I hate everything and everyone and I have a strong desire to kill.

That's what I was thinking a couple of hours ago.

Ok, from the beginning. I've noticed a couple of bed bugs left unpwnd so I rang the guy and he said he'd come at 5:30. So I thought I'd head into town to have a look around the sales during the day. I left a little after 1pm and spent the next four hours sat in my car in the most outrageous traffic ever seen throughout the history of mankind. I got into a car park but it took so long to get to a space that I knew if I actually parked and went shopping I wouldn't get home in time, so I didn't even get out of my car, just continued moving through the car park and 0.00000001 mph until I got out and went home, slowly.

For a short time I contemplated trying to get everyone to desert their cars like in that R.E.M. video. For and even shorter time I contemplated killing everyone in the building then myself.

But then it started moving.

I got home, the guy sprayed poison in my room, I ate food and I spoke to the Charlie and the Toddly who had a strange but excellent request involving masks.

I need a drink.

Boxing Day

I'm sitting here in my uncle's beautiful house just a few minutes walk away from Hampton Court watching the football with the boys while the girls are out in the Boxing Day sales. We've been for a walk round this giant local park, which was nice even if there was a freezing cold wind.

Yesterday we had pretty much the whole family round, thirteen people between the ages of four and eighty something. We did the obvious things: presents, outrageously enjoyable food, champagne and the oldest, most expensive, most gorgeous red wine my taste buds have had the pleasure of encountering. It was older than me... By about a decade!

The girls are back so I'm gonna cut this blog short. Sorry to everyone who has emailed me in the last week, I've totally lost the replying battle. I will try to get on top of it when I get home.

Bye.

xxx

TECHNICALLY....

I got globally featured.

But not really, because the new youtube front page means most people only see the top three featured and mine is the fifth, so I haven't really seen much difference. But still it's great that the vlogbrothers got to be guest editors to promote the project for awesome, and I'm thrilled that they chose my video to be one of the twelve that are up there representing the project.

I was going to go Chistmas shopping today so I could stop ending my blogs with 'I need to go Christmas shopping.' I didn't.

Victory!

I love the first comment game.

Everyone who thumbs down or replies to 'FIRST!' comments negatively need to think about this, if you were faced with a totally blank whatthebuck video, no views, no comments - wouldn't you type something as fast as you could? If you wouldn't then we are not made of the same stuff!

Project for Awesome

So this years project for awesome is drawing to a close and we went one better than last year when it claimed 19 out of the 20 most discussed videos on youtube, taking the whole of the front page and a lot of the rest of the top 100. I joined in with the mass commenting orchestrated via the vlogbrothers and Alan on blogtv and was fortunate enough to receive two comment attacks on my own video. Unfortunately I wasn't around for either of them, the first one was while I was asleep which put my 'Save Darfur' video as one of the top in the UK lists, then while I was pwning bed bugs an unexpected second wave put it on the first page of the globally most discussed. It was nice to see my video in the company of charlie, whatthebuck, lisanova etc even if it was totally cheating!

I was glad I chose to represent Darfur charities as I was the only one of the top 20 who did, maybe that played a part in why they chose to promote mine more than many of the others, I guess I had a bit of a head start as well having around six hundred comments before they began, which may have helped.

My favourite part was obviously hearing John Green say he thought my video was really good. It was totally out of the blue, nobody was talking - we were all busy commenting and suddenly he came out with that and I was all happy like a little girl who'd just been hugged by a Jonas brother. I think that's an accurate analogy, I'm not so hot on the current teeny-bopper culture.

All in all, although it stressed me out a bit trying (and failing) to upload on time, I'm so glad I took part. It's impossible to measure the good done as it's all for different charities and all donations go directly to them with all their others, but it doesn't really matter, we have done what we can. There was one video that really hit me, it showed some actual results of the sort of thing we are all trying to promote. It was by Shawn of the uncultured project. If you have a P4A video, I ask you to respond it to his, because I think what he does deserves to be seen, and it's a great closing to the project.

In other news I was supposed to upload my RED video 35 minutes ago but it's still rendering with 'about an hour to go'. I was also supposed to have made a second one and sent it to them. I haven't started the second one yet. It's alright though because Johnny Durham hasn't uplooooh NOOOOO! Johnny's video is up! I'm always late.

