Friday 20 March 2009

The final blog post.

Hey guys!

Over the past couple of days I've been setting up a new personal website for myself, along with the help of Alan; and I'm moving my blog over there now, so I won't be updating here anymore.

The new blog will be at http://johnnydurham.com.

I've been on blogger since 2007 and have posted over 100 entries here in that time, so it'll be a shame to move on. I'll obviously not delete this blog, as it'll be nice to have all my old posts here to look back on in the future, but I won't be posting any new stuff here.

Google reader tells me I have 310 subscribers, in addition to the 141 blogger followers I have here, so there's been a fair number of people out there who have been reading. That makes me very happy, so thank you to everyone who's out there and is interested in reading my ramblings.

I'd love for you to continue reading over at the new site, so if you'd like to do that, you can click here to add me to your reader: http://johnnydurham.com/feed/. Or if you don't have a reader, you could always just bookmark johnnydurham.com and check back occasionally for updates :)

I'd quickly like to thank everyone who contacted me about helping set up the new website. I got a lot more emails than I expected, and I didn't manage to reply individually to everyone who offered their help, and I'm really sorry about that.. so let me just say here A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who got in touch with me. I wish I could have replied to you all individually.

Finally, thanks once again for reading everything I've posted here, and for leaving comments on my posts. It's been great having your support :)

Hopefully see you over at the new blog!

Much love <3

Wednesday 11 March 2009

upcoming plans. (hi alan!)

I have lots of exciting things happening over the next few days.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting the train down to London. I'm meeting up with James at about 2.30ish, and hanging out with him during the afternoon. I love hanging out around London, there's always lots of fun stuff to do. Hopefully we'll go to the apple store so I can do my first ever dailybooth collab picture xD. So be sure to follow me here if you're not following me already. You wouldn't want to miss out on seeing me AND james in the same picture now, would you? :P [/shameless dailybooth plug]

Then later on in the afternoon, I'll be meeting up with Becky and Charlie. Which will probably involve morefuntimeshangingroundlondon. Oh, also we'll be meeting up with Dave and Ian at some point before 00.15am.

I can book into my hotel room any time from 3pm on the Thursday, so I'll do that at some point in the afternoon so I don't have to carry my bag around London all day.

Then, at 00.15am on Friday, we're going to see Watchmen at the IMAX! I'm super excited for that. I've never been to an imax cinema before. I really wanted to read the graphic novel before seeing the film, but that's not going to happen, so hopefully I'll understand the film. James told me it helps if you know the story before seeing the film, but meh. I'm sure I'll enjoy it regardless. I'm a bit scared I'll fall asleep during the film though, as we're going to see it so late, and I'll have had an early start on the Thursday.

I can see it being about 4am before we all get back to the hotel, and we have a meeting with the RNLI "mystery package" people at 10am.. so I'm not going to get much sleep =/

The meeting with the RNLI will probably go on until about 4ish on Friday. Tom will be there for that so I'm super excited to see him again :) It's been almost a month since I last saw him.. bad times. I'm not sure who else from youtube will be at the RNLI meeting, but it'll be nice to see anyone who turns up. Oh yes! I forgot Alex was coming back from glasgow in time for the meeting, so I will get to see his lovely face again too ^_^

Next, after the meeting with the RNLI, I'll be getting the train back to Dave's house, and will be staying there on Friday night, as we're going to be doing an epic blogTV show on Saturday to help raise money for Red Nose Day (which is a bi-annual fundraising day in the UK which is all about 'doing something funny for money'). I'll probably have to leave the blogTV show early to get back to Sheffield though, as Tom will already be there waiting for me ^_^ Hopefully Conor will still be in Sheffield by the time I get back so I can see him too :)

Sooo yeah! The next few days will be super fun! Seeing lots of people I love, and doing lots of interesting things!

