Oddments of High Unimportance

The course was titled “Make A 5-Minute Documentary in 7 Weeks” but it was almost seven months before I uploaded my Teacher documentary to YouTube.

Here are some notes on the experience.

The People’s Channel

The class was held at The People’s Channel in Chapel Hill, where we learned the basics of using a Panasonic AC90 camera, recording video and sound, using an extra microphone, unpacking and packing the tripod, and so on. The class fee included an Individual Membership to TPC for a year, allowing us to check out the camera and use TPC’s iMacs for video editing.

All TPC asked in return was 1) don’t break anything and 2) the privilege of showing the documentary you made using their equipment. They include many of these short films about people and the community in their program rotations alongside their longer-form programming.

Shooting the Video

I shot all the footage in a single weekend. J. Michael Pope, the subject of the documentary, happened to be performing at a church that Sunday with one of his students. He also arranged lessons in his studio with four of his students that I filmed almost in their entirety. Plus, we did a 30-minute interview.

By the end of that weekend, I had about 8 hours of video. This is where it’s easy to intimidate yourself. How was I going to create a 5-minute video out of all that footage? Where do I even start?

Sage Advice

Local video artist and potter Jason Abide taught the class and passed along some good tips.

• Just sit and watch all the footage one time through without making any notes.
• The next time through, watch with a notebook. I gave each clip a name, and noted timings of when songs started or when Michael said or did something I thought illustrative of his teaching style. I also made notes on some themes I saw emerging from the footage.
• Don’t overthink this. Editing is mainly about cutting things away. Plonk the bits you like best in a row, and start cutting away the stuff you don’t like.
• Use jump cuts for transitions. Viewers are used to them from newscasts and television generally. You can always change the transitions later.

Final Cut Pro X

Shooting footage is easy; editing it into a product is hard. For the 7-week class, fully 5 weeks were spent coming to grips with Final Cut Pro, a struggle that lasted for months.

Despite Jason’s advice to keep it simple and just cut, “simple” and “Final Cut Pro” do not go together.

The trouble here was that, in addition to figuring out what we wanted to say with our movies, we also struggled with learning the basics of how to make Final Cut Pro X do anything. We could see in our minds’ eye what we wanted the finished product to look like, but FCPX did not make it easy for us to realize them.

Aside from the overwhelmingly busy interface, there’s also the FCPX nomenclature. I still do not know the difference between libraries, events, and projects and those are basic concepts in FCPX.

My Sad Sad Story, Boo-Hoo

I could possibly have bought FCPX for my iMac, but I did not want to pay $300 for an application I did not expect to use again.

This meant using the iMacs at TPC.

Trouble #1: they were only open till 7pm a few nights of the week, and I work first-shift. I could have rearranged my schedule but the work upheavals that drove me to take the class also compelled me to stay close to the office.

Trouble #2: the only other time TPC was open was Saturday from 10am–2pm. So I had a four-hour window once a week during which I would have to relearn how to use FCPX, reacquaint myself with my footage, and try to make some sort of visible progress.

Trouble #3: Sometimes TPC would be closed on Saturday! After the second time this happened, I sent myself an automated reminder every Friday to call TPC and check their Saturday schedule. This saved me wasted trips a couple of times.

So my hands-on time with the footage was limited and there would be some occasions, such as when we went on vacation, where I’d be gone for weeks at a time. Whatever momentum I’d built up would be long gone. Hence the months needed for editing.

