Tag Archives: YouTube

Something new

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I don’t get enough traffic here to try to come up with something clever and click-baity. Part of the reason my posts have been fewer and farther between these days is that I’m working on a couple of new things.

First – I have started writing more. Writing there, means less writing here.

Second – I’m going to try to add a couple of bits to this page. I’m not into computer programing or whatever language the web kids are using right now to code pages. I’m not interested in being the person to do any of that stuff. I AM however going to try to get some new content via a YouTube channel that I’m creating.

Yes, talking and story telling via video tend to go a lot faster than I can type. I also want to connect up my tabletop RPG habit with this site, sort of creating an entire thing for myself.

We’ll see how it goes. There’s a lot of work to do between here and there.

Still Creating

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I’m wondering about the scale of my lack of focus. I don’t think it’s ADD or ADHD or whatever initials that particular diagnosis have been changed to lately. I am looking at the pattern of my postings here and seeing that they tend to cluster when I have certain things going on and thin way out when I have other things going on. There is nothing consistent about what I’m doing.

Having said that, I realize that there IS consistency, just at a larger scale. The general things I am interested in, and the things I work on are in certain channels, but those channels tend to cycle. There will be times when I am working on art pieces, times when I am crafting, times when I’m writing and struggling along with that and times when I’m reaching out with other creative endeavors.

Lately my energy is being spent on one of those ‘other’ creative endeavors. Gaming. I have posted before about being a player in a role playing game that was streaming on Twitch and YouTube. That game hit a snag ~ the snag of course being that we are adults with lives and responsibilities. Schedule has killed yet another game… OR has it?

I asked my friend if he minded that I step in and take over running a game. He was agreeable and so were the folks playing the game. Since then I’ve shifted gears and dropped back into my Dungeon Master ways. I’m producing art, but it’s generally for the game or the video channel. I’m writing, but it’s centered around the next adventure. I’ve dropped off the crafting and painting a bit simply because we’re running this game virtually across 2 time zones.

In the end, playing Dungeons & Dragons has resurfaced as my hobby of choice. I’m having a great time creating the world and working with the players as they move through various parts of their adventures. We’re still on the Ether Network channel, just under a different “show” title. IF you’re into the story, you should check it out over on Twitch or YouTube:

Episode 2

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We cruised into a second episode for our Beyond The Supernatural role playing game. It was a fun week, even if I struggled with move forward with my character. I made one spectacularly bad roll and earned a new nickname behind the scenes. I am now Mr. 114, however briefly.

If you’re into checking out the game, we’re live on Twitch when we play and then the videos get posted up to the YouTube channel. You can check out the latest episode here:

I Started Twitching

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The Plymouth Meeting Meeting – The Ether Network

A few days ago I posted about how great it felt to be gearing up to be a player in a Dungeons and Dragons game again. It was a really cool feeling I haven’t had for quite some time.

About that game… turns out that less than half of us really *know* 5th Edition rules. I was digging into the PHB and working hard at catching up when there was a choice made. That choice was to switch to a different game that others had a level of comfort with. We were assured this was not a bait and switch, but a temporary move to avoid losing the momentum our game had picked up.

Suddenly I spun about and landed in a supernatural horror game set in the modern day, albeit and alternate (darker if you can believe that) version of today’s world. The twist on this game for me? We live streamed the game while we were playing. We’re on a Twitch channel. When the games are finished, they live on Twitch for a while and then are moved over to a YouTube channel. It was a new and fun thing. IF you’re at all interested, hop on over and check out the video:

YouTube and Silo Entertainment

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Voice typing is something that requires more setup then I think works well with actually getting started on my treadmill. With time I think this will become something better than what it is right now but I need to have a lot more things preset before I start. There’s also a lot more editing to be done after the fact. My typing is slow, but the edits are a whole lot faster. More set up, more follow up.

I think that goes with the theme of what I want to talk about.

There are a lot of things that the computer does really really well. There is an amazing amount of information and entertainment that is at my fingertips all day, every day. I have discovered that there are certain things that I enjoy watching on YouTube. Problem is, I also like to use YouTube to find new things that I’m interested in watching or listening to. I say this is a problem not because there isn’t an infinite variety of things on YouTube, but because YouTube makes an effort to specifically cater to the other things that you have already watched. There are two particular, I’ll call them chat show hosts, that have very interesting guests and interviews.

I’m not quite sure how to express what it is that YouTube does. I have watched an interview with a particular host, therefore YouTube me a huge list of other things that this particular host has done. The two chat show hosts that I found interesting have hundreds of videos available. Now my “suggestions” page is nothing but videos from these particular chat show hosts or music from the one or two artists that I have listened to. Literally nothing else.

This list of suggestions is fantastic when that’s what I want to listen to. If I don’t want to listen to one of them or I’ve gone through all of the interviews or items that I found interesting from these particular interviewers and want to find something different, I now have two type in specific search words in order to find anything. Then even if I have searched for something different, still about half of my list are items related to the videos I’ve already seen. Not only does that make it very difficult to find other things that are new and interesting, but it narrows my selections to things that this computer program believes are my taste. This doesn’t give me an opportunity to find things that might not necessarily match exactly what I have watched before. It becomes a silo. It’s almost as if there is nothing else in the world except what I have seen already or the people that I have already indicated that I enjoy listening to.

YouTube is not the only entertainment provider that does this. Netflix is actually another provider that does something very similar. The list of videos that are recommended to me from Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, or any other place where I actually watch videos has become an extremely narrow selection. I only see things similar to what I’ve seen.

I think one of the things we need is an ability to have what I would call an anti-logarithm. The computer has the search pattern that it thinks it gives me all the things I want to see, but I want an alternate search pattern that gives me a list of other things with an opportunity to find something I didn’t know I was interested in. It is a struggle to find something new and interesting when my entire recommendation list is a bunch of things that match or closely match what I have already seen. It’s insular and boring.

Entertainment videos are not the only place where this becomes a problem. Facebook is another example of only showing you the things you want to see. It becomes very easy, very quickly to only ever see opinions that match your own. While I understand that there are number of times one doesn’t want to see inflammatory opinions or the ideas and concepts that make you angry, there is still a need for the availability of those things. It becomes self-fulfilling prophecy? You put an opinion out and the only people who see it are those who already agree with you. You gain a warped View of exactly how popular something really is. There is no reality check.

I wish I was better at math and/or computer programming. I think it would be a best selling app or program, that would be the “find me something new” button. I don’t know if simply applying and negative prefix to any of the programming language would provide the alternates that I’m thinking, but I’m sure there has to be a way to develop a search engine that picks out either popular or specifically different trends that might not necessarily match the things you’ve already seen. I think more people need this in greater quantity than ever before. Not just from an entertainment point of view, but also from an information standpoint. Most people these days receive and process more information than ever before. It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of filtering all the information to become just the things you want to hear it gives a warped perspective and it’s terrible for actual entertainment value.

Perhaps what I need to do is float this idea out there for free. Somebody needs to make that app or program that is called “change my mind”. Even that is actually a meme that I’ve already seen before. I don’t know its origin, I just know that it’s really popular. A guy sitting behind a card table in a park with a cardboard sign hanging in front of it. Written on the cardboard is an inflammatory or challenging question, ending with “change my mind”. I don’t think asking the people who like the same things you like to change your mind is necessarily an effective tool. I think if there were a statistical or mathematical based program it would work in a much healthier manner.

I may regret this part, but they’re only about a half a dozen people that read this. Give me a comment that is something I should search for on YouTube or Netflix that will change the search patterns that has narrowed my entertainment. I both look forward to, and cringe at the thought, of what you all have to say.