Snow and a Studio (almost.....)

Hello there, welcome back and sorry I haven't given any sort of Christmas themed video, but it's snowing now, it's just after Christmas, this looks very Christmassy, happy Christmas to everybody who's watching, I know it's a little bit late, but I'll just give you a quick spin around the place and I'll tell you what I've been up to and what's coming in 2018 because I'm particularly excited about it. It is a lovely snowy day, late in the day, in northern England where I live. Beautiful scenery. And for those of you who follow my videos, you'll notice that there's a hell of a lot less trees at the back of the pond there. That's because my friend Colin and myself have been clearing them out. That allows a lot more sun to get in, and it makes a hell of a difference to the garden. Now the consequence of having a very successful business is that my YouTube channel has suffered quite a lot. I can't get time to go out and do a lot of my hobbies, and therefore I can't get time to make many videos. There's actually two things that I've been doing recently, or that I have been involved in recently, that will address that problem. One's related to the outdoor videos, one's related to the indoor videos. And when you hear what I've got planned, hopefully you'll be a degree as excited as I am, because I'm really, really looking forward to getting going. Now I mentioned that we've been taking a lot of the trees down around the back of the pond. I'll just show you some of the stumps. There you go, got one there, one there, taking a limb off that one, there's another stump down there, there's a nation of little stumps here, these are all off Leylandii. They were really blocking out the sun and even just now you can see how much sun is getting to the forest floor, it really really does make a difference. But what makes the biggest difference is a lot of these trees down here have gone, especially down here there was a lot of holly bushes and it was really blackening everything out. So down there, I'm actually going to build a permanent shelter, like a woodland camp sort of a thing. I'm just in the corner of the wood, we've got spring water coming in, so we've got a good supply of water. I should be in Wi-Fi signal, because my house is just there. The Wi-Fi sender's there, so it's not too far away. Obviously it's cheating a little bit, because it's not out in the wilds, but I will be using that area to shoot some outdoor videos and outdoor demonstrations and so on. There you go that's a better view of it. It's not level but it's not far off level and by the time we take a few more of the little trees out it's going to be a good area to film in. It's quite sheltered and it should be quite sunny and if you've noticed here they're off all the little and I've left those long because I'm thinking of making some sort of giant teepee or something down here. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do. Now one thing I will be doing in the next few weeks is reviewing some more game cams. Got a couple set up here, one there. There, one there, so that's one there, one there. We're looking onto here where I've scattered a bit of corn. It's also a bit of a run that badgers and foxes and rabbits and so on use as well, so we'll see what we'll get there. One of the perks of having a reasonably successful YouTube channel is the companies sometimes want to send you things for nothing. In fact, now it's got to the point where I'm doing Amazon reviews as well, and each day I get probably nine or ten different companies wanting to send me things. I turned down 95% of the stuff because I just don't need it, there's no point reviewing it. And you tend to find a lot of these top reviewers on Amazon that just get stuff for nothing. Bash a review out without even, it's not even a review, it's basically just fake. They've never used the thing. I like to use things properly. Hence, when I get a game cam, I set it up properly, I'll run you through all the different functions and so on on it, and I'll show you the results and let you know what I think. Proper review. I love doing that. And it's to the point now where I'm going to start giving a lot of this stuff away. I've got a mountain of stuff to give away that I've reviewed in the past. Some stuff I've bought myself and thought, that's a little bit similar to what I've already got. I'm not going to review it, but it's all good stuff. There's a lot of outdoor stuff. It's quite a bit of aquatic stuff. And you guys are going to be the ones to benefit from that. Oh, I don't know whether this is going to come out on the viewfinder, but there's mist starting to roll in off the fields and it's coming into the wood. It looks absolutely magical, look at that man. That's what I wake up to every morning. Obviously it's not normally white but that's the vista out of one of the sides of my house. It's absolutely glorious man. People wonder why I'm so chilled all the time, look at that man. People go on holiday to Tibet to get that sort