Month: May 2022

That’s my mental state and motivation levels I guess…

I did finally dabble in a little bit of art, but not quite anything ‘proper’ so to speak. And no video again…

Really glad that I did do something artsy though… And also sent out a couple of letters. That’s something at least, even though I couldn’t bring myself to finish up everything I had wanted to.

A little amateur brushwork and a quick doodle.

Hands up who else is as lazy as I am? I have never drawn guidelines for calligraphy, and I am just too freaking lazy to do so. Would I improve faster if I do guidelines? Maybe. But I might also never learn to write properly without guidelines. I don’t know…. But I want to be able to do brush lettering without guidelines, and I can say for sure that practice has definitely helped a lot. If only I kept up with it. From the letters being completely slanted and falling off the page, to this… Most of it was when I pushed through with the 100 day challenge and then kept up with the lettering prompts for a little bit longer afterwards… So maybe, 4 months or half a year’s work? And by work I really mean, like 5 – 10 minutes of work a day on average. I might give that one word 1 or 3 attempts and that’s it. Hardly what you’d call practice, but still a lot more than I’ve been doing in the past… 3.5 years. That’s how frigging long it’s been since I last practiced, honest. I pretty much stopped when I changed jobs.

It’s certainly nice to have a job that’s a lot more mentally engaging. But it seems like regardless, I just don’t have sufficient energy/brain power or well, stamina and willpower to constantly be super productive after work. These days the most productive I might be is to practice on my speedcube a little before bed. But more often then not I’m just reading some webnovels, playing some games, and watching some YouTube. I should really make the effort to spend my time better huh. At least a portion of the time…

It’s 1:15am right now and strangly I’m not the slightest bit sleepy. Ok, maybe just slightly sleepy…

Using my pens again recently made me remember how nice it is to use them… AND that foxy doodle on the postcard made me realise how much I actually love that plasticky sort of feel. Personally I find it really nice to write on and I love it. And that’s why I love the Iroful paper. You might beg to differ too and that’s fine… It’s really a personal preference kind of thing. You do you.

Alright. Shall end off here today. Till next time!

With my letter writing. Not so with video production. Just two letters in my inbox! That’s quite amazing for me, didn’t think that such a day would ever come.

I’m out today… Went to test the new Iroful paper from Sakae Technical Paper. I will try and do a proper review of that soon, it’s quite a different paper, the sizing is very different from what I’m used to. It’s basically from the same factory as the old, aclaimed Tomoe River Paper, production of which has since stopped and the factory itself has changed hands. I don’t even know the exact details… Gotta do some reading up later… But the short summary is as such: Paper is very different, fountain pen friendly, has sort of plasticky feel, but from my very short test, I love it.

Off to meet some other fountain pen friends in a bit… To just hang out and get the tea that I ordered with them in a group buy. Hmm… Not sure what time I should head over. Maybe a little more? Don’t want to hang around so long in the ‘poison den’ so to speak. We are meeting at a local fountain pen shop that’s been affectionally nicknamed the poison den because well, you rarely go out unscathed. I mean, your wallet rarely comes out unscathed. It’s a very dangerous place… And I did just spend a ton there a few weeks back… AND also bought a bunch of paper today at Cityluxe were we got to try the Iroful paper. Yes, I definitely did buy the Iroful paper…. :X

In my defense, the paper is unlike any I’ve tried before… Ok, more similar to the Cosmos Note… But still quite different. AND it’s cheap! $9.9 (that’s Singapore dollars) for a pack of 50 A4 sheets, or the same price for a pack of 100 A5 sheets. That’s quite affordable plus they gave us 20% off today so… More excuses to buy right?

Alright. I shall end off here. Till next time!

But a short one this time. Like. Literally.

It’s a YouTube shorts.

I do have a long form video… But I did also spend all day yesterday reading instead of editing… And…

Well a short video is better than none right?

Wanted to do a 60s challenge, but the limit of YouTube shorts *is* 60s so… It kinda became 30s instead. I would love to do more random drawing things on YouTube, without bothering about the quality of my drawing… As much as I still have a lot of things to unbox… It’s not like I’m going to keep buying new things forever. And I really do want to do more art. Maybe more vlog style videos in the future? I don’t know. But I did three doodles in a row so there will be at least two more of these 30s doodle shorts coming up. So far I haven’t had much success with shorts… But I guess you can say I haven’t had much success with *anything*. I put quite a bit more time editing this shorts this time around… Hopefully I’ll at least get a few views… :X

New video is finally up!

Yeah, I actually won the giveaway! First time ever! I guess there being not as many participants as the usual online giveaways helped a ton… Since it was held in the wancher FB group rather than say, on their instagram page. I’ve tried so many of those instagram giveaways but nope, no luck. Those typically have thousands upon thousands of entries so yeah.

