A few of my favourite things

I've made a little list to help me remember the things I like and pick the most blog worthy to make this worth reading. Like Sarah, there are a lot of things I dislike but I'm going to focus on the things I do like.

Glasgow, in my opinion it's the best city in the world. Before I moved here coming up was always something I looked forward to. I love just walking around, my neighbourhood, the city centre, the westend, by myself or friends, it's a beautiful city. It's great for shopping and has an amazing music scene. I think its also a city full of contradictions, the funniest I think being that it was voted both Europe's most dangerous city and friendliest city but regardless I still like it.

I really love music. I was brought up listening to all sorts of music and I mainly influenced by my dad's taste in music. I really love The Clash, The Smiths, Freelance Whales, The Beatles, We Are Scientists, The Decemberists and whole load of Scottish indie pop and a bit of the top 40. My favourite thing about music is when you buy a new album and you listen to it for the first, I always have to listen to with my headphones the first time. I love having the actual physical album too, I really love reading the lyric booklet and looking at the photos in it.

I love to travel, I've not done much of it but I plan on doing more soon. I really like travelling by train, I don't know why, I think I find it relaxing, I like looking out the window and watching the scenery whiz pass me.

I'm a big art nerd, so drawing is one of those things I really can't live without. My room is filled with sketchbooks from college and sketchbook journals, paper, pens, pencils, paint, just about everything art related you could think of.

And last but not least, I collect quotes. I know it's quite an odd thing to do but I do it. I did it for a while before I actually realised what I was doing. Part of my wall is steadily being covered by yellow post-its with quotes on them. I find most of them by just looking around the internet but quite a few are from books I've read. I think I like quotes because they say a lot about a person, the one being quoted and the one reading it. Right now one of my favourite quote is, "Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death" by Harold Wilson.

Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens

I absolutely love fresh bread.  I have a bread machine, which is probably the most wonderful invention ever (other than, you know, the wheel, and electricity, and all those actually important ones).  I love being able to set it up the night before so that I can wake up to the delicious aroma of it in the morning and eat a warm and delicious breakfast that finished baking 5 minutes before I woke up.  I love the texture and the flavour and just everything.

Warm summer rain is just the best.  It rains a lot here, and most of the time it's cold and awful, but in the summer, when it's a nice warm rainfall I love to be outside in it.  The harder it falls the better.  I like to see all the people with their umbrellas, and hear the sound of the rain, and I don't know, something about a good rain storm just makes the whole world feel fresh and new and beautiful.  Two years ago my friends and I were camping and we ended up doing the hike out of our site in the middle of a tropical storm, and it was just the most wonderful thing.  I also especially love going to the beach in the rain.

I'm also a huge fan of used books.  I like to see what pages past owners have dog-eared, and what places they may have chosen to underline or annotate.  I like the smell of them, and I like to wonder if anyone else laughed or cried over that same book in the same pages that I did, and why they decided to get rid of it and why they had bought it in the first place.  I especially love used book stores, and most especially one nearby that has books absolutely floor to ceiling and boxes sitting haphazardly in the aisles because they just have so. many. books. and I always just want to know where they all came from and whether or not they were loved.

Another thing I love is discovering new music.  I do this thing sometimes where I just go to the library, browse the CD section, and pick out a few to listen to based entirely on band name, album title, cover art, and song titles.  If something catches my eye, even if it's a genre I don't usually listen to, I'll bring it home and give it a try.  I've discovered some really good music this way, and it's always such a thrill to hear a really good song for the first time ever and have it be all special and surprising and wonderful.

I think the last favourite thing I'm going to mention is blankets.  I love blankets.  I grew up in a big old house that was really hard to keep warm, so I was used to just using blankets all the time - curled up on the couch reading, sitting at the computer, whatever.  There's something about blankets that's just far cuddlier and more comforting than a sweater could ever be.  I have a variety of blankets of various weights and snuggliness that don't even go on my bed at night, they're just around, and I grab whenever I sit down anywhere that isn't the table or the floor.  Blankets are just great.

Those Things That I Don't Dislike

This post is saying Sunday, March 6th. I will have you know that it is 12:28 AM on Monday, March 7th. I'm also really sorry about how long this is. I didn't realize that before. There are 550 words.

Okay so this week's theme is about our favorite things. And this is going to be a challenge for me because I like a lot of things and I'm not going to be able to think of them all and then later when I do think of them I'm going to feel like I insulted that favorite thing because I didn't show it enough respect to put it in this blog post.

