The Best Job Ever

I found out just today that people can ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY OUT OF YOUTUBE VIDEOS! I think to myself: "How cool is that?!" I mean, doing something really fun, where hundreds of thousands of people love you and your material, and actually being paid for it! Now don't tell me that is pretty awesome. It's like being a rockstar I guess. But without the flying TVs. Or the pools displaced by cars. Or the death by vomit. Ew. But anyway, how cool would that be? Granted, you'd have to have quite a lot of subscribers and views to make any serious amount of money, and they only give money to people who are REALLY good at what they do, and I have none of the above, but still, the idea of it is actually starting to make me go crazy. Imagine what I could do even with just an extra £50 a month? Wow. But I can't think about it, because I'll go even crazier and my head will implode. I just have to face the fact that it's never gonna happen. Boo. Shame it combines my three favourite things: 1) Having fun 2) working with technology for a reason and 3) Making people happy. Awesome!

Ridiculous dreams and ambitions aside, I'm feeling ill again today. No missed school, but I'm actually feeling bad rather than having a nasty cough. More boo. I really am quite an ill person. I don't want sympathy and I'm not being a puff, but seriously. In the summer it's hayfever and bad knees/back. In the winter? An everlasting cold. Well, not everlasting, but lasts till the end of winter, by which time the hayfever kicks back in. It's all fun fun fun isn't it?!

The reason for the rather pointless post is because I actually wanted to do something creative-ish with my time for once. For the second time of the week. How odd. See ya people.

I Have Illness

Wow it's been a long time since I've done this. I know I say every time that I'll update it more often, but I never keep to that, so I'm just gonna stop saying it. I'm only doing this because I'm bored and have nothing else to do without annoying people with my croopy (yes, not creepy) cough!
This is also a revelation to me, because I've just downloaded an app that lets me update this blog directly from my iPhone. So who knows? Maybe it will be updated more often. Don't hold your breath. Because it really is pretty hard to type on this damn iPhone keyboard.
So seeing as I'm doing nothing I might as well write about stuff that I do when I have nothing to do. Does that even make sense? Can you see my logic? No? Neither can I, but I digest...
I'm gonna write about what i'm doing right now, which is, sadly, gaming. Now recently I bought Halo 3: ODST, but I'm not playing on that, because, typically for a Halo game, it was all hype and not much actual gameplay. It pains me to say it, but I just see it as a mahoosive waste of time. I mean the campaign's short, and not very good anyway, so it could have just come out as a DLC pack (DownLoaded Content, for all you "n00bs" out there), because it is so short I don't see why they should force me to pay £35 for it. Ironically, the best part of the game was the extra disc that contained all of the Halo 3 multiplayer maps, which replaced the need to buy them all seperately. Brilliant gaming.
Anyways I'm now playing on Call of Duty 4, in preparation for Modern Warfare 2. Man that's gonna be a good game. I hope it doesn't fall into the trap of having too much hype though. Because there's a hell of a lot of hype already. Dammit, now I'm worried! About a game that hasn't even come out yet. Jeez, I better get a life soon. I've had this game on preorder since August, so it better be frickin good!
That's enough from me and my sad, gaming ways, I just needed to do something creative! Go back to your lives, people, cos I'm going back to mine!
Peace out.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Laziness=Happiness

Now if you thought that my break back in May time was a big one, this was even bigger! I truly am sorry for neglecting you! Well, all three of you that actually read my blog that is! I don't know has happened really, I've just not remembered to update it! I know I say that I will do it more often every time and I don't, and that's just down to my sheer lack of organisation.

ANYWAY, about my summer. To be brutally honest, it has been quite uneventful, as you may imagine! I don't know whether this is down to the god-awful weather (it has been pretty bad, but that's a different story!) or my utter laziness. It's probably a bit of both, but either way once again, like every summer, I wish I'd done more with it!

