Blog: Favorite YouTube Videos (Volume 23)

This volume of my favorite YouTube videos is a little different. This time it's all videos from one source and weirder than that three of the videos have the same song. But I'll tell you that these videos were the ones that inspired me to start posting about my favorite YouTube videos and I've been waiting for this post for a long time.

I don't think I can describe World Order or Genki Sudo. I don't think I can describe their videos, so I suggest you watch them. I can say that I think that they're mind blowing and that their videos are go so far beyond simple dance that they are expressions of human physiology and kinetics.

Please remember to enjoy World Order responsibly and avoid operating heavy machinery for at least an hour after watching.

• The first two videos are both of the same song, the eponymous "World Order", the first in Tokyo and the second in New York. Beyond the group themselves the videos are fascinating for the reaction of the people around them.
• The next video is for the song "Machine Civilization" and here the group's dance is outstanding, mesmerizing and almost incomprehensible. Again it's fascinating to see the reactions they draw from the people around them.
• The third video is for "Boy Meets Girl" and we see what happens when World Order tries to relax for the evening and celebrate their success. 
• The next two videos are a tribute to World Order from a group in Florida. The first is the video they made and the second is the making of which shows just how much work it is for people to perfect the choreography. Again, when you watch it a second time (and I'm sure you will) watch for the reactions of all the people and the kids trying to figure out the moves. I think it's fitting that the tribute gets the same reaction as the original.

Blog: Cool Things I Never Mentioned

So I decided not to keep going with the weekly Cool Things posts. I either had too many or too few things to post and then keeping cool things for a week doesn't make much sense. So from now on cool things will show up on my Twitter feed (and I might post a round up here from time to time).

I have a pretty big list of videos left over that I didn't post and I'm going to post a list of them here (just as links since I don't think any of us need a 40 video long post).

• Team Wheaton's 2012 Wiggle Waggle Walk
• God's Number and Rubik's Cube - Numberphile
• Archdukes, Cynicism, and World War I: Crash Course World History #36
• What To Do With Your Life
• Talking About Tape
• Hot Metal! (Megaman 2 Medley) - Ferdk16 and Laura Shigihara
• Tengami GameMaker Video - IndieCade 2012 Nominee
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown | Tactical Role-Playing Game Review
• Soundz
• Inside Adam Savage's Cave: Geeking Out about Bits and Bytes
• 6 Episodes of SciShow
• Hey It's Pomplamoose - Theme Song
• IDTIMWYTIM: Stochasticity - THAT'S Random
• HOME FOR A REST - Ukulele Cover by Fruity Ukuladies
• "BEN" (Official Trailer)
• Leslie - From Nataly Dawn's Upcoming Album "How I Knew Her"
• Problems with Zero - Numberphile
• Notes on Friendship
• How To Make a Mechanical Pumpkin
• Infographic Trick or Treat Bags - Halloween Craft Series #5
• Tested vs. The Slow Motion Camera
• For those of you who enjoy discovering cool new music...
• Mean Kitty Fight Training
• More Magnets - Sixty Symbols
• REMEMBER, REMEMBER [NOV.05.12 DAY 740]
• Hack To Power, Brian
• Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project - Video Games - 11/20/2012
• John Green: The Paper Town Academy
• Penn and Teller - Fool Us S01E01

Blog: Cool Things on September 28

This week has been pretty quiet, mostly due to me having things to do in the "real world" Either way I still found a couple of things that are pretty cool this week.

Podcasts

Recently the Nerdist Podcast interviewed Henry Rollins (Listen to it). I happened to listen to it this week and thought it was really worth listening to. Rollins is, as always, incredibly insightful and also passionate about some very interesting things (which is not to say that everyone needs to be passionate about Finnish noise metal, but it's good to see someone who is genuinely passionate about things). The Nerdist crew is also interesting in this one since Jonah and "Nerdtern" Kyle are also big music heads.

The Nerdist Podcast, may involve ... long snowflakes?

Flash Games

Sometimes you just want a game that you kick off and then it plays itself (or at least I do ... in fact I may be the laziest gamer ever). Other times you want to fill the world with zombies. For times when you want to do both (with nice pixel graphics) there's Infectonator II, by Toge Productions. In this game you play the role of the zombie virus crafting the perfect zombies to wipe out the world. You gain money from the people your zombies eat and use that to make your zombies better and better. The humans meanwhile will bring in better opposition to bring you down so you'll need to keep getting better. I haven't played a lot yet, but I really enjoyed the first one and so far this seems like a sequel that leaves the good parts in and improves on the irritating bits.

