Back to pomo streaming during the day with very little (if any) voice. It helps me get stuff done. It also preserves my voice. People like it when I talk through my thought process when coding, but I just cannot do that every day. I have too much to get done at work that I cannot even talk through. I am still figuring out how to handle it when I do have stuff to talk through that would benefit from feedback from others. I suppose I can keep that in chat (and return to IRC for that). I’ve been meaning to return to that now that I’m on Linux on the desktop again (god I love Mint). Another reason is that I will be as limited as everyone else in communicating so we are equal. I noticed last time I did this that chat participation went up a lot, like a big chat room full of coworking nerds.
Update: Friday, January 20, 2023, 10:13:06AM EST
In terms of percentage of streaming hours, rwxrob.tv has become mostly an ASMR stream of an old hacker coding on his laptop from a comfy chair in a cozy room with HackerBeachYoga music on in the background. I would never have guessed it, but this stuff is very popular and why wouldn’t it be, this is exactly what I would put on during my work day while coding.
At about 4pm I go biking or IRL somewhere, usually the sunset, and just keep the music going. Sometimes I’ll go out to eat or something and switch to just chatting, but honestly, if I were watching I would just want to keep the music on and see something different unless it was a really ASMR kinda thing.
There’s something about streaming ASMR that frees me from the stress of streaming. People just want to listen to something without interruption, they want to zone out and chill more than anything else. And god knows I need it as well.
I think that having the spoken portions really scheduled is the key.
On January 14 it is three years of streaming on Twitch. The format has changed a lot over the last three years, but I feel like I finally hit what this is all about. I call it “pomo-radio” specifically for knowledge workers (coders, hackers, and the like) but anyone is welcome. Basically, as long as I’m awake and relatively close to the computer I stream music and whatever I’m doing, then take a 10 minute break at the top of every hour to answer questions about anything and everything.
This works for IRL as well since it is just a different scene. That means I can do yoga, go skateboarding, hiking, or just code and keep the stream just running with the same format. I will have to get good turning the music down on the breaks while IRL, but there are commands for that. I might even have to just make a better NoALBS bot to control my home system whenever I (or a moderator) types something specific. Spotify and YouTube music volume will definitely be a big one. I won’t be able to just grab the sound board on the break.
Here are the categories I’m planning and what it’ll be (roughly in order of amount of content):
Just Chatting My main category for 2023 and beyond. Once I get back to the IRL content and all the writing this will be the place.
Software and Game Development Since most tech streams will me be crunching out code in 2023 this will be second most common. Most (if not all) of my streaming in this category will be Go and Bash scripting.
Art When I cover any of my wife’s fine-art gallery crawls or studio visits, which is often. I want to cover all the street art tours and more.
Fitness & Health Any yoga or working out. I suppose walking will either be outdoors or chatting.
Science & Technology I still love this category. It covers everything in the cloud native and hacker space, but honestly, there won’t be a lot of that in 2023.
Music I’m really conflicted on this because I’m mostly a radio station with talking at the top of the hour. That means the content is mostly music, but the topics themselves aren’t always music. I think that is the criterion for this: is the topic music. Otherwise, music is just the background for whatever conversation is happening in one of the other categories.
Travel & Outdoors I love this category, but unless I’m camping or specifically talking about the destination I’m visiting most will be in Just Chatting.
ASMR If I ever actually get my Go Wireless II fixed I’ll start doing outdoor ASMR stuff around babbling brooks and in the wild, leaves rustling, all that great outdoor stuff.