Passion of the Geeks


I’ve been busy. Not so much with writing but with other things and I’m finally ready to talk about it. Some have you might have noticed that my YouTube channel is on hiatus. I have ideas for new videos but I found another are that I’m more suited for.

I have a podcast now.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine (Thanks Pat for being my partner in crime) soft-launched a podcast. We called it “Passion of the Geeks” and it’s basically us talking about things we love. We’re seven episodes in and we’re slowly starting to get the hang of it. So we’re starting to get the word out. We didn’t set any goals but it would be nice to to a three digit listener number per episode. I’d be happy with that. 🙂

So please check out our podcast and leave a comment or a review wherever you can. Thanks.

Corona – Day 37 – Skyscraper

Oops, I missed as few days. But no worries I’m fine I just needed as bit of rest to recharge batteries. I recorded a video for one of my classes, prepared oral matura exams and took a few walks. 

One thing that hasn’t worked out as I hoped is writing. I’m just not in the mood. I’ll try again next week once school and my regular days resume.

Tomorrow and Friday I have to prepare the next two weeks of school. That’s going to be a dozy. 

I’ll leave you with a video. Sven Eric Maier of Ergocinema read the first 10 pages of “Skyscraper” and talked about it. Enjoy.

Corona – Day 32 – Fingers Crossed

Today the Swiss government released their Corona timetable. Looks like proper school will gradually start in the 2nd week of May, they start with kindergarten and primary school and other schools should follow later. Not sure if that’s exactly what what our government will decide but it’s safe to assume that it will be similar in nature. 

Looks like we have to get used to this situation for a little bit longer but it also seems like there’s some light at the end of the tunnel and if things continue like this we should be able to return to some sense of normal in the fall. Hopefully.

Or, maybe the whole thing starts again. There’s a part of me that’s afraid that once we left the restrictions, the infection rate is going to sky rocket again. Let’s just hope I’m wrong. 

Yesterday I looked at some of my earlier Corona posts, one of the main reasons I’m doing these blogposts is to have a sense of my thoughts during this time, and it struck me how surreal the whole thing is. These are truly weird times and I’m actually curious of what the new normal is going to be, if there is one. 

I hope we learn something from this and make a few changes but then again, the human spirit is pretty consistent when it comes to screwing things up and we rarely learn from our mistakes so it’s probably back to normal until the next bad thing happens.

Speakinng of the next bad thing, how do you top a global pandemic? Asteroid? I hope not!

Corona – Day 31 – Probably

I’m back from a short easter hiatus and if I counted correctly it’s day 31 but who cares. Technically I’m on a school holiday at the moment so I have time to focus on other things. The plan is to finally bet some writing done. I got about two hours in on Monday and the plan is at least an hour today. 

I know that once I get the momentum going (remember #momentum) I’ll be able to crank out a few pages during the next few days but it’s just hard to get into the right headspace at the moment. U’l try anyway. 

I uploaded a new video essay over the weekend end that I’m quite happy with. This time it’s about movies that smile themselves in in the first few minutes. Very low viewer count though…I’m probably going to take a short break this week and come back with two fun videos next week. 

Corona – Day 24 – Bad Idea

Another one of these quick and dirty ones today:

  • Those “Beverly Hills Cop” movies are still enjoyable. 
  • That hot sauce challenge was a stupid idea.
  • Revisiting some classics was a good idea.
  • Next up John McTiernan movies. For some reason I feel the urge to revisit “Medicine Man”. Don’t ask me why. Or maybe I’ll finish Tony Scott’s oeuvre  first.
  • I can handle the hot sauce.
  • None of my students is going to do any of those holiday assignments the our department prepared today.
  • Now I have the “Axel F.” theme stuck in my head.
  • I have to do a proper exam with my students over the computers. That’s going to be fun. Actually, I might have figured that one out. I’m getting. The hang of forms.
  • That was such a stupid idea.

Cu tomorrow. 

Corona – Day 23 – Revisiting some Classics

Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t been watching movies all the time. I just wasn’t in the mood. Are usually watched one movie each night but most of the time I fell asleep during it after a hard day in the office. (Yes, the days in the office are hard.)

I’m trying to change that now. I re-watched Mad Max Fury Road and Gladiator recently and I decided to go back and revisit some old classics and fill some holes in my watchography. For some reason I’m in the mood for a stupid action movies, so I’ll probably start with some 80s or 90s action movies. I started to compile a list of suitable candidates. 

So if I start using movie one-liners, you know why. Thank god streaming services are full with silly old action movies. Don’t expect write-up though. I’m just trying to kill some time and have some fun while doing it, and who knows I might get some inspiration to finish Alaska.

This movie of choice Beverly Hills Cop.

This blog entry was brought to you by “dictation”.

Corona – Day 22 – The one I dictated

The weekend went over quite uneventful. As I mentioned last week, me and my friends we got together to play some Dungeons and Dragons online. The first half an hour was a little bit weird, but after everyone got used to the new circumstances, we actually had a good time.

Player interaction is obviously not as fun as it is around a table, but it’s better than not playing at all. I’m actually looking forward to the next session. I think I can seriously reduce prepping time this time. I’m also introducing some students of mine into the game over the Easter holidays, so I’ll prep that game as well. 

I’m kind of dreading the Easter break a little bit, the last the last few weeks have been weird but strangely structured, I need to maintain my structure and maybe adjusted a little bit. Instead of doing school work every day I plan to get some writing done every day. Not sure if I should set self any goals, but it would be great to get at least two pages done each day. The main focus is going to be “Alaska” but I’ll just see where creativity takes me.

One thing I noticed it might make things a little more interesting, and I hope you hadn’t noticed so far, are used the dictation feature to write this blog post. It only required a minimum of editing, and it’s not that I’m faster than normal, it’s just interesting to use my voice instead of my fingers to create text.

Not entirely sure how feasible it is to write a screenplay like this, but from time to time you have to mix it up a little bit. I have to admit I’m actually quite enjoying this, part of it being that it actually works quite seamlessly. I’ll have to try German later, but UK English works pretty great.

This is it for today. Stay healthy. 

Corona – Day 19 – Another Week

Had a light school day today. Most of my classes are hard at work, there’s still some correcting to do but I’ll probably do that next week. Can’t believe another week is over. It’s so strange, the days are over so quickly and yet it feels ages ago that we had proper school. 

I spent most of the day getting ready for a D&D session tomorrow. First time playing online. I’m curious how that will go. We’re using roll20 and it looks like it might get the job done but I think something will be missing playing online. But who knows, maybe we’ll enjoy it. Prepping was a bit weird though. I have no idea how fast we’ll be and I’m not sure if I have enough encounters. I obviously wants to prep enough but I don’t want to prep too much because it’s obviously different than prepping for live play. 

I’ll keep you posted but you’ll have to wait until Monday. I’m taming a weekend break again. I’m actually quite happy with my blogging and my schoolwork, and you probably already know how proud I am about my videos. 

One thing I have to work on though, writing. I haven’t written a single page since this whole thing started. But the plan is to do that during the Easter break, when schoolwork winds down. 

Ok, time to wind down now. Stay healthy.

Corona – Day 18 – Episode 2

Oops, I did it again. I shot and edited episode 2 this week. I need to work on the titles for next week, they are not essential but they should be at least readable. Other than that, I’m quite happy with how episode 2 turned out. 

I waste a lot of time recording…I need to get better but I managed to hide quite a lot of my edits in this video. But still, too many useless takes. 

But I digress. Please enjoy: