The first post

Whilst this might be the inagural blog post on this website - in April 2021 - the site has actually been around a while, and the projects featured on it have been around a whole while longer than that. Even though the real reasons for the gulf in time might boil down to nothing more than common tardiness, it does at least give me the opportunity to introduce these projects, as well as myself.

So, on that note - Hi, I'm Casperr. Of course, that's not actually my name; it just happens to be the alias I was using at the time I started to make some good friends online. As "Casperr" was at least a little more professional sounding than "Teabag" and its variants that I used to roll with, it made sense to stick with it as I started to doing other things online.

Productivity

All of these "other things online" generally exist because of one reason: I like being productive. Sure I can sit down and do nothing but mindlessly play games of an evening or even a whole weekend, but typically it's only a matter of time before I get itchy fingers as it were and I begin to feel my time is not time well spent if there is nothing productive coming out of it.

Because I enjoy video games, and because I enjoy being productive, I frequently end up asking myself the age old question: why not both? That's why almost everything you see here - my YouTube channel, Twitch extensions, Streamlabs Desktop applications, etc - are all pretty intrinsically reliant on video games. Let me give a quick TL;DR of those areas.

YouTube Channel

Originally a place I just uploaded frag montages of my time on a competitive Team Fortress 2 team, I soon found that I enjoyed making videos. As I made more, I found I enjoyed styles other than just frag videos and have recently settled somewhere more in the "infotainment" area of video production. I am always trying to create better and better videos (aren't we all?) and I wholly expect my style and content to continue to evolve as time goes on. At the time of writing, my YouTube channel sits at just over 70,000 subscribers which is creeping ever so close to the milestone of 100,000. Despite this, based on current growth, the channel won't be reaching that number for more than a year at least. One of my goals is to grind out some (what I believe to be) very good video ideas sitting in my to-do list and hit that goal this year. It's near the end of April and I haven't started them yet.

Twitch Extensions

When Twitch first announced extensions I was working as a full-time web developer (and still am). I tried my hand at the most super basic extension idea I could think of (literally just an image with a "days since" counter) to get my head around it and then made a few more displaying what I thought was pretty basic Twitch information (latest followers, upcoming "events" (RIP in peace), Team Members, etc). Pretty much all of my extensions were made really early on and I currently have no ideas for any more. Perhaps if Twitch finally releases a schedule API I will get back in the game.

Streamlabs Desktop Apps

The popularity of my Twitch Extensions lead to the team at Streamlabs reaching out to me when they were launching their new app store on their forked version of OBS called Streamlabs Desktop. As with my Twitch extensions, I started by builing what I felt were pretty simple concepts (though I can confirm that the actual workings behind them are anything but). I am really happy with the two apps I built and I am constantly thinking about ways to improve them. Memeboard will definitely be receiving an update soontm, and I plan on writing a post about that process when the time comes.

Skillshare

Skillshare is a site where "teachers" can make tutorial style videos about pretty much anything - I'm sure you've seen the ads on YouTube. At the time of writing I have only one class on there, but I enjoyed the process of making it and plan to make more. In fact, I have another class fully scripted and ready to record... I just need to actually record it.

Other Projects

I often look for ways I can help out by using my web development skills and experience in the communities I am a part of. Other times I just get an idea for a project and go ahead and build it myself. I recently had an idea for a large project that fills a need for me as a "gamer" that I don't see anyone else filling right now. At this point that project is nothing more than a twinkle in my eye and a couple of sentences on a Trello board, so I won't say anymore about it just yet.

The Future of this Blog

So that was a basic introduction to what's happened in the past. Now onto the future. Ultimately I plan to write about what I'm working on at any given time. To be totally honest, I feel like this blog will be as much an opportunity to share my process with interested parties as it is a place for me to rubber duck myself out of a creative block. Indeed, that's partly the reason I am writing this post today. With a finished YouTube script to record, another one to research and complete, another one half scripted and waiting for me to play through another game in order to advance, a completed Skillshare script to record, an updated overview and tutorial for Memeboard to record, updates to Memeboard itself, that new project I mentioned that I haven't started at all, and just now I am remembering that I have a Twitch channel I am actively trying to grow and stream on 2 or 3 times a week yet somehow forgot to mention in this blog post (and entire website) all about the productive things I get up to.

All of those things to do, and here I am creating a whole new section on my portfolio website to for some reason distract myself from doing any of them. The human mind do be like that sometimes.