Blogs from Blue Skies...

Hello

2010-09-23T13:57:00.002+03:30

Well then, time for my quarterly blog!

I blame twitter and a busy summer for my lack of writing. Actually, I think it's time to stop blaming things and accept that I just don't blog very often!

Since my last post I have organised and performed at Summer in the City 2010 and the first Life's a Beach (RNLI fund raiser) event, been to Stickaid to help out and just last week I got back from Europe. Tom Burns won some Interrail passes so we went and travelled around a bit... There are photos on facebook.

In between these things I've finished an album, which is now for sale. My next job is to get videos made for some of the songs from it. I'm trying to get a couple of my favourite video makers to help me out. This obviously means everything is going to take longer and be more difficult, but I think it'll be worth it when I have an end product.

I think I need videos that people pass on to their friends, and the videos I make on my own don't have that... They're just bedroom performance videos really, just with some decent editing. In order to have something with more viral possibilities, I think they need more, whether it's different styles like stop motion or animation, or more professional equipment, or a story within the video... So that's what I'm hoping to do over the coming weeks / months.

I also have the opportunity to get started on the next thing and I have no idea what that's going to be. I guess I'll just start writing and see what happens!

Right then, all caught up. Of course anyone reading this will know everything anyway! This is more for me - I like to have a record of where my life is so I can look back in the future. I might write something deeper soon, for example I'm currently terrified because I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to make enough money from music to continue doing it as a job. That'll be a fun read!

Speak to you... Next year probably.

xxx

NOISE DISCOVERY!

2010-07-10T16:06:00.003+04:30

For two or three years there has been a really loud popping noise coming from somewhere in my room at totally arbitrary times. It's fucking annoying and even though it's happened hundreds of times it still scares the shit out of me. But the worst part was not knowing what it was... I'm a very curious person and if I hear about anything I don't understand I look it up as soon as I can... But I couldn't look this up and it drove me mad!

Well after all this time I have finally discovered the source! It's this:

I know what you're thinking; 'That's just a jar of purple liquid' Well you're quite right. It's methylated spirit, which is used to clean bass guitar strings.

For the first time ever I happened to be looking in the general direction of this jar, which lives on my windowsill, when the noise went off, and I saw the lid move! Presumably changing temperatures cause the metal to expand/contract until it reaches a point where the centre pops up or down (kind of like the test to see if a jar has been opened - the centre of the lid should be up if unopened.)

I'm well aware that nobody gives a shit about this apart from me, but I don't even care!

Today is a good day.

A New Government

2010-05-12T03:12:00.004+04:30

I haven't blogged in a very long time, most things these days I can fit into a tweet or facebook update, but I think a change of government should provide a large enough topic to warrant a good old fashioned blog post. (Side note: I can't believe blog posts are old fashioned. When did that happen?)

My problem is now that I've found a topic big enough... Maybe it's a little too big! I don't know where to start. I guess with the era that is ending, poor old Gordon! Everyone seems to hate him and I'm not entirely sure why.

During his time in office a lot of very bad things have happened, but I struggle to believe that he is to blame for many, if any of them. The floods we had in his first month weren't his fault and the entire cock up of the global economy wasn't his fault, in fact on that front I wonder how much worse things could have been without him. It's funny while he was getting slated at home by newspapers and people who like to be angry, he was winning international awards for the work he was doing on the economy.

I'm not saying his time as PM was flawless, but we're none of us perfect, and I think he got a lot of big calls right.

But the people must have someone to blame and the buck stops with the Prime Minister. I think he was right to step down, even though I don't think it's what he deserved.

I felt for him when he was leaving with Sarah and the kids! (Who, by the way, I had never seen until today. Very impressed with that parenting.) But it's hardly the worst job too lose... Talk about a weight off! For proof of what that job can do to you take a look at Tony Blair moving into Downing Street in 1997. Yeah, now look at him leaving 10 years later... He aged about 30 years!

Anyway, for the Labour Party I think this could be a good thing. I've heard (and correct me if I'm wrong*) that no party has won four elections in a row for hundreds of years. The public grow tired and demand change no matter what that means. They now have some time to pick a new leader, re-assess their angle and hopefully be in power again in four years time after the public have had time to hate someone else for things they have no choice but to do.

Lib Dems next I think. Again, horrible situation. Loads of people hate them for doing a deal with the Tories, loads of people would have hated them for doing a deal with Labour. Personally I would have preferred a Lib-Lab coalition, and I don't agree with the idea that the legitimacy of such a deal would have been in question - that it would be a coalition of the losers - because Labour and the Lib Dems ideologies are much closer than either is to the Conservatives, so you could argue that more than 50% of people wanted a left of centre government.

However even between them, Lib-Lab fell short of a majority in terms of seats, which means they'd also have needed smaller parties to form a so called rainbow coalition. This is far from ideal, and I don't think you can overlook the importance of stability and the confidence of the markets at this time (though I do think many people will).

I understand why Clegg went with The Conservatives, and as a Lib Dem voter (even from before Nick's sterling first debate performance I should add!) I do not feel as though he has sold me out. Not yet anyway.

If the Lib Dems can secure serious electoral reform off the back of this election, it will be the biggest accomplishment the party has known for generations, and will secure them as the permanent political force that I believe they deserve to be. I was also pleased to hear that their plan to increase the threshold at which you begin to pay income tax to £10,000 was one of those that the Tories were looking at. I think that is bang on - I can't believe someone on £7,000 a year is expected to pay income tax right now.

On to the Conservatives then. Now you may have noticed if you've ever talked to me that I'm not a huge fan of the Tories. But I think there is an opportunity here to put the country before politics. (It's a lot easier to use that line when your party is set to benefit from it!)

I see nothing positive that can come out of complaining or scaremongering. In the hours since Cameron walked into number 10, I've seen that many tweets or facebook groups joined under names such as 'The Country is Doomed', 'Fuck David Cameron', 'Let's all Move to France' (Ok I made that last one up, it's not that bad!**)

Well Cameron is the Prime Minister and will be for the foreseeable future, so you're going to have to deal with that. I think the best way is to give him a chance. I have said throughout the campaign that I don't trust him or his party. I still don't, but I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. However I think more than ever it's important that people pay attention. Just because the election is over, doesn't mean politics shuts down for four years. The Tories need to know we are watching every move and judging every decision they make. If they don't deliver, especially on the concessions made to get Nick Clegg on board, then they have to know that we won't stand for it.

And on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems who will end up in the cabinet, I urge other 'progressives' not to think of them as traitors. They are our men on the inside! They are our voice in government and they need both our support and our scrutiny to perform as such. This is how hung parliaments work, and if you want PR you'd better get used to it.

All in all, this election has not gone as I would have hoped, but it's gone better than I expected. Before the campaigns began it was almost certain to be a strong Conservative majority. We've ended up with Cameron as PM, sure, but at least there is some balance to the cabinet.

I hope people remember that whoever won this election was going to have to make very unpopular cuts (and possibly in my opinion, though none of them would admit it, raise VAT). I've seen recently images from rioting in Greece in response to government cuts, and I want to ask the rioters if they have an alternative... They have a right to be angry for sure, but if they want their country to survive at all they NEED to seriously cut budgets, and so do we. I'm not saying I expect riots... I mean Greece is in another league of debt, but I hope people can see the big picture. (LOL, yeah right!)

The most important thing to remember is that political battles are not confined to election campaigns. If you want proportional representation, or if you want to sort out the digital economy bill then get involved. Sign the petitions, go to the demonstrations, promote the cause, email your (probably new) MP. Whatever you do, please don't absolve yourself of guilt with the line 'I voted for the other lot' and permit yourself political apathy until the next election; you're more important in opposition than you were in power.

Right, it's late and I can't be bothered reading through this (a thought which I'm sure you sympathise with right now!). Feel free to leave your thoughts, I'm sure they make more sense than mine.

* Unsurprisingly I have been corrected! Kris in the comments tells me the Tories won four in a row under Thatcher/Major. I don't know where I'd heard that statistic. Probably remembered it wrong... I'm sure SOMETHING hadn't been done for hundreds of years!
** Jokes France, you're lovely and make good wine.

Website

2010-03-05T18:37:00.004+03:30

I made myself a website!

http://blueskies.fm

It's nothing too advanced, but it means I can use just one url to direct people to... It was annoying listing facebook, twitter, myspace, etc. in the side of videos. Now it's all in one place and if people want to follow me on those things they are all linked from the site.

I've held off getting a Blue Skies domain because .com and .co.uk are taken (and cost in the region of £7000) and nothing else seemed right. I didn't want to use musicfromblueskies.com because 1) it's too long and 2) a lot of people assume that's the name of the band and I don't want to encourage that. But then I found that .fm was available and it sounded good so I bought it!

There is a 'News' section, which is essentially a blog, but I am going to keep this. This will be for my life, and that will be about the band. Granted they overlap quite a lot, but we'll see how it shapes up. Hope you check it out and add it to your feed readers and blogrolls!

xxx

Pro Crastinator.

2010-01-28T19:07:00.002+03:30

2010 has started pretty slowly for me. I can't seem to get motivated when it comes to recording. Because I'm right at the beginning of my next project, it seems like I have such a long way to go that I can't be bothered to start! I am in fact so at-the-beginning that I don't even know what the project is yet.

The one positive is that I've been writing quite a lot, and I've managed to keep the songs to myself, so there is plenty of new material to go along with the next release. I have about 6 songs almost fully written, and a host of half finished ones too. So now I'm wondering what to do with them. I need to make a full studio album, but that should include old songs that haven't been properly recorded yet - Blackout, Potential, Untitled, etc. And I'm not sure all of the new ones fit into that album. So my current plan (I think) is to record these new ones fairly simply - not necessarily 'live' as in the Blackout Sessions, but close to it if not actually it, and start selling them while I start on the studio album.

I've been listening to a lot of Mountain Goats in recent months and I like the idea of putting that kind of lo fi material out there, alongside a smaller number of nicely produced albums. They're more 'real' sounding - very honest, simple representations of the songs, and it encourages writing quickly; being more prolific. Releasing a really polished album every other year means you can get away with writing less than one song a month... I want to be writing one a week, releasing 4 EP/albums per year (that don't take months to create). Then maybe one studio album each year as well, that contains some songs from those other releases but with more instrumentation, and a few tracks that are exclusive to that record. That can be the one I push more - send out to radio stations, reviewers etc.

I think I'll go with that approach for now... It'll be especially useful over the next year or so as it will build up the repertoire for live shows.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this down, I imagine it's quite boring if you're not me. Sorry about that.

WMG

2010-01-20T15:24:00.002+03:30

Went on youtube this morning and saw this large and intimidating pink box...

So five of my videos, including two of my three most viewed, have been blocked. Bad times.

Twitter is over capacity and facebook won't update... I can only assume the reason for this is the mass outcry from thousands of adoring Blue Skies fans chastising WMG for this move. The twitter servers didn't stand a chance!

Due to all of youtube's 'improvements' over the years, my channel has been growing more and more slowly (or maybe I've just got worse!) and I'm sure this will hold it back even more. Every day, those videos were a window into my channel for about 1500 people, that's where the majority of my subscribers came from.

It seems these days you either have to do something stupid that goes viral, or you have to be in one of those groups who whore each other out with those little boxes on their channels. Of course the whole world is about who you know, not what you know - so why should youtube be any different? But for a little while I felt like it was... I thought if you were really good, that would be enough.

Ah well. At least I got in early enough to build the audience that I have. If I was starting out now I wouldn't get anywhere.

Oh and if in a few years WMG are trying to sign me, please remind me of this. I think we see the music industry in very different ways and it would not be wise for me to work with them.

Just got this message...

2010-01-11T16:00:00.000+03:30

"hi there,

im so sorry for disturbing but can i get permission from you on something ???

i want to use your videos for my affiliate programme .like this:-

I download your video on youtube , then I upload it back in youtube with additional advertistment in your videos..means for my affiliate programme...

but i dont change the content of your videos , just add my advertistment there.

*And beside I can help promote your video as well.

so can you allow me to do so ????? please reply...thank you........"

Hahaha! At least they asked.

A year ago

2010-01-03T04:38:00.002+03:30

I just thought 'I wonder what I was doing this time last year' and then I remembered I had a blog where I wrote stuff down.

Turns out I'd just had a massive house party, put a hole in my floor, raved to The Blues Brothers and then got really ill with 'That Bastard Ginger Chris's Disease' and lost a stone in weight. And I was about to go to Ireland.

I was also about to start the free download folder I have, so I was a long way from selling music, which is good because it shows progress! Selling music is not now a scary idea that one day I will hopefully put into practise... It's a thing that I do. It's... Fuck, it's my job!

Overall I'm fairly happy with the last year, but I hope and think that when I look back at now in a years' time there will be more of a difference. I have so many plans right now, I just hope they work out!

Boo!

2009-12-12T18:41:00.002+03:30

Set up an Audioboo so I can do this...

Listen!

Video Tutorials

2009-12-10T00:14:00.004+03:30

Hello there! Just writing this to get some feedback on an idea...

At the moment I'm looking at moving south, which will mean my outgoings will be considerably higher than they are right now. This means I need to be making more money. One way in which I intend to do this is by making video tutorials - basically teaching guitar online.

The idea is that people would pay around £1 and get a video, probably about 10 minutes long, and a tab to refer to. I could give them all difficulty ratings and each lesson could include one song (most likely something I've covered on youtube). There are a number of advantages over real life lessons - the ability to pause, rewind and replay the video would mean you could get an hour's worth of lesson/practice time out of each video, you could come back to it in a year when you'd forgotten it, and it would cost 10% of the price of a normal lesson.

And from my point of view, It'd probably take me an hour or so to make the video/tab, so then I'd only need to sell about 10 for it to pay better than a regular teaching job, plus I wouldn't be stuck to a timetable - I could make the videos whenever I had the time.

Any thoughts, problems, improvements etc. please let me know in the comments. And if you play guitar (or want to!) do you think you'd consider paying for lessons online like this?

THANKS!

xxx

London

2009-12-03T17:42:00.003+03:30

Hey good news, my hearing seems to have fixed itself!

Moving on, tonight I'll be heading into London and then tomorrow the whole RNLI / Apple thing will be happening. We're gonna meet up outside the Apple Store and deliver the message to the employees. Ben has even made some little paper mache apples to give to some of the people with big job titles that might be able to help.

If you're in London you're more than welcome to come along, we'll be meeting around noon. I'm gonna take my guitar, though I'm not sure how well that will go down with Regent Street shoppers. Or the police. I guess we'll see. I only plan on playing it if there are a lot of people there, if it's just the six of us I'd look like a right plum.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing people again, it's been a while.

xxx

Update

2009-12-02T00:44:00.003+03:30

Just thought I'd post a little blog to tell you what's going on... That's the idea, right?

Well I'm staying in Essex for a while at Paul's house. I've brought down the majority of my recording stuff and we're gonna try to be productive over the next few weeks. We're both working on websites, we plan on producing some kind of music/art project, and there are a few other things in the works.

This is all well and good, my only concern right now is that I woke up this morning without being able to hear very well! It hasn't changed much all day, my left ear especially feels weird. Things sound really bassy - like I'm underwater. It's not fun.

Hmm, I thought that would take a lot longer.

Add your dot!

2009-11-26T16:07:00.005+03:30

I set up an eventful page, which is designed so people can tell you where they want you to come and play shows. It gives you a cool map, look!

Obviously each red dot is a person asking me to play in that place. You can go and add your own red dot here.

It's currently showing me how much easier it is to play in Britain than anywhere else! There are slightly more dots in the US I think, but they're so spread out it would take four times as many shows to reach them all... The UK is so small it's practically coloured in red! I love our little island.

It'll be a while before I can afford to set up some shows overseas anyway, but when I do I will definitely be using this as a guide, it's so good. So if you want me to come to your town, add your dot and get your friends to add their own dots!

I'm also extremely pleased to have discovered an island that I didn't know existed - São Miguel! Right in the middle of the Atlantic. Whether that was actually a person who lives there or someone taking the piss, I don't know, but I'm tempted to go there either way!

