Nixie Pixel AWOL

[fox]

As Bob noted in another thread, the name, Nixie Pixel came up at the last PLUG MUG, and Bob gave me a set of somewhat dated Nixie Pixel youtube videos. I used to regularly watch her videos, but hadn't seen any lately and kind of forgot about her for awhile. I just looked her up on her website, and I think she may not be active on youtube anymore. One video I did see of hers at the end of 2015 (here), suggests that she got very sick on a trip to Asia and was going through a battery of tests while having too little energy to do videos. The latest reference to anything she has done that I could find  is a game review in June 2016 that was referenced in OMG Ubuntu! This thread on Reddit suggests that she is still alive, but hasn't produced anything in awhile. She did some really excellent Linux and open source videos and it's too bad she stopped, especially in light of the soon-to-be-cessation of the Linux Action Show. If you know anything more recent about Nixie Pixel, do post.

By the way, I just found out that her real name is Nicole Allen.

[Jason]

Tried doing some searches. She doesn't seem to be active anywhere other than having been on Steam a month or so ago. She still seems to be receiving $4K in donations from Patreon per month though I have no idea why since she's not producing anything. But maybe people are still supporting her because her present goal is to be able to afford decent health insurance. You'd think for that amount of money she could at least tell her donors on Patreon that she's still OK.

[fox]

Well apparently Nixie Pixel is back and has made a few recent videos. I tried watching one that was 1 1/2 hours long, just to find out what happened to her and what she's up to now. I picked up some snippets about her being ADHD and if I understood correctly, having chronic pain, but I wasn't sure about the latter. She seems to be trying to start up something geeky but new; maybe one of you can listen to the whole thing and fill us in. The website where you can get her current videos is on Reddit. Alternatively you can go here to catch the video I skimmed, called "My Health, Plans and Stream of Consciousness". I really don't know what to make of it.

[Jason]

About 20 minutes in she mentions that she has Ankylosing spondylitis but it took a long time before it was diagnosed so for a long time they didn't know what was wrong with her. She also mentions having been on chemo which was an attempted treatment.

And she didn't want to post because she had no new information and a lot of time she just felt too sick to do so. And she didn't want to tell people what was going on with her.

It was hard to understand because I don't think she had prepared out exactly what she was going to went off-topic a few times. She also mentions about 25 minutes in that she plans to do a public reveal later of her plans for the community. But she will be making more videos. It sounds like she also wants to take everything less seriously than she used to in recognizing that her limitations. She also admits to having ADD.

I could only get about 35 minutes into it before I couldn't follow her either. But apparently, her parents knew she had ADD and decided never to tell her or the school.

[fox]

Thanks for persisting through 35 minutes of that video. I had to look up Ankylosing spondylitis; it sounds pretty debilitating if you have a severe case of it. I hope she can stay active; she is very talented.

[Jason]

Yeah, it sounds like she had a bad case of it but that it's totally unpredictable. She mentioned that there was a period of time where she couldn't get out of bed and her roommate basically took care of her ("saved her life" as she put it). I hope she gets back to doing videos, too.