Starting Something New
An update on a new YouTube video, the refreshed MieTech website, and the first steps toward building Lend-A-Book.
New YouTube Video
I have not posted a long-form video since the beginning of the year. Consistency, especially with my YouTube channel, has not been great. But I figured this was worth sharing here on the blog as well.
The video is from an ATV ride with my brother on Memorial Day. In my last blog post, we had not had a chance to ride because of weather and busy schedules. Memorial Day turned out to be beautiful, though, and it was our last day up with our father. To close out the extended weekend, we decided to ride around some of the trails near our campground.
Beaver Trail Campground, where we were staying near West Branch, is maybe a fifth of a mile from a trail entrance, so it is in an ideal location for trail riding.
As a note, this video captures only my second time riding an ATV and my second time riding a small five-speed manual vehicle. So, if you are inclined to watch it, bear with my terrible shifting. We only rode about 16 miles, but it was a lot of fun, and we will definitely have to do it again.
This video was also my first attempt at editing with Final Cut Pro. Before this, I had used either DaVinci Resolve or LumaFusion on iOS. Final Cut Pro was a bit of a learning curve, but I also got the chance to tinker with Motion, which let me create a couple of title animations. I already have more ideas I would like to try.
From my limited experience, DaVinci Resolve seems to include nearly everything I need to create and export videos in one application. Final Cut Pro, on the other hand, seems to be primarily focused on editing, with companion apps handling more specific functionality. For example, when I exported the original video, it was roughly 14 GB. I used Compressor and shrank it down to just over 8 GB.
The main reason I am trying Final Cut Pro is that I have wanted to try it for a while. The price made that difficult before, because it was a large upfront cost for software I was only experimenting with. Both Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve Studio cost about $300 for the full license, but DaVinci Resolve lets you use most features for free, with additional features available in the paid version. As a heavy Apple user, I also wanted to try Final Cut Pro because it should be highly optimized for the hardware.
New Website, Who Dis?
My best friend and business partner has been working really hard on a new version of our website. Part of the reason for rebuilding it is that it gives us full control over both appearance and functionality. In the long run, it should also save us some money, which is always great.
Our new website can be found at mietechnologies.com.
We are really excited about the new site. I hope you visit it and see what we have been working on. You can find profiles for both of us to get to know us a little better, and if you need work done that we can help with, feel free to reach out and request a quote.
Upcoming Project
Since I have almost completed my current project, more about that to come, I have been thinking about what I should work on next. I have a constantly growing list of projects I would like to get around to eventually, but there are two that I think could be relatively quick wins.
After some back and forth with friends, I think I am going to begin working on an app I have affectionately named Lend-A-Book. This is an app I have wanted to build for a long time, but I have been caught up in other projects or simply life in general.
The core functionality of the app will be the ability to create, rate, add pictures to, and find Lend-A-Book locations. If you are not familiar with the concept, which makes sense because this is a name I coined, you can reference Little Free Library. That is where the core idea came from. I have a boatload of ideas for this project, but the initial release will only include the core functionality listed above.
I will be using SwiftUI to build the iOS application and React for the web app. I am not 100% sure what backend technology I want to use yet, but I believe I will use MongoDB for the database. I want to keep the React web app pretty basic. It will not contain all the features or functionality of the iOS and Android applications, with Android coming later. The web app will simply make it possible to find nearby locations.
This is an exciting new endeavor, and I am looking forward to working on it and getting it into people’s hands. I am especially excited by the idea of it being community driven. At first, I think that might lead to lower retention, but over time I hope it will build a certain loyalty. Being a part of something, especially something so community focused, is always fulfilling. With Lend-A-Book, people will not only be able to help build out a map of these locations, but also build new locations by hand.