In the middle of recording a video during yesterday evening’s dance class, my iPhone popped up an alert, a message notifying me that I ran out of disk space and that the current video recording was halted. After seeing the notification, I had mentally prepared myself to visit the Apple store to trade in my phone, upgrading the iPhone to one with larger disk capacity — perhaps doubling the capacity, from 2TB to 4 TB — but fortunately discovered that I can reclaim about 1/2 a TB of space by performing some clean up, pushing out the need to upgrade my phone.
What’s taking up all that space?
I attend dance classes ritually on Tuesdays and Thursdays and almost every class, I capture footage of the entire class, recording myself in order to both 1) create recap videos and 2) reflect on my dance, what I liked, what I dislike. These dance classes in London tend to run 90 minutes and recording at 30 frames per second (FPS), 1080P, HEVC encoding (I had assumed video was being encoded with H.264 and today learned about HEVC, a more efficient format), that’s about 3.6 GB of disk space per hour of video, taking up about 5.4 GB of space per class.
But why the hell is CapCut program itself eating up almost 1TB of space, almost half of the capacity on my iPhone?
What the hell is going on!?
It appears that CapCut duplicates each imported video file in a project. That’s my guess and it would make sense because the application should not affect the original file. This would explain why a project file consisting of a 30 second video clip extracted from 2 hour clip take up 10GB?
So now, I am currently performing some maintenance on my iPhone, carefully deleting project files. What’s odd is that there seems to be some sort of misreporting of disk space because when I delete what I think is 10 GB of project files, I only see a few hundred (about 400 MB) reclaimed. Maybe, just maybe, there’s another reason, like perhaps some background process or thread has not kicked in to update the disk utilization?
Either way, I am going to hold off on upgrading my iPhone that contains a larger capacity and try and reclaim 500GB of space.
Like many others walking this earth, I am currently in a state of transition. The divorce (which started last November) is almost coming to an end (won’t be diving into it here since the topic itself deserves its own post) and I’m finding myself constantly asking the following two questions:
What do you want to do?
What do you NOT want to do?
As Kit Laughlin shared in his podcast interview, the latter question is just as effective. By practicing asking yourself daily, I believe that I’m inching myself towards (for lack of a better word) actualization.
At the moment, here’s what I don’t want to do:
Go back and work full time in technology – whether the role is a leadership role (VP of Engineering) or senior software engineer, I’d like to (if possible) work part-time, anywhere between 15-20 hours per week. With the remainder of time, I’d like to work on my own projects
Yesterday
Elliott after school pick up
“Dad, this is a great place to do a pistol squat” – this brought me so much joy because sometimes, when I’m out and about with her, I’ll practice a pistol squat and cannot believe that this stuck with her
She asked me to tell her (almost every day) more spooky stories
Proud of her when she used the word “bittersweet” – When I touched her hands, I noticed her skin was softer (she had what we thought was a genetic skin condition) and she told me that the medicine she’s taking makes her feel bittersweet and I was so proud of her usage of language (as a almost 5 year old) and asked her where she heard that word and she said, “You taught me Daddy”. I felt proud for both myself and her.
I fell asleep while watching Netflix with her – While watching Netflix Super Kitties TV show that I projected onto the ceiling, I fell asleep while laying next to her and woke up about 45 minutes later, just in time for her mom to pick her up
Continuing practiced teaching Elliott how to ride her (her words: adult) bicycle with two wheels. I’m treading the line between encouragement and pressuring since I do not want her feel like she “has to” learn how to ride a bicycle since I consider the activity right now a source of joy
Dance practice
Drilled the last 8 count steps from Ani’s class – heel toe, pivot heel toe, toe tap
Practiced Pas De Bourrée variations that I came up with, looping the certain parts of the movement, achieving a sort of flow state. I’m starting to feel more comfortable with leaning into my own creativity
Today
Mavinga responded to my inquiry regarding 1:1 private dance lessons and she stepped through my Google Document that outlines my dance goals
She said (in a kind way I feel) that she’ll train me military style, the same way she trains with her Belgian friends. I’m all in and excited at the opportunity. We are working out logistics right now
When she vocalized (in her own words) my goals, she said so you want to dance at a professional level. At first I felt a bit embarrassed, took a deep breathe in and, actually, yes, I do want to dance at a highest level: for me I’m not forcing or pushing myself. I am building a relationship with dance and curious as to if I can actualize the visions I have of me dancing
Stretched for about 30 minutes
Worked my lats
Yamuna ball for my chest and shoulders
Plans
Take a scheduled call with a tax attorney
Take a scheduled call with some executives from White Space, a company that I’m considering consulting for on a part time basis as a VP of engineering
Delete AWS Resources for my Crossbill account since I’ve seen bills come in at hundreds of dollars, resources that I’m not using. So just tearing down various resources that have been neglected
Attend Dance Class with Jevan at Base Dance studios at 5:30pm
Pick up groceries in Wimbledon (from M&S) since I have Elliott this weekend and she loves (just like me) bolongese with pasta
Location: Base Dance Studios (in London, by Vauxhall station) Date/Time: August 08, 2024 @ 5:30pm-6:55pm (85 minutes) Overall class difficulty: 5 out of 10 Combo difficulty: 6 out of 10 Freestyle exercise? Yes
Overview
This blog post serves multiple purposes.
