The “on again, off again” Move… is ON again! (Patreon)

Happy New Year my dear Supporters!

I hope you had a “great slide” (guten Rutsch) as we say in Germany, and that all your wishes, hopes and dreams will come true. I’m looking forward to more creative challenges and more learning, and I hope I can share it all with you.

It’s been super chaotic here for the last couple of weeks. I’ve mentioned this in the above stream from New Year’s Eve, but just in case you didn’t know, we’re moving - and this time it’s for real. As you may recall, moving home has been on the cards several times over the last few years, and we could postpone it twice, so we were mentally prepared. On this occasion the time feels right to start afresh somewhere else, which happens to be in the building opposite ours - so we’re staying in the same neighborhood here in Miami Beach. How cool is that?

Our previous “move” from the apartment next door into the one we’ve stayed for the last 8 years was already hilarious, when we swapped apartments with your then neighbours. This time we have to walk across the back alley, but it takes less than 2 minutes between both front doors. Hence, Julia and I are taking it extremely easy in regards to packing, moving and unpacking things, and we’ve been doing a little bit every day since Christmas. 

For working, recording and streaming this will mean interesting challenges, but with creative thinking new opportunities may come out as a result. Over the last three years I’ve had a less than ideal streaming/recording setup that had me balance a keyboard and trackball on my lap in a portable fishing chair, with extremely long USB/HDMI cables connecting to my main desktop. While functional, it was technically a walk-in closet come laundry room, but during COVID it was a great opportunity. Who knew it would develop into such a regular place of business? 

Meanwhile, my main desk was setup with two monitors on the left connected to my PC workstation, while a third one was on the right connected to my old Mac Mini for communications and web browsing. I’m looking forward to a more streamlined and varied approach to working online, recording and doing client meetings on two separate desks: I’ll have my new Mac Studio and a PC laptop on the larger desk, and my PC workstation on a smaller desk for recording and streaming. This means more room for pen tablet work, editing on a more performant machine, and a decent background when necessary. All machines are connected via NoMachine in case I need to remote access from the other place. Oh, and we have a nice open kitchen with bar stools for occasional quick demos and perhaps that “Jay Cooks” segment I’ve been thinking about :-)

Speaking of work, I’ve managed to record the next part in the MD series and even made German versions of all parts including this one about rigging shoes. The last one is not quite edited yet, but as soon as it is, I’ll make another post. In the stream at the top I’m actually making textures for the outfit in this series, because outfits look better that way, and because the next part is about saving the project properly and textures are of course an important part of that exercise. There’s also a segment about full body fit-morphs I want to record, so as soon as I’m up and running again, I’ll start putting that on tape.

Today we’re expecting a delivery from Ikea so I’ll spend the day putting furniture together, and tomorrow a few strong lads with a van will come by and carry the heavier stuff over for us (although we really didn’t need the van, it was part of the package). Moving inevitably means we part with possessions amassed over the years, and it pains me to say that I must say good-bye to some things that are very dear to me, such as

• my Commodore C128 and Plus/4 computers
• my old HP Z600 workstations
• my old Z800 workstation

among a bunch of other electronic stuff I no longer use. We have a company called The Junk King drop by tomorrow and pick up old furniture, office chairs and the tech stuff, and they’ve promised to recycle and donate things where appropriate. However, if you’re interested in any go the above machines, do let me know and I’ll ship them over to you.

PS: if you want to get an impression of the new place, I did a quick test stream with a temporary setup this weekend, you can check it out here: 

I’m expecting to be fully operational again beginning of next week, and I’m looking forward to more 3D challenges and opportunities in the new year. I hope you’re doing well, let me know what your plans are for 2024.

Toodeloo from Jay Moves!