It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….wait. Wrong page!
Its summertime!
There are a lot of things I want to chat about in this blog, as well as talk about things that are and will be happening in the future. First things first.
Where have I been?
Work has picked up in ways that I did not foresee. Also some there were some family situations that presented themselves that really ate up huge chunks of my spare time so I wasn’t able to work on the site, let alone my cars in the meantime. But fortunately, situations have begun to resolve, work has reached a stable momentum, and I find myself with free time again! Also, my home office is getting quite cramped with all the boxes of projects that have been piling up, so I need to get cracking again!
My time away hasn’t been all work and no fun, though. I have had the opportunity to help a couple of followers with their car troubles. Thankfully I was able to help them sort out their issues and they are happily enjoying their cars! Part of the reason I wanted to start making videos was to be able to help people, it is amazing how the internet grants people the power to help others, even when they are miles away. Helping others also helps keep me motivated to continue working on my own projects and creating videos. I am also pretty jazzed that the people I helped are rocking Five Five Garage decals on their cars! It is an awesome feeling to see my logo out in the wild! Imagine my surprise when I saw my logo show up in a Gingium video on YouTube! Slowly but surely, I am getting out there.
Currently, I am working really hard on the website. Unfortunately, the plugin that was used for Instagram has decided to stop working, so for the meantime, I have had to remove the Instagram picture feed from the site. The links to my Instagram page are still there and working and my website admin is currently working on a fix, so the picture feed will be back!
There is a backload of review articles that I have been meaning to write, they have been sitting on my hard drive for a while and I have finally become motivated enough to finish them. Moving forward I intend to write more articles than videos, as I can create the articles faster than making video content. Videos will still be made, I won’t stop doing that, but I am going to try to write more. Some projects I can expound upon better with the written word, sometimes key points and explanations don’t translate well to video. Writing them out, I can give better explanation and visual examples that would make a video too long to watch in one sitting. Eventually I may even be able to sync articles with video releases which would make my life a whole lot easier!
Videos are currently being edited as well, so look forward to some new vids soon. I have some older Trailblazer vids that I found on a memory card I forgot about, a couple of Mazdaspeed 3 vids, and a couple of Miata install videos. There is many hours of video already recorded, all I need now is some time to edit them.
Moving forward, I am going to try to expand my knowledge base this summer by taking a class! I have always wanted to learn to weld (properly). Usually I would just buy whatever I wanted to learn about and just go out in the garage and tinker with it until I gained a proficiency in its use. But this time around, I decided to take a formal class on welding, I could just buy a welder and go at it, but I figured that the money spent on instruction will be money well spent. The class covers SMAW (arc/stick), MIG, TIG, and OA (oxy-acetlyene), so I can get a feel for using all different types. Right now I am planning on buying a MIG welder, but after the class? Who knows, maybe I will just buy a TIG!
Hopefully that gets everyone caught up on things happening around the Garage. Hopefully you all are out there enjoying the weather and your cars, I have a couple more articles to churn out and then I will get out there myself.
Until next time!
-Randy
Gingium Battle of the Builds Ep 1 (55 Garage decal @ 0:18)
