Geoff Killed a Pigeon and Coming soon...

As part of my renewed creative focus I mentioned in a previous blog that I was planning to start making YouTube videos as well as this blog, now i've done a lot of work today on the behind the scenes technical stuff over at YouTube and edited my existing videos to comply with the YouTube Partner regulations of no copyright infringement by changing the audio track on my aquarium video (below) to one of the free use tracks provided by YouTube's built in editing software.



Unfortunately my oldest and infact first ever attempt at video making from way back in 2006 cannot be made to comply with regulations so I will be forced to remove or at least make it a private video so it doesn't interfere with my plans to become a YouTube Partner.

The video in question is a CSI parody based around a song written by my old flatmates AKA the band called The Martians - and that song was called Geoff Killed a Pigeon. Yes it's the very same Geoff I have mentioned previously in this blog and it is based on a true story about when Geoff managed to run over a wild pigeon with his bicycle, squishing it beyond repair and then being forced to kill it to end it's suffering. The pigeon carcass was then spotted by one our flatmates and because he found out Geoff had caused it's death decided it was only appropriate to immortilise the mocking in song.

I wasn't yet a flatmate at this point but I too had spotted the dead pigeon in question by chance and after finding out it was Geoff, I searched for a few funny pigeon related images and decided to make a CSI parody about the whole incident detailing the "murder" investigation and generally teasing Geoff a bit more about it. 

Now looking back this video was shockingly dreadful but it amused me greatly at the time and got me started on YouTube even if I wouldn't properly utilise it until more recently, and in the past 6 years that sad pathetic little video has only received 160 views whilst my Mobility Scooter assembly/disassembly tutorial which was only intended for the person who was buying my Dad's mobility scooter has managed to rack up over 2000 views in the last 2 years and 193 of those views were in the last month alone!

So It is with a heavy heart that I will soon delete my first video but it is for good reason because coming soon to my channel will hopefully be a whole range of much more exciting and hopefully significantly better productions including a series of Crafty Creative Tutorial videos which I think i'll call "Roostarr Makes" where i'll be showing people how to make all sorts of fun and geeky things including a Lightsaber prop/torch and some geeky laptop sleeves.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for things you'd like to see me make then please leave a comment below or follow me on Twitter @roostarr and comment there.

Awesome Avengers

Earlier this week I wrote about my excitement about the eagerly awaited release of Marvel's The Avengers. I went to see it on the day of release and then had to wait several days before writing this blog so I didn't incite the wrath of any friends for giving away any spoilers!

I think most have seen it now and those who haven't, well tough - i've given them long enough so if they choose to read this anyway and see any spoilers then it's officially not my fault!

SPOILER ALERT..... SPOILER ALERT!!!


Ok, now that we've got the spoiler warnings out of the way, let's begin.

First of all I would like to thank Joss Whedon for not letting me down, this truly was the awesome movie I was hoping it would be and probably a whole lot more that I hadn't expected. Fantastic storyline, great casting, well scripted, fantastic moments of emotion throughout ranging from the very sentimental and touching through to the most perfectly timed moments of side-splitting laughter.

This film was adrenaline fueled, geektastic awesomeness personified - and it wasn't afraid to admit it.

The biggest laughs came from moments of classic slapstick perfectly placed in unexpected scenes to help change the mood at exactly the right moment - and in the case of this film, exactly the right cast member - namely The Hulk. The audience erupted in such abnoxiously loud hysterical laughter at these moments that they actually managed to drown out the cinema sound system!

As a massive Whedon fan one of the things I was most looking forward to was spotting his "Whedonverse Cameos/References" - for those who are unaware of this let me briefly explain. Joss Whedon likes to connect his projects and often casts the same actors in all his projects or throws in references in the background or script. Arguably the largest of Whedons creations is Buffy the Vampire Slayer and he had already referenced The Avengers in his most recent issue of the canonical "Season 9" comic book series - so it was every fans assumption that there would be at least one Buffyverse cameo or reference in The Avengers - and we were correct.

Actor Alexis Denisof who played the character "Wesley" in both Buffy and it's spin off show Angel (and also husband of the lovely Alyson Hannigan - "Willow") had been cast in the film as "The Other" a character who if I identified him correctly was in heavy prosthetics - which I am not ashamed to admit caused me to miss this particular cameo. Actor Enver Gjokaj from Whedon's more recent TV show "Dollhouse" also had a small part as a police officer taking orders from Captain America in one scene.