Could also do with going Christmas shopping at some point...

Bed bugs!

Oh my God, one of the places I stayed at recently, probably with a lot of you, had bed bugs and one or two of the little bastards made their way back to my lovely bed. Had an exterminator around, my room is basically a blood bath... of tiny insects. Hopefully that is them pwnd, but if anyone has stayed at a hostel in the past couple of months be on the lookout for blood on your bedsheets.

I have to make two videos for tomorrow and I haven't started thanks to my unforeseen battle with these bloodsucking fiends... Plus the fact that I still don't know what to do.

And I still haven't started Christmas shopping. Urgh, stress.

Project for Awesome: Darfur

The reason I chose to direct people towards charities for Darfur is that it's so understated. People hardly know about it and it's one of the worst humanitarian crises ever.

I can only imagine that distance is the reason for this, and that's a shit reason. We are a global community now. More than half of the people reading this live in a different country to me. And yet the newspapers, the television channels... the media at large are so focused on their own countries, they fail to see the importance of a real crisis.

A missing child in England could cause headlines for months, the latest British soldiers to die in Iraq or Afghanistan make the news at least a couple of times a week... But I can't remember the last time I saw anything in the mainstream media about Darfur, where around 300,000 people have died since 2003 and 2,500,000 are missing. Imagine if they were British people, or American, or anything that wasn't half a world away. It's unthinkable. But would that be any different to what's actually happening?

So they speak a different language and they live further away from you... Your home is only your home through chance. You were born somewhere, maybe you're still there or maybe opportunities arose that lead you elsewhere, but it's nothing more than chance that you were brought into an easier, more comfortable part of the world. A place where you can watch TV, worry about the economy, read John Green books, get stressed about having the family over for Christmas and turn on a tap to get a drink of water rather than walk seven miles to a source so dirty that you or I wouldn't give it to a pet.

What's happening in Darfur is death. Death on a massive scale. A scale that British history hasn't seen since WW2, and if you consider those missing and that the conflict is ongoing I can't see that number (about 450,000 according to wiki) not being topped.

So that's why I promoted charities for Darfur.

Bloody Hell!

That went well!

I have about four times as much footage as I need so thank you all very much, I still think I can fit everyone in, and if you've already put effort in to it feel free to still send it over and I'll try to get you in there too. I still need to film my part and then edit it all, though I have done a lot of the laborious elements of the editing process tonight in the hope that it won't be uploaded too late. Thankfully I'm five hours ahead of nerdfighter central!

For anyone that doesn't know this is what's happening tomorrow and what I was asking for clips for. I've combined my video with a song, and a collab now! I had to include the song really because I think it'll be the last video I do before Christmas and the song is festive! The collab just came about by me not having thought of an idea for the video to go with the song, and I must say I'm impressed with your collective ability to compensate for my lack of organisational skills!

So yes, basically the idea is go promote all of the Project for Awesome videos and getting them to the top of the most discussed/top rated videos and with them links to a lot of great charities. A rather large group of nerdfighters will be doing this on all of the videos, but if you don't have time for that I'm hoping you will help out with mine, it's quite simple - just rate it and leave a shit load of comments!

One final thought... I have a second channel, which is linked to my partnership - so I can upload the thumbnail without having to double the length of the video. If anyone would like to use it for their P4A video then leave a comment on here. First come first served isn't really fair in this world of time zones so I'll pick one at random... Unless a close friend asks!

Ok then, goodnight!

xxx

SNAP TO ATTENTION!

Collab... Quick!

Send me 10 seconds (ish) of something festive. Decorations, snowball fight, presents... Something like that. No audio required as it'll be going with a song.

16:9 if possible*, oh and within the next 12 hours.

K, THANKS!

Oh and leave a comment if you plan to get involved just so I know, and send files to musicfromblueskies@gmail.com. You can also send any questions there.


*If you can't film in 16:9, normal 4:3 will do but I'll chop a chuck off the top and bottom so don't have important stuff there and also make it as high quality as possible because that will lower it.

It's easy to be nice to your friends...

