vLog Channel News July 24 2016

Think I got Clicked Bombed

On Sunday I received and email from Google stating my Adsense account has been disabled. Well isn't that grand, not that I'm raking in the money like there is no tomorrow; but it is a bit annoying. Now I know I have not been clicking my own ads, and my family doesn't read this site so I know its not my kids doing it. I have never bought views or anything like that, so that leaves me down to one last item it could be. Click Bombed by someone that doesn't like my YouTube content. Since moving from a gaming only channel and expanding on the whole Family end of videos showing real life and not following the same path as every "YouTube Gamer" poster, means that some just want others gone. So guess I made someone out there mad about my move away just gaming and into a more real world view of my videos.

Now what does that mean for Life Of a Gaming Dad? Well I sit here and hope Google will re-activate my account and funding for this site will continue threw those means. But lets be truthful. As with doing some research around the web a good 80% of the time Google does these disabling never get back on-line again. Its a sad thing but something I will have to accept, there are other ad-programs out there, but with being a small blog and channel it will be a long road ahead to get them going. The next step after that would be do I want to move away from Blogger due to be owned by Google? Well again theres a hit when it comes to funding. I chose this place due to the easy access between YouTube, Blogger and Adsense in order to quickly get thing going for not only myself but the content I wanted to create.

With all that said Life of a Gaming Dad will go on in some form, might even cut my losses and step away from the channel I have had for years since YouTube's opening. Is it a big loss, both yes and no. Yes as I have become known with the handle I have had for so many years, thus the reason for using it to start this blog. On the no hand re-branding is a major task and I think thats were my problem showed up. Many didn't like the change creating a loss of over 150 subs in just a month. (Yep big run down).
All in all I am in big hopes for some good words back from Google but in the end its their call, and time to create a new plan for this Domain and idea.

Finding Spare Time

I have talked about this time and time again, trying to get things back on track every chance I can; But with kids those plans always side to the side. In today's world there is a lot of things to get your kids into after school programs, sports, library programs and so much more. With all this and work its hard to get free time in order to do some hobbies. So what is one to do? Well time management is a major thing to learn and use once you get things going more and more can get done, its like having a very organized work area.
I myself have been watching my how I spend my time, and looking to change some thing up in order to get more done. One big thing I have noticed is that since I commute to work I have a a good bit of spare time. My bus ride in is about fifty minutes one way there is a good bit of time to write or work on planning things out. So what I need to do is get my laptop back up and working now I don't have a very new laptop so you all know that I will be using a version of Linux on it in which will help with power management in which will make sure I have enough battery power for the ride in, lately there has been many delays and the commute making the ride on the bus over an hour and half. Now most newer laptops can last for up to four hours, now I will be reusing my old HP DV5 in which the battery only last about an hour and half on full running, with using the lowest display brightness and having the wi-fi turned off I should be able to get about two hours or a bit more. Since I am using blog spot using a free app for writing a word doc or even an HTML document then come home and copy the article from the freeware app into the website and upload.

Now that helps use up time for about two of my hours in the day were I am stuck unable to do anything else but wait for the driver to get where I am heading. Knowing where to get a spare thirty minutes in your day to help out with task you want to do is key to getting more done. Even waking up 30 minutes earlier in the morning in order to do something might seem like nothing will get done and in the first week there would be nothing until your body and mind get into the habit. Even getting up early and reading a book while you eat your breakfast can help you get more done. Its all about getting your mind going and onto the task at hand using this spare time to clear up your want to do list with just little tweak to your daily list of things to do.

Health

Alright folks, sorry for the delay had some health issues a rise but I'm back now and trying to get on track. Which brings me to this great item. Holidays and health, something that all people tend to skip over during this time of year. With all the running around getting gifts for family and friends we over look whats going on in our own lives and health. People always talk about the stress of the holidays with out thinking that we our selves make most of the stress. So we need to step back and take a few minutes to rest before we take on the next task, and when we see that person in front of us in line totally stressed out and yelling remember to give him a kind smile. The power of a smile can turn someones day around and remind them that even tho things are going bad and stress full but the next turn they make may be a brighter one.
Sorry again for not making a longer post, I am working on new content and will be getting more up, but with the holidays it will be slow.

Month of Craziness

This month has been nuts. I'm not sure how but this blog is starting off on a very good start. I can see that I get plenty of hit a day, but not that many comments.. well we have none at the moment. This could be from a lot of different things that I have thought about.

1.) People are shy: Yep in one way or another we all are shy. Lets face it it's hard to let your thoughts flow free on the web even tho you are hidden behind a screen name and no one really knows who you are unless you're like me and show a picture of your face along with the post. It takes a lot to let yourself be out there and talk freely not knowing who is reading. It takes some time to warm up to new things and post on this blog but we all have run into some of the things I am writing about, and if your searching around the web and have come along to this site then we are all friends here.

