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It’s that time of year again! The time of year where I look at my site and realize I haven’t written any significant articles even though it is already quarter 2... ERMMM (adjusts glasses) WELL ACKSHUALLY, I did write an article this year AND this article is coming out a month before the previous spring update came out last year, so I guess I am ahead of the curve.
Last year I celebrated over 20 thousand visits in the year since the view counter was added, but this time I’ve exceeded that with almost 50 thousand total visits (48K as of writing) since the counter was added! That means the site is getting well over 20 thousand visits per year, over 1700 a month, and over 50 per day. The articles that have page counters have also increased by the same rate factor meaning this website is overall somewhat more popular than it was last year, WOW!
I Introduced living articles last year which is now where a huge amount of the total updates to the site go. I update some of these articles VERY often, though I am bad at remembering to change the “last updated” date at the top every time. Specifically the useful cli stuff article and the quotes article get an update like once a month. I use some of these living articles as a highly accessible reference system, which means it’s the place where I put all the stuff I don’t want to remember like ffmpeg commands I only use every once in a while. The amount of time these living articles have saved me from having to look up how to do X in Y program and then skimming through a manual or a stack overflow question which has an incorrect answer is probably already in the hundreds of hours.
In the last update I mentioned other living articles that I still haven't written, things like best 2hu girl list or movie/anime/game reviews stupid stuff like that. I will probably make those articles in the future as well as some other important articles like the hogsmeade one. I really don’t know if I will do that this year either though, however I AM actively writing it and the accompanying article about the downfall of GMod Hogwarts roleplay servers. I have a few other things I want to write about, things like why crypto is gay now and various photo blogs are most certainly coming this year.
I am always coming up with new ideas about articles to write especially if it gives me an excuse to make a YouTube video about it as well. I try to double dip with my articles and videos as much as I can, usually the article format is much more in depth than the accompanying video. Speaking of YouTube, this article is coming out on the 5 year anniversary of the ShyStudios YouTube channel! I created the account on 4/19/19 before midnight and uploaded the first ever video on 4/20/19, so really the twentieth is the true start of the channel. I’ve been uploading one video a week for five years straight!
In early December 2023 the channel reached 1000 subscribers which is a huge milestone. Soon I will be able to start making money via ad revenue which would be very cool. Sadly right now the watch hours are SLIGHTLY lower than the required amount, so go watch every one of my videos in a row please! I’ve been making YouTube videos for over 17 years now. I created my personal channel in very early 2007. I was also making miniDV camcorder movies as a kid with the intention of putting them online even before making my YouTube account in 2007. Back then my favorite video website was actually google video, I made my YouTube account only after they added YT vids to GV. I could go on with the history lesson but I’ll save that for a future article!
It is quite funny when you compare the stats of both my YouTube channels. The ShyStudios YouTube channel has over 3 times as many subscribers but almost 4 times less views as my personal channel ( ~1 million total views after adding up the view counts from vids which were removed for being too epic). Even if you extrapolate out my current total view count on ShyStudios to 17 years assuming no growth then it still falls short of my OG channel. Basically I was kind of big shit on YouTube back in the day. It always makes me really happy when I see someone I’ve been subed to for like decades on my personal account randomly comment on a ShyStudios video, this has happened many times.
(I just re ran the numbers because it Isn’t clear if YouTube takes into account the view counts of removed videos or not in the total view number on the analytics page. My removed videos account for over 200K views and I came to the nearly 1 million view count number by adding that to the listed total view count. So it might be that my OG channel actually has about 750k total views and I just re-added those already counted videos on top which brought me to 1 million. If that is the case then that means after extrapolation for 17 years then YES the ShyStudios YouTube channel WOULD have more views. Again assuming ZERO growth.)
One of my long term goals is to migrate as many of my older videos as I possibly can over to the ShyStudios YouTube channel. Obviously some of the videos on my OG channel are staying there forever (or till YouTube bans me for no reason). Some of these videos will be edited into new ones, for example I want to take all of my old pivot animations and put them in a compilation video. Some other ones can’t go on YouTube at all for various reasons (mostly music content match BS). So in those cases the videos go on my Vidlii channel. I typically upload all of my videos to Vidlii earlier than they get published on YouTube, so if you want early access go check that out!