So here is an apology in advance to the favorite things that I won't manage to think of in the time that I write this. So, I'm sorry, and remember that even though you're not here, I will always love you.

I like Doctor Who, in fact, I love it. I love the stories from the classic and new series, they are so fun and full of adventure, they're full of emotion and such lovable characters. I love how it combines fairytale and science-fiction. Normally I get annoyed when a series gets the science wrong. But for some reason it doesn't matter when Doctor Who does it. I also really like its spin-offs, but that would add an extra five paragraphs to this post and I don't want to bore you guys for too long.

My favorite color is red but dark green and navy blue are acceptable, sometimes.

I like space. I like learning about the stars and planets. I like science in general. Atronomy, astrophysics, astrobiology, it's all so awesome. I really like archaeology and paleontology, I used to want to dig up dinosaur bones an explore pyramids before wanting to be an astronaut.

My favorite hobby is drawing. One day, I'll start a webcomic. My favorite tablet is my Intuos4 tablet and I love my Photoshop and Manga Studio programs while they don't love me. Currently I can't stop drawing pictures of lizard-people (call them Silurians, Reptilians, or whatever).
Whenever I join a website and I get to use profile pictures and avatars, I draw them. I've decided to draw them all now, doing that is really fun.

I like cosplay. That's my other favorite hobby. I don't watch anime or read manga as much as I used to, but cosplay has never stopped being fun. Last year I went to Anime Boston while cosplaying the Fourth Doctor (how I love my scarf), this year I'll be cosplaying as a Weeping Angel (how they terrify me and have really difficult costumes to make). I am quite proud of the wings I sculpted.There's one. I'm going to repaint them.

Have I mentioned Harry Potter yet? I don't think I've mentioned any books yet. Favorite books would be Harry Potter, Good Omens, The Cry of The Icemark, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

You're supposed to italicize books right? Let's pretend I wrote all the media titles in the correct format/font. When in doubt, italics are your friend.

Well that's it. Those are my favorite things. It was pretty difficult to not slip in something that I don't like as a comparison.

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!

I first got introduced to Nerdfighteria (though I didn't know what it was back then) by a friend of mine showing me a Vlogbrothers video. I think this was in 2007 0r 2008, but my memory fails me as to exactly when.
I started watching a couple of their videos, but I was still in school at the time and about to do my GCSEs (exams you take at 16) so I gradually stopped watching their videos.

Early 2009, I had been remembering about these awesome videos that I'd been shown, and I think I spent a week procrastinating searching youtube for them until I actually found them. I subscribed, and watched all of the videos. I knew kinda what Nerdfighteria was, but I wasn't actively part of the "collective".

It took till mid-2010 for another friend to link me to a video of "Alex Reads Twilight" for me to discover the rich pickings of Nerdfighteria & Youtube. Gradually, from watching Alex's videos and clicking on the links to a Youtube channel hosted by somebody called Charlie, that I eventually discovered how awesome people can be.

My story isn't very interesting, but it's my story and I'm glad.

p.s: it's also written really badly 'cause I kinda forgot it was Thursday and sort of rushed it. I'll improve it, honest!

Land Ahoy!

I found the Vlogbrothers through the Harry Potter fandom, though not from watching Hank's Accio Deathly Hallows video like most people. Way back in May/June-ish of 2009 I was getting back into Harry Potter and was reading the Half-blood Prince for the first time, in time for the new movie coming out. It was then by accident I discovered wizard rock, which I really loved and then spent most of my time on youtube watching videos of wrock concerts and discovering other wizard rockers. It was because of this I found Kristina Horner (italktosnakes) of The Parselmouths had a youtube account and vlogged and through her I found other vloggers like charlieissocoollike and nerimon, all of these people mentioned the Vlogbrothers in at least one of their videos and I was just like, "Who are these brothers that everyone is talking about?"

It took me until September of 2009 to even look at the Vlogbrothers channel and I only did because there was a link on someone else's (I don't remember who though). Upon entering their channel for the first time the first video I saw was by hank called 13 severed hands! about the 13 severed hands of Starwars. Despite the fact I'm not really into Starwars I watched the video and enjoyed it and began watching the rest and subscribed. And although I've been subscribed to the Vlogbrothers for so long I still have not seen every single video but I plan on doing that soon.

And that is my story of how I found Nerdfighteria, I leave you with the video that introduced me to it.

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!]