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_site
.DS_Store
.jekyll
.jekyll-metadata
.bundle
.sass-cache
Gemfile
Gemfile.lock
node_modules
package.json
package.json

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404.md
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---
layout: page
title: 404 - Page not found
permalink: /404.html
---
Sorry, we can't find that page that you're looking for. You can try again by going [back to the homepage]({{ site.baseurl }}/).

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CNAME
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blog.tilvids.com

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README.md
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> March, 2016: If you're on an old version of Jekyll Now and run into a) build warnings or b) syntax highlighting issues caused by [Jekyll 3 and GitHub Pages updates](https://github.com/blog/2100-github-pages-now-faster-and-simpler-with-jekyll-3-0), just :sparkles:[update your _config.yml](https://github.com/barryclark/jekyll-now/pull/445/files):sparkles: and you'll be set!
# Jekyll Now
**Jekyll** is a static site generator that's perfect for GitHub hosted blogs ([Jekyll Repository](https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll))
@ -8,7 +6,7 @@
- You don't need to touch the command line
- You don't need to install/configure ruby, rvm/rbenv, ruby gems :relaxed:
- You don't need to install runtime dependencies like markdown processors, Pygments, etc
- You don't need to install runtime dependancies like markdown processors, Pygments, etc
- If you're on Windows, this will make setting up Jekyll a lot easier
- It's easy to try out, you can just delete your forked repository if you don't like it
@ -22,7 +20,7 @@ In a few minutes you'll be set up with a minimal, responsive blog like the one b
Fork this repo, then rename the repository to yourgithubusername.github.io.
Your Jekyll blog will often be viewable immediately at <https://yourgithubusername.github.io> (if it's not, you can often force it to build by completing step 2)
Your Jekyll blog will often be viewable immediately at <http://yourgithubusername.github.io> (if it's not, you can often force it to build by completing step 2)
![Step 1](/images/step1.gif "Step 1")
@ -30,7 +28,7 @@ Your Jekyll blog will often be viewable immediately at <https://yourgithubuserna
Enter your site name, description, avatar and many other options by editing the _config.yml file. You can easily turn on Google Analytics tracking, Disqus commenting and social icons here too.
Making a change to _config.yml (or any file in your repository) will force GitHub Pages to rebuild your site with jekyll. Your rebuilt site will be viewable a few seconds later at <https://yourgithubusername.github.io> - if not, give it ten minutes as GitHub suggests and it'll appear soon
Making a change to _config.yml (or any file in your repository) will force GitHub Pages to rebuild your site with jekyll. Your rebuilt site will be viewable a few seconds later at <http://yourgithubusername.github.io> - if not, give it ten minutes as GitHub suggests and it'll appear soon
> There are 3 different ways that you can make changes to your blog's files:
@ -51,7 +49,7 @@ Edit `/_posts/2014-3-3-Hello-World.md` to publish your first blog post. This [Ma
## Local Development
1. Install Jekyll and plug-ins in one fell swoop. `gem install github-pages` This mirrors the plug-ins used by GitHub Pages on your local machine including Jekyll, Sass, etc.
2. Clone down your fork `git clone https://github.com/yourusername/yourusername.github.io.git`
2. Clone down your fork `git clone git@github.com:yourusername/yourusername.github.io.git`
3. Serve the site and watch for markup/sass changes `jekyll serve`
4. View your website at http://127.0.0.1:4000/
5. Commit any changes and push everything to the master branch of your GitHub user repository. GitHub Pages will then rebuild and serve your website.
@ -81,7 +79,7 @@ It covers:
✓ SVG social icons for your footer
✓ 3 http requests, including your avatar
✘ No installing dependencies
✘ No installing dependancies
✘ No need to set up local development
✘ No configuring plugins
✘ No need to spend time on theming

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_config.yml
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#
# Name of your site (displayed in the header)
name: TILvids Blog
name: Your Name
# Short bio or description (displayed in the header)
description: Updates from TILvids
description: Web Developer from Somewhere
# URL of your avatar or profile pic (you could use your GitHub profile pic)
avatar: https://pixelfed-prod.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/public/m/_v2/267497187179630592/bf1ba8b1c-ed24ad/G7C0esLTzUD9/JXSxprtRiZI3cf37VCCIfDGsSIJW3yUEI4GV7gX7.png
avatar: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/barryclark/jekyll-now/master/images/jekyll-logo.png
#
# Flags below are optional
@ -21,12 +21,12 @@ footer-links:
email:
facebook:
flickr:
github: # barryclark/jekyll-now
github: barryclark/jekyll-now
instagram:
linkedin:
pinterest:
rss: https://tilvids.com/feeds/videos.xml?sort=-best # just type anything here for a working RSS icon
twitter: tilvids
rss: # just type anything here for a working RSS icon
twitter: jekyllrb
stackoverflow: # your stackoverflow profile, e.g. "users/50476/bart-kiers"
youtube: # channel/<your_long_string> or user/<user-name>
googleplus: # anything in your profile username that comes after plus.google.com/
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# Your website URL (e.g. http://barryclark.github.io or http://www.barryclark.co)
# Used for Sitemap.xml and your RSS feed
url: https://tilvids.com
url:
# If you're hosting your site at a Project repository on GitHub pages
# (http://yourusername.github.io/repository-name)
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permalink: /:title/
# The release of Jekyll Now that you're using
version: v1.2.0
version: v1.1.0
# Jekyll 3 now only supports Kramdown for Markdown
kramdown:
@ -79,10 +79,8 @@ gems:
# Exclude these files from your production _site
exclude:
- Gemfile
- Gemfile.lock
- LICENSE
- README.md
- CNAME
theme: jekyll-theme-midnight
- Gemfile
- Gemfile.lock
- LICENSE
- README.md
- CNAME

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---
layout: post
title: You're up and running!
---
Next you can update your site name, avatar and other options using the _config.yml file in the root of your repository (shown below).
![_config.yml]({{ site.baseurl }}/images/config.png)
The easiest way to make your first post is to edit this one. Go into /_posts/ and update the Hello World markdown file. For more instructions head over to the [Jekyll Now repository](https://github.com/barryclark/jekyll-now) on GitHub.

