Welcome back guys, thought I’d write up a big blogpost of what I’ve been up to over July.

First up - happy birthday to the Yogscast, the channel is now 18 years old. I can remember vividly watching their WoW videos for the first time, I wasn’t very impressed at the time. But once they started playing Minecraft I became a dyed-in-the-wool, certified Yognau(gh)t!

Their new videos don’t get anywhere near the views they used to get, mostly because they’ve moved away from Minecraft and become more professional, less offensive and I have to say.. woke, I really wish the old Yogscast would come back, but I know it won’t.

We’ve had yet another heatwave, it’s getting ridiculous. I hate it when it’s hot, mainly because I know my PC is struggling, I do like it when it’s sunny though, don’t get me wrong. I haven’t been out the house at all to enjoy the weather, I’ve been stuck inside in my room working and playing on my PC.

There have been wildfires in the UK, there was one near Manchester, Peak District I think, a huge plume of smoke covered Manchester, you could smell the smoke, it was horrible, all because some twats had a barbecue or were playing with fireworks.

Grim Dawn’s third and FINAL expansion - ‘Fangs of Asterkarn’ released on the 23rd, I’ve recorded my first video questing through act 8 on my level 100 Primal Strike Warder. People have mentioned the game is much harder now, I’m a little worried I won’t be able to finish the expansion on ultimate difficulty.

I also want to check out the Berserker class, maybe for a mini series on the gaming channel.

I’ve been levelling a new character - a pets Ritualist, I am levelling as aether pets with skeletons. I want to level the most OP builds, but every time I do it gets nerfed or a new build comes out. I love Grim Dawn.

I know I’ve been saying this for ages, but I definitely want to get a subscription to Epidemic Sound - they have a plan that covers up to 3 YouTube channels which is perfect for me as I now have 3 channels! I have been using music from Pixabay for my electronics videos, but a lot of the music is content IDed and I’m worried one day the authors may copyright claim my videos.

I have recently made my ‘third’ (I will actually refer to it as my second channel even though it’s techincally my fourth!) YouTube channel and it will be for anything that isn’t gaming or electronics related. It’s currently called ‘ChrisElisonTech’, although I may change it. It’s going to be all about programming, web development, Linux, PC hardware and software, unboxings and photography. I’m thinking of just renaming it to ‘Chris Elison’.

The first video will be about Java programming, I’ve set myself the challenge of recreating an old college assignment from memory, although I am allowed to use Google, but no AI! The videos will be out soon. I want to get a little backlog going and ensure that the project works before I put it out.

I’ve been playing with my Linux virtual machine, I’ve installed tmux and managed to apply a theme to nvim, it looks pretty nice!

Google Earth desktop is being discontinued, I am devastated, I use Google Earth a lot to explore places and now they’re killing the dsektop app. I’ve tried using the web version it’s shit. I will keep hold of my install .exes and hope I can still use the desktop version for some time.

I’ve been playing Diablo 3 (Barbarian of course) for season 39, playing Wrath of the Wastes Whirlwind Barb, been having a lot of fun, just need to get a few more items for my build.

I’ve been playing WoW off-camera, I’ve been trying to get the trading post mount, I had to do dungeons, world quests, quests and kill raid bosses, I got the mount now, I will show it off in my next WoW video.

I’ve begun questing in Dragonblight in my WoW Paladin playthrough, next episode I record (193) will be the 4th anniversary episode!

I had internet problems while recording episode 192, I had to restart the router, my ping was atrocious and it interrupted recording an episode.

A few days ago I had a crash while starting WoW, it locked up and my PC rebooted automatically. Unfortunately it’s reset my WoW UI settings! The UI scale is completely wrong now, it’s so frustrating, from now on I will backup my WoW settings.

By the way, I usually have these settings enabled in WoW which slightly improve the graphics:

• /console set ResampleAlwaysSharpen 1
• /console set renderscale 0.999
• I’ve also set my contrast to 69%!

The WoW Paladin series is still going of course, here’s the latest video where I am currently up to Howling Fjord in Wrath of the Lich King!

Finally, I’ve been following this game’s development on Twitter/X for several years and yesterday I finally got to play Forsaken Realms: Vahrin’s Call, a beautiful looking action RPG developed by Titan Roc right here in the UK! It’s heavily influenced by the Fable games.

I’ve only played 45 minutes of the game, basically the intro, I can’t wait to play more.

And that’s it, August here we come. I’ve renewed the domain for this website and another domain I have for 2 years, so I’m glad that’s done, and I’ve written two blogs for CEDUK. Right, I think I’ll get down to editing some videos now!