I went to see U2 on Friday on the 360 degree tour. You might have heard about it, but the stage was absolutely epic! I mean, it doubled the previous world record for the highest stage at a height of 164 feet! It nearly poked out of the top of Wembley stadium for Christ's sake! I'm still astounded at how big it is even now! Stage set aside, let's focus on the band. To put it in short; they weren't nearly as good as they should have been. I don't know why, I just cannot put my finger on it. Whether the sound was mixed wrongly, the stage overwhelmed them, or the venue (Wembley Stadium) was just too big with the roof open, the fact that I couldn't see a bloody thing (I'm only 5'3 and we were on the pitch standing), I don't know. All I can say is that something was missing. And I was extremely disappointed, as I had very high hopes of them, especially as my Dad (who has seen them countless times) hyped them up to be awesome, and even "the best live band in the world". Hmmm...

Moving on, the Friday before that (and the Thursday) my Mum, sister and I all went up to see my Grandad in Norwich. We live in Somerset. The other side of the country. We drove back home on a Friday. In summer. Can you see where this is going? The journey was absolutely horrendous! On the way there it was 4 1/2 hours which is bad enough on a Thursday, but the way back.........6 1/2 HOURS!!! It was hell on earth! The absolute joys of English roads! Thanks holidaymakers...

Talking of holidays, this Saturday we are travelling to Sri Lanka for 2 weeks. Nice eh? It's going to be brilliant, we haven't been on a holiday as a family for 2 years, so it was long overdue! Obviously I won't be able to post ANYTHING from out there, which may slowly kill me, but in another way it'll be nice to get away. No videos, no blog posts, NO TWEETS! AAAAAARRRGGHHH!!! I'll try and survive! See ya!

Not My Idea of a Holiday!

Ahhh, the military. The home of many testosterone driven men with a passion for killing so-called "bad guys", such as the Taleban and...who else? Anyway, last Saturday I was whisked off to the rather-not-so exotic place of Penhale military camp, Cornwall. Not your idea of a summer holiday I presume, and not mine, I can tell you that for free!
Well, it wasn't too bad I guess, the only real things that I hated through to the depths of my heart were the military parts of it. For instance, waking up at 5:45 to do a rubbish sweep of the area, having the turnovers of our sheets on our beds exactly the same lengths, marching just to get some food, and all of the other stupid formalities. And don't even get me started on the military phrases..."Happy Days!" will give me nightmares for many weeks to come.
The first few days were probably the worst. I wasn't used to all this military shiz and the banter about me being one of the only Navy personnel on camp weren't much to my liking. Firing a machine gun was pretty awesome, and stalking around the sand dunes wasn't too bad either, but the weather at that point was shockingly bad. Rain, rain and more rain!
On the Tuesday night however things started to look up. We went to see Transformers 2 as a sort of break from military activities, and it was friggin' awesome! Seriously, what could be better than robots fighting, huge explosions, fast cars, spaceships and Megan Fox? The 2 1/2 hours went past in a flash, and I would quite happily go and see it again. I give it 9.5/10
The Wednesday brought adventure training day, involving sailing, kayaking, raft-building and, wait for it, volleyball! Strangely, the most enjoyable event wasn't actually involved in the adventure training at all, it was there as a time-filling exercise. Yes, you guessed it, of course it was the volleyball! Spirits were high leading into the most daunting task of the week; the 24-hour exercise. I won't go into glorious details, but the fact that we had to do 45-minute patrols, hour-long sentry duties and 3 hours' sleep basically tell you the story. Oh, and we fired blanks the next morning during ambushes :)
Anyway, I'm home now, and even more importantly, IT'S THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!!! Easily the best moment in the school calendar!
Danny out.

It's Over!

It has finally arrived: THE END OF EXAMS!!!!!! I have to admit that it went really quickly, and to be brutally honest, it was less stressful than a normal week of school. Apart from the time when you're in an actual exam...but the time in between them was longer than the exams themselves! On the Monday I got to go home at 11:00am, and on the Thursday I didn't come in until 1:00!

Even though the week was chilled I was of course focused on the important exams, the GCSEs that I was taking; Biology, Chemistry and Physics. They all went pretty well, and if you are following me on Twitter (if you even have Twitter!), you will know how they went in a little more detail. Now comes the long wait until 27th August when my results come. I would be slightly more worried, but, as my Dad says; "Don't worry about what you can no longer influence." But that still doesn't make me relaxed about my results, I want them now!

