cathoderaydude
patreon
Video(s): Three Of Them
🕑 Added 2024-03-03 20:06:05 +0000 UTCSo here's something new, or rather, three new things:
Li'l Guys ep 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kldj_NmR7oo
Li'l Guys ep 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2_X0FS2e4o
Checking out a Vaio C1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6257z3lui8
Okay, so, so, let me explain. It's complicated.
First, a technical note: These are not final drafts, because I'm going to be releasing them publicly over such a large timespan that the patron credits would get badly out of date. So comments are disabled, and errors are expected, because I will absolutely be uploading new versions with credits before release.
Now, as for the Pivot I'm doing here:
I've wanted to produce lower effort work for years. Not lower-quality, of course, I don't want to make filler, but I'm sick of every single video eating up at least a week and often two, including days and days of scriptwriting which doesn't always result in a better experience. Sometimes it does, but other times I think "wow, all those rewrites weren't really necessary." And besides that, the fact that I'm presenting everything in a didactic way forces me to go with my best achievable standards, and make every single minor error stand out like a sore thumb, and... it's just exhausting, especially on things so unimportant that it should hardly matter if I'm 100% correct.
I wouldn't say I'm burning out, per se, but it's more like I can see how I would, eventually. More importantly though, I'm just running into so many things that can't hold up to a scripted shoot. I have things to talk about and things to say about them, but they just aren't worth the pomp and circumstance of going to the studio and figuring out blocking and doing 20 takes and having to go back and find parking and do another take just because I said "windows vista" when I meant "windows 7." I have been struggling for years to figure out how to write about these things without so much overhead, and I think the answer is that I shouldn't write, I should just talk. So this is that.
What I've always wanted to do with my channel is an intel-style tick/tock approach, where I release a "big" video, then a "small" one, and repeat. And the ideal is that the small videos are so easy to produce that I can actually build up a backlog - which, as you see, I've done. I now have four finished and unreleased videos; I've never had a backlog like this before, at best it was one. I could actually carry my channel for the next month without shooting any new footage, which is a huge weight off my shoulders.
This is possible because I scripted nothing, looked things up on the fly while shooting, used a single tiny camera that shoots at much lower bitrate stuck on a manfrotto magic arm, and stopped caring whether the angles or lighting were perfect or if I got everything exactly right. It worked; I was able to shoot and edit each of these in a single day, and I think the result is still something I'm proud of.
I don't think pivoting entirely to this style of Content would be wise or desirable, either to the audience or me; I am proud of the production level of my usual stuff, and I think most of my work stands up to being scripted and properly lit and whatnot, but I'll tell you this: I am way, way more capable of delivering this kind of video on a regular basis, and I still think it's more engaging than most "vlog" style work, if I do say so myself.
I intend to start mixing these in to my release schedule (such as it is.) The question of course is when and how I should put them on Patreon. My inclination is to just post them the moment they're done, but that could end up being like, four separate patron releases in a week sometimes (like now.) A couple people have already said that seems intimidating, and I wouldn't want to overload you all with a backlog, so I'm not sure if I should space these out by at least a few days, or what. Thoughts and comments invited, and I hope you enjoy the new style.
Comments
Andreas Dorfer
Episode 3 [Lex Brik] RC1 / 18:10: ethernet cards with relays can be found on many "enterprise level" devices: fail over to "hot standby" device, just as a (more or less) cloned configuration behind the first edge routing device. If an external watchdog device decides (by whatever clever metric) that the first edge router is in a failed condition, interrupt it's power and the inbound eth will fail over to the standby device. off course, MultiChassis link-aggregation (MLAG) with to several edge nodes would be nicer, but when you can not have that and if that one (reliable) WAN cable in your cabinet is your single life line in a remote location, you have to resort to such pcb relays to fail over using mechanical force.
Weyoun 9
Gravis, I don't have a Lil guy with bypass networking, but I do have a couple of standalone PCIe cards that do the same thing, including one that can bypass fibre in case this concept wasn't insane enough for you already. Drop me a line if you want them.
Ian
Gigabyte still makes a line of mini PCs they call BRIX.
FliesLikeABrick
In episode 3 you commented that you weren't suee why there were 2 more concealed screws at the rear since the other 4 would seem sufficient to hold the housing together. That is true - the reason the back 2 screws are there is likely to add rigidity to the rear panel where the ports all are, so less than all of the force has to go through the bottom and the solder joints
Cathode Ray Dude
You can grab the installer from the Wyse 3040 drivers page on Dell's site, I'm not 100% sure how to use it but I'm sure there's directions online, this is a *very* common desire. I already nuked mine so I can't help unfortunately, haha.
Danny Forche
I just got around to watching episode 2 today, and I'm so interested in that little Wyse PC - I saw one in a production environment but the monitor was turned off so I have no idea what they were using it for. They're only like $25 on eBay, literally cheaper than a Raspberry Pi, so I really want to get myself one to tinker with. However, a lot of them say "no OS" - I want that ThinOS thing, I may be able to figure out what kind of Linux it is as well. Do you know if there's an installer available from Dell? Or would you be able to image the hard drive using your live-booting Linux... assuming you haven't nuked the drive yet to install Mint or whatever. I always use "dd" to do it, I can give you the commands if you aren't fluent in that. Could just back it up to a USB flash drive, and upload it to the Internet Archive. Thanks in advance
