Showing posts with label vlogbrothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vlogbrothers. Show all posts

Thursday, June 20, 2013

The Inaugural FUFDay

Today, I faced my fears.

Well, not all of them. FUFDay - Face Up to Fear Day - is going to be a weekly thing, for me. I have items on the list I'd drawn up that I just didn't have time to complete. I reckon if I hadn't had to go get a hair cut, I might have achieved something. I blame the hairdresser for changing their student offer ('cause there's no way I'm spending €25 on a haircut that could cost me €9.)

Delays aside, I got to work.

Now, two of the three things I did are sort of personal. They're the sort of personal I can announce if/when I know more about them. We'll put it this way: it took some forcing to get myself to do them. In one case, I've never done it before. In another, it's been over a year since I've done anything close to it...and I did a lot more of it than ever before. (Hurray for vagueness, right?) In both cases, your finding out will be based on the results of my actions today. If I've been successful, you'll know.

Anyway, in less vague terms, I posted five poems on YouTube today. That's more than doubled the amount of poem-videos I have on my channel.

These videos, as a sort of easing-myself-into-it decision, are about five YouTube channels (totalling seven YouTubers). Well, I say "about"... I mean they've been inspired by them, in some cases speak to them directly to them, but they're not biographical works.


The first video features the poem Young Hopeful, quote-unquote about Carrie Hope Fletcher. As these videos were posted in order of writing, I suppose I ought to explain why I wrote it. Problem is, I can't. I just got an idea for the poem, the words happened, and it was somewhat about Carrie, but not quite.


With WOTO up next, I even broke their name for the poem; rather than making reference to the World of the Orange, my poem is called Contented Content of the World of Orange. It's almost the same thing. Not almost enough. However, I didn't write the poem to get everything right. I wrote it to capture some of the fun of the duo behind the channel, Brad and Liam. If they see it, maybe they'll like it.


The third poem, If, Like, is more addressed to Charlie McDonnell than about him. It was also the first poem I wrote because I wanted to write a poem about a YouTuber, and not because I had a video on my mind. Charlie was also the first YouTuber I watched that I've stuck with since finding his channel, which I think is fun.


In an attempt to continue writing about my favourite YouTubers, I came to Alex Day. Unfortunately, many of Alex's videos have been about Twilight or sex. He's also vlogged about a lot of other things, but the one thing that always pops up again is his music. With that in mind, I wrote the poem, The Day, utilizing as many titles of his songs as I could. I'm fairly happy with the result.


The final poem was probably the hardest to write, because I wasn't sure what to say at all. A Home in Nerdfighteria is a semi-fictional address to some of the recurring jokes in the vlogbrothers videos made by John and Hank Green. I did my best with what my memory could pull out on the spot.

Now, the reason these poems were part of FUFDay: the audience.

Not only do I get nervous getting on stage, I mumble on camera. In the editing process, I also became aware of how many times I said "um" and "eh". And all these worries weren't even to do with the poems. What if people hear them and don't like them? What if people think it's incredibly, ridiculously weird to have written the poems, and think I should just get off the Internet forever?

Okay, that last one was a joke. But what if the people about whom they were written (or who I had in mind when I was writing them) don't like them? And I don't mean just not liking them. I mean disliking them. Actively. That would suck.

Can we play the Make the YouTuber Find the Thing game and see what happens, though?

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Fear Facing Prep

Yesterday, I mentioned the idea of doing a Face Up To Fear Day this Thursday. The basic idea was to do a few different things that I've been putting off for one reason or another that could summarily be called Fear. I've been afraid to put myself and my work on the line, and I've decided to put an end to that.

So, Thursday is going to be my inaugural Face Up To Fear Day. It might be a weekly thing.

Because it's such a personal thing, I'm not going to be listing everything I'll be doing on Thursday as part of this. However, one thing I have no trouble mentioning is that I'll be releasing a series of videos. I've been writing poems every day this month, as I'm sure you know, and a few of these have been about some of my favourite YouTubers.

