No Chocolate cake

Sometimes I feel bad when my son cries. Okay - I always feel bad when he cries.

But then he turns to me and goes "Want Chocolate Cake!".

A) Not that upset.
B) Clearly lining himself up to "be upset" when the desired cake does not appear.
C) I want cake too.

Anyway - I finished!

I finished the YouTube Creator Academy last night.  It's been a really valuable exercise to learn more about YouTube and how to sort your videos out to make them more attractive to potential viewers, and it's also let me experience a lot other channels by other creators that I'd normally totally miss.  I particularly recommend TheNickCrompton - very funny plus I believe he's from somewhere in Yorkshire so that's always a bonus!

If you haven't already seen it here's my welcome video to my YouTube Channel:

Apart from that I've now put a page up on my website about guest posts - I've started getting people talking about working together on stuff so I thought I ought to have some guidelines in place.  If you really want to you can check them out.

And if you did contribute on Kickstarter to the second season of My Gimpy Life, well done!  The target of $50,000 has been passed, so they're going to have the money to make the season.  Jolly good.

YouTube Creator Academy

Currently my son is taking great joy in organising things.  In his playroom he has a load of letters and numbers, and given time he'll arrange them into piles of:

• Numbers
• Foam letters
• Hard plastic capital letters in one font
• Hard plastic capital letters in a different font
• Hard plastic lower case letters

Well, it keeps him out of mischief.

Do you have a YouTube channel?  Are you interested in getting more views, improving your channel, and all that kind of thing?

If so, have you checked out the YouTube Creator Academy?  It's an online course discussing the various features of YouTube (especially the new YouTube One channel layout) and how to make your videos more popular.  I've started doing the course and I've certainly found it of value - I've mucked about with my channel homepage (if you've not visited my YouTube home, head over to https://www.youtube.com/ravenswingthog and check it out) and added a new welcome video too.  It's actually quite challenging, it encourages you to work with other YouTubers on the course and it's really highlighted to me just how far I have to go in improving the quality of my content to compete!  But I'm working on that.  If you do like my videos though, if you do have a YouTube/Google account, please do like my videos and subscribe to my channel if you can - and feel free to let me know what you'd like me to make, I love feedback!  Feel free to leave comments on YouTube, email me, or tweet at me at @ravenswingthog -  it's all good.

Not to over do it but if you haven't donated yet on Kickstarter for the second series of My Gimpy Life (first series available here) you've got till Friday 14th to donate - as things stand they're just under $10,000 short of their target, so if you were planning to put some cash in, head over to Kickstarter before the deadline passes.

Nappy guidance

Hi!

Is your little one in nappies!  Here's some guidance if taking you're taking them around a nature reserve.

1) Before you leave the house, might be an idea to change their nappy.  If you don't, take some nappies with you.
2) If you didn't change their nappy before you left, it's probably wise not to let them drink two full bottles of water while you're out.
3) If you did let them drink two full bottles of water, remember to take the bag of spare nappies with you when you leave the car to walk around the nature reserve.
4) If you didn't abide by all of the three rules above, it's probably a REALLY BAD idea to give your young child a piggy back unless you want a wet neck.

Luckily he didn't actually burst his nappy but I thought he had!  We got about halfway round the park when the nappy became so heavy that it was pulling his jeans down, so I thought the piggy back would be the simplest way to resolve the problem.  It promptly turned into a route march so that I could get back to the car in time!

Changing the subject completely, have you seen My Gimpy Life?

It's a really good web series starring Teal Sherer, a disabled actress who you may know as Venom from The Guild.  It's about her life and is very funny indeed.

Anyway, she did her first series (see it here) and now is looking for funding for her second series, and she's funding it through Kickstarter.  The deadline is Friday June the 14th, and she's looking for $50,000 (as I write this she's got over $31,000 pledged already) so if you liked the first series and would like to enjoy the second series I'm sure she'd appreciate a donation!  It's made me dip my toe into Kickstarter for the first time and it is really easy to give money if you have an Amazon account.

The use of attempting to pay for things as a resuscitation device

I am completely unable to pay for anything when in the vicinity of my grandmother.  This eighty-one year old kindly looking person uses some kind of interrogation practice probably outlawed by most countries to make you tell her how much anything cost that you bought, and then uses further evil techniques to make you take money from her.

A typical conversation goes like this:

 I'll walk into her living room. "Hi gran."
 She'll smile, and say "Hello. How much do I owe you."
 "Nothing, I've not brought you anything." I'll respond.  She'll use some kind of X-Ray vision at this point.
 "What about the bird seed you hid in the other room?"
 I'll shrug. "That wasn't a lot, forget about it."
 "No! You need your money!"
 "You need yours - you're on a pension." I'll attempt.  This will be batted away with a waved hand.
 "I haven't got anything to spend it on. How much was it?"
 "Um, five pounds."
 "Oh - I haven't got a fiver. Here's ten. Then you've got a little bit for going to the shop for me." she'll say, handing me a ten pound note.
 "Oh... thank you gran." I'll say, trying to think of a reason to say no but failing. She'll then rake through her purse, thinking.
 "I forgot! Here's five pounds for you to get a sandwich at work tomorrow." she'll then say, thrusting more money at me.
 "Didn't you say that you didn't have a fiver?"
 "Don't argue with your grandmother!"

Should she ever require the services of the emergency services and resuscitation is required, I shall merely call out from the doorway of the hospital "Gran I've paid for lunch okay, don't worry about it".  Within the next four seconds she'll be up and demanding her purse to recompense me.

Today can I recommend checking out web series My Gimpy Life - its lead character is (and played by) Teal Sherer, a disabled actress in Hollywood.  Teal played Venom in Series 2 of the Guild, but is overall much nicer a person in this show, which is well worth a watch.  The episodes can also be viewed on YouTube here.  They are looking for donations to let them make more episodes - visit the website to take part if you'd like to see more of the series.

The other thing I've been doing is getting more RAM installed in my PC.  When new the PC came with 2Gb, which at the time was more than adequate, but since I've been getting involved in video editing this has been badly shown to be in need of upgrade - more than once I've shut Adobe After Effects down due to lack of RAM.  And also more than once Windows seems to grind to a halt - I suspect my virus scanner for this though!  At any rate a RAM upgrade is a cheap, simple and effective way to get some more speed out of a PC.

The Crucial website has a handy system scanner which will tell you what RAM you've got in your PC, and what is compatible, and if you buy the RAM from them they even guarantee its compatibility.  You can of course use the scanner and then take its findings to another RAM seller, but Crucial prices are generally pretty competitive and for those that don't want to mess around opening the case up to check the motherboard it's a great time saver.

As it happens I had a couple of gift cards for PC World so I've just installed an additional 2Gb of RAM into my system, due to various reasons it says 4Gb installed (3.12Gb usable) which is annoying but at least the amount usable for actual problems is still a lot higher than it used to be, and the system is definitely more responsive.  I'm looking forward to giving the system a good test with some gaming and video editing to see what happens.