Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 89)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we push through all our barriers!

• First, we can fight through anything, so long as we have Mr. Smooth McGroove preforming Decisive Battle from Final Fantasy VI behind us. This one gives me chills and I think that's a mix between my own Super Nintendo memories and just how nicely 16-bit music fits Mr.McGroove's style. 
• Next, we can journey anywhere, so long as we have Mr. CalebElijah preforming Diddle's Organ from Legend of Mana behind us.
• Finally, we can do anything so long as we work together. This video is from the Calgary Stampede and shows a little of the work that had to be done to get the Stampede back up and running in less than a month after the flood of June 2013. 

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 81)

In this volume of my favourite YouTube videos, we ask some questions about the nature of the universe.

• First, what happens if you combine the awesomeness of the Duck Tales Moon Theme and Smooth McGroove? Well you get a lot of awesome in one place. Possibly enough to look at the asymptotic limits of awesomeness. 
• Next, what happens if Kristina Horner and her roommates get a bunch of costumes really cheap? This... apparently.
• Finally, what happens if the Internet talks about video games. Well lots of stuff, but here RinryGameGame looks at all the over analysis that happens.

Blog: Favourite YouTube Videos (Volume 31)

This volume of my favourite YouTube videos is pretty wide ranging including some video game music, some intelligent thinking about movies and some thoughts on YouTube itself.

• First in this volume we have a video of an original song "Guild Ho" from Dodger. The video feels a bit rough to me, but I especially love the enthusiasm in this.
• The second is a cover of "Terra's Theme" from Final Fantasy VI by Laura Shigihara and GBritaney. This is haunting and beautiful and really worth a listen.
• Next is an incredible video from Belated Media, in which he breaks down and rebuilds Star Wars Episode 1. I think his analysis is right on and that the movie he describes would have been significantly better (and not in the way that two hours of staring at a star field might also have been better, I mean significantly).
• Next Mr. Charlie McDonnall does a very cool real-life time attack of the landmarks of London. Cool video and good memories.
• Finally SMPFilms does his best to figure out what a YouTuber actually does.

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 ...

Blog: Favorite YouTube Videos (Volume 7)

This week the grab bag of things that once held my attention on YouTube (known of course as Favorite YouTube Videos, volume 7) is all over the place with stuff that at one point held my attention. For what ever reason that means that this week we get a few cool stop-motion animations, some inspirational moments with a group of cellos and two very different kinds of video game covers.

• I love animated short films. The one things I'm most likely to see at the annual film fest here is the  animated shorts program. I enjoy getting my mind bent around new ways to look at what's going on in the everyday. This one, by PESfilm in a nifty take on making dinner.
• Interestingly right on the heels of that first video the second one is a commercial for RBC which we were bombarded with during some major sporting thing (I'm fairly sure it was the 2008 Olympics). I really like this for several reasons, one of which is the animation, the second is the structure of the one long pull back and the third is the architecture of the pavilion that builds up around Mr. Muffin. One of my favorite ads of all time.
• The next video is a cover of Final Countdown played on cello with orchestral backing. Need I say more?
• Brentalfloss is known for his Video Game Music ... With Lyrics series and this is one of the early entries. I like this one and will sing about taking the stuff of poor mangle monsters whenever the opportunity presents itself. I will say though that the one time I played this for my D&D group after one of their victories I was met with rather uncomprehending faces.
• Finally we have a remix of Mario music. It's missing a video (as a lot of music things do) and it's pretty housy (I think, I'm a lousy gauge of music genre), but it's fun and I think it would go well in a Mario game.

Blog: Favorite Youtube Videos (Volume 2)

This is the second of my (going to be quite long) series of posts sharing my favorite videos from Youtube.

This volume, much line the first, is focused on some cool video game music.

• The first entry is a little shaky as far as video and sound quality goes, but is a good and exciting rendition of the best boss music in Final Fantasy. If this doesn't make the hair stand up on your arms then there is clearly something wrong with the hair on your arms (or possibly this wasn't a staple of your childhood, which is fair too, I guess).
• The second favorite is another from CalebElijah, playing music to be banished from your village to.
• The third is medley of all the ocarina songs from the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I favorited this one at least in part to teach myself how to play these on the piano, but I never got around to it (maybe that's another project from the future).
• And finally we have a Mario Paint version of Robo's Theme from Chrono Trigger (which we will here again in other forms, have no fear). This is made using the actual composer found in Mario Paint (as opposed to Mario Paint Composer, which is a tool based on the SNES game, but with a lot more functionality). Robo's Theme is my favorite from Chrono Trigger, and I loved the composer in Mario Paint (way more than actually painting) so this video was an easy thing to favorite.