The idea behind that is that I've been avoiding doing recordings of poems for a while. This is possibly because they've been so personal in a lot of cases, and while I don't plan on keeping those poems a secret forever and ever, I don't think I have the guts to put them out in the world myself just yet.

So, that's my compromise, and it's an example I can work with.

I drew up a list of everything I need to do to actually face up to that fear of putting some work out there, focusing on something that isn't so personal it'll terrify me if people hear me reading it. This list included:

- Write at least one more poem.
- Type up the poems.
- Memorise the poems - or enough of them at a time - for recording.
- Edit the videos.
- Release, and create a playlist.

Since I've been announcing the poems on Twitter as I've been writing them, I can reveal that the YouTubers who have poems written about them are, in order of writing:

- Carrie Hope Fletcher
- The World of Orange (WOTO)
- Charlie McDonnell
- Alex Day
- John and Hank Green (the vlogbrothers)

I consider this Volume 1 of The YouTuber Poems.

I'm not presuming them to be brilliant poems, though I'm happy with what I managed to do with a few of them, and I very much doubt any of the seven people above (two in WOTO) will ever see the videos. However, if they do, and/or if people enjoy them, I'll take that as a positive sign and work on writing poems about some of my other favourites.

I have a few other items on the list for Thursday, which will require putting myself out of my comfort zone. And that's the point. I've been hiding behind this safety net, and I want to get out of it, to get into the world and to start experiencing something new and exciting. I can't do that if I hide behind fear all the time.

On Thursday night, I'll go over how everything went with the day (and I'll embed the videos here). This'll be a fun day, I think, if not a little bit terrifying in parts.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Ze Powah of ze Interneht

So there I was browsing the Internet (as you do) and suddenly something pops up on my screen and tells me I have a trojan horse... or seven. I thought, "That's annoying and untrue." I was right on both accounts. I saw that a file was on my computer - well, it was a programme. It was called My Security Shield. I hadn't downloaded it, but I knew it was trouble. So I did what I always do when I'm distressed about something: I did some research.

My Security Shield is one of the latest in a line of viruses that pretend to show you other viruses to get you to download (once you've paid money) this particular software to help kill these malicious viruses that have gotten onto your computer. In my case, they attacked my laptop. In every case with My Security Shield, they are Red Herrings. What this means is that the files are actually fake. They are harmless and only detectable as viruses by - you guessed it - My Security Shield. I'll call it MSS from now on.

So, MSS planted these files on my laptop after worming its way into the system. It changes the host settings to stop it getting deleted and in some cases can even delete attacking software that tried to remove it. I found a handy guide that explained all this in full. I used its recommended software to kill MSS. It took a lot of time.

So, I did what I always do when my laptop is on the fritz: I went to the desktop. I tweeted about my problem, found my answers, and looked at a lot of videos online. They were all the lovely work of John and Hank Green, because they are awesome. Watching one of their videos also answered a question that is vague and wonderful in equal proportions: penguin, elephant or tiger? The answer is elephant. More on this in the future.

Through the power of the Internet (yeah, that's what the title is suggesting...) I managed to kill MSS and entertain myself. The power of the Internet also allowed myself and another writer on Twitter come up with the idea of having a sofa in a kitchen. This has the advantage of having a comfortable place from which a writer need not get up from to get tea, while having the disadvantage that the sofa needs to be easy to clean, and one would need to get someone like Ferris with his ability to drive several types of vehicle, including something to knock down a wall and something to carry away the debris. The cost of this goes up a bit very quickly. Even if Ferris were to knock down a wall in my house for free, I'd have a problem getting him to put one back up for free.

So, I think we all have a few lessons to learn from this. 1. The Internet is capable of both creating World Suck and 2. destroying it. Also 3. don't knock down your kitchen walls. Or 4. any other wall in your house, unless you have money to put it back up and 5. a trained professional to do the job for you.