My personal favourite however was near the start of the film and made me grin from ear to ear was the destruction of the Shield base in the same style and with an almost identical scene down to the camera angle to the distruction of Sunnydale (and the hellmouth) in the final episode of Buffy. It was a nice touch and one that only a true fan would have noticed, a nice big obvious shout out for Buffy fans but almost as if it was in a secret language that didn't take anything away from The Avengers for people who didn't understand the reference. I officially take of my hat to salute Joss Whedon for the creativity of this reference.

Daytime cinema screenings of superhero films tend to be full of the hardcore geeky fans who can't possibly wait until an evening showing for such a momentous film release, and The Avengers was no different. Come the end of the film, some got up and left but most of us waited to see if there would be a bonus credits scene relating to some future sequel and boy were we happy we waited around. I won't say who or what happened in the scene, you can google it if you really want to know, but I will say this - I was actually rendered speechless and so was my friend who went with me to the showing.

The next sequel cannot come fast enough, and I hope with all my heart that Joss Whedon gets put in the driving seat once again because he was truly made for this type of film and the standard of this film compared with all the other recent Marvel releases is out of this world.

Rating: 11 out of 10

Awaiting Avengers

This humble geek is very excited for this week an insanely long awaited film finally hits theatres near you! Yes i'm talking about Marvel Studios latest offering "The Avengers" or as it is annoyingly called here in the UK "Avengers Assemble" - why I hear you ask, well that's because of a rather annoying and very rubbish old british tv show which also went by the name "The Avengers" and subsequently inspired a movie of the same name back in 1998 starring the ever delightful Uma Thurman and that annoying Voldemort guy wearing a bowler hat!

Marvel's Avengers however is going to be a work of cinematic genius, I say that confidently because of how much faith I have in the man behind it - Joss Whedon! As a huge and lets face it eternal fan of Buffy i've watched everything the man GOD known as Whedon has produced since and i've not been dissapointed yet. When you combine that genius with the Marvel universe it's safe to say that this is going to be the event of the year for this geek so I thought it only appropriate to blog before and after to fully do it justice.

I honestly don't know what part to be excited about most, the big screen appearance of more than one of my favourite superheroes in one film, the extensive eye candy for me to drool over. The knowledge that hidden somewhere in this film there are likely to be some casting choices or cameos from the Whedonverse to satisfy Whedons compulsions to join all his projects together somehow. The presence of How I Met Your Mother star and all round awesome Canadian Cobie Smulders is part of the cast or the fact it's being released in the UK before it gets released in the US!

It's all very exciting and it's only a few days away, this thursday I shall be taking my seat with a friend and fellow Marvel fan who no doubt is just as excited as I am about this momentous cinematic event.

Geeks, Computers and Good Friends

I love being a geek and I've never made any secret of that, but this time I'm going to spare you a comic book or superhero related rant - it's good old fashioned computer geek time.

It has to be said I'm certainly not going to win any prizes for coding some new game or smartphone app, but I do love that I can do enough to make myself smile with geeky pride and that's all thanks to a short time living with someone who knows a hell of a lot more than I do.

Only a handful of years ago the extent of my computer geekery was playing a few games, untold hours of playing with an art program on an old Commodore Amiga 500+ and whatever remnants of COMAL coding i'd learned in high school on computers as old as time itself.  Then I met geoff (not a typo, he had the capital letter revoked in 2007 - it's a long story so perhaps I'll temporarily reinstate it for the purpose of this blog) and all that changed.

Geoff was one of my flatmates when I temporarily lived in Edinburgh during my final year of university and apart from hours of geeky conversations about Doctor Who, scientific theories and playing so many hours of video games - one of the things I learned from Geoff was about the existence of Linux.

I had come across Linux before this and even used a few in my life but hadn't realised what they were as they were on computers in youth hostels in San Francisco where out of ignorance I had just assumed the different computers were "an american thing".

