SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES-- Upload & More Upload--

 

28 July 2023--  

USPTO--1330PDT:

     The process for filing a trademark extension was straightforward and manageable. The most convenient part of the sequence of pages was not to change anything if not necessary, which many times in a long application can create errors that cannot be corrected. Just a matter of hitting the continue button unless flagged, which did not happen. Beyond the submission and payment, the pdf download is very useful to keep track of where the extension is going for the next required steps. Thank you for making the extension process understood without having to take additional measures. 

LAKE SWIM--0730PDT:

     As for the incredibly complicated process to get a 1 minute--involving just about ever editing item available: 3D Paint, Paint, Drive to download files, MS Video Editor, MS Clipchamp and was using Audacity to convert the MP3 recordings to .WAV, but that's now over with as going through the 3rd-part scammers is history, extinct.Originally, the project was to use cover songs through distributors to pay-per-stream/download but not only not cot effective, but unrealistic. A decision had to be made whether to sell at those sites and make $5 a year or just go ahead and upload for access by the public, the latter is the best approach. The reason is simple: all the other approaches eventually lead to a jinxed system, crashing, unavailable, and the opportunity to break the internet. Forget thousands of views, it's the system that needs develped more, and that's the strategy now. Theinternety has turned to the method of choice for swindlers and crooks, making promises that amount to nothing at best, legal troubles at worst, neither is acceptable. Aimed to extort money from socially immoble obscure artists, seeking to earn a place in the talent hierarchy that's loaded against them, the process turnms to perfecting the best approach, and not necessarily the content itself.

     Since thee is already availability of MP3 files, most of which are 2-3 minutes in length, the first part of the new system is to edit them down to one minute. For that matter, the old MP4 files that took forever to develop, can also be used by separating the audio from the video. A number of various programs, online, are available to edit the files down, but MS Clipchamp provides many of the poor-man functions that are available through yet another exorbitant, scammer promising to do all of that for a cost, monthly, with a contract that has to be paid in full if the decision is made to back out of the deal. Limits may be set on the free programs, as is the case for the number of Youtube uploads allowed in a 24-hour period.

27 July 2023  

UPLOAD & MORE UPLOAD--

     Back to Youtube, all the other venues, distributors are scams--pay $30K for 250K streams-downloads, and at a penny return for most of the swinefurt distributor sites, after going through the 3rd-party fee of $100, is $1000. Just places to send the money with aphony agenda. What's revealng about the cover son scam biz is that uploading the same cover song to Youtube, there's a check to see if there's a copyright infringement. In most cases, there isn't; so where's the so-called royalty fees going? Into the pockets of the third-party scammers.

     A visit to the Barnes & Noble self-publishing site resulted in the deletion of all those old stories, sripts that never sold one download. Jinxed. New material needs to be constantly added and the price see a radical drop from $10 a download, to $1. That will happen in due time. 

     The initial uploads to Youtube was with the basic system of two files to Tunes to Tube, which leaves a watermark, but converts a single cover image and an audio file to an MP4; which is then uploade to the channel. That method was soon abandoned as it did not take into the aspect ratio of the innovative method that now exists on the video platform, of "shorts." These are under 1 minute in length and, at first there appeared to be a megabyte limit on the upload, but recently, greater MBs have been uploaded to shorts with success.

     Continue with content: Youtube, writing, nook e-pub, and online store reopened Shopify, but not necessarilyt o sell, since all of this is in  development, to see what works and what doesn't. 

SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES--Sous Chef on a Runaway Train--

      At 0600 Pacific Daylight Time, the sun was just barely breaking the horizon line across the ridgeline to the East. The North Shore of Lake Tahoe is fairly quiet on Sunday morning after the long summer holiday week of July 4th. Many of the tourists in the crowd have not yet gotten up and moving and not a single skier is out on the water, even though it is glass. The cheesy tents along the narrow beach at the resort have all been taken down creating an opportunity to rake it and straighten up the chairs. While raking the beach, the events of yesterday were still fresh in memory; from the property owner at the apartment doing his Hitler imitation over the beach gate lock that been jammed by whomever the night before. It could have been any one of the hundreds of inconsiderate beach nazis that took over the North Shore for the week, marching around like SS troops at Stalag 17, pushing, shoving and demanding. That whole business with the fence and gate along the beach was an ill-planned and disastrous project from the beginning, chasing away all the gorgeous ladies in the process, reserving the neighborhood for the jet ski venue which may not even be legal. 

     As the morning progressed at the resort, the Latino maintenance man Juan inquired about some problems with the hot tub. On inspection in the spa room, the heater was found to be completely disassembled and non-functional. The igniter did not engage, the service light was on and there was a distinct leak from the tank indicating it might have a breach in the heat exchanger. Placing a call to MH, the details were forwarded; and in a few short minutes, a hostile text message was received from the manager. She allowed guests to sit in a cold tub, risking any number of problems with chemicals and electrical-fire hazards. The situation deteriorated even further and leaving the property was the only course of action. There may be an opportunity to stay away completely forever. Either way, there are enough other current opportunities locally and in other areas to make it worthwhile to look into them, which is what's being done. 

     One of those was an email the other day from Amtrak regarding a job opening as cook/chef in the Los Angeles zone, which would probably include trains not just running north-south, but west-east. For once, that was followed up on, even before the fireworks at the resort this morning. Yet another job invite was received last week from a long-forgotten inquiry and as a result, an interview was scheduled for early next week. If everyone else wants to march around like Hitler and Mussolini, let them; do not let it cause a loss of focus for opportunities. Too easy would be to overreact, hop in the car, run away like a runaway freight train and accomplish nothing in the process.

