Favorite YouTube Videos (Volume 21)

This volume of my favorite YouTube videos contains some thoughtfulness, some music, some video games and some laughs.

• The first video in this volume is from Corning, and (this might shock you) it's about glass. On the one hand it's a pretty standard corporate puff piece about how awesome they'll make your future, but I was mostly interested in it because it's a pretty good illustration (in my opinion) of how our technology should work for us over the next 20 years. I favorited this one because I thought the concepts were really interesting.
• The next video is by vlogger/designer Karen Kavett. These are her reflections on her time at RISD as she graduates. It's a cool, well produced video with a lot of heart and interesting reflections on her time as a student. It's nice to see someone who's education went so well and was so in line with where they wanted their life to go. 
• The third video in this volume is composer/pianist Laura Shigihara playing an improvised arraignment of music from Secret of Mana. It's a very restful piece and Secret of Mana's music always makes the hair on my arms stand up.
• The next video is a recording of a panel from the Calgary Comic Expo 2011, featuring the voices of the childhood of anyone of my generation, Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche and Jess Harnell. I was lucky enough to attend this panel and I thoroughly enjoyed it and am glad the chance exists to relive it through YouTube.
• The final video for this volume is another video song from Pomplamoose, their original song River Shiver. 

Project 6 : 100 Sketches

Over the years I've taken a few drawing classes and other kinds of art class. I've reached the point of being not terrible, but I'm never going to get better without practicing regularly which I haven't found the time and motivation to do. To give myself a kick to practicing more I'm starting a new project. My goal for this project is to practice sketching for at lest 15 minutes a day for 100 days in the next six months.

A sketching of things, using Paper on the iPad.

I'm not going to share all my sketches, since most of them probably won't be that good and I don't want to stress myself out about quality. If there are some I feel like showing off then you might see them in an update here.

The deadline for this project will be July 1, 2013 and I'm going to try to have 100 days of sketching between then and now.

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

Favorite YouTube Videos (Volume 20)

In this volume of my favorite YouTube videos we have video game playing, vlogs an a short ad (which I don't get paid for, I should note).

• The first video is part 11 of Chuggaconroy's Let's Play of Mother 3. I have to confess first that I'm not entirely sure why I favorited this particular video and I think I recommend that if you're interested you start with the first video in the series (since this is rather in the middle of things).
  
  Mother 3 is quite an odd game, created by Shigesato Itoi it is the sequel to Earthbound (which was Mother 2 in japan). It's an RPG for the Gameboy Advance (after having been converted from a scrapped Nintendo 64 game. For a video game though, especially and RPG it's very interesting in how many topics it tackles and how deep a view it takes on life. It was never released in North America and as such Chugga is playing on a fan translated patch.
  
  Chuggaconroy's Let's Play of this game is quite good (although I think he's improved his videos over the years, these older ones show him being very young). And given that it's really a landmark video game I think the whole series is worth a watch.
• The next video is a vlogbrothers video in which John looks at some of the questions the people have asked google lately.
• The next video is also from John Green, vlogbrother. In this he talks about nerdfighteria, sports and a little book that he can't figure out the name for yet.
• Next we have a video from the incredibly talented Elmify. In this video she talks about home-made gifts and how some things just aren't quite the same as you grow up. I find her videos phenomenally well paced and when you consider the amount of work she actually has to do to put them together they're quite incredible. I recommend you look up more of them, but don't be surprised that you'll see her here again.
• The final video in this set is an ad / promotional video that Kater17 made for Mountain Dew Pitch Black. It's a bit slow to start, but it's creative, kinda fun and the effects work is really good.