Yes.

2009-11-22T21:13:00.002+03:30

Mum (talking to my Dad, but I'm right there): Did you tell Dave you put that stuff in there? (pointing to a drawer)

Dad: Yes.

...

Dad: Well... No.

Re-evaluation

2009-11-20T04:53:00.005+03:30

As I write this I have the one hundredth most subscribed youtube channel in the UK. By the time you're reading this there's a good chance I won't anymore! I've been slipping down the list for several months now and as I'm on the way out it's got me thinking about the last two years and what I've accomplished on the site. I always say that I'm doing better than I thought I would be when I joined up, but now that I think about it, I'm not so sure that's true.

I doubt I would have thought 20,000 subscribers was achievable in my first two years. Though I was confident my channel could do well, back then even Mr Coollike didn't have those kind of numbers. So in terms of subscribers I am doing better than I thought I would be. But that's no measure of success. My life goal right now is to be able to afford to live by selling music. Of course music is much more than that, but I'm only looking at the business side of things right now.* I've always had the idea in my head, and I believe it's a well known theory in the industry, that if I were to have 1000 hardcore fans - by which I mean people who buy every album or EP I offer them - then I could live off that, and so my life goal could be translated into 'finding 1000 hardcore fans.'

My subscriber count may have exceeded expectations, but I definitely overestimated the percentage of subscribers that would turn into the 'hardcore fans'. Right now I think I'm at about 100. That's 10% of the aim, after two years. So it'll be another 18 years if I continue at that rate, and realistically I'm not picking up speed right now, I'm slowing down. Six months ago I'd be getting 40 - 50 new subscribers to my channel every day, now it's half of that on a good day.

This isn't me being depressed and moaning about life, I'm fairly optimistic about the future. I think I will accomplish that goal, and a long time before 2027 as well! I'm just re-evaluating. The internet is a powerful tool for a musician, but maybe not as much as I've given it credit for. Right now I just want to move to London, turn some friends into some band members and start gigging, a lot. You may not reach as many people that way, but I think it's a better way to find those 1000 (and it's fun!) Of course the real answer is to do both. But there's a balance there and I think I've let the internet side take up too much time so far.

Overall I wouldn't say that was a mistake, if I'd gone the traditional route from the beginning I don't think I'd have made it this far. I'd have given up on the dream and gotten a real job, letting music remain a hobby. I owe so much of my confidence to the people who have supported me online, and even if Blue Skies didn't exist, I'd still be obsessed with being a part of this community - so many ridiculously important people in my life right now were introduced to me thanks to one website or another.

I'm sorry for talking business (ish) I don't usually talk about this side of things, it's just been on my mind lately. I don't even like calling people 'fans' it sounds ridiculous. I'll wrap up with some thoughts on the future...

It's gonna be pretty great. I'm gonna move to London. I'm gonna gig more. I've been speaking to Paul a lot lately and we have so many ideas and plans that at least one of them is going to make us rich and then none of this business stuff will matter. I'm going to stay at his in December with Ian and we're gonna be very productive, both in terms of actually making some kind of EP or album and in terms of making plans for the new year.

This has been pretty long and probably vague or missing some massively important points. You probably don't care, but if you do have any questions about what I've said or about anything really, just ask.

Goodnight, and thanks for reading this... I appreciate all of the support you guys have given more than I can express.

xxx

p.s. Fairytale of New York just came on itunes shuffle, but not the version I have on The Pogues album... It's a one off and I don't know where I got it, but the album name it's listed under is 'Irish Punk Drinking Songs Compilation'. That sounds like the greatest album in the world, I might have to track it down.

*If I were to ignore business for a moment, and compare my musical output to what two years ago I had thought I'd be creating, I believe I have exceeded my expectations, though they were not particularly high! I still consider myself a beginner and am looking forward to the coming year as I think it will be very exciting musically. That fact alone is more important that the whole of this blog, but it doesn't mean I shouldn't be thinking about these things.

Rarities 07-09

2009-10-31T01:17:00.004+03:30

I have uploaded the rarities album that I've been talking about, so it's all available and stuff! You can buy it HERE.

It's 8 tracks, five full songs and three instrumentals, and I'm trying something new with the way I'm selling it - you can choose the price. I have set a minimum of £1 so I don't lose money on it! But other than that it's totally up to you. I'm gonna give £5 as a suggested price but if people can't afford that they are welcome to buy for whatever they can, and if you can afford more, well that would be very helpful!

All the money will be going on my music, but that's fairly obvious because pretty much all of my money does.

This is the first time I've put an album exclusively on bandcamp, so I'd be very interested to hear what your experience is with it... Especially if anybody wants to buy it but doesn't have access to paypal or any of the other payment options. If that is the case, please let me know what online payment options you can use and I'll see if I can set something up with them.

Thanks!

xxx

Website

2009-10-23T18:10:00.002+03:30

I've just started a little discussion on facebook asking people to give input on my website plans. I'm just looking at what content should be on there. The tabs I have down right now are...

Home - Music - Pictures - Lyrics/Tabs - Free Stuff - Store - Links

So Home will include news, latest release info, possibly my most recent video, upcoming gigs...

Music will be a discography with links to buy.

Pictures include artwork, live pics and fan pics (with either an email address to send them in to or an uploader if that's not difficult!)

Lyrics/Tabs is obvious.

Free Stuff will be downloads of songs, ringtones, wallpapers... Any other suggestions are welcome.

'Store' links to the big cartel.

And 'Links' contains contact info and links to my other sites.

Some things that have come up are a bio and a blog. I'm not sure about writing a bio because it wouldn't be all that interesting, but let me know if you think a band site needs one. And I originally kept a blog out because, well I have this obviously, but thought it was a bit more personal than the sort of thing you'd put on a band website. So what do you think? Should I put this blog on there, put a separate blog on there - less personal, more about music and the band, or not put a blog on there? I will have the news section on the home page either way.

So let me know,
Bio or no bio.
This blog, new blog or no blog.
Free Stuff - anything I can give away for free that won't cost me anything!
Any other ideas.

THANKS! =)

Hurray!

2009-10-20T22:39:00.002+03:30

My rant earlier obviously worked... I'm writing this from my new 24" iMac!

It's so big I can't even look at the whole screen. just areas of it! And they just brought out 27 inchers as well, imagine that! Pretty much ridiculous. I can't decide whether or not I'm gutted that I didn't wait and get a new one. They are cheaper than I thought they'd be, but still to get what I did including the extras would have set me back an extra few hundred quid, and there's not much difference. Not compared to the difference between this and my old one. Definitely not bothered about missing out on a 27 inch screen... Wouldn't fit on my desk! The new mouse looks very cool though.

Right now I'm just downloading and installing programs. I still have a few things that need sorting, for example the firewire on this is too modern for my old junk! So I need to get an adapter for that, and I've ordered a hard drive dock so hopefully I can get at all my old files.

Ahhh my old iMac didn't have an isight! I might start being on dailybooth more! And making videos will be easier.

EXCITED.

An explanation for the increase in blogging

2009-10-20T15:37:00.003+03:30

You may have noticed I've been blogging fairly regularly lately. That's because I have NOTHING TO DO!

Well actually I have a shit load of things to do, I just can't do them until my iMac gets here. It's really frustrating. Usually I don't think of myself as a particularly productive person, but I'm starting to see how much stuff I do now that I can't do it!

I'm so excited about it now though. I've been needing a new machine for ages. Jack was at least five years old and it was beginning to show. Especially video editing, using layers basically meant final cut wouldn't play back, so I had to work blind. And as for my pc (Tim) well he's a similar age and curls up into a ball on the floor if placed under the slightest bit of pressure. By which I mean he crashes if you play a flash game, or open two programs at once. When Tim crashes I move on to my parents laptop, which runs vista. Enough said.

I CAN'T WAIT!

In other news, I want to get that rarities album up during the postal strike because The Royal Mail can't fuck up downloads. But of course I need the iMac before I can do that. Oh God! What if my iMac gets caught up in the postal strike?! I would actually just start going around killing people.

iMacs

2009-10-18T02:51:00.002+03:30

So I got the hard drive, installed it and... It didn't work. Well, the same thing happened as did before. I'm pretty sure I fit it properly and all that, I just think that it wasn't what was causing the problem. The guy said it might also be one of the wires attached to it, so that's still a possibility.

But either way, my parents talked me into buying a new one. Since I was planning to get one anyway as soon as I could afford it, they said they'd lend me the money as it'd be a waste of time putting it off for a couple of months and trying to push my old iMac even further. They're right really, and especially as I'm just starting a studio album - it would be annoying to switch machines halfway through a project like that.

So I found a great deal tonight on a refurbished 24" iMac. I checked with Dale (I run anything that's both technical and expensive by the gadget dude before buying it!) and he had nothing against buying refurbished machines, plus it has Apple Care until 2012, so it's all good... And yeah, I bought it.

Now I have to wait for it to get here and I'm gonna be like a kid in the run up to Christmas! It - he - is gonna be called Mark Morrison, and if anyone gets that reference I pretty much love you. As for Jack (which wasn't a reference, it just rhymes) I'll probably still get him fixed and sell him, if I can bring myself to part with him! The spare hard drive I could sell, or I might just turn it into an external.

In other news, the post today included a box full of CD's and t-shirts from my friends, 'Rook and The Ravens' because when I was up in Manchester the other day I offered to sell them through Scratch That Records. They are one of the main bands I was thinking of when I said I could use it to sell friend's music as well as my own, and I'm so excited about the album, it's actually amazing. As in, objectively one of the best albums of the year, not just from people I know!

So that's one job for tomorrow - adding their stuff to the store. I hope people buy it because it's so fucking good!

Alright, off to bed.

xxx

Apple

2009-10-17T03:03:00.002+03:30

So I went to The Apple Store in Leicester and had a chat with the Genius guy. He was actually very nice and helpful. He seemed fairly certain that it was a problem with the hard drive, and said they could fix it for about £140 and 10 - 14 days. But he also said it's not that difficult and that I could probably manage it myself, so I'm gonna try that.

It was very refreshing to hear someone talk me through all of the options - not just the ones that are beneficial to the company they work for. He could easily have told me that attempting to change it myself would be very difficult and would most likely end up with me electrocuting myself and frying my iMac and that I should definitely pay Apple to do it - I'd have believed him! But when I got home I had a look and it does look fairly simple, I've ordered a new hard drive that should come tomorrow, will let you know how it goes!

While I'm on the subject of Apple, today a new youtube channel was launched by the RNLI - it's called Shout! and is the latest initiative from the charity aimed towards changing the perception of the youth in today's media. We are going to be setting some challenges for all of you people in internetland to take part in, which will hopefully result in us raising enough money to buy the RNLI a lifeboat! At the same time we will be trying to get the story into the papers - our own positive headlines.

'What does that have to do with Apple?' I hear you ask! (I don't) WELL, for the first challenge we decided to lobby a well known company, and we chose Apple. The idea is that so many people, young people especially, spend their money on this company's products that they might be willing to give a little something back, if we show them how much we love them. So we're asking for video responses, but here - it's all better explained in the launch video.

I hope some of you will be able to get involved by spreading the word and/or making a video response. Hopefully I'll be able to do one soon... Depends how tomorrow goes really!

xxx

Changed my mind... Already

2009-10-15T17:06:00.003+03:30

I've put the songs together and I think they do work with some of the instrumentals in there, so the track list right now looks like this:

Piano from the 'my day' blog - Needs a name!
Don't Go
Dance On
Ideas
What Did You Do Today?
Open D
Alaska
When I See You Again
Burn Forever

I think I'm just going to call it 'Rarities 07 -09' Because then I can do a similar thing if I have a bunch of unreleased songs in a year or two, and continue the name so they will all appear next to each other and in order in people's itunes.

So all I'm waiting for is a good version of Alaska which hopefully I can get tomorrow either from Jack or off my external - can't link that to my PC because it's firewire, but I'll take it to the Apple Store and do it there.

Jack is not well

2009-10-15T13:01:00.002+03:30

Tomorrow I head to Leicester where I have an appointment at the Apple Store so they can take a look at Jack who is not well at all. I fear the cost of fixing him may turn out to be more than he's worth (economically... He will always have a place in my heart as my first ever mac!) Which means buying a new iMac. On the plus side I was planning on this purchase so it's not come out of nowhere and it needed to happen anyway, but I don't really have the money for it yet. However I have decided that I want to get the best that I can even if it means being poor for a while, because the iMac is the centre of my studio and over time I want to build the best studio that I can, which means buying the best equipment, even if I can't afford to get it all at once.

So I need money, and I've been thinking of ways to get it. People have suggested setting up a 'chipin' which basically means people donate money to you... I don't love this idea because people are giving you something for nothing. So what I think I'm going to do it release some of my songs that so far have been unavailable to buy on this new site I've found. It's called bandcamp and you can set it up so people can download songs or albums for any price. So I'll put together some tracks, put it up there and people can enter the amount they want to pay for it, which will basically be their donation towards my new iMac.

What I'm not sure of is which songs to use. I was thinking of using all of the instrumental tunes I have, there are four so far and I could do another one to put in a promotional video, but I wonder whether people would pay much for instrumentals. I do have a few full songs recorded - Alaska, Don't Go, Dance On, Burn Forever, When I See You Again... I was planning to release these properly at some point but I could use them for this? Do you think more people would go for that? I could do both separately, or I could put all of them together. I actually have a video for Alaska ready to go... If I can get it off Jack.

Right. I think I'll start with the instrumentals, I'll do one more - obviously I can't record properly, they will all be just camera recordings, but the mic is pretty good. Then I'll have five instrumental tracks, I'll put them together as an EP and people can buy it for any amount. Then later I still have the option of doing the same with the full songs, if someone donated a load for the instrumentals they can always get the songs for 1p so in effect they have made the same donation and have all 10 tracks.

Sound like a plan?

If anyone has any thoughts on this, or has any other ideas for me to make some iMac money (inb4 get a pc instead... Get out of my life) then feel free to comment or email me.

xxx

Tired / Broken

2009-10-01T02:34:00.003+03:30

Right now I'm just tired of being happy.

I'm all broken.

Waiting for warm water.

2009-09-26T18:32:00.004+03:30

I just went to have a shower and the water is freezing. So while I wait for it to warm up I thought I'd write a little blog (and watch the football).

I've opened the online store, so The Blackout Sessions along with the t-shirts are officially available! It's strange because I sold a load at Summer in the City which was ages ago, and I've sold some over the last couple of days to the Street Team, so it's not really having a big release day. But to be honest it's bad enough taking 15 to the Post Office at a time! I'm always worried that everyone in the queue is going to hate me!

So I think I'll hold off making a video on my main channel until Monday/Tuesday as there's no post tomorrow. I might make something for the ScratchThatRecords channel though... I want to build that up so I'm going to give it the announcements first!

So if you want to get the CD and/or a t-shirt you can do so at blueskies.bigcartel.com

Thanks!

So long

2009-09-23T19:30:00.003+03:30

It's been so long since I posted anything on anything.

But at least I have some CDs and t-shirts to make up for it. I'm actually going to be selling things on the internet for the first time tomorrow, it's quite big/exciting/scary.

Right now I'm having the same problem that I always do, which is that I have new songs and ideas that excite me more than the old ones, but what is old to me is new to everyone else! A part of me is really excited about the whole process - from writing songs to recording, designing the artwork, getting CD's printed and finally selling them to people... But another part of my just wants to keep moving on - I've had a song in my head for the last few days but have been unable to get it recorded and start building it up because I've been working on the website and the online shop and stuff like that.

Still, it should settle down once everything is up and running. Then it'll only mean sticking CDs in envelopes and a walk to the Post Office every day or two, and that's only a few minutes away. So I'll be able to start on the new stuff. My next plan is to make an album - a proper studio album, with the best songs I have. A few from The Blackout Sessions and some new ones. The EP was quite a full sound but they weren't my favourite of my songs... The Blackout Sessions is full of my favourite songs, but it's not polished or layered - which was entirely the point - and I'm thrilled with it... But I really think I need a studio album, something I could, for example, send to radio stations. So that's next.