Geoff spent I don't know how many hours showing me how it worked, explaining things and getting excited showing off the latest customisation he'd learned how to install on his computer and I quickly got very excited about it and despite having a brand new laptop I soon got my hands on some old computer parts on freecycle and learned how to build a computer and just how good a system could be made with old parts if it was running Linux. From that moment on I was a little bit hooked, however, I always went back to my laptop as it was just so much more convenient especially since I didn't like the Linux version of Photoshop. I also had the problem of no longer living with an in house tech guru for when I got stuck with a system I wasn't very familiar with still.

Fast forwarding to this week I got the opportunity to get some more free computer parts from an internet cafe which had new owners and had decided to renovate and replace all the computers. The computers are old and had more dust inside them than my vacuum cleaner when its due to be emptied but I was able to salvage some good parts and have just built myself another Linux system to practice on.

So for the first time ever I've been experimenting and modifying with the Linux installation and making it look and act like the kind of system that Geoff had and ran all those years ago and whilst I don't have an in house tech guru any more, I do have an entire world full of Linux geeks at my disposal through the wonder of YouTube. I might not be as fast as Geoff was with the coding or even know what I'm doing half the time but thanks to what he taught me all those years ago I'm not scared of experimenting with it because if it goes wrong I can just start again - and he must have been doing something right, he's now got his own business providing the services of the humble computer geek to the "normal" folk of the world.

I know he's going to read this at some point, so I'm going to take this moment to say a huge thank you to him. Not only did he teach me things I didn't know the first thing about, he showed me friendship and support when I needed it most.


You are a good friend Geoff and my life is better for knowing you, thank you for everything.



Geoff's Blog
http://artificialphilosophy.blogspot.co.uk/

Geoff's Business
http://www.webdesignhighlands.co.uk/

Shameful lack of blogs

Well I suppose I should apologise for the severe and very shameful lack of blogs for a long time, the explanation is very simply that I tend to lose my creative drive when depression rears it's ugly head for another round. I've been up and down for a while again and it's only been very recently that i've been feeling that creative drive itching beneath the surface begging to be let out and to be heard again. This is in part thanks to watching my favourite YouTube Vlogs which i'm thinking might be another way for me to get creative in the future.

I think i'll save talking about the vlogs and why I was inspired for another time since it's currently 1.49am and I have a very early start in the morning.

Poppies for a different kind of remembrance day

I wrote and posted the following article elsewhere last year and I decided to repost it again here with a small introduction. 

Today would have been my Mum's 69th birthday and I'm just about to go out and remember her by doing some of her favourite things, not quite sure where i'm going to go yet but i'm going to go out for an adventure in my wee silver car which she used to share with my sister and wherever I end up i'm going to have a cappuccino and a disgustingly large and very naughty cake... probably a big freshly made merangue like we used to get and share whilst giggling like naughty school kids and on my way there i'm going to listen to a combination of my favourite songs that remind me of her and her favourite Abba album. 

But most importantly of all, i'll be wearing my Poppy and remembering her on this 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th year of this millenium.

Love you Mum x

Poppies for a different kind of remembrance day

by Ross Paterson on Thursday, 11 November 2010 at 01:04

Today is the 11th day of the 11th month and whilst many people remember those lost in battles fighting for our country i remember someone else, someone much more important - to me anyway.

Today would have been my Mum's 68th birthday, and poppies will forever be hers in my eyes. She might not have fought in fields with weapons, but she was the strongest woman i ever had the privilage of knowing and she didn't win her last fight.

Cancer is a cruel and heartless bitch, a scourge on the world and i have lost several family members to it now, none more painful than the loss of my Mum. Taken from me long before her time, just like all those poor young men forced into war to defend our country. I thank them for what they did for our country and I do not mean any dishonour to them when i say this but i shall not be wearing my poppy for them, i wear it for her.

My Mum was a kind, caring woman - not an ounce of selfishness in her body. and the number of people that came to pay their respects at the funeral certainly proved that, there wasn't an empty seat in the church as far as i remember and there were still others that sent cards from over seas who couldn't make it. Hundreds of people were that touched by her life and thought so highly of her. We had a collection for Macmillan Cancer Support that day and we raised more than £800 in her honour! To this very day i am still in awe of how loved she was and i can only hope that when its my time i'll have made even half as much of an impact on the people i encounter along the way as she did.

