Is That Jon… or an Agent?

I recently found out that YouTube will “auto-dub” videos into different languages. Using AI, of course. Because it’s helpful and safe. It’s not about the money at all.

So anyway, I’d heard about this a long time ago, but as with so many other YouTube/Google/Robots-of-Destruction announcements, I ignored it. But then I saw a YT creator complaining about the choice of voices that their videos were dubbed in.

I went to my channel in incognito mode, and… whattaya know? I speak Japanese, German, Hindi, and Indonesian. (More coming soon!)

Only it wasn’t me.

And that kind of bugged me. So I turned it off for all new videos.

Now I get the intent… more people to listen, right? But it’s creepy. It’s fake. I’m not one to get all artsy fartsy, but I realized as I listened that the video was no longer my creation. It was YouTube’s.

I get closed captions. It preserves the original intent, but allows non-English speakers a chance to read the translation. It respects the nuance a narrator may put in to their creation.

But to just replace my voice entirely? (Not that I have a great voice by any stretch.) Nope. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture.

I’m guessing the AI Murder Robots™ will show up soon enough anyway to silence us all. But until then, I don’t want to live in The Matrix. Or at least publish my work to it. I want to live in the real world.

Just Smile And Nod: Lazy Video Comments

I don’t get a huge number of comments on the videos that I spam upload to the Tubes of You. And for the most part, the ones I do get are either kind and encouraging, or legitimate questions about something modeling related.

However, by the way I worded that, you probably detect that this is going to be like watching those Kardashian TV shows… at some point a big “but” is going to appear.

But…

Some comments puzzle me.

I’ve gotten used to the angry and/or rude comments. If it’s purely just a rude comment, with no value at all, I simply delete it. Use enough profanity and I block the user. If someone says “I think using that product is a really bad idea and I disagree with it”, I usually answer in some manner and let it stand. On the other hand, if it says “I think using that %$#@*^% product is a really @^$*!$& bad idea and I disagree with it, and you are an absolute %$#@*&$ $&#@&$* who wears ugly shirts”, well… delete away and block I do.

However, many times I must do the “dog looking at a wristwatch” head tilt at some of them. For example, in one of my more recent videos, which was nearly an hour long, I received a kind comment to the effect of “great video!” Which is really nice. It really is.

Only… it arrived about 2 minutes after I launched the video live. I decided to just say “thanks“, rather than what I initially wanted to reply – “Thanks, but I am wondering which two minutes of the hour long video are you referring to? Asking for a friend…” But I held back.

Today, however, a new king has been crowned. A comment so obviously lazy that I was briefly stunned. I mean, talk about short attention spans…

The comment was:

On screen, it looked like this at the 29:00 mark:

Now, I know my old work didn’t reference paints all the time. But at some point I not only started posting them in the description and the blog, but also as an overlay on the video itself.

So I went to check it, and after confirmation, replied with this comment:

On screen, this is what showed at the 29:25 mark:

So close… yet so far.

I began to speculate what happened in those twenty-five very, very long and eternity-like seconds. Perhaps a meteor struck? No, wait… that would have precluded the comment. Bathroom break? Possibly. A need for more coffee? Perchance.

Or perhaps it is what plagues our modern world so severely that it causes disruptions, tensions, and feeds the very selfish attitudes that we all struggle with to some degree.

I want it now, I want it my way, and you owe me.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. I’d like to think I am, and it’s just another instance of a grumpy old man shaking his fist and shouting at the clouds.

Seriously though, have we gotten to the point that our desire to learn is such “short attention span theater” that we can’t wait a few seconds longer? Or even hit the skip key to jump ahead a few seconds?

In the long run I suppose pondering such matters is truly just an old man shouting at the clouds. As my Daddy would say, “Smile and nod, son, smile and nod.”

On That Note…

As long as the old man in me is shaking his first at the clouds, and thinking of short attention spans, I noted something that was of interest to me.

Most of my recent videos have been in the 45-60 minute range. However, I “repackaged” an old Patreon video and re-released it. The total video length was about 11 minutes.

I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to stats, so I often look through the data just to find interesting patterns and such. (Interesting to me…)

In checking the average view time, I saw that my long videos have an average of 3-5 minutes of total view time. Only about 15-20% of the audience watch most of the video.

Now, I would have thought because that 11 minute video was shorter, people might be more apt to engage longer. I mean, YouTube is always promoting tight, concise videos of (insert nebulous fluctuating suggestion here) minutes length. For the most part, the bigger channels seem to go from 12-30 minutes.

Yet when I looked at the analytics, I saw that the 11 minute video had the exact same average as the others. I went and looked at others of shorter length, longer length, middle length… all showed the same thing. People’s attention spans last for 3-5 minutes.

The odd paradox is I get many comments, emails, and even face-to-face discussions that what people like about my work is I go into detail. And I do believe that… stuffing an advanced technique into 12 minutes, which includes a silly montage, a Squarespace sponsorship, and several minutes of self-promotion ain’t always helpful.

Yet the stats don’t lie.

The only thing I can conclude in my pea-sized brain is that while people say they like thorough and detailed explanations, only a very few really do.

Which makes me smile.

Because I know that the way I do videos, if they are really going to be helpful, I must focus on that 15-20% who actually want to hear if something I say or do is actually useful. And they’re willing to hang around a while to find out. “You never know – the old boy may on to something.“

I often wonder “is doing videos about this silly hobby worth it?” In an odd way, this brief research confirms “yes it is”. And it also affirms my thought that I need to load more of the stuff that I think is going to be helpful after the first 5 minutes, and then spread it out over the balance. Reward those who are in it to grow. The rest?