But back to now. I posted a video on my second channel about what's going on, you can see that here. But basically I've set up a street team on reverbnation, and people who join it are gonna be the first to get the album and I'll sign those ones too. You can join here.

The idea behind this is that 1) a street team will be useful for word of mouth advertising and this will encourage people to join and 2) I can test out the online store and make sure I know what I'm doing while I have relatively few orders.

Then once I'm happy with it I'll make videos to promote. Oh I'm also building a website for www.scratchthatrecords.com with Jon. It's looking great and I'm excited! Especially as I told Tom and he reckons he's not far off finishing his album and I actually can't wait to hear that.

There; new video, new blog... BACK IN THE SWING.

Summer in the City

2009-09-01T15:51:00.003+04:30

Months of organising, planning, pulling out hair, persuading Tom that some things are very important and some things are not at all important, recording music, making CDs on which to store and sell said music, finally led me this weekend to driving to London to actually do all of the things that had been organised, planned, etc, etc.

On Friday we had a day for the tourists, looking around some of the famous landmarks. This went alright, but it's certainly something we'll tweak or totally change next year. Moving around is always a problem at gatherings in groups any bigger that 20 people, and there were a few spots of rain. But everyone was pretty excited to see each other and that feeling pretty much superseded everything! After food the majority of the people who were left went to a pub that we'd been to after some other gathering. Not that I'm an alcoholic, but that was definitely the best part of the day. It was the first time I could really relax and talk with friends old and new, just like we were normal people that saw each other all the time!

Friday night went on very late, I didn't sleep much and so I was pretty drained by Saturday, but we managed to get to Hyde Park not too late. The gathering was just big enough to attract the attention of the police, but fortunately nothing came of it. We had talked to the council beforehand to check. So I played some giant frisbee, met some people, sold some CDs, signed some CDs (lol), played the biggest game of pass the parcel you've ever seen in your life and drew on some postcards, but unfortunately after that I had to leave to go sound check for the evening. I really didn't want to go because it was all so nice and chilled out AND SUNNY! I can't even tell you how thankful I was for the sun that day because that could have fucked everything up and it was totally beyond our control!

But anyway, I had to go so I did. Went to The Luminaire and met the guys who would be running things, they were both really nice, helpful and good at their jobs, which are all things that I'm very happy to find in people I work with! So I checked sound, then met Greg and got him to start checking some sound, then I went back to the hostel and slept for a bit! Sounds like something I would regret with all the stuff that was going on, but that hour or so saved my life.

I got up, ate, had some red bull and got to the venue. I was in equal parts, surprised, relieved, excited and scared when the bouncer almost didn't let us in because it was 'packed'. A 300 capacity venue, packed before the first act had started! The fear was for the possibility of people coming from the gathering and not getting in. I'm hoping that didn't happen but have no way to know. I've convinced myself that it will have been alright because with people getting trains home throughout the night all you'd have needed to do was get a drink downstairs and try again in half an hour and I'm sure you'd have gotten in.

As Tom and Mhazz played I began to realise that I hadn't practised my own songs in months, which got me ridiculously nervous. I never usually get too nervous before gigs, and big ones like this I find easier than small ones because it reinforces the idea that you have the right to be on the stage! But I think that was the most nervous I've been since passing my driving test. I even had to miss half of Greg's set (and I fucking love Greg Holden) to remember words and learn songs. I literally had Tom (Prod) on ultimate-guitar.com on his phone finding out how to play that Julia Nunes song 20 minutes before I was on stage. Mr Milsom helped me out by walking in after Greg finished and saying something along the lines of 'He was so good, I would hate to follow that!' Oh nice one, brilliant!

Of course this was all my own fault for going to Malta for three weeks and then having to finish the CD in the week I had back in England, leaving me no time to play through the songs.

But anyway I got on stage and played untitled because 1) it's one of my most recognisable songs, and it's good to start with something people know, and 2) I could play it in my sleep so I wouldn't forget the words! After a couple of songs I finally started to relax. Not only had the nerves of backstage faded away, but the stress of organising was a distant memory. I was just a musician again, on stage with a great audience and a confidence in my abilities no matter how little I'd practised!

It turned into the best gig I've had (from my perspective anyway!) I remember little things like Sophie holding up the card to the audience telling them to sing 'Ahhhh Ahh Ahh Ahhhhh' during the Nunes song, sharing a round of whiskey with some people I don't think I knew in between songs, watching drunk people dance... I won't name and shame Mhazz at this point because I'm too nice.
I'd only written about 30 - 35 minutes worth of songs down on a set list and then I just asked what people wanted to hear. Those last 10 minutes were probably my favourite, I made it though the songs well enough to keep the flow, but there were little things that made me laugh, for example Cheekychen shouting out his version of the line 'I'd have to fall for a singer', which is of course, '... for a minger!'

After my set people were very nice, but then they usually are - it's not like youtube- this real life thing! I'll have to wait and see the footage, but I felt it went pretty well and the audience really responded so I think it was good.

The rest of the night was just fun times, drinks with friends and hanging out until we got kicked out, laughing at stories of a certain male friend who was apparently standing in the women's toilets, "swaying", or at Myles' text explaining that his absence was due to him being at a rave in a car park, which Jon's iPhone told us was an hour and a half's walk away. That was lucky because I was packing up my stuff to go meet him and that would have meant bad times for Sunday!

Even so everyone was pretty tired on Sunday, something that we had foreseen and thus hadn't really planned anything solid. It turned out to be a nice enough day but nothing particularly interesting happened so I'll leave it there.

So the weekend finished with no major catastrophes and a lot of positive feedback. Literally the day after I got home I was discussing next year with the other guys and we already have a facebook event up. We must be crazy.

Still, one of the best weekends ever.

The Blackout Sessions

2009-08-27T14:33:00.003+04:30

As I sleepily edged my way down the stairs this morning, the sound of the hammer that woke me up persistent and resolute behind me, I stumbled upon two quite large boxes sitting in the hall. The relief that they had come in time (leaving for Summer in the City tomorrow morning) almost immediately turned into excitement as I dragged one of them into the kitchen and set upon it with a big pair of scissors. Eventually I made it through the defences and pulled the cardboard back to see the design Paul and I had been working on just a few days ago staring back at me from a hundred CD cases.

A second wave of relief came as I picked up the nearest CD and examined it to find everything in it's right place and printed well. But nothing compared to putting a disc in the CD player and pressing play. It takes about 4-5 seconds for my CD player to recognise a disc when you first turn it on. That was probably the longest 4-5 seconds of my life. But hurray! Recognise it did, and the intro began.

I still can't really believe how quickly this has all come together. It's even turned out better than I had planned. A week ago I wasn't sure I was even going to get proper jewel cases and all the extra artwork that goes with it... Getting Paul on board really made that possible. We even chose a four sided insert over a two, and I wrote a little piece for the inside rather than trying to squeeze all of the lyrics in (never would have happened, my songs are heavy on the lyrics, it would take about 10 pages to fit them in!) I'll put the lyrics online anyway. Oh, speaking of - I bought www.scratchthatrecords.com yesterday. For now it's just redirecting to the youtube, but it's going to be one of the first things I get to work on after Summer in the City, especially as that'll be where I sell the CDs and t-shirts from.

Well then, if you're going to Summer in the City, I'll see you TOMORROW!

xxx

Guildford

2009-08-20T19:49:00.004+04:30

I made it to my Aunt's in Guildford. There's a shower and there's relative quiet and there are no distractions... I can't even get the internet on my mac because I don't know the password, instead of asking for it I'm gonna leave it that way so I can only access it up here in the study. Otherwise the album will never get done!

Today I'm just sorting a few things out and I'll probably put some fresh strings on my geetar, and start going over some of the tracks I recorded before Malta, then tomorrow it's time to POWER THROUGH!

xxx

Leaving... Again.

2009-08-20T01:08:00.003+04:30

So I left Malta, hung around London for a few days and then came home. While I was away the bathroom was being done up, so I was hoping that on my return it would basically resemble the type of bathroom you might use if you went to visit the Queen. As it turns out it looks more like a bathroom you would use if you went to visit someone whose house had recently been bombed.

So the job isn't quite done yet. Unfortunately I'm trying to finish this live album before Summer in the City, which is nine days away. That's not much time to work with. Now I can live with recording an album without having a working shower in the house, but having constant noise in the room next door from 8am - 6pm makes it fairly difficult.

So I'm leaving. Again.

My Aunt is on holiday at the moment so I called her up and asked if I could borrow her house for a while. So having been away from home for three weeks, I'm off again a day after getting back. Funny thing is it's just down the road from Sophie's where I've been staying for the last couple of days, I should have just gone straight there!

I reckon I have about three days to finish the album in order to get the CDs printed in time. Wish me luck!

Leaving

2009-08-15T14:20:00.004+04:30

Woke up (relatively) early today and so I read a few of the 81 blog posts I've missed since being here. There was one from Jay about a road trip he's been on and the idea of leaving something, someone or some place behind. I've been thinking a lot on the subject lately as well so I thought I'd try to get some of it down on paper (so to speak).

These thoughts always come when I'm travelling, I suppose because for every place you go, you have to leave some other place behind. Maybe just for a few days or weeks, or maybe for an indefinite amount of time. Take today for example, I'll be getting on a plane and leaving this little island, and though I'd love to come back one day, I can't know that I will. I might never see this place again... The yellow buses, the sun scorched rock beaches, the assortment of off white buildings of all shapes and sizes that make up the city landscape... They might all be forever confined to my memories.

But memories are pretty powerful. I realised yesterday that I'd hardly taken any photographs here, but I thought back to some of the places I've been and the strongest memories are so much clearer than the photos I have in a cupboard somewhere. I remember so perfectly the waves crashing against the rocks in Portugal, the steep steps spiralling below me as I stood high up on the cliff. I remember road tripping to Benicassim, not knowing where we were and just saying "Keep the sea on the left and drive!" And I'm sure I won't forget the sight of the Blue Lagoon any time soon. It was remarkable - like someone had tried to design paradise.

Leaving a place always gives me mixed feelings. I'm really looking forward to seeing England again. As nice as it is to get away for a while it's still my favourite place in the world. I've been to so many beautiful places but never considered living anywhere else. But at the same time I don't want to let go of this place. It has so much that I won't be able to enjoy for such a long time. On top of that having been to somewhere new I want to do it again! So really I want to be in three places at once; home, here and somewhere else.

People are awake now so I'm going to cut this short(er than I'd thought it would be).

Speak to you when I'm done leaving.

xxx

Malta

2009-08-07T06:48:00.004+04:30

So I've been in Malta for about a week, which is why I haven't been around the interwebs that much lately. We have found some free (or not so well guarded) waves of wifi floating about and so we are able to check in every now and then.

I was hoping to write some songs but I haven't really had much time to myself yet, but I definitely want to get at least one done and filmed while I'm out here. I don't want to waste the outrageously fortunate position I have found myself in of having a guitar to borrow for the three weeks I'm here.

It went like this; I saw it would be quite expensive to take my guitar on the plane, so I asked my facebook people if anyone lived in Malta and knew where / how cheap I could buy a guitar for, because I could get my hands on one in England for less than the cost of taking mine on the plane.... If the same was true in Malta then I could buy one on arrival and leave it / give it to someone / smash it up on the last day. After a day or two I got a reply from a guy called Neil who was all kinds of lovely and said he'd have a look for me. He gets back to me the next day, not with the price of a cheap guitar, but an offer from his friend Dan to borrow his Takamine for free!

This is possibly the greatest thing that's ever happened. For one thing, I found people who watch my videos in Malta, which is pretty fucking small, and then they turn out to be the nicest people in the world!

Anyway, Malta is beautiful. But I don't know how the people manage to look so good. With the heat and humidity, the wind and the salt, I look an absolute mess as soon as I step outside! We've travelled around quite a bit and have a few places lined up over the next few days that we've been saving until everyone is here (Laura arrived tonight), but I think my favourite place so far is just down the road. There's a rock beach about a hundred yards away from the front door and we've been down there at night a couple of times. When it's late and the heat of the day has subsided, you can sit out and watch the sea stretch out forever... It even comes in behind you when the tide is high, with just a little bridge connecting your tiny island of rock with the rest of the beach.

Being here has really awoken my love of traveling. I don't think I'd ever want to live outside of England constantly, but if I had the money I would definitely spend a few months a year abroad just to change the scenery. With any luck, if this music thing goes well, the opportunity may arise without it having to be a holiday. If I can fill a few large-ish venues in a few cities in a country then the trip could pay for itself... Of course I'm a long way off being able to do that! But it's nice to think about.

Ok now it's almost 5am and Ian is running around like a mentalist, I should go.

xxx

Two Weeks

2009-07-16T01:51:00.003+04:30

In exactly two weeks I'm going on holiday. Before then I intend to record an album that I can sell at Summer in the City (and elsewhere, why not?!) so I started that today.

It's nice to play some of these songs again as it's been a while. Unfortunately I'm remembering why recording isn't my favourite part of being a musician. Namely that my equipment is shit and so for every minute I spend recording I spend about half an hour fixing things and re-recording. (Which I believe would put me in an infinite loop, and that's never good.) To be fair, it's not all shit, I've got two great mics (one nicked from my cuz) so it should sound good once I've spent many half hours fixing things. I think it's my computer that's the problem, I could do with one that was built in the last five years if I'm honest.

Still, this album will be easier than usual because the point of it is to record everything live. No layers, no harmonies - just how I would play the songs at a gig. I thought that would be a good thing to take to SitC because that's how people will hear the songs there.

I'm not sure whether to sell it online yet. If I did it would mean that eventually there would be multiple versions of songs available, because most of these tracks I intend to put on an album with full instrumentation behind them... But there should be a fair bit of difference between them, plus people don't have to buy both! So I probably will. Financially it'd be a waste not to, and it'll be nice for people who can't make it to the gathering.

Early draft of the track list looks like this:
(not in order)

Untitled
The world's still ending (but it's cool)
Another day, another motorway
If we're telling the truth
Happy Friday
Alone Again
Blackout
Potential
Morning After

Then possibly one of the instrumentals I've put on here, one of several half written songs that are on here, and/or an acoustic version of a track from the new EP (as well as Happy Friday).

There's a couple of names you won't recognise, and I think I'll try to keep it that way until it's ready, I don't like the idea of releasing something with nothing new on it.

I've loads of other things I wanna talk about but I'm going to restrain myself because this is long already. Remind me to discuss the idea of the Malteser Sessions and also to tell you about my plans for Scratch That.

PEACE!

xxx

lolwut?

2009-07-12T06:38:00.002+04:30

Just got this message on youtube,

	Apologies for unsubscribing. I'm somewhat obsessive compulsive about the number of subscriptions I have. It must be divisible by three and it wasn't when I was subscribed to you. I still appreciate your music, as well as the huge amount of effort I know goes into a lot of your videos and will probably continue to watch them - just as an unsubscriber now. Wish you all the best!

Things:
1) That's weird.
2) If you hadn't told me I wouldn't have known and there'd be nothing to apologise for. (And there still isn't tbh, you can use the site how you want!)
3) I have (at least) 3 channels - make up the numbers!
4) Having unsubscribed, they had 61 subscriptions, which clearly does not divide by three.

That's all.
Goodnight. x

Aim for Happiness

2009-07-07T15:41:00.006+04:30

I made an EP about a month ago, you may remember... It's now all done and ready and available. It's called Aim for Happiness, and is on itunes and amazon mp3, which were by far the most popular choices in my (very scientific) poll.

Unfortunately, it turns out amazon are a bunch of muppets. I sent the track details, under the band name Blue Skies obviously, but for some reason that I can't figure out, they decided to add a 'The' in front of that. So my EP is listed on amazon under the band name 'The Blue Skies'. It's a pretty bad mistake to make and they tell me it happens all the time... I don't know how they can have such a terrible system in place without sorting it out. But what's worse is that even now I've seen the problem and let them know, apparently there is nothing they can do about it. I told them (in not so many words) that that was bullshit. Because if Radiohead uploaded an album and it came out as 'The Radiohead' something would be done! Still waiting to hear back from that one - not holding my breath.

