Why no videos? What's Coming Next?

Hello there, welcome back. This is just a very quick video to tell you where I've been and explain why there's been a distinct lack of videos lately and also to tell you what's coming up in the next few months. Well, the summer holidays are always a time when I take two or three, possibly four, weeks off filmmaking to spend more time with the kids and also with my wife because they're all off school. My wife's a teacher and my children are still at school. So we go away on our holidays. Normally I do shoot a few videos that I can release when we're actually on holidays and when I'm taking that extra time off but unfortunately my business has been so crazy I didn't get a chance to do that so it's been about five or six weeks since I put a video out. I do have two ready to go out, one of which is a giveaway video for a camp and cook set, which is very nice, and the other one is a fishing video. I've also got two or three metal detecting videos, which just need a little bit of tweaking, final editing, and they're going up, and I've also got the following videos coming up. One of the first ones that'll be coming up is another attempt to clear my pond. Because the clay that I used only worked for a certain amount of time. The farmer and his minions have been driving on up the field. They've mucked the pond up again, as you can see. So this time I've invested in something called aluminium sulphate, or aluminum sulphate, if you're in the US. It's known over here as alum, and it's a chemical that's used in water treatment plants in the UK. I've got 25 kilos of that, which is going to go in very shortly. Keep an eye on what that's like behind me and the next time I talk to you hopefully it will be clear, at least that's the plan. The guy that makes the bio home filter media for me has been working on a shower filter media specifically for koi shower filters and the design he's come up with is unlike anything that anybody else is using but it's an excellent media. I'm not going to discuss it here because I want it to be a surprise but that video will be coming up in the next few weeks I will also be making one or two pond filters probably based on the shower filter principle out of unusual things, one of which will be easily portable. It's an everyday object that you wouldn't normally think would make a good filter but it will and I'm really looking forward to that video. In fact, I like any videos where I'm making stuff where it's kind of giving people ideas, you know. I like getting ideas out there for free. And on the subject of filter media, a few weeks ago I ordered some samples from China. You've probably seen it. It's logs of filter media about that sort of size. Ceramic media with a hole in the middle. Big shower media. I also ordered every type that this particular company did for aquarium filters as well to take a look at. Unfortunately, it cost me £126 English pounds to get it over here. I'll give you the full verdict in a video and I'll show you what I think. But the summary of it is I wasted that £126. So that's another video coming up. Now I really don't know what's coming up in the way of outdoor videos, there'll possibly be another couple of fishing videos before the end of the season and there'll definitely be some fungus, fungi hunting videos because I will be going hunting with my friend Colin who I did the previous videos with. It's been very very dry here, there's been absolutely nothing out. We're kind of hoping that in the next few weeks we'll get a bit of rain, and it should be a really, really good harvest, so that should make for some cracking videos. As far as the bushcraft goes, because of my work situation, I just haven't had time to do anything, but I am intending to do something along those lines. Quickly jumping back to the aquatic and aquarium and pond-related videos, I'll be attending, in fact I'll be exhibiting at the Aqua Telford Show. which is in the UK in Telford. I think that's either Shropshire or Gloucestershire, Shropshire I think. Um... That's in mid-October and I'm going to be there along with Michael who makes the bio home with me. Now this stand won't be as flash as many other people's stands, it won't have Huge planted tanks or you know really impressive reef systems. We're basically just going down there to show off the different forms of Biohome to the trade because towards the back end of this year we will be supplying to the trade. I've been asked for it by so many shops and to be honest it's down to me and my... hopelessness at running a business well the financial side of the business anyway that i haven't got that set up yet i will be getting that set up so very soon you should be seeing the bio home in your local fish shops now when i'm at this show i'm hoping to go around the other exhibitors And film what they've got. I'd love to see what other people have come up with in the way of filtration, pumps, tanks, all that sort of thing. So I don't know whether I'll have numerous exhibitors in one video or whether I'll just have separate videos devoted to each exhibitor. But I really want to bring what's being shown there to the trade to you guys. Because I think you will be interested in a lot of the stuff that goes on down there. I've never actually been to this show. I used to go to the Glee Show, which is G-L-E-E in Birmingham. That was more skewed towards the garden centre trade as a whole, but this one is purely for the aquatic industry. So look out for those videos. They'll be coming from probably the end of October onwards. I'm hoping to make a good series out of those. And if you're watching this thinking... there's only a few videos that he's mentioned that i'll possibly be interested in the rest of them sound like they're gonna suck. what i have planned in the way of setting up new channels may be right up your alley. this channel, the Pond Guru channel, will be a hub where i just throw everything on from