Why Linux Fights Obsolescence and LXD is Key
I recently released a video on LXD being a sort of Noah's Ark and am working on strategies to make my videos more successful. I'm also working on projects for my day job and creating a 24x7 scheduler for a series of projects. I need to create nicknames, imagery, and visuals for the next iteration of Pipulate, but was cut off from PyPI because of their 2FA implementation. Read my blog post to learn more about my journey to success!
LXD: My Journey to Success with Linux and Obsolescence Avoidance
By Michael Levin
Saturday, August 13, 2022
I just pushed out a video on LXD being a sort of Noah’s Ark. My stuff’s never going to naturally light the YouTube algorithm on fire. I’m too niche. My content and message, even if it may someday have some mainstream appeal, doesn’t today, but I can’t let that stop me. I really don’t want to go the whole entrepreneurial route or anything over committal to have supplementary income. It’s got to be a natural side effect of what I do anyway. This publishing as a side-effect of just plain old life is definitely the way to go. I just have to make those videos more successful.
Okay, weakest link in the chain principle. I could do better research on the keywords and phrases before I push out new videos, tweaking the titles and descriptions this way and that to pander and appeal. It’s the same as my main field of SEO in which you step into the path of the search traffic that’s already there. Search patterns are search patterns and as a publisher you can either choose to walk into the path of those search patterns or not. And there’s my admission that even on YouTube, it’s mostly still about search for me and not auto-suggest.
Okay, so let’s do one of those weakest link in the chain analysis just like you would have done with clients back in the day before you became an in-house SEO. Hmmm. Okay, there’s bigger search than YouTube and it’s called Google. And I could have greater connection between my YouTube and Web content, reinforcing each other in any way that they could reinforce each other. And of course one of my greatest strengths is that I just naturally produce content when I think things out because I think in vim. In other words, I type directly into a text-editor like I’m talking to myself because it helps me think. But that’s not the weak link. The weak link is not tagging, organizing and publishing that content well, so as to step into the path of searchers. I can fix that.
The world is also considerably different than it was during the days I got into SEO (late 90s!) and I should give things a fresh think. Lots more people are searching, lots more people are searching in Google, and lots more people are searching in things other than Google. There are quite a lot of search streams, so there’s more places to be found, more outlets to have to target, and more competition in each of those channels. Many paths lead to spinning your wheels, just like it’s always been in SEO.
One must choose the work carefully in order to have a good chance of having an effect. There’s also the question of doing more work on fewer attempts (higher quality) or less work on more attempts (lower quality, but better odds). I should endeavor to do both (especially more of the quality stuff) without letting the frequent attempts “pull down” the quality stuff. And when I say “quality” I really just mean more highly produced to appeal to the attention-challenged mainstream. My niche crowd recognizes the quality in the higher frequency content. There’s also a certain charm to the genuine experiences and the rough cuts.
The wheel-spinning is sort of like the more frequent publishing with a lower resistance to publishing. There’s lots of analogies here. The one-arm bandits with frequent play and smaller payouts versus blackjack or poker with larger play-time but bigger payouts. Either strategy can and should be able to work, but you have to be engaged in both to have good data coming back for feedback loops. Yes, feedback loops. I have to establish more addictive (both to me and my audience) feedback loops. Engage in lots of small, interesting projects which compliment each other and over time create a snowballing effect.
Another interesting point is that I’m in the middle of the weekend now and I have a couple of projects for work that I still wish to slam out. In fact, I really need to because the day job pays for everything else. Another way of looking at it is that my weekend discretionary projects keep me qualified for my day job, but still. It’s good to please the boss and I need to please the boss a little bit more. We’ve got a really awesome team that’s getting most of the attaboy’s these days. I’m not that worried, but it’s always a good time to put more tension in the machinery. Get the “easy one” done which really could help the boss still even this weekend.
Other projects to think about are using the 24x7 scheduler I just created for a series of interesting little projects. Create strong nicknames, imagery and visuals around… oh my, the next iteration of Pipulate, of course! Wow, I need to get my login back on PyPI. I got cut-off because of their sudden 2FA implementation. I was careless and lost the app that had my 2FA in it. Not for any other services, but only PyPI, the only one without some sort of automated backup system tapping email or mobile. Ugh! Everything’s an interesting story, even this. You should make a video out of your PyPI experience.