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_posts/2020-10-1-TILvids-Update-October-2020.md
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---
layout: post
title: TILvids Update - October 2020
---
Welcome to October, [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! I've decided I'm going to try to do these updates at the beginning of the month, so as to retroactively look at how things went the previous month, and then hopefully highlight anything I'm hoping to see in the next month.
Some of the main highlights in September:
- I have to open with great news: we added a number of Patrons this month! This is fantastic, and I'm so thankful for their help and support. Right now, I'm paying all the costs to run TILvids, and while it's manageable for the moment, that's going to become less and less true as the site grows. Donating to TILvids is how we're going to make sure we can run the site without any video ads or data harvesting. Thanks so much to our patrons Jerome, Vegard, JC, Jeena, and Jason Resch (who is also contributing some great content to the site, please [check out his channel](https://tilvids.com/accounts/alwaysasking))!
- I added our first exclusive content to the site. I'm making this content under the channel/production name ["Smartyflix"](https://tilvids.com/accounts/smartyflix). Feel free to check it out, the video about [the History of Mozilla Firefox](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/294b946e-c0f9-4da0-8307-9512ef309755) is my favorite!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of October 2nd, 2020, we currently have 19,623 video views, 158 users, and 64.4GB of local videos.
For October, I'm hoping to see a few things happen:
1. Right now (as I'm typing this post), I'm upgrading our server. I'm adding more cores for processing video transcoding, more memory (which should help the site generally load faster), doubling our storage space, and upgrading the connection speed. All of this is made possible from our generous patrons, and should help the site perform better overall!
2. I'm hoping to continue to make some exclusive content! I'm currently working on a video about software tools that were used by 90s kids, hoping to get that done this weekend. I have a few other show ideas already baking.
3. I'm continuing to add content to the site. We have a few creators uploading their own content (which is fantastic, because it's less work for me, shout-out to [Tyler's Tech](https://tilvids.com/accounts/tylerstech) for uploading tons of awesome Linux distro content), and I also try to grab a few new videos each night from our creators and from Creative Commons that I think people might find interesting.
4. I'm still *constantly* searching for new creators for the site. I would say I generally reach out to a 5-10 per week. If you see anyone that should be on the site, let me know, or even better reach out to them and let THEM know; it's much more powerful when their own fans ask them to support another site.
5. We now have 58 users on /r/tilvids ! This is also great, because every day I try to post a "TILvids Video of the Day". It's hard to remember to visit TILvids every day, but these posts show up in feeds on Reddit and give people a reminder that new content is available. If you want to help the site grow, sharing this subreddit with others around Reddit is probably the biggest impact you can make.
I think that's it for now! Thanks again to our awesome patrons, and to the community just for watching and sharing. This job I'm doing is incredibly hard (and I'm doing it in my spare time). Whenever I wonder if it's worth it though, I think about all the people that have reached out and said how much they enjoy the community, and it gives me all the energy I need to keep going!

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_posts/2020-11-1-TILvids-Update-November-2020.md
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---
layout: post
title: TILvids Update - November 2020
---
Welcome to November, [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! Hopefully everyone had a very happy Halloween! We're on month two of me hitting these updates on the first day of the month, so off to a good start! Let's see where things stand.
Some of the main highlights in October:
- Just squeaking in under the wire, we added another monthly donor to help support the community. Please send a big thanks to Geoflly Adonias (gadonias.com) for their contribution. TILvids completely relies on the community to help pay for monthly server costs, and more donors means we can expand storage space, add processors to transcode content more quickly, etc. If you'd like to help support the community, [you can do so here](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids).
- A number of new creators joined us in October. This includes [Broke History](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/a26b4a7c-989c-4634-b647-a24335210713), [Vex0r](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/efd014b2-6362-4370-862c-d186c562510b), [Athena Productions](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/f311d459-7d55-45be-ac1c-0b72d48953e8), and [TheRetroPerspective](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/b25ab5cb-40c6-4a22-b0d7-276f74233e6a)! Thanks for sharing your wonderful content with the community, and welcome aboard!
- Speaking of creators, I also try to add my own content to the site (when I have time). This month I added a number of TILvids exclusives to the site, including [a history of Nextcloud](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/74bc7ce7-0e7e-4ab9-b688-b4e1c9ba4e27), [essential software tools of 90s kids](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/36381dc1-2f5b-4ab1-8e5f-2cc05a64a55c), and a video all about [data privacy and self-hosting](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/756c44e8-c44d-41c3-98e4-5eae899c376e). Hopefully you're enjoying this content, and depending on how much time I have available, I hope to continue making more!
- After [a good discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/tilvids/comments/jgigvc/tilvids_works_in_the_newpipe_youtube_client_on/) about using NewPipe to view TILvids content on Android mobile devices by /u/nebious I decided to make [a quick video showing how to do it](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/a6d493b6-f153-4d1f-b36f-789af343e048). This has gotten a decent amount of views, and has brought some great awareness to TILvids, NewPipe, and PeerTube in general. I'd call that a win! Thanks Nebious for kicking that all off!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of November 1st, 2020, we currently have 28,675 video views, 239 users, and 81.8GB of local videos.
Here's what I'm hoping to work on during November:
- I'm really hoping to continue getting more and more people to join /r/tilvids We started October at 58 users, and we're starting November at 178. That's a GREAT increase in users, and I'd love to see that continue. This is important because if you are subscribed to this sub, you will see the "TILvids video of the day" post that I put out daily, and it helps people remember to visit the site. So if you're looking for a way to help TILvids grow, **please share this community around Reddit with others**. This is one of the most useful things that you, a member of the TILvids community, can do.
- On to Mastodon, I decided to start posting the video of the day there as well. Thanks to a major shout-out from FediFollows (@FediFollows@mastodon.online), we picked up a pretty big following over there. I was initially disappointed because I wasn't getting any traction from the Mastodon community (which I truly want to support), so that was very exciting to see, and I'm happy to be able to support yet another open-web technology!
- For server resources, we're doing alright for the moment. I upgraded the storage as-planned last month, and that should hold us for another month or two. We're still fortunately just barely adding donors fast enough to offset the costs, but that will have to continue to scale going forward. This is very important, because it's the foundation of being able to run the site without data-harvesting video ads on every video.
- I'm still constantly trying to find new creators. If you guys run across anyone that you feel would be a good fit for our edutainment video community, you can send them my way, or even better, contact them yourself! It carries so much more weight when one of their viewers/fans asks them to share their content elsewhere. You can send them to the site, to this sub, or have them email creators [at] tilvids [d0t] com.
I think that's it for now. Thank you SO MUCH to the wonderful, growing TILvids community. I can't express enough how much joy it brings me to see this community continuing to grow. I have wanted to find a way to share information with the world while supporting open-source and open-web at the same time, so this is truly a passion-project for me. Every day brings some new source of excitement and interest, and I thank you all for that. Please continue to share the community with others and post here to share ideas on how to make this an even better experience!

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_posts/2020-12-1-TILvids-Update-December-2020.md
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---
layout: post
title: TILvids Update - December 2020
---
Welcome to December, [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! For those of you in the US, I hope you had as good of a Thanksgiving as this year could allow; for everyone else...I hope you're all just generally well! Let's take a look back at how things went during November, 2020:
- We had a number of new creators join us this month! Very happy to introduce [TooLateNate](https://tilvids.com/accounts/toolatenate), [ToggleJam](https://tilvids.com/accounts/togglejam), [PizzaLovingNerd](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pizzalovingnerdtilvids), [GeoTech Land](https://tilvids.com/accounts/geotechdigital), and [OmniTubers](https://tilvids.com/accounts/antikythera)! That's a huge group, and a bunch of great content to be shared with the TILvids community! A warm welcome to all of them!
- If you missed it, there was quite a big shakeup this month with [GitHub removing youtube-dl](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/github-agrees-riaa-claim-is-bunk-restores-popular-youtube-download-tool/) after a DMCA complaint by the RIAA, only to reinstate it a week or so later. I made [a video talking about the whole episode here](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/59eec034-c8a1-401b-af68-cf593d4ee55a), so feel free to catch up if you missed it.
- [B0pol](https://github.com/B0pol), one of the devs over on [NewPipe](https://www.reddit.com/r/NewPipe/) contacted me to let me know TILvids has been added to the official instances list in the app! You can check out the PR for the merge [over here](https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/pull/4969). Thanks NewPipe, big fan of what you all are doing! Look for that in the 0.25.x update, coming soon.
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of December 1st, 2020, we currently have 40,018 video views, 331 users, and 98.2GB of local videos.
For December, I'm continuing to focus on a few things:
1. Getting more users onto [the TILvids sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/tilvids). It remains the best way to get TILvids to show up in front of people on a daily basis. I have been committed to posting a "TILvids video of the day" here (not hard to do, since we have so many new contributors!) and the posts show up on people's Reddit feed. If you want to help the community, probably the best way to do so is to mention TILvids on other subs and encourage people to check it out! We added something like 100 new subs in the last month, and that's 100 new people seeing TILvids content daily!
2. [Posting to Mastodon](https://mstdn.social/@tilvids). As I said last month, this has been a wonderfully receptive community, and that continues to be true. I've actually started focusing less on Twitter and more on Mastodon recently, because the Mastodon community really gets what we're trying to do over here. Very supportive, and I like supporting Mastodon anyway.
3. Recruiting new creators. I'm constantly hunting around looking for smaller indie creators that would find a good home on TILvids, both because their content is a good fit, and because I think TILvids can be beneficial to helping them grow an audience. If you run into any creators that fit that description, feel free to send them over here!
I think that's it for now. I have talked to so many people over the past month that are supportive of what we're trying to do here, and you have no idea how much that means to me! I'm so happy to be able to build something that the community loves, that creators find useful, and that respects privacy all at the same time. For those that hang around in the Matrix chat, you know how much work this is for me, but it's incredibly gratifying work, and I'm greatly enjoying it.
Thanks for helping me build a great community here, let's keep it going!

