ADW 2K9 year in review

so while making this video was good times and I am quite pleased with the results, it also served to remind me how much I hate editing videos. I tend to be more of an ideas guy, some good and mostly bad, but big picture stuff is my specialty. Can rock details and be meticulous as well, but tend to get bored after a while. Which is why I still have yet to post that state quarters blog from April 2K9. Editing videos sucks. Or at least it does using Windows Movie Maker

all in all, ADW had a pretty good inaugural year. Obviously lots of mistakes and sloppiness, but reckon the youtubes've achieved an equilibrium with which I can be content. Sound quality was without a doubt the most annoying inconsistency. Some of 'em are barely even audible, others have too much static or an explosion/silence when I say a word that begins with the letter p. Most of those issues could be easily rectified if ever decide to rerecord/remix any of 'em, but that ain't gonna be happening any time soon

also glad I finally ended the long-running youtube thumbnail drama. When you embed a video, the image that appears before you push play is called the thumbnail. Youtube lets you chose the thumbnail from one of three images, supposedly capturing what appears at the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 marks of the video. 'Cept it often messes up the timing and gives you images that are not from the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 marks. Usually you can just re-edit the video and add a second or two to either the beginning or end and get a new set of thumbnails. Since I often have jokes and tangential references that really shouldn't be the official ADW youtube image, it is important that I get an appropriate thumbnail. Best one is for sure the official ADW pic of dude with his dates. Worst is the official ADW pic of someone else. Still from movies or jokes/tangential references without context are also completely unacceptable. Editing and uploading a video that is already finished ain't no fun at all. 'Specially when you gotta do it a whole bunch of times. Quite infuriating when it takes longer to get an appropriate thumbnail picture that it did to do the research, write the script, and make the video


(click on it for a bigger picture, the blogspot only supports tiny images)

Youtube didn't give me the option of using Raden Wijaya's official ADW pic until I added an extra 2 minutes of dead time to the original video. It kept wanting me to use Gajah Mada's future ADW teaser or Daniel Day Lewis versing Leonardo DiCaprio or a bombed out Beirut. These images all perfectly illustrated something in the video, but made no sense at all as a Rayden Wijaya thumbnail. Eventually I opted for the monsoon winds pic. Stressful and completely unproductive to versus the youtube over thumbnail images. Also uploaded 10 墨子 and 16 تیمور videos, but didn't feel the need to document my doing so for posterity

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might shy away from, if not completely abolish the quota system. Realized I messed up by following Βελισάριος with Nezahualcóyotl in the 5th installment of the "other" quadrant. 'Merican following the European was precedent, but forgot I had swapped out the African for a European because couldn't find sufficient info 'bout any አክሱም dudes. 2 Europeans, 2 'Mericans, and 0 Africans in the backwards tribes and castes category. So much for quotas. Plus, aside from some Sapa Incas I gotta translate from the Spanish to the English wikipedias, don't really have that many more worthy 'Mericans. And Africa is even more hurting. Providing youtubes to under-recognized folks remains the objective, but I refuse to belittle the awesomeness by including any tokens




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surprising the number of dudes whose lives straddled eras. Tried to stick the tweeners in their period of floruit (like my dates are 1979 - 20??, but my fl. clearly puts me in the 2000 - 2500 category) and that helped a bit. Stil have a coupla that achieved awesomeness over multiple 500 year spans, but whatever



obviously I have too high a percentage of medieval dudes. I'll try and increase the number of old-school brothers, but as my infatuation with golden era Islamic scholars is unlikely to diminish, doubt the graph will change all that significantly. The numbers for the most recent cohort are fine, since they should be 'bout half those of the others according to the "Gotta have at least a coupla hundred years of perspective ere you can be deemed awesome" rule I expounded upon in the first non-canonical ADW. While the difficulty of finding information is often correlated with the old-timeyness of the dude it is regarding, I'll try and get some more BC folks (and not just Chinese ones) in the MMX