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I originally had a video blog that I was going to post, but while I was editing it, I realized that there were random white bars that kept obstructing the recording playback. I didn’t want to rerecord it, so I ditched the idea. This is all I have today. The Daily Shoot Assignment of the DayWeather affects us all. Make a photo of weather or something affected by weather today.
While I was editing the audio and video, I noticed that it didn’t really sound as good as I wanted it to sound. I thought the guitar and vocals were fine, but the bucket drum and the cello parts were the biggest problems.It’s obvious that I didn’t have a real drum handy, so I grabbed a large aluminum bucket, covered the outside with three sheets of letter-sized paper, and put the top back on. When I used that to play the basic beat of the song, I thought it would at least sound decent, seeing as I wasn’t doing any complicated fillers or combos. What I didn’t realize is that when the microphone picked up the bucket drum, it interpreted it as a dying fish flailing against a wall, and recorded it that way. The final product made the bucket drum make a plopping sound instead of a thumping sound.As for the cello, this was the first time I had even touched a cello for anywhere between three and four years. I couldn’t even get the cello tuned correctly, so everything that I played was either an eighth of a step sharp or an eighth of a step flat. When I rendered the final product of the video, I had to lower the sound of the cello as low as possible so the horrible tuning and my horrible performance wouldn’t detract from the overall playing. It did anyway.I decided that I was going to keep the guitar and vocal parts, but rerecord the drum and guitar parts. For the drum part, I planned on either using a better container, or to use the surface of my guitar as the drum, and play a few secondary guitar parts when the drum part wasn’t significant. For the cello, I was going to actually get my cello tuned properly, practice a little bit, then actually play it right. Ends up, the drum and cello parts aren’t the only parts that I have to rerecord.When I finished recording each part, I uploaded them to my laptop and deleted them off my camera. All the files were on my laptop, and after I finished the final product, I didn’t back it up or save it anywhere else. A few days ago, I got myself a new laptop, and decided to give my old laptop to my parents. My parents wanted the laptop in factory condition (without all my random files and software on it), so I saved everything from my My Documents folder to my new laptop, then formatted the old laptop and installed a fresh operating system onto it. After all that was done, I realized that I didn’t save my Project Four-Panel videos in my My Documents folder, but had them in a folder named Proj4P on my Desktop that I had overlooked when transferring files.Yes, that means the old recordings are gone forever.If I get some time tonight, I’ll try to rerecord tonight. If not, it should be done within a week or so. There are a few changes I’m going to make before recording the new version. The first one is that I’m probably not going to record in front of a plain white wall, and instead do it where there’s some background scenery. I thought the white walls would make it look cleaner, but it instead made it look more boring. Second, I’m going to wear a darker-colored shirt so my face doesn’t look so dark. And third, my earbud will not be hanging out in front of me, but will be placed inside my shirt through the back, so it doesn’t show up on film.Finally, I decided to make a note that if I remember correctly, I never publicly announced the title of the second song I’m going to do for Project Four-Panel. If you’re truly interested in finding out what it is, here’s a hint: The title of the song, in its entirety, has already been mentioned in this blog post. It was used in context of the actual word’s meaning, not in the context of a song title. What I’m WatchingTwo days ago, I watched 
Although I heard a lot about how this book was deceiving, and that the publisher even offered refunds to everyone who felt tricked by this book, I didn’t do any in-depth research about this book before starting to read it so I could get as neutral and unbiased of an experience from the book. However, even if this book was 100% truthful, I still probably would not have liked it, and do not know how this book became so popular that it was feautred by Oprah.The main story of the book revolves around the author, James Frey, in his quest to become drug-free. Supposedly, Frey had been a drug user and addict since he was ten years old, and has been arrested multiple times for various reasons. Frey is placed in one of the best rehabilitation centers in the country, and is put on a schedule to help him remove his dependancy on substances.Throughout his time there, he states that the drugs he used have induced severe memory loss, and he does not remember many specific details about things that happen in his daily life. On the contrary, the book is written in extreme detail and covers events that seem like ordinary happenings.Apart from the questionable and insignificant plot, the style of the book’s writing makes it seem like the author was in elementary school when he wrote it. There is no indentation or quotation marks, and sentences are short and choppy. I realize that this was most likely done for effect, but it was done so excessively that it detracts from the overall reading experience. I’m not sure if James Frey did this for this novel only, or if he did this for all his other published works too; I’m afraid to even find out how the other books turned out.Another noticeable thing about the writing is that particular phrases are randomly and unnecessarily repeated. I know it is a writing technique (called parallel structure or anaphora) to repeat particular statements for emphasis and effect. However, there is no scheme and no apparent reason for the things Frey repeats; sometimes, entire sentences are repeated in places so odd that I have to read back a few lines and wonder why that sentence was important enough to be repeated.I probably wouldn’t really recommend this book to anybody, unless they are a third-grade teacher and are used to reading this kind of writing, or just want to read the story that incited so much arguing. 