of relaxation. And the second thing involves my new office. You might be thinking, well hold on this is just an office for his business, what's interesting about that? Well it's almost finished. Just needs the insulation puttin' in here and this claddin' off. Windows puttin' in, floor puttin' in. Second fix is the electric's doin'. But in the back here, we've got something well interesting. Pretty dark as well. We've got no electric in here yet. See, hey, oh, we've got a light. In here, we've got the supply from the house comin' in. There's gonna be a fuse box on here, a distribution box, and that's gonna distribute power within this place. And this area here, which is almost finished, It's actually going to be a studio. It's approximately 12 feet or 3.5 meters square. And I'm going to be able to site a camera here and film myself against the desk here. Now I'm going to need some sound proofing in. Not on the wall behind me, but certainly on the other wall, so I'll get some proper foam soundproofing. Because I want these videos that are going to be shot in here to be very good quality and have a very good sound. And in here, I'm going to start shooting a lot of aquarium-related videos. Whether that's setting up different aquariums, or filtration, or DIY projects of some sort. And that'll involve going back to my back catalogue of videos that I did years ago, where I was... Really no good at talking to the camera, rehashing all of those ones for a newer viewer base and also bringing a lot of new ideas in as well, including possible live filter upgrades, live chats or like a Saturday surgery sort of a thing where I could get local folks in who were in the trade, we could sit down here and answer all your questions, but I would only do that if the questions could be asked for free. I've seen a few live streams. from different channels where it comes up with people giving ten dollars twenty dollars five dollars i don't want that at all i want everybody to be able to ask me anything for free i think there'll probably be a way to do that i'll just have to disable that feature or something but i don't know anything about live streaming so i'm gonna have to have a little bit of help there and as you know i like to give stuff away whenever i can i like to do things for the benefit of you folks watching and this next idea is going to benefit you greatly More so folks in the UK, unfortunately. So you guys in America are probably going to miss out on this because of the shipping costs. But basically, I'm going to start doing a series of videos called Pimp My Filter. If you've got a filter that you want me to upgrade, send it to me. I'll upgrade it in a video, which will benefit the people watching. Say it's a Fluval 406 or something. I'll put all the gear into it, explain what I was doing and why I was doing it. And then I'll send it back to you fully upgraded. Now that sounds like a canny idea. There's so many different types of filters out there that it's a series that could run for a long time and it could benefit a hell of a lot of people. Now there was another series of videos that I was contemplating doing but I can't remember what it is. This is the problem, my memory is atrocious. So I'll just give you another quick look around this place. As it's coming together it's really, really, really looking good. Everything's totally insulated. I've gone to town on it. It's taken an extra couple of months because I ran out of money. I had to save up again, but it's coming together well. It's really, really good. I'd better go. That's a parcel force fella coming to collect all my orders. There you go. That's the view that anybody working in here is going to have looking out. I mean, that's pretty awesome. Not so good that way, but at least you get the sunset there. That's all right. And behind door number two, we've got place for number two. We've got a toilet in there. My father and his friend have built this thing in its entirety by themselves and they've done an absolutely awesome job. I'm really over the moon with it. It's really going to help me to develop my business because at the moment I work from a tiny little cabin and I'm literally sitting like this working on the computer and packaging stuff up. In a year I get three or four people people helping me. The windows and the flooring are going in mid-January. And by then the roof and everything will be finished, the electrics should be done then. We just need the power connecting to the main fuse box in the house and the various parts of the garden as well because I'm redoing everything in the garden to make everything super safe and super reliable because there's a few times when I've been working in my cabin, things have overheated a little bit and the electric's gone off. I hope everybody viewing this had a really good Christmas and I wish you a good and prosperous new year. Thanks very much for watching. I shall see you next time. It's probably my best look in silhouette. I don't know. Don't have to look at my face then.