Blog : Favorite YouTube Videos (Volume 15)

This volume of my Favorite YouTube Videos is sad, but also heart warming. It starts with a eulogy for a nerdfighter who died too young, and goes on to some very amazing cinematography and then geeky/cool music and  and film making.

• The first video is John Green's eulogy for Esther Earl, who was a nerdfighter and a cool person who died of cancer at the age of 16. It's difficult to know what to say with this kind of video, but it's a good thing to have a time and a place (that they're on the internet makes no difference) to be able to go and say, yes this was a person who existed, who impacted us and who is gone now. I also think the advice at the heart of Johns message is very important, "Don't just do something, stand there."
• The second video is an accompaniment to a NPR RadioLab episode called Words. I haven't listened to the episode yet (and I really should't put things off this long), but the video stands strongly on its own and is a remarkable piece of film.
• The third and fourth videos are music videos by Charlie McDonnell doing acoustic covers of some of his songs from his Trock (Time Lord rock) group Chameleon Circuit. We also get the Charlies of two different periods, the first concerned with Weeping Angels and the second with the ongoing relationship between ... well actually I haven't watched enough Doctor Who, to know who's at war here, but it's certainly epic. 
• The final video is from my perennial favorites Pomplamoose, working together with generally awesome music person Ben Folds and novelist Nick Hornby. This was a bonus track for Ben and Nick's (can I call them that?) ... Mr. Folds and Mr. Hornby's album Lonely Avenue. It's a little more contemplative than some of the songs I've favorited, but it's still a very pleasant listen.

Blog : Cool Things on September 14, 2012

I'm starting a new series of posts on the blog side where I'm going to mention some of the cool things I've run across. I hope this is roughly weekly, but the blog schedule has to flex to the actually being a student schedule.

This first edition is mostly things from youtube, where I'm a little better oganized about keeping track of cool things (and you don't have to worry there's at least a year's worth of favorite YouTube videos before I have to do anything there). In the future I will hopefully be keeping track of all the cool things.

Videos

Let's start then with the inimitable Dodger, who has started a let's play series of the game They Bleed Pixels. The style of the game is pretty cool, I especially like the character's pose as she jumps, and how reactive the game looks. It looks like it can become incredibly frustrating so I'm just as happy to let someone else play. Dodger's Let's Play style is enjoyable, she's actually good at games, and makes for great back ground listening. I also appreciate how she goes back at the end of the prologue video to pick up the collectables she missed. Check out the following episodes too, unfortunately there isn't a playlist of them yet.

Another cool video I found this week is Karen Kavett's video on how she created a Doctor Who Guess Who set. She's pretty inspirational on the getting excited and making things front and she makes some pretty cool things. The video features the music from Chameleon Circuit.

The last video this week is the 1000th video from the vlogbrothers (well, technically the 1001st). It's pretty cool all the things that have come together over the last five years. DFTBA.

Games

This week I've also been playing (a bit to my chagrin) Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Dark Lord, a downloadable title by Square-Enix on the Wii. This game is a pretty cheesy tower defense game (in which you have to defend your tower ... rather than use the tower for defense). The concept is a little weird/j-rpg the mechanics are a bit simple (and sometimes frustrating) but for some reason this is a hell of a lot of fun.

Yeah, that's what it looks like ... (via GameFAQs) 

Podcasts

I've recently run across the not-at-all new Film Sack from the Frog Pants Network. In which Scott Johnson, Brian Dunaway, Randy Jordan and Brian Ibbot discuss a movie each week, usually a B from a while ago and see how it feels, if it holds up and whether people should actually be interested. Despite not being much of a movie buff myself listening to these four guys talk about films is really fun and the kind of thing you can put on in the background while getting things done. I've started listening both to the oldest episode and going forward and the newest one going backward and we'll see what happens when the film sack trains collide.

On a related note, Film Sack's cousin podcast Autopilot is preparing for it's second season. This podcast (put together by Scott Johnson and Tom Merritt) takes a look at the pilots of television shows and is informative and entertaining. They released the first season earlier this year, and decided to fun the second season through Kickstarter (rather than through sponsorships). I enjoyed the first season enough to get on board to give them a kick.

Wrap-up

I'd like to thank my friend Daley for his bump to the blog earlier this week. He runs his blog at lingwhatics.ca and keeps a good eye on the world both there and on his twitter.

And finally, although I'm sure everyone's had enough gangnam style, here's the crew of Weekend Confirmed getting overwhelmed by the spirit of ... dance ...