On another matter, my XBox Live is no longer working. My Dad has been trying desperately hard to get it sorted (considering it's Father's Day), but alas, the damn thing doesn't want to work. So it looks like a lot of Single Player Campaign and not much online matches for me! I can forsee a large degree of Guitar Hero (a game I never play online) playing coming up!

I downloaded iPhone 3.0 on Friday evening and it really isn't much different to the old software! Not much viewable change, but I presume that a lot has changed behind the scenes, like the programming and other geeky things. Unfortunately it seems to have buggered my data roaming that I pay a good £10 a month for, and I don't know how it could've. I'm just saying it doesn't look like a coincidence that when I installed 3.0 on the Friday evening, my data roaming didn't work on the Saturday. Technology makes me angry sometimes. Why can't they just invent things that WORK!! Is it that hard? Obviously it is.

Enough ranting and raving, I think I should go and resume my slobbing around the house, I was enjoying it before! Bye!

Stress

I've never seen myself as a stress-filled person. However, over the past few weeks that's begun to change. I have preps flying all over the place, GCSE exams looming, endless cricket endeavours to go to, and, to be quite frank, I'm fed up.
Let's start with the exams. To be honest, I honestly don't think I'm going to get a D. I don't even think I'm going to get a B. Not being arrogant, but I just don't think I will. At school we have been doing some revision and past papers, and I've turned out pretty well on those, getting A*'s across the board. But that's not the point. It's the pressure that we've been put under by the teachers (and, to a certain extent, parents), and all this is just starting to make me think; "Do I have to work as hard as you're saying to even get close to an A*?" Don't think for one minute that I think I can just cruise an A*, because I know I can't, but right at the moment I'm comfortable that I know what I need to know and that I can do well in my exams. Try telling that to my teachers or parents however, and you get a face full of: "You're just being lazy," or: "You're just being arrogant." Can't you trust me people?
Now on to the preps. After that previous rant I have hardly any energy to go on about this subject! But I do think that it is quite inconsiderate of teachers of subjects other than Science to be giving us preps due for the next day when they know damn well we are already revising our socks off - or not as the case may be :).
Cricket. Not as big an issue, because I love it. I really adore playing it, but at the moment the amount of practices is starting to get a little bit excessive. But, as I said, it's not too big a problem.
I apologise to the 2 people who probably read this blog that I haven't been posting again, but, due to the content and the tone of the post, you can probably tell why.

Long Time No See!

Let me start by saying that I'm sorry. I have deprived you of my wonderfully interesting and excitable blog for exactly four weeks now. How have you survived? Well, the wait is over, the next post is finally here!
Let me start by talking about a couple of movies I have seen over the past weeks.
Tropic Thunder was a huge disappointment. I expected it to be hilariously funny, and I had heard from various friends that it was hilariously funny, but it just wasn't! As my dad said: "It had all the right ingredients, but not the icing to finish it all off." It had great potential, but the storyline was disjointed, some of the jokes that were meant to be funny weren't, and it appeared to me that they were just trying too hard. It was funny, but not funny enough. 6/10
Angels and Demons was, on the contrary a brilliant film! Easily better than the Da Vinci Code, with a far more expansive storyline (although a little predictable at times), better special effects, more explosions (which scores bonus points with me :P), and altogether easier to watch. I still hold true to my word that I have never seen a bad Tom Hanks movie! To sum it all up, it's not often that a sequel is better than the first film, but this sure was! 8.5/10

Anyway, moving on!
School has pretty much been a nightmare so far this term, and it stands to get worse! I had an RS GCSE on the 12th May, which was horrifically fun, as you might have expected. That involved a surprisingly little revision, with surprisingly pleasing results. I haven't got my actual results, and I won't receive them until August, but I felt that I did pretty well. Continuing the trend of exams my Science modules are drawing ever closer. I can't say that I'm scared (at the moment), but the pressure is starting to tell now with teachers talking exam technique all over the shop! Now that's when you really know that you're drawing close to exam period!
Apart from exams, my organisation dropped like a stone in the past few weeks for some unknown reason, I'm definitely going to have to sort that out!
CRICKET! It has started again! I'm now settling into the routine of playing a possible 13 hours of cricket a week (or more)! Well, that's if this goddamn rain ever stops...
Playing at number 1 for the A's, which I'm pretty pleased about, and doing roughly about average. Trust me, nothing can be worse than last season!
Hopefully, fellow peoples of the interwebs, I shall start making regular blog posts again, that's if I remember! Goodbye!

