Category Archives: Durosia News

The State of the Empire

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Throne RoomThe last time I did one of these was back in 2011.

Back then there was a lot of wild change going on.

That wild change got a little out of hand and, well, it really hasn’t been worth looking at the state of the good ol’ Durosian Empire since then.

It’s pretty much been in steady decline, despite some flailing attempts at reclaiming some of its former (or, at least, planned) glory.

Most of those attempts didn’t last more than a post or two on most of my other web properties.

That, of course, led, to a lot of digital dust being gathered. (Not that this lack of follow-through stopped me from buying domain names for other ideas I had, mind you…)

In short, the last few years really haven’t been good ones when it comes to all my pet projects. So we’ll skip over the retrospective and focus on what isn’t, what is, and what I’m aiming for.

Gone But Not Forgotten

There are a few sites that just won’t be updated any more unless something really extraordinary happens. I won’t be taking them down, for one reason or another, but they’ll continue to gather dust.

How to Crush Without Being Crushed was a distinct casualty of time passing and things changing. There’s no good way right now for me to do anything worthwhile with it.

Presence @ Durosia.com, my freelance site, will also remain in mothballs. I learned the hard way that I can’t deliver freelance work when I’m working a day job.

My writing and gaming sub-domains for Durosia.com. Both of those were taken out by a patch I didn’t apply before an exploit got into the wild. Not that there was really a lot to lose on either of them. I may get them back up and running sometime later this year, but there’s currently not much point in that.

Moving Forward

There are a handful of things I’m planning on moving forward with over the next year. They fall into three categories: Projects, Events, and Interests.

Projects

The Searcher Journal, my metaphysical site, will be spun back up. Soon. Like maybe this weekend. I have a need to get back to some basics in this arena in my own life. In part to help recover from the past few years. In part to try to really figure out what I’m doing for the next few decades. So, Metaphysical Mondays may be returning very, very soon.

ToobTalk, my entertainment and review site, may get a little touch up and start getting new content again. I’ve been putting a bunch of stuff directly on Facebook (movie and show reviews, mostly short ones), so I may just try to get into the habit of doing those on my own property first.

Hat From Hell, my horror-flavored site, fell to the same unpatched vulnerability as a few of my other sites (was really too busy focusing on day job sites that needed the same thing done to worry about my own sites). I still have big plans for it, but need to put together a team and get content in order before I bother resurrecting the dead. Had hoped to get some of that done before the end of last year, but reality had different plans. We’ll see what this year brings.

Durosia.com, right here, will still be serving as the hub of everything else. I just need to keep it spinning. And touch up the paint job a bit. Tune it a little under the hood. Maybe extract all the really old blog posts from their hidden archive on a different platform and finally transfer them over here with the newer stuff.

Events

Every year for the last few years, I’ve hosted two board game events: International TableTop Day and Kier’s Spooky Game Day. Those will continue to happen, as people have generally enjoyed them and they give me an excuse to play at least some of the board games I’ve backed on Kickstarter.

I’ve been threatening to do some themed movie nights for well over a decade now. I want to get to at least two of them this year. That’s mostly just a question of figuring out when people are available. I do low-key “couch movie nights” on any Friday I’m not doing other things (those are when I watch movies I’ve never seen before but have been meaning to get around to). I may try to make those a little more structured (but still low key) and then toss a few bigger planned movie nights out there.

I really don’t have the venue for too much more than that.

Interests

I need to get back to getting out more. Or better at convincing people to come over and hang out. Either way, more trips out to movies, more impetus to get out to museums, lectures, and whatever else goes on out there in the world. More than just club nights.

Gaming, in general, is something I’ll definitely be doing more of this year. I’ve already been lucky enough to have a more or less stable Apocalypse World game that I’m running and a semi-regular Call of Cthulhu game I’ve been playing in. I will have at least one more game that’ll get pulled together for a new game coming out in February/March… that’s going to be a year-long commitment of a couple of sessions a month. And there are a lot of one-off/short duration games I’d love to run or play in. Most of that will likely happen through Roll20.net, which has served me quite well so far.

There are also a couple of interest group-like things connected to some of my projects that I want to get up and running. But those, as usual, hinge on people being interested and able to participate (preferably in person), so those won’t come easy. I’ll see what I can fit in, but, really, it’s all just more reason to get together with actual people more in settings where we can have actual conversations.

Roundup

So, that’s about it. Things have not been good. Some things are dead. Some things aren’t. And I’m mostly just trying to make some new stuff grow from the dried out husks that I have around here.

Guess we’ll see how that goes.

Hopefully, you’ll come along for the adventure.

 

One Hundred Days Left…

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curtain-spotlight-textOkay, today’s the day the first vlog entry is going to go live.

It’ll be later tonight, after I get home from work and, uh, shoot it.

We’ll see how long that kind of schedule lasts before I decide it’s just a bad idea.

(Probably a week or less, I’m guessing.)

I’ll be posting it here on the blog. It’ll be cross-posted to Facebook and Twitter. I should probably share it on Tumblr, too.

