Monthly Ramble: November 2023

Transcript

Right, hello, welcome to the November or I guess the end of November monthly ramble thing. This is the second one that I've done and I'm very very excited. I've had a good month I would say, probably not as good as November but I've had a lot of fun.

So the first thing I guess I would like to talk about is I'm very very happy to be recording again. I uploaded quite a lot in October and I was feeling a bit, not like burnt out, but like I just kind of didn't really want to think about it for a while. So I didn't think about it for a while and then I was like, let's try and write some scripts and then I managed to upload.

I do want to say that was like, because I was just getting started from now on, hopefully the upload should be a lot more consistent, probably like halfway through a month and then at the end of the month, maybe, or I might do it like at the start and then at the end, the middle. I haven't quite decided just yet, but I'll figure it out. So yeah, I have a microphone arm, which is very useful.

I looked up how to take my Yeti microphone off of like the stand that it comes in and how to put it on and how to set it all up and it's been very very helpful. The old, or I guess like the stand that it comes with was very, very tall. So I had to like move my chair and angle it at a really weird angle.

But this is very useful. I can turn it upside down, I can move it around. It's been a lot of, it's been like a huge kind of convenience.

So yeah, and I'm really excited to be recording again during December. December is very exciting because I can do Christmas audios, which is going to be fun. I did do that last year.

I did one for like Christmas Eve and then also one for waking up on Christmas Day, which was a lot of fun. I don't know if I just do that again this year or if I try and write something completely different but still like Christmas related. I haven't really decided yet, but that's definitely something that is on my mind.

As far as like Ocleo audios that could be Christmas related, I don't know. I mean, I have like one idea, but I don't know if it's like something that people would enjoy. But I'll figure something out as well for Ocleo.

Right, yes, what else is happening? I should be getting some time to go home and visit my mom and my family over Christmas. I know last year I went back and I wrapped some presents.

I did some cooking, some baking and had a really nice time. So that should be fun. To be honest, I think getting older you kind of like don't really care about Christmas that much anymore.

I mean, it used to be like, it used to get really, really cold, which I liked, but it was snow. But nowadays it just gets really cold, but then there's no snow. I mean, I've had like frost on the grass for a couple of days.

Like when I go outside, I see frost in the morning, but I don't see like full on snow anymore. And that's really, I miss the snow. Snow is so pretty to me.

I really love seeing it snowing. So yeah, so that's very exciting. I get to see my family, I get to, you know, just relax, take a bit of a breather.

The week of like Christmas Eve all the way to New Year's Day is just like the best thing because everyone just agrees that it's like the time to relax and not think about anything that's like really, really important. So yeah, very, very excited for that. So what have I done during November, I managed to find a new laptop.

I have a new laptop now, which is what I've been using to record and everything. I have also started streaming, which has been a lot of fun. I do have a gaming laptop.

So that's kind of like my old laptop was like this Dell, like two in one thing. And the screen part of that laptop is not very well made. It kind of rests on the table instead of it just kind of opening up normally, which means that it's it was very fragile.

And I noticed in like June, that the screen was starting to like peel off or something. I was like, Oh, no. And then it like really became like dislodged in like August.

So I just I never took it out my my room or my, my my bedroom, I just kept it in my house. And I didn't even like when I turned it off, I didn't close the lid, I didn't close the screen back down. I just left it there because the hinge and the screen was just, it was so messed up.

But I was, I probably would have gotten a new laptop anyway. So I went and bought a gaming laptop. I went and bought a monitor as well.

So I have two screens, which is very, very useful, not just for streaming, but like for work as well, or just in general, having another screen is so helpful for everything. Like right now I have my little note thing of like, everything that I want to talk about on my on my laptop, and then my monitor, I have my recording thing. It is so convenient.

It's so convenient. So yeah, so I got a new laptop. It's very, very, it's a good one.

The keyboard is like a ocean blue kind of light color. It has this really funny feature where, hold on, it, I can turn, so obviously because it's like a gaming laptop, it can be quite loud, but there's a function where I can turn the fans like on to them, their maximum power. How do I do it? It's like this.

