You primarily know me as a blogger. But over the years, I’ve actually tried every form of media. I was part of an EVE Online podcast, I’ve uploaded videos to YouTube, and of course, I’ve also streamed.

The podcast actually went quite well, partly because I wasn’t alone. I could chat with the other two and get a conversation going. When I’m blogging, I can take my time; I write a post, I revise it, or I delete it entirely. But just talking into the void is hard for me. Probably also because I know my girlfriend is listening. I just end up rambling, whether it’s in a video or a stream. And it feels weird.

In a video, at least I have a script. I can use that as a guide. I personally don’t like reading directly from it. And with streaming? I have no plan at all. And you can tell pretty quickly – my streams are often silent. Accordingly, my success has been rather minimal. So it’s not surprising that I hung up streaming for that reason as well.

But that’s not all: streaming, like gaming, is still heavily geared towards Windows. While OBS is available for Linux, it usually works more poorly than not. Game Capture? No chance. It sort of works under Gnome with x11, but it wouldn’t work under XFCE4. So I have to capture my entire screen. CORRECTION: With the right OBS version (git), Window Capture also works under XFCE.

And that brings us to the next difficulty. I have a 21:9 monitor with a resolution of 3440x1440. A configuration that Twitch doesn’t even support. For Twitch, it’s only 16:9. Anything else creates black bars and becomes unrecognizably small due to scaling. YouTube isn’t any better here, at least in the default settings. Creating a new stream key did provide a solution, though.

So, my stream is set up: I stream in 3440x1440 at 30 FPS on YouTube without annoying black bars. More FPS just isn’t possible with my current CPU. So I could get started, and I did. I streamed for almost two hours and said nothing for almost two hours. The stream must have been relatively boring. I myself had no desire to scroll through the recording.

I think I’ll just stick to blogging. Here, I have time to gather and sort my thoughts, I can just start writing, and when I think I’m done, I click “Publish.” All this social media has become such a time sink, and maybe I’ll withdraw from live and social media platforms altogether.

Although, Mastodon is actually quite okay.