So I don't know what to do, I can't find anyone that can do anything. The only thing I've been offered is to have the EP taken down from the site, and that would only hurt me and the people who want to buy it but can't use itunes. Oh and they also said they could change the name for me... Change the name to anything in the world apart from 'Blue Skies'. Brilliant, nice one.

I know it's not a major catastrophe, but I don't think it's too much to ask that they use the name I gave them. Still, people can get it there and just change the name, or have it under the wrong name, it doesn't really matter!

And the good news is that itunes has processed it, and all appears to be well there. I'm exporting a video for one of the songs now, so hopefully that will go up tonight and people might, yunno - buy it! It's quite a big step but since I really took it a month ago, and have since just been waiting for it to happen, it doesn't really feel like one.

Also Cheeky is sorting out the final things I need to order t-shirts, I'll probably start selling those at Summer in the City.

Oh and as some people have asked, I currently have no plans to make physical copies of this EP, for one thing that costs money, and also it's only four tracks - doesn't really seem worth it. I'm planning to put together a sort of live album to sell at Summer in the City with at least 10 of my tunes performed acoustically. I've borrowed a second mic from my cousin for the next few weeks so hopefully I'll have it done by the time I go away at the end of July.

I was also thinking about doing some lo fi recordings... See I'm going to be in Malta for about three weeks and I'd like to get some songs written while I'm away. I thought I could record them on my camera and then sell them, but not properly - set up a paypal thing where you can pay any amount and then you get a link to a download of the songs. Like Radiohead did with In Rainbows... Pay what you want. That way people can't moan about the sound quality! And to be fair the quality will be alright, I just don't plan on setting up a studio out there! Might not be everyone's cup of tea but I love some lo fi stuff... I mean check this shit! To be fair though I just fucking love Conor Oberst. But even so, I think the not particularly brilliant recording quality really adds to that tune.

Well, I'll stop the rambling now. If you have anything to add/ask about any of that then go ahead, I'll be in the comments! (Would especially like to hear from someone who works at amazon and has the power to remove the 'the'!)

xxx

EDIT: Video is up now, click here.

Magic bin!

2009-06-28T17:39:00.003+04:30

Mum just threw two pieces of paper into the bin and they landed... Above it!

So basically we have a magic bin.

Or as a possible alternative explanation... we NEVER go into the lounge now we have a sofa in the kitchen and so a spider has taken the opportunity to move in.

T-shirts round 2

2009-06-27T15:59:00.004+04:30

Thanks to Paul I now have actual computery designs.

Do you prefer lower case...
Or upper case...
Unfortunately the printers can't go right to the sides because their machines are A3 sized. But I quite like the new version. What d'you think?

T-shirt designs!

2009-06-24T20:04:00.007+04:30

Today was too nice to be inside, so I went out in the garden and designed some t-shirts that I could sell at gigs and stuff. I've been meaning to get some done for ages and just haven't got round to it. Also I'm no good at getting designs onto a computer so I'm gonna need someone's help!

First I'll show you some sketches. I tried to keep them all to two colours to keep the cost down, and because I think it's good to keep them simple.

1.2.
I thought I might be able to carry on the lines from the guitar and the S's on to the back on this one.

3.
It's not that clear because of my poor drawing ability! It's supposed to be two arrows that would hopefully continue over onto the back, or if that would be too expensive I'd make the design a bit small to fit it all on the front. This one might require a third colour as well, in between the two arrows (above the second s and on the other side on the arm)

4 (star), 5 (stripes) & 6 (other!):

Let me know what you think, which one's you like/dislike, your favourites, whether you'd buy them and most importantly, anyone who can turn these pencil scribbles into something on a computer screen that I could send to a t-shirt printers, let me know!

xx

Road Trip part3: Heading Home

2009-06-24T02:41:00.014+04:30

So it just occurred to me that I never finished off what the papers aren't calling 'The Blog Trilogy of the Year!'

I told you about the trip up to Scotland and stopping off at the castle... And about party times on the karaoke bus in Glasgow, so all that's left is the second road trip, which is basically the same as the first but backwards.

This time we decided not to look for another castle because it would never be as good as the one on the way. I noticed that we went fairly near the coast a couple of times, and that there was a beach at Morecambe. So we went to Morecambe.

At first it only appeared to be a pebble beach, which did not impress us. Though we did go down and dip our feet in the Irish Sea... And of course pretend to be crabs for a photo:

Turned out there was a sand beach about 50 yards away. So Morecambe was alright. didn't spend much time there, but it was a nice break.

I have one final thing to show you, a game Dale invented in the car. It's called 'The Wobbly Phone Camera Game' and it basically involves taking photos like this,

By moving your phone all over the place while you take a picture so it... Morphs.

We tried to get some of Sophie, but they all came out normal...

And that was our trip to Scotland... That happened several weeks ago now. I suck at blogging. The trouble is when stuff is happening you're too busy to blog, then you forget, then suddenly you're writing about stuff that happened three weeks ago. Ah well.

I did take some video footage, which I might use as a part of a music video because I have a song that kind of involves road tripping. For now I'm working on a big split screen project to promote my EP... Less than a month until it's out!

So that's all. If you take only one thing away from today, let it be The Wobbly Phone Camera Game. It's genius and you know it. Try it on your friends!

xxx

The Green Out

2009-06-18T13:27:00.003+04:30

Yesterday on twitter this sentence came up quite frequently,

#helpiranelection - show support for democracy in Iran add green overlay to your Twitter avatar with 1-click - http://helpiranelection.com/

and a lot of people's avatars went slightly green.

I thought it was quite a nice idea, so I did it too, but as with most things done on the internet by more than three people, it came with the unavoidable slew of cynicism. So I thought I'd take a second to defend the green out.

The argument against it seems to be quite simple - 'How is making your avatar green going to change anything? What's the point?!' Now obviously this is not going to directly bring an honest democracy to Iran. If it was as simple as pressing a button I think someone would have done it by now. But it's a simple show of support, a way to get the word out and to keep people talking about something important. That's the way the world works - you keep people talking and solutions are at least looked for. If you let things go quietly then they're forgotten about.

I saw one tweet that said 'It won't help etc etc, remember the blackout, did that work?'

The blackout was a similar movement on twitter whereby people just used a black square instead of their usual picture to protest against a new law in New Zealand, which meant people could have their internet cut off if accused of piracy... Not convicted; accused. No trial, no judge, no jury.

Now, not living in New Zealand I didn't really follow the story, but in answer to the question 'did the blackout work?' You have answered it yourself - it worked because you remember it. The point of the blackout was to spread the word and gain support, not so the PM of New Zealand would check his twitter and say 'Oh shit, look at all these blacked out avatars, I better not pass that law!' Just like the regime in control in Iran are unlikely to hand over power based on some pictures being tinged green, but that doesn't mean it's worthless.

The green out is a minuscule part of what's going on, but it took five seconds and cost me nothing, so why moan about it? Here's something else that makes no difference - going to a protest in the street. If you lived in Iran and you had to decide between staying at home and going out to a protest, you would know that your decision alone would not affect anything, it's far too small a choice. But a lot of people made that choice and this was the result.

Sorry if you don't care about this, it just annoys me when people hate bandwagons whatever they're about. I heard someone say once they weren't going to get an organ donor card because it was just another bandwagon. Never mind that that bandwagon could save lives. Mental.

One final thought - it's nice to see the generation of people politicised during the last US election following through and talking about the election in Iran, which is far less cool because Barack Obama isn't involved.

EDIT: thanks to Laura for mentioning in the comments, another thing you can do to help is change your twitter time zone (in settings at the top) to GMT +3:30 Tehran, the idea behind this is that it makes it harder to identify those actually twittering from within Iran. I must confess I have no idea how effective this is, but I've done it myself because why not?!

Road Trip part2: Glasgow.

2009-06-15T15:43:00.008+04:30

I know I said I'd do this 'tomorrow' and that was about two weeks ago but lets move on. Quit living in the past!

We got to Glasgow. Shit it was so long ago I can't remember what happened. Ok, I got it - the first night we got there pretty late because of the castle vidit, we just hung in Sinead's garden with a drink or two and her parents' crazy friend creeped us out but it was all good.

then the next day it was John's birthday (And Ginge's after midnight hence the double celebration) and the KARAOKE BUS DAY!

Calm down ladies, it's only a picture.

Basically this bus drove around Glasgow for an hour while we drunk champagne and sung karaoke. It's pretty much the best idea ever. I'd love to have been there when whoever it was thought, 'Wait a minute... Buses. Karaoke. Put them together and... I'M A GENIUS!'

I think Liam was recreating that moment here.

Ah, found a shot of everyone:

Things I notice: 1) Doog has an admirer. 2) Jemma despises the cameraman. 3) the guy behind me is too tall to stand up straight. 4) Ginger Chris is already (this is about 7pm) needing help with the whole standing up thing. 5) Liam and I would make a pretty good couple. Just saying.

After the bus we went to a place they had hired out and Sophie demonstrated her ability to be normal and smile for the camera...

Here's Chris sporting the t-shirt Dom bought him for the occasion, which is one of the best photos ever:

One last picture, the cake!

Wonderful.

Road Trip part1: Castle!

2009-06-04T03:26:00.011+04:30

This weekend it was Mr. John Cox AND Mr. Ginger Chris' birthdays so a few of us had a little road trip up to Scotland land to celebrate.

It would have been good if I'd had the time/technology to blog during the weekend because now it seems like too much to fit in, so I'm going to split it up, keep it brief and use pictures!

So here's part one - the journey. Basically we decided to do something on the way so it wasn't just 5 hours in a car. The night before we were talking about going to a castle, so I had a look on Google maps and found one that was just about a mile off the M6 that we'd be going up. The internet says it's called Brougham Castle, but I'm sure the sign just said Brough. Ah well, either way, here it is:

It was possibly the best thing EVER.

It was a little bit shut when we got there, but we decided since we had come so far we'd have a sneaky look anyway... Hopped a couple of fences and invaded. (/walked in)

Turns out it's way better after hours because there's nobody to stop you exploring and climbing on the walls. Well, apart from this sign...

I know, I'm such a rebel it's unreal.

We did do some pretty good climbing! I got in here:

... From the wall on the right. There was actually no way in there from the other side. There would have been a room in front of me in centuries past but now it's just floating there, a little hole in a wall, 20 feet up in the air.

This shot is from pretty much the top...

We were there for a good couple of hours and could have stayed all night, but with the sun setting and friends waiting for us north of the border we decided to get going.

(from left: Dale, Sophie, Ian, Doog and me.)

Part 2, which I'm fairly certain will be subtitled "Glasgow!" should be along tomorrow with some karaoke bus action. After that I'll introduce you to the wobbly phone camera game.

xxx

FACE 2 COX

2009-05-26T23:58:00.002+04:30

Barry Aldridge (of 'BarryAldridge' fame) wrote a blog the other day talking about his 'Face 2 Face' interview series on Youtube. I left a comment that said "When do we get 'Face 2 Cox'?" Because I am (as I'm sure most of you are) eagerly anticipating the fulfilment of the promise Barry made - to give the people a JohnCox88 channel recommendation. Granted channel recommendations as we knew them are finished, but John Cox and his legions of fans have agreed that a 'Face 2 Cox' episode will suffice.

I received the following DM on twitter earlier today.

Hey Dave, I had to delete your comment from my latest blog entry because of Face 2 Cox comment. If my family saw that that would be upset.

I asked why, given that Cox is just a name and was told,

I know but the thing Face2Cox sounds like something else and some people would take it the wrong way thinking you maybe taking the piss.

I know right. Take the piss... Me?! And as for what this "something else" might be, I'm none the wiser. But I assure you, the fight for 'Face 2 Cox' will continue until our demands are met, and Barry's promise is kept!

Keep the faith.

xxx

p.s. There was another Aldridge gem on his facebook status this morning, may as well stick it in here...
"I hate waking up to rain, it's like waking up to hell.' I love you Barry.

Fuck

2009-05-25T18:34:00.002+04:30

I hate letting people down. I hate it more when they lay a massive guilt trip on you.

I was only trying to help out someone else and then they let me down, so I had to pass it along. I even covered for them, don't ask me why. Sometimes I think it would be easier if I just stopped doing things - if I hadn't offered to help in the first place everything would be fine.

New rule: Only help people if it doesn't require getting someone else to help too.

Fuck the to-do list.

/vent. Sorry.

Summer

2009-05-25T04:02:00.002+04:30

Today had a very 'first day of summer' feel about it.

The last football of this Premiership season was played, it was properly hot with not a cloud to be seen and we had a BBQ for the first time in over half a year. I also made a playlist of summery songs on my ipod.

Of course I got nothing done because I was outside all day, I'm gonna have to work on that.
My cousin was round the other day though to have a listen to my EP. She was very complimentary, which made me really pleased/relieved because she knows what she's talking about. She also showed me a few things that can help with the sound and now I'm almost ready to let them go. It's strange, I've been making tiny adjustments for as long as I was writing and recording instruments and soon I'm going to stop and they will be set in stone.

Oh, I don't know why I started writing this, I didn't have any news... Just that it's been a lovely day.

I'm gonna make a to-do list for tomorrow in case it's sunny again. If I don't I'll just read in the garden all day.

- Finish tracks for EP (and try to think of a name)
- Finish half written song
- Answer some questions for an interview
- Look for a laptop for my parents
- Read in the garden (but only for a while)
- Write a blog describing how well the to-do list went.

Goodnight. x

p.s. all this talk of summer and itunes on shuffle keeps bringing up Christmas songs!

I am

2009-05-23T06:28:00.002+04:30

Fucking inspired right about now to be honest.

I hope I still feel like this tomorrow because I'm gonna crash soon.

The songs are sounding good though, and I'm writing a few new ones as well. The world is all right. Also keep the 10th June free if you fancy a trip to Nottingham, but don't quote me on that because it's not fo sho.

Peace out, A town, word to your mother.

x

Good news!

2009-05-21T04:52:00.006+04:30

First off here's a video I uploaded to my second channel earlier. Go ahead and hit play so you can listen while you read on!

It's just a guitar style I've been practising with the last couple of days. See I saw two minutes of this film called 'August Rush' and they were playing a song in some open tuning... I liked it so I stopped watching in order to watch it from the start next time, but I went and stuck my guitar in open D for a while. Might record something properly with it tomorrow.

The good news is that my friends Rook and the Ravens - the second best band in the world - have started up a youtube channel. These guys are good on a ridiculous scale - Like if you think I'm good - LOL. They've been gigging since they were about ten years old and it shows. They've just recorded an album so I can't fucking wait for that.

Earlier Tom blogged about his three favourite youtube musicians, I said Tom Hall, Greg Holden and The Nunes. Well The Nunes just got bumped out of the top three, that's how serious I am!

It's weird though because they're offline friends and now it's all mixed up. Ah well, mixing stuff up is good, just look at fruit salads - they've gone from strength to strength.

I've been doing more Summer in the City organising today, starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. All I know is it better be the best fucking day of my life, or there will be trouble!

Here, click on this sentence to go sub to RatR. I guarantee good times.

Goodnight. x

24 hours in London

2009-05-17T14:59:00.007+04:30

On Friday I left for London. I got into Derby really early... For some reason when catching trains I always give the bus half an hour to get there, even though it takes about ten minutes. So I had a little wonder around Derby and ended up sitting on one of the comfy chairs in the new shopping centre where I started re-reading The Catcher in the Rye. Apart from getting up to walk to the station and on to a train that pretty much continued until London. I headed to Waterloo to meet Paul and Sophie (and Chris Lomas briefly!) and we headed up the Jubilee line to visit a potential venue for Summer in the City. The guy in charge was cool... He reminded me of a guy I know that runs a pub in Glossop, mostly because they both run gig venues and are Scottish, but still. The place looked great and hopefully they will have us... I still have to persuade him to let under 18s in, but I think he'll come around!

