I’ll be writing today about that third group, because those are the only ones who, realistically, rely on YouTube for a direct steady income. I know many people who watch YouTubers but don’t subscribe to them, don’t click thumbs up, comment, or Favorite them. All these small things that take any person a minute max to do, helps them a lot. It’s by the amount of views, likes, comments and subscriptions that these guys get, that they make money off YouTube and can consider it their job. Guys like MysteryGuitarMan get hugely creative and editing exhaustive short videos out every Tuesday and Thursday, in his case. But this guy is one of the most subscribed to on YouTube, on of the few with over a million subscribers. Before I go more into detail on that what does subscribing to a channel really mean?

Well, it’s simple, when you click that magic button, all that happens is that they get one more subscriber, and you get every video they make on your subscriptions feed (the top feed when you get onto your YouTube homepage) so that it’s easier for you to watch their new material if you like. So what for you is a click so that you can easily watch each of the videos of a creative YouTuber you enjoy means money for them.

All it takes you is making an account on YouTube, which really doesn’t have to hold any of your information and always allows you to post videos if you’re so inclined, and then find the guys you actually like. For example even though Tobuscus is on page 4 of most subscribed of all time has some awesomely funny things and was Tweeted about by Milla Jovovic. There are loads of funny, interesting channels that aren’t the most subscribed, but that doesn’t mean that the most subscribed aren’t good, because those guys are normally some of the best.

All it takes is some searching for what you like and a click of a button and you help the guys you enjoy watching to give you more videos. Everyone works well with support, and on YouTube it’s very easy to.

I will be M.I.A.. No, not the singer who does some great music. From monday for 10 days I will be M.I.A. click read more to see why.

A month or two ago four friends of mine invited me to join them in a Legendary trip. We’re going to be leaving Lisbon today, actually as this is being published, we should be on our way to the station. But all in all it’s this: We’re going on a train trip to a few towns in Portugal to find what we think is the most Portuguese ‘tasca’ there is. During these 10 days we will be in company of one of the most annoying, yet fun, people I know, and we’ll be updating stuff online. Yet, we’ll still basically be on radio silence. We’re planning a film, so that’ll be up as well, but most of all this post is my little ‘Ode’ to my Mac, which I will be leaving at home.

I’ve had this MacBook for around four months now, but I’ve been ‘addicted’ to the internet for some time now. The internet is a real tool that when one learns how to use, it’s just perfect. To search for news, facts, definitions, videos, songs or locations it gives you it all. If you want to watch your favorite vloggers ranting/saying news/doing awesome stuff, it’s the place to go. To share things in a fast way with many people at once or one at a time, it’s the right tool. To update my blog, work on a blog project or just randomly comunicate, right place. And all accessible from my Mac. And soon I might start a vlog, so one more thing I can access from my Mac to the internet. But if it were ‘only’ that. Editing, writing, listening to music, working, organising are a few of the things my computer has been useful to me for over the last months, and being away from it for 10 days will be really weird.

I’ll miss my random writing, the updates by sxephil or freddiew, the daily check of abola and record . pt, the constant updates on facebook, backchecking of random information on wikipedia and then spending 10 min following that up with a deeper view into the same random information, the random chatting with people I hardly know and those I know too well are all things I will miss from my computer.

More than that the family and friends I seem to be leaving again and again for holidays/studying/etc…it’s is always amazing, but they will be missed the most.

So here it goes, au revoir for 10 days…why am I so dramatic? It’s not as if I’m going to be completely gone, and I am going to have a lot of helling fun.
By the way, if you speak Portuguese, thus read it as well, you can check up on what we’re doing here.
Enjoy.