     Currently, there is still the cybersecurity class scheduled to begin a week from tomorrow, on the web from UNR. That will be followed by a full schedule in the fall, which is not totally set in stone but subject to change with respect to work. Yet another option is to drop college completely, pay off the student loan and return in five years, after sous cheffing around the country until its paid. What's most significant immediately is that nothing needs to be done. Add to that, the rude text messaging from the resort manager resulted in that being blocked indefinitely; she can pick up the phone and call. As for Hitler at the apartment property, he needs to go find a bunker if he can't take the incoming outside. 

     The hot tub has been a nightmare ever since it was built and installed 20 years ago; the biggest headache on the property, an unbelievable money pit every time the heater blows out, which is like clockwork around July 04 every year. It went out again last week, right on schedule. Juan swapped out the spa heater for the one on the pool, but the pool had been undergoing major repairs since last October so there was no way to know if that one was in working condition; the core may have been rusted out on that one as well. The more serious issue was that MH didn't know about it and bringing it to his attention to find a solution, resulted in nasty text messages from the manager and accusations of being a "backstabber" just because he was made aware of the problem, in other words, the Mussolini complex. 

SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES-- Phantoms of Tsiolkovsky

 

         The exact date of the beginning of the story is unknown, along with its location. A great deal of the story takes place in Santa Cruz with the telescope at Mount Hamilton playing a considerable role.

SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES--Recollections of the Barn--SANTA CRUZ, 1980

 

The barn was located about two miles up Old San Jose Road at 1641. James Kouretas, one of the original members of the "White Lightning" party, Laguna Beach, rented it from an old half-cripple named "Charlie," who spent most of his time at a local golf course drinking highball.

Tucked away across a small creek with a wooden bridge, the structure was made from wood, had two decks and two wings which served as horse corrals, on each side of the main room, accessed by massive doors that rolled open. Surrounded by trees, the barn wasn't visible from the road; additionally, a great deal of lower vegetation was in the immediate vicinity, mostly weeds and grass that needed to be chopped back to make the place habitable. It had water, there was a small bathroom in one of the outlying houses just up the small dirt road from the main house where Charlie lived alone, along with his black Labrador dog, Midnight.

The main lower deck of the structure was cluttered with junk; old barrels, half torn apart engine blocks, probably from some farm tractors, and a variety of rusted-out and partially useless tools for cultivating the property. The ranch, or farm, itself, extended halfway up a distant hill where a spectacular panoramic of the farm, with all the apricot and peach trees in an orchard along the highway, could be seen. In addition, the neighbors on the west side grew a variety of fruits and vegetables in the many different rows on the other side of a small fence. In addition to the weeds, gras, trees and overgrown shrubbery, there were the token critters that lived there. They included yellow jackets, centipedes and a variety of some very dangerous looking spiders, crawling and creeping from under every piece of rotten wood and rusted out tool. Ants were everywhere, birds swooped down and paid brief visits to the new occupants, that in particular being me, since James would commute from his other run-down studio at the edge of deactivated McLellan Air Base in North Highlands, on the outskirts of Sacramento.

The barn was about 50 feet in length with the main deck at 25 feet and each corral wing extending out another 10-20 feet. The height at the crest was about 25-30 feet

The barn needed a Hollywood makeover to make it livable. Most of the junk on the main lower deck was gradually moved into the horse stalls on the wings

Kouretas rented it in the early 80s for $50/month, I lived there and we set up a kiln to fire ceramics. I spent the days working on Gomez cars, the nights in the beer bars in Capitola, had no money at all.

Now long forgotten are those days in the past, it's now a wedding venue for the rich.

Rancho Soquel | Wedding Venues | Soquel, California (caratsandcake.com)

Charlie and his highballs at the golf course.

The Barn in Google Earth 3D--

Google Earth

SWIMMING TO LOS ANGELES-- The Sawdust Festival-- LAGUNA BEACH, 1970

  Somewhere in the early 80s, before the floods of '83, ceramics innovator James Kouretas, had moved back from Laguna Beach after graduating from Cal State Fullerton. He rented a run-down quonset type tin-roofed shed on east side of Sacramento in North Highlands on Madison Avenue and set up shop to manufacture pottery. Along with a fellow ceramicist, Phil Schuster, they built kilns out of brick and sealed them with clay, using wood and gas to fire them to temperatures that would reach a desired temperature according to cones inside. They had access to walk-in types at Sacramento State and those were employed for large vases that James and Phil would eventually begin to create. For the most part, the handmade kilns were used solely for firing small plates, dishes and goblets. I had been with James from the beginning, from the days of the early Sawdust Festivals in late 1960-early 1970 in Laguna Beach.

The Sawdust Festival was originally billed for those who couldn't qualify for the Festival of Arts Pageant across the street at the entrance to Laguna Canyon just on the outskirts of the town. Most of the products featured at the festival were smaller tourist type starving-artist items, such as paintings, jewelry and pottery in the style of Kouretas. In the late 60s, James confined himself to small cups and goblets, not so perfectly designed as on a potter's wheel, but more handcrafted, with glazes that were offbeat, mismatched and often gaudy and ornate. They were innovative at best, unique at worst. He may have had a booth at the Sawdust in 1969, but he certainly had one in 1970; I built it out of driftwood, old sticks and junk that had washed up on the beach. James had taken off for points unknown for a matter of business and left me to run the booth.

  There wasn't much to running the booth, do a lot of nothing but play guitar and wait for prospective customers to buy; hardly anything was sold that summer, but it was a place to be and drew as many visitors as the big deal across the canyon boulevard. The festival got its name from the sawdust that was scattered on the ground and there were few elaborate booths in those early days, not like the ones that followed when it was discovered by the local rich crowd that pushed out the starving artists and sold upscale beads and similar overpriced junk. By then, booth space had also become too costly for the pioneers of the enterprise, that included Kouretas.