Lessons Learned

• As Jason advised, don’t try to learn everything about FCPX. Search Google for “FCPX 10.3” (include the version number you’re using) to find specific help as you need it. Then write it down in a notebook so you find it faster next time!
• That said, search on “FCPX cheatsheet” or “FCPX keyboard shortcuts” and bookmark or print the more helpful items. Jason encouraged us to learn and use basic keyboard shortcuts we’d use 98 percent of the time: start, stop, reverse, forward, zoom in to the timeline, etc.
• I found a few excellent Lynda.com FCP tutorial videos that I returned to often. On Saturdays, I’d start my work session by looking at the tutorials to review and remind myself of the technique or method I would use that day.[1]
• Dedicate a notebook to the project and use it to collect your notes on timings, themes, learnings, etc. I noted FCP key shortcuts in the back of my pocket Moleskine.
• I spent weeks simply reviewing the footage, and marking and organizing sections of clips for both the interview and the b-roll (or secondary) footage. This made compiling the first half of the video go more swiftly than I expected.
• As the video took shape, I’d start each work session by watching it through twice, noting any nips and tucks that were needed, deciding on the next steps, etc.
• I treated Michael’s interview as if it were recorded for radio. I edited, trimmed, and clipped silences, hesitations, etc. so it sounded tight. I knew I could cover the awkward jump cuts with my b-roll footage illustrating whatever he was talking about.
• As Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings.” When I got rid of the bits that I really loved, the story fell into place.
• I saw the movie in layers. Get the interview foundation solid, then add b-roll on top of that to add visual interest and variety, then play with the audio so the music or interview would fade in and out, then add the titles and credits. And then, sit and watch it over and over to tweak as needed till it looked smooth, to my eye.
• Near the end, I thought I needed three full 8-hour days to finish the thing. But by working on it a little at a time, I discovered to my surprise that I was done after only two Saturday sessions. I was stunned at how quietly it came together.
• I learned yet again that I can start from a place of zero knowledge and create something. I just have to keep showing up and doing the work.
• Some creative decisions are ones of necessity, but they can still be really good decisions.
• Some ideas come to you when you’re looking in the other direction. While I was making the bed one day, it occurred to me to end the movie with Pope saying “Excellent!” at the end of Ron’s solo. You hear him say it throughout the movie, so it’s natural and unforced.
• When I hit on ending the video with Pope exclaiming “Excellent!”, I thought of it as simply a nice button so we wouldn’t go out on a blank screen. He says this often during a lesson and it’s so expressive of his personality as a teacher. I didn’t realize till later that it could be interpreted on other levels: that he was proclaiming the movie as “Excellent!”, and that he was also saying it to the viewer who just sat through a mini-lesson with him.
• Be ready for that moment when a big project that has occupied your mindspace for months is now done. Because it will leave a vast echoing space behind and the question, “What next?” Have something waiting.

1. Unfortunately, Lynda.com removed the best documentary-based FCP course, one that followed a producer making a news piece on enticing CEOs to consider U.S. veterans for jobs. I wish I had noted the producer’s name, because she had lots of great tips and advice that saved me loads of time. Alas, gone without trace.  ↩

I did not start drinking coffee till my mid to late 20s at my first job. My bad nightowl habits, along with the early days of David Letterman’s late night show, meant I was usually sleepy the next day.

My doctor recommended drinking one cup of coffee in the morning and one after lunch to wake me up. “Treat it like a drug,” he said. “Not as a beverage or a dessert.”

That advice lasted for a little while, bless him. It was not long before coffee became my go-to drink of choice.

Herbal teas I never quite got the hang of; too fruity, most of them. And Earl Grey and the other black teas were not that tasty to me, either.

But coffee, that usually hit the spot. Except at night. I could drink decaf in the evening, sure, but even so – I was always a little suspicious that it had a little caffeine in it.

Several years ago, I read some blogger trying to wean himself off caffeine. He touted a product called Teeccino, an "herbal coffee" beverage he was using a coffee-substitute.

The local Whole Foods carried it and I tried it. It has since become one of my favorite hot  evening beverages, along with peppermint or ginger teas (my tastes have expanded, thank you).

Teeccino is made from a blend of chicory, dates, figs, etc. and is totally herbal without caffeine. What I like about Teeccino is that it’s thicker and more flavorful than the usual herbal teas; you brew it, rather like you brew a cup of coffee. I rotate among my preferred favors of Hazelnut, Mocha, and Java. With a splash of half-and-half and a bit of sugar, a cup of Teeccino strikes a very comforting note for me, especially in these dark winter months.

The only trouble with Teeccino is that it’s finely ground, and our tea ball’s mesh did not keep the grounds out of the drink. I’d tried using a gold filter cone, which worked OK but only OK; the water took a while to seep through and the cone was a mess to clean out.

What has taken my Teeccino experience to the next level is a wonderful Christmas gift from Liz: a Finum brewing basket.