Back To School

That time of term has come again. The worst part. The beginning. Dragging myself out of bed for a shower, then dragging myself downstairs for some breakfast, then dragging myself into the car and on the way to school. There is nothing worse than that feeling at the end of the last day of holidays and realising that you've completely run out of spare time, and, most of all, FUN. The feeling of dread as you suddenly realise that I'll be waking up at 6:50 for the next 6 or so weeks. Bleurgh.

On a lighter note, at least I'll be waking up fo the cricket season! Yay! My favourite sport combined with my favourite weather, SUN! And sunny it has been these past few days, so hopefully that's a sign for things to come. Big up global warming! Although we still have to wear winter uniform (I think our Headmaster hates us a bit) I still think that I can enjoy the summer weather.

Getting back to the cricket, I had my first school training session today, and, to be quite honest, it didn't go so well. My fielding was pretty much abysmal (haven't caught or thrown a cricket ball since September, thought I would just throw that one in there!), and my knee started hurting right from the word go, which is also a worrying sign. Then I moved on to batting, where I was made to look pretty bad as I fought it out with our opening bowlers while everyone else was allowed to face the other bowlers. Not that I'm saying the other bowlers are bad, it's just the opening bowlers are always a bit daunting! I could hardly hit the ball and I should have been caught out. However, this still doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, because I really did. It's great to get back into it!

OK then, that pretty much sums up my time in the past 2 days or so, so I will leave you with...nothing! Bye!

Large Break!

Hello fellow peoples of the Internet! This is my first post for a week and a half, so I guess that was my first real break. You must let me explain however:

As you may know, last Friday (as in 10 April!) I travelled by coach overnight to Alpe D'Huez, a ski resort in the French Alps. 22 Hours it took us! And, to add to the long coach journey, I spent only 2 hours of it sleeping! It really wasn't the greatest journey ever know to man, or the most comfortable to be honest! But it was all worth it, and I ended up having a fabulous time as expected. Although the snow wasn't too great most days (to say the least), I found that my first time skiing in the advanced group to be challenging yet fun. Plus I had some great friends with me, so even when I wasn't skiing I was having a whale of a time with my mates, such as listening to hardcore gangsta rap! ;) 

If you want to find out a bit more about my French times, look at my twitter: twitter.com/dannyboybenson and follow me if you will!

But now I am back and I will update my blog as often as I can! I must admit I am absolutely shattered, and I'm so fatigued that I really cannot be bothered to say anything more, so goodbye!

Gamers

"So then, what is the definition of a gamer?" This is a question that I can see myself asking quite regularly in the future. The reason is because I am a gamer. But the definition of a gamer is "someone who enjoys playing video or computer games in their spare time." Now not many of my friends at school can deny being a gamer, yet some of them still do. Last time I looked, games outsold DVDs and CDs by a huge amount, so surely there is nothing wrong with it? I just think that people have the wrong idea of what a gamer really is, because they're probably as much of a gamer themselves! But what I don't understand is why they are scared to admit it? Are they worried that they wouldn't look cool or something? And anyway, who cares about what people think of you?
When I ask people what they've done over the holidays, the classic answer is: "Nothing much really, just sat around and watched TV, went on the computer and just chilled out." So these people are telling me that they have a Wii at home, but not at one point on each day in the 14 hours or so that they are awake did they touch the games console? I find that excruciatingly hard to believe.
Sure, there are people who game more than others, but if you are prepared to call someone a gamer then you have to be prepared to call yourself a gamer, because there is not one person who doesn't enjoy a bit of Wii Sports, or something along those lines. There's nothing wrong with it! We don't hurt anyone! So what's the problem?
Calling someone a gamer is obviously insinuating that they are a geek of some sort. OK, so you may not game that much anyway, but I've seen the volume of updates and apps and photos and comments of some my school friends on Facebook, and I can only draw the conclusion that they spend most of the day on it. Surely that is the same thing, spending time on something electronic? I don't mean to accuse or offend anyone, but I am getting fed up with people calling me a gamer when they're probably as guilty themselves.
OK, rant over!

