How I download and play YouTube videos with my smartphone using vlc and yt-dlp! I wrote this bash script as ~/bin/termux-url-opener and tell the YouTube app to share with termux. Prompts if I want to download an mp3 audio or video, saves the file, then opens it ad free in vlc.
#!/bin/bash
read -t 5 -p "Hit m for mp3 otherwise download video: " CHOICE
if [[ "$CHOICE" == "m" ]]; then
DOWNLOAD_DIR="/sdcard/Movies"
cd "$DOWNLOAD_DIR"
FILENAME=$(yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 --print filename -o "%(title)s.mp3" "$1")
FILENAME=${FILENAME%.*}.mp3
echo "downloading mp3..." $FILENAME
yt-dlp "$1" -x --audio-format mp3 -o "$FILENAME"
am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW \ -
-d "file://$DOWNLOAD_DIR/$FILENAME" \
-t "audio/mp3" \
-n org.videolan.vlc/org.videolan.vlc.gui.video.VideoPlayerActivity
exit 1
fi
DOWNLOAD_DIR="/sdcard/Movies"
cd "$DOWNLOAD_DIR"
FORMAT="bestvideo[height<=240]+bestaudio[abr<=128]/best[height<=240]"
FILENAME=$(yt-dlp -f "$FORMAT" --print filename -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "$1")
echo "Downloading: $FILENAME"
yt-dlp -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "$1" -f "$FORMAT"
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "Got error, retrying in 10 secomds"
sleep 10
yt-dlp -o "%(title)s.%(ext)s" "$1" -f "$FORMAT"
fi
am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW \
-d "file://$DOWNLOAD_DIR/$FILENAME" \
-t "video/*" \
-n org.videolan.vlc/org.videolan.vlc.gui.video.VideoPlayerActivity
You camp in the middle of January in an unheated truck cap. You ride your mountain bike to work in February on the icy bike trail. You’ve lost around 50 lbs of weight, you eat right and ride to work most days of the week. You don’t eat that processed food stuff.
Truth is I wish I had many more skills, that I was a better hunter, trapper, fisher and homesteader. Skills I could refine if I did more of it, and maybe I really don’t have a good excuse not to practice except that I live in city, though I do spend a lot of time in wilderness too.
Maybe if I wasn’t so damn lazy, unwilling to do more then pick up a book and instead get out there and do more, I could be a lot better off. Be involved with more activities and groups, associate myself with more of the right kind of people that share my interests. Join a sportsmen club, attend more lectures and activities on hunting and fishing. Tour more off-grid houses, meet people are forums and events.
But maybe I’m just kind of fat and lazy in another way. Too willing to do things the way I’ve always done them, too unwilling to go out in field and practice my book knowledge. It’s great I’ve read a dozen books on hunting and homesteading, but it’s all for naught if you don’t do any of those things.
Negative one seemed a bit too cold to ride in plus I’m not sure if the paths are cleared through Corning’s Preserve. More snow then I thought when I actually went outside. You know I don’t really mind not having a vehicle and not having to dig it out, as there really is quite a bit of snow when you go outside.That cold felt good as did the sweet smell of silage on the air. Preska’s cows are eating good in a cold. The bus was running a few minutes late, though I knew that from the real time bus info, but were making good time through the city.
Maybe tomorrow I will ride in tomorrow, 🚲 I do have another Pine Bush meeting to go to but I’m not sure if I can go. First time riding the bus in a while but with the cold ❄️ and snow I might be a more frequent rider. Traffic is surprisingly light on Delaware Ave and there aren’t as many abandoned cars in the road or five feet away from what was the curb. Negative one is cold and I probably should have worn gloves 🧤 on my way to the bus. Catching the earlier local bus and shuttle 🚀 over to the Enterprise assuming I can make the transfer at 8:25.
Yesterday I sort of worked from home 🏡, though I had my laptop in the office 🏢 which was a problem when I realized I would need the VPN and one of the databases which I only had the old version of it. 💾 Which is why I am heading in early. The roads in the city still have some grease on them but the buses are much better in the snow with traction control then back in the day. 🚏 I’m just amazed about the lack of abandoned cars on the roads and how well the city has the banks pushed back. 🅿️ But I guess this is not as bad of a snow storm as those years ago. Next weekends snow storm could be much worse with the existing snow banks and nowhere to push.
Last night I made up a big pot of chicken and rice soup with lots of carrots of course. And some carrot bread . It was delicious and there is more to enjoy the rest of the week when I get home . Going to walk laps in the Plaza after work, catch the bus home and have me some soup and head under the covers. Still need to find me a good book to read and really get into, the past few books have hardly peaked my interest. I’m glad to be out of the apartment, it really felt like I spent way too much time lately stuck inside. It was worth it to ride to Walmart just to get out on Sunday even if my hands were bitterly cold . I am actually looking forward to getting to the office just so I can be around people, walk and just be away from the small walls of my apartment. I really want to ride in tomorrow if at all possible.
