Blog : Favorite YouTube Videos (Volume 14)

Welcome to the 14th volume of my favorite YouTube videos. This volume involves my discovery of the most popular YouTuber in the UK, a little bit of music and a couple of deeply thoughtful videos.

• The first two videos in this volume are from YouTube sensation   Charlie "charlieissocoollike" McDonell. The first video is of Charlie singing one of his own songs, with a little help from himself and the power of video editing (and it wows me how much you can do at home now-a-days) and the second is the video for a project he did called chart-jackers where he and a group of friends tried their best to take over the UK pop charts. Oh, and yes, that's Mr. Stephen Fry giving the tag line at the end.
• The next video in this volume is by Ben Chan who is mostly an online violine teacher, but is also a lover of video game music. He's playing the theme to Chrono Trigger, which as you've probably guessed is a pretty easy way to make me favorite a video.
• The fourth video is one I've had a bit of a hard time figuring out. It is, as it calls itself the PEN story, and it's a beautiful stop motion film built out of photographs. As I mentioned though, I don't know why it's called the PEN story, nor about who made it or why. It's upbeat and fun, however so it's worth a watch.
• The fifth video is another interesting one. Called "How to be Alone" and is a video by fiilmaker, Andrea Dorfman of the poem (of the same name) by Tanya Davis. It's a beautiful contemplative piece that's quite compelling to watch in addition to being interesting life advice for a thing many people (myself included sometimes) are not very good at.

Blog : Favorite YouTube Videos (Volume 13)

This volume of my favorite YouTube videos is mostly musical with a side of spoon.

• The first video in this volume is possibly the best cover of a Zelda song ever. The music in Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is astoundingly good to begin with and this cover by FreddeGredde only improves on it. I also really appreciate the video song style with all the different instruments and voices he added in to give the song a lot of depth and interest. If ever there was a song to wake up to on Christmas Day, this is it.
• The second video in the volume is from the department of things you've probably heard of, but I still like the video anyway so there (which is a weird department to have, but there you go). Fireflies by Owl City is fun and upbeat and makes me happy, so here it is.
• The third video in the volume stems from the interest the vlogbrothers developed in anglerfish (I'd say don't ask, but really that's just how the vlogbrothers work, they're a series of inside jokes), and their unusual sexual practices (which are outlined in the song, I won't spoil it for you). Also, a floating cat (cuter than the anglerfish in the picture).
• The next video is important because it involves The Tick and the origin of the most important battle cry to ever grace the television medium. SPOOOOOOOOOON!
• The final video in this volume is another song by Hank Green of the vlogbrothers and tells the tail of the most dangerous squirrel ever to live. The video is fun, and shows just how awesome the community of nerdfighters can be. Also it provides a free lesson in squirrel linguistics.

Delays Delays

Sorry for the lack of posts in the last week or so. I've been suffering from the combined effects of a cold and the death of my laptop, which has screwed with my work setup. Posts should be resuming shortly.

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.