After that we went off to get food, but only found drink. Had a pint in Camden before asking the very foreign staff where KOKO was... One of them kind of knew and gave me directions that sounded rough but turned out to be very accurate. We got there a bit late - missed most of the support who sounded pretty good. It was the first time I'd been to KOKO, which is a wonderful venue - not very deep but there are a few layers of balconies like at a theatre, which I imagine it was originally. It also has one of the biggest glitter balls I've ever seen.

Ben Kweller, who I realise I haven't mentioned yet, though he was the reason we were there, came on and played some tracks from his new album Changing Horses as well as quite a few from all of his older albums. They worked quite well together considering his new album is very country, whereas the old stuff is more indie/rock/I'm no good with genre names.

I've seen him plenty of times before so I knew what to expect. The first time I went, my friend sent a text to someone to describe the show and he just wrote 'This is talent.' Kweller is an immensely talented man and he surrounds himself with great musicians. But the one thing that stands out about him is how much he loves what he does. I've never seen anybody more comfortable on stage, he absolutely loves it!

The rest of the night involved a few more drinks, getting a hi five from some random woman because I unplugged the speaker that was drowning out our conversation, going back to Sophie's where we met Ian and Lex, and cooking pasta, which was the first thing I'd eaten in about 15 hours.

The next day we had to get up fairly early, which none of us are very good at, but we managed it. Even though Sophie made us miss one train we got on the next one and went to see a hostel. I'm trying to sort something out with this hostel for Summer in the City. It's quite a complicated situation and I'm going to think about how best to work it later on today, but the place is beautiful and Renee who I've been talking to over email and who showed us round was really nice. Then I rushed back towards St Pancras, while the others rushed back to Waterloo. I made it on my train back with about one minute to spare, which is always a good feeling!

So that was my day in London. There was some more Catcher in the Rye on the train home, but not much more as I could barely keep my eyes open.

Still tired now, but good times had.

xxx

Cheeky Bastards

2009-05-15T03:14:00.003+04:30

Lately the media in England have been going crazy over the amount of money MP's have been claiming on their housing expenses. See they have to be in London a lot, as well as with their constituencies, so they get a second home allowance, and some of them have a second home about five minutes away from their first, some aren't living in their first homes for long enough for it to be a first home, and a hundred other things that I won't tell you because you don't care. I don't care. I've yet to meet anyone who cares beyond saying, 'Cheeky bastard' on hearing the latest story and moving on.

But we keep being told how much we care and it's starting to bother me. Aren't these the people who are running the country? They're supposed to be speaking for us, deciding what is best for the country, if you go high enough, which this 'scandal' appears to be, they are the people who run everything - school, hospitals, police, housing... they can send us to war! Don't they have things to do?

I agree some of them have been cheeky bastards but did anyone expect anything else? So sort the system out, have them pay back money, do whatever... Just leave it out of the headlines because I don't give a shit. It was the same with swine flu for about a week until this came along. I tell you what, if they hadn't latched onto this they'd still be banging on about the flu. And they'll be talking about this until the next thing I don't care about comes along.

I don't mean I don't care at all... I do care about the news in general. I like to be informed, just not about the same thing everyday when it just isn't that important.

So basically, the media pisses me off. If I had a paper it'd be a different length everyday, depending on how much interesting stuff actually happened.

In other (more interesting) news, I started work on a new video today. It's using split screens but in a new way (for me!). If you track my split screen videos so far it goes the Promise, Saves the Day, Coldplay, then this. I think the previous three are some of my best videos and they've improved each time, so I'm hoping this one will continue that trend... I know this much: it's ambitious! It'll probably drive me crazy, but I'm taking it slowly because it's for one of the tracks on the EP which is at least a month away.

Alright then.

Oh, I'm going to London to see Ben Kweller for the... Fifth(?) time tomorrow. I'm very excited.

Bye then!

xxx

Three at once.

2009-05-12T15:25:00.002+04:30

The four tracks I have recorded for my first EP have been sent off to my cousin for her approval and advice before they are uploaded. I think they will be going on itunes and amazonmp3, those were by far the most popular choices by commenters on my latest video. So for today I can't really do anything on it. That means I can do some work on the acoustic tracks that I also want to make available to download soon.

It's got me thinking about how I'm going to need to work in the coming months and years. Since I don't have an audience large enough to sell thousands and thousands of whatever I release, in order to live off my creativity I will have to have quite a high output. As such I think I'll always be working on three things at once;

1. Current songs - those which have been written and are being recorded.
2. Old songs, which will actually be new to the audience - songs that are recently available to download... Making videos for them will be the most important part of this category.
3. New songs - I'll need to be writing songs to get started on as soon as the current ones are done.

Supposedly itunes takes about a month to process songs, so if in that time I can get two or three videos done ready to promote the songs, and get a good start on recording the next thing I should be able to keep things moving nicely.

Of course this will all fall apart because I'm useless, but it's good to have a plan.

The strange thing is the idea of consciously keeping my youtube channel a month or so in the past, because I will have to wait for songs to be available before uploading videos for them. I like to share things as soon as I write them... I suppose I can still do that, maybe just a rough version of new songs on my second channel, or I might find some new ways to get stuff out there... More secret ways! I can show people who read this blog some of the demos or something. That way the people who really care can keep up to date.

Hmm, sorry - just thinking out loud (*in type).

Well anyway, it should be fun!

Too long to tweet.

2009-05-03T16:20:00.003+04:30

There was some discussion on twitter yesterday regarding Summer in the City. I missed the fireworks, but I thought I'd add a word or two in a place not confined by a 140 character limit and at a time slightly out of the heat of the argument, which I hope will allow for a more level headed approach.

The background to the story is this. Davey (aka daveyboyz) entered an online video competition a few weeks back. The prize was £100,000 (I believe only £20,000 was cash, the rest in 'sponsorship'). Davey announced that if he won he would give £2,000 to help cover the cost of the gathering already being organised by myself and a few others. Whether this move was intended for the good of the community and the gathering, or as a way of gathering support for the video, I'll leave for you to decide. What I will say is that he didn't make any contact with any of the organisers before he did this.

I remember seeing a lot of my friends helping out on twitter, asking people to vote for the video for the good of the gathering, but in the end it wasn't enough, Davey didn't win that prize.

However, and I don't know exactly how it works - I think there are competitions every month and Davey's video was re-entered into the next competition, and it won. The prize is significantly smaller, I believe £5,000.

Now here comes the argument (isn't it always right after the money comes in?!) Tom, who's helping to organise, assumed this meant Davey would be sticking by his promise of a £2,000 donation. Davey said it was a different competition with a smaller prize so he would be keeping all of the money himself.

The point of this blog is still to come, and it's not to voice my opinion on what would have been the right thing to do, but I'll let you know that now just for the record.

I don't think it would be fair to ask for 2 out of 5 grand, when it was originally supposed to be 2 from 20 (plus all the sponsorship).
I also don't think it's fair to give nothing when a lot of people were voting for the video under the assumption that a percentage of the winnings would be going to the gathering.
What I would have done is given the same percentage - it was £2,000 out of £20,000, so I would have offered £500 out of the £5,000 winnings - 10%.

If I were in Davey's place, that's what I'd have done. But let me be clear, I'm not asking for £500, or any money. First of all I don't think even I could persuade Tom to accept it now, secondly Davey posted the following tweet earlier:

"if I do give anything to the gathering, I will decide people i give it to - its not going anywhere near you guys, sorry"

So I don't imagine asking for any amount would be fruitful.

But most importantly, and here we've finally got to the point... We don't need it. (Sorry you had to read all of that to get to a four word point. Still it could have been worse, I think Tom's was four letters.)
We've planned this gathering well, spent a lot of time considering options, searching for places and thinking about ways to finance it. Though there's still work to be done, we're in a good place.

I wrote this post last night, and at this point I took a break and watched X-Men 2! When I came back there was another tweet from Davey that read,

"Ok well i dont mind giving some, but i wont be giving directly to you organisers."

I think I've said all I need to as an organiser of the event, namely that planning is going really well and we are happy to continue without any 'help'. So I'll leave this last paragraph for my personal thoughts - this is my blog after all.

I was quite insulted (though not surprised) that Davey made the announcement without consulting any of us. Those last two tweets have magnified that considerably. I don't know where he would plan to send money if not to the organisers, but I feel as though he's undermining the huge number of hours we've spent discussing, researching and planning this gathering. On the plus side, nothing has changed! I'm still really looking forward to August, in a couple off weeks I'll be in London and I'll be looking at the probable venue for the Saturday night. There's also a sample t-shirt on it's way to me, we'll be selling them to help with the funding.

On another note, did you hear... The UK is forecast a long, hot summer. I'm very ready for that!

xxx

Lunch break.

2009-04-28T18:53:00.002+04:30

I've been working on a song and I thought I'd write a cheeky little blog before lunch. It's nice to have something to show for a morning's work, lately I've been doing a lot of production work, which only changes something you already have, and a lot of organising, which involves looking around the internet and emailing people. Even when not getting distracted and actually doing it, those things don't give you that feeling of accomplishment that either writing or recording do. But when I woke up today this song didn't exist and now... It kind of does... A bit!

The organising I mentioned has been mostly for Summer in the City. Looking for a venue that will allow under 18's in is no mean feat... But I think I've found one. I'm going to go have a look at it when I'm next in London (15th for Kweller!) It will be 14+ and I think that's the best we can hope for, I will have to apologise to any under 14's but they can still come to the daytime part of the gathering. We also have some t-shirts in the works, should be seeing some samples soon, then if it's all good we will start selling them and the profits should cover the venue fee and any other expenses. That's the plan anyway!

Oh and music plans at the moment, I have three tracks that don't really fit in with the other 10 - 12, because they're electric with drums and stuff, so I'm going to put those on itunes on their own, before the rest. I'm adding a fourth because three would really just be a single, four I can call an EP. The fourth is what I've been working on today. Once these songs are up I'll work on the rest, then once everything is on itunes I'll work on a CD, which will include a couple of the tracks from itunes but possibly re-recorded and some newer stuff. I'll be able to put some extra money into the CD because I'll have some from the itunes sales. It all fits together quite nicely, ya see? It'd be nice to get that done by Summer in the City, that's the target I have in my head.

Right, I'm hungry.

xx

Jazza called me wise.

2009-04-22T21:59:00.002+04:30

I will never let him forget.

But that's not why I'm here, I just wanted to tell you lovely blog readers that should you want to listen to a properly recorded version of the song 'Another Day, Another Motorway' (Or ADAM... I got very excited earlier when I discovered the acronym!) I have just uploaded it to Myspace.

This is a bloggy treat, I'm not even telling twitter!

Click here to listen.

xxx

THE GREAT PURGE '09!

2009-04-21T16:05:00.005+04:30

I'm gonna add my tuppence to the idea of the internet purge started, as usual, by Alex Day.

But this isn't really directed at him. I know Alex quite well and as such I'm pretty much unshockable with regards to these things that he does... And if you want my opinion on what in his brain makes him do them we'll be here all day.

I'm going to look at it the other way... From the purger's perspective.

A brief mention of non youtube sites - twitter I would never delete because it's too useful as a promotional tool. I might unfollow a few people, but more likely I'll just miss some updates from everyone. Twitter is very in the now... If I don't see something within the first half hour it's off the first page. Now I could track back and make sure I see everything, but there's no need. I'll just look at the first page and my @replies... If something is important then it will be replied to me or sent via a different medium.

Dailybooth has no real use, but it doesn't take up much time either, and I do like having my latest picture here on my blog... That's kinda replaced the in-blog pictures I had for a while. So while I've given up taking pictures daily (though I never really intended to see it through) I'm keeping it for now.

Facebook is my only private website. Everything else I accept everyone to, but it's pretty much the only link I have to a lot of old friends. I doubt I'll ever delete it, even if I stop using it.

Myspace is basically essential for a band. I only go on there to accept friends requests and answer stuff, but I can't get rid of it.

Ok, so youtube. I used to watch every video in my sub box. I don't anymore... So I suppose I do have too many subscriptions and I may cut them back. But for me there are two types of subscription... There are those that are purely for entertainment. Channels like 'College Humour' which I watch because it's funny - I don't know them, I don't communicate with them, it may as well be on TV. I could get rid of these channels as easily as I could stop watching TV (Heroes and 24 aside - pretty easy!)

The other type of subscription would be those channels that belong to friends. This is different, because although I do get a similar enjoyment out of the videos (and when it comes to youtube friends I almost inevitably do enjoy their videos, as you tend to start talking to people because of that), I also care about their videos. Whether they're talking about something that's important to them, or showing their latest creation, be it song/artwork/whatever... I want to know because it's a friend.

Little side note example: I lived in Liverpool for three years. During this time I lived with a few people who were part of a band. Over the three years I went to literally hundreds of their gigs. This could be considered a huge waste of time... Imagine the hours I clocked up listening to them play, the things I could have done in all that time! If I'd used it to work and revise I'd easily have first class degree right now. But I definitely wouldn't be as close to them, and I wouldn't even know a lot of people who I now consider friends. I'll take that and a 2.1 any day!

Now, they aren't total bastards. If I hadn't gone to a single gig they wouldn't have denied me friendship... It's just as they were friends I wanted to go and support them (and have fun, make no mistake I loved every minute) and so we became closer friends due to spending more time together and because of the fact that I cared about them. It works both ways obviously - they were supportive of me, hell I practically became part of their family I was round their house so much.. I had a toothbrush there!

The point is part of friendship is supporting people in whatever it is they do. It's not necessary, but it brings people closer. So, there are some people whose videos I could not stop watching because I consider them friends and that is their creative outlet. If I can't give them a couple of minutes every week or two then then that friendship obviously isn't worth very much to me.

There, that's what I think. Please note as I said at the beginning, this isn't about Alex - this is how I feel about it as a possible purger, I know Alex thinks differently and that's fine. My only problem with his purge is that I probably won't be in contact with him much any more... I don't really think to email people and that's pretty much the only option left.

If you have any thoughts feel free to share.

x

All apologies

2009-04-19T21:02:00.003+04:30

Have you noticed how people are always apologising for the length of time since they wrote a blog, or posted a video? Yeah, I'm not gonna do that - I don't owe you blogs!

I think the reason, if you care, is that these last few weeks I've either been very busy or very not. When I've been busy I've had other things on my mind and haven't thought to write, and when I've not been busy I've had nothing much to write about. I should really use the not busy times to write and reflect on the busier times. I just... Didn't.

Things of interest, just to keep you up to date, include having a bunch of far away friends come here for a night which involved my playing a gig in a cave. The gig was fun, though quite difficult - I like having a microphone! I couldn't play quite a few of my songs because they'd have been too quiet. But it's good to have things like that thrown upon you at the last minute - keeps you on your toes!

I've also been down to London to film this cheesy charity video. The sort of thing I wouldn't normally do but did because it's for charity... And they paid for me to go to London and see some friends and stay in a hotel. Just so you know - I don't specifically enjoy taking expense money from charities... In fact I still have a £40 dinner receipt that I couldn't bring myself to claim back from the RNLI. It was doing those things that was enjoyable... Not the fact that they were free. (Well ok... It may have helped.)

Today I wrote a song on the piano. It was quite a challenge as I was trying to keep the meaning somewhat ambiguous. I wanted it to make sense, especially at the beginning, as a break up song, but I also wanted it to work for a friendship that had gone wrong, and most importantly as a reaction to the death of someone close. I know - cheery stuff! I might blog about the lyrics in detail once I've put a video up. That will hopefully be in the next few days.

Just had a break in writing this to eat dinner and you'd never have known were it not for this sentence.

Tom called as well and that reminds me of something else I've been working on - Summer in the City planning. It's not easy trying to keep every demographic in mind and keep every one of them happy. For example we need a venue that lets under 18s in - or we'd have a bunch of pissed off under 18s, but also serves alcohol - or we'd have a bunch of pissed off over 18s. But I'm hopeful that I may have found somewhere perfect... Should be hearing back from them tomorrow.

