Daily Archives: March 17, 2022

Pivoting (Back) to Video

Okay, so the last of the big winter freezes has (probably) passed by Dallas, and the Sarracenia and temperate sundews are starting to wake up from winter dormancy. The move to the new house is complete (the workroom may look as if Hunter S. Thompson camped there for a month, but this is an example of “no battle-ready unit ever passed inspection”), the gallery renovation ramps up this week, and show season starts next weekend. So what’s next? Video!

After a hiatus set off by Day Job schedule conflicts and a vastly increased show and open house schedule in 2021, it’s time to start giving interested passersby better views of the gallery and what to expect. That includes biting the bullet, swallowing my general loathing of the platform, taking advice from the Dallas Observer, and starting a TikTok account. Go give TexasTriffidRanch a view: it’ll mostly be views of new enclosures, ongoing shows, and ongoing projects, all with a minimum of mugging, synthesized voices, and filters.

(I WILL give TikTok high credit for one thing. When setting up a business account, the huge library of royalty-free music available to those accounts is exceptional. Without fail, finishing an enclosure video, entering a soundtrack reference that seems particularly appropriate, and scrolling through the options finds something even better. I’m willing to stick with TikTok just for the music library.)

This is, of course, a sideproject: the real plan is to start up new Twitch streams and YouTube videos by the end of April. Barring something critical, and 2022 has already filled itself with critical issues, this is now a viable plan. Now it’s up to the plants.

Personal Interlude

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who celebrate. While the rest of Dallas focuses on excessive drinking (this incredibly NSFW piece, and I’m not kidding about it being NSFW, should be the city’s anthem today), my personal anthem is a bit more traditional. (Of course, the song needs to be flipped for me: my father was a Scot Catholic and my mother an Irish Lutheran, but you know how it goes.)