Stevie’s Blog

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!

Podcast Episode 4 covers my last few days, feel free to listen below.

My Christmas dinner was pretty epic, along with an amazing caramel cake and a gingerbread tree!

Audio Transcript - AI generated so it might not be perfect -

Hey everyone, welcome to podcast episode four.

It is a little later than planned.

I had planned to do one during Christmas at least, but due to various time constraints, obviously because it’s Christmas, I didn’t get around to doing one.

So today’s my first opportunity to catch everyone up a little bit.

So let’s go back a few days to Christmas Eve Eve and talk about how I’ve done a good job this year.

Historically, I would leave wrapping my presents until the very last minute.

It’d be an activity that I do on Christmas Eve, as late as possible, get the wrapping done, and all’s good.

And I have a little tradition that when I do wrap my presents, I put a film on called Love Actually.

My goal is to wrap the presents before that film is finished.

If I have, I’ve done a great job.

If not, I’ve taken too long.

And I am not keen on wrapping.

To be fair, I’m kind of on the fence of, is wrapping even worth it?

Because you spend all that time and effort, all that wrapping paper, et cetera, and it lasts a couple of minutes, if that, whilst people are unwrapping it.

So is it worth all that effort for it to then disappear really quickly?

I’m not sure.

Maybe I’m being a little bit too grinchy.

I’m the worst wrapper, M&M style as well.

I don’t like doing anything complicated, anything round, anything with unusual ends.

For me, it’s gotta be square.

It’s gotta be solid.

It’s gotta be easy to do.

I even looked on Instagram for wrapping paper tips and people that are really good at it.

And I tried to follow one where you essentially twist the present to a diagonal if you’ve not got enough room for it to meet in the middle.

And if you twist it, you then have enough room to make it meet in the middle.

And I tried it and it started out really well, but then I was still left with a gap at the end that I just had to bodge back together, essentially.

So yeah, I’m not keen on wrapping at all, but absolutely pleased that I managed to do it a day earlier than normal and managed to watch Love Actually probably for the 20th time.

So I think it’s about 20 years old now, that film.

So yeah, all good.

And then for me, Christmas Day is always a relatively quiet affair, pretty good.

And for me, it’s all about the food, really.

I always find writing lists really difficult when people ask me what I want.

It’s like, I’m old enough to buy whatever I want whenever I want it.

For me to wait till Christmas, it’s just not a concept that I and many people follow anymore.

So writing a list is really difficult to do, but I did manage to come up with a few things on my list this year.

Aftershave being one of them, a little air card tracker for my wallet that I wanted, like an Apple AirTag, but it’s like a credit card shape.

So I’ve got one of those, which is good.

And then just the standard chocolate, alcohol, et cetera.

I did get a really good selection box, to be fair.

It had like a little mini box of milk tray in it as well, along with all about the other standards, like a 12 bar and I kind of remember a whisper.

The normal stuff that’s in a selection box that has totally disappeared out of my mind now.

So yeah, that was all good, but I just enjoy the food at Christmas, to be fair, and the opportunity just to chill out.

Obviously I’m taking a bit of time to chill at the moment anyway, which is unusual for me.

More on that in a follow-up podcast.

Christmas was good.

And then Boxing Day, which I know is a bit of a unique thing to the UK.

I think other areas of the world don’t really have it or don’t really celebrate it.

Not that you really celebrate Boxing Day.

Traditionally, Boxing Day is where you have a similar sort of meal, but it’s generally like all of the odds and ends that you haven’t had before.

And traditionally, a lot of people mix it into bubble and squeak.

So bubble and squeak is essentially a potato base that’s fried, but then you mix in any of the leftovers, like vegetables, particularly Brussels sprouts, if you like them, carrots, et cetera, parsnips.

You can put literally anything in bubble and squeak.

And then that’s normally followed up with anything else that you’ve got that’s cold.

So like sausage rolls and crisps and stuff.

So it’s like a real mix and match kind of meal.

Actually, I really love it.

And I’m really disappointed that generally we don’t have it at any time other than Christmas.

Although this year I did manage it around Easter, I think.

I think I had bubble and squeak then as well, following a roast dinner.

And it’s just really good.

You get lots of odd bits of food and it’s just nice.

So that’s Boxing Day.

And then that brings us to today.

And the weather down here today has been horrendous.

Got another storm, which I can’t pronounce.

Starts with a G.

I’m not even gonna try.

So it’s been pretty miserable, pretty wet and windy.

Just on that subject really quickly, it’s been really funny.

Since we’ve started naming storms in the UK, because we never used to, but what was it?

Four or five years ago, we started naming storms.

The weather’s been worse since we’ve been naming storms, which has been really odd.

We never used to.

And we used to just get a bit of wind and rain, but now it’s, oh, we’ve got like a weather warning out and everything’s really bad.

Never used to do that really, when we didn’t name storms.

Bit of a strange one.

But anyway, back to Christmas.

That was today.

Haven’t done any shopping in shops yet.

I mean, who does to be fair?

Think I’ve only done the Boxing Day sales like once or twice in my life.

It’s just absolute chaos.

But I have brought an additional bit of equipment for making these podcasts.

As I mentioned in the previous couple of episodes, I’m new to this again.

So refreshing the setups.

I’ve already changed my microphone, already got some new software.

And now I want to do the Elgato Stream Deck device, which has like loads of shortcuts on it.

So I can do things really quickly.

It’s traditionally used by streamers and gamers.

So they can switch around what they’re doing very quickly on Twitch, for example, or they can put little graphics in, et cetera, and control their stream basically.

So essentially it’s just a little shortcuts box.

So you can use it for anything on your computer, whether that’s Photoshop, whether that’s Adobe Audition in this scenario, whether it’s just part of your daily workflow.

It just speeds up having to use the mouse so much and also having to remember lots and lots of keyboard shortcuts.

So that should be here tomorrow.

I did get the white one rather than the black one, which I’m not entirely sure about, but then it should mix in with my Mac, my Mac keyboard.

Some of that is white, but obviously a lot of the stuff in my room is black.

So yeah, we’ll see.

So that’s kind of my last three or four days.

I hope everyone else has had a wonderful time, a good Christmas.

Managed to get some rest, see some family, see some friends and have a good catch up really.

And of course eat lots of good food.

That’s it for my Christmas this year.

I’ll be back with podcast episode five later this week.

I want to talk about Doctor Who a little bit more because that was on again Christmas day and a few other things as well.

And then I’m actually starting to pull together a rough kind of plan for the podcast that I want to do and get into more of a regular routine of doing it once or twice a week on these days.

Let’s see how far I can take that.

For now, that’s all and I will catch you all soon.

Bye.