Hey guys - December is over already! And so is 2022! Over! Already!
So here’s an update on all the stuff I’ve been up to this past month, and then we’ll finish with a quick look back over 2022.
I used to stream myself painting on Twitch back in 2018/2019, and it was a total blast. I stopped for a few reasons, but I’m glad to say I started again earlier this month! If you want to hang out with me while I paint, you can catch me over at twitch.tv/ChristopherCant
Unfortunately, this week I’m travelling so might not be able to stream so much, but I hope that from next week I’ll be live every weekday.
My Stream! Come hang out
As I expected, now that I only use an iPad Pro getting a decent stream set up wasn’t straightforward and I had to try out a bunch of options, before eventually finding an app designed for mobile streaming called Streamchamp.
The app has pretty much solved everything and now I have a decent enough stream. Coupling my iPad with a second smaller Huawei tablet to serve as the webcam, chat/notifications and web browser means I have a compact little setup that I should be able to take with me everywhere and provides viewers with a decent experience.
It’s been really fun to get back into streaming, especially hanging out with the old gang again. I missed it, but I had good reasons to change direction at the time - now I’m in a decent place to start it up again, and im coming at it now with a completely different perspective and from a different situation, so I look forward to streaming a bunch more.
I also want to get back into putting out content again, so a lot of this month was dedicated to cleaning up my various social media accounts, many of which were abandoned for years. There are still a few things to tidy up here and there, but everything's basically ready to go. Go to my links page and you'll find most of my social accounts.
I have a fairly well-defined and efficient content-plan at this point. I won't go into specifics as I think a dedicated article on content planning would be useful, but suffice to say that I should be able to post writing, images and video content to my sites, newsletters and a whole load of social platforms every week, without overwhelming myself as has happened before.
Eventually, I even want to add podcast content as well.
It’s a huge number of platforms and different formats, but I think my plan is solid and not even that strenuous. Let's see!
And thus VulgateCycle.com becomes FallofCamelot.com.
The Fall of Camelot header image, coming along nicely
Ultimately, while the Vulgate Cycle is a badass name, it has a couple of issues - the general internet browser has no clue what ‘Vulgate Cycle’ refers to, and will forget the name of the site very quickly.
It’s immediately obvious what ‘Fall of Camelot’ will be about, and it’s much easier to remember.
The point of the site is to create my own Arthurian tales, to weave into the established legends; the Vulgate Cycle refers to an already established group of Arthurian literature - we know it more commonly as the Lancelot-Grail cycle, and as you can guess from the name includes the stories introducing Lancelot and the Holy Grail to Arthurian myths.
Therefore, I can’t call my tales ‘the Vulgate Cycle’ and would have to call them something else - so why would I call the site VulgateCycle.com?
So it’s FallofCamelot.com, and I’ll call my additions something like the ‘Post-Camelot Cycle’, or just ‘The Fall of Camelot’.
We spent Christmas in Batumi, Georgia, on the Black Sea coast. It was the girlfriend’s first time seeing Christmas in a Christian country, so it was cool to be with her while she experienced it for the first time.
Unfortunately for her, Georgians dont seem to decorate for Christmas as early as they do in UK. They didnt have things set up in the centre until the Christmas weekend, and the cathedral wasn’t decorated at all. Its possible that Georgians typically celebrate from Christmas onward, instead of until Christmas like in UK, but unfortunately we will be leaving Georgia on the 3rd of January, so we wont really know.
Despite this, it was still pretty cool to see Christmas in Georgia, and the centre was highly decorated with lights.
2022 was a good year for me. In many ways I spent 2022 slowly getting back to the things I used to do before the COVID lockdowns and concentrating on SelfemployedArtist.com.
This year wasn’t my most productive year I’ve ever had, as about 6 months of this year was spent just trying to enjoy life a bit. However, the quieter periods gave me the clarity I needed to realise what I need to build next, and how all the different pieces will fit together.
In 2022 I visited Turkey, Armenia and Georgia. Each of them has their own charms - Izmir in Turkey was an exciting place, but a bit too overcrowded and I don’t particularly resonate with Turkish cuisine; Yerevan has beautiful architecture in the centre but ultimately it’s expensive for the area, but Batumi in Georgia has definitely been a favourite. It’s both modern and traditional, a good size and great value for money.
What a nice change travelling has been, after being cooped up for 2 years in a UK village during COVID lockdowns, and waiting for travelling risks to reduce.
Figuring out which way to take my personal project, the Nidean Legacy, was a big task. After the success of learning SEO and applying it to SelfemployedArtist.com in 2020/21, I spent a lot of time in 2022 trying to find a way to use SEO in my personal project.
With a lot of brainstorming, I decided to try out seeing if I could integrate mythology into my project, and create a site with informational articles on myths which would then lead people toward my own project.
I ended up publishing 3 separate sites about different mythologies with basic content on them, to try out which mythology might be the most promising and what might be the best approach to building them.
FateofGods.com, unpublished
Ultimately, I realised that my idea will work, but I’ll have to write a lot of content no matter which mythology I pick. I feel most connected to arthurian legends, so I decided to contentrate on that primarily and created FallofCamelot.com. The other 2 sites were unpublished and will be rolled into a single site to be released later on, called 'Book of the Gods'.
Nidean Legacy as a name is over, but very much will live on as these 2 successor projects.
Next week, I’ll go over plans for 2023. Hopefully going forward I’ll find a way to work on everything I used to do while still keeping up with my SEO content plans. But like I say, thats a conversation for next week - for now, Happy new year!
