So I am learning many lessons of you tubing on the road.  While collecting the video is fairly simple and easy. The downloading, editing, and processing are much complicated by space and power.  Also as noted in a prior blog, a glitch in the system leaves no backup plan to resolve hardware issues.  When the screen died on the laptop my only recourse was to return to base.

With my current learnings.  I’m finding out that relying on my iPhone to upload videos is a mistake.  Upload speeds are greatly throttled compared to download speeds.  In the inefficiency of using your phone is a hotspot and a phone at the same time means too many things are going on in the background.  In my attempt to upload my Lake Sherwood recreation area video in 1080P resulted in posting a video on YouTube that was at 380 resolution.  Incredibly pixelated and choppy on anything but a small phone.

To correct the problem I enlisted the help of a nearby librarian, who set me up on their free guest Wi-Fi.  I have found in the past that when there becomes a computer problem, librarians are extremely helpful.  And because the library had symmetrical Internet access, meaning upload speeds are as fast as download speeds, I got what was going to be a three-hour video on my iPhone uploaded in 15 minutes.  It was so fast I even had time to upload a 2^nd video for the next week.  So now that I am a week ahead I can do a more thorough editing and search out libraries to upload from.  Many libraries also leave their Wi-Fi on at night and weekends when they might be closed.  This allows me to upload in the parking lot if need be.

I am attempted to do uploads at McDonald’s and Burger King who also offer free Wi-Fi.  But it is not symmetrical and takes quite a long time to upload anything.  I will have to do some experimentation to see what the real speed is.  Other places that I’m aware of that have fast Wi-Fi is Panera bread and Starbucks coffee shops.  But since Panera bread is a small fortune to eat there and I don’t drink coffee I feel slightly guilty about using their Wi-Fi.  Most places that have free Wi-Fi use a slower “guest” Wifi platform that is relatively slow to prevent downloading movies.  I imagine it may be changing in the future as they compete for guests and customers.

Other great things you can use library 4 is searching for genealogy links and documents.  Many libraries compete with the local historical society and having historical documents.  I’m not a believer that this is the right way to do things.  I think they should band together in share their information and resources.  And of course the library is a great place for kids to go during rainy days and unsupervised days when they can really expand their brains and minds in the areas that we can’t really guide them to.  So please support

your local library.  There are many ways to do that.  Through book donations, cash donations, some libraries have thrift stores, or just volunteer to help out at the library.  You’ll find all of these worthwhile and will make you feel good.

So I think this is a quick one for this week.  Speaking about donations, don’t forget there’s a donation button at the top if you have a few extra nickels and dimes.  If you donate $10 through that link, I will get $9.85.  As opposed to YouTube which will give me $6.55.  But obviously some time there is a price to convenience so no worries.  Just coming here and viewing the blog in the videos is a big help.  And sharing is a great help too.

Have a great week my friends, we’ll see you on the next video

Rick and Akela