A picture worth a thousand words, and all of them the right ones. I’m not going to say much here, just that I found this painted facade on the way to making my new ID, and I really liked it, it’s a strong message showing that people do notice that these companies are drinking the world dry and fucking it up. If you didn’t notice the companies on the crown include BP, Galp, Esso and Repsol and the building is abandoned…and it’s on a busy road in central Lisbon, so the fact that it is abandoned is already alarming really, at least it’s put to some good use. Why would one say that this is not good? As in graffiti, some of it is really good, useful, nice. By the way, one can see the hint of another painting on the left.

[João Marrana]
The truth is we aren’t all the same. And we aren’t all the same in any way.

The people lived in their places, they had their spaces and friendships already established, and suddenly the municipality says: “For your own good, you will now have a nice home and will move to Ameixoeira, to Chelas, to…”

So there is a relationship of neighbourhood, of mutual help, of complicity, of friendship, which is destroyed once you take the horizontal and turn it into the vertical.

The quarter is dirty, it’s filthy, but the residents’ own houses are clean. Therefore the quarter of those people is only their own house from the walls inward. From the walls outward is not theirs. If we don’t find a mechanism for them to identify themselves with their own quarter, the house will always be clean, but the street will be forever dirty.

[Livia Tirone]
The people who come from simple, rural communities are people who learned to feel confidence only towards their familiar aggregate. When they are introduced into a part of a city they have to feel confidence towards a larger aggregate. This demands from them certain skills which if they don’t have the facility to learn they can’t create the bridge to their quarter.

[João Marrana]
In those 1000 [One Thousand] homes you didn’t see even one grocery store, one café, or one supermarket. You didn’t see anything, there is nothing.

This isn’t an agreeable way to live; we wouldn’t like to live in a place like this.

[Livia Tirone]
And one of the levels on which it is reflected is in that relationship which is sometimes symbolized by elements like meters. And the meters in the houses we saw, practically all were being hoodwinked by stealing the resource before it goes through the meter.

But in the case of electricity and gas it can actually put the peoples lives at risk, not only the ones stealing it, but everyone else around them.

We saw that the elevators didn’t work in most the buildings we visited, and they stopped working also because of lack of knowledge, because these people don’t know how to work with elevators.

[João Marrana]
And that is where we come back to the old question: ‘Is it the people who are bad, who are uncivilized because they wreck everything, destroy and do, or is it us who when we called them to this new model of life didn’t impose on them the social rules of our city, as well as the utility and usufruct of what we gave them?’

If we can come down to earth, relate and be able to communicate with them, which is the hardest part, we will be able to make them feel respected and get their respect in turn. Our function is for the people to find their way; we just have to give them the tools to find it, as it’s them who define it, not us. Each person is one person, every case is one case, every family is one family and families aren’t to be put in a pot.

————————————————
It has been a very rewarding experience as I got to have a glimpse into editing and I got to really work for the first time with Miguel. It’s been a lot of work, but a lot of fun, and we got to look into a reality that we wouldn’t have thought to graze the surface of otherwise. If you go to the “read more” part you will find the English transcript to the film, as the film is in Portuguese, which many times contains more or less direct translations. Please vote for it under “Vote neste video”, which you can find if you click on the video itself. I hope you like it.

Apart from complaining, there has been a lot of disappointment and some glorious uproar. So as FIFA already gave me a way to divide, let me start on last Friday. The Hosts played against Mexico to give many contrasts, Khune (Goalkeeper for RSA) played a great match and is, in my view, the man of the match next to Tschabalala, who not only scored, but also gave the Mexican defenders a hard time. Oscar Perez (MEX Goalkeeper) on the other hand was truly dismal, not proving the choice of small goalkeepers on the Mexican side as the right one, and also not showing why he was chosen over Ochoa. All in all RSA exceeded expectations and made a great effort to proving they can go further than expected. The other match of this group was one of the most boring ones I have seen in a long time, as the French ran up against Uruguay’s stone clad defence, who after losing a man to the first red card of the tournament, closed down even better. Domenech hasn’t proven his worth at all, whereas the players he has are some of the most promising in the world. A goalless draw gave that group an equal starting point.

