Hi there, today I’m going to tell you how one of the most interesting periods of my life started. And also, how a period of despair can bring something good.

One year ago, the world was on the brink of collapse. We were in a period of uncertainty and isolation like never before. In just a few days, from a normal high school student busy with homework and competitions and whatnot, I became a literal couch potato, who was watching The Office for the third time in six months and went to sleep at 6AM. Of course, at that time I was also watching a lot of YouTube, seeing all sorts of tech videos. One of my favorite kinds are the “upgrading every version of Windows” type. I think they are very relaxing and also show just how flexible and backwards-compatible Windows really is. So, I thought that there must be someone who has already made something similar to my first video, which is upgrading every build, not version of Windows, but I couldn’t find any. So I started thinking about making one by myself. But me, on YouTube? That would be so cringe. I had a secondary channel on my google account, but I have never used it before (I don’t even remember why I even made in the first place 5 years ago). Also, what name to put? I’m not really good at naming things. So, at first I decided to leave this sort of thing for other people.

Why did I change my mind? Well, the reason is kind of hilarious. In the middle of April I saw a video on YouTube about a remix of Dua Lipa’s Hallucinate song combined with the theme song of BBC News. And the author said that it’s been made during lockdown. So, seeing the creativity of other people during this time, I also wanted to make something interesting.

And that’s how I started making my first video. At first, my channel was supposed to be a one-act show: just this video and that’s it. (that’s why I also chose NTDEV as name, basically at random, because I saw it on MajorSky17’s videos about beta versions of Windows, and I thought it was cool). So, I installed OBS and started recording my screen. Basically this is what I’ve been doing for about two weeks or so. I had no idea how idea how to edit a video, let alone how to make one with 200 hours of footage watchable. But I kept learning as I went along. Also during this time I have drank Coca-Cola and ate chocolate like never before. Last, but not least, I found out that listening to music really helps you get things done! So I kept recording and recording, almost from early in the morning till late at night. This definitely took a toll on my laptop, as after finishing the second part of the saga (where I upgraded every Windows 10 build up to that point), I had noticed that the base of my laptop had warped slightly from the heat. But I’m sure that recording 400 hours of footage while doing pretty intensive workloads takes a toll on any device.

So, I have a video, now what?

After I uploaded the video to YouTube, it was obvious that I wouldn’t have instant fame and success, but just seeing my video on YouTube gave a feeling of pride and excitement like never before. A few days later, I finally made courage to promote my video somewhere, by posting a link of it on r/windows on Reddit, with pretty good success.

Now, what’s the deal with this Twitter stuff?

Prior to creating my channel, I haven’t really used Twitter (although I had an account), and the reason I started using it after I posted my first video is pretty hilarious, too. About a month after posting my first video, I started searching my name on Twitter as a joke (I was pretty confident that there’s no way people would have heard about my little 1000-views video). But I was wrong. I noticed that John Lam from Microsoft had tweeted about my video, and I wanted to respond to his tweet. At first, I actually replied to his tweet with the account having my real name, but then I thought “wait, why would he trust me in saying that I’m the one who made that video?” So I deleted the reply and promptly changed my name to NTDEV on Twitter, while also adding a fancier bio… Then I replied to him again, under my new persona.

And the rest is history.

Thank you for your attention.