DFTBA

It’s only Tuesday and already this week has been full of YouTube awesomeness. Ignoring the multitude of awesome YouTube videos that have scattered the subscription section on my YouTube homepage, I have also received some physical YouTubeness.

Firstly – although a little late – I got given “Looking for Alaska” by John Green from Terrie for my birthday. Yesterday, I finally became the official owner of a book written by a YouTuber: and a Vlogbrother too! I’m on page 121 at the moment (almost half way through) and it is a brilliant book. There are some awesomely nerdy comments in it and I hate putting it down. Maybe I’ll have a quite flick through what I’ve read so far and give you some of my favourite quotes so far =) (don’t worry, I’ll try to avoid spoilers!):

“I flipped to the back and found the highlighted quote (“NEVER USE A HIGHLIGHTER IN MY BOOKS,” my dad had told me a thousand times. But how else are you supposed to find what you’re looking for?).”

“I’m on a triple-and-a-half date.”

Maybe some more when I come across them =)

The second awesome thing is the fact that two of the three YouTube CDs I ordered came today! “Songs in the key of e-mail” by ALL CAPS hasn’t arrived yet but “Painfully Mainstream” by Tom Milsom and “Parrot Stories” by Alex Day both came. Since finding a brown envelope waiting patiently for me on the sofa when I got home, both CDs have been on repeat all evening. My first words as I came in were not “Hi, mum, we’re home!” but “Ooooh! My CDs have arrived!” To add to the awesomeness of this, my package came with a DFTBA sticker and an extra copy of the insert thingy for Tom Milsom’s CD. I don’t know whether the extra leaf thingy was intentional but this means I can put it in my scrapbook without harm to the original! I may also put the sticker in my scrapbook.

I got a sticker when I bought the Chameleon Circuit CD but this one is much cooler. It has four possible meaning of the DFTBA initialism and I (finally) watched Hank’s DFTBA rap which includes a number of these. If I were to make up my own, it would be something random like ‘Drizzle Fails To Be Awesome’ or ‘Don’t Fill The Bath, Aggie.’ Although I quite like ‘Don’t Forget To Blog Abroad’ despite the fact that I rarely go abroad and if I did I probably wouldn’t be able to blog even if I wanted to and remembered. Anyway, hopefully ALL CAPS’ CD will arrive soon too and my collection will be complete! (Or at least complete until their new albums come out!)

Oh, one more awesome YouTubey thing happened too: EddPlant announced that he, Tom Milsom and Alex Day will be doing a tour of the UK! I expect they’ll do a gig or two in London but I think it would be awesome if they could actually come to Kent! Apparently, we can nominate places for them to come seen as they haven’t made up their mind yet so I’ve put a link in the side... somewhere... you’ll find it =) [unless you’re reading this ages after I wrote this in which case I may have removed it due to lack in functionality and what not.]

Right, ramble over. History homework still doesn’t seem particularly inviting. DFTBA, Terrie, I have not forgotten.

"Beep" "Beep"

I’ve recently finished reading a book called “Perfect Chemistry” and (as you might guess) the plot involves two teens falling in love due to being paired together in chemistry. It’s a pretty good book that any hopeless romantic would love However, I mention it because of a rather small detail; the school where it is set has music between periods rather than two high pitch – and frankly annoying – beeps. I think this is an awesome idea and would love for this to be implemented in my school.

I was talking to one of my friends about this (in chemistry, ironically) and she agreed that music instead of pips would be a brilliant idea. Obviously, disputes over which songs to use would be unavoidable but maybe a new tune each week, or even day, could minimise that. One day our lesson could end with a few mellow chords from Coldplay’s “Postcards from far away” while another day could be divided up by excerpts from “Grease!” songs.

I love music and I don’t think I could survive a whole day without some sort of music. I’m nearly always listening to my mp3 and I love discovering new songs and rediscovering old songs. I think it would be great if each day a different person could share their personal playlist.

If I could choose my ‘pips’ for the day, I would have a short section of Trock. I think a line from Gallifreyan History 101 by Chameleon Circuit would be great. The line goes:

“This is Gallifreyan History 101 so please make sure you’re in the right class.”

On a little side note, while I was drafting this in my little notebook during sup-study (yes, I know, I should have been doing homework but I’d finished all my history notes...) Alex decided to doodle on the opposite page. I said I’d put it in my blog so here it is:

 Alex is awesome as is Charlieissocoollike who is said Charlie in the doodle. Oh, and his latest video contains those little mushroom things. (Yes, they’re from some random video game that I don’t know but I don’t play many video games so leave me alone!)

