The Problem With Social Media

I have a very specific problem with social media. And it has a lot to do with why I stopped doing VEDA. I was so motivated about posting a video every day in April, but then one of social media’s most irritating problems interfered.

In recent months, YouTube has been tweaking things in their search algorithms, as well as how they push out videos to people. It’s the latter issue I have problems with. You see, they changed how subscribers see videos of channels they subscribe to. When you click on the subscribe button for a channel, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll see each and every video of theirs as they’re published on the subscription feed.  This has been verified by several of my subscribers, saying that they saw only a few of my videos or even none of my VEDA videos in their subscription feed. I talk about it in this video:

And you know what? I checked for myself if I’m receiving all videos of people I subscribe to, and I’m not. There are some very popular channels I subscribe to that I’m not seeing in my subscription feed, either.

But you know, YouTube isn’t the only place I have problems with their feeds. On Facebook, it defaults to Top Stories, which are often stories I’ve already read, and I never see posts from the majority of people I’m friends with. The option to see most recent posts is still there, but it never defaults to it. I want to see most recent.

On Instagram, it has some algorithm that shows what Instagram thinks I want to see. It used to show the most recent, but now there isn’t even an option for that. I miss most of the pictures of people I follow.

On Twitter, they all seem quite random, rather than showing most recent.

Social media, can you please just let us see all posts in chronological order? Please?

E Is for Environment Minister

Silly days of the week. They go sequentially don’t they? I missed a day yesterday, and posted The Doctor just before this post. But this one is on time!

For the A to Z Challenge, we move on to the letter E, and while there is an engineer in this story, it focuses more on the Environment Minister. But the engineer is a recurring character while the Environment Minister is not. And this is where things start to heat up! So, let’s find out what happened and you can also see what was going on in my head when I wrote this part:

If you want to keep up with the story on my YouTube channel, then please consider subscribing! And let me know what you thought about this part of the story.

D Is for Doctor

The alphabet is easy. The fourth letter is D. And it’s pretty easy to figure out a job that starts with D.

Last time, our carpenter had a mishap, and so he had to have someone check over his injury. Here is the Doctor! No, not from Doctor Who, but an actual medical doctor.

So, we continue the A to Z Challenge with the letter D and The Doctor. Check out the video of me reading my story, and then I talk a bit about some of the background.

If you’re interested in keeping up with the story as I release it, then please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel! I talk a lot about books, reading, writing, and even some science fiction. And let me know what you think in the comments below.

C Is for Carpenter

Part 3 is here for my reading of Ariadne! The letter C stands for Carpenter.

If you remember from my previous posts, I participated in the A to Z Challenge three years ago, and I wrote a flash fiction series based on the letters of the alphabet, each part representing a different profession. For the letter C, I chose carpenter.

On my YouTube channel, I decided to read the stories out and then discuss various aspects on what was going through my mind while I was writing. Who are the characters? What’s revealed about the world and my inspiration? Well, find out in the video!

If you have any comments, then please let me know down below.

B Is for Botanist

Oops! I missed a day. But here it is, this is part 2 of the Ariadne flash fiction series I did three years ago for the A to Z Challenge! You can see the full list of stories here.

In this part, I read the story, “The Botanist.” I also discuss the main character, Malika Said, and a bit more about the tree. Find out what I have to say about my writing thought process in the video:

If you’d like to keep up with the videos on my YouTube channel, then please consider subscribing.

And let me know what you thought about this part!

A Is for Artist

No April Fools today. I actually am going to do a blog post every day this month. Sounds like the old days!

Starting today, I’m sort of doing the A to Z Challenge, but in video form. The first part of the flash fiction series I did three years ago is up! It’s called “The Artist.” Enjoy!

I’ll be posting a new video every day, and if you’d like to keep up to date on YouTube, you can subscribe to my channel.

A to Z Challenge Again?

Three years ago, I participated in the A to Z Challenge. This year, I’m sort of participating, but not really. First of all, I’m not signed up for it. But secondly, this is a blogging challenge, and what I’m doing isn’t blogging. But I am informing you of it on my blog. Instead, I am doing VEDA, Vlog Every Day in April. And it is very much related to the A to Z Challenge I did three years ago.

You see, three years ago, I wrote a 26 part series of flash fiction stories based on my world of Ariadne. This year, I’m reading them out and talking about the inspirations, backgrounds, and characters involved in each part. I’m doing this all on video. Below is my announcement video.

Every day, I will be posting each video on here, and you can leave your comments on this blog or on the video itself, if you want. And I consider this my return to blogging!

So, hi!

I’ve Never Watched Game of Thrones!

You read that headline correctly. I’ve never watched Game of Thrones. Of course, I was living in Japan when it started, so I was very far behind by the time I moved to Canada. But also, I’ve only read the first three books. I explained why I haven’t watched the TV series in this video:

So, what do you think? Should I watch it? Let me know in the comments section below.

Social Media Book Tag

Time to get caught up on the blog posts for VEDA! Uh, that’s about 20 videos to catch up on.

For this one, I did something called the Social Media Book Tag. I had to relate different books to different social media platforms, based on the nature of those platforms. It was an interesting exercise. Find out what I said:

Which books would you relate to the social media platforms? Here’s a list of the questions:

Twitter- Your favorite shortest book.
Facebook- A book everybody pressured you into reading.
Tumblr- A book you read before it was cool.
Myspace- A book you don’t remember whether you liked or not.
Instagram- A book that was so beautiful you had to Instagram it.
Youtube- A book you wish would be turned into a movie.
Goodreads- A book you recommend to everyone.
Skype- A book with characters that you wish you could talk to instead of just reading about.

Let me know how you would answer these.

Did You See the Eclipse? I Did!

This is the second solar eclipse I’ve seen in six years. The last one was in Japan, and it was a total eclipse. This time, we had a partial eclipse here in Edmonton. I made a solar eclipse viewer with a cereal box, and it performed wonderfully. Curious to see the results? Well, check it out!

The things that I observed with the viewer that I found interesting were:

• I could see clouds when they passed over the sun.
• While the image was sharp, the camera found it to be difficult to focus on it, mainly because of the contrast between the dark box and bright light of the eclipse.

Outside the box, when it was at maximum eclipse, I noticed the following:

• It got darker. It was still sunny, but it was a very odd sunny. It was like we had a 70% less bright sun. Things that I normally would have squinted at, like the white garage door, was no longer very bright.
• It became cooler. It was a significant drop in temperature, and I wanted to wear a jacket. It was a 25 C day. That’s warm. But with 70% of the sun covered, the heat was less, and it felt cool.

I would have loved to have experienced the total eclipse. When I was in Japan, it was cloudy. I didn’t notice much of a cooling and while it did become significantly darker, it was still cloudy, and it wasn’t as impressive. I could still see the eclipse through the clouds, though. And yes, I did look at it without protecting my eyes with glasses. I couldn’t see it with the glasses, actually! The clouds were just the right thickness to be able to see the eclipse. But don’t worry, I only glanced at it quickly. And then when there was a break in the clouds, I used the glasses and took pictures through them.

Did you see the eclipse? Let me know!