A Brief Introduction

Welcome to MindCast!

This is something of a resurrection for the idea behind MindCast. I had a blog years ago with the same name, doing roughly the same things as I intend to do with this site, and though I was proud of some of the writing I did there, it never quite got going. In the end I got dispirited with the whole thing and eventually deleted the site wholesale.

Recently the urge to write reviews and thoughts centered mostly around media and the Arts has resurfaced and honestly I slightly regret having deleted those old posts. So, this new site is again named MindCast in honour of that past site. Hopefully I can make more of a show of things this time.

So what is this MindCast thing anyway? Well, it will largely be reviews and opinions based on my consumption of media. I tend to engage with media in a way that suggests I should probably give up any claim to being neurotypical. It revolves around a system which I have refined and reinvented over the course of more years than I am very comfortble thinking about, but I think I have finally come to a version that offers longevity as well as continuing to scratch the set-up process has been satisfying (which is possibly why I have constantly reinvented it).

The system works like this:

1. Create a list of media types and platforms to engage with. These can be broad categories (e.g. just a media type such as “Book”), or granular (e.g. listing streaming services separately rather than gathering them under an umbrella “Film/TV”)
2. Randomise the list.
3. Turn that list into a schedule designed so that the item at the top of the list happens most often and the item on the bottom the least often with everything else happening on a sliding scale of frequency inbetween.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 when the end of the schedule is reached or to create parallel schedules where needed (e.g. if the first iteration is front loaded with longer form media suh as books or video games, a parallel schedule may be required with more short form things front loaded for the sake of variety).
5. For each category, create a running order. Depending on the type of media in that category this will be based on a combination of factors including, but not limited to, availability, order of presentation on the platform and related media (e.g. franchises/shared media)

This all sounds much more complicated than it is, but it will dictate the frequency and order of posts to a large degree, so I thought it worth explaining a little bit about why things might seem to bounce around.

I am still in the midst of creating the first iterations of cycles and running orders so I am not yet sure what the first main posts will be or when they will surface, but keep a weather eye, things will be happening very soon.