Good-Bye Blogger, Hello, Wordpress.

Hi, everyone. Just figure I'd stop in and let everyone know that as of November 2, I have officially moved this blog (all 100+ posts) from Blogger to Wordpress. Thanks to all who have followed me on this blog for the last two years and hope that you will continue to follow me, after all the blog's not ending. It's just going to be on another platform. So here is the official URL for the site:

http://blackcatloner.wordpress.com

Thanks again, everyone. It's been fun.

Blackcatloner

PS- My other blog, "A Cat A Day..." will continue to be published on Blogger. So I hope everyone will check that out in the meantime.

Mr. Hater

Well, yesterday was my three-year anniversary of the day I originally signed up for YouTube and what better way to celebrate than to upload a video in which I make fun of YouTube haters. I shot my first video in almost a month in which I put on a transparent plastic mask that I bought at Walmart that looks like someone whose face got beat up and slashed up. In a way, I saw that it was symbolic of a hater who got metaphorically beaten up after trying to leave a hater comment on a video posted by someone who is actually being creative, because that's the whole point of being a hater. After all, haters are either people who are only on the Internet to harrass people who are actually doing something or are jealous that the more creative person has more friends and subscribers than they do.

Anyway, back to the video. In the video, my new character (appropriately named "Mr. Hater") is upset that he was rebuked and blocked by a person on whose video he left a hater comment on. As a result, he looks for a video which turns out to be the infamous 2girls1cup video. And of course he takes offense, but I had to keep it PG-rated so I don't offend my younger viewers. In a way, it's a funny video with a moral: Don't be a hater. And it also symbolizes that I am not going to take crap from any hater. As Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" said after the "You talkin' to me?" scene, "Here is a man who stood up."

The Mr. Hater video marks the first video I filmed in over a month, partly because I couldn't afford batteries for the camcorder, plus I was taking a little break after the negative backlash I got from my last Black Cat Weekly video (which I had to retool) and repost. So reports of me leaving YouTube have been greatly exaggerated. Blackcatloner is not going anywhere.

Constant Whitewater

Okay, I am going to start this off by saying that I can't believe that it's October already. Wow, 2010 is now less than three months away. It's like, where did 2009 go? I missed about two months of blogging mainly because of the fact that I have so much going on in my life right now, both online as well as off.

In many ways, while I got a sudden spike of creativity as far as my YouTube career goes. In the last two months alone, I put my channel through so many changes, mainly taking down some videos that either didn't attract too many comments or videos I felt could be done better, such as the video I shot at Ilion Little Theater back in March and the Walk in the Park video. I originally intended for the latter video to be my first HD video. I have since reposted both.

Also I figured I try my hand at news reporting by doing a series of news videos that I called "The Black Cat Weekly," but that turned out to be a disaster. First off, it got more and more difficult to get news stories that I could do a video about, not to mention that the videos brought the haters out in record droves. I didn't expect to be that badly received as far as that goes. However, I have decided to adopt other YouTuber's methods and attack the haters in reply comments, because it's pretty fun to do because they're a group of losers who either don't do videos and are only on there to cause trouble or they're a group who have only a handful of videos and have very few or no friends or subscribers.

Now don't take this the wrong way. Just because I stopped doing the news videos doesn't mean I'm gonna stop making videos or give up on YouTube like very few people do. I'm too well established on YouTube for that. Plus there are other factors than that at work. I have been meeting more and more people online, not to mention people sending me IM requests and app invites on Facebook to keep up with them all. It's like constant whitewater for me. It does get overwhelming after a while.

In some ways, YouTube and Twitter have led to me not being able to blog so much, mainly because it is starting to get easier for me to make videos and Twitter is basically the in thing for bloggers, not to mention some personal things I am going through right now. So I have to get back into the habit of blogging again because that was how I got started on the web.

But on the bright side, October is a pretty big month for me, most notably the fact that at the end of the month is my three-year anniversary on YouTube. Clearly something to look forward to. But for now, I just wanted to touch base with everyone to show that I am still committed to this blog.