Truth is by the time the snow is gone from the rail trail, I should be able to ride both ways to work. That will be nice not having to deal with the buses, though for the first few weeks of February it can be a bit of a race against the darkness, though I have lights on my bike. And the ride from office in Menands to the bus stop on days I catch the bus home due to too much snow on the rail trail won’t be in darkness. That’s always good.
Besides work yesterday, spent some time reading and studying up more on the truck buying process. 🛻🛻 I watched a video last night about the solid front axles on HD trucks, as I’ve always had Independent Front Suspension, which rides better but has more potential failure points getting beat on rough roads. Also, I’ve joined several groups about Ford SuperDuty trucks to learn more about the actual issues and repairs people are making. Also been looking a little at leveling kits and pricing them out, not because I plan to go out tomorrow and get 37s and put on a leveling kit to fit them but I want to know what’s out there.
Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time reading the Wall Street Journal, financial and investment books, YouTube videos on financial topics. Mostly because I have guilt about buying a Ford SuperDuty truck, even if I’m not getting a real-fancy trim. But the advertisers are on me, and they want me to know what I really need is to spend my money on a financial advisor.
Reminds me a lot of the fun house room that Better Help is, the mental health online counseling service who creepy tactics follow you around the Internet, and then speak to you in creepy voices late at night when you can’t get to sleep and you turn on a podcast to give your mind something to think about as sit their lying in bed. I did the licensed mental health counselor thing for five sessions, it’s was fine way to spend $125 bucks and mostly get balled out for my use of the word redneck or having an accusatory voice raised when you talk about eventually building that off-grid cabin, like you plan to be some kind of hermit. If anything I got out of those sessions is you shouldn’t being calling yourself mentally ill, unless of course you want to be mentally ill. Seeking professional help is a way to spend money, while not actually fixing your own problems.
There was a time when I was looking at buying a house and a homestead and considering the benefits of developing a relationship with a financial advisor to better understand the tax ramifications of selling off my investments. I had hoped that maybe a subject matter expert on investing could do two things for me:
Provide insight into the tax code and investing stragety beyond what I already knew
Allow me to see my own biases from an independent perspective
Those were the same things I was looking for with my licensed mental health professional, which he did to a certain degree, but also I realized the relationship was less beneficial as I hoped – he couldn’t just change me by telling me some magic words or giving me some drug. The world doesn’t work that way. Most of the things a financial advisor would tell me are likely things I already know or could find out from reading a book or internet research.
I am not saying an advisor of any sort is a bad thing, indeed both of those bullet points can be valuable for many people. Many people can benefit from mental health counseling and financial advise. But many others do not benefit from such services, especially when mental health counselors and financial advisors have a reason to push and obfuscate their services so people don’t realize they don’t need them as much as they are sold that they do need them.
Mental health counselors and financial advisors dewel on complexity. It’s in their advantage to make their products and explanations are complicated and hard to understand as possible for the layman. Even when a simple mental health issue or financial portfolio can be managed with simple products and concepts, it is really not in their benefit to sell simplicity. It is certainly not in their advantage to sell self-help, because that would mean you wouldn’t be buying their services.
Maybe at some point in the future I will give further thought to both mental health counseling or financial advising – as those bullet points are valid. But I do think advisors often make things overly complicated for marginal benefits, and too often are focused on improving their business then helping the individuals that are coming to them for help.
I can see the desire to own equal weighted funds, especially as they get you more small caps when thee magnificent seven are dominating the market and over weighting index funds, but I think a lower fee small cap index fund is a better way to correct for such imbalance with less turnover than a true equal weighted fund. That said, a lot of small caps are that way because they have slow growth, are in dying industries and have limited prospects for growth. But I do have some investments in small cap funds just like I do some investments in energy sector stocks as a hedge against energy inflation pulling down the market as a whole. But they are not a large part of my portfolio as they're risky and kind of side bets.
And some carrot 
bread 
. It was delicious and there is more to enjoy the rest of the week when I get home 
. Going to walk 
laps in the Plaza after work, catch the bus 
home and have me some soup and head under the covers. 
Still need to find me a good book to read 
and really get into, the past few books have hardly peaked my interest. I’m glad to be out of the apartment, it really felt like I spent way too much time lately stuck inside. It was worth it to ride to Walmart just to get out on Sunday even if my hands 
were bitterly cold 
. I am actually looking forward to getting to the office just so I can be around people, walk 
and just be away from the small walls of my apartment. I really want to ride in tomorrow if at all possible.
I should be able to ride both ways to work. That will be nice not having to deal with the buses, though for the first few weeks of February it can be a bit of a race against the darkness, though I have lights on my bike. And the ride from office in Menands to the bus stop on days I catch the bus home due to too much snow on the rail trail won’t be in darkness. 
That’s always good.