Maybe someday I’d have a ton of subscribers and viewers too and I can actually earn a decent enough living from doing all these so as to do my own giveaways…. Or something

I was certainly very excited to win this pen… And I was quite conflicted on which pen color to pick. I keep saying ‘model’ because they give all these different colors nice names and all. Almost like it’s a different model but not really. Just a different color. The blues are nice, but not really that special. The is color changing and looks great, plus I do love greenish/turquoise hues a lot too… And it was also the color that my bestie penpaller loved the most. But the black also stood out a lot to me, and the more I looked at the photos, the more the colors popped and the more I liked the pen. The colors actually look a lot brighter than what I could photograph for the YouTube thumbnail. I should I should take my photos in the day when it’s much brighter… But alas, I’m a night owl. Even with lots of lights the photo still looked really dark ><. Dang.

Still have not inked up the pen yet. What should I ink it up with? Hmmm…

I caved and bought something expensive again.

Not a pen…

Oh wait. I DID actually buy a really expensive pen. And that’s coming up in a video soon. Next week most likely.

But I’m not talking about that today.

I’m talking keyboards. More specially the iPad Pro smart folio keyboard that just arrived yesterday.

So you may or may not be aware that I’m actually doing almost everything on my iPad. Video editing. Typing this blog entry right now. Watching YouTube. Ok I do play a lot of games on my iPhone but pretty much everything else is the iPad. It’s definitely my laptop replacement at this point and the only thing it can’t do is some minor things like storing all my iCloud videos to like AWS. Have decided on AWS for long term storage of my old video raws and all… But have NOT found a way to actually upload my videos to AWS from the iPad. It seems like I have to do it on a computer still… Not yet reached that stage where my iCloud drive is full, so just delaying that for now.

But yes. The iPad is my daily driver and my old smart folio keyboard was getting really battered.

The back cover and even the side of the keys are getting all frayed, and I used tape to hold it all together…

More importantly though, the connection to the iPad was getting worse and worse. Initially it would happen occasionally – usually I just had to reconnect the keyboard once and it’ll be useable. But then it started happening halfway while using… And even when it was connected sometimes the keys would just stay held down forever. Especially the space bar and the arrow keys.

So yeah. Finally bit the bullet and paid for a new keyboard. No regrets though. All the connection issues are gone (glad that it was a keyboard thing and not an iPad issue!). And the new keys feel solid and great. The old one had wobby keys, and the fabric on many of the keys were getting worn out so it was completely smooth and completely different from how this new keyboard feels. Awesome. Hopefully this keyboard will last me another 3 years… This thing is freaking expensive after all. Could get a very nice pen with this money. Heck. It’s even more expensive then the very fancy logitech gaming keyboard I bought (and ended up not really using as I switched to iPad only eventually.)

Oh wells. So that’s it for this post. Till next time!

Video editing for this week’s video is DONE.

I got so tired that I was falling asleep while editing the last few minutes of the video. I don’t even know why… Just tired. Constantly tired… No matter how much I slept last night.

Oh wells. At least the video is done.

Yeah. I totally dropped the ball on YouTube and even blogging here, I know. It’s partly one of those things, where you stop and can’t start again…

I’m not sure why or what happened either, can’t quite put a finger to it. But I guess that’s the case with mental health issues. I was just unable to do anything productive outside of work… Weekends just felt that they were never enough, but at the same time they were not spent productively….

I’m feeling much better now. Took me two weeks to edit last week’s video, but edit it and upload it I did. Now working on today’s video since yesterday was spent cubing…

Yeah, this does not bode well for a YouTuber career… But yeah…. As much as I love content… I guess I don’t love it enough (at least not yet) to be able to push through everything and do it really consistently. That said, stamina (or the lack thereof) has ALWAYS been my weakness, regardless of whatever I do. And it was also my greatest worry coming into this YouTube video making project. (Still, WAYY too early tow orry about this at the moment, so yeah, whatever.)

I’ve pretty much exhausted my pre-recorded videos, and I really need to record a lot more stuff now. Thankfully Monday AND Tuesday are both public holidays. Hurrah for the mega long weekend. I *need* to get a bunch of recording (and editing) done then.

Not just need, I really *want* to. I have new supplies, lots of cool stuff… But I want to do unboxing on camera and… Yeah. So I need this table packed and ready for filming… Gotta find out how to set up my new microphone… Yeah lots of stuff to be done to get back in business.

Really looking forward to be playing with all my fancy stuff again. Also really gald for the new mike. I tested it out briefly and it worked wonders. No wind noise even though my fan was blasting at me. With the weather these days, I REALLY need the fan on or I’ll start dripping sweat in 5 mins.

Ok, I’ll end this post here. Gonna grab some lunch and continue editing the video…