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_posts/2020-9-1-TILvids-Update-September-2020.md
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---
layout: post
title: TILvids Update - September 2020
---
Greetings TILvids community! Recently, I was [asked if I have a blog/vlog for TILvids](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeerTube/comments/itucq9/peertube_instances_i_have_found_so_far/g5kcdz7/) by someone on /r/PeerTube, and I didn't really feel I had a great answer. I've started up so many blogs in my life and didn't really relish the idea of making yet another one. I do already have /r/TILvids though, so I figured maybe I could use this as a "blog-lite" for the time-being. Possibly I'll set something up on Github someday using Jekyll or something...only so much time in my day though. :)
So since this is my first "blog-lite" post, welcome! Hopefully you know what TILvids is if you're here, but the TL;DR is that I'm trying to build a video community, based around edutainment content, that respects both viewers (privacy) and creators (engagement) alike, much more than the present video landscape. So far, I'm quite happy with the results! I think we have around 40 creators/contributors on the site, which is really helping us add content. The unfortunate part there is that it also consumes space, so *THANKFULLY* we have our first three [Patron supporters](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids) (shout-out to Jerome, [Jason](https://tilvids.com/accounts/alwaysasking), and Vegard!), which will go directly to providing more storage space, and likely in the near future some additional memory/CPU/bandwidth.
I'm not sure what else people might be interested in knowing about TILvids (or even if anyone will read this, for that matter). Feel free to ask questions below, if you have any. If I do see people engaging on these, I'll try to do them more regularly.
Thanks for your support!

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_posts/2021-1-1-TILvids-Update-January-2021.md
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---
layout: post
title: TILvids Update - January 2021
---
Welcome to January and 2021, TILvids community! Here we all are, despite one of the most memorable years of many of our lives. Certainly it was a challenging year for many, but it was also the year that TILvids was born, so I can find a positive there! Let's take a look back at how things went during December, 2020, before we move on to the new year:
- We were very pleased to announce that the [Pine64 Community](https://www.pine64.org) reached out to see if they could make [TILvids.com](https://tilvids.com) their official PeerTube instance, to which I emphatically approved. I've been a long-time supporter of what the Pine64 group is doing, and would enjoy nothing more than to have TILvids be part of their continued success. You can check out [the Pine64 Community channel on TILvids here](https://tilvids.com/video-channels/pine64).
- We were joined by a new creator, [Illustrate to Educate](https://tilvids.com/accounts/illustrate_to_educate/video-channels) who is sharing some really great edutainment content about politics, technology, etc. Check them out if you haven't already! And if you're an edutainment creator looking to move to a more open video platform, don't hesitate to send a message to me!
- Speaking of creators, I wanted to highlight some of our most active video contributors! [GeoTech](https://tilvids.com/accounts/geotechdigital), [PizzaLovingNerd](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pizzalovingnerdtilvids), and [Tyler's Tech](https://tilvids.com/accounts/tylerstech) always have some great Linux and open-source perspectives. [Vex0r](https://tilvids.com/accounts/vex0r) always brings it strong with fun retro-tech videos. [Athena Productions](https://tilvids.com/accounts/athenaproductions) has some fantastic mythology episodes, and [Always Asking](https://tilvids.com/accounts/alwaysasking) has some great videos pondering the big mysteries of life. And finally, [The Attic Dwellers](https://tilvids.com/accounts/theatticdwellers) always delivers on the 80s nostalgia. Thanks to everyone for sharing your wonderful stories!
- In-between running the site, promoting videos, looking for new creators, and everything else, I was able to squeeze out a video of my own! I'm a huge advocate of open-source/open-web and data privacy, so I decided to make a list of the open projects that are having the biggest influence on my life at the moment. Check out my [Top Data Privacy Tech for 2021](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/7428f76f-7e03-449a-bc96-a07d7cf82d74) video!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of January 1st, 2021, we currently have 48,426 video views, 394 users, and 115GB of local videos.
For January, I'm continuing to focus on a few things:
- Trying to get the community to start helping out with promoting TILvids. As you're all aware, TILvids [completely runs on donations](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids) and all of that money goes to running/growing the server. As such, with there being no marketing budget, all marketing is done at a grass-roots level. The biggest thing you can do is find a video you love on TILvids once a week, and share it out on social media. Reddit is a great place (because so many videos on the site work in different subs), but Mastodon, Twitter, and other places are great as well. This is where a huge chunk of my time is spent, and anything I can offload here will give me more time, and help our community grow more quickly!
- Making content. I love [making videos](https://tilvids.com/accounts/smartyflix/video-channels), but have very little spare time for it. I do have one video already in the hopper, focused on the importance of infrastructure investment. I have about 25 other video topics ready, I just need to find some time to work on them!
- Continuing to advocate for the open-web. I've been finding and sharing articles that talk about how unhealthy YouTube is for online video. I think it's incredibly important for our community to talk about these things, because they will help guide how we grow our own community, and become a voice that helps others learn about why this is important.
I think that's it for now! As I said before, this was a challenging year for everyone, so I wish all the best to you and your circle of friends/family. A new year is a chance for a fresh start, and I hope that this year is full of potential and new opportunities for everyone. One of the reasons I picked edutainment as the main focus for TILvids is because I believe learning is the most valuable tool we as humans have at our disposal. It's how we grow and advance, and it's how we learn to understand each other. I think the content we have in this community is a great example of that, and I always look forward every day to seeing what new content people are sharing!
Thanks for helping me build a great community here, let's keep it going!