It's cold being a zombie sometimes. (via Toge Productions blog)

Then there are the times where you just want to command an army of Monkeys to pop every balloon in the world. For times like those there's Bloons Tower Defense 5 by Ninja Kiwi. This is a pretty straight forward tower defense game, balloons come in one end and you set up monkeys with different powers to pop them. It only takes one dart to pop a balloon but most of the balloons come with other balloons inside of them. I really like the level design on this one as compared to the earlier versions of this game and the power / organization of the monkeys feels a lot better as well. On the downside I think the levels are a bit too long, but at the same time it can be tough to get enough money to unlock the really cool monkeys. The other major problem with the game is that before the balloons start coming you can't tell where they come from on each map. Beyond that though this can be a lot of fun if you feel like a tower defense kind of game.

Every monkey should have a spiffy sweat band.

Then of course there are the times when you want to match three things together and get bigger things out of them. Triple Town (warning Facebook link) by SpryFox is not at all a new game, but was recently upgraded (on Facebook at least) and I've fallen back into it (with the help of a good friend, who really enjoys matching 3 things together). The core game play hasn't changed, but the way the in-game store works and the over world have been redesigned to make it a lot easier to play and give you more reason to play. It's worth checking out on facebook or wherever else it might be found (I really don't know).

All decked out for ... fallo'ween?

Videos

As far as I'm concerned, Corey, Mr. Safety, of SMPFilms is one the best film makers on YouTube. His cinematography is always amazing and his videos convey his love of California with amazing clarity. In this one (in a small ploy to get himself an iPhone5), he straps his old iPhone to a rocket and gets the best footage of his world yet.

Wrap-up

So we learned this week that I when I have real world work to do I play flash games. Hmm, see it is all about the productivity.

I've also been debating about this video from Geek & Sundry / Felicia Day, so I dropped it here. It's episode 9 of the Vaginal Fantasy Book Club. I have to confess that I haven't finished watching it (since it's incredibly long) and I'm not sure I'm interested in what these four are talking about (that being sci-fi/fantasy/horror romance(?) books), but they are a pretty entertaining group of ladies and the the mix of tentacles and whiskey really does demand to be watched.

Blog : Cool Things on September 21, 2012

So I found some more cool things this week (and I even got some of my own work done). I'm please to share the cool things I found below.

Lectures

While I'm not able to find video from the talk (although it may materialize), this week I attended the seventh Richard and Louise Guy Lecture which this year was on the Mathematics of Doodling.

A view of the 7th Richard and Louise Guy Lecture.

The Department of Mathematics at University of Calgary has hosted this talk for several years now (arranged by Louise as a 90th birthday gift for Richard) and it is always informative and interesting without being bogged down. In pervious years the topic has ranged including areas such as knot theory and the mathematics of music and they have always left me more excited to explore than I was going in.

Sadly Louise passed away several years ago, but Richard continues to attend the lectures (and others, including some classes each year) and it is always encouraging to see his life long love of learning. (If one may be so hokey as to say it that way).

I hope the lectures serve as a model and that we can see more and more interesting talks that continue to inspire us to be better question askers and answer finders.

Blogs

One cool thing I found this week is Day[9]'s blog. Day[9] or Sean Plott (as the non-gaming world knows him), is a former pro Starcraft player and now pro Starcraft II shout caster (and host of the Day[9] Daily). Whether or not you're interested in e-sports and better ways to play Starcraft II, it's still worth taking the time to take a look at the blog. Day[9]'s interests go well beyond the realm of video games and he is a very astute and interesting speaker and writer. (Also you can watch him making a perfume with Felica Day on her Flog this week.)

Video

You might have seen this already given the names involved, but this week, for reasons only known to the deepest oldest minds of the universe the Nerdist manage to revive two things people haven't seen in a long time. Ben Folds Five and the Fraggles. Got something you don't want to do? "Do it anyway!" (Then watch the video.)

Former Five Awesome Girls Monday Kristina Horner and her housemates/co-star launched a new gaming channel called TeamHypercube. They're doing a mix of table-top gaming and video games and the first video game they've tackled Dokapon Kingdom is ... interesting to say the least.

Over the last few months the sports racers (are the viewers even still called that, duck fans maybe now) of a show have been working with Ze and Mr.Norman to put together a song and a video ... and this is it:

Wrap-up

Wanna know how Chris Hardwick managed to make muppetty goodness for us this year? Well now you will:

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 ...