Before we went on holiday, I went through a phase where I became very enthusiastic about various vlog opportunities that were popping into my mind. This was a bit of a surprise to me, because ever since I had become enamoured of the idea, and technology involved in vlogging, the one thing I was severely lacking, was what to talk about.
For that period of time ideas were quite literally popping out of my head, and before long, I had a list of potential candidates, that would evelove as time went on, not quite limitless, but good enough to keep me going for a while.
Then we went on holiday. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved, and really enjoyed the holiday. Even the brief moments of terror that included my now intense dislike of flying, the fear, as we crossed the border from Canada to the USA, that we might get turfed off the Amtrack train, because my wife lacked an I-94 (mine was in place, and in order) of course, I said that if she were taken off the train I would get off with her, even though it looked like we were in the miiddle of nowhere (looking at a map, we weren’t that far from civilisation). Luckily, Elayne was not turfed off the train and we enjoyed our five days in New York. Until our last night in the New Yorker Hotel, when we attempted to finalise our checkin for the transatlantic crossing. The ways we realised that we had forgotten to do the online checkin within the appropriate timeframe were (Sorry, it’s 23:58 I had to publish to preserve my posting count) twofold; Firstly, the checkin website wouldn’t recognise Elaynes log in credentials, the second was when we checked on the status of the cruise using the cruise number, the computer calmly told us “The Queen Mary 2 has already sailed”. Now, as I was looking at the Marine Traffic Service, and QM2’s AIS (automated Identification System) was telling us that she was off the coast of the USA, inbound to New York, definitely not outbound (we were especially worried, as we have a reputation for getting dates and departure times, and locations so very wrong). Luckily, I found a number for the cruise line, and given that it was 22:30, rang it with no expectation that it would be answered, and thanks to American Customer Service, the liine was picked up. The very kind lady at the other end was as bemused as we were, but at least she could confirm that the ship had not sailed, and that we were booked on the ship. her suggestion was; go to the cruise terminal, early, and plead ignorance with the cruise staff.
Obviously, we didn’t have a problem, thanks to a couple of incredibly patient american ladies. We got home safely.
Almost two months after the holiday, and here I am thinking about what I had been thinking about before we went on holiday, and I now realise that I had not lost the enthusaism that had suffused me in those heady times of unlimited vlog topics, I had forgotten the enthusiasm.
And so, we arrive at the title of today’s post, The ideas factory. This is a spreadsheet that contains a list of my ideas for projects (mostly vlogs), and I have it set up so that I can say to ChatGPT; “Please add that to the Ideas Factory” and it updates the spreadsheet. Quitie amazing to watch it in real time.
I quite enjoyed writing this post. As for the ideas in the factory – Hopefully, you’ll start finding out about them. At some point.