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_posts/2021-10-1-TILvids-Update-October-2021.md
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---
layout: post
title: TILvids Update - October 2021
---
Welcome to October 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- We had a few new creators join us this month! [ArthurPizza](https://tilvids.com/c/arthurpizza/videos) has some great Linux and tech rants. [HappySquirrelBuilder](https://tilvids.com/c/happysquirrelbuilder_tech_channel/videos) shares information about how ransomware works. And finally, [LukeTech](https://tilvids.com/c/luketech_channel/videos) shares videos about Linux and single-board computers. Welcome to everyone, thanks for sharing your videos with the TILvids community!
- Next, a user-experience update. After some requests and discussion from our [Matrix](https://matrix.to/#/!kzdkMSDlVUjuTTObHw:matrix.org?via=matrix.org) / [Discord](https://discord.gg/bVzErWjvTS) chat, I tweaked the default landing page to have a new "Home" view (see image, below). This will hopefully expose new content being shared with the community better, as well as give coverage to our featured creators. Drop by our chat and let us know what you think!
<img src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/69435791/135702046-1048b357-5f6c-455e-bbd4-5373bcdfc036.png" width="461" height="320">
- And finally, I updated the PeerTube software to version 3.3.0. I generally try to give new versions a couple of weeks to shake out the bugs, so look forward to 3.4.0 some time during October, probably. This will hopefully provide some new features for subscribing to individual creators on other instances.
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of September 1st, 2021, we currently have 88,630 video views, 1004 users, and 175GB of local videos. Congrats to the whole TILvids community on finally passing the 1,000 user milestone. On to the next 1,000!
Here are a few thoughts for October:
- As most of you know, I generally try to find a video to post as our "TILvids video of the day" to [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/tilvids/), [Lemmy](https://lemmy.ml/c/tilvids), [Mastodon](https://mstdn.social/web/@tilvids), and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/tilvids). This being October, be on the lookout for some Halloween-themed content to be shared there! And for you creators out in the community, if you have a "spooky" video coming out this month, make sure to give me a heads-up in the chat or on social media and let me know, so I can make sure to get your video into the mix!
- As always, more storage space and server resources means higher costs to run the site. If you're in the position to support, and want to help the TILvids community grow, please consider [donating to our Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids). Every little bit helps keep us growing!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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_posts/2021-11-1-TILvids-Update-November-2021.md
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Welcome to November 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- Happy Halloween! For those of you checking our [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/tilvids/), [Mastodon](https://mstdn.social/web/@tilvids), or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/tilvids) feeds, I post a TILvids video of the day on most days. To celebrate the Halloween spirit, I tried to highlight a number of "spooky" themed videos last month. Hopefully you enjoyed the festivities! 🎃
- We were joined by an awesome new creator this month, [The 1920s Channel](https://tilvids.com/c/the1920schannel/videos)! They are going to be contributing some excellent content all about 1920s style, art, culture, and more. Welcome aboard, and thanks for sharing your videos with the TILvids community!
- We have two new patrons donating to support the TILvids community, Barry Solow and PublicLewdness! Also, a few regular patrons increased their monthly donation. Thank you all **so much** for your contributions. TILvids is a completely community-funded project, and the more donations we have, the more we can afford additional storage space for creators, processing to transcode video files, etc. If you are in a position to help and want to support TILvids, [consider donating](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids)!
- And finally, I updated the PeerTube software from 3.3.0 to version 3.4.0. There are some interesting new features in this update, especially relating to subscribing to individual creators on other instances, which is something the TILvids community has asked for. If you know of a creator on another instance that you would like to see as part of the TILvids stream, let us know on the [Matrix](https://matrix.to/#/!kzdkMSDlVUjuTTObHw:matrix.org?via=matrix.org) or [Discord](https://discord.gg/bVzErWjvTS) chat!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of November 1st, 2021, we currently have 91,825 video views, 1075 users, and 179GB of local videos. It's worth keeping in mind that many instances don't clear out the spam accounts, but I do try to keep on top of that, which is deflating our total number of users (but is, in my mind, very much worth it).
Here are a few thoughts for November:
- We're now starting to have a number of regular content contributors to the site. You all ***rock***! Fresh content is what keeps TILvids interesting, and it's great to see all of your different videos! Please continue spreading the word to other creators and encourage them to consider sharing their edutainment content on TILvids. If you know someone who is interested in sharing, have them reach out on Mastodon, Twitter, Matrix, Discord, Reddit, [Lemmy](https://lemmy.ml/c/tilvids)...lots of great options!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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_posts/2021-12-1-TILvids-Update-December-2021.md
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Welcome to December 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- First off, Happy Thanksgiving to the TILvids community! Even if you aren't visiting from the United States, I hope you are able to stop every once in a while and think about the people and things in your life that bring you joy!
- Getting down to business, we were joined by an awesome new creator this month, [Video Game Animation Study](https://tilvids.com/a/danroot/video-channels)! Hosted by Dan Root, he is sharing some great break-downs of how animation is used in video games, especially retro-style games.
- Speaking of Dan Root, not only is he contributing his content, but he's also donating to our Patreon! We also are able to say thanks to Kuba, who joined us as a patron this month as well! Thank you all **so much** for your contributions. TILvids is a completely community-funded project, and the more donations we have, the more we can afford additional storage space for creators, processing to transcode video files, etc. If you are in a position to help and want to support TILvids, [consider donating](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids)!
- And finally, I updated the PeerTube software from 3.4.0 to version 3.4.1. No new features in this version, but some welcome bug fixes. For creators sharing on our community, the youtube-dl has been having some trouble lately, and is sometimes failing to pull in content. In looking at what's coming in PeerTube's 4.0.0 update, it looks like they're moving from youtube-dl to yt-dlp, a more regularly maintained script, so hopefully that will help smooth things out. 🤞
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of November 1st, 2021, we currently have 94,630 video views, 1184 users, and 182GB of local videos. It's worth keeping in mind that many instances don't clear out the spam accounts, but I do try to keep on top of that, which is deflating our total number of users (but is, in my mind, very much worth it).
Here are a few thoughts for December:
- Probably a bit slower this month from the admin side, as we have the holidays coming up, and things tend to get hectic in personal lives at that time. I still intend to post a TILvids video of the day though, and will hopefully find some holiday-themed content to brighten up everyone's lives!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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_posts/2021-2-1-TILvids-Update-February-2021.md
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Welcome to February 2021, TILvids community! It's hard to believe we're already a month into the year, but time just continues marching on! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- We welcomed some new contributors to our community! If you haven't checked out their videos yet, [Slope's Game Room](https://tilvids.com/accounts/slopesgameroom) has some excellent video game history videos, [Infosec Bytes](https://tilvids.com/accounts/infosecbytes) has some great privacy tips (always near and dear to my heart), [Two-Minute Bioengineering](https://tilvids.com/accounts/julius_eckert) has joined us to share some really interesting science-future videos, and the always-insightful [GDQuest](https://tilvids.com/accounts/gdquest) has graciously permitted us to re-share their content with the TILvids community! Welcome to everyone, and thanks for sharing your great content!
- Speaking of great contributors, we continue to have lots of activity from site favorites, including [Vex0r](https://tilvids.com/accounts/vex0r), [PizzaLovingNerd](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pizzalovingnerdtilvids), [GeoTech](https://tilvids.com/accounts/geotechdigital), [Athena Productions](https://tilvids.com/accounts/athenaproductions), and others!
- The Pine64 community shared a great [monthly update of their own](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/db1e07db-00ed-45c8-97a6-974e3f3a970b), so check that out if you missed it! TILvids continues to proudly support the [Pine64 community](https://www.pine64.org) as their official PeerTube video host. We love supporting great open-source projects and communities, so if you know of any other exciting projects looking for a more open, privacy-respecting home for their videos, point them in our direction!
- As usual, the struggle continues to find time to put out our own exclusive content, but I was able to sneak in one video this month: [Building the Future: What History Can Teach Us About Infrastructure Investment](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/d4796638-14db-41ec-bd6c-9e1d7997c974). I do hope to try to put out at least one exclusive per month.
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of February 1st, 2021, we currently have 56,613 video views, 468 users, and 129GB of local videos.
For February, I'm continuing to focus on a few things:
- Shortly after posting this message, I'll be updating the [PeerTube software](https://joinpeertube.org/) that runs TILvids to version 3.0.1. Assuming all goes well, it should only take about 10 minutes or so. This will bring live-streaming capabilities to TILvids. I'm unsure of how I want this to play into the site (or if the server can even support it), so feel free to leave your thoughts and feedback about it.
- After many months of basically having to run the site as a one-man-band, I'm finally starting to see folks talk about TILvids, join this sub-reddit, share links, and of course upload video content. I can't understate how wonderful this is to see, if means that people are enjoying the community, which is excellent. Please keep it up, and tell your friends, encourage more creators to join, share links...it's all great!
- We are nearing the point where we're going to need more storage space on the server. Our excellent patrons are doing great to keeping costs at bay, but there will come a point where costs are going to eclipse donations again. If you enjoy using the site, and want to help it grow, feel free to [donate to our Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids). As you know, there are no video ads or data harvesting on the site, and the site runs by the generous donations of the community. Thank you so much to everyone already donating, every little bit helps!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and join this adventure we're all on together! Every day, I wake up excited to find out what new things await us on [TILvids](https://tilvids.com)!

