Another Roof

GOOD NEWS! My latest video has received incredible feedback -- thank you so much to all who watched and left lovely comments.

BAD NEWS -- I spent nine months making it, and it's the worst-performing full video on my channel. I can only assume either:
(a) It took so long that viewers have forgotten me, or the video is performing so poorly that it wasn't recommended to you. If that's the case, then here I am, and here it is!
(b) Viewers are put off by the length.

I get it. Over two hours of maths sounds daunting, but it's broken up into bite-sized chapters which makes it easy to watch it in chunks. And you don't need to remember any specific details from chapter to chapter. Give it a try!

We know that RSA will soon be broken by quantum computers. What will replace it? The world's nerdiest hunger games -- an epic 8-year contest where cryptographers could propose new schemes and break each others' -- was used to find the new standards. My video tells the story of this battle royale and how post-quantum schemes work.

I cover niche topics in lots of detail and that's never going to be hugely popular. I'm okay with not appealing to everyone. But, if you're subscribed, I do make videos for *you* and I think you'll love this story.

16 hours ago | [YT] | 49

Another Roof

Thank you all for your patience while I finish my epic video! So long as nothing major goes wrong, I'll premiere it on 5th October at ~4pm BST. Join me afterwards for a post-video stream to say hi and nag me for taking so damned long!

The video is around 2 hours 40 minutes. Ridiculous, I know, but this is a one-off super project with lots of story to tell and varied mathematics. Every 30 minutes or so, we'll finish one topic and move onto another. All topics are thematically related, but there's no need to remember all the maths from section to section -- hopefully that means it won't be too overwhelming with new information.

One last thing: there has been a lot of worry and speculation over some recent YouTube algorithm changes (see e.g. Josh Strife Hayes discussing it). This is exactly what I wanted to hear just before releasing a video I've spent nine months working on... Still, as a smaller channel, I don't know how I'll be affected. All I'll say is: Thank you so much for watching my videos, please watch and share this one, and consider supporting me on Patreon if you like what I make.

See you in a week!

1 week ago | [YT] | 209

Another Roof

Since Christmas, I have been working on a single video. I knew it would take a while, but I didn’t know it would take THIS long. I wanted to update you on: when you can expect the video, some thoughts on video length and structure, and honestly: build some hype!

NEW VIDEO?
I’m keeping the topic secret. My patrons have received tons of updates including screenshots and clips, but even they don’t know the main subject. What I will say is: I’m telling the story of an enormous ten-year-long mathematical event. It has drama, twists, winners and losers, lots of mathematics, and is about something that affects us all.

Why has it taken so long to make? Brace yourself: it’s over 2.5 hours long. That said, in my usual videos, I build lots of theory toward one big conclusion. So, they are perhaps best-viewed in one go so you can keep the stepping stones in your mind to enjoy the punchline. My upcoming project has natural chapter end-points where you can relax before moving on to the next part, taking a break if you need to. It feels like three of my usual 30- to 40-minute videos in one, but with a narrative linking them together. As such, my original plan was to separate the story into multiple videos. But in the end, I decided that one epic all-in-one video with all the drama and all the maths was the way to go — it is ONE story.

WHY SO LONG?
Because it's a long story! I wanted to address this though because I've seen some negativity recently about YouTube being saturated with time-wasting videos. Broadly speaking, I agree with the sentiment — many video essays could be much shorter while still making their case. Being charitable, editing one's own work is difficult, and it's easier to make your point in many words than few. Being cynical, the algorithm prioritises watch-time, so making super-long videos is an easy way to game the system. This is why we see ""video essays"" about films which spend most of the time recapping the plot.

I bring this up to reassure you that I haven't inflated the video length to score views or waste your time. I'm always conscious of length and desperate to shorten things, but while there may be a shorter version of this story, it wouldn't be the complete one told in my own meticulous detail-loving style. I have faith in my viewers to view the video in multiple sittings if they need to, effectively turning it into a multi-video series. I’ll also say that this is a one-off super project — I do not plan to shift into an HBomb pattern of exclusively making enormous videos months or years apart!

RELEASE
I had to do a tonne of research, reach out to lots of academics to check my facts, write 25,000 words for my script, and make an ungodly amount of props. I started shooting two months ago, and have just now finished. In this time I’ve also managed to do lots of editing. So, I’m currently sitting on a big long sequence that’s edited together but with no effects, captions, music, and so on — all the things that bring videos to life. It’s been a long journey, but I can see the finishing line! I want to say it’ll be ready in about a month, but whenever I make these sorts of predictions I realise what a fool I was. So, a month-ish, with a generous heap of salt.