(yes, I realise I've mentioned Charlie in my last two blogs. I like his vlogs. Deal with it.)


DFTBA, Terrie, I have not forgotten.

Emoticon War! - Actually, I just don't know what to say...

*Awkward silence*

When you’re talking, it is almost impossible to avoid moments of silence. Sometimes these silences and, for some reason, msn requires these silences to be broken with emoticons.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could use emoticons in real life? If there is nothing to talk about and you could break the silence by holding up a massive smiley face or a funny picture of Noddy running around a tree. Maybe you could even invent a device to give your companion a weird vibrating nudge while music plays around you. (Talking of nudges and the sounds played by msn, I’ve changed all my alert noises to Dr Who quotes and Trock... how awesome is that eh)

IRL, (in real life FYI [for your information btw {by the way for you n00bs }])... Hang on, where was I? So, IRL, awkward silences can often be broken by someone else infiltrating your nonversation. However, this can never happen on msn. You can’t suddenly have someone else enter your conversation without inviting them in yourself (which is just weird in the case of a nonversation and breaks all internet etiquette.) Talking of etiquette, different situations in life let you do different things. When talking on msn, you could easily get changed in the middle of a conversation (although that is not advised if you have a web cam...) but if you started talking your clothes off while talking to a friend in a coffee shop you may not be invited out again. Also, you could wear a bikini on the beach without anyone batting an eyelid (providing you’re a girl) while wearing swimming gear to a wedding would cause more than a few funny looks!

One of my favourite etiquette related YouTube videos is Charlie McDonnell's “How to be English” video. However, I think I break all English social etiquette rules by not liking tea. Although I went through a phase where I would drink half a milky cup, I don’t consider a cup of tea a particularly great drink. I’m happy to just have juice =)

So all forms of etiquette are just weird: Why do we feel the need to continue msn nonversations with emoticons? Why is it so wrong to wear your swimming stuff when you’re not at the beach or a swimming pool? Why are all English people required to like (and drink) tea? Nevertheless, most of us generally go along with these rules and expectations and let life continue on around us... Terrie, those emoticon wars we have will not stop!

♫ Sing a song of Sixpence ♫

It’s a pain when you get a song stuck in your head and not knowing what the song is makes it even worse.

I tend to find that the song playing on the radio as I get off the bus is the one on constant repeat for the morning and today was no different. As I sat through chemistry, the same song went round and round my head but I had no idea what it was! I knew I’d heard it before and that it was probably on my mp3 so I finally ended up searching through my mp3 for said song. Considering I have almost 1000 songs on my mp3, that wasn’t exactly the easiest task. Narrowing the list down to songs on “Now” albums, I finally found the song to be “The Importance of Being Idle”: The relief of knowing what song had been stuck on my internal jukebox! (Phrase borrowed off Terrie :])

This discovery left me listening to music from Now 62 that I hadn’t heard in ages. It is great re-discovering music you used to listen to constantly. It’s also really bizarre how you seem to still know half the words!

Usually I listen to a select list of music on a relatively short playlist. However, on the bus journey home today, I decided to have my mp3 on shuffle for all 916 songs. Some of the music that came up reminded me of my old favourite tracks ‘back in the old days’ where these things called CDs were still all the rage. I also came across a number of tracks that I don’t remember adding at all. I think I’ve got a bit over excited about discovering free and legal music and just end up downloading anything I get sent! Maybe I should go through my music to make sure I’ve actually listened to it all... someday...

Having all these songs also meant that while sitting on the bus I swiftly went from one genre to another. My jumps may not be as impressive as Terrie’s from Ozzy Osborne to S Club 7 but I’m pretty sure I’m not far off. I have almost everything from nerdy Trock tracks to dance anthems; sad ballads to heavy metal; Christian Pop to Doctor Who audio books; Christmas songs to endless Coldplay and Snow Patrol tracks. Maybe I should ditch my current playlist of nerdy YouTube songs...

“DFTBA, Terrie, I have not forgot”

Why does ‘lisp’ have an ‘s’ in it?

I really don’t get why spelling is so important. As long as people understand what I’m going on about, does it really matter if I spell the occasional word wrong?

Some words have letters in them that just make no sense; words like knife and lamb have letters that you don’t even pronounce! Personally, I don’t think that makes any sense. If people decide that the ‘H’ at the beginning of my name doesn’t need to be pronounced I get very annoyed; the ‘H’ isn’t there for decoration, it is part of my name. Other words are just frustrating because they are impossible to pronounce. However, onomatopoeia words are certainly my favourite.

