Back to the Future

A very kind person spotted me a seat on their Youtube Family plan, and that caused me to return to my gmail account name.

My hilarious (to me at least) posts on the stupid ads that now that YT is getting aggressive about blocking the ad blockers I was seeing led to one of my few readers to offer me an open seat in their family plan.

Naturally, I thought about it for a nanosecond before accepting their offer. Yep, I jumped all over it.

A little history. I got my original Gmail address circa 2003 when I got an invite (the “beta” lasted literally years) and back then I consumed a lot of Google’s goodies, and after Google acquired Youtube, I naturally tuned in.

Then, circa 2012 I moved my home domain email from a creaking ISP (they were finally going belly up, and I needed a new home. I moved it to a Google Apps¹ account, where my personal and family email is gander at tralfaz.org², and we (my wife and I) never really used the other goodies that Google bundled into it.

But the family plan wouldn’t let me use that ID, so I pulled up my ancient Gmail address (basically, it is just a spam trap these days) and used it to join.

The Bad

Well, not bad, but unavoidable, is the fact that all the channels I have subscribed to are not there, so I had to “remember” my favorites. I got this mostly addressed, although the one area that have yet to add back are the RC Car channels I had cultivated.

And that is all.

The good

All the saved videos that I had are still there. This is exciting, but I should explain why.

When I was a heavy Facebook participant, I had a ritual. On Sunday evenings, I would post a YT video I called “Guitar Porn”. I spent a lot of time scouring that era of YT for clips of playing, or songs that inspired me. Also, I started bookmarking many of these.

Also, I will admit that I made an effort then to find amazing female guitar players, mainly because there are so many males people idolize, and that really bugged me. There is no reason for this, and it should be different.

One of the players I found and highlighted was Ally Salem an Egyptian guitarist who just slayed. The video that I found was this:

Her cover of this Gary Moore staple was entrancing.

But coming back to today, I found her again, and many years later she posted this:

And, she still fucking rocks. Just nails this Iron Maiden classic. Do check out her page - Ally Salem

Youtube is also how I found Alexandra Zerner:

Holy shit, the good ol’ days are here again!

Oh, and to my generous patron who gifted me this ad-free spot on their family plan, you ROCK! \m/

1. The original product for businesses was called Google Apps. It has had a few branding changes over the last decade-plus, now it is simply “G-Suite”

2. Why “Tralfaz”? Back in the 1990’s I had an English Mastiff that I had named Astro after the canine on The Jetsons. A deep trivia reference is that before Astro became the Jetsons’ family pet, his name was “Tralfaz” - yeah, I am a geek, deal with it.

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