The good and bad of YouTube

YouTube is a wonderful outlet for anyone with a video camera and some basic editing skills. Having been a part of it for as many years as I have, I have seen some very good videos and some very bad ones as well. Separating the good from the bad channels can be a problem all it's own.

Part of the problem has to do with the balance of friendship and boredom. As an example, consider the days of old when you had friends who would make home movies or take vacations pictures and invite you over to view them. Very few of these were hardly worth watching, mostly because your friend's idea of things that are interesting would not match your own. But as a friend you felt obligated to sit through them no matter how boring they were.

Fast forward to the present where we have YouTube. Now we have the ability to pick and choose what we watch or don't watch. Whatever your interests are, there is more than likely a video or channel dedicated to that subject. Great! What could possibly go wrong with that? Let's take a look.

Over the years that YouTube has been around, a lot of folks have gotten the bug to make their own videos and post them on their channel. No problem there, watch or don't watch, the decision is yous. But here is where the problem begins.

Say you begin to have a following. Not much at first, but your subscriber base grows. Like it or not, you feel obligated to return the favor and subscribe to their channel. You figure if they like what you are posting, surely their tastes must be similar. As long as that is the case, there is not much of a problem, but here is the rub. Maybe they subscribed at the request of someone else and are just doing it out of loyalty to a friend. Oops! Now we have a problem.

And the problem gets worse the more subscribers you get. You don't want to be a snob so you hit the subscribe button on their channel and so it goes until you are subscribed to so many people who post videos you care nothing about that you simply can't keep up watching them all in a day and so you just don't watch any!

I think everyone needs to find their own solution, but what I did was to politely explain to some of the people I subbed to that I might not watch all of their videos because the content didn't interest me. I think most reasonable people understand that.

I also tend to skip through videos that I have little interest in. You can still comment just by looking at the comments made so far and from the parts you watch. It may not be totally fair, but when you get so far behind it's almost mandatory.

I've also found that people I once found very interesting are no long interesting or post videos that are boring. Those I may just click on and then go directly to the end so that YouTube will mark it watched. I hate seeing videos in my subscriptions that are not marked watched.

And finally I've gone through my subscriptions and unsubscribed to those I don't enjoy at all. Life is too short to waste watching videos I am not interested in at all. To be fair, if anyone doesn't want to stay subbed to me because of that I completely understand.

I would be most interested in your method to cope with this problem. :)

What's happening in July?

Guess I've been too busy lately to type anything here. Making videos, providing transportation to our newest job recipient (Lexi) and just all around living in general. Yes Lexi got a job at the local Arby's restaurant about the time school was out for the summer. She absolutely loves working there, at least for the time being. It seems the longer one works at almost any job, the less they are lovin' it. LOL

I've been busy in the shop as well, currently building a power supply for an AM transmitter kit that I recently put together. The power supply is a regulated 12 volt DC and should be finished sometime this weekend. I made it out of an old 12 volt lamp transformer and put it in an old computer power supply case. I do plan to paint it, but haven't decided on a color yet.

Also went to my rheumatologist yesterday in Greenwood, IN. Had a good time being with granddaughters Jordan and Kylie, as well as great granddaughter Lainee. After the doctor visit we ate at the Skyline Chili near there and had desert at Cold Stone Creamery. Man was that some good eats!

 Also assembled another power supply kit recently that I bought at Banggood. Main reason I bought it was it's price. Hard to find electronics kits that cheap. Plus I will use it with the breadboard that I got off eBay sometime back. I have started a BB series on my channel for playing around build circuits that might possibly be useful on the bench. First one was on voltage doublers and that was done in preparation for another bench project coming up.

The other project I'm talking about is adding one more panel to my variac output besides the AC (0-150 Volts) and the low voltage DC (0-50 Volts) that I recently added. As you can see in the picture,

the outputs are clearly marked and the DC panel is on the left and AC on the right. A recent addition to the AC panel is the addition of binding posts for those times I need to use some low voltage AC for projects on the bench. The last addition of outputs from the variac will be a voltage doubler which will add higher voltage DC (0-400 Volts) for testing old radio circuits for leakage. When that is finished, that will complete my original plans for the variac output.

That's enough for now, maybe I'll be back again in another 6 months or so. :)