As much as I intend to keep a plan, sometimes an opportunity comes up that just slots in so perfectly, that you can’t ignore it. At the end of the year, I had a channel rebrand all put together and in motion. I had planned content and projects for the year.
Life had other plans for me though.
One of my growing side hobbies (pinball) had started taking more and more of my time. One of my favorite manufacturers (Stern) had announced a pin (pinball machine) themed entirely around an IP I care a lot about, and have streamed on Twitch (Pokemon). The love continued to grow and my time at the arcade began to increase.
It wasn’t long after that when the real question hit: “Am I as passionate about my current projects as I could be about a different set of projects?” I was hesitant at first to admit it, but I wasn’t. A lot of the projects I had planned for the year were not just stretches, but projects filled with complex challenges in skills I wasn’t even certain I wanted to develop. I felt like I had steered myself in the wrong direction and wasted time pathing down some of these projects. It ultimately wasn’t wasted though because the few things I had done, will be re-utilized for some new upcoming projects.
The Change
Going forward, I am not pursuing retro hardware related development projects. My heart just isn’t in the low level coding and bit-bashing needed to accomplish these sort of projects. One additional detail to any kind of success for these sort of projects is heavy code reverse engineering, which I have no knowledge of or reasonable skills in regards to assembly or C.
The direction forward i will be taking is that I will be working on some mechanical assemblies, and weird concepts I have for pinball machines. I will be releasing content discussing how I have made them, how they work in relation to other types of similar mechs and some of the engineering that goes into it. I have some accessories planned for existing pins also! Content on Twitch (re-launching this month post family visits), will remain very similar to pre-rebrand with some streams converted to “Arts and Crafts” or Maker type streams.
Part of this path will lead to more video type content, but the same style and personality I put into streaming.