A while ago, part of the YouTube community made a bunch of videos directed at their younger selves: giving them advice about life, telling them what to watch out for, generally being quite sweet and nostalgic. They were a nice series of videos, and I was tempted to make one myself, but I figured that if I was going to talk to any version of myself, talking to the past wouldn’t really amount to much. If I talked to a future self though, and then watched that video 10 or so years later, I really would be able to talk to my future self! The idea really excited me, watching old videos of yourself is always really interesting, so a video based on that idea could potentially be quite fun, and very meta. Naturally, as I do quite a lot, I sat on the idea, eventually forgot about it, and the video never got made. Till today.

My favourite thing about this video is, very easily, John Green’s cameo. If you don’t know John, he’s a New York Times best selling authour, a video blogger (sharing the VlogBrothers channel with his brother Hank Green) and an all round nice guy. He’s was in the UK for a couple of days, and so popped round to the flat one morning to say hi to me and Alex -- of course, while he was here, I had to exploit his presence and shove him in a video of mine. He did exactly the same thing to me and Alex though, so we’re even! He also was the first person to Vlog in front of The Wall Of Stuff 2.0, so he officially has the wall’s virginity. That’s a fun fact right there.

John did a couple of events while he was over here, one of which being a kind of Book Reading/Gig hybrid, with him reading some of his work, and the other Sons Of Admirals playing some tunes. I just wanted to put out a quick apology to anyone that attended this event on Saturday thinking I was going to be at it -- very early on in the planning stages I thought I would be able to play at it, but other commitments meant that I wouldn’t have the time to rehearse. It’s really not very nice to have to say no to doing fun things, and I felt really bad about not being able to be there. I only have a finite amount of time, and I can assure you that if I miss out in something awesome, it’s only because I’m spending my time trying to do something just as, if not more awesome :) I heard the gig went brilliantly though, so if you were there, I’m very jealous.

Have a nice rest of your week everyone, time to leave this video alone for ten whole years!

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Exactly two years and three days ago today, I uploaded my first ever Trock (Time Lord Rock) song: Blink, which I wrote for the “songs about doctor who” project/band that I share with a few of my friends called Chameleon Circuit. It’s taken a whole year for the Trock urge to rush back over me, but now that it’s back, I’m loving it. Needless to say, if I can keep up the song writing momentum, a brand spanking new Chameleon Circuit album should be on it’s way soon! Well, soon-ish.

Seeing as I decided to upload this song as soon as I had finished writing it, I had to learn it pretty damn fast, which isn’t that easy for a song with, well, you’ve heard it now -- I packed a fair few lyrics into this one! And if you listen closely, you’ll notice that there isn’t a single part of the song that repeats exactly … I spent all of yesterday trying to record it and failed miserably. It’s fortunate that I managed to nail the recording today, if I’d failed again, I probably would have taken this song to the grave as a result of hating it so much. I already hate it a little bit.

On a non-Trock note, It may have come to your attention that that The Wall Of Stuff 2.0 isn’t up yet: it will be soon. I’ve just been quite busy recently, got a lot of projects on the go that you’ll find out about soon, and sticking things on my wall hasn’t been top of my to-do list. I have, however, just realised that I have a bit of free time this evening, so with any luck it’ll be up by tonight, or at least by the time my next video goes up. Excitement!

Me & My Fez

Oh, and by the way, that Fez? Made it myself out of some printer paper and some red tissue paper, stuck together with sellotape. Took me a fair few hours to make, all for a seven second joke at the end of the video, after the outro, so most people might not even bother to watch it. So worth it. So so so worth it. I hope this shows you how dedicated I am to you all! Though really, when you can make a Fez and call it “work” you’re in a pretty good place. I’m very thankful. Especially because I now have a Fez. I wear a Fez now. Fezzes are cool.

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I shot this video on the 25th of July (so just a day shy of being able to submit it to the Life In A Day project, such is life) which means that time has passed since I made the video, six days to be exact. Six days I’ve been living in London. Six whole days! By tomorrow it’ll have been a whole week! Whoa man, this being independent thing is crazy. I’m still not completely moved yet, I’m heading back to Bath on Sunday to pick up the last of my things, and then that’ll be that. I’ll be all moved out and stuff. Lordy.

I should mention, although The Wall Of Stuff 1 is no more, I will be making a second wall right here in my new London based bedroom, with all of the classics that you know and love from the last wall (minus the ones that got destroyed when I tried to take them off) and a bunch of new things too. “The Wall Of Stuff 2.0″ is the tentative title, though I’m also considering “The Wall Of More Stuff” or “It’s Just A Wall, Stop Caring So Much About What To Call It, Charlie”.

My Flat + My Flatmate :0

If you’ve already been following the video progress of my flatmate, the esteemed YouTube weblebrity known as Nerimon (I just call him Alex) then you know what our place looks like already. For the uninitiated though, see that picture at the left? That’s what our flat looks like. Just like any boring, normal flat really. But it’s quite nice, and we like it a lot. It’s lovely living with Alex too, we spark off each other when it comes to creative stuff, which makes getting on with our jobs much easier, and he’s just generally just very nice to be around.