The basket sits in the cup, the cover keeps the beverage hot as it steeps, hardly any grounds or sludge seep out into the cup, and cleanup is a breeze.

Teeccino and the Finum brewing basket: Highly Recommended.

Sorry for the horrible "diarizing" in the title, but the word fits for now. 

In addition to this blog, on which I'm aiming to make a daily post of some kind, I'm also recording the days in the fifth year of a 5-year diary (many, many gaps of white space in previous years), and am playing with the 1-Second Everyday video app on my iPhone. 

Each medium contains a different message, as it were. The blog is the stuff I clean up and show to people, the diary holds some minutiae of the day (weather, errands done, people met, movies seen), and the video app records a blink of visual time. Two days ago, I shot a second of our still fully lit and decorated Christmas tree from my chair in the living room. Today, I shot a second of the bare tree lying on our snowy curb.

Each medium forces me to think a bit differently about what is worth remembering. They are all, in some way, about paying attention. I wonder what I will see.

In the world's neverending quest to quantify, there is the concept of the "four-quadrant movie." I'm sure there are demographic breakdowns like this for any industry, and this may serve as a simple heuristic for making quck decisions, but geez -- isn't it also a Procrustean bed?

Liz and I recently saw Darkest Hour and The Shape of Water. Neither of which I think would appeal much to quadrants 1 and 2 (men and women under 25 years old). There is no quadrant for "popcorn-worthy movie," which seems to be the basis of our movie-going decisions.

Quietly beautiful portraits of women against a backdrop of mazes, flowers, and William Morris-inspired wallpaper patterns. This kind of work thrills me -- that it's by a self-taught artist, that it's something I've never seen before.

Updated on 2026-01-28

I have tried various technological or mental gizmos over the years to help me fall and stay asleep: white noise machines, small fans, mantras, working my way through the alphabet naming flowers or birds or superheroes, or tensing and relaxing my body from the feet up.

A few months back, I tried something different and I now tend to fall asleep and get back to sleep more quickly.

It’s not a new idea by any means: I listen to music through my Bluetooth headset as I go to sleep. If I wake in the night, I simply put the music back on and away I doze.

Two keys that make this work for me: the music and the hardware.

Music

What came first was the music. I don’t know why music works for me; it could be that the music distracts the busy analytical part of my mind enough so the sleepy part can shut everything down.

In my iTunes music library, I created a playlist folder called “aZleep” (it sorts to the top of the folder list) and in it, I have playlists for the following:

• Some time back, Moby released a playlist of slow, droney tracks that he created to help himself relax and sleep, “Long Ambients1: Calm. Sleep.” Each track is from 17 to 35 minutes long. I usually find myself asleep within a few minutes. I let the music play to the end of the playlist in case I wake up in the night.
• If my mind is feeling overactive, I listen to Sharon Isbin’s complete Bach lute sonatas. This album is in its own playlist and lasts about an hour. I can’t remember ever listening to the whole thing; I think my mind has associated this CD with sleep for so long that I am usually gone by the third or fourth track.
• Max Richter’s From Sleep is a minimal, ambient album, not as electronic or droney as Moby. More rhythmic. There is piano, strings, some vocal chant – rather melancholy, truth be told. It’s an hour long and is excerpted from the much much much longer work Sleep, which is intended to reflect a complete 8-hour sleep cycle. As one Amazon customer puts it, “Playing it a little louder, it also works fairly well as somewhat somber background music for dinner parties.” Sold!
• Thunderstorm sounds also work really well for me, for whatever reason. The sounds of a storm outside, the comfort of shelter inside – this works for me.

And that’s it. When I go to bed, I pick whichever category of sound stands out and crawl under the covers. If I get up in the night, I’ll simply start playing it again.

Hardware

The other key to making this work for me is my LG HBS-730 Bluetooth headset. I’ve had these for so long the button locations are in my muscle memory.

I use a bit of black tape to cover up the blinking blue light indicating that bluetooth is activated. Whenever I wake in the night and want to hear the music again, I simply press the Play button and the active playlist starts right up.

