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Hold On To Your Butts (Content Update)

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fa3e19ffd513583d5f7ae60382262d9a0505d72589cd2374af2b2a7de75e057dI’ve been vague Tweeting from the Some Other Castle Twitter account about this site because I’m kind of a jerky pants and enjoy riling up the Internet. Since I’ve got this delightful blog space it might be time to tell you guys exactly what’s going on here.  The Some Other Castle website is getting a redesign and relaunching! It’s going to be a bit different than it was in the past so stay with me while I explain everything.

First let’s get the bad news out of the way. As I discussed in a previous post Some Other Podcast will not be returning. That show was a product of Leah and myself. I’m going to archive that thing and in a future post I’ll tell you guys how to acquire the episodes should you want to hold them in your podcast vault forever. I realize the fact that SOP is not returning will bum a lot of you out and I’m sorry about that. I’m hoping you’ll at least give this new project a shot before you write the site off forever.

The good news is that the SOP sized void in this site will be filled by not one but two new podcasts. First up is the Ranting After Dark tisigPodcast (aka the RADCast). This show is going to have a similar format to SOP. It will be 2-3 people per show talking largely about video games with food, beverages, and nonsense tangents thrown into the mix. The difference is I now have a pool of folks to pull from instead of just two standing co-hosts. This setup allows us to avoid the issue where we are constantly talking about the same two games week to week. I can pull people together that have an active interest in the news of the week or the game of the minute. It provides diversity, freshness, and variety to the banter and breadth of topics we can touch on. The other major benefit is that it removes some of the scheduling stress. Ultimately any two people from our pool can be on the show which means if I’m tied up or someone else is there are enough folks to get together. I also have some editing help in the group which is a delight. RADCast should be recording in the next week and I’m hoping to launch the first episode over the weekend if all goes well.

The second podcast in the mix is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. Thanks to the help of Justin from Last Save Loaded it will be called the Invitation Only Podcast. The premise here is super simple, it’s myself and one guest and we are going to talk about whatever we want. Originally the goal was to restrict the discussion to one single topic but I like the idea of organic conversation between myself and a guest. The delightful thing about this show is that it doesn’t have to be about video games. I can reach out to all kinds of people and I have a place to put these shows that don’t necessarily fit into our main podcast feed. It lets me have guests on without disrupting the normal podcast flow. The first episode of this show was recorded last year and I slept on editing it. Well it’s nearly complete and I’ll drop it very soon. It was a conversation almost completely about Earthbound. It was a happy making experience for me and I’m super pumped to finally release it.

Now that we’ve talked about audio let’s talk video. We’ve got a Twitch channel and a YouTube channel ready to go. There will be Twitch streams from various members of the staff including myself and there will be recorded videos and maybe even some whole game play throughs up on the YouTube channel. You’ll get to see and hear a bunch of us play games and that is rad. I don’t have a firm start date for video content but I will drop a post and some Tweets when we have that figured out. For now do me a personal favor and follow the Twitch and YouTube channels by clicking the links below. I threw a link to our Twitter account in the mix as well because you like nonsense and I like Tweeting nonsense from that account.

Some Other Castle Twitch

Some Other Castle YouTube

Some Other Castle Twitter

To Recap, in the next few weeks you will see:

  • An episode of Invitation Only
  • An episode of RADCast
  • Video content on Twitch and YouTube
  • An “About” page describing the staff and where you can find them on the Internet
  • A redesigned SOC
  • A lot of Tweets from me that include GIFs

Thanks for taking the time to read my WALL OF WORDS OMFG. I’m really excited about this site, the podcasts, and the super great group of folks that I have somehow talked into participating in my nonsense. I’m going to do my very best to make sure we produce consistent, fun content that helps you guys get through the day. I can’t say enough how lucky I feel to have all the support I’ve been shown over the years. That support combined with some wonderful friends is what has given me the push to finally make this happen.

Now that all my emotions are out of the damn way it’s time to return to regularly scheduled nonsense……EVERYBODY DANCE NOW!

q3e87zR

Host Migration and Moving Forward

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Take a deep breath. I know a lot of folks see something new post to this site and lose their minds because of how much they want the podcast to return. Don’t lose your mind, leave that to Grumpy Cat.

Some Other Podcast is still not returning. That part hasn’t changed. Some other things are changing so let’s talk about those.

 

Hosting migration: My wonderful friend Carolyn has been gracious enough to host SOC for quite a while via her hosting plan. She is currently migrating all of her sites to another service and in that process I’m taking control of SOC hosting again. Over the next week I’ll be moving the site hosting and sorting out what plan makes the most sense moving forward.

Developing a Plan: The way I see it I have three options for this website; 1) Kill it off all together 2) Pay for hosting but let it sit unused as an archive or 3) Develop some new content for this thing and move forward. I would really like to pursue option 3. I want to use this site to post my text reviews, link to YouTube and Streaming videos, and most likely start another podcast. Some Other Podcast will always exist as its own entity and I won’t be touching it. If I start a new show it will have a new name and I will leave SOP alone. If hosting can support it I will leave the episodes up on this site so those of you who love them can access them. I will most likely remove them from iTunes so I can reuse the feed but we’ll see if/when the time comes.

I’m having conversations with some folks because if I do move forward with more audio content I would like to have a pool of different people to work with. Multiple personalities and tastes would be refreshing and give the show a different feel. I’m still working on details and deciding what exactly I want to do here but I wanted to make you all aware of what was in my head. For now I’m going to move forward with migrating the site and hosting it on a modest plan. When I have some content details to share I’ll let you all know what precisely is going on.

