My Figures library & Co

I wrote earlier about my collection of figures to show you how I save and easily find back to my favorite figures. But still, these figures are not the chosen ones! That collection is a kind of waiting room for nice moves. I collect and maintain these rows for the day I want to have some new movements or variation on the old giros in my daily dance. Some of these suggestions will never advance to the spreadsheet I call for FIG library. On this spreadsheet I keep the figures I have seriously worked on! Most of the videos show moves from my workshops but my favorites from youtube channels are also included.

FIG library

For these videos I like to have some more information. Sometimes it has been interesting to check the year and month when the steps were initiated to my dance or when I  was working on them for the first time. It has been fun to check what was going on in 2009? What teachers I had then? Just use the filter for that column and you have the information. There is also a column to group the figures, usually about 20-30 rows/items to go together, based on the teacher but sometimes on a theme as canyengue or something. These groups I can easily dance through during a tanda on a practica. At the beginning I made an MP3 file telling me every 20s a new move and for a tango tanda 26 was a good number. Today I try to memorize the lists instead.

The column NUMBER is useful when I have filtered a selection and need to know how many items fit the criteria. No counting of rows but I just place the cursor on the column top letter and in a click I can read the result in the right down corner. Easy and fast!

When I decide to work on a figure in the Collection I cut-copy it and paste it to the Fig library. With other words I add it to the Library and remove it from the Collection.

You maybe want to have all your stuff on one sheet and it is totally up to you. If you change your mind later you can separate them into two sheets. You can still keep them together in the same workbook. There is a tab for each of them as you see at the bottom of the picture.

If you click the picture above it opens up in a new window and you see it clearly!

 

Teacher Notes and other observations

It was too easy to forget what the teacher has told me during a private lesson or on a workshop. I maybe had the correction in mind for some time but afterward I just continue in the old way. Now I write a line for everything I hear from her or him and I read these notes regularly to remind me of the changes needed.

There are labels like body lead attitude abrazo . . . . .
The second level labels are Hand arm foot leg hip timing . . . .

When I read these notes I remember vividly what it was about and hopefully it will develop and come to daylight on some milonga in the future!


Today I am also experimenting with a new sheet for repetitions of the groups in the FIG Library. It is annoying to participate, pay the fee, traveling and stay but forget the most of the content later on. This sheet is for my solo training and it will carry information about my activities so I know what content I have repeated on a specific week. I can easily check if something needs to be repeated again and in this way I don't forget a group of favorites! Coming back about this when I feel that it is working ok!

I use here also the freezed headings and filtering functions. This video shows shortly how!

To keep in touch with your tango steps!

It was a frustrating experience when I couldn't find back to a loved youtube figure I had seen a month or a year earlier. The solution below has been running for three years now and it has helped me many times so far! Some periods I don't use it at all and then suddenldly it is updated with several new lines per night.  It is allways visible and easy to access! I hope it will save time for you too!

I am a PC user and the collection is created on a google spreadsheet. On the screenprint below you find the headings and labels which have helped me to identify a video clip again. Most of my links are from youtube but facebook items and other internet addresses can be saved also.

This spreadsheet is for instant records, to save the moves I like when surfing around. I have created separate sheets for the figures from workshops and one for my teachers observations and advices. I have this split because the number of entries is growing surpricingly fast on each of these sections!

This is the version I use  for the collection! The column headings and labels you find here have served me well during the years.

To manage this collection of links I use some basic functions you find below but the most important of them is to create a backup every now and then!

Watch the video or read the text!

Your choice!  :)

EASY ACCESS and FILTERS

To have easy access I have placed an icon on the bookmarks bar - when the site is open you just drag the icon to the bar as shown on the picture. Ater that you will easily find the site and save your new steps. When my collection had grown to contain several hundreds of rows the filtering function has helped me out! I use the most simple version of it and it is very intuitive at that level.You create a filter by placing the cursor on the row for column titles and via DATA menue you find the option! At the same place you can get rid of it and reactivate it again later.

FREEZE the HEADINGS

Frozen headings have also been easy to apply. It keeps the column heads as well as the lable suggestions visible when the collection grows!

Put the cursor on the row number you want to keep visible and make the rest in VIEW menue

TIMESTAMPS

When you save a youtube address with timestamp you will land on the figure right away.
Facebook offers the same; addresses with timestamp!

Right click the video window and choose the time option!

BACKUP ! ! !

One terribly day in the future a backup can be useful to have and it is easy to fix today! I just send my figure collection, library and teacher notes to another email address. All in one mail as an EXCEL file.  That's all!

You can control the SPEED in youtube

One of the most valuable option in youtube of today is the speed control: You can decide if it goes slower than normal or speed it up. 

Here you have the control button:

If this option is not available at your youtube window you maybe are missing the add-on called HTML . All things remain the same on your youtube window but you just get the control button!

Place your cursor on the youtube window and RIGHT click. This click brings up a list of options and you take the HTML line.

(this information goes out to all may channels - Sorry if repeated for you)