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Channel update from Jonathan.

I am really excited to report that I just finished the rough draft of Next part 2 a few minutes ago. Coming in at just over 14k words, it is the longest rough draft of any script I've written so far. I do expect it to grow substantially in editing however, it may top 20k words when all is said and done. So it's not ready for recording yet, but the first major step has been completed. 

I've mentioned this before, but I am going to post the final draft of Next part 2 on the Substack as soon as I am done writing it. That way anyone interested can read it for free while the video is being created. If it comes in at over 20k words, the video could very well take 3-4 months of editing. Thanks to Bill coming on board, I don't have to do the audio editing, but the video editing is going to take me at least several months. 

I've also been working on three new scripts that I am really excited about, all three are part of a series on 1997 PDAs that I am going to try to release as close to each other as possible. These should be shorter (for me) videos that shouldn't take months to edit once the scripts are ready for recording. The first script is getting close to done at 4100 words, the second script is probably a third done, and we won't talk about the third script...all 390 words of it so far :P

Hopefully be ready for release not too long after NeXT is released, but we will see. I also reserve the right to put them on the back burner for a bit if I feel that I need a break or decide to chase a rabbit down a different path. One of the ways I avoid burn out is by working on multiple things at once, I really don't want to join the ranks of burned out creators.

I've been head down in a lot of research lately, got a few thick MacWorld magazines from 1993 in that I've been reading through and making mental notes, lots of good stuff in there. Also been trying to track down issues of Handheld PC magazine, fortunately some are archived but most are not and I have not been able to find any issues on eBay so far. Since I prefer to have physical copies of research materials wherever possible, I've already printed out a thick stack of Handheld PC magazine articles, but there are a lot more that I want to get my hands on. I just love digging into a fresh stack of old computer magazines, it's always fascinating to see the details of what the tech world was excited about at that time. 

I've additionally been working on editing David's upcoming video on Sega's marketing of the Genesis, it's an interesting topic and he's done a great job digging into it. 

I do have a couple other projects that I'm excited about, but none of them are far enough along to really talk about, I'll hopefully have more to discuss about them in a few months.

I've been experimenting with shorts a bit (two shorts in the past week plus, what a crazy fast upload schedule for the channel :P). I feel like I am getting a little bit of a better handle on what I want to try to do with Shorts, but I am still figuring it out as I go. I definitely don't want to crank out subpar stuff, but figuring out worthwhile subjects to cover in 60 seconds or less is definitely a challenge.

Well I think that about wraps it up for this update, appreciate you all!

Best,

Jonathan

Edit: for some reason a whole paragraph was in red when I wrote this, and was deleted when I posted it. I have no idea why, had to re-add it. 

Updates: 

The Rise of Microsoft Windows Part 2 extended thoughts Substack is live. At 4500 words, it wound up being quite a bit longer than I expected, it just was too much fun going down even more rabbit holes. 

Thanks to everybody that made the comment section for RoW2 such a fascinating, thought provoking place! 

 https://anotherboringtopic.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-microsoft-windows-2x 


In other news, Steve Jobs and Next part 2 is coming along nicely, up to well over 11k words. Monday I got in three MacWorld magazines from 1992 (I love getting my hands on old computer magazines) from an eBay lot, that have already been quite useful in fleshing out a key part of the script. 

Unfortunately I still don't have a clear idea when I'll be done writing it, but I've made more progress in the past month than I have in the previous year, which is a nice feeling :) 

Once it's done, I will immediately post it to the Substack, that way anyone interested can read it without having to wait several months (at least) for me to get the video edited.

Appreciate you all!

-Jonathan 

I’ve released the Linux script as a Substack article. I don’t think I’ll turn it into a video, it would take too much time away from Next part 2 and Windows part 3.

However if you are interested in a lengthy vent about why I finally gave up on Linux/Pop!OS, head on over to the Substack to check it out. 

 https://anotherboringtopic.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-linux-a-frustrated 

Channel update,

Had a reasonably productive writing day, added somewhere around 1100 words to the Next part 2 script. I will not give an ETA, but wanted to let everyone know that it was crawling forward.
Mostly was I was working on fleshing out the Gil Amelio and Copland sections. I also did a decent amount of edits over the first two thirds of the current draft. 

Also trying to finish up the rise of Windows part 2 extended thoughts Substack post, its currently sitting at 2400 words. I keep finding new rabbit holes to dive down in it so I don't know when it will be done, but hopefully soonish. 

This is just a collection of my thoughts and opinions on a couple things, some suggested by the insightful comments that have been left that made me want to explore my sources more and look for some answers and some are just my giving an unasked for opinion. 

Current bullet points in it:
Did Microsoft copy the Macintosh with Windows 2x?
IBM and the 386
Windows 2x bundle deals with OEM’s
When did Compaq start working with Microsoft on Windows/386?
Windows/386 Preemptive Multitasking

I did get a burst of inspiration last week and hammered out a 25 minute script or so that is purely an opinion piece on why I no longer use Linux in general and Pop!OS in particular for any part of video production, why I was forced to give up on Pop!OS after two years of using it for all the videos I made for the channel, why I don't see myself ever trying Linux again for any serious work, and why Linux is going to keep struggling to grow unless some major things change. 