But that doesn't make you a good person.

You have to be nice to the other people too.

Crazy Charlie Fans

I was just on last.fm and I remembered something I was going to blog about a while back but didn't because it involved YouToon back when it was a secret. Well it's not anymore so...

Basically I sent Charlie the script and he sent me his lines. I listened to them in itunes and because I have a last.fm widget thing it recorded that I had listened to 'Charlie McDonnell - lines.' I noticed that the next time I was on the site and had a little laugh to myself. I also saw that Charlie had an actual page (Everyone seems to have a page on there... I did way before I found out about it, it's great!) I left a little comment that went something (exactly) like this:

lmao - I got charlie to say a few lines for a project, he sent them over and I listened to them in itunes... "Charlie McDonnell - lines" has just been added to my last.fm library! XD

Well the next day I got the following message from a last.fm user,

Hello. ^_^
I know it sounds a bit freakish but could you upload the lines that Charlie said? Our "Charlie is so cool like"-group would be very grateful. :)

Is it just me, or is that mental? Imagine listening to one persons lines from a show totally out of context! I can't remember if I told Charlie this, think I forgot. So Charlie: you have crazy fans. I know this is news to nobody, but still, it made me laugh.

Also if the guy who sent me that message happens to read this, I don't mean to make fun, you seem lovely - but you are a little bit mental. Still, who isn't?


p.s. Did you notice on my page - #1 related artist = The Nunes, and more importantly I am hers too! Epic win.


OH P.P.S! My previous post... That was taken from utubedrama, yes? Not my words. I saw a comment today from someone who seemed to think I was just saying that!

UToonDrama

4. KickThePJ says in his YouTube video titled SECRET PROJECT REVEALED that HE IS PART OF A NEW COLLAB CHANNEL BUT IT IS NOT A COLLAB CHANNEL EVEN THOUGH IT LOOKS LIKE A COLLAB CHANNEL and the COLLAB CHANNEL NAME IS YouTooners which is an animated video channel with YouTubers KickThePJ and OmgmHazzRocks and MusicFromBlueSkies and MyShowbizName and CowInParachute but then he says IF YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THEIR NEW NOT A COLLAB CHANNEL THEN AmazingPhil WILL SAVE A BABY GIRAFFE but IF YOU DO NOT SUBSCRIBE THEN AmazingPhil WILL KILL A BABY GIRAFFE meaning HE IS THREATENING YOUTUBERS TO SUBSCRIBE TO HIS NEW NOT A COLLAB CHANNEL WHICH IS AGAINST THE TERMS OF SERVICE TOS POLICY on YouTube and also AmazingPhil WILL BE SUSPENDED HIMSELF and then he WILL GET THE ELECTRIC CHAIR if he kills just one baby giraffe in England.

Yeah Phil.

YouToon

Some of you will already have seen it, but for those who haven't, over the past few months I've been involved in a project with some friends from YouTube. It's a cartoon based around five youtubers living together. The pilot has just been uploaded and it's gone down really well so far, but I think it could be really big. I'll be making a video to promote it later in the week.

I have a different video going up tonight, I've already uploaded it once and youtube raped the quality so much I deleted it, even though I can't see how I can fix it. Oh well It's 86% uploaded on the second attempt and I'm not doing it again!

Well the main point of this post is just to let you all know about the cartoon, so here it is - please subscribe if you enjoy it as we are planning to make more.

CLICK HERE FOR CARTOONEY GOODNESS!

p.s. as it's a totally new channel any help with promotion is greatly appreciated, anything from tweeting the link, featuring on your channel or just sending it to a friend on msn. Word of mouth advertising for the win!

WHY?!

I was just adding the blog of Minish to my Google reader. I couldn't find the add subscription button for a few seconds, then I realised they had moved it three inches further up the page. Why? Why do websites change things when there is just no need. All the effort of changing the site (granted I have no idea how much effort that is) and all they accomplished was confusing me for a few seconds.

Not even going to bring up the Y****** word because I want to go eat breakfast, and if I started on that we could be here for some time.

Manchester return, please.