Alright then, enough for now.

x

April Fools

2009-04-01T05:24:00.002+04:30

I think people hate April Fools because they know they can't fool anyone because everyone is so guarded... Apart from Ginger Chris apparently who'd been had five times in the first hour.

But it always reminds me of prank wars. The best I've had were in uni. You're away from home with new people and it's all about having fun... Little jokes escalate so fast! I remember in first year, we got from hiding people's clothes and food to stealing each others cars and bedroom furniture within a couple of days.

That last one actually led to one of my favourite moments in my life so far. My friend and I decided to steal our flatmates bed... As you do. We left the pillowcase /sheet in place but took the frame. We got everything ready - got the keys to her room and the room opposite to hide the bed, then picked it up and got it halfway out of the door. We held it for a second while I opened the door opposite, and then these two guys that worked around the flats walked in. I was stood there opening one of the girls doors with one hand, while holding half a bed in the other hand, my friend holding up the other half was still in the room and didn't know what was going on. I just looked at the men and they looked back for a couple of seconds while I held back laughter, and then they just carried on walking the other way.

It's one of my favourite moments because still remember exactly how I felt - it was hilarious and there was just nothing to say to explain it so I was just stood there, I think I actually did say 'Hi.' and smiled... Yunno - ACT CASUAL style.

Ahh good times!

Guess the songs!

2009-03-27T04:38:00.021+04:30

So this little game has been going around in facebook notes. But I thought I'd bring it over here to my blog so everyone can play!

Basically you put your whole itunes on shuffle and go through the first 40 tracks, writing out the first line of lyrics, then people guess them in the comments. I'll try to keep it edited so you know which ones people have got already by putting the answer in bold after the line, but I will probably fail.

I skipped over a few but only if they either 1) had no lyrics or 2) had the title in the first line or 3) would have been ridiculously difficult e.g. my mates old band (that actually did come up!)

I don't know if there are rules in general but let's just say you can't use the internet to help! Obviously Googling the line will give you the answer in 99% of cases, so there's no point. YOU'RE CHEATING YOURSELF! etc, etc...

So answers in the comments and though I think the idea is to tag people, I cba... Do it if you like.
Ok let's go!

1. Everybody wants you to be special, and everybody wants you to be high. Rescue Blues-Ryam Adams

2. Can I get close to ya, if only for a while. I don't mean to busy you. You're the jive guru and
I want to sing along with you. Cause a Rockslide - Badly Drawn Boy

3. So I look in your direction, but you pay me no attention do you?
Shiver by Coldplay

4. Jehosaphat the mongrel cat jumped off the roof today. John Prine - Livin' in the Future.

5. I used to say 'just follow your heart', but my heart always lead me in circles. Don't Say No- Patrick Wolf

6. All the boys are begging for her, reaching long to grab her clothes. Minus The Bear- Lost My Money At The Cock Fight

7. Fill these spaces up with days, in my room you can go you can stay. Sleep-Azure Ray

8. Look him in the eyes, there's no need to be scared. He's as powerless as you and me. Willy Mason- Hard Hand to Hold

9. There's children on the street using guns and knives, taking drugs and each other's lives. FotC- Issues (Think about it)

10. I am waiting till I don't know when, 'cause I'm sure it's gonna happen then.
Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles) by Arcade Fire

11. Bleed in your own light, dream of your own life
smashing pumpkins- rocket

12. The city freeze for, I just realised I don't like you.
The Kooks - Sofa song

13. I want to live, I want to give. I've been a miner for a...
Heart of Gold by Neil Young

14. Well I'm gonna write a little letter, I'm gonna mail it to my local DJ
Roll Over Beethoven by Chuck Berry

15. Send my love to the city for I'll be having an affair this summer. Larrikin Love - Meet me by the getaway car.

16. When I was a child, running in the night, I was afraid of what might be. Hounds of Love- Futureheads

17. It's to reveal that fucked up cop. Elliott Smith - Riot Coming

18. Where's that smile at, where'd you take it to? I never thought that anything could hurt you. Hurtin' You - Ben Kweller

19. It seems we stood and talked like this before. We looked at each other in the same way then. Frank Sinatra Where or When (was actually the Harry Connick Jr. version but yeh!)

20. Rebel, rebel and yell. Cause our people still dwell in hell. Rage Against The Machine - Township Rebellion

21. Catch a feel or cop a ride, I won't be late, I won't decline. Martha Wainwright - GPT

22. Now here's a tale. Tale I will tell. Blood lust after no sweet love and a many, many things I do so well. stix and stones - babyshambles

23. You don't answer my call with even a nod or a wink, but you gaze at your own reflection alright. Smash the Mirror- The Who

24. You thought the fire could protect you from it, but why have you been so, why have you ill informed? Idlewild - Actually It's Darkness

25. Found your name across the chapel door, carved in cursive with a table fork. Muddy Hymnal- Iron and Wine

26. I change key from C to D, you see to me it's just a...
Minor Thing - Red Hot Chili Peppers

27. He hides in his suit like, like a snake in the grass. His sales pitch fork tongue hissed. Survival of the Fittest - Desaparecidos

28. Lies and love. Lies, love bed wetting son, of the great heat it's all over me, it's all under me,
the face ain't making what the mouth needs. Way Out - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

29. Sup up your beer and collect your fags, there's a row going on down near slough. The Jam- The Eton Rifles

30. Since I'm putting down all of the true things around, but I like it. Foo Fighters - Good Grief

31. Hair blowing in the hot wind, time hanging from a clothes pin, there's no sorrow that the sun's not gonna heal. Sausalito - Conor Oberst

32. I remember when the days were long and the nights when the living room was on the lawn. Death Cab For Cutie - Photobooth

33. I got a letter this morning, what do you reckon it read? The White Stripes- Death Letter

34. You needed it when I was away, and no matter what I say, you'll never forget when I wasn't there. So, why should I care? Overdue by Muse

35. We kicked our shoes off. Can you feel the ground beneath you shift? Liam Frost - If Tonight We Could Only Sleep

36. If life is a carnival, can I stay here a while? Nemesis rose, and I feel I'm about to go down. Music Was Saved by Starsailor

37. I am a dull and simple lad, can not tell water from champagne. The Kinks - David Watts.

38. They lead a lifetime that is comfortable. They travel far to keep their stomachs full. Nirvana - Swap Meet

39. Hey now girl what's the matter with me? We're on a back road something to see. Beck- Rental car

40. It's not enough to hear me say you've won, you only wanted me for having fun.
Goodnight, Goodnight by Hot Hot Heat

Rofl...

2009-03-26T18:46:00.001+04:30

So apparently it wasn't designed like that... It's just broken.

SOZ!

Still annoying, but not wanting to murder facebook so much now.

Most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.

2009-03-26T18:31:00.003+04:30

If you create an event on facebook, when it comes to the part where you send out invitations, instead of a big list of names like it used to have, it's now a big list of profile pictures. HALF OF THEM DON'T EVEN HAVE THE PEOPLE'S FACES IN THEM! There are no names written anywhere WHAT. THE. FUCK?! How the fuck am I supposed to know what everyone's profile picture is? Well done facebook, you've made a one minute job into a half hour annoyance-fest. FUCK YOU.

Allow me to demonstrate with a picture:

The end.

Ah YouTube...

2009-03-26T16:37:00.002+04:30

Here's a little quotation from the latest youtube blog.

"Our search advertising programme is about helping anyone promote their videos to a larger audience on YouTube (right now this is only available in the U.S.)."

Gutted for those of us outside the U.S. who aren't anyone!

Hello there

2009-03-23T16:02:00.002+04:30

I'm getting out of the blogging habit it seems. Personally I hold twitter and dailybooth accountable! But to be honest not much is going on that is blog worthy. I've just got some new strings to put on the old geetar so I can start recording some of my newer songs over the next couple of weeks. I've started rowing (on a machine, not on water) in an attempt to not be such a lazy git. I made a video about High School Musical toilet paper and I just missed Ginger Chris doing student radio.

There, up to date.

Today I think I might record a video for the song 'Alaska' which I gave to Hank Green because he asked me for a song. It's gone on this compilation album, which should be on itunes soon. I'm thinking I should get a video done so I can respond it to the announcement video and hopefully get some new viewers from it.

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN!

It's all gone quiet

2009-03-16T01:51:00.005+03:30

In my house.

As you probably know if you know me, which you probably do because you're reading my blog, I've had some friends over the last couple of days. the reason was so that we could hold a blogtv show to raise money for Red Nose Day. But I'm going to start before that, on Thursday.

I got the train to London, which included sitting next to a woman who, just seconds after I sat down, took a load of horrible smelling fast food from a bag. I swap seats because it would have been so obvious, but it wasn't pleasant. I got to London, checked into the hotel, met various friends, ate Wagamamas, creeped out a guy in the office across the street from the hotel, went to see Watchmen at the IMAX and stayed up later than was advisable talking with Ian. Watchmen was good, not having read the novel I wanted more explanation on some things but I guess that's to be expected, and the IMAX was pretty incredible - it was the first time I'd been, and Charlie - I still owe you money.

On Friday we got up very early (for me) and went to a meeting with the RNLI. They are rather lovely people who are even worth getting up early for! We talked about their project and I was fairly happy with how it went - I'm always a bot concerned that a charity is paying for our trains and hotels and so I want them to get a lot out of it, thankfully I think they did. We're good value for money us youtubers!

Friday night we drove back to Derby, we being Ian, Charlie, Tom and myself, stopping off at Miss Sophie's to get the car and steal a converse bag (bitofaresult). We got back to mine after picking up Jazza who had been waiting for us for several hours, and I'll tell you why: I told him to get to Derby between 8 and 9 to give us time to get back. He got there several hours before that. That night involved relaxing, talking and above all, not planning what to do during a six hour long blogtv show the next day.

The next day would be Saturday, and it started much later than the previous one, which is always good. We spent all morning (which to be fair was not technically morning) doing very little apart from watching The Crystal Maze - an inevitable occurrence when I have friends over. Again we failed to plan anything for the show until we realised it was going to start in about an hour. So we made a couple of videos to let people know and then began.

The show itself was both enjoyable and stressful, for the main show I was doing more organising than entertaining as it was at my house - take away the time I was going out to get props, sorting out food, taking people to train stations, etc... One viewer noted that they had been there for longer than me! But I get on really well with everyone that was here so even the stressful stuff wasn't that stressful. Apart from Jazza missing his train and me having to take him to Stoke to get his next train only to find the station closed and discover that he'd booked for 11am not pm. That was pretty bad. But it was worse for him to be fair!

We got back after midnight - when the show was supposed to end, but they were still going when we walked into the kitchen. People started going to bed and pretty soon it was just Ian and me still up, and still live on blogtv. By that time we were tired and had had enough of doing challenges so I imposed the rule that whatever people wanted from us, it could not involve getting off the sofa! So basically we just talked to them, which was good for me as I had hardly done that all day. Somehow the hours just rolled by and suddenly we realised that it was getting light out, birds were making noise and I was taking Jazza to Stoke in about three hours, so we went to bed. I really enjoyed that chat though, and even though we were tired and weren't doing anything beyond talking we were the most viewed show all night long.

So a couple of hours sleep later and I got up to take Jazza to his train, it went better the second time around. I went home and slept for a few more hours, then people started getting up and we had a bit of a lazy day... Especially Charlie who slept through the majority of it, literally.

Tom, Ian and Charlie left at around 6, and though I've been about ready for bed since then, I've snuck in a few episodes of 24 and caught up on most of my emails/internet stuff. But the day is definitely drawing to a close now.

And there's no way I'm reading this back.

xxx

p.s. I forgot to mention, we raised a little over £1600! Quite a bit more than I'd expect if I'm honest, so I am pleased. Though even if we hadn't been raising money for charity at all, it would still have been a good few days!

Comic Relief

2009-03-10T16:26:00.003+03:30

I came up with an idea - a way for people to spread the word about our Comic Relief fund raising. Then I realised I was a lazy man, so I asked Tom to do it. Now it is done.

Basically if you're partner you can add a Red Nose Day banner and/or 'side column image' and link them to the donation page. I figure if a lot of us do it, it'll be some good exposure. Even if people don't donate, they might find out about the project and make a video response, come to the blogtv show, show friends etc...

So here (thanks to Tom) are the links:

Banner-
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/9471/rndbanner.png

Box (side column image)-
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/299/rndsidebox.png

And link them to-
http://www.tinyurl.com/rednose2009

So I hope some of you partners will help us out. If you aren't a partner you could do something similar by making yourself a RND background, but I appreciate that requires a lot more work than the main plan!

The most important thing is still video responses, so if you have any time over the next few days we'd really appreciate it if you could make one, and thanks so much to the people who already have!

On 'success'.

2009-03-06T18:27:00.004+03:30

Read a piece in the paper today about the music industry and how it's changing. It suggested that the big turning point was in 2006 when TOTP was taken off the air, that showed how the singles chart just didn't matter anymore. It also focused on people's perceptions of 'success' and how it's outdated. Using examples of Leona Lewis and the relatively unknown Ingrid Michelson. People would assume that financially speaking Lewis was far more successful - she's all over the radio/tv and top of the charts. Michelson doesn't have a record label. But she's managed to get some of her tracks on tv shows e.g. grey's anatomy, and has built a following from that synchronisation, as it's known. Not having a record label means about 60% of the profits from her sales on itunes go straight to her. What percentage do you think Leona Lewis makes? It'll be a single digit, and probably a low one. That's not even to mention the fact that alone you maintain 100% of the creative control of your project.

The article also made reference to Conor Oberst as one of the first artists to use the internet as a substitute for reliance on a major label. He had his own following, and with the internet could keep things organised and keep in touch with the audience and that was enough for him not only to sell enough of his music to become 'successful', but he started a record label called Saddle Creek, to which he signed friends' bands and oh my God, that guy is my hero. I want his life but with fewer overdoses.

Ten years ago you pretty much either 'made it' or didn't in the music industry. There was very little middle ground - people who made music and sold it but weren't famous or ridiculously wealthy. But the middle ground is growing, and fast. I think it's an exciting time. If there are fewer superstars but more people able to just make a living from music, 1) the people you are left with will be the ones who love music and not the idea of being famous and 2) there will be more artists around and we will get that great feeling of discovering great bands rather than being told what to listen to by conventional media.

Well actually, I take back the fewer superstars part, there will always be people who want to be the next pop idol, and there will always be record companies happy to make money from them. So that element will remain, but personally I find it easy to ignore. I don't listen to the radio much, I tend to find people either on the internet or through friends/local venues.

But the growth of the middle ground leads to exciting times! I just hope to be a part of it. I can't imagine where I'll be in ten years. Let's hope for selling lots of records through my own record company that has a lot of my friends on it and doesn't involve me being too famous.

x

p.s. I found the article online if anyone would like to read it.

I've written two 'comedy' songs in a row

2009-03-06T01:09:00.002+03:30

And I'm already annoyed!

I need to write something real, and soon. Actually I've already started two. Hopefully I'll get one of them finished in the next few days.

The jokey songs aren't really my thing - they don't come so naturally and I'm just not as good at them. I did get one comment on the new one saying it was my best song... That's a 'lol, gutted' moment if ever I heard one! I did like the solo part though, I even let it go on a little too long because I was having fun.

Well it's all good anyway, hopefully we get some responses and some money for Comic Relief.

I just really can't wait to have a new proper song. There's nothing better than falling in love with a song you've written that's so new you're literally the only person in the world who's heard it.

xx

p.s. Joy of joys - gotta do 4g&m tomorrow, might just fuck it off and write songs instead haha (oh, translated into English, 'fuck it off' means not do it.)

As if just to prove me wrong...

2009-03-01T04:05:00.005+03:30

Or to give me some faith back, the new video is doing really well!

I thought it would be well received, but it's got over a thousand ratings in the first day, which for me is unheard of... It must already be my third top rated video, which is pretty crazy.

