Since August of 2024 I’ve begun creating media for YouTube again in earnest. In this case, in the form of mostly reaction videos to one particular science and reality denying Young Earth Creationist named Kent Hovind; a man I’ve written a few pieces on before.
Over those months, my video work went from pre-recorded reactions, with rough results, to the occasional livestream, to now effectively exclusive livestreams, nearly every day of the week now.
It’s proven to be fun, to provide a modest but still appreciated amount of income, and, best of all, has given me an entirely new circle of friends online — a fresh group of quite similarly minded people who enjoy what I create and contribute their own ideas to the greater discussion, if not by doing their own content then by simply commenting, participating, following, and, well, being there.
It’s an incredible treat when compared to so many other scenes I’ve been a part of that were truly toxic. Indeed, I had almost forgotten what a functional social group actually was like, but what I have now? That is is.
It’s quite the fun time streaming, commenting, laughing at the jokes my audience will make, or them providing me with facts on the fly for things I may not know. Hell, even correcting me when I’m wrong — they do it in the right way, and I’m grateful for it. It is certainly safe to say I’ve become a bit addicted to the interaction, even with how much effort streaming actually does take. It’s still, to a degree, less effort than doing the same content pre-recorded, so, I do save a bit in the long run, bur still, looking at an entire 2 hour debate, resulting in my own video being nearly 4 hours long, well, that’s quite the investment for a one-and-done kind of project.
Still, I enjoy it all. Indeed, I’ve been enjoying it so much that it has greatly contributed to the neglect I’ve given to this website. Xadara is supposed to be my home online, but now it’s almost like an expensive to maintain index of random thoughts mostly from over 5 years ago.
Yep, it’s been half a decade now since the glory days of this site. I’ve constantly been saying I need to rectify that, and I will, soon. I’m going to taper off a bit of the video work and instead devote a modest amount of time, hopefully daily or every other day, to getting some written content made. Even if it isn’t a finished article, that’s fine — so long as I am putting text into what will eventually become a complete entry, I’ll be making progress.
I’m hoping to get back to my roots, in many ways — vintage space, some modern stuff that I like, classic gaming, some thoughts on history, society, and of course general tech. That’s not to ignore the much delayed Angry Video Game Nerd episode reviews, which I am prepping to get back to this week, along with some new projects.
Speaking of projects, I have spent quite a bit of free time in the past few months with a few side projects and have, honestly, revamped everything as far as online services I provide. Final Zone BBS is now modern forums, I’ve set up a fully standards compliant XMPP server for personal and public use, my Asterisk system on PhreakNet continues to run strong, and I really should be “that guy” and brag about moving to Debian on my primary laptop computer. Hell, were it not for games I could switch my main machine to a Linux distro with no issue, but alas, now is not the time in my life for that.
The clouds are parting, you could say, after far too many delays. We’ll see where things stand in a month. I’m certain they will, in some way, better.