The pictures below are of a part of Derby that I am rather taken with, just outside the city centre. I only ever go there if I'm walking between the bus and train stations, but every time I do I remember how much I love it. December doesn't show it in the same light as late spring and I hope I remember to go back with a camera then, but it is still rather beautiful, I think.



I took those on Thursday just before I got the train to Manchester. The decision to go by rail rather than road was made, based partly on the weather forecast which predicted a blizzard over the entire area I would be traveling through. As you can see there was no snow in Derby and the same was true for everywhere I went. But never mind, at least I could drink and be forced to go to Sheffield. More on that later.

I got into Manchester Piccadilly, walked into town and met Joe. Short introduction, I lived with Joe for three years in Liverpool, he's in this band, he's from the place they film League of Gentleman and the first thing he says to me after a good month or two without seeing each other is, 'Drink?' Hell yes.

We found a bar and caught up over a drink, more awesome people started to show up gradually and after a couple of hours we headed down the road to a small venue called The Ruby Lounge to see Ben Kweller. This girl came up to me before the music had started and said something along the lines of 'Hey, are you that guy who did that Fratellis thing on Youtube?' Why yes, I am! So that was fun. Joe pointed out that if you were to go on a Dave from Blue Skies search, a Ben Kweller gig would be a very, very good place to start.

The support act started quite soon after that. I forget his name, he was alright but nothing special. We noticed there was no backline so Ben wasn't going to be playing with a full band, which was a bit disappointing. We've seen him before with his band and they are incredible. But it was still Ben Kweller and he's one of my absolute favourite musicians. He played with one other guy who played slide guitar and was very large. I loved his set even without the band, I honestly don't think he's capable of disappointing me. He got a really full sound with just him on guitar or piano and this guy doing a bit of slide guitar. I won't go into detail and I couldn't pick favourite songs, it was just wonderful to see his energy and pure passion for music on stage again. Though I would say that the first time I saw him, which was at a similarly small venue, but with his band, was the best gig I've been to.

After the gig he stayed for a while signing stuff. I didn't get an autograph but I did give him a CD-R of a bunch of my songs. If I'm not mistaken, the first I've ever given to anyone. I remember he took the CD and put it in his back pocket and he seemed so grateful, I think he hugged me and he definitely said he would listen to it on his way to Glasgow tonight. I'm a little sketchy over what happen during those 30 seconds. It was similar to playing on stage then trying to remember your performance, but you were so into it that it's all just a blur. One thing I do remember is discovering that he signs his name with a star, exactly the same way that I do (not on official things!) This fact made me unreasonably happy, though I didn't mention it to anyone.

I could ramble on and on about how much I love Ben Kweller, from his love for playing music to the way he treats his fans, but I still have today to tell you about so I will restrain myself - we drove back to Joe's and went to sleep.

Today I had only one thing I had to do: get back to Derby. I had arranged to meet Jazza for a little while in Manchester and was planning to meet another friend from uni but she couldn't make it. Not knowing any other people likely to be free and in Manchester I wrote a text that said 'Lunch in Sheffield anyone?' and sent it to everyone I could think of that lives in Sheffield, which turned out to be two people. Fortunately they are two wonderful people and they both replied. So, after searching all of Manchester (three shops) for a tea strainer for Jazza (what - that's normal!) I hopped on a train, took some photos of Sheffield's lovely water features, headed into town and met Johnny Durham.

Here are some of those pictures. I may upload the rest to flickr or something. I have an account there and have never used it, might start.




We had lunch, which went down extremely well considering I'd eaten one bowl of cereal and half a bowl of pub chips in the previous 48 hours. Then Laura (Bubble) joined us after her radio show and we had a few drinks and a lot of talk.

That may be my favourite thing about my life right now, I can be in almost any major British city, send out a text or two and within an hour I'll have someone awesome to eat lunch with.
It's a good feeling.

So then I headed back to the station which looked lovely in the dark as well, just caught a train that had been delayed (unlucky for the people who'd been waiting, lucky for me!) and got back to Derby to find many blogs and videos requiring my attention. I was gone under two days, I don't know how they build up so fast - it's like people know I'm going away so they get productive!

Anyway, I ate food, wrote this blog and then I went to bed.

xxx

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Thinking about hibernation to bypass the cold. Or a house in Australia. Yes, I could go over there during winter and so my seasons would go Spring - Summer - Autumn - Summer! Good times.

