From The Desk of Nerd³ - November 2024 Edition

Dearest Patreons,

As the protective barrier of spooky season finally gives way, allowing the deluge of Christmas songs in ASDA to smother us all, it’s time to enter 2024’s equivalent of Friday afternoon. November is here, and with it a worldwide feeling of… “eh.” That project can wait on the backburner a little longer, that unused gym membership can help your bank account shed a few more pounds, and that window has looked like it was going to fall out in June. It’ll be fine another few months. Yes, November is here, and the world enters productivity hibernation.

However, in a small shed at the bottom of a garden, a company of two is hatching a plan. Joining myself in the shed is Rebecca, who’s stepping up to co-run the company with me. However, our discussion isn’t currently about how to run our business. Roz, the only one of our chickens that knows she’s built on dinosaur DNA, has cornered us between the feed bins. I’m panicking about the oxygen running out, despite our shed not being particularly airtight, while Rebecca withdraws a final slice of butternut squash to use as a distraction. With a quick throw it’s away. With three or four more quick throws it's away and has been thrown accurately enough to make it out of the fully open door. Roz turns. We bolt. Freedom!

Back inside, and after we’ve triple checked all the locks to protect us from our feathery raptor, it’s time to talk shop. Nerd³, the company, needs an overhaul.

Now, don’t expect reboots or a new logo, (although the Twitch intro screens are getting an overhaul), I’m talking more about the company itself. Google tells me that the average age of a small business is just under nine years, so we’re practically ancient. No wonder we’ve got such a saggy backside, full of subscriptions to unused software, unnecessary yet eye-watering expenses, and a Dropbox with so many folders within folders that you could film Inception in there. So, it’s time to get out the pruning sheers and start cutting back!

SLASH! There goes the website. As beautiful as it was, Christ it was expensive to run. It’ll be replaced eventually, most likely with something much, much simpler.

HACK! There goes our internal organisation systems. Useful, but far too granular, to the point where it took longer to fill in them than to do the actual work. Now, simple to-do lists. Check!

SLICE! RIP in piece to the Nerd³ Video Archive. A monstrous, many-terabyte chunk of cloud storage with every video I’ve ever made in it. While it was nice to have, it was far too expensive for something we’ve never opened. Also, if I ever need footage from an old video, I just nick it off YouTube…

So that’s what we’re up to right now. Well, that and the three weeks of an entirely different job that I also had to squeeze in this past month, as well as finishing the final-final-final version of The Paradox Paradox ahead of next months (!) e-book launch. Oh, and I need to call a weird man about some advent calendars…

Actually, that’s a point. This month I’ll be curating my top games of 2024 list, which will be in its usual form of daily videos in December. So, if there’s any hidden gems I’ve missed, let me know down in the old comments or forever hold your tongue. Just be aware, if your suggestion is bad, I will personally judge you for it. You have been warned.

Little bit of Patreon housekeeping to do before we go. Last month, due to control of this sort of thing moving over to me, a bunch of people were missed out of the credits tier. While I’m genuinely sorry about that and am going to try and fix it this month, Patreon itself is changing how it deals with subscriptions on the 4th November. I don’t think this means anything for you, but backend wise, it could cause a few more issues. Bear with us, and just note that I’ll be sending especially horrid nightmares to the enemies of those affected as compensation.

And finally, remember the TikTok we started a while back? Well, I want to bring it back, but I’d like some feedback first. As a platform, it lacks the longevity of a YouTube video, so I’m thinking of swapping the shortform reviews for more disposable guff. The current plan is for me to be playing guessing games on there like Whodle, maybe interspersed with YouTube highlights, but if you’ve got any other thoughts, let me know. TikTok to me is the multiverse to Doctor Strange. It’s a concept of which I know frighteningly little.

Until next time,

Daniel

xx

PS. Oh, also I formatted my PC by accident this week. I am a jenius.