Group B didn’t surprise me at all, as a fresh, fast South Korea pummelled a Greece that is passed its prime to win a convincing 2-0 and propelling them to the provisional first place. Argentina also won, by 1 goal only, against a resistant Nigeria, getting their goal early on, after which Messi, Tevez and Higuain could put the ball past Enyeama (Man of the Match) who had some steady gloves.

Contrary to him, Green had greasy gloves it seems as he let passed the equalizing goal against USA, leaving England with a disappointing 1-1 draw. Even so, England did put on a good match and are likely to go far. Slovenia didn’t waste their chance though, overpowering Algeria for a late 1-0 win, continuing to surpass the odds their doubters set them.

Group D brought back the team that plays well everywhere but in the world cup in Serbia, who lost by 1 goal to Ghana in their opening match, continuing their ‘tradition’. Germany on the other hand surpassed their high expectations to beat a tactically confusing Australia 4-0. I will never understand how the manager could choose to play 6 midfielders and believe he would draw. They couldn’t stop break Germany’s play at all, and brilliant players like Cahill and Emerton had no one to serve a dangerous ball to. Coupled with that was a slow old defence and a German team who, even without their tireless captain Ballack, were lethal in all sectors. They got through Australian holes easily and with speed and dominance got the ball for four strikers to score.

Group E brought another set of hopefuls to victory as Holland gave Denmark a hard time beating them 2-0. Their midfield is still unstoppable and their team-play brilliant, especially comparing to other favourites France. Japan also got their first win against Cameroon in a match where captain Eto’o couldn’t do anything to stop the Asian speed. Both 2002 hosts have shown their worth again up to now.

Going onto Group F one saw two 1-1 draws with Italy disappointing against the powerful Paraguay and New Zealand surprising another of the world cup surprises Slovakia in a match that points to both these teams not being able to go any further. In the European-South American matchup, there was some great football played with Italy earning a lucky corner equalizer so that they wouldn’t end up like France in 2002. This group shouldn’t bring any more surprises though with the only thing still unknown being who will top the group.

The ‘Group of Death’ though seems to have turned into the ‘Group, which will be a toss up between Portugal and Ivory Coast’. It was a strong match between the two aforementioned that ended in another goalless draw, but it showed four things. 1) Portuguese players can’t stop whining, especially Cristiano Ronaldo. 2) Ivory Coast has a solid shadowing defence. 3) Ivory Coast causes heart attacks in the last moments of the match and 4) There is no way to understand what the hell Queiroz is thinking. Brazil played a solid match against North Korea, where they dominated and won by 2-1, with a last minute honour goal to finish the great display of favouritism. It will come down to who will slip up and who will stop Brazil in the fight between the Sailors and the Elephants.

Lastly the biggest surprise yet: In Group H, after Chile convincing in a 1-0 win against Honduras, explaining the world why they got 2nd (in front of Argentina) in the qualifying phase, Spain dominated their match against Switzerland, but lost in a freak play. The 1-0 that the Swiss scored was achieved against the flow of the match, in a time where nothing seemed to be going wrong for Spain, except their “goallessness”. The goal gives Spain a bit of a heart attack, as they will have to fight their way to the top now, instead of soaring as expected.

Lastly I will give my expectations:
Group A: Some freak happening will put Mexico on the plane back home and the Hosts on a Highway to stardom backed by the vuvuzelas. I feel they will give both Uruguay and France a very hard time, especially as both those teams have to set their act straight. Mexico has a lot to change and improve, their only hope laying in Vela, dos Santos and captain Marquez.

Group B: Argentina top it in front of South Korea with a possible surprise by Nigeria, but Greece don’t stand a chance after their first display.

Group C: England and Slovenia should go through, with Algeria not standing a chance and USA giving a good fight, but Slovenia have proven that their qualification was out of merit and not luck.

