January 2020 Production Update

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TL;DR at the bottom. 

Last month, I said that I was close to finishing part 11 and that I would post it here on Patreon when it was done, which I expected to have been in early December. But then, 3 things happened that got in the way.

The first is that I realized that early December would be the perfect time  to release a compilation of the previous ten 50 Ways videos and it took much longer to edit than I thought it would. I've had the idea of combining all my 50 Ways videos into one big video for a while now and it seemed appropriate to do that after reaching the 10th episode. After all, 500 Ways to Die in Minecraft is a much less awkward title than 550 Ways to Die in Minecraft. On top of that, I had nothing to release for December and even though I already made enough revenue this year to pay all my expenses, it seemed like a waste to not release anything during the most ad-heavy month of the year. So for these reasons, I decided to shift my focus to the compilation video.

Since it was mostly just a mashing together of videos I had already made, I thought it wouldn't take too long to produce, but I was wrong. While the time-spent-editing-to-final-video-length ratio was nowhere near as bad as a new 50 Ways video's would be and it didn't take the 3 years it would have to have made an original 500 Ways to Die in Minecraft, it still took me a week to put it all together. I only had small edits to make to the video, but since the video was so long, the number of small edits still added up to many days of work.

The second thing that got in the way of me finishing Part 11 is that Microsoft is ending support for Windows 7 on January 14th, so I've got to build a Windows 10 PC. I was actually planning to take some time away from Minecraft videos in the first place, but I forgot about it when I made last month's production update. This has to be done as soon as possible. I've already finished doing all the research into the parts I need and ordered them. Once the parts arrive, I'll need to assemble the hardware, install the OS, and reinstall all my programs before I'll be ready to finish Part 11. I probably would have waited to build my new PC after finishing Part 11 if I hadn't made the compilation video, but after making it, I didn't think I'd have enough time to squeeze in one more project before windows 7 lost its support.

And the last obstacle in the way of finishing part 11was my vacation. I hadn't had more than a 2-day stretch of work-free days since June, so I was really looking forward to taking an entire week off after  finishing Part 11. But after finishing the compilation video, I realized that if I waited to start my vacation after finishing Part 11, I'd probably also need to wait until after I finished building my PC since the vacation probably wouldn't have left enough time for me to finish my new PC before the end of Windows 7 support. I didn't want to take my vacation AFTER Christmas and Part 11's deadline isn't until June anyway, so it made sense to me to hold off on that until after my vacation and the new PC is done. 

So for those reasons, Part 11 isn't done yet. Once New Years is over with, I'm gonna finish Part 11, then start working on the Halloween 50 Ways video, just like I planned.

TL;DR: I haven't  finished Part 11 yet because the 500 Ways compilation video took longer than I expected, I had to build a new PC, and  I took a vacation. I'm going to finish Part 11 after New Years, then I'll work on the Halloween 50 Ways.