#PastebinMonday 07/08/2024 A Week to Myself Was Good Edition

'Sup, doods!

As it turns out, I did mind hosting a week of GDQ free chat. I was worried that my being so out of physical shape would not allow me to hold an entertaining stream for 12 hours a day. No, the thing that held me back from holding an entertaining stream was having no variety of things to talk about during the GDQ runs. I look to GDQs to educate myself on these games and how to speedrun them. It is clear that GDQ is looking to entertain first and educate later. As much good that the marathon did, I hope to never forget how rough those first two days were. Everyone else was looking to be entertained through mindless fun. I was looking to be entertained through thoughtful commentary. I was not entertained. I was so not amused by the first two days that I rage-quit doing my watch-along for the rest of the week. Honestly, I had more fun with the marathon when I wasn't paying too much attention to it. By day 4, I think the sheer entertainment value picked up enough to where a watch-along would have been entertaining to watch, but by then, I had already f***ed up my sleep schedule. In fact, my sleep schedule will probably not be right for the next three days. Wish me luck, doods.

The week off did manage to put me the right state in mind to get a few things done, though. I have a TON of new clips I have downloaded to edit into stream reactions. (I need to fix the Troll 2 clip if I can remember it. I'm not sure where the sound went.) This is something I think I can do during the week. I have made graphics and secured sounds to put into a very particular set of stream alerts that I hope to design this weekend. The logistics will be tricky considering the different scenes I use. The thing that has me the most excited, however, is the intro that I have made. I will be showing it off on Wednesday and it's even better than how I imagined it in my head. I hope it sufficiently communicates the variety of speedruns I have done and how long I have been doing them, adding some much needed personality to the channel. It should give me an excuse to edit down my personal best videos in the backlog, too. I can't remember when all those Tetris Attack Easy – V-Hard PBs happened, dood. Gonna have to open that LiveSplit file in a spreadsheet to find that data. (Didn't know they could be opened in that way, did ya?)

I've also tweaked my formula for YouTube shorts to improve the presentation without adding too much editing time. That should start popping up next week. I might do a further tweak once the stream intro is rolled out to turn the clips into proper commercials, dood. That's kinda the point of me making them.

I'm hoping to have another week to myself in a couple of months, dood. Time to myself will always be good. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to fix my sleep schedule without popping too many pain pills to cope. I made the bed, but I'm not very good at laying in it.


Today's (permanent) extra streaming goals:

Goal #1: finish personal shorts and speedrun tournament VOD thumbnails. They'll be done by tomorrow.
Goal #2: personal best videos in Tetris Attack Easy – V-Hard and Normal.
Goal #5b: finalize the tournament layout once and for all in a way that I can adapt for the Pokemon Puzzle League tournaments. I hope to start on making the layout more user friendly this weekend.
Goal #6a: clean up my own stream layout. Most of the framework necessary for a semi-proper stream is done now thanks to streaming the process, though I'm not currently motivated to stream any other part of it at the moment. Next major objective is to make alerts. I have stream reaction clips to put in. Emotes, one or two alternate overlay themes, and alternate timer themes would come soon after. As soon as I think of things to put in, I will add them to the list.
Goal #6b: catch up on video archives that I have yet to upload since I restarted streaming.
Goal #7: script and record footage for my Puzzle League tutorial series. I have some scripts left to touch up before feeling comfortable with moving on to recording gameplay. Then I will need to record my talking points and edit it all together. Getting back to this will be easier once the workflow for the monthly tournaments is finalized.
Goal #8: release the Puzzle League tutorial series YouTube shorts once a day until they're all done. I really do think I need to time the release of the series with a ramping up of my streaming schedule so that I can take advantage of whatever there is to gain from releasing the shorts.

This week's schedule:

Wednesday @ 8pm - 10pm ET – Wild Cards Wednesday – Tetris Attack Poochy Open Qualifying (oh yeah, that will open up soon)
Friday @ 9pm - 1am ET – Friday Night Salt Mines – Redoing Tetris Attack Poochy Open Qualifying or Just Going for Normal VS. WR now that I'm 3 seconds away


That’s my life story for the week. Until next time, everyone, be decent to each other. Later, doods!

--Cards