Well, my first video that was basically centered around me got me quite a bit of comments. It also taught me quite a bit. First the lessons I learned myself:
– Batteries. Lots of video means you need some way to charge a battery, or have a replacement ready. In the two days camping I spend the battery of my good camera the first day. My phone was empty around noon the second day, and the two gopro clones I had did last a bit longer, but had a terrible image and sound quality.
– Interaction. It was difficult to film people I did not know. It felt like I would invade their privacy, so I did not film anything while I talked to others. People in our group also showed some restraint when appearing, so I also kept these interactions to a minimum. The result was a movie where I am almost the only person to appear.
– Clean. The video needs to be ‘cleaner’. I don’t know the correct word, but a lot of my sentences end in gibberish no-one can understand. I need to speak clearer. Some parts of the video show the ground, or my feet, or my shirt, and are not focused correctly. I needed to keep some of these parts to avoid breaking the monologue I was having.
– Information. I need a bit more of background information, so I have something to say when there is a dull moment.
– Editing. Cutting away boring parts is not so easy. I was talking a lot, and sometimes I had to leave bad parts to not cut my sentence in half. Sometimes I had to remove big clips, because I repeated things I had already said. Shorter sentences and a small pause before changing topic might help a lot to do the editing afterwards.
My family also had some comments. Quite a lot of comments actually, but most are covered my the issues I found myself.
– Focus. There is no clear goal for the movie. I was told nobody would be interested in seeing only me talk (and drink). It the focus is a family movie we see to little family. If the focus is transmitting interesting facts, I need to include more information.
– No interaction. The same as I already stated, but my family told me it was not all on me. The participants to the video should participate more, without being scared of the camera. This will probably be hard to achieve, because I told everyone I would be making a video, and everybody thought it was a good idea, but still almost nobody wanted to be filmed.
Conclusion: I liked filming and thought the video was not so bad, and maybe even a bit funny, but after all the criticism I have changed my mind. It is not a good video, and it would take a lot of effort to make it better. Will there be a next video… I´m not sure. We don’t normally go camping, so maybe I can make a video when we do something more often, and I need something to talk about. I’ll see, but for now my motivation is a bit low.
The month started easy for me, while the kids were celebrating their holidays in Torrevieja and later in London I was back home, working. The second week of the month it all started for me. My official holiday finally started and I went to the Netherlands with the kids. We spend two weeks there staying with grandma Nel. We did all the usual stuff. Playing with Grandma, beach, lake, bitterballen, frikandellen, Alex’ birthday, niece, nephew, uncle and aunt, friends. Avifauna, the juliana toren, a kid oriented attraction park, the flower corso on the boulevard of Noordwijk. De kinderboerderij, an illegal trip at 22 meters from the ground. BBQ’s, Indonesian food. A soft-ice sprint, Gijs and the list goes on.
I continue to see new creative projects which I can realize with a simple coconut. After making a drinking cup, a cookie jar and an orchid pot I now recreated a project I already did in the past, but now with a coconut as an important part. My new project is a coco insect hotel. I made an 
First step was cutting a cocunut in half. This is getting easier every time now that I’m getting some experience. With the coco cut open you need to remove all the white inside. I use a dull knife to cut the white ‘meat’ in small strips which are easy to remove. After drying the empty coconut I sanded the edges and that was the coco part. All done. Now I get some reed, and cut this into small pieces of around 4 cm each. I used two types of reed, new fresh green reed, and older dried up light brown reed. The fresh green reed was easier to deform, so it made it easier to fit inside the coco. Before putting the reed inside the coco I sanded it a little to take away any imperfections. I mixed sizes so that different insect could find different sizes rooms in our hotel.
It was also a month filled with birthdays. First Ana, than me. This time my birthday is extra special. It will be my last birthday in my 40’s. Next year I will start with my fifties. Time is going so fast! To celebrate I planned a weekend in Tenerife, where Ana and I will visit the concert of Ed Sheeran! First we will fly to Tenerife, where we will arrive pretty early. After arriving we will go and check out our hotel and leave our bags. Get some food and relax a bit, then we can go to the concert. After the concert we spend the night in the hotel, and the next morning we have to wake up quite early to fly back home.
The watch is heavy and big, you are easily reminded you are wearing it, it transmits a feeling of quality. The size of the watch was one of the things that worried me. I though a too big of a watch was uncomfortable, and would maybe look to much like I was calling for attention, which I wanted to avoid. In the end the watch is quite sizable, but it is an acceptable size, and it looks pretty good on my wrist, without being overly big. 
Step one was a 