<3

Wednesday 4 March 2009

website design.

hey blog buddies!

i registered the domain johnnydurham.com nearly a year ago. the page you see if you go there now was supposed to be a temp page while i found some way of building a decent site. i planned on learning some web design skills myself, but i never got passed the basics which allowed me to create that pitiful excuse for a website that you see at the moment.

so basically, i was wondering if anyone could help me with re-designing my website?

ideally i'd like it to something like buck's website, or davedays, or dk1.

a banner at the top, links below the banner to various different pages, and then blog entries in the main section of the website.

it's quite possible you can build a website like those with wordpress? (or something similar?) but yeah, i have no idea how to do that.

if you've read my blog before you'll know that i'm a hard-up student with no money, so i can't really afford to pay anyone to design a website for me, so if there's any generous people out there who just enjoy website design and wouldn't mind doing it for free that would be amazing xD

it's not going to happen is it?! haha

email me if you're interested though :)

johnnydurham@gmail.com

Sunday 1 March 2009

march?!

I can't believe it's the 1st of March already.
Are we seriously 1/6th of the way through 2009?!
It's going to be 2010 before I know it.
And 2010 sounds so futuristic.
It feels like we should all be flying around everywhere in little spaceships, or be living underwater or something.
Crazy.

I was looking at my bank statement today and realised that I made more from "online endeavours" last month than in any other single month in the past, which was nice. I actually made more than what I would have made working 20 hours per week at a part time job somewhere, which feels pretty damn great.

Of course, I'm still in masses of debt, and struggle to support myself, but meh...

University is going okay at the moment. I handed in an individual report on communication skills, and a group report on catering processes on friday, and I was pleased with how both reports turned out :)

In other news, I'm traveling down to London on the 12th of March to meet up with the RNLI people again. I absolutely love going to London. It's one of my favourite places to be. So I'm looking forward to that trip.

Aaaand I think that's all I wish to say in the blog post.

Much love <3


oh oh, and I'm up to number 6 most followed on dailybooth now! I hate how much I care about that site, but I'm seriously in love with it at the moment xD

people have been asking me how you know who is most followed... go here and the first 10 people that show up are the top 10 most followed... or click the "popular" tab and you can scroll through the list to see more than just the top 10.

Thursday 26 February 2009

dailybooth

so, like, there's this new website you probably won't have heard of.
it's called dailybooth.com.

and there appears to be a battle between everyone to see who can get the most followers.
i guess it was bound to happen.
we're youtubers. we like attention. our egos need to be fed!

and guess what?!
i just hit 500 followers!!!
which moves me up to the 8th most followed person on the entire site.
my profile can be found here:
dailybooth.com/JohnnyDurham
you should sign up and follow me too! :P


more seriously though...
dailybooth looks like it's going to be a pretty cool site. i like the idea of being able to chronicle my life. to be able to look back a year from now and see what I looked like. after all, a lot can change in a year. i'll probably be living in a completely different place. I might have a new hair style? a beard? an third eye? who knows. so it'll be pretty neat being able to look back and see what I looked like now.

I also like the fact you can leave picture comments to interact with each other. It feels a lot more personal than text comments on youtube or twitter etc. I feel like I'm just repeating what alex said in his latest nerdfighterlike video, so i'll stop talking now.

but yeah, dailybooth seems pretty cool ^_^

and i'd definitely recommend checking it out if you haven't done already.

here is my latest picture from dailybooth (just for the sake of having a picture in this blog post xD)

Sunday 22 February 2009

weekend / math the band

thank you to everyone who commented on either of my last two blog posts.
it was cool getting feedback on my t-shirt designs, and loads of you left nice comments on the blog I wrote at the end of last week when I was feeling a bit miserable, and that cheered me up, so thank you.

i had a really good weekend, so i'm going to blog about it now. it'll probably be really boring to read, so if you're the type of person who gets bored easily, then stop reading now and go and watch a cute kitten fall asleep or something.

for those of you left reading, this is what i did this weekend...