Group D: Unless somehow Australia gets their act straight without Cahill, they won’t surpass the tireless Ghanaians. Serbia is set to have a 2006 repeat and Germany should continue to dominate.

Group E: Even though Japan have shown heart, Denmark should sneak up into a second place spot behind Holland who should just get better with time.

Group F: As I already said, Slovakia and New Zealand don’t seem to stand a chance, and it’s all down to Paraguay and Italy to show their strength and hunt for the 1st place.

Group G: Brazil top it, Portugal and Ivory Coast have a tug of war. North Korea scores a couple more goals before getting onto the plane to rejoin their leader Kim Jong-Il.

Group H: After this first round I expect one of the two who are right now at the top to top the group, but Spain still to come 2nd. Depends really on who wins between Chile and Switzerland in my view. Honduras shouldn’t surprise.

Please comment, it’s easy to rebut any of the things I said. Plus, please stop complaining about the Vuvuzelas, they’re not going anywhere, and are kind of fun.

I thought Spam was annoying when I had just my email, but really that filters right through and doesn’t really bother me all that much. Now that I have a blog though I am constantly getting spam messages and it has already happened that one or two real comments got deleted. Not by me, but by my dad who sometimes goes and cleans it.

Some of this spam doesn’t really look like spam at first, but then you read it and it really doesn’t apply to what you wrote, or in other situations, it’s just some complete stranger so you have no idea if you should take it seriously. Here when I say you for some reason I mean I. But more than anything are the comments like this with a link attached:
“???? ?? ??? ?????????? ???????????? ? ???????, ?? ? ?? ? ?????????????. ?????? ??? ????? ???????? ???????.”
You think, how the hell is that a real comment. But somehow it is nice to click delete when you see that. Problem is they come back. Tenfold.

To end this I can only say that Spam is pure time-consuming useless crap and it benefits no one. They post, I delete, no viruses, no nothing, just annoyance and time wasting.

It was a great Tuesday and Thursday for me this week as I got to see a bit of a world I’d only heard of. During these days I met wine makers, bloggers, distributers, as well as people studying wine related subjects and just generally wine enthusiasts. It was a great experience for three main reasons: People, Wine and Work.

Though people are the most important, I’ll talk about that last, and give wine precedence. This week I’ve tried roughly thirty different wines some of which were just utterly amazing, others…not so much. I don’t really know their names, so don’t ask me, for that I’ll redirect you to adegga.com and catavino.net. I really hadn’t noticed the great discrepancies in taste and smell of wine before, how some can just invade your nose and others dominate your mouth. How some can leave your mouth dry, and others just overload you on sugar. A new friend of mine, Ryan O’Connell a winemaker in southern France, made me realize something which for me is just amazing, wine is a great art. Yet unlike most arts the job of the artist doesn’t come in the form of inventing, but interpreting. When you look at it simply, the agriculture and manipulation of the grape doesn’t seem like much, but when you smell and taste all the different outcomes, it seriously convinces you, or at least it did me. Where as we think of art in a more pen on paper or image reproduction thing, it is really creativity that involves any of our senses, and what better than one that affects two different ones? I really recommend visiting those websites because those people know their stuff, while I, when it comes to wine, am just a plus one.

The second thing was work. During the week that my friend from Adegga was here he didn’t stop while at the conference. From doing presentations to establishing networks, getting contacts and making deals, he achieved a lot and came out very happy. My friend Ryan O’Connell got into contact with distributers so that he could sell more of his wine. Naked wines did a ‘little’ competition (based on consumer opinion) which led to a wine maker selling all the crates she had available of one wine at the time more or less overnight online. There is example after example of energy flowing so well, excitement and deals being struck. The atmosphere was amazing, everyone was buzzing, and at the end most people came out winning. Even I got a potential job offer for my work placement year.

