Thing #20: YouTube

I've had some experience in the past with youtube, so I went into this Thing thinking that it would just be a casual stroll around the site to find some new videos and refresh my memory about the various features that were offered. And so it was, until the time came to post a video of my choice to my blog. I'll come back to that.
YouTube really does offer a great selection of videos. Of course most of them are quite dumb, or poorly filmed, or too short, or too long. Putting it bluntly, most of the content is junk. But for virtually any topic you could think of, there are some really great gems to be found. This is really true of the internet as a whole. If you have the time and skill to pan through raging rivers of crap, there's gold to be found.
Such was the case for me today when I found a very nicely done video of an emperor scorpion eating what appears to be a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. This was quite an interesting video for me (i have a sweet lil' scorpion of my own at home) since it's rare to see such clear footage of a scorpion as it feeds. They tend to be reclusive and like to enjoy their meals in secluded areas. This video was just great though. The picture was clear and there were interesting facts interspersed with the footage for those new to the species.
However, getting this video to load into my blog proved to be quite a chore. After struggling with it for about an hour, I enlisted the help of 2 fellow librarians (who had already made it work on their own blogs) and they couldn't remember how it was done either. I finally made it work, but it seems that all 3 of us stumbled across the correct steps on our own, without the process being clearly laid out for us. There should really be a better set of instructions for this. But, now that I've done it once, I imagine that I'll be able to do it in the future. Then again...