Saturday 22 December 2018

Eradication of Club Penguin

This week saw the death of Club Penguin Island, an HTML and for a short period of time only mobile successor to Club Penguin. However, these past few weeks also saw the eradication of Club Penguin as on 20 November 2018, the app was removed from the app store (both Apple and Google Play) but this week, especially Thursday, saw the nearly-complete eradication of the franchise's social media presence.
The first thing I noticed was that their Twitter account became private:
They have also unfollowed everyone they were following and their Instagram has also gone private. The website also currently being taken down and any links to the Club Penguin website now redirect to Disney's website. Their videos on YouTube (as in videos on the OFFICAL CLUB PENGUIN YOUTUBE CHANNEL) have been deleted and many fans on Twitter have announced their intention to archive the channels and re-upload the videos. It's unclear if the channels (what remains of them) will be deleted along with the privatised social media accounts but if some noticeable change happens, I will this post or do a sequel post with the tag Club Penguin.

Tuesday 18 December 2018

Viacom's sudden act of kindness upon Stephen Hillenburg's death

On 26th November 2018, Stephen Hillenburg died following a diagnosis of ALS last year and his death was announced the next day. I was informed this by my dad who came in with a news article on his tablet and -surprisingly enough- I didn't cry unlike what happened when Stephen Hawking died in March, also of ALS. I just got a bit sad but I am also puzzled at how ALS took him so quickly as usually a person with ALS dies 2 to 5 years after diagnosis. I listened to O Krusty Krab from Truth or Square as I reflected on his life as it's one of the few sad Spongebob songs that came into my head (I did listen to This grill is not a home and Gary come home as well) and got swept up in the tide of tribute via Twitter and on DeviantArt (they aren't always gaga about fetishes BTW).

I am making this post not because I forgot this blog existed for a while but because well, Viacom's heart grew the day Stephen's death was announced and ALLOWED SPONGEBOB FANS to UPLOAD clips from the show as a tribute. I say this because they would take down anything that has one of their intellectual properties in them and even eradicate the user who uploaded the content off the ace of YouTube but I guess Viacom decided to let fans upload clips of the show as a tribute so that way the fans wouldn't go at them for taking down their tributes to Stephen Hillenburg.
Oh and Nickelodeon paid tribute (of course) to Stephen via this video:
Before you ask, I was very young when I started watching Spongebob and I had the comics (Pre Bongo), 2 VHS tapes (Tide and Seek and The Seascape Caper), the first film on DVD and To Love a Patty on DVD along with a Spongebob toy where it told jokes by squeezing the hand and a least one toy from a Happy Meal.
Rest In Peace, Stephen Hillenburg (21 August 1961 - 26 November 2018)

Monday 13 August 2018

I've have noticed something with the YouTube Kids channels

YouTube Kids is supposed to be YouTube only toned down for kids but that doesn't stop disturbing cartoons from being shown on the app and these go against the YouTube Community Guidelines but yet they get away with it.
The reason I am blogging this is that I noticed that if you try to reach out to these channels, they don't comment on what they are doing as if they don't want to give their identities away or something like that. BBC News and Saberspark tried to no avail. I don't think it due to shyness because well, I don't know them but then it hit me. These channels repeat the same content as these "spokesperson twitter accounts" 
This is just one of the many examples of these "spokesperson Twitter account"
It came to me when I remembered watching this YouTuber's video about a YouTube channel called "Toys in Japan" and he said that a bot is controlling these channels and he covered this BEFORE THE ESLAGATE SCANDAL CAUGHT THE MEDIA'S ATTENTION!
Mind...
BLOWNG MATERIAL!
In fact, I only started to notice that when I saw that the videos are repeated like the spokesperson Twitter accounts!
I may be wrong but it looks like it.

Tuesday 3 July 2018

Where's the Fair Use? - Ferris Wheelhouse wiped off of the face of YouTube

Ferris Wheelhouse, known for their YouTube series The Looney Tunes Critic have been terminated from YouTube. I find out when I was looking through Facebook and not trying to look up their videos on YouTube when I saw this message:
The YouTube Channel is officially dead. They said we had used spam and or commerically deceptive content. We used neither.
I was shocked because, at the start of every single one of their videos, they said that they don't own the footage or content and said it falls under fair use but I guess the lawyers at Warner Bros. didn't care and screamed CEASE AND DESIST at them. However, they won't back down as in the posts that followed the channel's death they said they would set up multiple channels, a Dailymotion channel, and a Patreon account so if they get hit again, they can start again. They were just reviewing a Warner Bros. gave to us and Warner Bros. "got offended" and struck them 3 times! As of posting this, they have made another youtube channel and a Dailymotion account.
I'll update this with more information...
UPDATE 4 JULY 2018
 They have uploaded a video that explains their situation (It's highly unlikely this will be geoblocked because it barely contains copyrighted footage).

