I Forget This Exists

Posted on July 25, 2023 • 4 min read • 716 words

I really need to at least occasionally remember that I have this site....

Oh yeah, I do have a site  

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything here lately, almost a year actually. I really have no idea if anyone is actually reading anything here either, but that’s not going to stop me from cluttering up my corner of the internet (just like my house).

I’ve recently actually started making and publishing YouTube videos about D&D like I said I was going to do a year and a half ago or so. As of this morning, I’ve got 1 full video and 1 short published, with another 2 shorts and 1 long video scheduled and several more in the pipeline to get out in the next few weeks. So far, it’s going very well and I’ve found some decent tools to help me out through the process.

YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@beardsengaming 

Canva  

I looked at Canva a few times over the past year, and found it “ok” since most of the good stuff was behind their subscription. But now I really need to start making some thumbnails and my graphic design skills are less impressive than my hairline. So I signed up for a 30 day trial and less than 30 minutes later I had a pretty decent looking (to me, at least) thumbnail for my second video about finding groups to play with.

They’ve got a lot of stock images, backgrounds, pre-defined layouts and templates, and a bunch of other stuff that makes it fairly easy for a graphic-ignorant person like me to be able to be make passable thumbnails. This isn’t necessarily an endorsement for Canva, and there may be better sites/apps out there, but this is what I’ve found that is working for me so far.

Davinci Resolve  

I’m one of those weird people who actually like video editing. I’ll just say it now, though: I hate Adobe Premier. I’ve always hated it, it always has problems and it’s just never worked well for me. But Resolve is pretty damn impressive. It’s easy to use, with all the functionality I need at the moment. It’s quick and I don’t think I’ve ever had it crash. And best of all, it’s FREE. Yes, they do have a paid version that adds in some more features and tools, but they aren’t necessary for what I’m looking to do right now. And if I wanted to purchase it later, it’s only $300. That’s a one time purchase, not a subscription. That’s a rarity these days and another reason I don’t want to use Adobe products.

Obsidian  

For the past year or two, I’ve been using Notion for project organization, task lists, notes, and other things like that. But over the past couple of months, I’ve noticed it’s been slower to open and change pages. It also likes to log me out at random times, and isn’t available at all offline. So if I don’t have an internet connection, I can’t use it.

So that led me to take a look at Obsidian instead. Obsidian does everything in what it calls “notes”, which are just markdown files. That already makes it easier to use, since it’s all in standard markdown. It’s also primarily uses local storage, so it’s available offline. They do have a sync service available for $8/month (or an annual subscription), or you can use something like OneDrive or Google Drive for syncing across devices (with some limitations). Unless you use their sync service, you don’t even need to sign up for anything either.

Another bonus over Notion is the plugins. As of right now, there’s over 1,000 community plugins available that extend and expand the functionality of Obsidian. With the addition of a half dozen plugins, I’m able to replicate everything I was doing in Notion, even with some improvements. It took me a little while to figure out how to use everything, since there’s a LOT of data query writing involved, but there are plenty of videos out there to help.

Wrap-up  

So yeah, I’ve actually started being productive with stuff, and to be honest… it feels great. Even writing this felt good. So who knows, maybe I’ll actually keep writing here. Or maybe I’ll forget about it for 6 months again. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.