all my hobbies And I'm aware of the fact that, although it's got quite a few subscribers, I've been doing this for a lot of years and the fact that it isn't a single topic channel has held it way back because there's a lot of people subscribe to channels and they like to see the same thing week in, week out. I don't offer that. I've got that many hobbies and I'm probably going to bring some more of my hobbies into this main channel. So I'm going to set up four different channels. I'm going to populate a lot of my older videos onto those, but the topics for those channels will be as follows. There'll be one for aquarium and ponds, so all of these will kind of be prefixed with Pond Guru, I would imagine. So it'll be Pond Guru, aquarium and ponds. That'll have all my pond videos on, all the ones I did in the past, the instructional videos, any new filter videos, and quite a lot of the upcoming videos from the trade show. Next one will be Pond Guru Outdoors, that'll put in a lot of the bushcraft stuff, survival, possibly some of the reviews of outdoor gear and also shooting and fishing, wildlife as well, basically things connected to the outdoor hobbies that I have. The third one will be a dedicated metal detecting channel. I'm not sure how many videos I'm going to add to that in the future, but there will be a lot from my back catalogue going on to that. So if you're only interested in detecting videos, that would be the one for you. The fourth channel that I'll be setting up has been born out of another hobby that I've taken on over the last few months. Over the last few months, I've been doing a lot of Amazon reviews on Amazon.co.uk of the various things that I've bought, not necessarily on Amazon, but... the things that i've bought connected mostly to the outdoors over the last four or five years i've just been putting very honest reviews on there now they've been very popular seem to be getting a lot of um like helpful votes for the reviews on there which is good because it's good feeling to help people some of the reviews are not the normal two or three lines they're like half a page there's a lot of information in some of those reviews And that's prompted a lot of companies to contact me, wanting to send me stuff out for free. Up to this point, I've been turning probably 95% of them down. But what I thought was, not only could I take those products for free, I could also give the vast majority of them away to you guys. So the fourth channel... will be specifically for reviews and also giveaways so if you're into review videos and the chance of winning free stuff that would be the channel for you now I think those four channels really sum up my main interests and although I'm not quite sure how I'm going to monitor those channels or keep up with all of the comments on them I like to reply to every question that I get I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. It's going to take me a long time to set that up. And I thought that on this channel, putting everything into playlists would help people to pick the videos that they were interested in. But it doesn't seem to be working that well. I think I need specific channels for each topic. So that's what I'm going to do. So there you go. There'll probably be another two or three videos come out in the next few days, followed by next week I should have the detecting videos done. And then other ones will follow. That's my holiday over, as far as video making goes. Now I don't know how I forgot this, but I forgot to say in that video that behind me here, that's underneath my cabin where I work from. I'm actually going to be starting to work at the other end of my garden where there's a huge shed being built. So underneath here is going to be cleared out. And underneath here is going to be the mother of all pond filters. The whole of the space under there is going to be taken up by a filter to filter my pond. Hopefully to keep it clear. That is a massive project, so that will probably form a series of videos. Because there's so many different techniques going to be used in that particular filter system. So look out for that. People that know me know that I really don't like vlog sort of channels, or vlogs. Vlog, I don't know what the hell they're called. Vlog or vlog. Well people go on about every aspect of their life it's really of no interest you know. I don't think anybody's interested in what I do on a day-to-day basis so I generally wouldn't mention anything about my day-to-day life but unfortunately those people who know me know that I had three cats and since my last video we've actually lost two of them. One through old age that was Hamish, He was 22 years old, so he didn't do badly, and the other one was Bo. who was my bengal he disappeared i don't know where he went somebody might have taken him because that is apparently a thing people stealing bengal cats and selling them or he could have just wandered off he's been missing now for a good few weeks i'll just put a picture of him up now and if you've seen him or you know of anybody who may have taken him please get in contact with me there is a reward for his return no matter how i get him back I'll put my contact details in the video description. And after saying that I really don't like vlogs or vlogs, I think I will do a short video of what's been going on around our place because there's been a hell of a lot of work going on here. That might be of interest to some people, so that'll be another video that comes up. Thanks very much for listening to me waffle on into the camera. Thanks very much for watching the videos as well. I do appreciate everybody who watches them and enjoys them. And even if people don't enjoy them. As long as they put in the comment section why they don't enjoy them, that helps me to learn. So I'm all for that. Constructive criticism is good. So very shortly, normal service will be resumed. Thanks very much for watching and I shall see you next time.