Vidlii is also the place I upload alternate cuts of certain videos that are TOO HOT FOR YOUTUBE and even some exclusive stuff. Sometimes I’ll even just post random videos I think are funny that I didn’t make. Vidlii is really great and I get WAY better viewer interaction than on YouTube. I have YouTube videos with no comments and the same video on Vidlii will have an esoteric deep discussion about the topic of the video. The people on Vidlii are great, though it does have a tendency to attract a few UNDESIRABLE individuals. It really makes you appreciate the censorship and curation of YouTube. Vidlii does shape my videos somewhat, I purposely edit most of my videos to fit the 35 min duration limit of Vidlii since it is slightly inconvenient to cut a video into multiple parts.
That’s enough about videos, I want to get back to talking about the actual website. I’d say pretty much every time I look though or re-read any article I’ve wrote I end up going back and changing something. It is almost always stupid minor mistakes like grammar, punctuation, or a misspelling that stupid LibreOffice didn’t catch. LibreOffice spellcheck is notoriously bad, in fact the word in the previous paragraph “curation” is highlighted in red. It even thinks the word “libre” is misspelled which is kind of hilarious. I am seriously considering installing an old version of M$ office. If you see any weird grammar or spelling that pisses you off, please frick off, OR email me and I MIGHT fix it!
I implement community suggestions quite a lot, for example my boy skipper recently gave me some CSS which made it so my preformatted text boxes do not break the page anymore and instead scroll. I added this in a way which maintains the original aesthetic of a solid black box with no scrollbars. Another one of my OGs also pointed out that I am dyslexic and wrote “atp install” instead of “apt install” in my previous PaleMoon article. Seriously if you see things like this feel free to point them out via email or post on the BBS.
I also sometimes don’t totally know the best way to do certain things, the Ring of Elysium article for example; When I update the page should I update the date at the top, or JUST the date in the 1st paragraph? Maybe I should add a new date to the footer, an “originally published date” and have the top date be the “updated” date like in the living articles. Who knows! Speaking of Ring, there is a small dedicated effort going on to get the game working again which is a huge win for me as that was my goal with the ring videos/articles. Hopefully in the future that game will be removed from the list of unplayable live service games. Please visit stopkillinggames.com if you haven't already.
As for other projects I am working on, well I have a LOT. This is why a lot of things get put on hold. Not only do I have tons of ShyStudios related stuff going on, I also have TONS of IRL stuff going on. There are so many projects I want to dedicate time to but there is just so many of them that it kind of puts a lot of stress on me, especially since I come up with new ideas almost daily. For example, my video project folder has 119 individual active projects right now.
Some of these projects I want to prioritize because it allows me to do OTHER projects later. Sometimes finishing a certain project also allows me to free up a huge amount of storage or lets me get rid of something that I otherwise don’t actually have much of a use for (anyone want to buy an IBM 5140?) I think I have QUITE a long time before I run out of video ideas. If you ever see me doing man on the street vlogging then that’s when you know I have finally finished all of my projects.
I do sometimes feel like I end up with partial choice paralysis due to all the projects I could be working on but really I think it is more like just work fatigue. I HARDLY ever get to just sit and play any video games anymore, but I am actively trying to make time to do so. When I got my new graphics card recently I decided to play Rise of the Tomb Raider, which I really enjoyed. For whatever reason, playing this game made me feel like I had more time to do other stuff during the day even after spending 2-3 hours gaming.
I suppose playing a game where I don’t have to worry or think about anything for a little while gives me significant mental clarity. I’ve already known the benefits of taking breaks but it is just my nature to GRIND. Multiplayer games do NOT give me this same kind of mental break since even in something simple like OpenTTD or cs gun game I am still FOCUSING on doing something and so I think it doesn’t give as much of a mental break as a single player semi linear story focused game. Multiplayer games are more of a form of socializing rather than leisure.
I think there needs to be a lot more contained story based games and I am sure a LOT of other people feel the same way. I plan on making a game in the future that would fit this style, semi linear, story focused, and FUN. It will probably take years to make by myself with lots of effort/0 funding, and it isn’t even my “DREAM GAME”. It is just a funny story and experience I want to make, but I think people would really appreciate it. You will likely NOT be hearing about this game till it comes out unless I decide to start making “DEVELOPER DIARIES”. My real dream game would probably be a modernized and backwards compatable SC4 clone with a Jerry Martin soundtrack.
Anyway that is where I will end it for this year’s spring update! Thanks for taking the time to read this and please share my videos and articles with people you think might appreciate or find use in them!