I HEART iMOVIE, SORT OF

It is indeed true that Necessity is the Mother of Invention.  No, I didn't invent anything that can change the world drastically.  It's just that all these times as a Mac owner I rarely play with iMovie, which is part of the iLife suite of multimedia applications bundled with every Macintosh computer.  When my son was young, I may have dabbled a bit, baby videos and all.  Maybe my Mac back then was too old and slow, or maybe I didn't have the time like I do now during the pandemic quarantine, but I didn't make anything out of iMovie.

I run a very active alumni group for my high school and one day came across a YouTube video that turned out to be popular with the group.  Then some time later I discovered that the video was blocked by YouTube, because of some copyright issue with the music used.  It's still there, maybe viewable in some Communist country that doesn't care about copyright laws, just not available where I live.  I was able to contact the person who posted the video and after much waiting finally got a hold of the video file, some 700 MB in size and in the WMV format.

The entire video is 35 minutes in length and would need to have certain sections having no sound because of copyright.  From my past dealing with uploading videos to Facebook, it's best not to have a big file.  Facebook needs to do some processing and after the long wait to upload the big file, say anything 300 MB or bigger, there would be another delay before the video is viewable.  I was sure iMovie could do that for me - chop up the video into more digestible sections and zero out the sound level anywhere that there's music that may offend some copyright owner's feelings.

If it's something I have no idea how to proceed I would read up, perhaps spending an hour or so going through the online help.  But iMovie looks simple enough so I dove right in.  Making the first few clips was a pain!  Sure I got them made, but I was doing it the hard way.  Eventually I found the correct way, as far as I know, and I was quickly Splitting clips, Joining them, etc.  In the end, I was able to even re-combine all the various clips into one file to re-upload to YouTube, without the offending music.  If you are from Newtown High School of Elmhurst, Queens, New York, Class of 1994, check out the video:


NEWTON HIGH SCHOOL OF ELMHURST, QUEENS NY CLASS OF 1994 SENIOR VIDEO

MY SON IS A CYCLIST!

I started teaching my son how to ride the bike as early as 2007.  Wow, six years ago!  He is too afraid and didn't become a cyclist back then.  I think a few years ago I had a day or two trying to get him into it but again no luck.  With the most recent attempts, the promise is that I will get him a certain Nerf product.  Maybe that did the trick.  It also helped that as someone who is not gainfully employed, I have the time to take him to the park on weekdays, as opposed to having the time only on weekends, since I usually get home late during the week when I was working.

This time around it took four sessions, according to my son.  I think it was three sessions, but it's his child-brain versus my aging brain, I'll trust his memory.  It was frustrating, as with all things new.  It was like he never learned at all.  At first, he would not even pedal.  Then he did, but only moved a few meters.  Next he moved, but with me holding the seat and the rightmost tip of the handlebar, he would lean into me.  Maybe it's because my son and the nephew and nieces are all older, most just a few inches shorter than me, training them wasn't too physically demanding.  I was able to physically support them without feeling too drained.  It was a little more energy-draining with my son since he's overweight, but I managed.

Little by little, he got better.  I started with letting go of the handlebar and he was able to move along briefly before going wild with the steering.  He's tall enough to just put his feet down to stop.  He wasn't moving too fast so braking was not absolutely needed.  I made sure he knew about braking nevertheless.  He thought he would need a few more days to learn how to start off on his own, but I noticed a few times he just automatically put his feet on the pedals and continue moving.

It was such a joyous moment when I finally let go of both the back and the handlebar and jog along with him!  Some day he and I can go brunning, or biking and running.  Even better would be both of us running, but I take things one item at a time.  He still had trouble turning and was going in circle, clockwise because he didn't know how to turn left.  Then for a while he would only go counter-clockwise.  In the end, he got it, even if he was still a bit shaky.  Then he had a crash, maybe because he got overconfident and was going too fast to chase his cousin LZ, who just became a cyclist last week.  Only a scraped left knee and barely a scratch on the right elbow.  I think my bike got it worse, with a out-of-whack basket and even the bike head got twisted.  He's cool about it all and is eager to resume tomorrow.  I so look forward to some quality time with my son on the few bike paths we have in the area!