I don't know if you heard that, but it is very, very loud. It never really gets to that point because it's quite a modern one, but I think it's funny how you can just manually turn like the fans on to maximum and it's so loud. It's, yeah, but other than that, I'm very happy with the performance and have been able to stream Cult of the Lamb once.

I'm going to come back to that because a lot of the fun stuff that you can do in that game kind of require you to be, I think it's affiliate on Twitch. So I'm going to wait until I get affiliate and then I will return to that game. But I've been playing, what have I been playing? I've been playing Batman Arkham Asylum and I'm probably going to go through like Asylum, City, Origins and Knight, which are like four games.

It's my favorite like video game series of all time. So yeah, I'm very happy to have a laptop that I can play it on now. I remember being like, oh, how old was I? I must've been like 12 or 13 when I went into CEX and I bought Batman Arkham Asylum.

It was so bad, like the disc, the game kept crashing and my controller was like really, really old. So I couldn't use like the scanner thing and it was just so, I mean, I was fine with it because I was only like 12, but looking back, I was like, yeah, maybe there was a reason why I never got to like complete the story or finish all the challenges. It's been ages since I played Arkham Asylum and yeah, City and Origins I also played back when I was like 13, but I don't think I got to complete them.

I think I got to like 94 or like 96% on those games. I never like truly completed them, which really annoyed me because they are games that have not only really, really good story, but like a lot of collectibles and you can unlock like different bat suits and they're just so much fun. So yeah, but I remember playing like City for a very long time and then I played Origins.

I remember when I completed Origins, I would just kind of load it up and just free roam and just like play as Batman for like an hour and a half and then I would go to bed. I love free roaming in that game because like there's snow and it's set during Christmas and it's so pretty and Batman's like suit is really, really cool looking in Arkham Origins like specifically. So yeah, I have many, many fond memories of playing those games when I was like a teenager.

What I do like is when I bought them on Steam so that they did this deal thing where it was like you can get all four games plus all of the DLC for like all of them for I think it was 15 pounds, which was a bargain. I mean, it was like 70 or 80% off. I was like, I have to get this.

So yeah, so that was, that's how I got the games and I always like, I never really liked how if you have a console, it was really hard for me to get like DLC because I would have to go ask my mom, like, mom, can you come buy this for me? I was only like 12 or 13, I didn't have like a credit card so I couldn't buy DLC. But I know when you complete certain parts of the game, you can unlock all of these different Batsuits and some of them are like from the comics, some of them are from like films, some of them are completely custom, like I know in Arkham Origins there's like a complete white Batman suit, it's a white suit with a white cape and he looks really, really cool.

And I know in Arkham City, they put the Batman animated series Batsuit on there. So you're walking around and you look like a cartoon character. It's a lot of fun.

So yeah, I'm excited to like finally have access to all of the DLC that I wished I had, that I wished I had when I was like a teenager playing those games in my room on my Xbox 360. So yeah, I'm very excited to stream those and I'm very excited to stream Cult of the Lamb when I get affiliate because there's like, viewers in chat can like make the game easier or like make the game difficult for me, or like more difficult for me and they can like give me resources or they can take resources away or they can just, you know, it's a lot of fun. Plus they can like put themselves in the cult and like design their own follower, which I think is such a cute idea.

So yeah, so I'm very, very excited for all of that. I don't know what else I would play. A lot of the games I play now, I play with my controller because my laptop is on a laptop stand so it's kind of far away.

It's not like in front of me. So playing with like a mouse and keyboard would be weird because I'd have to like sit really far forward and like type on my laptop, but look at my monitor because I put the game on my monitor because it's a lot nicer looking. It would be very, very weird.

And I don't know if I can just plug a keyboard into my laptop. I think I should be able to, but yeah, that requires me to go and buy a gaming keyboard. And I don't know if I can do that yet.

But Cult of the Lamb and all four of those Batman games can be played with a controller. So I shouldn't need to for like another, I'd say like four or five months probably, which is more than enough time. So yeah, I'm very, very excited for that.