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_posts/2021-3-1-TILvids-Update-March-2021.md
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Welcome to March 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- A big TILvids welcome to new content contributor [Hot Chaklat Productions](https://tilvids.com/accounts/hotchaklat)! If you want to watch some interesting content ranging from electric vehicles to data privacy online, head on over and check them out!
- Our self-uploading crew continues to push out lots of great new content for the TILvids community! Thanks to [Vex0r](https://tilvids.com/accounts/vex0r), [PizzaLovingNerd](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pizzalovingnerdtilvids), [GeoTech](https://tilvids.com/accounts/geotechdigital), [Athena Productions](https://tilvids.com/accounts/athenaproductions), [The Attic Dwellers](https://tilvids.com/accounts/theatticdwellers), [Tyler's Tech](https://tilvids.com/accounts/tylerstech) and [the Pine64 Community](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pine64tilvids) for continuing to share their content!
- To celebrate the Mars Perseverance rover landing, a number of videos about the current and previous Mars missions were added to [the Open Space Vids channel](https://tilvids.com/accounts/openspacevids), including [this amazing video of the rover landing itself](https://tilvids.com/videos/watch/5211e86d-6421-442e-b1d8-d3e983ebd3b9)!
- No exclusive TILvids video content this month, unfortunately. With February being a short month, and just other things to focus on with the site, time ran out. Hopefully next month!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of March 1st, 2021, we currently have 63,736 video views, 545 users, and 137GB of local videos.
For March, I'm continuing to focus on a few things:
- Looking for more creators. Trying to run TILvids is like trying to balance multiple spinning plates at once, with those plates being technically running the site, promoting the site to help grow the community, creating exclusive content, engaging with our community, and finding new creators. February was spent dealing with some technical issues and promoting, so I'm hoping to get back to reaching out to more creators this month.
- Speaking of content, I'd love to hear more from our community about what they'd like to see. We have a natural gravity around tech and open-source/web content, which is great and I love that content. But past that, I need to know what types of content creators I should be looking to bring in. If you have topic areas you'd like to see, post below in the comments and let me know!
- As always, please continue to spread the word online! Every month our community continues to grow, and this just makes it easier to convince new creators to give it a shot. If you want to see TILvids continue to get new creators, sharing the site is the best way to do it!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community!

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_posts/2021-4-1-TILvids-Update-April-2021.md
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Welcome to April 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- A big TILvids welcome to new content contributor [Polarhive](https://tilvids.com/video-channels/polarhive)! He's bringing some great shows about privacy and open-source, so make sure to check out his channel!
- Our self-uploading crew continues to push out lots of great new content for the TILvids community! Thanks to [Vex0r](https://tilvids.com/accounts/vex0r), [PizzaLovingNerd](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pizzalovingnerdtilvids), [GeoTech](https://tilvids.com/accounts/geotechdigital), [Athena Productions](https://tilvids.com/accounts/athenaproductions), [The Attic Dwellers](https://tilvids.com/accounts/theatticdwellers), [Tyler's Tech](https://tilvids.com/accounts/tylerstech), [Always Asking](https://tilvids.com/accounts/alwaysasking), and [the Pine64 Community](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pine64tilvids) for continuing to share their content!
- Some unfortunate news about the NewPipe mobile client. After some user reports that TILvids videos were no longer loading, we [tracked the issue down](https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/5964) to a switch we made to using PeerTube's HLS streaming option instead of WebTorrent. Because this is now the recommended streaming option from the PeerTube developers, we're going to keep it configured that way, but unfortunately it means that NewPipe's mobile client won't work until they implement this method of streaming support. Make sure to let them know if this is important to you!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of April 1st, 2021, we currently have 69,681 video views, 615 users, and 145GB of local videos.
Here are a few thoughts for April:
- I get asked a lot about why TILvids doesn't federate with the larger PeerTube ecosystem, and there are two main reasons for this. First, there is a *lot* of questionable content across the ecosystems, and this has given PeerTube a bad reputation. I started the community with the hopes of changing this reputation by curating the creators that share with the community. Second, some of the creators sharing on TILvids want their content associated with "TILvids", and not federated PeerTube, so I want to be able to respect those wishes. That said, I really don't want TILvids to become a complete island. What I'd love to see happen is for some of the creators on TILvids that grow their own following to start up their own personal instances, and then federate back/forth with the larger TILvids community. This will help the community to grow beyond just TILvids, and we can all help each other rise. This is a long-term vision, but one that I think will be healthy in the long-run.
- In March, we finally hit the point where it was time to add more space again. This also meant the next tier of service doubled our processing (from 2 to 4 vCPUs) and memory (from 4 to 8GB). I've noticed the site running a lot faster, and it's also able to process and transcode more videos, so they go live more quickly. All of this comes at an additional cost though. Up until now, we've been fortunate to have enough donations to offset the cost of running the site, but we're starting to get close to needing more, if we want to be able to add additional space. If you enjoy the videos shared in the TILvids community, and want to help it continue to grow, [donating is a great way to make that happen](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids).
- As always, please continue to spread the word online! Every month our community continues to grow, and this just makes it easier to convince new creators to give it a shot. If you want to see TILvids continue to get new creators, sharing the site is the best way to do it!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community!

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_posts/2021-5-1-TILvids-Update-May-2021.md
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Welcome to May 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- A big TILvids welcome to our newest content creators! We had a big month for new creators, so please welcome [jbriones95](https://tilvids.com/accounts/jbriones95/videos), [Tim Krief](https://tilvids.com/accounts/timkrief/videos), [Paperpunk](https://tilvids.com/accounts/paperpunk/videos), [Connor Kaye](https://tilvids.com/accounts/connor_kaye/videos), [Marinauts](https://tilvids.com/accounts/marinauts/videos), and [Triple_Eye](https://tilvids.com/accounts/triple_eye/videos)! Holy smokes, what a list!
- Our self-uploading crew continues to push out lots of great new content for the TILvids community! Way too many at this point to break out individually, by you guys are the beating heart of our community, and thank you for continuing to share your excellent content!
- This month, I started up a Discord server for folks that want to chat about TILvids with each other, give feedback about the site, ways to improve the community, etc. It's open to anyone, so feel free to [drop by](https://discord.gg/bVzErWjvTS) and join in the conversation!
- The software that runs TILvids (/r/peertube) was updated to version 3.1.0 during April. There were a few hiccups that unfortunately broke our layout for about a day, but things should be back up and running now. Sorry for any interruption!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of April 1st, 2021, we currently have 74,077 video views, 692 users, and 151GB of local videos.
Here are a few thoughts for May:
- More and more, as the TILvids community continues to grow, I think about how to set it up to do so in a sustainable, healthy way. I'm beginning to explore the idea of setting it up as a "hub and spoke" model, where established creators on TILvids can "graduate" to having their own instance that TILvids follows. In that way, we create a sort of mesh network of content, where people looking for a one-stop location can come to TILvids, but creators also have control over their own sub-community a bit more. This also has added benefits of distributing some of the ever-increasing storage costs, while still also keeping a lot of the non-edutainment content off the network. I'll likely be looking to test the waters on this in the near future. All of this is very much still under development though, so feel free to share thoughts in our Discord, and look for more details to come.
- As always, please continue to spread the word online! Every month our community continues to grow, and this just makes it easier to convince new creators to give it a shot. If you want to see TILvids continue to get new creators, sharing the site is the best way to do it!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community!

