I learnt how to solve the Rubik's Cube in 2022, just a small personal goal as I found the puzzle intriguing. I didn't know what I was in for, especially after seeing videos online that claim it can be solved with a single move. After practice and getting familiar with the cube, I've finally memorised the algorithms and can now solve it in under 2 mins. It's challenging to learn, but great when you get it.
I found many of the videos online quite long-winded, so I created a document of each step to solve the Rubik's Cube that can be printed and followed, accompanied by this video for visual reference of the moves and algorithms, which I think is an easier way to learn how to solve it.
Wow! These Gymkhana videos always amaze, now Travis Pastrana grinds a rail like a skateboard and jumps over a helicopter with his 862 horsepower Subaru Wagon. Speeds up to 165MPH were reached for the jumps. Enjoy 10 minutes of epic driving and the beautiful sound of this Subaru.
RedBull's Austrian trials bike rider Fabio Wibmer has just released his latest video, combining amazing bicycle skills and tricks with Grand Theft Auto style gamification. The film took 50 days to shoot and apparently the bunny hop from bench to bench with a tailwhip exit was the hardest trick that took the most attempts. It's thoroughly entertaining and an extremely brilliantly done video.
It is highly recommended that you watch this video with headphones or at a time when you can crank the sound, it's not loud music, but rather for the intensity of the action. This one is remarkable, 28 year old Valentin Delluc flies through a French ski resort called Avorias. Grinding the ski lift cables, doing rolls, blackflips, scraping rooftops, pulling the kite through a tunnel, it is just beautiful to watch.
If you've enjoyed any of Ken Block's previous gymkhana videos, you'll enjoy this one too. This time instead of the Ford, Travis Pastrana is driving a Subaru WRX STI packing 862hp. The video was recorded in his home town and it's the same brilliant camera angles and action packed driving as always, with some huge and fast jumps. Travis certainly looks a bucket load more tense than Ken while driving, but he did drop a tyre of the edge and drive away. High speed, precision, thumbs up!
Please click the video headline and watch it on YouTube, so you can use the timeline chapters.
This is a Royal Caribbean cruise compilation combining five cruises together in one video. This is by far the most ambitious video I have edited to date, but after our 2020 Royal Caribbean cruise from Barcelona to Copenhagen was cancelled, I started going through our video footage from previous cruises and decided to start pulling out all the clips that aren't included in our shorter cruise videos, all those extended scenes that had to be cut short can now be seen, and many hours later the footage now has a place to live on YouTube, which makes me very happy, even though it's almost an hour long.
Please use the chapeters in the timeline, by watching this video on YouTube rather than this website, to navigate to certain Royal Caribbean cruise ships, cities or cruise entertainment highlights.
We pondered over "five cruises in five years", because 2014 to 2019 is actually six years if you count 2014 as 1, but if you minus 5 years from 2019, you get to 2014... 5 year plan successfully completed either way :)
Royal Caribbean cruise summary:
Liberty of the Seas
Barcelona, Marseille, MOnte Carlo, Pisa, Rome, Naples
Vision of the Seas
Venice, Kotor, Corfu, Athens, Mykonos, Kefalonia
Quantum of the Seas
Shanghai, Sakaiminato, Fukuoka, Kumamoto
Symphony of the Seas
Naples, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Marseille, Florence
Serenade of the Seas
Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Tallinn, Visby
As Royal Caribbean say, I guess we are 'loyal to royal', We worked hard, saved hard and travelled hard, which is not that easy using South African currency, we're both very grateful for these experiences and love cruising, as we get to see multiple places in one overseas trip. Cruising is also pretty stress free, if you get the drinks package, everything is basically bottomless onboard in terms of food and drink, plus the only thing you need to carry is a small plastic card (Seapass card), no wallet, no cell phone and everything you need is around you.
The general vibe onboard is a safe space, so swimming and leaving the camera and bag on the lounger is no sweat and people are generatlly awesome - you meet people from all over the world and we've met South Africans on every cruise. Hopefully one day, the world and travel industry will return to normal.