Lastly the people. I don’t know if it’s the wine or the blogging, but the people at the dinner and at the ‘Access Zone’ of the LIWF were electrifying and just nice people. They got you pumped up, trying wine, and were always smiling, happy and nice. At the Wine Bloggers Dinner, I got to talk to people better and my reaction after all the wine and talking is just that it is indescribable. There were many examples for all of this, and I won’t get much into it, but the topics ranged from anything at all to anything else. Wine, work, life stories, boobs, blogs, wine, photography, food and some more wine were just some of the examples, and I have to say, Farringdon is a really nice area.

Well, that was my week, I had a lot of fun, I thank all the people I met for the great time, but especially André, who was a guest at my house, and invited me into this world. This is one memory to keep; I wish I just gave the writing a little more thought, especially the last part.

In a whole, anyone who doesn’t really mind violence or profanity should really enjoy this fast paced movie. It has a great general plot, nice character development, well placed misunderstanding, secrecy and very cool vilains. From everything in the story (the violence, the treachery, and many other small things) only one plot point disturbed me, and that was Hitgirl. She is a kid of around 10 or 11 who has guns. And is good at using them. It’s freaky.

Other than that, my general opinion is that this was a great film, it even prompted me to starting the graphic novel. Up to now, what I can recognize is that the film did the initial buildup in a much more refined way and that it keeps true to the story and style, but the way it is exposed in the graphic novel seems more raw, in a good way. Another thing I love about both is the way that Kick-Ass’ conflicts and problems are portrayed. This guy is a regular teenager with a normal life who had his mother die a few years before. He was way into comic books and one day just figured, why the hell doesn’t anyone become a hero just to help the fellow man. His changes of heart, obsessions, surges of adrenaline and cowardice/bravery/stupidity are given into reality very realistically.

I really don’t want to give plot points away, so I’ll end with this: for me this film was widely underrated and it didn’t get the recognition it deserved, sure it was very controversial in what it portrayed, but hell many movies show these things under different lights. It was rated R in the US, 15 in the UK and PG in France…so if that consensus shows you anything. Fun, fast-paced action film, a definite watch in my books.

I’m going to start with the 3D obsession. I’m a guy who likes his 3D movies; really Avatar was amazing to watch in 3D totally worth it and just a great world to forget yourself in. The plot had its weaknesses, but maybe that can be repaired in the 2nd movie, now that they have invented the world, created amazing visuals and just made everything so amazing in the film on the way.

Now just because some movies are Kick Ass (by the way, that movie is underrated, it is really well done and just great fun) in 3D, doesn’t mean all of them are. After watching Avatar for the first time my reaction was the same as after I watched it for the second time. I loved it, I noticed its flaws, but I loved it, well-filmed and great fun. I took a critical side to it in the months between though, yet watching it in the biggest screen in Europe was awesome.

On the other hand comes the film that has most disappointed me over the last years (and I watched The Box): Clash of the Titans. For me that film was useless, the characters were weak, the effects were good, but not compensating, the original story was amazing, but they just killed it completely by changing the whole line of events piece by piece, but the worst of it all was the fact that it was filmed in 2D and made a 3D. The 3D was seriously just bad. In short the film just disappointed me and spent too much time on the useless fight scenes.

Back to the concept, some films I really would only watch in 3D, because it’s worth it: Avatar, Step Up 3D, How to Train Your Dragon. All these films were made in 3D, but other films I will really just watch in the normal version, because those films are still amazing. 3D doesn’t suddenly make a bad movie good, it just adds value to value when it is done well.

Now, on to the two reviews. These two films that I watched this week (Iron Man 2 and Robin Hood) I was very happy about. Both of them were of great quality, and very recommended. Iron Man 2 builds upon the first movie perfectly and follows the same line. What that means is great plot, funny scenes, fast paced short fight scenes, great action, characters that make you feel involved in the movie and a cast to envy and lastly it seems short even if it’s 2:30h. Robin Hood, like I said, was also a good surprise, I was weighing it a lot against Kevin Costner’s version and it was a great movie. Russell Crowe does a good part, the story is well thought out, and completely different, the both the English kings you meet you both like and dislike, and it makes you feel really in the time. It’s a movie worth watching with good fighting scenes and great suspense.

