Streaming and Scheming | The Friday Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.

What have I been up to this week?

The past week has seen us embark on a new experiment here at Tom Nicholas Towers (not a real place).

A little while back, someone from Twitch got in touch to ask if I’d be interested in doing some streaming and offering to lend a bit of a hand in buying some new kit.

I previously did a run of streams a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. I find having the opportunity to connect with viewers live really fun and think the chance to collaborative build knowledge on a given topic is pretty exciting.

So, last week, we began trialling a bi-weekly Twitch show.

The core of the stream is a media review (in a segment I’m thinking of calling “Paper Cuts”?). During this, we have a go at taking apart the front pages of the newspapers and asking why they’re obsessing over some stories and completely ignoring others.

Last night we also premiered a new section called “America Watch”. I realised that a lot of the early show tends to focus on UK politics (probably because of timing). So, we decided that, in the second half of the show, we’d console ourselves at the state of British politics by taking a look at what our friends over the pond are up to.

It’s been great so far. I really appreciate everyone who’s turned up and hung out!

If it sounds of interest to you, we’ll be live from 6pm UK time every Monday to Thursday. You can sign up to get a notification whenever I go live at https://twitch.tv/tom_nicholas

(For those who aren’t interested, I found a few extra photos from our shoot last week that I thought I’d share below!)

And outside of work?

Winter has really started closing in here in the UK. The dark comes earlier and cold is biting.

To try and cheer ourselves up, last weekend, my wife and I went to a winter fair at a nearby stately home. We thought it was going to be a fairly low-key affair but, when we got there, it turned out we had to park a few miles away and get a shuttle bus to the fair itself.

In all honesty, I don’t think I’m quite feeling Christmassy enough for winter fairs yet; even if one of my neighbours does have her Christmas decorations up. I’m both pining for summer whilst also not quite being able to tune out the horrors which are filling the news. Nevertheless, I did enjoy having a nice warm pork roll!

What have I been reading/watching/listening to?

Last weekend, I went to see Emma Seligman’s Bottoms at the cinema.

For those who don’t know, the film is about a couple of unpopular girls at an American high school who start a fight club with the hopes of trying to get close to a the more popular girls who they fancy. And, of course, hi-jinks ensue.

The film stars Ayo Edebiri who plays Sydney in The Bear and was also in Theater Camp for anyone who saw that. I think she’s absolutely amazing and she’s no exception in this.

I think the best thing to compare the film to would be Booksmart; but it’s actually much wilder than that. There’s a lot of blood and guts flinging about all over the place.

So, if you’re not squeamish, definitely one to check out!

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of the Friday Update. I hope you’ve found it mildly insightful.

Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!