It's also just got to the top of some good search results, hopefully it will stay there for a while!

Last night I was in London with the Ian, the Beard and the Cheekychen, we went to this mental show, which included an orchestra, a choir, a choir of clappers, a beatboxing flautist, the worst dancers you have ever seen and a rapper named Chipmunk, who claimed to have just won a MOBO, but I am suspicious of this because he was so very, very terrible. According to the small section of the audience that was made up of ten year old girls however, he did appear to appeal to ten year old girls. They especially enjoyed the part where he requested the audience hold up their hands in the shape of a C. C for Chipmunk. We came up with a few alternatives...

The night in general was great: Southbank is just beautiful at night, we got some Wagamama's, had some laughs and the show was at times enjoyable because it was good, and at other times enjoyable because it was hilariously bad. When Ian, Sophie and I got back to Soph's we watched a hell of a lot of The Young Ones, one of the greatest shows EVER. Then we found this and laughed. A lot...
After that Ian and I somehow discovered that Sophie hates feet, and thus proceeded to put our feet in her face for the next... several hours. Honestly, it just didn't get old!

Went to bed at God knows what time, got up a little after 1pm and soon realised I had to leave at a little after a little after 1pm to catch my train. I left, missed the train, but managed to sneak on the next one without having to pay so it's all good.

First thing my Dad said to me as I walked in the door was 'I'm making a curry, do you want some?' It was about 5pm and I hadn't eaten all day... Sometimes people say the exact thing you want them to. Those times are good.

Quick

2009-02-27T14:43:00.003+03:30

Video's up! Took until 5am to correct and re-upload, but I'm happy with it now, and it's doing alright considering it went up at a silly time.

Now I have to make a video for 4G&M and upload it before getting ready to go to London at 2:00.

EASY!

D:

2009-02-27T04:16:00.004+03:30

Just when you think it's over!

I've been working on this video for a long time. I finished it tonight, exported it (which took an age) uploaded it, then once it had processed I watched it and I noticed a mistake. It was less than half a second long and nobody would have noticed it, and if they did they would have thought it was intentional because it didn't look that bad. This is what I was telling myself in my head as I clicked onto the 'my videos' section, then I was telling myself 'Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it...' As I clicked delete.

I can't even explain to myself why I did that. It's gonna take hours to get it sorted and live again, but I just couldn't stand watching that half a second. I'm not even a perfectionist most of the time. I've uploaded plenty of stuff that I knew could be improved upon and it's not bothered me but sometimes I just get on one and, well... Stuff like this happens.

Well I have a plan anyway. I'll leave it uploading and go to bed. When I wake up, assuming it all worked, it will have been there for too long to take it down again. I caught it this time with only one or two comments.

Thing is I love this video. I think it's really good. And although I sometimes act like an arrogant prick, it is an act - mainly for comedic purposes but also to help me with my confidence, because really I'm far more inclined to criticise rather than celebrate my own work. Hell, I was 21 before I started performing songs in front of people, been playing the guitar since I was 10, what does that tell you? That's why the old youtube really helped me to begin with - it's easy to force yourself to record a video and make yourself upload it. Whereas if I was at an open mic night or something, people would say 'Go play a song!' And I'd always be like 'Yeah, maybe later...' But I've found acting confident can make you confident. It's kinda tied in with my 'just fucking do it' technique.

Don't even know what I'm talking about now. The bottom line is this video is well good. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to matter that much for me in terms of how successful it will be. For cover songs it just depends if they get in a good search result... Iris is in the first page of the search 'Iris goo goo dolls' and so it gets a lot of views. Others got in a good spot for a couple of weeks as a 'recent video' and so did pretty well then died down, and some just get seen by my subscribers. Then my original songs, well they get around my sub number in the first couple of weeks, the old ones are now all around 30,000 views, which is great! If you'd told me that a year ago and all that... But I do look around at other musicians on the site who seem to get 5 - 10 times as many views as they have subscribers and I just wonder where they all come from.

I just wish the way youtube worked encouraged people to push themselves. Like when PJ's animation got featured a few weeks back I was so happy because it was one of the best things I've seen on the site, but it could easily not have been featured and gone relatively unnoticed. It seems it's more important to be quirky and topical (and of course put sex in the tags) than to be creative and talented.

This isn't news to me and I'm sure it's not to you. I'm always aware of it and I accept it because, well you have to don't you? Plus I think the only way to make the site work for you is to compare it to other sites/mediums not compare your channel to other peoples, because some work better for youtube than others, but it doesn't really mean anything. I'm sure there are a load of musicians way better than me who have youtube pages but haven't enjoyed half as much success, just because I've figured out how to make the site work for me (and spent way too much time on it!) Likewise I'll never be up there with WhatTheBuck and Davedays because they're so perfectly suited to youtube, but it's still brought me success I probably wouldn't have found elsewhere and that's the point. That, and I'd rather aim to be the creative and talented one rather than the quirky, topical one even if it means being less successful. (Not that there's anything particularly wrong with being quirky or topical.)

Oh my God. Ramble, ramble, ramble! I can only apologise.
I'm just gonna stop.

xxx

Just got featured...

2009-02-25T04:14:00.004+03:30

On a different channel, with the most ridiculous video I've ever made. But hey better than not getting featured.

Anyway, I got this email because of it so I thought I'd show you while I answer it.

Well, I've got a few questions.
You're obviously not answering any of them because you never do.
Well, I'm Mafalda.
An annoying 13-year-old from Portugal (I bet you didn't eve knew that was a country)
I come from a different planet (NOT)

Why are you (almost) blond ?
Why do you make funny songs ?
What's your problem with cute squirrels ?
Why were you born ?
Why do you have little dimples when you smile ?
Why is your guittar so weird ?
Why do hate the world ?
Why were you one of the Beatles ?
Why do look like someone who doesn't like the Addams Family ?

I ran out of stupid questions to ask.

So, there are the Q's here come the A's...

I'm not almost blond.
I make funny songs because I enjoy it. I also make serious songs.
I have no problem with squirrels, cute or otherwise.
I was born because my sister wasn't good enough.
I have dimples because they make me irresistible to the opposite sex.
It's not.
I don't.
I wasn't.
Because I know Wednesday and the last text she sent me said 'You're a prick" with no explanation.

Now then Mafalda, allow me to throw a few questions your way.

Why do you assume I never answer emails when you've never emailed me before?
Why are you annoying?
How could anyone not know that Portugal is a country?
Why are you using NOT jokes that belong in the 90's?

And the answer to the last one had better be "Because I just watched Wayne's World and it was fucking awesome."

Southampton

2009-02-24T04:25:00.004+03:30

... Has free buses! I think I might move there just for that!

Actually it is rather lovely, there's loads of old castle type buildings just sticking out in the middle of all the new shops and offices. I could definitely see myself moving that way one day. I mean, look at the sunset:

Taken on my phone, so not the best quality but you get the gist - it's fucking beautiful.

By the way, good news - I can get pictures off my phone again! Haven't been able to since the software on my pc decided for no good reason to stop recognising that there was a phone attached to one of the usb ports. But I just gave it a go with Jack the Mac who came through for me like an absolute legend... Bluetooth>connected>there's your picture>can I help you with anything else? "No thanks Jack, lets just write a blog. I'll mention how awesome you are."

Hmm, that was an odd paragraph.

So I saw Greg Holden in London on Thursday. It was a good night and I'm glad I got to see him before he heads off to New York. Room was a bit packed but the music was top.

The following day we headed down south and basically had party times for a few days. Got to see Dom for the second time, and he stayed the night this time which was better. Saw Ian for the God-know-how-many-th time, but I'd gone three weeks (bitofaguess) without seeing him which is a long time by our standards as of late... It's got to the point where it feels weird after about a week of not seeing him. Reminds me of being at uni, which reminds me that I need to go up north to see those guys soon, it's been too long. It's always been too long.

I'm not going to start naming people I'm glad I saw, because it's all of them, or things we did because there are many. Let's just say I spent a few day among friends and it was good.

Apparently we missed a gathering in Bath, which is a shame, I've never been there. Ah well, I'll go down there some day to kidnap Mr Coollike and force all of his subscribers to pay me £10 before I let him make a video. It's a foolproof plan.

Today I've been working on this cover song, should have it finished by tomorrow, then I'll start working on a video. It's quite a famous band and recent song so I want to make the video good as I think it could do well. But me thinking that probably means it won't! But either way, I got to use sugar, raisins and pumpkin seeds for percussion. Good times.

xxx

Oh hello!

2009-02-18T05:46:00.002+03:30

I thought I'd write an entry as it's been a while. Not that you care, but I like to keep in the habit.

I've just been busy writing songs and making videos, so I've not had much to write about. I got very inspired last night and wrote the start of something that is fairly different but I really like it. Of course I have plenty of time to spoil it! If it even gets finished, I'm very bad at finishing songs. Got enough first verses to last me a lifetime, but I only just fill out a set of full original songs.

My latest distraction from writing blogs, to go along with twitter, is called dailybooth. Basically it's taking pictures, and you can reply to other people's pictures with your own, and/or text too of course. I quite enjoy it. Of course it's not necessary, but it's there and it's a nice way to communicate and to share pictures. I do love photos and have never been that impressed with flickr or any similar websites because of lack of possible communication, so I think dailybooth has a chance of sticking around.

I need to write a funny song for Red Nose Day. I'm planning something quite big with a few friends, which should be result in good times. The song is just a part of it, but I need to get that written first! So if you have any topic suggestions leave them in the comments.

Going to see Greg Holden on Thursday, which should be great. If you're around London you should come and say hi. The following day The Travelling Band are playing in London too... I should really be gone by then but they are so good I'm tempted to try to fit it in. I somehow need to make a video on Friday as well. That should be... Interesting!

p.s. I wish youtube would keep maintenance day the same day of the week every time. You never know where you are anymore!

Twenty three

2009-02-10T04:00:00.002+03:30

Not long ago it became the 10th which makes it currently my birthday.

And I'm not out partying, I'm sat here listening to a Stephen Fry talk from that Apple event the other day. Haha, boring old bastard!

Today I've been getting stuck into a cover song I've been meaning to do for a while. One huge advantage of recording songs over videos... You can look a mess! I'll probably continue working on it tomorrow. As it's my Birthday I could take the day to do anything I want, but then I can't think of anything I'd rather do!

It's nice to be doing what you love.

But of course the currently rounded state of my age must have me looking back with wonder at the pick pocket of time who must have made off with my last year, because surely it's not over already! Just as much of a cliché, I'm worried about looking the other way. Although it's lovely to be able to pursue musical ambitions, and this last year has granted me more success in that field than I could possibly have hoped for as I turned twenty two, I am concerned that it may not be able to sustain me in a life where I pay rent and bills and generally be an adult. Whether because of the constant stream of maths running through my head, forming equations of the sort: if I can make an EP/album every so many months and this many people buy it for that much money then would I be able to afford both rent AND food? Or perhaps just because living off something I enjoy seems to good to possibly be true.

Well whether or not, there will be far less question marks in my maths after I release a few things, so I must concentrate on that. I think it's taken me so long because I'm nervous. I get distracted on other projects because I'm worried about the next step: selling music. I don't know what it is that makes me fret but I'll have to get passed it. I have a good method for getting passed mental blocks, it's called the 'just fucking do it technique'.

Once upon a time I was nervous about playing music in front of people, so I got some gigs - that forced me to get over it. About a year and a half ago I was nervous about posting a video on youtube, I've made about six this week! I swear by that technique. If you stumbled across this blog looking for wisdom, well firstly you are well and truly lost, but that is the advice I offer you... If you think something is worth doing and will have a positive impact on your life, but for whatever reason you're nervous about it, just fucking do it.

This ends the 'Dave's advice' section of the blog. Never come to me with problems - I either don't care or will have nothing helpful to say. Unless the phrase 'just fucking do it' would be helpful, and I've already imparted that pearl of wisdom to every one of you.

Goodness, forgive me for rambling on, but I'm old, you see. Ah, 41 years old according to Wednesday's twitter post. Guess that means the Wednesday joke will be continuing for some time.

Speaking of twitter, that's a whole lot of happy birthday messages! I fear I will not be able to thank you all, so here you can share this one, ready? ... Thanks! =)

Stephen Fry's birthday is going to break the internet.

Well then, those who read till the end get to be wished a good night by way of a reward...

Goodnight!

xxx

p.s. Greg Holden gig, 19th, Monkey Chews in London, see you there?

TWO!

2009-02-09T05:31:00.003+03:30

I have two videos ready to be uploaded. This is very unlike me! I've just been in quite a productive mood.

I'm crediting it to the fact that I've forced myself to stay in Derby for a while. This came about when a couple of weeks ago I realised I couldn't remember the last weekend I hadn't done something like go to London, or go to Ireland, or Sheffield or Manchester... Or have a New Years party in my house.

Don't get me wrong, I love doing all those things, but if you leave on Friday and get back on Monday that's half the week gone! I only posted one video between mid December and February on my main channel, I aim to post once every week so that's pretty much a complete and utter failure.

But the stay at home policy has done the trick, February is only 8 days old and I've done two videos for my main channel, one for davefromblueskies and one for fourguysandmhazz. Plus two that are practically finished and will be uploaded once current videos have had some time to get seen.

In a way it's nice knowing I have things ready, but I'm so impatient when I've made something new - I want people to see/hear it right away! So it's not easy holding them back. I think I'll put one up tomorrow though, Today will have been up 4 days then. The next one is only about 30 seconds long and has no editing at all, but I think it's kinda funny.

Anyway, in real life news my sister has been here this weekend and will be until my birthday (Tuesday) which is nice. On the subject of my birthday, it's official: I am old. I don't mean because I'm turning 23, although that is ridiculous... I mean because I don't give a crap about birthdays anymore. I heard Alex say that each birthday should be more exciting than the last because you're one year older each time. Utter bollocks.

Everything is more exciting when you're a kid. Birthdays are like a great song that gets totally overplayed. I don't hate them like some people (people who wish they were younger) because I appreciate that I'm the same one day older when I wake up that morning as any other, but there's nothing particularly exciting about them either. All they do is count how many years you've managed to not die... I have better things to celebrate.

Still, feel free to send me presents that don't require me giving out my address on the internet!

Bedtime now.

xxx

p.s. Added a few more tracks to mediafire. Older ones - White Stripes, Get Cape, Killers... A few others. Go, download, show your friends!

This is just too good!

2009-02-05T05:21:00.013+03:30

Honestly, I can't even tell you how good this is... Just... Read!
If the pictures are too small, click on them for full size.

It all started with this comment on the fourguysandmhazz channel:

To which someone replied, "We got Smosh to give us a shoutout."

He asked how and was informed that Tom was Ian from Smosh's cousin. This leads us on to,

Now I know what you're thinking, THIS IS VERY FUNNY. But wait, we have a new player about to enter the game!

We have no more say in it, so I'll just give you the rest of the conversation between the two of them...

So there you have it. Idiocy, greed, gullibility, jealousy, wild delusions, hypocrisy and selfishness, that ladies and gentlemen, is the greatest story ever told... Though the medium of youtube comments.

Best dream EVER

2009-02-04T15:35:00.002+03:30

I was sat outside at a table in the middle of some music festival. With me was my friend Joe, a couple of people I can't remember, and Ben Kweller.

He was playing us a new song and I was about a yard away. What's funny is the song doesn't actually exist, so presumably my subconscious mind wrote it specially for the occasion.

Was pretty gutted to wake up really. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

xxx

p.s. Just found Ben has twitter! I'm beginning to love that site.

p.p.s. Also just found that his new album was being released literally as I dreamt about him! That's a bit crazy.

Rather beautiful

2009-02-02T20:42:00.003+03:30

That would be the world today. Well England at least. Here is my garden earlier on:

I went out to film a song, didn't know it that well so the performance wasn't perfect, but it fits really well and who knows when I'll get to sing in the snow again?

The sun is down now and the white has gone that lovely blue colour... You know, this one:

That's a rose in the foreground. If you pay attention to song lyrics you know of the rose outside my window.

