Category: Early films – first attempts

Early YouTube stuff that is not very good, just here for the sake of completeness.

First “Musical Muckaround”

Mucking around to Beauty and the Beast

This may appear pretty senseless, but it’s the first of the “musical muckaround” ones I’ve done with Sophie, which got a lot better with time. I think it’s obviously dire, but I’m including it as an example of the early stuff so that people can see how it started and how it developed.

You don’t get kids interested in music by being a perfectionist, you have to treat it as a game, and that’s always been my way with Sophie.

My Husband's Wife: A Novel
4.3 out of 5 stars(43533347)
$17.71 (as of 30/04/2026 00:27 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
Project Hail Mary
4.7 out of 5 stars(475227801)
$26.21 (as of 30/04/2026 00:27 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Elena’s Numa Version

Russian numanuma


My wife singing the Professor Lebedev Russian lyrics to the Numa Numa song at a friend’s wedding.

This video got the usual crop of nonsense comments from the YT electorate, but I just think she looks great on it.

This Inevitable Ruin: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 7
4.8 out of 5 stars(48530312)
$21.99 (as of 30/04/2026 00:27 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
The End Unseen
4.3 out of 5 stars(43543)
$17.46 (as of 30/04/2026 00:39 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Is there life outside the mouth?

Geophagus hondae babies

As an adjunct to the earlier film on the fish with a mouthful, this shows the babies whenever they come out. They don’t need long to go back in again whenever danger threatens.

Quite a few animals use their mouths to protect their young, mouthbrooding is especially associated with fishes but also is practised by crocodiles.

It is quite surprising that it is not more broadly practiced throughout the animal kingdom, as it is a very interesting and practical survival trait. If evolution were true, surely there would be much more of this going on than in a few disparate families?

Evolutionists of course will quickly point out the downside pay-off – they will say that a fish with its mouth full of young itself becomes more tempting a morsel for predators and cannot escape so easily, or that it cannot fight, or that it can’t eat while it has a mouthful of young. Each of those defences are fairly facile, but typical of the sort of dreamt up nonsense that is trolled out regularly to support the theory of evolution.

Theo of Golden: A Novel
4.7 out of 5 stars(47584907)
$19.68 (as of 30/04/2026 00:27 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
Dungeon Crawler Carl: A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure
4.7 out of 5 stars(47567068)
$19.69 (as of 30/04/2026 00:27 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Rocking Horse Reminiscences

Baby Rocker

This rocking horse was my kids’ favorite toy, until it was so used up it was beyong repair. Bought when we lived in Moscow but brought back to Poland in my Jeep, it was with us for about 4 years and served both Tanya and Sophie (George didn’t fancy it it so much) and now what remains is the memory – in the form of this clip.

In the beginning it used to neigh when you stroked the mane, but as you can imagine that was about the first thing that went the journey.

Most of the children born in Europe and America today will never have the luxury of a cuddly horse to rock around on, as the Health and Safety Officials of these nanny states will rule against them on grounds that a child could fall off them backwards. Even on this film some wise guy made the comment that he thought my daughter was swinging too far back. In the near future they will probably want to take into care homes and foster homes kids whose parents wantonly gave them a rocking horse like this to play on. Never caused any tears in my household, that’s all I can say to that. The scratches it made on our Afzelia wood floor whenever it made its inexorable way, nudge by nudge, off the rug are still visible, but I’m not bothered about that.

My Husband's Wife: A Novel
4.3 out of 5 stars(43533347)
$17.71 (as of 30/04/2026 00:27 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
A Parade of Horribles: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 8
$18.86 (as of 30/04/2026 00:27 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

A fish with a mouthful!

Geophagus hondae mouthbrooding

This is the same tank as you saw the Megalichthys in and in fact these Geophagus hondae were breeding while the catfishes were in there with them, but because of their great mouthbrooding ability, they didn’t lose many of the fry.

You can see the full chin and cheeks being a dead giveaway that she has a lot of babies, which we will see in another clip.

The species used to be called Geophagus steindachneri, but that was considered a bit of a mouthful in itself and so it got shortened to ‘hondae’, since Honda was actually Steindachner’s favorite motorbike.

"Ja, ja. Zose vere ze days!"

Here we see the old Austrian ichthyologist himself reminiscing about riding his Honda bike in and out of Harvard Yard making as much noise as possible at two o’clock in the morning and waking up all the undergraduates, as well as Louis Agassiz.

Franz Steindachner, incidentally, would have made a great mouthbrooder as his copious beard would have provided additional cover for the fry as well as looking serious and this warning off predators.

And that’s another thing we don’t get to do in YouTube, either, and that is add still images next to the videos.  This one is from Wikipedia, so it has the GNU licence.

Theo of Golden: A Novel
4.7 out of 5 stars(47584907)
$19.68 (as of 30/04/2026 00:27 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
Fury Bound
$30.70 (as of 30/04/2026 00:39 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)