Though I may have moved, I am still the same Charlie, and my plans to dedicate as much of my time to videos as possible have not wavered. If anything, this move should lead to me being more driven, because now I have to earn money to pay for food and rent and stuff. I’m very excited, it’s all go from this point onwards :)

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Seriously, almost three whole weeks without making a video, Charlie? Since the start of this year I’ve been doing my utmost to post a video every single week, there have been a few weeks where I’ve lapsed, but never three in a row like this. When you start getting emails from people asking if you’ve died, you know it’s been too long. When your FRIENDS start getting emails asking why I haven’t made a video, you really know it’s been too long. Still, technically I’ve just uploaded 12 new videos (including all of those that go into make an episode of Truth Or Fail) so I hope that makes up for it!

Some of you might recall this video from four months ago, which I made while I was actually in San Fransisco, in the middle of my visit to the Pixar studios. In the video, I talked about how I had interviewed Lee Unkrich, the director of Toy Story 3, in song -- the more observant among you will notice that the song didn’t make the final cut in the video. As the months passed, my ideas for the video changed a lot from what I had originally envisioned before going to Pixar, and when the time came to make the video, the song just didn’t quite fit with what I wanted to do.

However, if I can find the time then I might always upload the song, out of context, up here onto the website. That is if there’s an interest for it. Also, there’s a lot of extra footage that I got with Lee when I interviewed him (which happened just recently actually, I wanted some more footage to beef up my video and, seeing as he was in London promoting Toy Story 3, he managed to find some time for me) so I might upload a longer version of that interview up here too. Hopefully I’ll manage to find the time to put those videos together!

Thanks, as always, for your continued support. It seems silly for me to try and “make it!” in the world of television or whatever, not that I won’t consider those opportunities if they come along, but in the mean time I really want to direct my attention to what I love to do. I’ll do all I can to make the best videos I can, and I hope you’ll like them! :)

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Photo from LearningDSLRVideo.com

So, VidCon is a thing that has happened. Never heard of VidCon? Well, it was only the biggest and baddest online video conference/gathering that there ever was, and you missed it! Gutted. I gave a few talks, played a few songs, made some new friends, gave a lot of hugs, dived into a few ball pits, and took my pants off. Yes, I took my pants off on stage, and yes, I’m still completely teetotal. I’m still not quite sure how I did it.

If, however, you had already heard of VidCon and didn’t need it explained to you, apologies for that last paragraph. Massive respect goes to Hank Green (the main organiser) and all of the team that worked on the conference for managing to pull everything together so well. Sure, there was room for improvement, but seeing as it was Hank’s first go I think he did a brilliant job, and I can’t wait to see how he can build upon it next year … if there is a next year. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed, and I’ll be sure to swoop up the opportunity if he chooses to invite me again.

The most overwhelming thing about the conference though was how many people seemed to know who I was. I did my absolute best to meet as many people as possible when I had spare time to do so, and fortunately everybody that I met was very lovely, friendly, and not creepy in the slightest. There were, however, a few times when I’d head down to the lobby to meet up with a friend for lunch, bump into someone who wanted a photo, and then look behind them a few minutes later to find that a “meet charlieissocoollike!” line had formed all on it’s own. The moments where I had to turn people away so that I could go and get some food were incredibly hard for me to handle, I wanted to give everyone the chance to meet me, but I just didn’t have the time. If you were at VidCon and didn’t get the chance to say hey, I can’t apologize enough :(

Another Thing

As well as VidCon being as thing that has happened, another thing has happened that I want to inform you all about, and that’s FirstTV. I’m extremely lucky to be in the position that I am, I’m thankful for it every day, to live in a world where opportunities get handed to me as often as I do. As a 19 year old without much life direction, when I was approached to audition for a job in traditional presenting I thought “hey, sure, I’ll give it a go”. After all, I wasn’t ever going to know if traditional presenting was the job for me unless I tried it out, so when the producer of FirstTV was kind enough to give me a shot, and a job, I jumped in.

Image from FirstTV

However, it was only after the first day of shooting that I started to feel out of place. Reading from a script didn’t feel right, no matter how much I tried to make it my own, it just wasn’t the show for me … so I decided to quit. Everybody that works on the show is downright lovely, and we all became friends very quickly, which just made my decision to leave all the harder. But hey, when something doesn’t feel right, logically or emotionally, all you can do is use your best judgment.