It has been too long since I’ve written here; I will make it a goal to write much more now that I’m freer. See if I can do it.

Starting with some Sci-Fi, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief was an interesting movie on some aspects, quite annoying on others. Let me start with the good. I’ve always loved Greek Mythology, and I can see through this movie that the guy who wrote the books corresponding did as well. He really brought a lot of the details from that history into the story in a very interesting way. The depiction in film was very nice indeed, so for all the mythological aspects this film is quite nice. It is something we don’t come upon often in films anymore and offers enough explanation. Now the annoying part: The character development was rushed through, friendships were made on the spot, trust was earned without thought and a kid became a man in like…no time. In Harry Potter at least the first book never made him out to be amazing, the kid was daring and couldn’t be touched, he was clever and was protected. In this, the kid is taught in one lesson how to fight and suddenly he’s a boss, with a little help from his godly father, and in a matter of seconds is an efficient controller of water. In Avatar (series) this process of being good at controlling an element is taken through much more detail, and given justice in its difficulty. It’s like, this guy just touches water and suddenly it obeys him, he doesn’t even have to understand it or know what he’s doing. Lastly, the film is very cliché.

I love you Phillip Morris is actually a film I enjoyed a lot. Yes, it is very weird, for all the things that Russel does to satisfy his homosexual partners are completely insane, but the way that he does it is not only ingenious but also deeply heartfelt. The story is basically about a man who will do anything (fraud, coning, lying and well anything for money and a good quality of life) to be a) with his love and b) make him as happy as possible. It’s a story about another level of relationships that took to criminal behaviour. Really, not much more that I can say except that the moral of the story that all that extreme wasn’t necessary really for Steven Jay Russell to have lived a great life, but a man with a high IQ (163) needs to do something with that brain, and he got a lot done, and got out of prison very creatively.

My Cousin Vinny. Also about getting someone out of prison, but not via fraud, but via justice and a lot of humour…for the viewer. This is a really nice movie for its creativity which comes to light in a) the catalysing situation, b) all of Vinny’s problems in and out of court and c) how he solves the case. The first one is quite simple, mistaken identity and misinformation lead two guys to admit to murder while thinking they were being accused of stealing a can of tuna. It seems ridiculous but the way it is shown is very plausible. The second is what I would call a series of unfortunate events that lead to lack of sleep, a dress code problem, a legal identity problem and a few nights in jail for Vinny, all of which helped him or the comedy ultimately somehow. The last one was just ingenious and funny how he discredited the eye-whiteness’ and an automotive expert with, again, simple, plausible points. This film is hilarious and got Marisa Tomei a deserved Oscar.

Lastly Capitalism: A Love Story. Just like Bowling in Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko this film is a Michael Moore must watch about the USA’s (and general) problems and obvious steps that can and must be taken not only to prevent it but to eliminate the problem. This one is about the corruption that caused and followed this last economic crisis, why it came to be and all the inhumanity behind it. But it doesn’t end on a bad note, instead it shows positive signs of rebellion in the US against big corporations that created a Plutonomy (where the top 1% of the population has more money than the bottom 95%). It also shows how all the things that the US needs is very possible and was even something they helped Europe and Japan have after the war. What FDR called the Second Bill of Rights included the rights to have “a job, an adequate wage and decent living, a decent home, medical care, economic protection during sickness, accident, old age or unemployment and a good education” (taken from the film). These are fundamental rights especially when living in a capitalistic society, they protect the work force and the nation, and America just doesn’t have that. Great film, great man, great ideas.

Really, I enjoyed all four films, if anyone else who reads this has watched any of them, feel free to comment on what you thought.