Thinking Crazy Thoughts
I've been thinking of going back to just posting everything under my main Hive account.
Why?
I've been trying to see everythng from a bird's eye view of everything I've been posting. I've tried commiting to a schedule with DecentraCast on ceritin days, NTROradio on these days, Loud & Proud on the weekends, etc. I even tried to do DecentraCast on a daily basis. But I tend to get bored with schedules and rebel. I then end up not posting at all. I cant seem to find anything consistant with seperate content creation. Then add in that I was creating it multiple formats of each of that content in written. audio and video.
It quickly became overwhelming and I would again rebel against myself and just stop. Because it would feel too much like a job. A requirement that I artificially put on myself to make the same content available in differnt formats in order to gain an audience.
Dont get me wrong. I really am doing this because it's fun and I'm not looking for fame or fortune. If I was looking for that I would look in other places. Would I like to get paid to do this? Hell yeah! But is it my primary goal. Hell no!
I'm just the kind of person that will do what I want to do when I want to do it. Not because I have to do it. All of this ended up in sporadic random content on 3 different Hive accounts.
So lets talk about my goals for a minute
My goals are pretty simple.
- Have fun in life
- Learn new stuff about content creation. Specificly how to do it on Linux and OpenSource.
- Show others that it isn't hard and doesn't cost a 2nd home mortage to do.
- Have people enjoy my content.
So you see my goals are simple enough. So why shouldn't the content be as simple?
My plan going forward
I plan on ending the DecentraCast & NTROradio Hive accounts and start posting that content under this account again. Managing multiple accounts for nearly the same content I could be posting under one is becoming atrocious. Thinking back now I should have just been posting those podcasts to this account with the tags of ntroradio decentracast and podcast. Since those are the tags I end up adding to each of their respective posts. So there was no real need to start seperate Hive accounts.
But the reasoning I had was that I wanted to have seperate RSS feeds for each and 3Speak doesnt have the playlist feature yet. But they are planning on it in the future. I had planned on using Aureal but they also still havent implemented the media hosting features yet. In retrospect I could've just set up an RSS feed with HiveRSs and told people to subscribe to those for podcast feeds. But it doesnt, as far as I know, support enclosures or are set up for Podcasting 2.0.
Add in the fact that I needed to get away from Anchor.fm and Spotify before I went insane with blood spurting from my eyes. If you like those companies then by all means use them. Its not my place to tell you who to use. I just refuse to be a product for multi million dollar companies to sell to advertisers. Neither Anchor or it's parent company Spotify give two shits about the podcasters or the artists they claim to help. They are just as much products to them as the listeners.
The Content Itself
I will be focusing on video content since it's the most engaging with an audience and it's getting fun learning the pre and post production stuff. How to produce a LIVE show and make it fun and engaging for the audience without a ton of post production editing is a pretty steep learing curve and involves a lot of pre production to make it work. Thats what I seem to enjoy the most is the stuff behind the scenes. It's what really gets my mind to working.
Recently if you've been watching you've noticed a lot less of "me" in my videos. I've never been comfortable with showing my face on camera because I always though I had a great face for radio. So I did a bunch of research on being a Vtuber. It's seems to be a rather interesting way to do videos. Kind of a cross between hangin out in a VR world like at HiveFest last year. I found that to be a blast and cant wait to do it again this year. Some of the software can be quite resource intensive to stream, play a game and run the Vtuber software. So I continued looking and found out there is a thing known as a PNGTuber (pronounced "ping tuber"). It's a Vtuber that uses static PNG images as the avatar.
It's actually a lot lower on resources and there is even one app I found that is really nothing more than a html file that runs in your browser. Another is a stand alone app that lauches a Unity browser with a green screen called Veadotube Mini. This is the one I use. Since I am dealing with second hand laptops and dont have external video cards this works great for my situation.
So I will focus being a PNGTuber until I can get a more powerful computer that can handle being a Vtuber and proper video production. At first I thought that I was the only one on Hive that did the Vtuber/PNGTuber thing. But I recently found at least one other that I can verify is doing it. The only thing is I dont think she is posting videos to 3Speak, VimmTV or DTube. I know she streams on Twitch and she is represening Hive on there. So kudos!
But I want to make sure I'm found on Hive. So I will be streaming to Twitch and VimmTV mostly at the same time if not just VimmTV. My goal is to draw people to Hive. But to do that I need to be where the eyes currently are. Which is Twitch and YouTube. Lol, I will feel dirty producing content to them but if it gets only one person to switch then it's all worth it right?
My day job is changing
You may know that I have been out of work since 5/30/21. It was unplanned and not something that I would wish on anybody. To do a quick cliff notes version for those who dont know. I have Chronic Heart Failure. My EF (Ejection Fraction) on my left side of the heart was down to 20-25%. That means that my hear was failing. This is typically due to a blockage of some kind somewhere. But a bunch of tests and cameras revealed absolutely nothing. So the docs all determined it was stress related. But because of the condition I had to wear a LifeVest. Which is an external defibrulator that looks much like a brasieer. It has a battery that you carry around and in the event that your heart stops it would go off and save your life.
The docs all said to wear it for 3 months but no driving, no power tools. no lawn mowers, etc. I was to sit on my ass with minor exercise, take a couple of presciptions and let the heart heal itself. Hence no job After those 3 months we did another Echocardiogram and it revealed zero change. Was still at 20-25% EF. So they recommended I have an ICD (Implanted Cardio Device). It's a pacemaker & defibrulator. Which means that according to FHWA regulations I will never drive a commercial vehicle in my lifetime again.
So my boss created a new postition and is training me to do dispatch/safety department work from home. Best boss in the world right there! Since I live two hours away from the office he is putting me up in a hotel all of next week so I can do training. After that I will only need to go to the office one day a week and possibly not have to go there at all using Zoom. So next week will be kind of slim on content from me. Unless I can find a way to do it in a hotel room. Which I'm not all that excited about packing all my stuff up just for that. Plus the wifi will be pretty shitty.
So that's a quick update and I will try to do a live stream later tonight and record an episode explaining all of this in detail. Plus I got some news stories that are absolutely mind boggling as to how stupid some people can be that I want to rant about.
Till then be safe and never stick your finger where you wouldnt stick your face!
Follow me social media
@unklebonehead on any Hive frontend
Blog
- @unklebonehead
Twitch
YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4RQU-YGBbDp4JFAHt3LnmQ
Twitter - https://twitter.com/3speakvidshare
Website - Links - https://unklebonehead.xyz
Podcasts - https://decentracast.xyz
- https://ntroradio.rocks
If you would like to support me outside of Hive
These two lists are what I need to build a streaming pc. The main parts are available on Amazon while there are 3 items that are cheaper at Newegg. The total build is currently coming in at $912 as of 10/01/21.
I can make do for now with what I have. But it isnt easy and very unreliable equipment. This build would be the first "new" computer I've ever had.
I dont expect anybody to help me with this but if you can it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you if you can.