I don’t regret my decision to join the FirstTV team, albeit very briefly, because without that experience I wouldn’t ever have known that traditional presenting just wasn’t for me. For the FirstTV team of the future, I wish you all the best of luck, and for anyone that’s interested, you’ll be able to find the next four episodes, appearing one by one (all of my stuff has already been shot) on their website: firsttv.tv – I actually break a world record in the first episode, surely it’s worth watching just for that :)

Thanks again to the FirstTV team for the opportunity, to Emma, Nick and Fran for being such lovely ladies and co-presenters, and to you, for your continued support while I try and work out what the hell I want to do with my life. I’ll know at least by the time I reach 30, I promise. <3

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First things first: yes, I am very aware of the fact that a gorilla is an ape, not a monkey. I couldn’t find a monkey that would agree to be in the video, so I had to compromise. Still, the gorilla we did get for the video really is both an excellent actor and singer, we were very lucky to find him. He brought in a banoffee pie for the crew on the last day of shooting too. What a swell guy.

Big credit goes to my Mum for the “parody Duet With Myself, sing with a monkey!” idea. It’s not really a parody per-say, but it’s definitely inspired by the duet video, and no doubt you all spotted the oh-so-subtle reference on my T-Shirt. I did try and put together a video for this song ages ago, I wanted another one like Holding On and A Song About Love, something split screen with a bunch of jump cuts, but it just wasn’t working out. This is miles better than what I had before, and much weirder too, which I adore. It’s good to do something a bit odd every now and again.

I actually recorded this song in the studio that I’m recording my album in, I just took some of the instruments out for the purposes of the video, but it’s more or less the album version. An update on my album by the way: I’m expecting to have all of the recording done by the end of the month, then we’ll just need to mix it, and then a month after that it’ll be out! Still no definite release date yet, but one is imminent.

Next stop: LA! Will I be seeing any of you guys at VidCon? :)

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Twilight! Oh lord, I do hope I never have to talk about this again. I have to say, after reading what was really just a very short chapter of the book, my respect for Alex has increased tenfold. The guy has read 15 whole chapters of Twilight, and I could hardly even manage one. He’s a hero and I don’t care who knows it.

Yeah, sure, I’m still not really in a position where I have the right to bash Twilight, one chapter is hardly enough to base my opinion of the entire book on. I will say however, that if you do ever decide to read Twilight, be sure to skip chapter 16. It might burn your eyes. By the way, to keep my video under 4 minutes long, I had to cut out a bit where Bella pretended like she wasn’t scared of Edward, and so Edward pounced on her like he was going to bite her head off, just to try and prove that he is, actually, quite scary. That’s true love right there.

As mentioned at the beginning and end of the video, this challenge involves swapping video blogs with Alex! If you’d like to watch a lovely montage of some colourful elephants in London, you’re in luck! Click here to watch his challenge.

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After the gross amount of planning, effort and stress that went into making last week’s video, this week I decided to balance things out with a good old fashioned vlog. I sat down, ready to shoot a video about a completely different topic that I had been planning all week, and found myself throwing that idea out of the window in favour of, well, this. A quick, malformed ramble about video games, with no planning at all. My sincerest apologies go out to you all.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 is by far my favourite game on the Wii, by the way. Galaxy 1 was brilliant, and definitely my favourite game on the system for the longest time, but Galaxy 2 exceeds it on all fronts: more levels, more refined, more of a challenge (which was a big thing for me, because Galaxy 1 was a bit easy) and overall much more fun. If you only buy one Wii game this year, buy this one -- and I don’t just mean that as a figure of speech, it’s probably the only Wii game I’m going to buy this year.

Speaking of video games, E3! That’s a thing that has happened. Some of you might remember last year’s E3, which I was lucky enough to attend and vlog about using one of my sub channels, CharlieAtE3. I was invited to attend E3 again this year but couldn’t make it unfortunately, the glamorous video blogger lifestyle that I lead ended up getting in the way. Sons Of Admirals, solo album recording, and trips up to London for meetings with exciting prospects, all to be revealed very soon. Really gutted I couldn’t go, I would have loved to have tried out the new Zelda.

Bloody hell, apparently I’m in a rambling mood at the moment. Time to relieve you. Adios!

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Click Here if you’d like to download this song from iTunes!

Well, I’ve definitely been sitting on this one for a while. What you will find in the video above, dear reader, is the first (and currently only) song by my new band, Sons Of Admirals! Which is, as mentioned, the result of Alex Day, Tom Milsom, Eddplant and I all merging to try and make music together, and hopefully create something that we could never have managed as individuals.

I’m really excited to hear what you all think of this, especially the music video, which is my first attempt at doing something that is hopefully a bit more professional than my usual videos. Special thanks go to Tom Bacon, for filming and helping me edit and colour the music video, and to Emma and Gryff for being in the video as our very loveable love interests. All of those people stepped in at the very last minute, for no money. Those are some serious friends <3

To point something out: Sons Of Admirals isn’t really a band in the traditional sense, and this definitely doesn’t mean that any of us are going to be giving up on our solo music, or Chameleon Circuit. Far from it actually, if all goes to plan, we’re hoping to learn each others songs and tour with both SOA and solo material. Also, it’s also not like one of us is the “guitarist” or the “lead singer” or anything, heck, as well as singing on this track I also directed the music video. That’s not the kind of thing you’ll get with a traditional band! We’re something new, and we’re very excited about it :)

Anyway, I hope you like the song! And as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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