Mark James Ludford

It’s been a while since I last updated here, wow. Whatever happened to once a week? Ah well, better late than never.

A lot of good stuff has been happening recently! I recently got accepted onto the YouTube Partnership Programme, which basically allows me to earn revenue from YouTube, which is pretty handy, and I also get to add banners on my channel and stuff. I’m quite proud of my redesigned channel, check it out! Now all I’ve gotta do is make some videos, which is proving to be quite difficult. But I’ll think of something soon. I want to get out a new video every week at the very least. I’m getting a new camera for Christmas so my videos will look a lot nicer too next year!

I’ve entered my final year at high school, and in September next year I’m going to college! It’s quite weird to think about right now as I still feel quite young, but by this time next year, I’ll be sixteen and I’ll have left high school and gone to college. I’m still a little unsure about which college I’m going to, but I think I’ve decided.

And I’m going to New York in February with school for five days! That’s gonna be a ton of fun, some of my best friends are going too. We’re visiting the Empire State Building, going on a walking tour of the main streets, visiting Macy’s, visiting NBC, and going on a boat tour around the Statue of Liberty. There’s probably more but I don’t have the list with me. I’ll try and shoot a video out there too.

And I think that’s all I’ve got to say really. I’m getting close to 1k subs on YouTube so I have no idea how I’ll celebrate that. If you have any ideas, comment below or message me on twitter (@MarkLudford), and I shall see you guys whenever I decide to update again. I’ll try and do it before the end of this year :p

Bye!

After almost five months away from regularly making and uploading Minecraft videos, I decided enough was enough. I’ve tried to record a new episode of my Minecraft series at least 8 times now, and every single time there was problems with the audio from my microphone. Sometimes the sound kept cutting out, other times the sound was too quiet, and other times the sound actually wasn’t in sync with the the gameplay, while the Minecraft sounds were. There’s only so many times I can keep on trying, and when it actually worked for once, the filming was interrupted by my mother and I couldn’t finish it, and I just gave up with my headset. I put it in my drawer and didn’t pull it out again. It was only £10, so I couldn’t really complain. The last time I used it was with the Rollercoaster video, but the commentary quality came out that bad that I had to replace it with an instrumental of Still Alive, which actually worked really well and some parts of the song seemed to sync to the gameplay, such as when the song kicks in properly at the chorus and the view changes to third-person, that was completely coincidental. But for a guy who likes to commentate, I can’t really rely on random coincidences all the time. But although I missed commentating, I was getting tired of just doing an average let’s play, and I wanted to make something different and something not so much of a cliché. If I was gonna continue to make videos I had to change what direction I was taking with the series.

Yesterday I was walking aimlessly around Manchester City Centre on my own, and I decided enough was enough. I went into Argos and bought a brand new, slightly more expensive but higher quality headset, and I got home and set it up. I started recording gameplay with Fraps to try it out, and before I knew it, I didn’t even want to stop testing it and that same recording session quickly turned into my next Minecraft video. The sound quality is so much better and it syncs and I have literally no problems with it at all. Overall, I’m really happy with it, and it means I can continue to create Minecraft videos for YouTube, which makes it even sweeter. It’s not gonna be an average let’s play anymore, I’m going to showcase mods, custom maps, updates and whatever the hell I decide to create. I’m done doing what everyone else does, and I’m gonna be different with it.

- Mark out.

Updaaaaaaaaaaates!

New headset, new videos, new rules.