Thursday 26 April 2018

This is just baffling

This is just baffling me and the fact that it's official is even more baffling.
So a sequel to Chicken Run (2000) is coming in Autumn 2019 according to Aardman Animations official Twitter account and I am just left baffled and bewildered by the announcement because... WHAT IS THE PLOT GOING TO BE ABOUT? 
I wasn't like this when Toy Story 4 was announced because I wanted to see more of Bonnie playing with Woody and Buzz or when the sequel to The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists (2012) was scrapped because I felt that the ending to that was just too good for a sequel, I am just going "They escaped the farm so why do we need a sequel?"

I won't be surprised if they announce a new Wallace and Gromit along the line because although we lost Peter Sallis (voice of Wallace from 1989-2010), we have Ben Whitehead and I'm aleady used to Ben voicing Wallace instead of Peter.
Oh and someone saw it coming:


 

Sunday 25 March 2018

A Retro Mystery: Beckinsdale Fertility Operation

It has come to my attention that something was brewing in the romance of Richard Becksindale and Judy Loe and it was brought to my attention in Issue 7 of Yours Retro with this quoted statement that I highlighted gently with my Frixon highlighter:
In March 1979, Judy was due to go into hospital for an operation they hoped would help them have another child.
This is puzzling, to say the least as they had two daughters Samantha (with former spouse Margaret Bradley) and Kate before this so where did secondary infertility come in?
Kate said she wanted to be a big sister prior to her daddy's demise according to BreakingNews.ie's acticle Becksindale's family tragedy and that she was the reasion why her mother wanted more kids. What's odd is that it doesn't mention Mrs Loe having fertility problems so something's up here. Other links on Google are just legal documents that aren't related to Judy so I dived onto Wikipedia and IMBD to see if it had answers but I resurfaced empty-handed.

This is very puzzling indeed and if more on the matter surfaces, I will update this.

Woody Woodpecker (2017) - The Search For The Worst - IHE

Saturday 10 February 2018

YouTube Kids and Elsagate - an introduction

Picture this.
You're a child and you see a video, you click on it only to find out you have to wait until you're 18 to watch it and you would have to watch something similar but G rated until then. That is when you come across this:



You go "That looks ok for an under 18" so you click on it and boy are you are wrong.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some years ago, the YouTube Kids app was launched and I remember my dad said that yit would have kid stuff on it like "Peppa Pig" and "The Magic Roundabout" on it but we brushed it off as there wasn't any real kids that were in the age demographic in the family at the time that would watch YouTube Kids. Now with my godfather and his wife having thier first daughter last year, I realised that she will be first in line in the family to watch the Youtube Kids app sometime soon and that would mean she would be exposed to the nature of them.


These YouTube Kids videos are basically clickbait videos with characters doing stuff and sometimes that involves nudity, violence and anything that is against the YouTube Community Guidelines but these seem to get away with it somehow. However, they are being tracked by YouTube themselves recently but that would probably only make them stronger.  I will try and catch some to review even though they barely have any stories but I will try and decipher them.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the Parents
You can learn more about them in text form or by watching the videos below. You can also make a playlist for your kids to watch that has the "kids" content that you approve of and do adult to adult screenings on these.

 For the Kids
Be careful out there and don't talk to the friendly stranger even if he has puppies!

Thursday 8 February 2018

Dora OS by R.I.P NORBIKA9VIDEO (2014-2016)

Video: Dora OS
Uploader: R.I.P NORBIKA9VIDEO (2014-2016)

Made using: Goanimate and recorded with Screencast

Source: YouTube 
Upload date: 16 Feb 2016
Lenght: 6:20 (6 minutes and 20 seconds)
--------------------------------------------------------
Review
The video starts off with a bloodied smiley face saying that he upgraded his Windows 7 computer to Windows 10 and is going to download The X Files but the download turns out to be a trick and he is forced to download a (fake) operating system called Dora OS that was made by the Nick Jr character Dora the Explorer. When his computer boots up, he tries to change his desktop wallpaper but is restricted and is allowed after threatening Dora that he would trash the OS. He goes online where Dora translate Spanish on her site but the user goes onto The X Files website which causes him to get a BND Screen of Doom (Blue Screen of Death parody). 

After the computer restarts, the user is given inaccurate weather for Mexico (Seriously 100,000,000,000,000 with a rainy thunderstorm), tries to access sport but ignites it somehow, gets tortured by the Dora the Explorer theme song and gets trolled when he tries to play the never going to happen Half-Life 3.  This angers the user so much that he clicks on the UFO on The X Files wallpaper that has a kill option. The kill option kills Dora and Dora OS and the video ends with the user getting Windows 10 back.
---------------------------------------------
 Problem(s)
The Threatening Dora part can be unintelligible. 
-------------------------------------------
Video (Tell me in the comments if it has been removed, age-restricted or geo-blocked)