But if you want to know as soon as it’s live…

The absolute best thing to do is to subscribe to my YouTube channel. (Be sure to hit the gear after you subscribe so you can set email notifications.)

Yeah… that’s going to need some sprucing up. Guess that’ll be another facet to this project. The more people who are going to be looking at this, the better I’m going to need it to look.

Still, trying desperately to resist the urge to build out a full marketing plan and cross-platform campaign. That’s made a little easier by not having a focus for this challenge. Or, y’know, a target market or anything.

*sigh* This would have all been so much easier if it had been an option before I knew all the possible things that can be done to make something successful. (Thankfully, I’m not all that concerned with any traditional “success” in this case.)

That’s about it for now. Next post will have the first video in it.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]

A Hundred Eyes?

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film_countdown_01If I haven’t made it clear enough, I purposefully don’t have a lot of expectations for this 100 Days of Vlogging project.

It’s akin to just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

If anything sticks really well, it may be something I do a lot more with.

At the absolute least, it’ll get things moving somewhere. That’s what’s really important to me.

So, I’m not expecting (or, really, even wanting) to get “YouTube Famous” or rake in that shared ad revenue. I just want to get a bunch of content out there, get comfortable talking to an empty room with one soulless eye looking at me, and, in general, prove to myself that I can actually pull off something of this scale.

What is the scale of this?

If you’re like most people, you’ve never really pulled together a video project of any size or complexity. I kind of wish I were that naive when it comes to the process.

Once upon a time, I wanted to make movies. And TV shows. Back then, there wasn’t anything even close to the Internet we know today, let alone YouTube. The home video technology was in its infancy. Things were really expensive. And there weren’t any cheap and easy ways to learn how to do this stuff. (Especially if you weren’t old enough to get a job.)

In college, I took a bunch of film and video classes. Technology had improved a bit by then, but good quality stuff was still on the really expensive side of the budget line and, while the Internet was almost a household idea, there still wasn’t anything like YouTube.

I worked for a few years down here in the DC area at a place that produces a lot of videos. I have a lot of friends who make movies–shorts and features and webseries. I still keep up on the industry as a whole and things have come a very long way in the last 30 years. Good quality stuff… is in your smart phone. That ubiquitous $600 or so hunk of technology produces video quality beyond anything a non-pro was using back fifteen years ago, let alone in the 80s and 90s.

Shooting and editing are the biggest time sinks with what I have planned. I’m decidedly trying not to script things right off the top. I’m also trying to avoid a lot of pre-production work, for the most part. And any fancy post-production work, too.

This is a hobby project that I’m squeezing in between everything else that I do when I get home from work.

Thankfully, that doesn’t exactly mean that the quality is going to be horrible. It’s tricky to create truly horrible quality these days. Sure, stuff can be bad–bad content, bad lighting, bad sound–but if you have half a clue (which is at least what I have), it’s easy to avoid the worst of those “bad” things.

So, that’s something.

Overall, a 3-5 minute video of me just yammering on will likely take about half an hour to fully put together. Maybe less if I can overcome my innate desire to fiddle with things. Optimally, it would take ten minutes. Everything done in one shot, a quick run through Premiere Pro to trim things, and then uploaded.

We’ll see how that goes in practice.

But what about concrete goals?

Fine, you want some actual concrete goal? Something to aim for? Some distinct measure that can mark a milestone.

How about this: 100 Eyes.

That’s 50 people. (Generally speaking…)

I’ll be completely satisfied if I can get at least 50 people regularly watching what I put out there. And by “regularly watching” I mean that there are 50 people subscribed to my YouTube channel with view count at least coming close to that on a video to video basis.

If I get more… well, that just means I’m actually doing something right… and that something has stuck to that wall and will need to be looked at a little more closely.

Speaking of eyes… click the big green button below here to get your eyes to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]

The Minimalist Hundred Day Plan

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film_countdown_04As I’ve mentioned, one of the key things I’m trying to overcome with all this is my case of perfection paralysis.

It’s something that’s kept me from doing a lot of things, and really slowed me down with a lot of others. Thankfully, it hasn’t caused any real problems for me, because I’m pretty good about switching over to a much more practical mode when there’s an actual deadline… and the project is for someone else. (My own stuff… well, there’s really been no helping that most of the time.)

That’s not to say that other things haven’t gotten in the way of completing other people’s projects… just that they weren’t killed by perfection paralysis.

What is Perfection Paralysis, anyway?

Perfection paralysis is pretty much what it sounds like. You don’t move forward with a project because you can’t get it perfect. It’s the painting that’s never started because you can’t get the rough sketch just right. It’s the short story that’s never finished because you keep editing it again, and again, and again. It’s that open mic night you never step up to because you just know you’re going to mess up that opening note or stumble over the chorus.

Partially it comes from being far too set on your visualized outcome.

Partially it comes from a deep seated fear of failure–or success (which, really, can be just as terrifying… I’ll probably talk a bit about that in a vlog sometime).

It’s easy to forget that everyone started off producing crappy work.

There isn’t a single creator of anything that I know of who doesn’t have a pile of stuff they’d just as soon burn as put out there. Some of them keep it around, though, so they can always remember there’s a process involved.

