Hello again, there’s currently a heatwave going on in the UK, it’s very warm here, something to do with El Niño. I’ve got my fan on full blast, my room is like an oven, haven’t played any games on my PC as it would just add more heat. Anyway, I thought I’d better write a new blogpost of what I’ve been up to over the past couple of months.

First up, I was ill for much of the beginning of 2026, another ear/nose/throat infection thing, had a very sore throat and strange smells in my nose. I had a throat swab taken and it tested positive for thrush, I also had a sinus infection. I’ve also been suffering with my IBS and hiatus hernia. I’m going for an endescopy/colonoscopy again soon which I’m not looking forward to.

I’ve finally completed questing through the Burning Crusade in my WoW Let’s Play series, I am so glad to get that done with, this may be an unpopular opinion but TBC is probably my least favourite WoW expansion. In fact, I very nearly quit the series altogether in one of the Shadowmoon Valley episodes, I ended up going back to Chromie after dying to a boss and turning off Chromie Time, I think I will stay in the current timeline for now and just try and blast through Wrath of the Lich King.

I don’t care if anybody watches my WoW videos or not, this is something personal, I want to quest through all (well, most) of WoW, I want to experience every zone and then maybe put the game down for a long while and do something else like getting back into Minecraft or playing other games.

With the start of the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, I decided to do a bit of a refresh and used a new format for the thumbnails, I think they look a bit more professional and less cluttered than my old thumbnail design. I was inspired my MrGMs images.

I recorded another video for my electronics channel, something rather unusual as it was all recorded in OBS on my PC as I was checking out a circuit simulator on Steam called ‘CRUMB’, it is pretty good, you can make all kinds of circuits in it, I’m not sure how useful it is to electronics tinkerers, but it might be useful for learning and maybe even prototyping.

I have the next video planned, I’ll be unboxing a multimeter, then after that I think I am due for some proper electronics tinkering and doing my first project.

Speaking of rebrands, I’ve been messing about in Gemini, Grok and ChatGPT and I’ve made some new avatars for my YouTube channels and social media, they use the same cartoon character, but different backgrounds, I think it’d be cool to have a sort of consistent branding across my channels and social media. I don’t know if I mentioned it in the previous blogpost, but I want to create a third YouTube channel, it will be for my miscellaneous interests like programming, web development, Linux, photography, unboxings, etc. I haven’t yet decided on a name, I was thinking ‘ChrisElisonDotUK’ or just ‘ChrisElisonUK’, something like that.

Apparently you are not allowed to put domain names in your YouTube channel name, username or even in the banner image, good job I found that out, you can get your channel deleted, potentially.

I still haven’t gotten round to starting the revamp of chriselison.uk or even starting work on chriselisonelectronics.com, I have however been checking out Google’s Stitch, which allows you to generate a website using AI. I’ve generated a couple of sites so far and they look really nice, although I don’t think I will use Stitch to make my sites, maybe using the sites as inspiration, but I will be doing all the HTML and CSS coding by hand the old fashioned way.

Recently I have been relearning how to use Git and GitHub and I’ve started my own ‘Code Lab’ repository on GitHub which will hold all my code as I learn (and relearn!) to program in C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, PHP many other languages. I’ve been doing all my coding in my Ubuntu Linux virtual machine.

This all started when I wrote some exercises for my niece who is studying Python as part of her GCSEs, I didn’t know any Python, but it was fun to learn and I can now see why so many people learn it as their first language.

I have also pimped up my GitHub profile a bit, I have neglected it for so long since I first made it, I am going to try and keep contributing to it from now on. I’ve got lots of ideas for coding projects and exercises.

I got some new DC skate shoes for my birthday, unfortunately they’re too big, we had to send them back to the USA where they came from, I still haven’t chosen a new pair. I only wear skate shoes, absolutely no chav trainers.

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head for years? I have. Since like 1996, seriously this song has been stuck in my head for decades, I had no idea who wrote/sang it, but I have finally found it - it’s not even the sort of music I listen to. The song is called ‘One and One’ by Robert Miles and released in 1996.

I’ve been having a bit of trouble with DaVinci Resolve and Chrome recently on my PC. Sometimes when working in Resolve the UI becomes slow and unresponsive, not just Resolve but Windows too, I have to restart the PC. I think I need to update my BIOS, it hasn’t been updated since I got it, Windows also needs an update, but I have been unable to because Secure Boot was off for some unknown reason.

Edit: Apparently Pressing Win + Ctrl + Shift + B fixes this problem by resetting the graphics in Windows, I’ll try this next time I’m editing a video!

I have now re-enabled Secure Boot (I was scared of messing up my BIOS settings) and Windows boots up fine, so I think I can go ahead and just update to 25H2 when ready. I have done a massive backup of all my files just in case.

What I’m really worried about is updating the BIOS, if it goes wrong or the power goes out my PC is bricked. I have in the meantime disabled ‘MultiCore Enhancement’ in my ASUS BIOS which should have been off, but wasn’t disabled by CyberPowerUK! This setting is essential to turn off if you have a 13th or 14th gen Intel CPU.

I have the latest BIOS on a USB stick ready to go, I just have to gather enough courage to do the update. I’ve taken photos of all my BIOS settings, I’m hoping it just goes smoothly without any issues.

Edit: I have downloaded the Windows Installation Assistant, I think this will upgrade me to the latest version, although it appears by the wording that it’s going to reinstall Windows, I don’t want that, I want all my apps and files left intact. The update hasn’t appeared back on Windows Update since I messed it up last time by trying to install it with Secure Boot off.

I’m getting just a little bit sick of computers and Windows in particular. I’d happily move to Linux, but I need DaVinci Resolve as well as all my games I know some of them work on Linux, but at least ALL my games work on Windows.

Edit: So I have now successfully updated to Windows 11 25H2 AND I have managed to manually update my Secure Boot certificates. I plucked up enough courage and just launched the Installation Assistant, I was expecting it to wipe my C: drive, but no, it just upgraded my Windows to the latest version without any input from me or any problems at all. My advice if you’re still using 23H2 or 24H2 and don’t get any updates: just download the Installation Assistant, launch it and let it do its thing.

The next issue was my Secure Boot certificates. The current certificates expire in June 2026, even though I have a relatively new PC, mine were set to expire which meant I had to update them somehow. I thought having updated Windows meant it would just update my certificates, but I ran Windows update and it had nothing for me. I think updating my BIOS would install these new Secure Boot certificates, but I’m not ready to do that just yet (and I’m scared!), so I was wondering if there was another way.

After asking some questions on Gemini, I found out I can force the update of my Secure Boot certificates by going into a Windows PowerShell (as an administrator!!!) and typing the following two commands:

reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\SecureBoot /v AvailableUpdates /t REG_DWORD /d 0x5944 /f

Start-ScheduledTask -TaskName "\Microsoft\Windows\PI\Secure-Boot-Update"

After that, I rebooted the PC and checked my Windows Security app (Device Security) confirming the certificates had been updated successfully with the message ‘Secure Boot is on and all required certificate updates have been applied’. You may need to reboot a couple of times for the update to take effect, if it didn’t work, try the ‘Start-ScheduledTask’ command again. Failing that, you will need to flash your BIOS to a new version.

And so, I can now breathe again, this has been a massive weight off my mind, my PC lives on for now, well that is until I get round to updating my BIOS, I’m sure it’ll be fine. Gulp.

BREAKING NEWS!!! Grim Dawn’s latest DLC, Fangs of Asterkarn releases July 23rd! I will definitely be checking it out, playing through act 8 and maybe even playing the new class!