quantifica: january

Hey team! This is quantifica, my new, monthly number-crunch. There will be another component coming in a day or two. For now: let's look at the stats.

MANAHOURS

This month I released The Reverse Gish Gallop. Production-wise, the illustrations took the lion's share of the hours (as is common for Alt-Right Playbook vids), but a comparatively smaller share of the mana, being generally the least taxing part of the process when judged by the hour. Audio would appear to be the most taxing per-hour, though that's less to do with being particularly hard (it's not) but that I have gotten very fast at recording and editing audio, especially with a script as small as this. A 2-mana job is gonna seem taxing if it only takes 20 minutes! That leaves editing in the mid-zone - with the number of effects I was trying out on this video, that's where a lot of the energy was sunk. Worth remembering, when I'm illustrating with a bunch of cool effects in mind: bro, you gotta animate that later! Editor Ian was not always happy with Illustrator Ian's decisions.

FINANCIALS

Numbers redacted (obviously), but my AdSense payout was far above prediction! (The math on AdSense is gonna be weird for this - the payment I get in January is for ads that were seen in December, so this is indicative of how well Didoing did, not The Reverse Gish Gallop.) (This means I already know, roughly, what February's payout is gonna be, and can't do anything to change it if it's under target.) Patreon payout a bit below target, sadly; this may correct itself in time, Patreon tends to say it's finished charging everyone and then have a few pledges keep trickling in over the next few days. This marks the second time in the last 6 months that an increase in patronage has been followed by a lower payout due to declined pledges! Declines are usually between $5 and $20 each month, but, like clockwork, any time I get an influx of new patrons I end up with $70 or more in declines. Last time this was because Patreon hired a new third party payment processor who screwed the pooch, and I anticipate getting a similar email this time. Maybe it'll get sorted in time and the pledges will go through; fingers crossed. For the time being, though, this means not only as the Patreon income not grown as much as I'd hoped, it's actually shrunk since last month, even though the amount pledged is up. *sigh* This is what relying on Patreon is like.

But, thanks to a nontrivial check from Nebula revshare (which is usually very much trivial) and a hefty paycheck for finishing the freelance gig, we are at nearly double the target for January! So there's plenty of cause to celebrate!

BINGOS

I had one thing from my bingo card scheduled for last weekend and then canceled it cuz I was too fucking exhausted. So, for now, the bingo card remains untouched!

JANUARY MINI MIX

A little curated list from this month's musical discoveries! Track one is (and will always be) my most-listened to song of the month according to Spotify Pie, no matter how embarrassing it may be. The other five are a mix of songs in heavy rotation and recent favs.

[BE ADVISED: if you do not have a Spotify account, this link will be randomly seeded with extra songs and play on shuffle. I'm sorry.]

I Wanna Fuck You Till I'm Dead

- discovery queue

El Pico

- found the band on discovery queue, listened to the album, liked this song more

Backseat Freestyle

- from twitter recs when I asked for concept albums

De Selby (Part 2)

- rec from a partner

Bilingue

- playlist from a partner

Brenninsteinn

- rereading TheLitCritGuy's entry on Kveikur from his Sigur Ros retrospective Hope Against Hope