Onomatopoeia is where the word sounds like the thing it is describing and tends to be spelt as it’s said. Bang, baa and moo are amongst the easiest words to spell as they are exactly as they sound. I think ‘lisp’ is one of these words as not only is it spelt as it sounds but it perfectly demonstrates what it is when someone says “I have a lisp”! (However, that is assuming that the person saying that actually has a lisp...) The word onomatopoeia is nothing like this. Not only is it impossible to spell but it in no way describes what it is.

Long words like onomatopoeia are terrible. Why is dyslexia so hard to spell when the people who write it the most are the ones who have the most trouble with spellings? Additionally, I don’t have a fear of long words, just an inability to spell them, but imagine having to write down that you have hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia when the word itself scares you! Or maybe even if you were a dyslexic hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobic – that would be terrible!

Words with multiple spellings also confuse me and with Americanism taking over, spelling clashes are appearing more and more often. Yogurt and yoghurt is one of the multiple spelling words that I come across a lot. My view is, if this word can be spelt more than one way, why can’t other? I expect you’ve come across the internet chain mail thing that says that says that as lnog as the frist and lsat lteetrs are in the ccreort oerdr and all the rgiht lrettets are terhe, we can siltl read waht is witretn. Why can’t teachers accept this?! Surely this means there is no need for the “’i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’” rule and also means we don’t have to worry about anomalies like neighbour and weird.

I have previously been threatened with disembowelment, disembodiment, decapitation, dissection and all deadly words beginning with ‘d’ for spelling simile with an extra ‘i’ and multiple spelling mistakes is something that will result in punishment in Terrie’s challenge. However, I will just have to rely on spellcheck to get me through when writing these blogs and answering such questions as “why does ‘lisp’ have an ‘s’ in it?” that often appear in the random conversations I have with Terrie!

DFTBA

Note for Terrie: The section in the second to last paragraph is intentionally spelt wrong! Do not punish me! Please!

The Challenge

Today I got back from my flute lesson to discover that, instead of revising, my friend Terrie had devised a list of blog titles for me to use. Along with this list came an explanation of what this list of titles was for and what I should do with them all.

Apparently, I have been set a challenge to write a blog for each of these titles with some rules attached. The first of these rules is that I must write one of these blogs at least once every ten days. Apparently I have oodles of free time and regular blogging will not seriously affect my busy schedule of school, attending and helping at various clubs and internet-ing. Also, my social life will apparently be left unharmed.

The next rule is that, the blog cannot be in direct relation to the title. Instead it must be skilfully used. This is like saying “you must paint a picture in blue, but you’re not allowed to use blue paint.” Nevertheless, I will get round this. Going back to my example, I will use aqua paint instead.

The following rule is probably the easiest: a 300 word minimum. This will only be a problem if I have totally run out of time and inspiration!

Next, a reason behind the title must be included. This is much easier said than done but I will jump that hurdle when I come to it...

All of these blogs must also have the label “DFTBA Terrie” Additionally, any personal blogs that I do in-between these “challenge” blogs must end in the line “DFTBA, Terrie, I have not forgotten”.

Also, I must do all this with no more than two spelling mistakes. This is virtually impossible! Thank goodness for the wonders of spell-checks...

There are reasons for these rules: Terrie gets to ‘judge’ my blogs and if she deems them a fail or I break any of these rules I will receive a punishment. I’m not too sure what this ‘punishment’ will entail. Whether it will be something internet based like writing an extra blog or creating a vlog, or something IRL based like carrying Terrie’s books around school all day I have no idea. Nevertheless, there is a plus side. I can get bonus prizes for ‘ingenious’ uses of quotes or pictures and if Terrie does not read my blog or notice any of my mistakes within two days of me posting the blog, I get to punish her! I hope Terrie is ready to get checking my blog page regularly because I am ready with punishment idea....

DFTBA

A Winter Wonderland

I don’t know why I’m calling it “A Winter Wonderland” because, although the snow looks amazing, I now understand why so many adults don’t like the snow. With an exam tomorrow, I spent most of the weekend panicking about how I was going to travel the 12 miles to school. With more snow that I have ever seen before, if it had not started to thaw, delving into the realms of fantasy may have been the only way out of this predicament. Our Skôda Fabia is certainly not a 4x4 and walking for over 3 hours to get to an exam which is only 1 ¼ hours long does not seem feasible or sane!
Although I appreciated getting Thursday and Friday off school for a combination of revision and snow antics, I didn’t appreciate the extra snow that came Friday evening. Despite being able to use the snow to make an igloo that I could get inside, the church services were cancelled on Sunday. The snow had made the roads in the village so unsafe that our pastor took the drastic measures of cancelling both services.