Hello Again

Hello good peoples of the internet, I'm here with the difficult second day of blogging! And, to be perfectly honest, it really is hard! I mean, there is hardly anything else for me to talk about in previous days, I'm going to have to talk about what I'm doing day to day.
So, today, I did do something interesting. I went to the cinema. Now I know in my last post I talked about a movie, but this is all I have to talk about! I went to see The Boat That Rocked, and I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting much. For a start, I was born nearly 30 years after it was set and all the ideas were thought of. Which isn't a good start. It's OK if it's a war film, where you can kind of get it, but this film talks about music, and style, and thoughts, which obviously I wouldn't get!
However it somehow bypassed this, and I loved it! About the music, it was awesome. I've never heard some of it, but it still sounded brilliant.
It was also pretty funny, but something can't not be funny with actors like Nick Frost, Rhys Darby, and that Irish guy from the IT Crowd (sorry I don't know his name)!
So, all in all, it was a great film, and I'm glad that my parents dragged me to see it!

An Unexpected Surprise!

I am surprised, and weirdly unconcerned to announce that I very much enjoyed the movie Twilight! My Dad and I sat down with my sister and my Mum expecting a complete love story chick flick kind of thing, with a few vampires thrown in here and there. And that basically is what it was when I think back.

But there was something about that film that made it into something more...cool? I mean the odd comedic comment, the odd strike of irony and the odd bit of slowmotion filming make it acceptable to an audience who would usually stick there nose up and move on at even the thought of watching a film like this! And I can say that because that is exactly what I thought before we sat down to watch it.

So in future, I shall aim to not judge a book by its cover, or, in this case, a film by its genre. Once again, I'm surprised at myself for saying this, but what a cool film!

Ooops...

Due to popular demand (you know who you are!) I have something to add to my previous post. On Saturday evening my Dad and I went to see The Enemy at the O2 academy in Bristol. Bottom of the bill were Kid British, a sort of Ska, Reggae and Punk mash-up kind of thing (I'll probably be told off for not appreciating and understanding their music!). Both me and my Dad enjoyed them a lot, they were definitely a hidden gem!
Then came Twisted Wheel, who, apart from a couple of thrashy wall-of-noise songs, were also quite impressive. However neither band held a candle to the experience of The Enemy in a small club. What a fantastic atmosphere! What brilliant musicianship! What a band! And what a night out! Highlights included "We'll Live and Die In These Towns" and "You're Not Alone". Just to finish...I want to be Tom Clarke, however small he may be!

First!

Hi to anyone who has stumbled across my blog! Today is my first post and to be honest I haven't got the foggiest clue what to put here!



I'm at the halfway stage of my holidays and to be honest, I haven't really achieved that much. More than most holidays I have, but not that much! Apart from the odd bit of revision for my first GCSE Science modules in June, trampolining, cricket, Call of Duty 4 and Heroes have been my most exciting endeavours.



About the modules, I know June is a long time off but it's nice to just refresh the memory a bit, as some of the stuff involved in the exams I covered over a year ago! I'm not spending ages on it, just the odd half an hour to an hour here and there!



Something I have been doing today is getting ready for the school ski trip on Friday; clothes, skigear, etc. It's only the four of us in my year going this year, so who knows, it may be even more fun than last year! However we are going pretty late, and I'm keeping my hopes up of there being plenty of snow still out there.



The Hills came over yesterday, and I think I speak for the whole of my family when I say that it was great fun! Tara, Annalise, Oliver and I had a brilliant time playing Mario Kart (which I won of course :D ), bouncing on the trampoline and playing Guitar Hero: World Tour! Thanks to Mum, the food was exquisite.



Well there we have it, my first post over and done with! Wasn't too bad was it? Now what do I click next...