THIS WEEK'S STUFF

Happy Monday!

BYAMPOD will be out, hopefully, later today - sorry you're not getting it early. We were running a bit late, because we were away last week filming, and then I was editing. 

Despite a few of you voicing concerns that last week's drama might in some way put us off of BYAMPOD... worry ye not. We'll talk about it more when we record, but the Fish email honestly didn't really affect either of us. If anything, it just underlined our point.

The next Digi video is uploading now, so you WILL get long before everyone else. It's a bit of an epic. We did consider splitting it into two, as it's so long, and there's a very obvious tonal shift right in the middle. Ultimately we concluded that we'd rather give you one, big, meaty video rather than two.

The first half is way more serious than I expected it to be, and probably more serious than anything we've ever done before - you can almost see me struggling to keep my tongue in my cheek at points - and then it lurches into the sort of absurdity you can usually expect from us. Maybe even more so than usual, to compensate for what came before.

I've said it a lot recently, but... I think it's one of the best videos we've ever made. We seem to be on a real roll at the minute.

ROLLING ROLLING ROLLING

I hope you're enjoying these out-and-about videos as much as we are, because we've no plans to stop anytime soon. I'm sure we'll discuss it in more depth in a Patreon video at some point, but we finally appear to have hit on a format which feels like the thing we've spent years searching for.

It seems to bring out the best in us, in a way that builds organically on the last five or six years, rather than be another left-turn; I get to scratch a bit of my journalism itch, we can still feature all our stupid characters and guests, the locations bring real value...

I've always put 100% into our content, but part of our jumping around in terms of formats was me trying to settle on what Digitiser was if it wasn't a teletext video game magazine. While we've tried to sell Digi's it-can-be-anything format as a USP, in truth it has hurt us, and has never completely satisfied. Both Sanja and I think we might've found a way to do that, which doesn't betray what we've been before. 

I don't know why it has taken this long - probably because Digi's long history has been a difficult thing to let go of - but of all the videos we have done since Digitiser The Show, it was always the ones where we got out from behind the desk that felt most effortless and enjoyable and natural. 

Finally getting some decent wireless mics has unshackled us - quite literally - and being able to achieve decent sound on location has opened up a world of possibilities. Add to that the fact the kids are now old enough to look after themselves, and - though we still have my mum to help look after - we're in some ways more free than we ever been.

The only thing I'm now struggling with is that, if we do continue down this road, Digitiser really does seem like an odd name for what we're doing, and if we continue with these sort-of-travel vlog things, as I suspect we will - mostly keeping desk stuff for when we do live streams - then do they even belong on this channel with the rest of the back catalogue being so at odds? What do I do with Digi Level 2? Where does that go? 

I don't want to get rid of the name. I don't want to rebrand. But I'm also torn, because while it was useful in the early days in terms of recognition, I worry about it holding us back. Much to ponder!

The vid's now at 57%. Should be up by lunchtime (they take way longer to upload, now we're doing them in 4k). Settle down tonight with a bowl of crisps, and brace for details of a new Patreon giveaway. 

Biffo's Brain this Thursday, for those in that tier. Usual time.