i got home on friday afternoon, and had my hair cut.
then i went out on friday night with my friends, wid and morgan.
it was really cool seeing them both again -- just chatting and catching up.
we went to some different pubs than we'd usually go out to, and sampled a few real ales which was fun :)
towards the end of the night we were in loveshack (which is pretty much the only club durham has to offer) and we were all just dancing on the dance floor. i go to the toilet, and when i come back they're both dancing separately with two girls. i would have just gone to the bar to get a drink, but by this time of the night, i had no money left, and i didn't want to just stand around doing nothing, so i awkwardly danced sort-of-near-them-but-not, and hoped that no one on the crowded dance floor would notice i was just dancing by myself. i soon got bored of doing this though, and i saw a pretty girl by the edge of the dance floor, so i went over to say hello. i obviously wasn't looking for anything to happen with her, but i was bored and had nothing to do to pass the time until my friends were ready to leave and get a taxi home, so thought i might as well just go strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. i resisted the urge to use one of my chat up lines on her, although I kind of wanted to, just to see what the reaction would have been xD. I was pretty drunk though, and think I remember telling her that she had the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen. god bless alcohol and its ability to lower your inhibitions and say whatever pops in to your mind. anyways, we chatted and flirted for a bit, but nothing happened. my friends and I then left, got some pizza and went home. good night all in all.

i got up fairly early on saturday, and went through to newcastle to meet a couple of my other friends, kelly and tom.

tom was working until 4, so kelly and i went to get some food at this quaint little sandwich cafe called blakes. i was hungover and felt a bit woozy, so only ate half my sandwich, even though it was rather nice. i also drank a can of orange fanta. i hadn't had fanta in aaages, so that was lovely.

we then met tom and went to northumbria's student union for a drink.

kelly and tom are two of my favourite people of all time, so it was great seeing both of them again, and catching up :)

on saturday evening I went out for a meal with my mum, step-dad, sister, and two step-siblings to celebrate my mum's birthday. we went to the newton grange (which is the pub/restaurant i used to work at a few months ago). we ate nice food, and I got to see a few of my old work colleagues, as well as getting to spend a bit of time with my family, so it went really well :D

then today, sunday, i've been to see my grandparents, my mum took me shopping to stock me up with groceries for the next few weeks, and then i drove back to sheffield.

so yeah.. it's been an awesome weekend seeing all my family and friends again.

i miss being at home in durham around everyone i love.

it's also been cool having a couple of days away from the internet again. the past few weeks i've been feeling more and more compelled to distance myself from the internet world. i think i'll probably talk more about that in a future blog post though. (nb: the irony of posting an online blog about distancing oneself from the internet isn't lost on me, just incase you think i'm crazy xD)

oh oh.. before i leave, i should send you all to listen to some amazing music!

my math the band banned the math CD arrived in the post along with a math the band tee shirt while i was away this weekend! wooooop! :D

some of you will have heard of math the band, and others won't.. either way, go now and listen to them on myspace! guarenteed to make you feel good :)

Wednesday 18 February 2009

life sucks.

i'm feeling terribly miserable thisevening.
so i'm going to have a little moan here to make myself feel better.

i hate being in sheffield. it's horrible. it's lonely. it's boring.

i'm so thankful i've been able to take a few trips away during the past couple of months. going down to london 2 or 3 times. flying across to ireland. going to derby. it's kept me sane.

there are things i do like about being in sheffield. namely, the awesome flat i get to live in. but other than that, i completely hate being here.

i'm stuck doing a course i have absolutely no motivation to do. and it's costing me a fortune to be here. my life savings have all-but-gone after this academic year, not to mention the fact i'm further in debt with my student loan. i must have about £15,000 worth of debt now. i kind of feel like i'm failing at life. suprisingly, it's not a nice feeling.

people try to console me by stating that i only have a few more months here until i graduate.. but that doesn't make it any easier to motivate myself to do the work which i despise doing. it is a shame though, as I put in so much work during the first 2 years of the course, but on a day-to-day basis i struggle to see the big picture.

one of the worst things though.. is that even after i've graduated (assuming i actually do graduate) i have no idea what i am going to do with my life. perhaps that is something i should get excited about. i can do whatever i want with my life. but it doesn't excite me, it scares me.

i guess for now, i just have to take each day as it comes.. starting tomorrow.

- collect the package which is waiting for me at the post office
- post tom his cd back
- send receipts off to hat trick
- buy birthday card/presents for my mum
- possibly make a new video?
- possibly do some uni work?
- explore dailybooth xD
- drive home to durham for the weekend

tom just sent me a track from his upcoming album while i was writing this blog which has actually cheered me up immensely. i still have no idea what i'm doing with my life, but at least now i'm failing at life whilst listening to a pretty boy making pretty music :)

think i'll end this blog post now. ciao.