Fun fact, on this day three years ago, I uploaded my first video. Thank you all so much, whether you’ve been here since the beginning or have recently discovered the channel. And thank you all for your continued patience — I cannot wait to share this project with you!

- Alex (and Alex (and Alex))

3 months ago | [YT] | 428

Another Roof

I've always believed in quality over quantity when it comes to videos. All my favourite channels follow that approach. I'm so grateful to all of you for your patience, and to those who show up for every video. Thank you!

I bring this up because I'm deep into the research for my next video, but it's a *huge* topic. I'm planning for my next video to be an epic -- over an hour, potentially longer than two hours, in order to cover everything at the level of "no missing steps" detail I like. Because of this scope, it'll be a while before it is released, so just wanted to let you all know and thank you in advance for your patience. It's a topic that's fun, fascinating, and affects all of us!

In the meantime, what was your favourite 2024 video of mine? It's easy to get obsessed with metrics like view counts, but I like knowing which videos viewers *value* and *enjoy* regardless of view count. Enjoy the stupid square images that YouTube, a video platform, forced me to upload.

8 months ago | [YT] | 74

Another Roof

Join me tomorrow for my final video of 2024, a sort of spiritual sequel to my Countdown video. Thank you so much for watching my videos -- many more to come next year!

9 months ago | [YT] | 90

Another Roof

I've had a lot going on with the start of a new academic year and switching editing software, so thank you for your patience! Join me this Sunday when I'll be premiering my latest video!

10 months ago | [YT] | 152

Another Roof

Thanks to everyone who has watched my latest video on the Golden Ratio, Pi, and numerology! I hope you enjoyed it. I’m so excited for next week’s video, which is a collab!

Apologies for the long post but I want to be transparent about something: I’m trying out YouTube’s “test and compare” feature for thumbnails. I know this is reasonably common practice among YouTubers but I want to be honest and upfront about it and share some feelings about YouTubing as a whole.

Coming up with eyecatching titles / thumbnails is the only part of YouTubing that I hate. I have personal rules, like not to pull a face which doesn’t appear in the video itself, highlight surprising things but don’t lie etc — stuff you’d think any reasonable person would do but many channels plainly lie to bait viewers. I follow these but still, making thumbnails is not what I enjoy about making videos. (While I’m being transparent, the one time I broke my face-pulling rule was for my Sherlock video because I cut the footage that used the magnifying glass!)

As an example, I made a video recently about Gauss’s Heptadecagon which did well with 200k+ views. I think many people who watched that video would also enjoy the sequel about polygon constructions. But that sequel video got 40k views and stagnated quickly. A friend of mine didn’t even know that I’d made the sequel because they didn’t see it in their feed, despite how they are subscribed and loved the first one! Perhaps the title and thumbnail didn’t resonate with viewers and therefore YouTube didn’t recommended the video as widely.

Playing the thumbnail game, it seems, is a necessary and sad aspect of building a career on the platform and reaching more viewers to inspire with mathematics. This is especially true in the current algorithmic climate which values frequent uploads. Meanwhile I’m still trying to make it with the old fashioned low-frequency high-quality approach — which is risky because as the example illustrates, sometimes hundreds of hours of work can go broadly unseen.

To clarify, I don’t just make videos to get views. I make them because I love sharing stories about mathematics. YouTubing does form a growing portion of my income though, so I need to be realistic about how the videos are marketed. I’ve seen some of my favourite channels devolve into view-chasing, where the video content suffers for the sake of maximising views. I’ll never do that. For me, it’s always video first and then decide how best to market it, rather than marketability first then making a video around that.

I hope you understand my decision to trial this feature — thank you so much for subscribing to my silly channel!

1 year ago | [YT] | 333

Another Roof

Today marks two years since my first video! Can't believe it's been so long but here we are 24 videos, 55k subscribers, and 3M total views later. Thank you so much for choosing to follow me -- many more videos in the pipeline!

1 year ago | [YT] | 319

Another Roof

...but WHY are the only constructible regular polygons those with side number equal to a product of distinct Fermat Primes and an arbitrary power of 2?!? Find out -- as many of you canny viewers already know -- on 5th June, when we'll embark on an epic climb of field theory, polynomials, and other construction impossibilities.

1 year ago | [YT] | 326

Another Roof

I hit 50k subscribers today! Thank you so much to all of you, and welcome to all who subscribed following my heptadecagon video. Look forward to more videos soon!

1 year ago | [YT] | 369