However I am on the fence about making it into an actual video, I might just post it to Substack or just sit on it indefinitely. Its purely an opinion piece and I'm not sure if it fits here. I freely admit that parts of it very much focus on the frustration I feel with Linux, after my many years of being let down by it during many failed attempts to use it as my only OS. I don't think it devolves into a rant, but I may not be the best judge of that ;)

I am also working on editing David's upcoming video on how Sega beat Nintendo with the Genesis, and I hope to have that done in the next few weeks.

Anyhow, that's all I've got for a channel update right now.

Appreciate you all!

Jonathan 

All 19,513 words of the final draft of The Rise of Windows part 2 script have been formatted and posted to the Substack.

 https://anotherboringtopic.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-windows-part-2-windows 

After months of work, the rough edit of Rise of Windows part 2 is complete! Currently runs one hour and fifty-six minutes long.

So what is left to do to get the final edit done? Well, I need to re-record one sentence where I said "IBM" instead of "Microsoft" (doggone it!), then I need to write and record 2-3 paragraphs to attempt to clarify why a rather confusing small part of Windows 2x's history...is confusing (at least FOUR conflicting sources that cannot be reconciled aaarrgh).

I also have one other possible addition to write and record. I haven't quite decided yet, it might instead go into a "RoW2 final thoughts" Substack post. 

Lastly I need to just go over the edit from start to finish and look for things that need to be fixed/improved/tweaked/etc. Normally I don't change much in this step, but I usually find a missing transition or two, a few assets that I want to swap out, some timings to tweak, and other little things like that. And of course...make sure the audio isn't too quiet!!!

Between this and a few housekeeping things to get ready for upload (thumbnail, chapters, CC file, format script for Substack, etc), I suspect it won't be ready until next weekend at the earliest (not overly likely). However, if this weekend is AMAZINGLY productive (doubtful), it may go up Sunday night (unlikely). 

As always, I appreciate your patience :)

- Jonathan 

Its been an incredible year for us, thank you so much to everybody who has subscribed, shared, liked, left a comment, or watched one of our videos! It's honestly kind of hard to believe just how much the channel and community has grown over the past year, it's been exciting and very motivating. 

Given our irregular video release schedule (or what is laughably referred to as our "schedule"), we really do very much appreciate all of the patience and encouraging feedback that we have received from our community.  

We are working on a "2023 state of the channel" video, where we will also cover some of our 2024 plans (yes, NeXT part 2 is on the docket), and if anybody has any questions about the channel/videos/etc, we'd love to hear from you.

If you have a question, just leave a comment on this post or send us an email, I cannot promise we will answer every question we get, but we will do our best. 



Regards,

Jonathan

PS: I have edited 1 hour and 6 mins of Rise of Windows part 2, so it is slightly over half done :) 

Its been a couple weeks so here is a brief update on the channel. 

Nothing too exciting I'm afraid, but steady progress is being made on editing Rise of Windows part 2, and the edit has reached 34 minutes (out of  1:54 ). As expected, my editing time has been really limited the past couple months, however we did decide to invest in a new 15" MacBook Air for me, and that has allowed me to go mobile with editing and squeeze more editing time into odd moments, especially late in the evening. 

Side note: we do not review new tech on here, but I have to say that the 15" M2 MacBook Air is an astonishingly powerful machine for its size, and with 16 GB of RAM it just flies through edits, subjectively it certainly feels like it matches my Ryzen 9 3900X tower with its 3060 and 64 GB of RAM. 

Granted, my videos are pretty simple and not complicated to edit (just time consuming), but my previous laptop (2017 MacBook Pro with a dual core i5 and 8 GB of RAM) was not fun to edit on and even with the fans screaming full bore it tended to heat up to levels I haven't seen since my G4 PowerBook days in the mid-2000s.

I also finally consolidated all three (current) Rise of Windows scripts into Scrivener (I write my drafts in Google Docs) and broke them down into chapters. Totals over 40,000 words so far. 

I do not feel optimistic about getting RoW part 2 out the door before the end of the year, but if I have a productive couple of weeks, I might be able to finish it by mid January. And I should start having more time to edit in the next month or two.

The Substack also hit over 100 subscribers this month, which is absolutely amazing to me, and a huge encouragement.

Think that's all I've got for right now, progress is always slower than I want, but progress is being made on multiple projects.

Appreciate you all!

Jonathan 

I really expected this to take at least a day or two, but I actually just finished formatting and hit Publish on ~13k words of dBase history.

Check it out! 

 https://open.substack.com/pub/anotherboringtopic/p/the-rise-fall-and-surprising-survival-e70?r=yim8a&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web 

Just started the lengthy process of formatting the dBase Substack post, several days ahead of what is laughably  referred to as my schedule!

And as usual Substack wants me to know that I'm overly verbose :D