You start out making crap and, with time and work, you get better. Those first dozen drafts probably don’t look like what’s in your head. You’re still learning to hold the brush, or turn a phrase. You’re increasing your skill with your vocabulary–be it literary or visual. If you’re smart, you’re consuming massive amounts of content, both related to the subject you’re trying to work with and unrelated (because you’ll never cease to be surprised at how an idea from some disparate arena can solve a problem you’ve been having for ages).

That’s something that’s very hard to remember. It’s an easy excuse to never even start.

It’s why, if you know you’re prone to perfection paralysis, you need a minimalist plan. Not a perfect plan… just something to give yourself permission to start out imperfect.

My plan is, more or less, to just get something up every day for a week.

The requirements for that “something” are pretty light. It will be a video that’s between 3 and 5 minutes long, featuring me, talking about stuff.

There’s no requirement for fancy editing. There’s no insistence that it employ all the things that I know about that make a video utterly fantastic. There’s no plan for multiple takes–or, for that matter–a script.

After those first seven? Well, we’ll see. The main goal of the first dozen or so is just to get comfortable talking to the camera without anyone else around. Once I get that down, then I can worry about making it all better. (Heck, I’m still not even that skilled using my editing software… that’ll be another long-term goal.)

The important thing is that I just start cranking this stuff out. Overcome the inertia and other things holding me back so the project can start building its own momentum.

Who knows where it’s going to lead? I certainly don’t.

And I don’t think I want to know right now.

Speaking of wanting to know… click the big green button below here to submit topic suggestions and questions so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos, even if they are a bit crappy at first.

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]

A Hundred Ways This is Uncomfortable

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film_countdown_05Don’t panic, I’m not actually going to list all 100 (or so).

Depending on how well you know me, it may seem a little odd that doing this vlog project is something that’s outside of my comfort zone.

Maybe you’ve seen me “hold court” among a group of friends or strangers, going on, at length (sometimes too much length) about any number of topics.

Maybe you’ve been at a wedding I’ve officiated.

Maybe you’ve known me long enough to have seen me on stage long, long ago in a play.

Maybe you’ve read my frank and direct (though often a bit purple) writing in my various blogs.

Being gregarious, open, and not afraid to step into the spotlight, how the heck is a vlog something I’m uncomfortable about?

Simple: I get through all that other stuff because it doesn’t leave me talking to myself.

Seriously, that’s a big part of it. Like most people, I don’t care much for how my voice sounds when it gets played back to me. As a trained public speaker, I can hear all the imperfections and hesitations and subtle stumbles. As someone who values silence as much as I do, hearing myself run on and on and on without any other voices interjecting is… disconcerting.

I’ve also questioned my own mental health enough over the years to worry just a wee bit when I find myself talking out loud and there’s no one else around. Since the current, default, vlog setup is just me, a camera, and a microphone, that’s all I’ll be doing.

I’ll also have no idea how things are being received until after they’re out there and beyond my control.

This is kind of a big deal. When I’m interacting directly with people, I can change up a lot of things based on their reactions. If the topic I’m on is falling dead, I can switch to a new one. If I’ve lost the interest of the audience, I can kick things up in my presentation, adding a little more flair. (With writing, I can always go back and edit… but mostly, I just spend a bunch of time going back over it before I put it out there, making small changes here and there… that’s really not something one can do easily with a daily vlog setup, at least not when it’s just a hobby.)

I don’t care much for looking at myself, either.

It took me a really, really long time to accept that I have, at least, an average appearance. There’s a lot that goes into that bit of personal psychology, but it is what it is. There is precisely one usable mirror in my apartment. It’s in the bathroom, over the sink. I avoid it as much as possible.

Pictures of myself? Don’t much care for most of them… no matter how good others thing they are. Seriously, you’re not going to find a flood of selfies on any of my streams. You’re not going to find dozens of profile pictures of me. I’ve been using the same two profile pictures for… a really long time. (I should probably switch to a new one before the transition will be really jarring to people… hmmm…)

While editing this vlog, I’m going to have to look at and listen to myself… a lot. That’s going to be tricky to do without getting all sorts of self-critical. (Definitely tied to the perfection paralysis I’m fighting to overcome in general with this project.)

So that’s something else I’ll need from all y’all: Perspective.

There’s a really good chance that, at some point over the next hundred days, I’ll hit a wild negative spiral or three. I’ll be frustrated that things aren’t showing up on screen like they are in my head; I’ll be fed up with how I look and sound; I’ll simply be looking for excuses to just stop.

Having other people along for the ride–people I know and trust–will help me keep all that under control better. It’s not that I want a bunch of emphatic encouragement and saccharine sweet praise. I expect honest criticism from my friends (and you do deliver oh-so-well most of the time).

The good and the bad, presented honestly, is what keeps me from flying off the road in either direction.

It also let’s me know that I’m not just talking to myself.

Speaking of talking… click the big green button below here to submit topic suggestions and questions so I’m not totally boring you to death for five minutes a day.

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]