halfcactus

I was getting tired of the chaos of Twitter, so I started a Youtube account for... Zhang Xincheng things. As much as I really miss working on my desktop and having more control over typography and design, this has been a really fun exercise of learning how to do new things and learning a bit about how Youtube works (I always thought the end cards/links were automatically generated, but turns out they are manually activated!). And anyway, I find screenrecording on mobile/tablet so much easier than on desktop.

And while I don't expect anyone, even my fellow enthusiasts in the Anglosphere, to watch all 11 minutes of this cut of his livestream that I put together from my 999 Twitter posts about it, PLEASE APPRECIATE MY CUTE 8-SECOND INTRO (that I trimmed from an edit that I did earlier this week haha).


(The reason I'm moving to Youtube is because Vimeo has a space limit, and I think it's best to keep my Vimeo as my more "artistic" and "creative" space.)

And if anyone's wondering, the apps I use are primarily InShot for trimming and editing and yeeting to Twitter, and Video Captions for captioning. For that compilation vid, I used Lumafusion which I don't actually recommend because it's paid and expensive (one-time fee, no trial) and still doesn't support subtitle tracks, and not fun, and definitely not for people who have no video-editing experience (it's more similar to desktop software, but with fewer features, though specially designed for mobile/tablet). It is excellent for exporting and better for longer videos, since InShot has so limited compression options (it's designed for social media use), you end up with giant files which I almost immediately delete from my phone/tablet.

Honestly I was going to write an entire post about app pros and cons because I have 8934853489 opinions and very specific needs but I GOT DISTRACTED.

Links to my accounts: YouTube | Vimeo

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In other news, I got a new watch, a Garmin Lily:


I originally bought it for the look and size (it's a watch that was especially designed for small wrists and fashionability) with a little bit of wanting to learn more about myself, but I actually... like it a lot?!? In the grand spectrum of fitness watches, this is probably more on the side of casual use, but I've honestly always liked tracking my exercise (with a very lax definition of exercise; mostly I just stretch my back for 10-15 mins) because it makes me feel like I'm doing something with my life. It's also summer and I tend to be more physically active in the summer with the logic of "since I'm already sweaty and suffering, I might as well get sweatier and suffer some more". I've really enjoyed the ease with which I can just doubletap the watchface to let my watch know that I'm engaging in a physical activity, and doubletap to tell it that the activity has stopped, and then I can see how hard my heart has been working during that timeframe (evidently not as hard as I always think haha).

The annoying thing about it is that the Garmin Connect app doesn't work without an internet connection, and the interface isn't great. The primary product is the watch, so it's not a dealbreaker, but it annoys me. XD

Other cons: gesture responsiveness (responsive enough, but only just—and if you turn up the sensitivity it's too sensitive; and not instantaneous), sleep tracking (which I don't care about, but if you do, this watch is very bad at it).