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_posts/2021-6-1-TILvids-Update-June-2021.md
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Welcome to June 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- A big TILvids welcome to our newest content creator, [Anthill Art](https://tilvids.com/accounts/anthillart/video-channels)! We've already seen a bunch of very cool videos about creating art using molten aluminum while removing invasive species. Check it out!
- As I mentioned in [last month's update](https://www.reddit.com/r/tilvids/comments/n2m780/tilvids_update_may_2021/), I want TILvids to grow in scalable ways, and one of the mechanisms I hope to use is the "hub and spoke" model, where successful creators that fit into certain criteria can run their own instances and link back into TILvids via federation. I was happy to announce a few weeks ago we are running our first experimental trial under this model, and have [added Sun Knudsen](https://www.reddit.com/r/tilvids/comments/n8i2bo/tilvids_announcement_of_the_day_creatorpartner/) as a creator-partner instance! Check his content out, either on TILvids or on [Sun's instance](https://peertube.sunknudsen.com) as he has some great privacy-related content!
- Mobile community members were disappointed a month or two ago to find out that NewPipe was no longer working with many PeerTube instances due to lacking support for HLS streaming. Happy to report that the latest release of NewPipe, version 0.21.3, has [fixed this issue](https://www.reddit.com/r/tilvids/comments/nmwz9v/psa_newpipe_release_v0213_available_fixes/)! So if you're a mobile community viewer, go grab the latest update and start watching again!
- As many of you know, I've struggled lately to find time to make my own content to share on the site. However, I [ran across](https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/njva2s/i_released_my_first_godot_game_on_itchio/) a very cool indie game made with Godot, and being a fan of both indie gaming *and* Godot, I decided to make a short review of the game. Check out our exclusive [review of Starboy](https://www.reddit.com/r/tilvids/comments/nkow88/tilvids_video_of_the_day_starboy_indie_game_made/), and if you think it looks like fun, consider paying $2 to [download Starboy from itch.io](https://mrkdji.itch.io/starboy)
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of April 1st, 2021, we currently have 77,514 video views, 751 users, and 156GB of local videos.
Here are a few thoughts for June:
- June might be a bit of a slower month for bigger undertakings, as I have some outside things taking up cycles. That said, I'm hoping to continue adding new creators to the community, and potentially expanding the "hub and spoke" model to any current creators interested in trying it out. Get in touch if you fall into either of those camps!
- We're starting to creep closer to the big 1,000 mark for users! As always, please continue to spread the word online! Every month our community continues to grow, and this just makes it easier to convince new creators to give it a shot. If you want to see TILvids continue to get new creators, sharing the site is the best way to do it!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community!

