Gratitude to Glowforge and all the Glowfolk

I always felt a bit guilty that my hobbies were so involved and not always connected to my work life. I especially felt at times that my laser obsession in the long wait for production units and time on this forum might be a bit much. I had been practicing the clarinet for two years almost every day and about October of '15 I stopped pretty much altogether. That was after my pilgrimage to Seattle just to get a glimpse of their amazing signage. and brought back a cat.

The story continues with @Rita giving me the call and asking if I would be willing to get a pre-release. You betcha! And then the most amazing opportunity of a few of us getting sponsored for a trip to Bay Area MakerFaire.

I was motivated to set up a YouTube channel and do a crash course in live streaming to share my experience with the Glowforge when there were so few in the wild. I did my best. Wisely, Glowforge quickly recruited many more who got a chance to showcase the new machine in the pre-release stage.

BAMF17 meant that I had to purchase some new tech for the trip. Got a tricked out Surface Book and a wireless hotspot for the trip. Too bad wifi was so congested, but we managed.

I am able to shed my guilt over the money and time I spent on this project because of what’s going on now. We have suspended public services at our Church. I, as so many of you, suddenly find myself having to do my job in ways I hadn’t had to before.

Enter Glowforge U: Because I had the technology, because I learned the workflow for streaming, and because I learned how not to let my ego get in the way of putting things out there, even if they weren’t perfect like @evansd2 joints, or @jae’s amazing leather work, I have been able to pivot a little to streaming ministry. It’s raw and unprofessional, but my flock appreciates it and my boss says said it was more important to get something out once we suspended public services and deal with quality as we go along than not have anything.

We have a long way to go, but my Surface book and hotspot, with a little help from OBS Studio and YouTube streaming, we are getting it done. [OBS is so good. Today I needed to do a slideshow for streaming. I don’t have Office on my laptop and jumping to my desktop was getting confusing and haven’t used LibreOffice’s presentation software. One hour to get this figured out how to do a slide show into OBS without having to mess with video editing something. I just thought, surely OBS should have something. And they did. Just had to turn all the pics from TIFFS to PNGs and away we went.]

Thanks Glowforge and thanks to all my fellow forum members for the amazing journey we have shared and all that you have taught me!

I still have to work on the audio connection. I am loud enough with my nasal whine, but other folks aren’t. I do have a USB input device (10 year old Tascam that I at least was able to find a driver for), but getting the audio output from the sound system in church to my laptop in the middle of church is a challenge. I didn’t have the right connectors. Sweetwater to the rescue. But the hearing assist device feed just doesn’t cut it. I know most churches have the sound and video stuff figured out ages ago, but we are a bit slow to catch up.

So thanks again @Dan and all of you!

Me at work:

25 Likes

You’ll likely appreciate this sentiment, but I’ve always found that God sets us up with what we need before we need it. Sometimes from some very unexpected sources. :slightly_smiling_face:

6 Likes

I very much like that you met the challenge and put all of this together. People aren’t looking for perfection…they are looking for solace and caring…which is what you deliver in spades. Nice work, Marion.

8 Likes

I was thinking all that live-streaming you did back then would be coming in handy right now. What a comforting resource for the people in your area! So much better than watching a national broadcast where nobody knows any of the participants.

7 Likes

I wish our pastor would do this. But he’s older and not technologically facile. He’s befuddled by most things new or even just different. He thought that the vulnerable-only shopping hours were too frazzled with so many old people having issues all at the same time looking for store clerks (vs I guess, spreading the same number of old people out over the course of the week having issues in small bursts :slight_smile: ) - end result he won’t go shopping anymore. The parish will be doing that for him even though the supermarket also offers delivery - he doesn’t feel comfortable ordering groceries online.

But having him say mass and live stream it would be a huge comfort to our parish - especially the elderly who are used to going to 8am mass every day.

I’ll have to give some thought to seeing if I can help make something like this happen.

9 Likes

I’ll be glad to assist. A good laptop with a good internet connection and decent sound will do it. OBS studio and a camera is all you need to get a good handle on the input side. It connects very well with YouTube streaming and allows for easy switching between video and audio sources. You just need permission and then set it up and he might not even know its there. The music publishers are giving free license for streaming for “performance” of their work. Yes. It’s the law and it is ethical but I seriously hold the church accountable for having to rely on copyright in the first place.

Social Isolation distances can be tricky of course at this time of limited movement but you can manage.

Folks are all responding in different ways. I have one guy I’m going to have to have a talking to. He is going around to all the older folks and getting their phones and computers set up to watch my mass stream. It’s probably ok this week, but not much longer at all. Maybe we shut down in time to limit contagion. Seriously doubt it.

6 Likes

Thanks. Just popped over to the OBS studio site and am heading down that rabbit hole :slight_smile:

5 Likes

Let me know what you need. Going to PM.

3 Likes

So glad you can continue your ministry in new form!

5 Likes

Thank you for sharing the journey. Your early efforts helped make the Glowforge experience better for all of us, and you are such a good influence in the forum. The world lost another clarinet player, but gained so much more.

4 Likes

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to isolate and have time on my hands. Doubt it, but if I do, clarinet comes back out!

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 32 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.