I'm off to Manchester for a couple of days, to see friends and Ben Kwellers.

Bye.

xxx

March 28th

I've been watching old brotherhood 2.0 videos tonight as I've not been feeling very well. I've realised it's become the thing I do when I don't feel well, like I used to watch films when I was off school sick. Films like Liar Liar and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'd always meant to go back and watch the beginning as I was a latecomer to the Vlogbrothers channel, but if I remember correctly it took a late night in which I couldn't sleep because I had a cold to get me to start.

Well for some reason March 28th is taking freakishly long to load and I can't just skip it, that would be ridiculous! So I thought I'd write a blog and aim to finish at the same time as the red loading bar finishes. It's about half way so far.

In order to make this blog worth the time you've spent reading it I want to put an idea to you... I discovered that putting stuff on itunes takes a long time so I'm not making a Christmas EP, but I have already written one song and I thought for the video I could use footage of people doing their decorations. First of all I would like to know if people would be interested in sending me footage. I imagine quite a lot of people will because you guys are pretty fucking awesome. However I would like to make the video as soon as I am able to sing well again, which will hopefully be soon, so I would also like to know when you plan to put up your decorations, if you do that.

If you would let me know in the comments that would be lovely.

March 28th has loaded.

Bye. x

Lazy day

I'm trying to think of things I can do that will be productive but wont take up much energy as I'm still really tired, even after an 11 hour sleep.

I got a really good one that I've been meaning to do for a while, upload all the cover songs I've done to a site like mediafire, so people can download them. The Myspace worked well for a while, but now I have so many, and I can only put up 6 on there, that and it's totally fucked and nobody has been able to download anything for ages. So I'll upload them all individually and add links in the video descriptions. That will take quite a while, but it'll be worth doing.

Of course then I'll have that second myspace page with not much point to it. But I think I'll just put some of my older tracks or demos of new stuff on there, there's no point closing it down, with it I can have 12 songs on myspace instead of 6.

Might write a song as well, that can be relaxing. I tried a new tuning the other day that Tom uses - DADAAD, I like new/different tunings, as none of the regular chord shapes work it's really easy to think outside the box, you just start thinking about sounds instead of letters and shapes. So perhaps something in that.

First I'll probably write a blog telling you all the stuff I'm putting off doing by writing said blog.

The Advent Gathering

I am very tired. So I'm going to do this the lazy way; with bullet points. Hooray for bullet points!

This was my weekend...

• Woke up on Saturday at 8:00am for the first time in... Memory.
• Train was packed, had to stand for most of it.
• Got to London. Insane amounts of people, Christmas shopping I guess.
• Happened upon a big group of youtubers 'gathered' in Covent Garden.
• Hung out with them.
• Had enjoyable conversations and hugs.
• Signed a shirt, which reminded me of old school gatherings. That made me happy.
• Went to a Christmas fair thing in Hyde Park.
• Went to Harrods, big mistake - very busy, all got lost and separated.
• Went to the Tate gallery but was not in the mood for looking at art, was in the mood for sitting down and talking to people, which I did.
• Went to Wagamamas for some tasty food.
• Added this man to the rather long list of youtubers I love.
• Went to the pub for a few before everyone went their separate ways.
• Apart from about... 14 (?) of us who went the same way - to a hostel.
• Had a few drinks, talked and played songs in our room until the bar downstairs closed.
• Went down to the closed bar and drank in it while continuing to play songs and chat.
• Realised I was rather drunk.
• Around 4am we were chatting with the guys working there, they asked us to play a gig the next day!
• Unfortunately had to turn them down, because of the fact that none of us would be in London the following evening. Perhaps another time.
• Went to bed around 6:30, waking up everyone in the process.
• Got slapped by Mhazz.
• Slapped Mhazz.
• Fell asleep.
• Got woken up. Did not enjoy.
• Spent all of today trying to sit down and close my eyes, though did enjoy the company of many wonderful people.
• Got a train home, there was a dog on it. I'm not that into animals but it was lovely.

Good times.
But now it's bedtimes.
xxx