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_posts/2021-7-1-TILvids-Update-July-2021.md
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Welcome to July 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- We are now sharing videos from [Engineer Guy](https://tilvids.com/video-channels/engineerguy/videos), a very cool channel with Creative Commons videos all about engineering questions. There are a number of creators on TILvids who do not actively post videos themselves, but have given us permission to share their content. Thanks to randomguyatepizza, one of our active community members, for reaching out to get permission!
- That said, we do have a number of creators that *are* actively sharing their content with the community as well. This past month, we saw excellent videos shared by [Linux Lounge](https://tilvids.com/accounts/linuxlounge), [Pizza Loving Nerd](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pizzalovingnerdtilvids), [GeoTech Digital](https://tilvids.com/accounts/geotechdigital), [JBriones95](https://tilvids.com/accounts/jbriones95), [Athena Productions](https://tilvids.com/accounts/athenaproductions), [The Attic Dwellers](https://tilvids.com/accounts/theatticdwellers), [Anthill Art](https://tilvids.com/accounts/anthillart), [ToggleJam](https://tilvids.com/accounts/togglejam), [Tim Krief](https://tilvids.com/accounts/timkrief), [The Pine64 Community](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pine64tilvids), [Addem](https://tilvids.com/accounts/addem), and [PolarHive](https://tilvids.com/accounts/nathan). What a huge list of awesome content, ranging from retro movie reviews to history of mythology, and everything in-between! Thanks so much for all the videos that you all have shared, you're the beating heart of the TILvids community!
- We also had a number of video shared by [Always Asking](https://tilvids.com/accounts/alwaysasking). This is a special shout-out because not only are they awesome for sharing content, but they're also one of our major donors, helping to offset the costs of running the TILvids website. This is absolutely critical, because as we add more content creators, the cost to run the site continues to climb. If you're interested in helping to support the community, feel free to [help donate to TILvids](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids)! Thank you so much Always Asking! 🙌
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of July 1st, 2021, we currently have 80,138 video views, 844 users, and 163GB of local videos.
Here are a few thoughts for July:
- As promised, June was a bit slower month on my end, as I have external commitments to continue dealing with. That's ok though, because my hope has always been to get TILvids to a point where it becomes self-sustaining, so that I don't have to actively promote it as much. With more and more content creators sharing, that is beginning to be realized. That said, the more the merrier, and if you know someone making great edutainment content that would be interested, feel free to point them our way!
- We're starting to creep closer to the big 1,000 mark for users! As always, please continue to spread the word online! Every month our community continues to grow, and this just makes it easier to convince new creators to give it a shot. If you want to see TILvids continue to get new creators, sharing the site is the best way to do it!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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_posts/2021-8-1-TILvids-Update-August-2021.md
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layout: post
title: TILvids Update - August 2021
---
Welcome to August 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- First up: [The TILvids blog](https://blog.tilvids.com/)! As you hopefully have noticed (by virtue of being here), last month I created a dedicated blog for TILvids. I had been using Reddit previously to post updates, but have received many requests to have a more dedicated location for the blog, so that it's easier to find and share the content. Mission accomplished!
- For those of you unaware, we have a [Discord Community](https://discord.gg/bVzErWjvTS). We also have a [Matrix Chatroom](https://matrix.to/#/!kzdkMSDlVUjuTTObHw:matrix.org?via=matrix.org). However, both of those communities were siloed off from each other, and the conversations existed in a vacuum. Thanks to some good work from the Matrix crew, we were able to set up a bridge so that communication in either of the communities now shows up in both places. Thanks especially to @random_guy524 for helping to get all of that going!
- Thank you to all of the creators sharing their content with the TILvids community! This past month, we saw excellent videos shared by [Linux Lounge](https://tilvids.com/accounts/linuxlounge), [Pizza Loving Nerd](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pizzalovingnerdtilvids), [GeoTech Digital](https://tilvids.com/accounts/geotechdigital), [JBriones95](https://tilvids.com/accounts/jbriones95), [Athena Productions](https://tilvids.com/accounts/athenaproductions), [ToggleJam](https://tilvids.com/accounts/togglejam), [Tim Krief](https://tilvids.com/accounts/timkrief), [The Pine64 Community](https://tilvids.com/accounts/pine64tilvids). So many interesting videos shared, ranging from tech, to science, to history, and lots of other subjects in-between. Thanks for keeping the TILvids community entertained!
- Also, a special shout-out to [The Attic Dwellers](https://tilvids.com/accounts/theatticdwellers). Not only are they long-time content contributors to TILvids (they are one of the oldest channels!) but they also began donating to our Patreon! This is absolutely critical, because as we add more content creators, the cost to run the site continues to climb. If you're interested in helping to support the community, feel free to [help donate to TILvids](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids)! Thank you so much to The Attic Dwellers! 🙌
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of August 1st, 2021, we currently have 83,456 video views, 897 users, and 167GB of local videos.
Here are a few thoughts for August:
- One of the surest signs of a growing community includes a growing number of spam accounts, and I'm "happy" to say we've made it to the big leagues. There has been a noticeable uptick in the number of spam accounts created. To that end, I opted to enable email verification for new accounts. This has slowed the number of spam accounts considerably, however some still do trickle through. If you watch the user numbers and notice them fluctuate up and down, this is just a result of me "cleaning house" every so often.
- That said, we continue to creep closer to the big 1,000 mark for users! From time to time, I check out where TILvids stands on the [PeerTube Instances List](https://instances.joinpeertube.org/instances) for total users, and it's been fun to watch us rise up the charts (currently sitting at #30). As always, please continue to spread the word online! Every month our community continues to grow, and this just makes it easier to convince new creators to give it a shot. If you want to see TILvids continue to get new creators, sharing the site is the best way to do it!
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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_posts/2021-9-1-TILvids-Update-September-2021.md
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layout: post
title: TILvids Update - September 2021
---
Welcome to September 2021, TILvids community! Let's take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- Not a lot of big news for August, we're definitely in the lazy summer months! Since there isn't a lot of news, I'll take this opportunity to remind everyone that TILvids is completely funded via community donations. The more people we have donating, the more space I'm able to give to our creators to share their videos with the community. If you're in a position to donate, and would like to help, [you can do so here](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids). Thanks to everyone who is already contributing!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of September 1st, 2021, we currently have 85,875 video views, 929 users, and 170GB of local videos.
Here are a few thoughts for September:
- I really want to try to find more creators to share with the TILvids community. When I first started the site, I spent a lot of time asking people if they'd be interested, and probably reached out to over 200 creators. That's something I haven't had as much time to do lately, but I want to get back to it. If you have any channels you regularly follow in the edutainment space, especially smaller channels (under 50,000 subscribers) please send them my way, or even better reach out to them and tell them you'd like to see their content available on TILvids!
- I'm looking to update the site software to v3.3.0 soon. I try to lag about a month or so behind the current version, just so any kinks can be worked out. Usually a pretty smooth process, but if there are any interruptions, that's probably why.
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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_posts/2022-01-01-TILvids-Update-January-2022.md
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layout: post
title: TILvids Update - January 2022
---
Welcome to January 2022, TILvids community! Because this is the last post for 2021, and since I've had some requests for a video update in the past, I thought I'd take the opportunity to make a "Year in Review" video for the TILvids community. So without further ado, here is the TILvids 2021 Year in Review video!
<iframe width="560" height="315" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups" title="TILvids 2021 Year in Review" src="https://tilvids.com/videos/embed/02781a54-cc2a-4398-93b1-c0a35f6ee057?warningTitle=0&peertubeLink=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of January 1st, 2022, we currently have 96,702 video views, 1252 users, and 185GB of local videos. It's worth keeping in mind that many instances don't clear out the spam accounts, but I do try to keep on top of that, which is deflating our total number of users (but is, in my mind, very much worth it).
Here are a few thoughts for January:
- We had a huge influx of users, creators, and even donors after [this](https://twitter.com/Linux4Everyone/status/1471507890083024905) and a few other Twitter threads. We're so happy to see new folks discover our TILvids community, and you are all very much welcomed! I'll be introducing our new creators via our TILvids video of the day in the coming week!
- Looking forward to the 4.0 PeerTube update, which I'll hopefully be able to roll out this month. The youtube-dl plugin is lately having a lot of trouble pulling in videos from creators' other channels, and 4.0 promises to address some of that.
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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_posts/2022-02-01-TILvids-Update-February-2022.md
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layout: post
title: TILvids Update - February 2022
---
Welcome to February 2022, TILvids community! Let’s take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- First off, huge thank-you to our newest patrons, Nick T, Cypheon, and 1peter10! TILvids is completely community-funded, so becoming a patron means you are helping the community grow. Community donations go to expanding storage and other server resources, so that we can continue to add creators and share more content with the TILvids community. If you're interested in becoming a patron, [go here to learn more](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids)!
- We were joined by a number of new creators this month! [Simon Caine](https://tilvids.com/c/simon.caine_channel/videos) is bringing the TILvids community his unique blend of humor and tech commentary. [Jacob Westall](https://tilvids.com/c/jacob_westall_channel/videos) is showing off some neat DIY projects. And [Freedcreative](https://tilvids.com/c/freedcreative_channel) has a channel dedicated to all things [Krita](https://krita.org). We're excited and thankful to have our new creators sharing with the TILvids community. Welcome aboard!
- Congrats to Geotechland([@geotechland@fosstodon.org](https://fosstodon.org/@geotechland)) on the success of his [latest video about Gnome 42](https://tilvids.com/w/2NQfnCZMnRQcUorE1v58ds), which shot up to well over 1,000 views! A great accomplishment indeed!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of February 1st, 2022, we currently have 101,460 video views, 1350 users, and 188GB of local videos. It's worth keeping in mind that many instances don't clear out the spam accounts, but I do try to keep on top of that, which is deflating our total number of users (but is, in my mind, very much worth it).
Here are a few thoughts for February:
- Still waiting for [PeerTube 4.0](https://joinpeertube.org) to stabilize before updating the server, as there appear to be a few potential upgrade bugs still out there. The youtube-dl plugin is lately having a lot of trouble pulling in videos from creators' other channels, and 4.0 promises to address some of that.
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️
![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/69435791/152031656-660a13b4-3d57-4286-aa91-443f918c2683.png)