She did so much for me and for that i will always be eternally grateful, but its some of the smallest simplest things that i miss most of all and i would like to share some of those with you now, like the way she would wake me up singing one of her songs always in the most cheerful of moods. Most parents probably spent many a day yelling at their teenage/student kids to get out of bed and stop being lazy, mine always started my day by making me smile.

The way she repeatedly inflicted  her Abba tapes on me in the car on near constant repeat when i was little to the point where i knew the words and exact running order to each one off by heart... and probably still do! when we got a new car with a cd player instead of a tape player she missed her tapes that much that i bought her an Abba greatest hits cd to cheer her up and resigned myself to the fact that i would never be free of the damn songs but at least she would be happy! LOL

The way she bribed me to go swimming with the promise of a blue slush puppie and then how i stopped caring about the slush puppie cause i just loved going swimming with her - and also the discovery of how much fun jacuzzis were - eventually not a lot of time was spent swimming, Mum trained me well at an early age in the arts of relaxation LOL

My Mum was my best friend, not everyone is that lucky in life thats why i take great pride in remembering her life today and why I will always remember her on this day. Remembrance day may have been designed for a completely different purpose, but i don't think any of those soldiers would have minded sharing their day with such a remarkably spectacular woman.

Isabel Paterson I remember you now and forever, Happy Birthday Mum x

In memoriam, 9/11 - my thoughts and memories

I wasn't in New York City 10 years ago, but I remember where I was that day and remember watching the second plane fly into the second tower live on the news, watching terrified people jumping to their deaths from the towers live on the television with my heart in my mouth and tears in my eyes. I didn't know my American friends as well as I do today, but just knowing that they might be in danger terrified me. I had grown up dreaming of the things I would do in that city one day, the people I might meet and suddenly the most magical city I had dreamed about was suffering so much and so horrifically and my heart was breaking. Then I found out my cousin and his wife were in the states and had been due to fly to New York that day and nobody knew any more details than that. That was when everything suddenly got so much more real for me, I had already been crying for all those poor people but now a close family member and his wonderful wife were over there somewhere in the midst of all that horror and we didn't know if they were safe or not. Thankfully it was only a few hours before we got a phone call from my cousin to tell us that he was still in Washington and that he was safe. The relief didn't last very long though, my heart was still breaking for all the others involved and I remember wishing there was something I could do and that I could help somehow and feeling so insignificant and helpless because I couldn't.

3 years later I stood at Ground Zero and cried.

I read the names on the memorial that stood at the time, I paid my respects to each and every one of them and with great sadness I found people who shared my name and whilst any relation between us would most likely be hugely removed by time, they still felt strangely like lost family as they had to have gained their family name from somewhere in the past as did my family. Unfortunately I do not remember their full names or how many there were on the list, but I do remember them regardless as I remember everyone on that list regardless of whether I can speak their name or not.

I still remember the way I felt standing at Ground Zero, it was a place full of overwhelming sadness and pain and every second I was there I had tears rolling down my face as did almost every other person I saw near me. Occasionally you would catch someone else's eye as you looked around and in that brief moment there was a brief glimpse of hope in that other persons eyes and presumably in my own as seen by them, just knowing that we were both remembering and honouring those who were gone and that the world still had people who cared. I had lost relatives and family friends at this point in my life but I hadn't truly lost someone yet, it would still be another 3 months until my Mum would be diagnosed with cancer and another 2 years before I lost her, and 3 years until I lost my Dad – so I didn't truly know how the families of the people on that list felt, but now, 10 years later I sit here at home watching the memorial ceremony in tears once again and now whilst I still won't ever know the pain those people felt and still feel – I know how much they miss their loved ones and my heart is with each and every one of them on this day.

Today a new memorial opened, filled with both peace and sadness. Life once again has come to that part of New York, tree's have been planted and gardens will grow. Water runs and at night lights will shine so that darkness never again falls on those who have been lost, names carved into bronze will shine with light from within and they will never be forgotten. No longer will that site be empty or fenced off, those who were lost and never recovered finally have a memorial, a resting place of sorts, a place which will grow into something beautiful and full of life in years to come where friends and family and even complete strangers can sit and remember them and help them live on in their memories.

For all those who lost their lives on that day or because of it, may your spirits soar 

For all those who lost someone dear, may you find peace and comfort