What I would really love is some feedback. Send me a message on Twitter or ideally post in the comments here and let me know what kinds of things you would like to see. What did you like about the podcast format previously? What kind of streaming/video forward do you guys like and want to see? How long is the optimal podcast length for you? Do you care about text content or does it not matter to you? The more information I can pull out of you guys the easier it is for me to marry what I want to do with what people actually care about. That has the best potential to make us all happy!

Thank you for all the support you guys have given. I can’t tell you all enough how much your kind words and silly messages mean. Meeting and interacting with people has always been the reason I put myself out there online and you folks have all made it feel more than worthwhile.

State of the Podcast (A.K.A. What’s Going On)

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Well hello there, Internet. I’ve gotten a ton of questions, comments, and concerns from you lovely folks in the last few months so I think it’s time for me to dig in and write a post for you guys to tell you where this thing is at and what’s going on.

For the foreseeable future Some Other Castle isn’t going to be producing any new episodes or video content. I’m not going to sit here and say this show is never coming back again because I don’t really know if that’s true. We’ve had long hiatuses before and have come back so this doesn’t mean we’re gone forever but it does mean we’re done for now.

The truth of the matter is that I’m personally exhausted. The combo of feeling burned out with podcasting, the resurgence of some of my other hobbies, bookmarking more time for my family, taking a new job, and just kind of wanting to play games instead of talking about them produces the recipe for someone who just doesn’t want to record things anymore. The scheduling of recording time and then editing, uploading, monitoring, and even paying for hosting the content just stopped being enjoyable for me. I needed to step away and reset, play games to enjoy them and do my own thing for a while.

I’m going to keep this site up for the time being and I will be archiving the entire WordPress installation with all content in case it does get pulled down. That sets me up for an easier time if we decide to come back. I will leave the twitter account for the show active so if anything changes you’ll hear about it on Twitter via that account.

I’m personally going to be doing my own thing on Twitch and Youtube for a while. I’ll stream games, interact with you guys, and post archives and other Let’s Play type of videos. If you’d like to follow along all that information is below as well as my personal twitter account. I’m still dancing with the idea of doing Extra Life 2015. As that develops I’ll Tweet about it.

Streaming:  www.twitch.tv/etdragon

Youtube Archives:  www.youtube.com/user/etdragonLP

Twitter:  www.twitter.com/etdragon

Leah is still hanging out on Twitter via www.twitter.com/Improbable42 as well.

I know you guys miss us and every time I get a nice comment about the show it truly makes me smile. Hopefully at some point in the future Leah and I can reconvene to bring you guys some more content but for now the show is off the air. Thank you to all of our followers and fans who have helped along the way and who have listened to our nonsense. You’ve truly made this fun. I always feel bad having to put this show on hiatus because I know how much you guys dig the insanity. Definitely interact with us on social media. I’m frequently available and will do my best to answer and questions you guys have.

Again thank you for all your support. This show wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable without the community that loved it.

 

-Elaine

Some Other Audio Content

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We’ve had a few requests for audio-only versions of the stuff we put out in video form, and we now have a means of ripping the tracks and releasing them on our feed for you guys so that you can listen at work or wherever else you might do such a thing. So, the question is this: what might people want to see? Right now we’re trying to gauge demand, because while it’s not a terribly complicated process, it IS a little time-consuming. Not that we mind! We just don’t want to deluge you with unnecessary file-age.

Let us know in the comments, or email us: someotherpodcast@gmail.com, what you want to see/hear on the feed. Building Character Persona runs? Extra Life stuff? Anything else? Thanks for the input, everyone!

Merchandise is a go!

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I’m pretty excited to be finally writing this post. Leah and I have discussed the idea of making t-shirts and other miscellaneous nonsense available to you guys for a really long time but we never pulled the trigger. Part of the reason for that was many of the iterations of our logo just weren’t well suited for that sort of business. The current logo designed by Mik from The Fanboys Lunchcast fame, is perfectly suited to shirts and other hot merchandise. A million thanks to him for making that logo and providing it to me a thousand different ways. He’s a pretty rad guy.

OF COURSE THIS HAPPENED.
OF COURSE THIS HAPPENED

Now you can sport a little piece of Some Other Castle on the daily. We have two shirts available for you to purchase as well as a polo, a hoodie, and a hot coffee mug for well, hot coffee mostly. I won’t judge you for putting whiskey in there though. That’s what I plan to use it for. You can find the storefront by following this link.

A few things to note about this storefront of ours. First, you can put any of the shirt designs (and the hoodie logo design) on any other piece of apparel that Zazzle sells. You can also order a different color than the stock ones we chose. You want a baby onsie with #HEEEYYY on it? Yeah you can do that. I will personally be ordering shirts for both of my children. Second, 5% of all sales from this stuff technically go to us. I’m going to take every penny that we make from that and donate it directly to our Extra Life campaign this year. I know some of this stuff is a touch expensive and adding that commission on top of it makes it more so but I want to pull a little extra coin in to help Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

If you folks have any other designs you would like to see made up drop a comment in this post so I can track ideas. If an idea is rad enough I will make it happen for you folks. If you buy some gear make sure to take an action shot and send it to us so we can see how rad you guys look in our logo. Share the storefront, buy some shirts, and get ready for new episodes and other hot nonsense from us.