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_posts/2022-04-01-TILvids-Update-April-2022.md
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layout: post
title: TILvids Update - April 2022
---
![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/69435791/161336613-36445ba5-43bb-4d34-9311-725c94d4e6a0.png)
Welcome to April 2022, TILvids community! Let’s take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- So, a funny thing happened on the way to the blog update. I have a calendar reminder set to write up a blog post at the end of the month, but my reminder series went out and I forgot to post last month! I said to myself, "Oh well, it wasn't a big month, I'll just squeeze March and April together, since there's probably not a lot to report..." Famous last words, as it turns out. I noticed toward the last week or so of March that the site was loading really slowly, video thumbnails weren't showing up on social media, etc. I reached out to the Yunohost community (we use their technology to admin the site) and they said that the 4.1.0 release might have some issues, and that updating to 4.1.1 should hopefully clear it up. I usually lag our instance behind a few weeks after updates, just to let the dust settle a bit, but it was bad enough that I opted to roll the dice. Oops. Upon initializing the update procedure, there were a number of errors that occurred. The system ended up bailing on the install, but it left the server in an inoperable state. I had to spend the next few days talking between the PeerTube and Yunohost communities to even track down what was happening. In the end, I had to manually dig into the PeerTube service and delete a plugin to support Chromecast playback that appeared to be no longer compatible with PeerTube, along with deleting over 150 database records that somehow became duplicated. All in all, it took about three days to get to the bottom of what was happening, but happy to report that the server did recover after that, update 4.1.1 was rolled out, and it appears the original problem I was trying to solve did indeed improve after the update. Lots of lessons learned and things to think about coming out the other side of this, but ultimately, just happy everything is back to a working state again. Thanks for hanging with me while I tried to sort it out!
- In more positive news, happy to welcome new TILvids creator [LINMOB](https://tilvids.com/a/linmob/video-channels) to our community, who is making some great FOSS hardware content! Also happy to welcome [v_brigham](https://tilvids.com/c/v_brigham_channel) who is bringing some neat Commodore 64 and other retro dev topics. We're excited and thankful to have our new creators sharing with the TILvids community. Welcome aboard!
- The question pops up from time-to-time, about what my goals are for TILvids and the community. I've touched on that before in [previous blog entries](https://blog.tilvids.com/TILvids-Update-May-2021/), but expounded on it in a few different ways in [this Reddit reply](https://www.reddit.com/r/tilvids/comments/tr65yr/2_questions_about_tilvids/) so I thought it was worth sharing here as well. Ultimately, I really want TILvids to be a positive force in the tech world that is driven by a sense of community. I drive most of my decisions about the site with that foundation in mind.
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of April 1st, 2022, we currently have 105,925 video views, 1502 users, and 193GB of local videos. It's worth keeping in mind that many instances don't clear out the spam accounts, but I do try to keep on top of that, which is deflating our total number of users (but is, in my mind, very much worth it).
Here are a few thoughts for May:
- Better backups. I could have saved myself a lot of heartburn by having a more robust backup strategy. It's a challenge, since I don't host TILvids locally and our database of videos isn't exactly small at this point. I've already made a few changes that should help make it better going forward, but I still want to investigate more.
- Server migration. While trying to fix the server issue, I had a good chat with some folks on our chat servers, and they tipped me off to some different hosting options that not only have better resources, but also might even reduce costs a bit (which is something that needs to be done to ensure long-term viability of the site). I'm going to investigate that a bit. I don't want to make any changes just yet, coming off of all the excitement from last month, but it's on the roadmap, so expect some changes there at some point.
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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_posts/2022-05-01-TILvids-Update-May-2022.md
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layout: post
title: TILvids Update - May 2022
---
![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/69435791/166168805-75edab62-2719-4cc1-916e-dec4a3e1cfff.png)
Welcome to May 2022, TILvids community! Let’s take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- If you'll remember [last month](https://blog.tilvids.com/TILvids-Update-April-2022/), I mentioned that we'd be looking to migrate to a new server host, and I'm happy to say that I was able to successfully perform the migration earlier this month. It wasn't without its hiccups; immediately upon pointing the DNS to the new site, I noticed a number of elements that I missed during the copy process. Oops. At any rate, with some help from the community, and with some late-night troubleshooting, everything was straightened out. This migration should help a lot to not only reduce costs a bit (at least for now), but will also give us more storage space, allowing for more content! The only major issue is that the server is hosted in Germany as opposed to Canada now, so streaming performance is a bit slower for our western-hemisphere users. More on that below...
- A very happy welcome to new TILvids creator [Veronica Explains](https://tilvids.com/a/veronicaexplains)! We're excited and thankful to have new creators sharing with the TILvids community. Welcome aboard!
- In case you missed it this month, with the announcement of [Elon Musk acquiring Twitter](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/04/twitter-reportedly-set-to-accept-elon-musks-offer-to-buy-the-company/), the Mastodon community saw [a large influx of new users](https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-get-started-on-mastodon-and-leave-twitter-behind). As supporters of the decentralized movement, this is fantastic news, and we were happy to see so many new users, and give a warm welcome to the many who [followed us on Mastodon](https://mstdn.social/web/@tilvids). A billionaire buying walled-garden social media communities isn't going to make the world a better place, that will only come from the decentralization of the Internet, so keep pushing!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of May 1st, 2022, we currently have 108,728 video views, 1,582 users, and 198GB of local videos. It's worth keeping in mind that many instances don't clear out the spam accounts, but I do try to keep on top of that, which is deflating our total number of users (but is, in my mind, very much worth it).
Here are a few thoughts for June:
- As mentioned above, with the migration of the site to a new host, we have seen some slowdowns for users in the western-hemisphere (though, happily, some speed *increases* for those in Europe). One thing I'd like to look into is building a pseudo-CDN by spinning up a mirror server in the western-hemisphere. I've done a few tests so far but haven't made any real progress. My hope is to continue working toward that going forward.
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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_posts/2022-06-01-TILvids-Update-June-2022.md
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layout: post
title: TILvids Update - June 2022
---
![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/69435791/171321523-923b1337-b37f-4a80-9bee-cabda172f427.png)
Welcome to June 2022, TILvids community! Let’s take a look at what was happening at [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) over the last month:
- After a couple of exciting months in server-admin-land, happy to have a relatively quiet month in May. Due to the upgrades and expansions made possible, I've been able to get back to pulling in content from creators that don't post themselves, but give us permission to re-post for them on TILvids. Hoping to keep that up a bit, to continue introducing great new content and creators to our community!
- Big thanks to new TILvids patrons Separate Realities and Escovan! Donations from our patrons go directly to supporting and expanding our server, which lets us continue to add more creators and content to our community. If you'd like to donate to TILvids, [check out our Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/tilvids)!
- I had a request to track some of the site stats. As of June 1st, 2022, we currently have 111,552 video views, 1,674 users, and 207GB of local videos.
Here are a few thoughts for July:
- I mentioned last month that with the migration of the site to a new host, we have seen some slowdowns for users in the western-hemisphere, and I was hoping to construct a pseudo-CDN by spinning up a mirror server in the western-hemisphere. Still no progress there, but would like to look into it when I get some time.
- Please keep spreading the word about TILvids, especially to your favorite edutainment content creators! We are fortunate enough now to have a decently-sized community, which begins to start to be attractive to creators. This is such a far cry from where things started out almost two years ago. I can't say enough how much respect I have for our community, and how exciting it has been to watch it grow and develop! I've learned so much from all of this, and count TILvids as one of my joys in life.
I think that's it for now! Thanks so much to everyone for continuing to watch, comment, share, and support the [TILvids](https://tilvids.com) community! ❤️

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// Colors
$blue: #4183C4;
$lightBlue: #0066FF;
$darkBlue: #0099FF;
// Grays
$black: #000;
@ -26,4 +24,4 @@ $georgia: Georgia, serif;
@media screen and (max-width: 640px) {
@content;
}
}
}

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}
body {
background: $darkGray;
background: $white;
font: 18px/1.4 $helvetica;
color: $lightGray;
color: $darkGray;
}
.container {
@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ body {
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
font-family: $helveticaNeue;
color: $lightGray;
color: $darkerGray;
font-weight: bold;
line-height: 1.7;
@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ h3 {
h4 {
font-size: 18px;
color: $lightGray;
color: $gray;
}
p {
@ -69,11 +69,11 @@ p {
}
a {
color: $darkBlue;
color: $blue;
text-decoration: none;
cursor: pointer;
&:hover, &:active {
color: $lightBlue;
color: $blue;
}
}
@ -117,7 +117,7 @@ img {
.date {
font-style: italic;
color: $lightGray;
color: $gray;
}
// Specify the color of the selection
@ -192,7 +192,7 @@ img {
.site-name {
margin: 0;
color: $lightGray;
color: $darkGray;
cursor: pointer;
font-family: $helveticaNeue;
font-weight: 300;
@ -202,7 +202,7 @@ img {
.site-description {
margin: -5px 0 0 0;
color: $lightGray;
color: $gray;
font-size: 16px;
@include mobile {