It's also very exciting. Well, not exciting. It's very, it's really nice to have something that I can do indoors now because it is getting very, very cold here where I live in the UK.

It is getting so cold. So normally when I go out for whatever, if I'm going to work or if I'm going to, like just going out with my friends, I have this like grey, it's kind of like a bike jacket, but it's not like a leather one. It's like a BMX, like dirt bike kind of jacket.

And it's really, really comfy. It has like the nice kind of soft material on the outside, but then, sorry, on the inside, but then on the outside, it has this nice waterproof protective layer on it. And it's just like my go-to jacket, but the problem is it is quite small.

So I have this other like big kind of winter fur coat and I've been wearing that because it's been so cold. Uh, it's really, really comfy. However, I always feel very like, like out of place because it's very big.

So if I sit down, I like take up a lot more space than I really should. So I don't really like wearing it if I'm going to, if I'm going to be like on the bus, for example, because you know, you don't want to be taking up lots of space, like in certain situations. I think the best thing about it is that it's really, really warm, but the second best thing is just how many pockets there are.

There's two, four, six, seven, eight, nine, nine pockets in that coat. So sometimes I'll go to like to the, to the, to the like nearby shop and I'll buy like just a couple of things, like, you know, a carton of eggs or some sweets. And I don't need a bag because I could just put the carton of eggs in my pocket.

The pockets are huge. I can get both of my hands in one of them. Yeah, it's really, really convenient having a lot of pockets.

I've, I've heard that's like an issue with like clothing for women, that there's just no pockets or if they are, they're either fake or like really, really small. So I kind of feel a bit like, I feel a bit bad, but like, I don't think there's anything wrong with, with a woman just going and buying like a men's fur coat because it's big. So it will keep you warm.

And I mean, it looks quite nice. It's got a nice color and it solves the pocket issue. But yeah, I think women should have a lot of pockets on their coats.

It's kind of unfair that there's just none. But then when I buy a coat, I have nine pockets. There's a pocket on the arm, like on my left arm, kind of where like the upper arm area, there's a pocket there.

And it's like for credit cards or receipts. And I'm like, if that's there, come on, surely you can put, you know, pockets on other places, on other pieces of, or on other coats. So yeah, it's been getting very cold.

I've been lighting candles and wearing my big coat and drinking hot chocolate. And I mean, it's tough because sometimes my room can get quite cold. However, I would pick being cold over being warm any day, because I do not like the summer when it's like 30 degrees in my room and I'm just sweating and I can't use my laptop because it's overheating.

That was a big issue. I couldn't play games or use my laptop very well because it would overheat very quickly because it was so warm. It was just like, if I'm typing, I would feel it on my keyboard and I hated it.

So yeah, I'd much rather be cold than be warm or like not warm, but like hot, like be boiling hot. So yeah, it's getting very cold. Hopefully it should warm up soon.

If it doesn't warm up, I really want it to snow because like I said, I think snow is so pretty and I really, really want to see snow. So yeah. So what else has happened in November? I suppose I could talk about what I did today.

I was in the lab today again. Now, not to worry. I wasn't doing anything like particularly dangerous.

I was actually doing something related to computational chemistry. So after that reaction that I did like a couple of months ago, I had to make this like circuit board thing and then program it. It was all very like, you know, Python code complicated.

It's not my strongest thing, which made it even more difficult for me, but that's what I spent today doing. And we have to use that as like a piece of equipment in our further research, which is going to be fun. It's interesting to like think about just like the theory of it, but it's not fun to just kind of sit there and try and force like LEDs and resistors into this like circuit thing and then hope that it works.

And then you have to type code. Yeah, I don't really like it that much. I mean, I know people who do, but me personally, I don't like it that much.

So yeah, but it's nice, like not, you know, there's no like immediate danger with it. I mean, the LED is kind of bright, but that's the most dangerous thing about this. There's no, there's no like carcinogenic chemical that I'm scared to use, or there's no like, you know, there's no chemical that's just going to explode spontaneously that I have to deal with.

So yeah.