Alex has been bugging me for ages to start letting him record Minecraft videos like his favorites TheDiamondMinecart and StampyLongNose. This became more urgent though once one of his friends from school became Reid the Diamond Robot and started posting his own videos.
So here we go, Alex’s first Minecraft video. Um, he was really tired when we did this one, and got increasingly frustrated as we went, leading to a complete meltdown in the last few minutes of the video. Oops! He still wanted to post it though!
We’ve already got two more episodes recorded after this one that I will be posting soon. So subscribe to ALeXMXeLA on YouTube now to see more as they get made!
Showed him the controls a few seconds before starting this video. Had to convince him to try himself rather than just watching me. Then seconds later he finished his first level! So proud! :-)
12 hours of timelapse total crunched into 3:45. There is a bit of me cleaning before the construction starts, and a bit of me recording my podcast after construction is done.
Actual construction from about 1:30 to 3:00 on the video.
Roscoe and Brandy help a little bit too.
This is of course a snippet of the kind of thing always available on the AbulCam.
I figured that since we are coming up fast on Alex’s 3rd birthday, I’d go ahead and post some highlights of his 1st birthday. You know, for the three or four relatives who will actually watch it. :-)
Edit 2012 Aug 17 07:35 UTC to swap video for slightly revised one adding in one clip I’d missed the first time.
Alex has been really into playing with his toy trains for quite a few months now. Spending hours doing it almost every day, building elaborate arrangements of tracks and blocks, pulling really long trains, asking me to “Play Thomas” or “Play Hiro” under his direction. But recently he has found something new and wonderful…
Videos of real trains on YouTube.
The video above is one I started to take of him watching one and getting excited. (He had been jumping up and down and yelling, then I started recording and started it over, which he wasn’t excited about.) He noticed me videoing, told me “NO!” and took my phone, and started recording the video off the computer screen. In all he recorded almost 15 minutes of train videos before I reclaimed my phone. The video only contains the highlights. :-)
Especially when it is late and he is getting sleepy, but other times as well, he will now ask for “Train Videos“, or sometimes more specifically “Blue Train!“. On the computer he will happily watch one after another after another, but he hasn’t quite mastered the trackpad (or mouse) yet, so when a video ends, he looks through the pictures for the related videos that come up at the end, and points at the one he wants, and one of us has to start it.
But… but… with the YouTube app on the iPhone, he is completely proficient at navigating on his own. Start it off with a search of “trains” or “blue trains” or something similar, and he will be enthralled and fully engrossed and fascinated moving from one video to another to another, exploring the world of YouTube train videos… seemingly for hours… certainly long enough for an hour or so long drive home from day care.
The timelapse above is from my home office yesterday. Since I was working from home due to snow, you actually get to see me in my office some. The excitement of my crazy gesticulating during conference calls! The thrills of Alex coming to fetch me and climbing all over me before getting me to carry him back downstairs. The views of my midsection as I pace back and forth in front of the camera. All very exciting stuff!
This is all to note that I made some updates to the AbulCam lately. There is now sometimes sound if I don’t have it muted. Also, the way the timelapses are made will slow down even more when there is lots of motion, and speed up more when there is not, leading to more interesting timelapses. At least I think so. I’ve also matched the sizes of the live shot and the previous day’s timelapse. They are a little smaller, but that means they will load faster and stream better. I’ve also emoved some old clunky bits that didn’t work any more. Finally, at least for the moment, the portable wireless webcam I moved from place to place has died… a non-waterproof camera doesn’t like being left outside in the rain… even if it does generate some nice movies before dying… so the picture is going to be from the webcam on my desktop in my home office for awhile. But that means more me! Well, at least a little. Reality is I’m not in my office anywhere near as much as I would like and sometimes whole days go by without me dropping in at all. But hey, new and better timelapses!