I like this “collar” style of headset for sleeping. It does not obstruct my head movement, does not fall off, and does not get in my way. I do not put an earbud into both ears; I sleep on my side and don’t like the feel of an earbud pressing into my ear. Instead, whenever I turn over to my other side, I remove one, dock it magnetically to the collar, and insert the other. I’ve been doing this for so long, the action does not wake me up.

My sleeping problems seem to be 90 percent licked. The waking-up-and-not-raring-to-go-in-the-morning problem is still there, but these things take time.

Updated on 2026-01-29:

• The LG HBS-730 headset is long discontinued, but there are other similar collar headsets available. The location of the controls vary a bit, but after a few days, I know them by feel. Since they’re relatively cheap, I try to buy two sets: one that stays by my bed, one that stays in my travel kit.
• I also expanded my nighttime listening to speech, talking, audiobooks, podcasts. If I’m sleepy but my mind is particularly busy, then having that busy part of the mind distracted by listening to people talking will sometimes help me sleep.
• But then there are nights where I will wake up and can’t get back. This tendency got a lot better in 2024 when I worked with practitioner of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi).

I just finished boiling about 5 lbs. of red potatoes, eyes and blemishes removed but much of the skin intact.

They're now sitting in two good-sized containers in the fridge. I'll carry one of them to work tomorrow and those cold potatoes, with a bit of salt, are all I'll eat till suppertime, when I eat a normal meal with my wife.

That style of cold-potato eating is called PBD -- or "Potatoes by Day" -- as found in Tim Steele's book The Potato Hack. The book is quite well-written, with a dip into an 1880's article on the efficacy of potato diets, the history of potatoes, the science of potatoes, and recipes.

The actual Potato Hack is eating only cold or reheated potatoes for 3 days straight. Some people can lose from a quarter to a half pound a day on this regimen.

I've tried the hack twice and could only make it a day and half before I caved. Despite cutting the experiment short, I lost 3 pounds on the first hack, so I will testify to its weight-loss effect. Unfortunately, I was also swept away by incredible hunger pangs and thoughts of food distracted me for hours.

For whatever reason, I find the PBD variation easier to deal with. In communication with Steele on his web site, he suggested I vary up the potatoes for different times of day or meals. So cold boiled potatoes for lunch, perhaps, with maybe baked potatoes or baked russet wedges alongside mashed Yukon golds for supper. I've not tried that but it's a good idea.

The goal of the hack is not to eat only potatoes for ever and ever, though there's a guy who kept a video diary on YouTube where he ate only spuds for an entire year. Yikes. The goal is simply to "reset" your digestive system, give it a break from the standard American diet, and then go on with your life. The way I use the PBD hack is to establish a stable eating habit during the early part of the week, when my will power is strongest and when I can leverage the power of routine. Even if I don't lose any weight, I can easily maintain where I am.

One of the first things people ask me when I talk about the hack is, "I thought potatoes were high on the glycemic index and the starch turns to sugar in your body."

That was my belief too. But Steele makes the point in his book that, while cooked potatoes do indeed act like that, cooled potatoes do not. The cooked starch cools to become "resistant starch" -- basically fiber -- and so one should not experience a glycemic spike from the cooked then cooled potatoes. Reheating cooled potatoes can reduce some of the resistant starch, but when they're cooled again more resistant starch is created.

Steele goes into quite a lot of detail on resistant starch and its favorable properties in supporting better gut health. I was impressed by his research and presentation of the scientific literature.

I first heard of The Potato Hack via the Critical MAS site, where MAS has helpfully collected all of his potato-related posts into a single Best Of page.

MAS made several points that swayed me to try it. One was that potatoes are noted for their high satiety -- you will "feel full" faster with potatoes.

One of MAS's more compelling arguments is that eating plain cold boiled potatoes severs the flavor reward connection in our brains. One of the reasons we mindlessly eat more than we need to is because we crave a variety of flavors and textures. By eating unexciting cold potatoes, you're taking in calories, feeling full, but not reinforcing the flavor-reward connection. You'll likely stop eating sooner when the body feels sated rather than eating to discomfort or regret.

