The idea for creating my own YouTube channel goes back to 2015 when I got the idea to make a Vampirologist channel. It would feature videos explaining vampire folklore in different cultures and analyses of the mythology found in movies and tv shows. But around that time, YouTube started cracking down pretty hard on copyright,…
Category: Blog
The Albatross: or Modern Cultural Bias in History
To make my videos for Defragged History, I do a lot of research. I read as many books and articles from all the centuries and many different cultures and perspectives as possible. I want to form as complete a picture as possible. While reading, I noticed a pattern: many authors write about ancient people as…
Computer to Decypher VOC Archive Manuscripts
“‘t eylant Formosa sal worden een cooren-schuyre voor onse Nederlantse buytencolonien”, a VOC official exulted in 1637. He summed up how much merchandise the island, now Taiwan, had yielded. It translates to ‘the island of Farmosa will be a wheat barn for our Dutch outer colonies.’ The United Dutch East India Company (VOC) archive is…
The Batavia Titles Explained
Some people, some curious people, might be interested to know how I decide on title and chapter headings for the episodes and what they refer to. Here’s a rundown of some of the chapter and episode names for the Batavia series on YouTube. I’m leaving the more obvious ones out, but if you have questions…
Translate This!
For the Defragged History YouTube series, I create my own subtitles, and I use Google Translate for the Dutch subs. Once I finish editing an episode and am ready to start publishing it to YouTube, I run the whole text through Google Translate if I need Dutch subtitles. I only make Dutch subtitles for programs…