Well, as you can see above, I have just posted my first ever attempt at a video blog or “vlog”. It’s not great… Pretty much, I look stupid on camera, and I can see why no one takes me seriously, I kind of feel like a buffoon! Most of the vlog is pretty self-explanatory, but I just wanted to share a few comments here below, for those of you that are still interested after 8 minutes! (Only a unique few who have to love me, I’m sure…)

So first off, for those of you who may be on a ship or have a poor internet connection, I’ll get a transcript posted when I see how good YouTube’s machine transcription is. I’m not sure if I’ll add that to the end of this post, as an attachment, or as a separate post. If you have thoughts, let me know in the comments.

Next… I hate Windows Live Movie Maker. This is the software I used to edit the video, and as you can see it did a bad job. What I saw in my little preview video before publishing is not what the final video turned out to be. There were some awkward cuts, etc. I think you know where they were. I originally downloaded it because I thought it could capture from my webcam directly… turns out that was Windows Movie Maker (nee “live”), and the new version no longer does that (just because you’re free, doesn’t mean you should be cheap!).

Then I had some problems after I uploaded it to YouTube, because YouTube tries to re-encode the video. I tried again, and cut it with Adobe Media Encoder to a better format. Still it doesn’t look great on YouTube, so obviously I have some lessons to learn. Unfortunately with a 15 minute encoding time, both from Windows Live Movie Maker and Adobe Media Encoder for an 8 minute video… I’ll pass on doing it again. Lessons learned for next time, right?

So this was my adventure: what I thought would be an hour or two tossing up a video onto the blog turned into 7 hours (1pm to 8pm); seriously I have 200% more respect for vloggers now!

Unproductive Productivity

I’m sitting in my office, staring at my computer, wondering how this outline of a document I just wrote will ever get filled in. The Word file stares back at me, unblinking, unkind, and uncaring. Three weeks ago, in a fit of motivation, I wrote the headings for this document- Introduction, Problem Scope and Motivation, Approach, Approach Evaluation, Conclusion. If that seems non-descriptive, you’re right, and this skeleton of a document is not helping me at all.

My downfall for the past three weeks has not been procrastination or distraction (although I have been battling the two as well), the downfall of this document has been the pseudo-productive task that has driven me away from accomplishing this necessary creative work, but left me feeling satisfied as though I had achieved useful progress. It is only three weeks later that I can see those tasks for what they really were- especially as the glow of the screen shows me my empty document.

It is hard to work at home, I’ve concluded. But I knew that before I undertook my thesis in Arlington instead of Fargo. I moved so that I could be closer to Jaci- and we both knew that I would need a good work environment. So we rented a house with two floors- intending the upper floor to be the work area. A bit optimistically, we thought that separate living and work areas would be better for me to work in because I could “go to work” by going upstairs at 9 and “come home” by coming downstairs at 5.  So far it has been mostly successful, but dog still demands attention, no matter which floor I’m on.

What ends up happening is that I take on tasks that seem productive, short term items that are usually completed quickly. They are errands, server updates, bits of code and script that I want to try out, updates to my resume, searching for a job, etc. They nicely get checked off my to-do list, and when 5 comes along, and Jaci comes home, I’m ready for a seemingly deserved relaxing evening. It is a tyranny that demands my time, and siphons my creative process away from my necessary work.

And as I stare at the shell of the document, it becomes clear, for the first time in my life, I think I have writers block! Too bad it is on something so important. The cursor at the end of the title of this document blinks at me reminding me that it is: “Resource Allocation in Hybrid Wireless Networks; A Proposal for Masters Thesis Work at NDSU”. So dear reader, please any advice you can give on breaking the deadlock would be much appreciated!

Ah, another task to check off my list: “complete blog post about pseudo-productive tasks” … doh.

During our many Christmastime conversations, the question of my graduate thesis came up.  Ben, in an urge to experiment with self-publishing and happening to know I had a fairly polished hundred pages, put this together back in 2008 and made it available via Lulu.  He designed the cover art and wrote the blurbage as well (basically, everything required to make it accessible).

Mom Bengfort, in particular, advocated for making sure that this paper was available to those interested in the topic.  If I do say so myself (and definitionally, I do), while it isn’t groundbreaking anthropology or breathtaking Shakespeare, the extensive bibliography would be very useful to any student of Guyanese anthropology, sociology, history, or literature.

In any case, if you’re here at Bengfort.com, statistically you are here for the cookbook.  So this is, in essence, a classic “But wait!  There’s more!”  Consider this your invitation to sit down with a nice spread of dahl, roti, pumpkin, and armchair anthropology.

http://www.lulu.com/content/2742903