Clouds I suppose… 😁

But I Thought You Had Enough Paint…?

As with much of our hobby, the line often seems to be blurred between “builders of things” and “collectors of things”.

For years I was a builder and collector of models, but simply a user of paint. And then I brainwashed myself into the whole “I’m a YouTuber and so I must review paints” nonsense. That is why today I sit quite uncomfortably upon a pile of hundreds of bottles paint, of all brands. Some nearly complete sets (Citadel, Two Thin Coats), some partial (Tamiya), and some tucked away in various places that I have no idea what thy are. And of course there is Vallejo, which despite having 180+ bottles of the stuff it’s not near their entire catalog.

I don’t want to say I gave up on trying new paints, but I decided it would require a really good reason for me to do so. If I run out of a colors across ALL of the paint lines I have… I’d buy Vallejo.

A few months ago (even before “Tariff Wars”) one of the local shops had a clearance sale on their entire line of Vallejo products. I know the owner, so I asked him about it. He said that his upstream suppliers were warning of availability issues. It was a problem, he said, that had actually been going on for years, but stock levels had been OK to meet demand. But when the people he got paint from talked about being cautious going forward, he decided to drop Vallejo. (Instead they now carry Army Painter, so I don’t go to that shop… 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️)

In early October, I got an email from the CEO of MicroMark, an American company that I am very familiar with. They’ve been in business 100 years now, and sell loads of model railroad and other modeling products.

Now, I knew by the wording of the email that it was copy and paste all the way. Or I at least suspected, because when I read “shows exactly the kind of craftsmanship and authenticity that connects with our audience” to describe my work, I chuckled to myself and thought “they’ve never actually seen my work.” 🤣

The offer was pretty standard. They send paints, I give a nice review (OK, to be fair they didn’t even hint it had to be nice), and they send affiliate links so I get a bit of any sale that comes from my work.

I wrote back and told them I appreciated it, but no thanks. I preferred to buy my own stuff, and not worry about affiliate links. Plus, I tried those for several years from other sources and literally only made 40¢. Still, I did tell him I’d order some and give them a go. He did respond, and said if I had questions let him know. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

But the fact is I had been looking around for a US source of water based acrylics. I knew there was ProAcryl, who many mini (see what I did there?) painters really adore. Squadron Hobbies has their own line of paints too that are also manufactured in the US. (I think they bought the old Scale Colors range.)

I’ve always been impressed with MicroMark’s products, and I was already on the website looking at their paints… so I placed an order for a few. (And I paid for them…)

I’ve been painting the Leman Russ tank commander with a few of them, and so far I’m impressed. My basic assessment of any water-based acrylic paint is “does it work like Vallejo?” While some paints (Two Thin Coats and Citadel) are maybe a bit nicer than Vallejo (a bit…), they’re also more expensive or harder to get. I’ve always felt Vallejo paints were rock solid dependable. They’re not a Cadillac, or a Ferrari, but they are a Honda. Affordable, reliable… exactly what you need to get there.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the little bit of use of the MicroMark Acrylics I’ve had so far have gone very well. And by “very well” I mean they gave me no reason to complain. It was like using Vallejo. I’ve only brush painted so far, but thy flowed nicely, thinned nicely, gave good coverage, and just looked the part.

Now, am I going to dump ALL OF MY PAINTS and buy these? No. Not in any way, shape, or form. (Someone always asks.)

But, it is good to know that if supply gets to be more of an issue I can have some choice that is here in the US, and is affordable.

Kits In Progress

Warhammer 40K Leman Russ

I’m really enjoying this one, despite putting the resin recessed sponsons on the wrong sides – and thus upside down. I thought about fixing it, but I’d gone to such great lengths to make sure they would not come out that I am afraid I’d destroy either the resin, the plastic, or both.

After pondering it for a while, I decided life is too short to sweat the stuff like that. I’ve always said that I ruin every model simply by opening the box, at least to a certain degree. Some gaffes are easier to see than others. In fact, the only reason I pointed it out in the video is so when the inevitable “Ah-ha! I caught you making a mistake” comment is left, I can point to that segment of the video where I did admit to it.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If you turn your nose up at Warhammer kits because they’re “not a serious model”, you’re missing out on a load of fun.

Warhammer The Horus Heresy Spartan Assault Tank

This is one that I hadn’t planned to build. I hadn’t even recalled that I had it in my stash. But I was having so much fun building the Leman Russ, I decided to build another Warhammer kit simply to have it assembled and ready to go for sometime next year.

It’s weird to me that while I dislike assembling most models, for some reason I have fun assembling Warhammer kits. They have tons of sprue connectors, and there is a load of nub cleanup. While they fit good, they’re not quite like Bandai, or even Tamiya.

I think what mellows the assembly out is that I have more fun per pound of plastic with painting and weathering Warhammer kits than any other genre. It’s not even close. I do like to build other stuff, of course.

But Warhammer takes the cake for me in terms of start-to-finish fun. And I’ve learned to live with the loss of subscribers every time I post a Warhammer video.

Because fun.

Others – Seapig and Crusher Joe Galleon

Those are both in the works too. Nothing new to note.

Well, that’s it for this time. Thanks for letting me into your hobby world. Happy day to you friends!

Jon