Notes, Nerdfighter Style

I whipped up a few Nerdfighter notes earlier this evening... some of them I just put John Green quotes on, which might seem lazy, but I just felt like they summed up what Nerdifghteria was all about so well.

And the backs of the first three:

One person's trash...

Can be the fodder for someone else's creativity!

(Okay, so that's not quite how the saying goes, just bear with me here).

I've previously mentioned my love of making stuff out of what other people would consider trash, and I thought this theme-less week might be a good time to elaborate on that a bit.

I don't know if it's as bad for everyone else, but I seem to always have lots and lots of plastic bags. I'm not sure how they all even got there - I have a sneaking suspicion they're interbreeding while I'm not watching.

I hate getting plastic bags. It means I forgot my reusable ones, and then the plastic ones will just sit around; I don't want to throw them out, but always forget to take them for recycling (and there seem to be so few places that recycle them!). What's a girl to do?

Well, I decided to make plastic yarn (or "plarn") out of them and make something. It's actually a really simple process (if you're interested, there's instructions here, but I didn't want to bore everyone else with a lengthy how-to), though a bit time-consuming since I wanted a lot of plarn. I ended up crocheting a doormat and giant circular rug for my room, and I love both of them.

They're sturdy, colorful without being gaudy, and feel nice on my bare feet. And I used up 200 plastic bags! Whoooo!

(I would insert pictures here, but I'm writing this from a computer without my pictures on them :( I'll put them in when I get back to my computer late this weekend)

My plastic bags are starting to pile up again.... I think I might make a reusable grocery bag out of them. That'd be some excellent poetic justice, right?

What other things do you guys think I should make out of plastic bags? I've unfortunately started running out of ideas. I thought it would be cool to take people's bags and make them into a reusable one for them, but most of the people I run around with are also people who try to avoid getting extra grocery bags.

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This might be outdated now, since I'm writing this on Thursday and will be afk until at least Saturday, but I really like Sophie's idea to make a Facebook group instead of communicating through Your Pants. We all have to be friends for that to work though, so to help things along, here's a link to my Facebook (since I've now just posted that on the interwebs, if you make note that you're one of us in the request space it'd be helpful - there's a whole lot of Sophies, Kaitys, Katies, and Sarahs in the world). Since Sophie's quick I've already friended her and started up a group, so as soon as I get requests from the rest of you we can all be in there :)

Who The Eff is John?

I don't completely remember how I came across the Vlogbrothers and the wonder that is Nerdfighteria - one of Hank's videos popped up in the sidebar of related videos and it looked interesting. What was I watching before that? I totally don't remember. But I do remember watching this:

And thinking that this guy seemed pretty well spoken and well informed, and had some really good points.

Also, "Who the eff is John?"

I promptly sent the video off to several of my friends, who joined me on the journey to be made of awesome and decrease world suck.

I confess that I also have not seen every vlogbrothers video, only the ones directly before that video and since then. As an aside, are you guys familiar with the vlogbrothers wiki? It has all of the videos indexed with title, link to/embed of the video, and a transcription. While skimming through to find the video for my Nerdfighter origin story I clicked a couple links on other entries as well - while I'm sure every video is good, this is helpful for working out old jokes ("Why does Hank's guitar say 'This Machine Pwns N00bs'? Oh hey, a video called 'This Machine Pwns N00bs!").

DFTBA!

All Roads Lead to Nerdfighteria

Although I'm the oldest one on this blog, I'm willing to bet I'm the newest to Nerdfighteria.  I actually only discovered this wonderful community about a month ago, luckily just in time to jump into Your Pants and find the thread which led to the creation of this blog.

It started, as many things do, with Twitter.  Neil Gaiman posted a picture of himself on the TARDIS with Charlie McDonnell, which of course led me to Charlie's YouTube channel, which was when I first realized that there was more to YouTube than music videos and kids biting each other's fingers.  This led into a spiral of ever more and more YouTube subscriptions, finally culminating with the vlogbrothers at the beginning of February.

I'm really not sure how it took me this long to find this wonderful thing.  I've been a nerd my whole life.  When I was three I was jealous that my brother got to go to school and LEARN THINGS and I had to wait two whole years before I got to go.  Oh, the misery.  Anyway, pretty much as soon as I saw the "How to be a Nerdfighter Video" I knew that Nerdfighteria was definitely for me.  Especially when I discovered the obsession with putting things on your head.  I am pretty notorious amongst my friends for putting anything and everything on my head on a regular basis.

I guess that's all there is to my story, actually.  I'm still in the process of exploring vlogbrothers videos and getting caught up on all the in-jokes.  Everything is all new and exciting and I hope it stays this lovely forever.

[Unrelated side note: The power cord for my laptop died yesterday and I'm currently at the mercy of the availability of campus computers.  If I'm a little flaky on reading/commenting on your posts or responding to anything that might come up on the YP group, that's why.  Things should be back to normal in about a week!]

Nerdfi-what?

So this week it seems we’re all going to reminisce about the past and recount just how it was we found our way to the awesome that is Nerdfighteria. Mine’s not really all that exciting but it’s the truth, I hope it is at least. Wouldn’t it be awful to have false memories because your brain decided it wanted to play a prank on you? Well I guess you wouldn’t really know if they were false so it couldn’t be awful if you didn’t know it. I’m getting off topic.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I was browsing forums on Gaia Online when I was in a thread and someone posted a link to a Youtube video they thought was relevant to the conversation. I decided to click the link and I watched this video and it happened to be Hank Green’s “50 Jokes” video, and I thought it was pretty cool so I clicked on another one and watched that. But this is the internet and I have a short attention span, something else popped up and I said “Vlogbrothers who?” Having barely watched two videos I completely forgot they existed.

A couple of months later, it was early in the morning and I was sitting in the chemistry lab of my high school. A friend of mine came in as she normally does to do homework, that never actually happened any time she came in because we both distracted each other to no end. We were looking up Youtube videos when she asked me if I had ever heard of Hank and John Green the Vlogbrothers, I told her no because I had completely forgotten the channel at that point but it did sound familiar. We watched a video and my mind realized I’d seen these guys before and that I had never finished watching the videos I had meant to watch. After watching the videos like mad for a week, subscribing, and realizing there was a whole community out there full of such awesome people, I had found Nerdfighteria.

So that’s how I found Nerdfighteria. There may be a few inaccuracies, such as the video, this happened back in 2009 I believe, and I don’t trust my memory. “50 Jokes” was probably the second video I watched but I really think it was the first one. And I am pretty sure it was before school and not after school. Despite those, that’s how it went down. I can’t wait to read other stories about how you guys found Nerdfighteria.