2.) My writing sucks: This I know, I have been working on better gramor and sentences on this site as I go. This site is not only a place for us to explore the fun of being a gaming dad, but a place for me to improve my writing while telling you all the crazy stories I run into. In everything we do in life we can learn or improve on things. I'm just not going to be shy about it and will keep working on it all.

3.) Login needed: I am looking into different ways for this. Sometimes people don't like creating logins for sites they don't use much. I know myself that I have logins for millions of sites that I don't access anymore and my email is on so many list that i have to use the filter on the mess that comes in every day. So I am looking into getting some type of quick comment system going that does not need a login and is mobile friendly, since I see so many of my views use mobile devices to access this site.

I hope this clears up some of the readers minds when they think, do I really want to reply or comment this post? I will be trying to make it easier for everyone in the end, because lets face it. I am sure we all have run into something like this in what we do everyday. Plus I am sure you all can add to the conversation down the road.

Extra Hardware - Linux

I have already talked about using some old hardware as a media server in order to re-use some of the hardware you have laying around. But what about even older hardware below the dual core models? Or even some old laptops since they have lower end parts over the desktop models? We all know that Microsoft will no longer support Windows XP and too old hardware to use Windows 7 or newer. Well its time to try a different OS, Linux. But Dark, isn't Linux a OS for very advance users? Well not so much anymore. There are tons of different distributions for Linux out there and here are a two that I have been messing with for older hardware.

• Lubutu (for old hardware)
  
  
  
  

Lubutu is a very compact system for older hardware and very easy to install with their graphic installer. If you have a machine that can not go past the old 4 gig memory limit you can load an older version of it I have found that version 12.04 was the last one that really works well for these machine that can not hold up to the bigger memory limits and once you have the system loaded just clicking the update to latest in the software manager will get the newest version loaded witch is 15.10. Now for the layout of the system is very basic and fits very well if the user is use to the XP style layout. For using the interest it has loaded by default Chromium this Linux Chrome web browser.

• Fedora (dual core systems)

Now for the "newer" systems that have dual core and more then 4 gigs of ram I have been messing with Fedora. Its a cleaner version of Red Hat for home use and free. This works very well for the people that are use to the MAC type setup of the GUI. Installing is very easy as it walks you threw all the items. I have also found this works out of the box for those pesky HP Laptops with their Boardcom wireless drivers that always cause Linux users some headaches from time to time. This also has FireFox Mozilla loaded for web use which tons of people are use to. I have found it works really well for battery time on my HP DV5000 laptop. This OS is very usesfull and full of software since it was built on the Red Hat design for packages.

Now this wasn't a huge dive into Linux as there is so much to talk about each OS and how they work. The best thing to do, is download the package and do what is called a "Live-CD". What this lets you do is boot of the CD you just made and try the distro before you even install it to your PC. Giving you a chance to see if its right for you. This way you can go out and try many different types of Linux before you even install anything to your PC. Please check out this link for more distros of Linux you can try.

Holiday Season Family Gaming

So we are a few days away from Thanks Giving one of my favorite holidays here in the USA. Yep another day where we can eat until we cant feel our legs. Now my wife loves this day because she loves to cook so our house always ends up with a mass amount of people. Just what do we do to keep all those people happy because we don't have cable TV so there is no football in this house, which is fine by me I'm not much of a sports watcher anymore; hockey was always my sport to watch.

Now last week I spoke about using old hardware as a media machine using Plex. So there is always something for people to watch and we have Netflix and Hulu on the Amazon Fire TV. So the parents will have something to watch but what the kids? Well they can join the parents in watching a movie or they can head down to the basement were we have a TV with the Wii/WiiU and the old X-Box setup. Here is where the problem come in, the age difference of the kids. The oldest one will want to play the more graphic games then what the little ones should see. Yes, I know we all did it ourselves when we were younger and we made it. But back then we did not have the powerful gaming machines we do today, the graphics are some time too close to the real thing. So I think its a good idea before this holiday season to stop for a minute and have a quick chat with the kids about what should be played with company around. Tell them to try to stick to the more family friendly multi player games you know, racing, sports, goofy ones; and when the family is done eating the littlest family members are watching a movie then they can break out the heavier games the old kids like to play.

Its also a fun idea to get some of the family that don't think gaming is good for kids to see the more family fun said of games, and get them to play a round with the kids. It's a nice way to break down the ideas that the media paints on games and the people that play them. The holidays are a wondrous time to year, getting the family to sit down and game together is an event I love to see happen around my house, hope it also happens around yours too.