A Gift Box of Niche Skills, Easily Acquired.
Hello.
Welcome to your gift box of niche skills.
I’m Edvard. Your tour guide.
This is a short tour. Please scroll down.
—the box top unfolds like a magnificent corrugated cardboard flower—
- Make a font out of your handwriting. I used a skillshare tutorial, but honestly the site’s pretty danged intuitive. Took me like 10ish minutes to fulfill a longtime dream.
- Learn some tutting (really cool dancey movements you can do with your hands—perhaps something to practice below-screen/off-cam in your zoom meetings? I see you, my fellow restless people.)
- Practice breathing deeper in silly, playful, and really effective ways. We did breathing gym workouts in choir high school and recently rediscovered them, much to my delight!
- Stretch yourself out before bed, and sleep a bit sounder. This was my go to routine when I was a stressed out classroom teacher who couldn’t calm my brain down. It’s good stuff.
- Transcribe videos/audio without having to actually type much of anything. Descript actually delivers on pretty danged accurate auto transcription (at least for my voice), and is also amazing for editing video with lots of speaking in it. A beautiful tool. And a highly functional free trial. It’s pretty badass.
I used it to make this video of my 2020 Alternative Education Resource Organization conference talk, and I think it turned out pretty nicely for a first shot at long-form educational video editing.
None of this is the least bit sponsored. I just like doing cool shit and figure you probably do, too.
—the box closes up, mysteriously, without you having to touch anything—
Thus ends the tour of the box,
Edvard
P.S. I don’t actually know who Edvard is, but he had a red velvet smoking jacket and a cool accent, so I let him take the reins for a bit. I wanted your experience of this list to be whimsical and snazzy.
Wishing you well from snowy Vermont,
Alex