As of today, my website is officially live! The website's domain name is yoyopro.org, and my website will immediately appear if you type yoyopro.org into chrome. It's an exciting feeling to have my own website! I also have my videos posted on youtube under my Jeremy Mahoney account. The French videos will likely not be visible for at least several hours, because they are still uploading. Once the French videos are visible, the first version of my website will be officially complete! I may well decide to add more videos to the website throughout the summer based on how many people end up being interested in the site.
The biggest way in which I deviated from my original plan is that my website currently only has tutorials in English, Spanish, and French, not Chinese as well. I originally planned to include Chinese videos, but I decided against including Chinese videos for several reasons. For one thing, it would be very difficult to get a significant Chinese speaking audience with the resources I currently have available. The Chinese-speaking online market is dominated by China's state-run browser: BaiDu. In fact, 90% of the world's Chinese language internet searches are carried out through BaiDu. The issue is that a website must be hosted in China to be visibly listed in BaiDu, and hosting a website in China requires either a connection to somebody who lives in China who has access to extra server space, or plenty of extra money to pay a Chinese web hosting company. As a foreigner, hosting a website in China, Hong Kong, or a nearby East Asian location with good speeds is often considerably more expensive than hosting a website within one's own country. There is also an extensive series of legal hoops to jump through to get approved to host a website in China, which would take a minimum of several weeks and many hours to complete. In addition, I realized that my Chinese level isn't quite high enough yet for me to produce high quality translations of yoyo tutorials. Yoyo tutorials involve complex language with plenty of precise prepositions, and I need to spend more time studying Chinese before I'm capable of commanding this complex language with fluency. Due to my currently insufficient Chinese language abilities and the difficulty of reaching Chinese-speaking populations, I decided that it would be best for me to focus on creating tutorials in just English, Spanish, and French. I'm proud of what I accomplished during this independent study! As far as I know, yoyopro.org currently has one of the internet's best collection of beginner yoyo tutorials in Spanish. (I haven't been able to find much Spanish stuff out there!) There are slightly more French resources and significantly more English resources already online, but it's still valuable to add more resources in each of these languages. I think my abilities in many areas, including website building, translation, oral language presentation, and multimedia production have significantly improved as a result of this experience. I'll certainly be monitoring my website and youtube channel in the coming weeks, and I'd be delighted to virtually interact with anyone who needs help with tricks!
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Today I finished making my final set of videos in Spanish! Here are the videos I made:
6. Pasear al perro (walk the dog) 7. El ratón (the mouse) 8. La licuadora (the blender) 9. Alrededor de la esquina (around the corner) 10. ¿Por qué no vuelve mi yoyo? (why won't my yoyo come up) 11. La Torre Eiffel (the Eiffel Tower) In addition, I figured out how to upload a video to youtube! I managed to export a video at a size small enough that I could use my home wifi to upload the video (around 200 MB, instead of around 2 GB). However, uploading videos still takes quite a while due to the slow speed of my wifi. Before going to bed, I began uploading all of my English videos, so I'll see whether they're visible tomorrow morning. Throughout Monday and Tuesday, I'll continuously upload my Spanish and French videos so that they are all visible by the end of Tuesday. Here is the link to my youtube channel, which is where my videos will appear before they appear on my website: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwdH__DerXawp1JpJFn3NDw I'll spend tomorrow working on constructing yoyopro.org so that it is easy for users to navigate. Today I assembled my first set of yoyo videos in Spanish! I made the following videos today:
1. Poner la cuerda en el yoyó (putting the string on the yoyo) 2. El lanzamiento básico (the basic throw) 3. El durmiente (the sleeper) 4. El lanzamiento hacia adelante (the forward throw) 5. Alrededor del mundo (around the world) I also purchased a domain name today! I decided on yoyopro.org for several reasons. Most importantly, this is the best available yoyo-related domain name that I could find. I also appreciate that it makes sense in English, Spanish, and French, because "pro" is the beginning of the word for professional in all three languages. However, I haven't quite figured out how to connect my Wix website that is in development to yoyopro.org, so I'll do more research on that in the coming days. Tomorrow, I plan to finish my Spanish videos and figure out how to upload my videos to youtube. Today, I finished making my French videos. I created the following videos:
7. Pourquoi mon yoyo ne revient-il? (why doesn't my yoyo come back up?) 8. Le mélangeur (the blender) 9. Promener le chien (walk the dog) 10. Le souris (the mouse) 11. Tourner le coin (around the corner) I'll upload these videos as soon as possible, and I'll move onto making Spanish videos tomorrow! Today, I continued making my French videos. I made the following videos:
4. La Tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower) 5. Autour du monde (Around the world) 6. Attacher la ficelle au yoyo (putting the string on the yoyo) This weekend, I'll go into BGSU to use the faster wifi to upload my videos. I spent today making the first set of French videos for my website. I created the following videos today:
1. Le lancement de base (the basic throw) 2. Le dormeur (the sleeper) 3. Le lancement en avant (the forward throw) It's certainly a bit harder to make non-English videos! I had my ipad close to the camera so that I could remind myself of certain words in between shots. However, I found it even more fun to make videos in French than I did in English. I really enjoy explaining things in another language! I spent today making the rest of the English videos for my website! I made videos on the following tricks:
6. The Eiffel Tower 7. Around the corner 8. The braintwister 9. Walk the dog 10. The creeper I also made a video called "why won't my yoyo come up?" A common problem people have is that their yoyo simply stays spinning at the bottom of the string and doesn't respond to a pull. This can make it almost impossible to learn most other tricks, so I wanted to explain what could be happening if this is the case. Today I made the first 5 English videos for my website! Here are the videos I made:
1. The basic throw 2. The sleeper 3. The forward throw 4. Around the world 5. Putting the string on the yoyo I'm planning on putting the putting the string on the yoyo video first on my website, because many yoyos that people will find laying around their house are likely to be unstrung. It's also important to know how to string a yoyo because the string often breaks, and I want people to be able to find out how to restring their yoyos immediately. I'm going to post my videos to both youtube and my website. However, I realized that I'm unable to upload the videos to youtube from my house because the files are too large. My mom works at BGSU, so to upload the videos, I'll have to use the faster BGSU wifi. To do this, I'll have to transfer the videos from my computer to her computer with a flash drive, then drive into her office with her computer to upload them. I haven't been able to do this, but I will upload the videos sometime this weekend. I will then embed the videos in Wix on my actual website. I spent these days translating my scripts from English to Spanish. I've been learning plenty of new Spanish words that are relevant to yoyoing, such as holgura (slack), desenroscar (to unscrew), apretar (to tighten), el rodamiento (the bearing), and el eje (the axle). I've added all words like these to an Anki deck, and I've been studying them every morning. In the final week of my intensive, I'll focus on Chinese translations and filming.
I spent today finishing my French translations of the English scripts I wrote. In the process, I learned lots of new yoyoing related words in French! I added all of these to a deck of flashcards so that I will learn these words well over the next few days, and I'll ultimately be able to fluently use them in my videos.
I've also begun exploring the Wix website creator a bit more thoroughly! It looks like there are lots of helpful things I could add to my website. One feature I plan to add is a forum on which people can ask me questions if they're having trouble with a trick. My user base will initially be small, so as my website first begins to grow, I'll be able to have personal, one on one communication with my users in multiple languages. It's especially hard for non English speakers to find extra yoyoing resources online if they have questions, because most of the resources are targeted for an English speaking audience. I'll be able to remedy this by giving my users personal help. I also plan to post my videos to youtube, so I will respond to users' questions if they ask legitimate questions in the comments sections. |