Shorter cruise videos of this compilation per ship:
YouTube started testing Chapters earlier in 2020 and on the 28th of May YouTube confirmed Chapters are here to stay and available to all who upload videos to the platform. I missed the announcement and found Chapters in a video last week, which led me to investigate further.
0:00 We heard you and added Video Chapters.
0:30 You liked it.
1:00 Now it's official: Video Chapters are here to stay.
1:30 Creators, try Chapters by adding timestamps starting at 0:00 to your video description. Viewers, scrub to find exactly what you’re looking for.
2:00 Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/bIHGsGVmyW
Chapters is a fantastic new feature that will benefit both content creators and viewers, by allowing people to jump ahead to parts in the video straight from the timeline. This feature will likely be best suited to longer videos for things like recipes, tutorials, news, travel or documentary videos.
Applying Chapters to your videos is easy, all you have to do is add timestamps to the video description, starting at 0:00, each chapter should be 10 seconds long (9 seconds worked for me) and you should have atleast three chapters listed in ascending order.
Here is what YouTube Chapters looks like and how to apply them:
This is fully customisable
When I searched on mobile for YouTube chapters, they seem to be indexed on the Google results page and allow people to deep-link into a chapter of the video straight from the search result page. The timestamps become links in the video description once saved. This makes me think that Chapters might be used as a ranking signal in the near future - we all know how mobile usage and video consumption is increasing year-on-year, so I predict Chapters may play a role in video Search Engine Optimisation. I love the feature, although I find it a bit strange that Chapters doesn't seem to work when videos are embedded off YouTube.
This is one of the best Rube Goldberg machines I have ever seen. Trickshot expert (since 2014) Cree took one month to build this at his home, and another month to get it to work - that is a bucket load of dedication for the shot. The video was filmed in one take without any cuts or edits. I think it's incredibly smooth, especially with the aerial and fast moving shots of the course. Very fun to watch.
This is a few weeks late with level 3 lockdown restrictions announced this week, allowing the sale of alcohol from 1 June in South Africa, but I wanted to document this anyway as it tasted pretty good and it's my first attempt speaking to the camera. When my booz started depleting during lockdown, I went on YouTube to learn how to brew my own 'beer', this is obviously after I had conquered banana bread and all the other lockdown must-dos. I took what I thought were the best tips from multiple people and created my own recipe. Seven days later, the end result was fantastic. So much so, that we immediately started the next batch, the very next day. I'm no expert, but this recipe and method worked, plus it definitely had a kick, so it's worth trying, even if just to learn about brewing basics.
Pineapple beer making has increased massively in South Africa since lockdown restrictions banned the sale of alcohol. After the first batch of pineapple beer, we replaced the pineapples with apples and raisins with the exact same method and it produced a very pleasing cider drink.
The recipe:
4x pineapples (or apples and raisins for cider)
2kgs of brown sugar
2x 10g sachets of instant/brewers yeast
23-24L of water
The method:
Clean everything (scrub the pineapples with a brush)
Chop pineapples with skins and place in the brewing vessle
Pour sugar into the brewing vessle
Fill with warm water - only half way so you can dissolve the sugar (stir)
Fill the rest of the brewing vessle with cold water
You want the overall temperature of your mixture to be about 26 degrees celcius
Add both sachets of yeast (if the water is too hot, you will kill the yeast and prevent fermentation)
Stir well and seal the container, leave it alone for two days
Thereafter stir it once a day for five days
On day seven, you're ready, strain the mixture into another container to remove the pineapple chunks and then bottle - you can drink it immediately.
DIY airlock
The airlock is essential, I read you can use a glove, but it might give your mixture a rubbery taste, I tried this initially and it popped off my container, so I quickly made the airlock, details in the video.
For our December holiday we decided to break away from the norm and spend 4 nights on our own in the country. We chose Elgin and Greyton as our destinations for their proximity to Cape Town, but mostly for their small town, good wine and good vibes feel. Quality surroundings with tranquility.
We visited the Elgin Railway Market, which was nice and over New Years we stayed 8kms outside of Greyton at Oewerzicht, which was amazing and is perfectly suited to couples, groups and families.