Hey guys - December is over already! And so is 2022! Over! Already!
So here’s an update on all the stuff I’ve been up to this past month, and then we’ll finish with a quick look back over 2022.
I used to stream myself painting on Twitch back in 2018/2019, and it was a total blast. I stopped for a few reasons, but I’m glad to say I started again earlier this month! If you want to hang out with me while I paint, you can catch me over at twitch.tv/ChristopherCant
Unfortunately, this week I’m travelling so might not be able to stream so much, but I hope that from next week I’ll be live every weekday.
My Stream! Come hang out
As I expected, now that I only use an iPad Pro getting a decent stream set up wasn’t straightforward and I had to try out a bunch of options, before eventually finding an app designed for mobile streaming called Streamchamp.
The app has pretty much solved everything and now I have a decent enough stream. Coupling my iPad with a second smaller Huawei tablet to serve as the webcam, chat/notifications and web browser means I have a compact little setup that I should be able to take with me everywhere and provides viewers with a decent experience.
It’s been really fun to get back into streaming, especially hanging out with the old gang again. I missed it, but I had good reasons to change direction at the time - now I’m in a decent place to start it up again, and im coming at it now with a completely different perspective and from a different situation, so I look forward to streaming a bunch more.
I also want to get back into putting out content again, so a lot of this month was dedicated to cleaning up my various social media accounts, many of which were abandoned for years. There are still a few things to tidy up here and there, but everything's basically ready to go. Go to my links page and you'll find most of my social accounts.
I have a fairly well-defined and efficient content-plan at this point. I won't go into specifics as I think a dedicated article on content planning would be useful, but suffice to say that I should be able to post writing, images and video content to my sites, newsletters and a whole load of social platforms every week, without overwhelming myself as has happened before.
Eventually, I even want to add podcast content as well.
It’s a huge number of platforms and different formats, but I think my plan is solid and not even that strenuous. Let's see!
And thus VulgateCycle.com becomes FallofCamelot.com.
The Fall of Camelot header image, coming along nicely
Ultimately, while the Vulgate Cycle is a badass name, it has a couple of issues - the general internet browser has no clue what ‘Vulgate Cycle’ refers to, and will forget the name of the site very quickly.
It’s immediately obvious what ‘Fall of Camelot’ will be about, and it’s much easier to remember.
The point of the site is to create my own Arthurian tales, to weave into the established legends; the Vulgate Cycle refers to an already established group of Arthurian literature - we know it more commonly as the Lancelot-Grail cycle, and as you can guess from the name includes the stories introducing Lancelot and the Holy Grail to Arthurian myths.
Therefore, I can’t call my tales ‘the Vulgate Cycle’ and would have to call them something else - so why would I call the site VulgateCycle.com?
So it’s FallofCamelot.com, and I’ll call my additions something like the ‘Post-Camelot Cycle’, or just ‘The Fall of Camelot’.
We spent Christmas in Batumi, Georgia, on the Black Sea coast. It was the girlfriend’s first time seeing Christmas in a Christian country, so it was cool to be with her while she experienced it for the first time.
Unfortunately for her, Georgians dont seem to decorate for Christmas as early as they do in UK. They didnt have things set up in the centre until the Christmas weekend, and the cathedral wasn’t decorated at all. Its possible that Georgians typically celebrate from Christmas onward, instead of until Christmas like in UK, but unfortunately we will be leaving Georgia on the 3rd of January, so we wont really know.
Despite this, it was still pretty cool to see Christmas in Georgia, and the centre was highly decorated with lights.
2022 was a good year for me. In many ways I spent 2022 slowly getting back to the things I used to do before the COVID lockdowns and concentrating on SelfemployedArtist.com.
This year wasn’t my most productive year I’ve ever had, as about 6 months of this year was spent just trying to enjoy life a bit. However, the quieter periods gave me the clarity I needed to realise what I need to build next, and how all the different pieces will fit together.
In 2022 I visited Turkey, Armenia and Georgia. Each of them has their own charms - Izmir in Turkey was an exciting place, but a bit too overcrowded and I don’t particularly resonate with Turkish cuisine; Yerevan has beautiful architecture in the centre but ultimately it’s expensive for the area, but Batumi in Georgia has definitely been a favourite. It’s both modern and traditional, a good size and great value for money.
What a nice change travelling has been, after being cooped up for 2 years in a UK village during COVID lockdowns, and waiting for travelling risks to reduce.
Figuring out which way to take my personal project, the Nidean Legacy, was a big task. After the success of learning SEO and applying it to SelfemployedArtist.com in 2020/21, I spent a lot of time in 2022 trying to find a way to use SEO in my personal project.
With a lot of brainstorming, I decided to try out seeing if I could integrate mythology into my project, and create a site with informational articles on myths which would then lead people toward my own project.
I ended up publishing 3 separate sites about different mythologies with basic content on them, to try out which mythology might be the most promising and what might be the best approach to building them.
FateofGods.com, unpublished
Ultimately, I realised that my idea will work, but I’ll have to write a lot of content no matter which mythology I pick. I feel most connected to arthurian legends, so I decided to contentrate on that primarily and created FallofCamelot.com. The other 2 sites were unpublished and will be rolled into a single site to be released later on, called 'Book of the Gods'.
Nidean Legacy as a name is over, but very much will live on as these 2 successor projects.
Next week, I’ll go over plans for 2023. Hopefully going forward I’ll find a way to work on everything I used to do while still keeping up with my SEO content plans. But like I say, thats a conversation for next week - for now, Happy new year!
