Weekly Vlog Thing #1

This is basically a transcript of the text from my new talking vlog: 

Today I'm going to try something a little bit different. I'm not working on a project - actually I'm working on about 10 projects simultaneously as you know and I never get any finished, but I'm just going to talk at you. Now I used to do this in the beginning of this channel when it was called Keef Talks and it was like semi-scripted and actually pretty hard work. But this is pretty much unscripted - I've just got a list of topics and I'm going to tell you about things that have been going on in the last week so it hopefully could be a weekly thing if I can squeeze it into my skedoolie.

I was going to shoot this yesterday, Sunday afternoon, but the sun came out and so did all the kids and they've been sort of locked away for quite a while so it was like a little cluster bomb exploded - all these small earthlings playing football and screaming and shouting and having a great time. So Mr Grumpy, well I'm doing it now - it's Monday so I'm pretending it's Sunday so I won't tell you what I saw this morning or anything about today except I'm here doing it.

OK, wittering, that's what I'm doing, I'm wittering. It's been an interesting week it started well especially weather-wise this being Britain we had proper spring weather which means all four seasons usually in one day. We had a couple of days of very hot sunshine that might have been the week before. Anyway, in the low 20s Celsius which is y'know, scorchio for Yorkshire - it doesn't get a lot hotter than that. I love it, but then a few days later we had snow a couple of days of snow one of the days it settled proper. Also yesterday, Sunday, we had an unexpected flurry of hail and that still didn't stop the kids playing but yeah it's just been mad mad mad.

But the main news of the week is that things keep breaking - our World's Sexiest Kettle mark II that broke a couple of weeks ago and we had to get replacement. Mrs Planet said she would choose it because y'know, I always go for the glass ones which are okay till they start scaling up and then they don't look great. So now we've got just an ordinary stainless steel jug kettle which is fine, it's fine, except the controls to open the lid and switch it on are reversed from what I'm used to so every time I go to switch it on I open the lid. I expect I'll get used to that just in time for us to have to buy another one. Also things keep breaking - my inkjet printer decided that after five years of faithful service it wasn't going to do any more. I wouldn't mind but I only just bought ink cartridges about a month ago.

But when you switch it on you get the error light. It's just on. It's not flashing. If it was flashing that would tell you what the problem was - it can flash any number of times up to 17 and each one of those has a different meaning. But if it's just on, canon have nothing to say about that. Other people do have something to say about that and it goes something like 'it's knackered'. So here we go, built-in obsolescence. Well maybe it's not - five years is OK and it was a very very cheap printer. It only cost, I don't know, about 30 pounds because this is the thing with printers - you're not paying for the printer you're paying for the ink. The ink costs a fortune so as soon as I've got some pennies I'm going to get a replacement where you subscribe to the ink. Now I'll tell you more about that next week when I've done it.

So that's two things that are broke and the third thing that's broken is this beast - well it's not a beast, it's a Zoom H1 digital audio recorder. Basically it's a digital tape recorder. So first of all the battery compartment cover won't close - it's lost something, something snapped off so it won't stay closed. But worse than that you put a battery in and I know that's a fresh battery and I've tested it, it's full of juice, but it will not power the device so that's useless. However it can be powered by a funny shaped USB plug and I've got a few of those because if you ever buy an Arduino it'll come with a little cable like this and it will be 30cm long which is no good. So then I had to buy a two metre extension cable, for that to power this when it's up over my head. So that was OK for one video. I was going to use it for this one and when I switched it on it won't read the card, the memory card. It just doesn't recognize that it's there and so it won't record anything. So I am annoyed about that because I don't actually like this machine, I don't like the way it's designed, I don't like the switch, the way the switches work. I just don't like it but a new one - and it won't be a Zoom because well it just won't, I mean I just don't like the way they design their products. But whatever it is will cost at least 100 pounds which right now I don't have so I'm back to the Rode mic which has been, well the mic hasn't been giving problems but the extension cable to connect it to the camera up to three metres away has developed a buzz. But I've found a way to maybe reduce that buzz anyway.

Ah serious wittering. I am annoyed at the, well, I've always been annoyed at the concept of stuff not lasting forever. And the other concept of stuff being deliberately engineered not to last forever because if you do that and I said I won't buy another Zoom on principle because this should last forever. I shouldn't have to buy another digital audio recorder and I have taken to keeping receipts and things these days just in case something breaks while it's still in warranty. The new kettle by the way has a three year warranty so we'll see how that goes.

We've got some good stuff on the telly this week. I don't normally like to watch more than one or two hours of TV per night there's other things to do and I'd generally just fall asleep on the sofa if I'm on it for too long so that's a waste of time. What we were looking forward to was the finals week of Masterchef, which is always pretty gripping you've got down to the last four and then the last three and they are absolute genius level cooks by this stage and there's very little to choose between them. And it's all down to you know do they cut their finger on the night. So that's something that I've been looking forward to for weeks. Then another thing we've started watching is This Is My House - this is a series on BBC One hosted by Stacy Dooley in which four unknown to us people, are in this, usually quite smart house and they all claim that it belongs to them and there's a panel of celebrities who ask them questions and try to figure out who actually lives in that house. And they're not actually very good at it so far because the contestants are excellent liars. It sounds totally barmy but it's actually brilliant brilliant stuff so yeah, I look forward to that.

Finally an old bloke died on Friday. Prince Philip the Queen's husband - 99 years old - he's just had a month in hospital so it wasn't entirely a surprise but well the BBC just went completely overboard. They cancelled all of their programs on that night - that day and that night and the next morning, 24 hours rolling coverage of just people saying 'oh he was a great bloke isn't it sad' on BBC One and BBC Two and they also cancelled all local radio stations, all the different radio stations playing the same thing and, well talk about overkill. They even had to set up a special complaints form on their website just to handle the sheer volume of people saying we don't want wall-to-wall coverage of this on all your channels it's just completely unwarranted. And it is. But this is the pressure that the the BBC are under from the government who, y'know, basically want them to go away and die. Sorry that was a bit political - I'm not doing politics on this channel.

OK also we watched the film The Avengers Assemble, which is one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that we've kind of avoided or just missed. We just haven't watched any of them and it was brilliant. Absolutely loved it so that's opened the door to y'know, a couple of dozen films that we might watch in the future. However what I wanted to watch on Friday night was the final of Masterchef but it was cancelled because some bloke died and the BBC haven't actually as of yet said when it will be shown. So that's annoying but things are looking up. We're into stage two of unlocking the lockdown on Monday - that's today but I'm not talking about it which means that non-essential shops and hairdressers can open and uh yes I'll be playing a visit this week I think. I haven't actually made a booking because blokes don't do that but we'll see.

Right so that was 15 minutes of non-stop wittering. I think you've had enough, I know I have. So you take care and uh I'll try and do this again next week when more interesting stuff will have happened. Thanks for watching see you next time