My journey to church wasn’t the only travelling affected. Two of my friends were planning to go to London to meet a Youtuber that we all really like and take part in the filming of his music video. The snow meant they couldn’t travel with the certainty that a train would be running to bring them back meaning they couldn’t travel at all. I was also going to get them to get a CD signed by him but the snow prevented me getting it to my friends in the first place, let alone it travelling with them up to London!

Even though it hasn’t really snowed any more since Saturday night, the remaining ice and slushy snow is just as frustrating. Although the roads are pretty much clear now, the paths are still diabolical! Today I have ‘almost’ slipped over so many times and I even totally fell over when walking home from the bus stop. Obviously my sister was very concerned as to whether I had hurt myself: she laughed.
Moaning about snow makes me feel old. I should be young and enjoying the time off school it provides! So, I’ll end this blog with a quote from a song called ‘Snow Day’ by ALL CAPS:

“Open my eyes start to get out of bed, throw back the curtains to see a white spread. I feel like I’m ten and it’s snowing once again. Let’s go have some fun, the day’s only begun.”

My Treasured Possession

Back in year 10, we were asked to do a talk on our most treasured possession. At the time, I just focussed on trying to tick all the boxes to get the highest marks possible but looking back, I could have used this as a chance to demonstrate what’s really valuable in my life.

I don’t have a treasured possession as such, but I guess the definition of a ‘treasured possession’ should be considered. Is it something that holds a lot of emotional value? Something that is very unique or irreplaceable? Something that has high monetary value or something we could never live without? When I think about it, a treasured possession is likely to hold a mixture of all these properties. However, it is still hard to choose just one treasured possession. Do you choose a photograph of a time or person you never want to forget or something more practical or obsessive like a phone you could never live without?

If I think about it, a lot of my possessions are replaceable: I can buy new books, glasses or phone, and a large proportion of my photos are preserved online. Ultimately, my point is that I came into this world with nothing; all my possessions could easily be lost, stolen, or damaged at any time and I will ultimately leave this world without a single item. Therefore, my most treasured possession would have to be the one that makes the biggest impact on my life: The Bible.

I’m not trying to idolise the Bible as a book or as a material object but instead trying to indicate how much its contents affect my life. If it wasn't for what the Bible has taught me, I would be a totally different person. I'm not a Christian just because my parents are Christians. I'm a Christian because of what the Bible has taught me. God's word tells me about the great God who created all the amazing things in the world and how we’ve spoilt it all with our sin and disobedience. The Bible also tells me of how God sent his son to take the punishment for our sins in our place; He sent his son to be our perfect saviour so that we don’t have to face his judgement for all the wrong things we’ve done in our life. He has promised that “whoever comes to me I will never drive away.” It is because of this great love that He has shown us when all we deserve is judgement that I seek to live my life for Him rather than myself. It is the Bible - God’s word - that has changed my life; it is the Bible that lets me learn even more about God’s character each day reminding me how little we deserve and how much he offers. It is for this reason that The Bible would have to be my treasured possession rather than any sentimental piece of jewellery or well-read novel. Without the Bible, my life would be so different.

New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year!

As you can tell by the fact that I’m blogging, New Year isn’t really something my family make a great deal of fuss about. We don’t tend to stay up late specifically to see the New Year in and I rarely make New Year’s resolutions. Even if I do I tend to forget them, break them within a week, or make them so easy to keep it wasn’t really worth setting them in the first place!

However, this year, I thought I’d set myself a few New Year’s Resolutions and put them up here. The thing is: what sort of resolutions should I set myself? I could set some really serious ones or I could just set them really easy but that wouldn’t be much of a challenge. I guess I should make resolutions about the most important things in my life: My Christian life; my family; my friends; and my future (i.e. wanting to become a vet). Right, I’m going to make myself some New Year’s Resolutions and try and stick to them!

• Stick with the reading scheme we’ve chosen for The Ugs and not miss days for petty reasons
• Seek God’s will in everything; put his desires first before mine
• Talk with my family more about personal and spiritual things
• Talk to my friends about what matters most to me more (because if it means a lot to me, surely I’d want to talk about it a lot?)
• Don’t let anything get in the way of my goal of becoming a vet (if I can’t become a vet I have no idea what job I’ll want to do!)
• Stick to my resolutions: they may be tough but they’re what matter most

I thought I’d end this post with a verse from the Bible for 2010:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

(Philippians 4 v 8-9)