First, it helps me experience gratitude. Attending this class is one of the ways I squeeze in (my low desire of) socializing with folks who share similar values (e.g. physical activity, curiosity, social contact)
Second, the post may motivate someone to take the class and perhaps they are on the fence and want to gain a little insight into what will be learned.
Third, this post is a form of reflection, allowing me to contemplate what moves and exercises I want to continue practicing.
The class agenda was as follows:
Warm up – often my favorite part of the class and I incorporate the moves into my freestyle rounds
Short combination – consisted of the chase, loose legs, dodger, former, tic tac toe (variation) and side walk (variation)
Freestyle partner exercise – each of us took turns with the (above) combination
Cypher – we formed a larger circle (still only consisting of 4 individuals) and exchanged with one another
To get a glimpse of what the class looked like, here’s a little reel I put together that’s part and parcel of my dance journey log.
Combo: Chase, Loose Legs, Farmer, Dodger, Tic Tac Toe, Side Walk
Overall, I felt the difficulty of the combo was 6 out of 10. The reason for the somewhat higher than average difficulty is because I was unfamiliar with the tic tac toe and side walk variation. Outside of these two moves, I was familiar with the other foundational moves (e.g. chase, loose legs, farmer).
Tic Tac Toe variation (right) Tic Tac Toe variation (left)
Side walk variation (left) Side walk variation (right)
Areas of growth
As mentioned above, classes reveal what areas I’d like to work on (there are many). Here are the ones that I struggled with:
Tic Tac Toe – Not only was the positioning of the feet challenging, but the groove and body positioning felt foreign
Transition from dodger (last one) to the tic tac toe – while the dodger move itself was not challenging, theh transition out of this move INTO the tic tac toe tripped me up
The side walk variation – Jevan loves this move and it’s a variation that I haven’t been able to stick for months. In fact, I struggle with this almost every class in which this move is part of the combo. My body is accustomed to a familiar move: the pow wow. That move has been committed to muscle memory so my body wants to default to the pow wow.
The farmer – Though it is considered foundational and something I’ve thrown in rounds before, I’m not quite confident with the timing and feels a bit “off beat”
Syncopated Loose Leg – fan of this variation that he introduced, the first time I’ve danced the move
Freestyle exercise
The freestyle exercise was essentially partnering up with one other person in class and each of us taking turns to perform the freestyle.
After each of performed our combo, our partner would then offer
A positive comment pointing out what they liked out of round and
An area of growth.
For me, the positive comment I received was that my loose legs were the “loosest loose legs” and that it was sublime. For the area of growth, she pointed out my farmer. Though she wasn’t able to precisely offer feedback, I felt even within my body that I was not stretching out the entire downbeat.
Closing – dancing for others AND dancing for self
In a nutshell, you can BOTH dance (for yourself) and perform (for others) — at the same time.
Most of the classes I’ve taken in the United States emphasize that house is a feeling. Instructors often encourage students to NOT perform and instead, dance … to be free. While this belief resonates with me, I find that this assertion can sometimes unintentionally invalidate another aspect of dance: performing.
What I appreciated about what Jevan said was that freestyling is both dancing for yourself AND a performance. I believe the two — dancing for self and dancing for otthers — can (and do) co-exist.
Sometimes I dance without the idea of performance and consider these times rare, consider them “catching the ghost”. Othertimes I’m a bit too in my mind and I find that I am performing. Often, it’s a combination of dancing for self AND for others.