One of the key ideas I picked up from Tim Ferris' slow-carb diet (SCD) was that we already eat the same few dishes anyway, week in and week out. When I did the SCD, I ate the same lunch at work Mon-Thu of microwaved lentils, veg, and poached chicken breasts or thighs, with some apple cider vinegar and Tabasco splashed on. For months. I appreciated not having to think about what I'd do for lunch that day. My wife really dislikes eating the same meal more than twice in a row, but for whatever reason, I have no problem with it.

So taking my cold boiled potatoes to work tomorrow suits me just fine. I will not go hungry but I'll also consume far fewer calories than I would on a normal eating day. It's simplicity itself, and a hack I still find interesting and fun to do.

I quit adopting New Year's Resolutions some years ago. But I liked the idea of an official "fresh start" of some kind. A Google search for alternatives led me to find Christine Kane's Word of the Year scheme.

If coachspeak makes your skin crawl, then let your eyes glide over "intention" and "upleveling." Instead, simply consider the idea that an aspirational or inspirational word could help you more than a list of rules and regulations.

Christine includes a PDF (you need to provide an email address to get the PDF) of questions and fill-in-the-blank items intended to help you think through what you want from the year and also, just as important, what you tend to avoid.

She includes a list of sample words (Yes, No, Prayerfulness, Risk, Pioneer) and some good provoking questions to help you think about why this or that word may be a good match for you in the coming year (i.e., "How do you already embody this word? How do you not embody it? List 5 habits that would help you embody the word fully.")

I have found, for myself, that the word should scare me a little bit. It's a word that makes me want to, in Christine's words, "run in the other direction." That for me is a sign that a part of myself needs some loving attention. The word becomes a teacher or perhaps a lighthouse, guiding me rather than pushing me.

During a particularly challenging work year, I chose the word "Leader," a word and concept that absolutely terrified me. It's not part of my self-image at all, particularly in the workplace. I'm not sure I became the leader I thought I needed to be that year, but it encouraged me to live up to that word, in the ways I thought best. I'm sure I carry some attitudes from that year into my work today.

Christine suggests placing a reminder of the word in your path every day. Let it work on you, don't force it to work on you.

I use a FollowupThen biweekly email with questions and prompts to remind me of my word and think about whether it continues to be useful to me.

My word this year is rather a plain one: TRUST. Trust what? Myself and my intuitions, mostly. I tend to look outward for "expert advice" for lots of things -- for too many things possibly -- instead of just trusting my own experience and my own wisdom. Look inside this year, rather than out.

Trust that I will get the answer I need when I need it. Trust that I will always have the resources to meet whatever challenge it is I may face, and that I will be OK if I don't.

I could have maybe chosen the word "Relax," since that seems to be my ultimate goal. But it isn't. The goal is something bigger, the person I want to be is someone bigger.

Happy New Year.

Backups via Time Machine to our 2TB Time Capsule have not gone smoothly the last several months, with the backup always stopping with an unexplained error.

After reviewing this 2010 page from Joe Kissell on troubleshooting Time Capsule problems, I tried Disk Utility and then finally opted for a complete erase of the drive and a fresh Time Machine backup. The dialog UI has changed, of course, and it took a bit of spelunking to find the Erase command in the Airport Utility.

The fresh backup copying seems to be going OK so far, and I'm hoping this brings an end to these intermittent failures.

Update, 2018-01-01: This did not help; still getting the error. May try another erase and then a hard reset of the Time Capsule. More later.

Liz wanted to return one of the gifts I'd purchased for her from her Amazon wishlist. She tries to only flag items covered by Prime and that are "Fulfilled by Amazon"; if we have to return an item, then those are indicators of free UPS shipping back to Amazon.

But the item we wanted to return today was showing that I'd be paying almost half the purchase price of the item for return shipping -- for a Prime item Fulfilled by Amazon. Huh.

A few quick searches uncovered an interesting workaround: engage in a Live Chat with Amazon Support. I gave the guy my order number, the specific item name, and said I needed to return it. He immediately created a return slip for me and said there would be no shipping charge. In a few minutes, I got an email with the return shipping label. Later this afternoon, I got an email from Amazon confirming the full amount of my refund.

So: if you're not getting the full refund for a return, try starting a Live Chat with Amazon Support, and see if that works for you.