Meta Update II
Hey all, it’s still me. As per the idea set forth in the last Meta Update that I posted back on February 6th, I’ve felt inclined to keep you up to date with more of the behind the scenes stuff as well as with how I am planning to carry stuff forward. Needless to say, a lot of shit has changed in the last month.
What’s New
Honestly, I think the most obvious new and shiny thing with respect to the reviews is the website that you are reading this on currently! I am by no means a website developer and in this process of bumping around to get this website together, I learned how incredibly difficult it is to even do basic things and thus I appreciate web devs even more than I did before. However, it has been a fun and exciting couple of weeks of late nights getting all of the old reviews up onto the website, writing the few new ones, and getting everything squared away in time.
With the advent of the new website, as well, I would like to aim to try and stick to my one review per week practice that I had seemed to fall into once the reviews started to gain a bit of traction. As I had said before in my previous Meta Update, I honestly don’t intend to force myself into any sort of routine or schedule of release simply because my life is currently too hectic and unpredictable on a week to week basis in order for me to be able to promise a review to the hour and minute on a specific day of the week. However, due to this mild irregularity, I’ve chosen to setup further social media sites in order to help promote when I get new reviews out. As of the time that you are reading this currently, the following are the ways that you can reach out to me:
Discord: ThereminGoat#2561
Reddit: u/theremingoat
Instagram: theremingoatmk
Twitter: @goattheremin
While it serves as a plethora of platforms with which to reach out to me with, I would recommend following me on at least one of the later three as I intend to make posts to those accounts when new reviews are up such that you don’t have to constantly be refreshing the website every day of the week. (Although, I would love if you spent hours on there every week.)
Current Setting and Looking Forward
As I have pointed out in my previous update, I am still an undergraduate in college in a STEM field with jobs as a teaching assistant, resident advisor, and nearly full-time research job. On any normal given week this would push me to 50-60 hours of week and leave me writing reviews by my faithful desk lamp in the middle of the night. However, COVID-19 has chosen to completely monkey-wrench the entire semester and is making everything a living nightmare in terms of classes, jobs, etc. That being said, I don’t think it will affect my production of reviews too much, but I just want you all to be aware that I’m in a decently more chaotic state than normal if things do change a bit.
Extremely Rough Future Plans List
As discussed above, the following is a kind of list of roughed out plans that I have in my head for the future as well as an extremely loose timeline that I hold absolutely no promises about whatsoever.
Reviews Planned – Currently None (that I can talk about in public)! I have had a few private conversations with vendors about potentially reviewing some switches to come out in the future, but nothing I can talk about it publicly.
Reviews I Want to Do:
-“From the Vault” – Review older, popular pieces such as Gateron Inks, Novelkeys Creams, Zealios V2, etc. as these are often the most popular in the community and these give you a good baseline for my tastes.
-“Plastic Comparisons” – A writeup detailing the chemistry behind things like POM, Polycarbonate, Polyethylene, etc. that goes into your switches and how theoretically they make a difference.
-GSUS/SuperVan Panda Drama – A writeup about the drama clusterfuck that threw everything into the Modern Durock era.
-“Lube Comparison” – A discussion much in the same fashion as the plastic comparisons.
-“How Should I start?” – A more detailed beginners guide to switches past “just buy Gateron Yellows and add some lube”
-“ThereminGoat’s Views on Frankenswitches” – A talk a bit about Frankenswitches, why I don’t cover them, ones I consider as “valid”, as well as interesting ones I’ve come across.
-“Hirose Something Something” – A discussion of everyone’s favorite vintage MX switches and some variants not documented really anywhere on the web yet.
Again, I stress these are all things I want to do – but they may not even happen. In a perfect world, though, I want to get more of these ideas off this list and into the done pile as I feel they could be useful or interesting given the reception of my reviews and writeups this far along.