From The Desk of Nerd³ - January 2024 Edition (Patreon)

Dearest Patreons,Blimey. 2024 already. Thirteen years since I started the channel, twelve since I started the company, and somehow nine since the bit of Back to the Future Part II that was set in the far future. Time is a relentless bastard, but at least the ‘4’ in ‘2024’ made the year-shaped glasses easier to see through this time around. Hope you had a good holiday, now for some updates!

My Dinner with ParadoxHere at Nerd³ Industries we’re tidying up from the Christmas party. Rebecca is neatly packing away baubles, Matt is vomiting cheap liquor out of a window, and I’ve spent the entirety of this year so far finishing the forth draft of The Paradox Paradox. That’s right, draft four is in the bag and has been whisked back off to Unbound to be checked over. Four thousand, two hundred and fifteen edits were made in this draft, and here are some fun facts!1. I spelt the word ‘metre’ wrong every single time. (I blame America’s superior spelling (of this word and this word only))2. I confused ‘less’ and ‘fewer’ twice. (Three times and they’d redact my Sunday Times Bestseller badge)3. One of the notes I received started with “Re. The fart prank:”. (So you know this is a high quality novel.)4. I still don’t know how semicolons work. (Does anyone?)5. The book is 627 pages long currently; not including the list of backers. (But including the [REDACTED])

Press ‘F’ to CutSo far we’ve had an incredibly positive response to my return to editing, which I must admit I was slightly nervous about. My style is distinctly old school, which used to be considered hyperactive but is now the YouTube equivalent of a calm walk around a park on a Sunday morning. I’m aware that I’m still a bundle of chaos who doesn’t check if his fucking luggage is tied down properly, but would audiences want an editing style to match? I went for ‘no’, and it seems to be the right answer. Occasional text on screen, fighting with tooltips, silly gags, and ancient memes. It's like I never left. One thing I’m bad at though is the credits. They need to be precisely updated, made pretty, and be legible. For that reason, Matt is still putting them together. I record the video, edit it, and fling it at Matt. He glues the front and back on and boots it over to YouTube. That’s right motherfuckers, we’ve got a workflow. Pretty soon I’ll know what synergy means and everything.Anyway, a tease for the next video… Besiege. Beyblades. Big Explosions.

YouTube’s Done a Stupid: Episode 2Last month we talked about YouTube’s silly new adverts, and said we planned to test how far and wide videos would spread with and without them on. This month it no longer matters, because they’ve been turned on by default. Yay!So the plan going forward is to now give you all a lovely, Patreon-exclusive version of the video with no ads enabled, then upload a 2nd version for the plebs valued subscribers over on YouTube. Additionally, mid-rolls will still be off… until YouTube decides to “simplify” things for us again… Funny isn’t it. I start editing, and YouTube immediate resumes it’s abusive relationship. It’s like I never left.

We’ll do it live!Livestreams return this Friday, with a slight deviation from last time. They’re going to be later in the day, they’re going to be shorter, and they’ll feature a me who is far, far less tired at the end of them. I did enjoy the longer, multiple game vibes, but blimey is that exhausting. As for streaming on Twitch and YouTube simultaneously, that will continue! …once we’ve set up a new bit of restream software so that the stream doesn’t collapse if someone within five miles sends a text message. We should have that sorted in the next few weeks. Yay!

Matt Vs Royal MailPrints are soon! Issues are sorted, Christmas is out of the way and we will resume the shipping with a big ol’ period of catchup. Matt will be around here soon with more info, but until then, keep watching the skies. I mean, your post boxes…

The Nerd³ Boot SaleSo, one thing I’ve been working on these past few years is wiping out my need to collect and hoard everything that I see. My approach to collections was like the final question on Mastermind. I’ve started, so I’ll finish. However, this was bad for two major reasons.1. My house is bursting at the seams.2. I have no money.So, to combat those two points, I’m thinking of selling some unopened, retired Lego sets. (71042, 10236, 81000, 10214, 10253, 70840, 70831, 21306) I’m just not going to build them and I’d rather sell them to people who actually want them (you) instead of ebay scalpers (boo). Details of how we’re selling these will be up on Patreon soon!That’s all from me for today. I’m off to go MAKE SOME DAMN YOUTUBE VIDEOS.Happy New Solar Orbit,DanielXx