My new video isn't doing particularly well. They never seem to anymore... The last one - Julia Nunes cover, is over 2 weeks old and still has less views than I have subscribers.
Ah well, at least it's snowing. Plus I quite like the song, and that's all that really matters.

Super-widescreen!

2009-02-02T03:54:00.006+03:30

I'm all for widescreen, but this is just ridiculous!

I've got an advert covering my guitar and this new annoying annotation editor down to my eyes. Pretty soon we will all be reduced to floating chins. FLOATING CHINS I TELL YOU!

Sleep is for wimps

2009-01-30T02:51:00.008+03:30

Hey hey! Yesterday I went to London. Look - here is proof!

Assuming you know what seats on the district line look like or can somehow work your way through the double glazed reflection and make out the four tired faces that belong to Becky, myself, Jazza and Alex - that's Becky's boyfriend.

So that was last night, and we were tired then, so it was an interesting choice to decide to forgo sleep and just play wii and watch flight of the conchords all night. There were two reasons for this: firstly we had to get up at 6am and personally I much prefer seeing 6am after many hours of being awake as opposed to a few hours of being asleep, and secondly I hadn't seen Alex in ages and wouldn't see much of him the following day (that'd be today if you're counting) so I wanted to spend some time with him, and remind him how funny I am.

Forgive me for using flashbacks but prior to the droopy eyed tube photo, we went into the 'Rainforest Cafe', which resulted in this rather wonderful portrait...

Johnny text us later on saying, 'What was that Rainforest place called?' If only he'd added, 'The place with the cafe' it would have been perfect, but it still had us laughing very loud on public transport.

I suppose I should get on to the reason we were in London and had to be up so early... The RNLI (formally known as the mystery package people) had set up a silent disco in Waterloo station as a part of their annual fundraising day, and they invited us. They started it at 8am to catch the commuters. I'd probably have preferred they catch them on their way home: yes 5pm would have just about allowed time for sleep, but nevermind. We went and we danced to songs Scott Mills played to us through headphones so nobody else could hear them and we even managed to enjoy it!

Afterwards Mhazz and I got our picture taken with Scott for one reason and one reason only - to annoy Doug. He loves Scott Mills... A lot.

Then we got some brunch and had a chat about the RNLI's plans for 2009 that may involve us in some way and we all went off our separate ways. Johnny and Ian came back to mine for dinner, Johnny's gone now but Ian is sitting next to me wishing Phil a happy birthday. We should probably go to bed, but once you've been awake for 39 hours, what's another one?!

So that brings us to now. I will leave you with one final photo. In Alex's house there are several interesting pieces of art. This is a picture of me with one of them. It's also wearing his hat.
I'm fairly certain Alex doesn't know I took this.

Sleep tight!

xxx

27/1/09

2009-01-28T03:39:00.006+03:30

Don't pay attention to the date, today was the 27th, it's just gone midnight.

Today's picture is intended to show you everything I got in town this afternoon, which consists of some headphones, a haircut and a shit load of plectrums because I lose them so fast I imagine I've set some sort of record. In fact the more observant of you will have noticed there are nine plectrums in the picture, which would be a strange number to buy - why not round it up to ten? Well I did. Apparently one has already bitten the dust.

The past couple of days I've been working on the second episode of YouToon with Dom and PJ and it's going really well. I think this is the first time I've thought of myself as a writer. An element of writing goes into most of my non-music videos but I never set aside time for it like we have to for this. The main difference I think is in my approach, in the past when I've written for my videos there has been very little actual writing involved. It's mainly just thinking about what I want say, just like I would in a conversation with someone, only for longer and maybe bullet pointing so I don't forget things.

With YouToon however I'm not thinking about me saying it, this episode for example I have hardly any good lines to say but that doesn't matter because the show on the whole is hilarious, and being a part of the reason for that is enough. Another reason I feel like a writer is I'm worried that people will mess up the lines I wrote!

So I must convey my thanks and admiration to Dom and PJ for making this happen and including me in it. Dom came up with an idea that pretty much gave us limitless writing possibilities, and without PJ we'd have been sat around for the last six months looking for an animator!

So anyway, tomorrow Johnny is driving here then we're getting a coach down to London and staying at Alex's for a night. I make this promise to you, my blog, that I will take some photos for you (because I know I usually forget). I'll also try to get some video footage because the reason we're going down is for an RNLI thing that we've been invited to. They requested we didn't mention any specifics but if you're near London and up (very) early on Thursday, pay attention to twitter, I'll tweet about it if I'm allowed.

After that I am DEFINITELY staying here for a while.

I'm sure I had more to say but alas, it has deserted my mind. I think it's time for bed anyway.

xxx

Podcast

2009-01-26T02:31:00.004+03:30

Hmm, what's happened since my last post? It was a very long time ago (for me)...

There was the gathering in Sheffield which I went to and enjoyed. Also had a few people back to mine and we made the greatest video of all time.

I recorded a podcast for Youtoon with Dom and PJ, it went pretty well for our first one I think. We were basically answering peoples questions about the show that were left in comments. We recorded for over an hour so we split it in half, the first half is up now - you can find that here - and the second one will be posted in about a week.

I've been working on some songs that I intend to get on itunes fairly soon because... Well I want a new mac. One in particular took me a REALLY long time to finish, but it's pretty much done now and I'm loving it! If all goes to plan you will be able to hear that on the second half of the podcast (It's going on there because it's the song that the Youtoon intro music is taken from) and I'll put it on myspace some time after that. Just today I've been talking to PJ about doing a video for it, but that can wait until it's available for download. I've also told him I will work on some music for a video he's making for his channel, I was gonna start that this weekend but had a few friends over so tomorrow I will get moving on it. I'm looking forward to it, what's in my head is quite different to my usual stuff... I'm a little nervous though because I sent PJ some tracks from a friend (Tom) that were really good! I like picking music for things, that would be a great job.

At this point in the blog Johnny Durham would like to say, and I quote, "hi".

...

Ok I just spent some time talking to Johnny and you should all know this: HE IS MADE OF EVIL AND CAN TALK YOU INTO GOING TO LONDON EVEN IF YOU'D PREVIOUSLY DECIDED AGAINST IT!

So I'm going to London on Thursday. I think it's Thursday...

FLOOR!

2009-01-17T00:23:00.003+03:30

Look at my tidy room... You can see the floor!

See I was working on a song today, and I kept treading on things so I stopped for a room cleaning break.

Right the download situation. A few people have said they were having problems and I couldn't get some of them to work before, but I've just tried one that wasn't working yesterday and it does now, though I am on a mac this time. Also the numbers show it's working fine for plenty of people, so I don't think there's anything wrong with the site. Anyway, there's nothing more I can do right now, but if they weren't working give it another go, maybe try a different browser or machine because it's definitely possible!

Also think I should mention I put a video up yesterday. I was a little concerned that it wasn't doing nearly as well as they usually do, then I got a comment saying it didn't appear in their subscription box. I thought they fixed that! Apparently they did maintenance last night which, as usual, fucked things up. Also, I thought Wednesday was maintenance day? Apparently not.

Well if anyone that reads this missed it, here it is.

I also added the song to the download folder, and thanks to Bruno's comment (thank you!) I've made a custom url for that folder, it's now called, http://www.mediafire.com/blueskies

Ian, Sophie and Ivens should be here tonight to head up to Sheffield tomorrow... However Ian isn't even at Sophie's yet! Gonna be a late one. (If they get here at all!) At least I can do some work on that song.

p.s. lulz

p.p.s. Tom made me a new background!

xxx

Moab

2009-01-16T04:47:00.006+03:30

I like it when there are photos in blogs so I may try to continue with that. Slightly concerned that I'm being incredibly pretentious. But I was just trying to capture how I'm feeling in a picture rather than (or as well as) in writing, and fuck - if you can't be pretentious in your blog where can you be?

In a bit of a shit mood and I don't really know why. Maybe it's being alone after having people around so much lately... But that's not me, I know some people can't hack it but I'm great at being alone. I always think if you can't be happy with yourself then who can you be happy with?

I tried to write a song but only ended up with a few lines I like...

I wanna write a song that people hate
But if they did it would destroy me.

And the slightly less subtle;

I'm tired of smiling when I'm pissed off.

So basically I'm just lying around listening to Conor Oberst. I know you can't miss what you've never had, but if I can't imagine not having Conor Oberst. When I feel down I know exactly what I'm going to do, put a bunch of his albums in a playlist, hit shuffle and lie down. It makes me want to write songs, which is good, but sometimes I get annoyed because I wish I was that good at writing. If anyone is considering telling me I'm as good at songwriting as Conor to cheer me up, thank you but don't... You're either lying or just plain wrong.

I am at least feeling motivated. I want to write and record. I need to stop going away for a while, give myself some time. After this weekend.

Fuck it, I'm just gonna go to bed. Ian is meant to be coming round tomorrow, if a simple nine hour sleep doesn't make me feel better then he will. Plus Sheffield should be fun.
There's nothing that the road cannot heal.

Let me know if you like the pictures or if they make me look like a pretentious prick. But be nicer than that cos I'm already feeling low.

FREE DOWNLOADS!

2009-01-15T04:13:00.004+03:30

Oh yes, it's a Blue Skies t-shirt.

Ok, before you wet yourselves with excitement, I've not got t-shirts. I've got t-shirt, singular. Dom got it for me for Christmas because he's lovely.

So no t-shirts for you yet, sorry. However I do have good news. I've spent tonight uploading a bunch of mp3s from old videos that you can download for free, and also finding a way to link you to a folder of them rather than one at a time. I'm adding individual links to all the video descriptions and most importantly the link at the end of this blog will take you to the whole folder so you can have a look and see which ones you have, which you want and download whatever.

This doesn't include anything I'm going to sell obviously as these are all free, so it's mostly cover songs. There are a couple of originals like the Stickaid song, that one minute youtoon promo and an instrumental called messabout that was on the Making the Band video we did at PJ's.

If any video makers are reading, which I expect they are, you have permission to use any of them in your videos if you just give me a little link in the description. (Though of course for covers you would TECHNICALLY need permission from the writer, but, well... Yeah.)

So here we are... Click this here link to be taken to the magic folder of downloadage!

p.s. notice there are two pages of songs, wouldn't want you to miss out!

xxx

Ireland

2009-01-13T17:44:00.005+03:30

So the last time I wrote here I was quite unwell and was about to go to London. I went, saw Julia Nunes and Greg Holden, both of whom were wonderful. I stayed at Paul's house and came back a little too early the next day, which I believe was Friday. I spent the rest of Friday learning a Julia Nunes song and recording a video for it and a little vlog after mentioning the gig and that I was going to the Dublin gathering on Sunday. I finished editing on Saturday morning, clicked upload and went to catch a plane to Ireland.

The flight was crazy in that pretty much as soon as we took off we were preparing to land. All sorts happened in Ireland, I will give you one paragraph of highlights.

I got a €5 = £5 pint with Johnny Durham at the airport, we assumed we'd been ripped off because it was an airport... Apparently not, the whole of Ireland is crazy expensive. We got told to go to the basement of our hostel for the best wi-fi reception then after an hour or two down there were politely asked by the man who told us that, 'What the FUCK are you doing down here?!' We found Ian, rather Ian found us after we had almost given up hope of ever seeing him again as he had no credit, which abroad means you can't receive calls either. Stephen got incredibly drunk. The hostel stole Ian's money. We got up far too early and went to a gathering. I met Sean! We (the whole gathering) got kicked out of A LOT of places, including a park (what the fuck?) We went back to Stephen's house and had lasagna. Todd fell down the stairs and got concussion. We got up RIDICULOUSLY early, went to a fancy studio and filmed some videos. Then we got the bus back to the airport, had a pint of Guinness as we hadn't thus far, and got on a plane back to my house. Well... to East Midlands Airport, then drove to my house.

Oh and somewhere in there I discovered the video I tried to upload before I left failed, so now I'm going to have to re-edit and lose the part where I say 'come to the Dublin gathering on Sunday' or I might be blamed for a very poor gathering next Sunday.

Now I'm in my house with Johnny Durham and The Toddly, who will both be heading back to Sheffield later so I guess I'll do that video tonight.

There, consider yourself blogged.

xxx

Fuck the Atkins

2009-01-06T00:21:00.004+03:30

I don't even know where to start.

New years was crazy cool. Basically I had a three day party incorporating Sophie's birthday, New Years Eve and New Years Day - not a traditional party day but I still had a whole load of people in my house!

Somehow only one glass got smashed (by some lunatic dinosaur apparently) no carpets were permanently damaged and there's only one MASSIVE HOLE IN MY FLOOR! We were raving with a strobe light in my bedroom. Eight people is a squeeze, there must have been at least 20 in there, many of whom (including myself to be fair) were on the bed, the bed only has six fairly small pressure points where it meets the floor. Where one of those was placed there is now a hole in both the carpet and the big thick wooden floorboard! I did laugh when I saw it and remembered how it must have happened. Still it was worth it for the rave, seriously good times.

One downside was driving to the station and back about 79 times a day, but it was great to not have to go home at the end of the night, and more importantly nobody else did either! The best part of gatherings always tends to be the hostel, it's more relaxed - there are less people so you can talk properly to those who are left. Plus you can have a drink.

Ok so missing out many stories, everyone went home. Dale was the last to go and as soon as I shut the door I went upstairs and went to bed. Not because I was tired, though I was - being kept up talking until around 7:30am then woken up by Mhazz to drive them to the station at around 10am, no I went to bed because I had caught what's become known as 'that bastard Ginger Chris's disease' which a large proportion of people who were there seem to have picked up. I stayed in bed until I had to let my parents in when they got home from skiing, two and a half days later. I'm over the main symptoms now but I have lost a stone in weight over three days so I can't walk up the stairs without needing to lie down for 20 minutes afterwards. Which brings me to the title of this entry. If you're looking for a diet, find a that-bastard-ginger-Chris's-disease sufferer and give them a kiss. Then wait. Forget Atkins he doesn't know what he's talking about. A stone in three days!

My aim now is to be able to stand up long enough to watch The Nunes on Thursday. A wonderful incentive I must say.

After that I'm heading over to Ireland for the weekend. Something I've been meaning to do for... Well, my whole life. My Mum's Irish you see, but her whole family moved over here when she was young, so my grandparents are the only ones with the accent. Still they are pretty much the central point of a very extended family because they have five kids and all of the people who are mad enough to marry into that, such as my Dad, are only-children or have just one sibling. So the Irish thing has always been quite prominent in my family life. I can't wait.

Oh hey did anyone see my first blogtv show? I don't imagine it was very good because I wasn't paying attention but my computer didn't crash as I imagined it would, so I might do another. I'd like them to pay me money, that'd be good.

xxx

2009

2009-01-01T15:44:00.002+03:30

Hey look, it's the first of January!

Also there's a lot of people in my house which currently has a striking resemblance to a rubbish tip. The year has been pretty good so far, for example Amazing Phil ust sat next to me! Good times.

Also Ian has made slippers out of kitchen roll. Hey look it's John Cox!

We had a fucking rave to the blues brothers last night. It was mint.

Ok bye then!

xxx

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

2008-12-29T22:18:00.002+03:30

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

2008-12-26T17:58:00.003+03:30

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....

2008-12-20T20:26:00.002+03:30

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!

2008-12-20T04:11:00.005+03:30

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

2008-12-19T15:19:00.002+03:30

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!

2008-12-18T23:19:00.003+03:30

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

2008-12-17T21:28:00.003+03:30

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!

2008-12-17T07:41:00.003+03:30

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!

2008-12-16T21:01:00.003+03:30

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...

2008-12-15T07:13:00.003+03:30

But that doesn't make you a good person.

You have to be nice to the other people too.

Crazy Charlie Fans

2008-12-11T05:39:00.009+03:30

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

2008-12-09T17:39:00.003+03:30

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

2008-12-09T01:46:00.003+03:30

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?!

2008-12-07T16:21:00.002+03:30

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.