Rain Dance

It's turned out to be a really depressing vacation this week. I should have been out making videos and doing things but instead much of it has been spent doing some more soul-searching in terms of life issues, mainly on the romantic front. Not to mention the fact that the weather this week has been horrible to say the least. It's rained for two days therefore limiting what I can do. The fact that I don't have any money doesn't help things any either.

First off, I was glad that the Fourth fell on a Saturday which is my day off anyway. On my last night in, I managed to film the fireworks display to put up on YouTube. When I was going to upload the video, I noticed that YouTube increased its gigabyte upload limit from 1 GB to 2 GB. The 2 GB limit was intended to make longer videos possible. However when I went to upload my original video, which was 25 minutes long, to YouTube, it was rejected for being over 10 minutes. That is stupid, especially since a majority of videos longer than 10 minutes even with HD settings come in well under 1 GB. What YouTube should really do is increase the time limit on the videos the user uploads.

So I ended up uploading two different versions of the video. For YouTube, I uploaded a 10-minute cut of the fireworks which was mainly the tail end of the show and I uploaded the original 25-minute video to another site I belong to called Vimeo.

Basically, other than that, I decided to go through my Myspace and Facebook accounts and deleted that I was looking for a serious relationship. When I was first starting out on the social networking scene, I figured that online dating would be easier than offline dating. It turns out that it's even more complicated mainly because of the fact that you have way more options than I did back when there was no Myspace or Facebook to help you find the girl of your dreams. It has pretty much reached the point that I have become disenchanted with the whole thing and just say forget it. It's just not worth it.

As soon as I posted the update that I decided not to look for a serious relationship based on the fact that the concept "doesn't exist anymore," that was when everyone started commenting their support. I've only had one date this year which was the only date I've ever had so far and it wasn't going anywhere.

Other than the usual soap opera mumbo-jumbo that is my life, not too much has gone on lately. Hope everyone is doing okay.

Blackcatloner Forever (100th Blog)

I've spent some time trying to come up with a story to mark the 100th blog on this site, "The Adventures of Blackcatloner" and I decided that I would salvage this story from my old blog site on the soon to be extinct Yahoo 360. This story answers the question in which how I came up with my prestigious and rather unique username, Blackcatloner. Well anyway here goes.

Prior to the fall of 2005, I had been surfing the web primarily to check out upcoming movies and other things. In 2005, when I became involved in the Gillette case, I asked the public library in Herkimer if I could set up an email address there because I did not have a computer or Internet access at that time. I decided to set up my email account with Yahoo because it was free to set up an email address. When it came time to select my Yahoo name, I was a little confused. I wanted something that was dark and mysterious mainly because of the fact that I am dark and mysterious. Then I remembered that one of my favorite groups was the 80's band the Stray Cats. That mixed with the fact that I had two black cats and the fact that I have been a loner pretty much all of my life got the wheels set in motion. As soon as I knew it, I typed in "blackcatloner." The reason I had to type it in as one word was the fact that email addresses could not be broken up into three separate words unless separated by an underscore.

At that time I was only creating an email address for a project but little did I realize that I was creating a whole new identity for myself. And the rest is history.

Then three months after opening my email address, I started my career as a blogger on Yahoo 360 with the site that was originally called "The World of Blackcatloner" but I later called it "Ultimate Blackcatloner." While I was blogging, I became integrated into the whole Internet social networking scene which at that time included Myyearbook, Myspace and some other sites, and it's led to some pretty wild and exciting adventures and of course chances are I posted them online. The more I blogged and integrated myself into the social networking scene the more my popularity increased. In time I would add making videos on YouTube and even furthering my adventures on Twitter to my resume.

I have no regrets about my time on the Internet. My time on the Internet has been a very pleasant one. As long as it continues to be fun, I will be around for a very long time. There's still so many more adventures from my past, present and future to be had so I can post them up on either here, YouTube, or Twitter. Not bad for someone who is truly "one lone cat against a big bad world."

And so ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. My 100th blog on this site is now officially in the books. I hope you had a great time reading it as I had writing it. It's never the end. It's only the beginning.

Out With The Old... In With The New

Once again there are changes in the air as far as my online life goes. Last night I got word that Yahoo is shutting down its Yahoo 360 social networking site for good on July 13. As many of my long-term Internet followers know, 360 was where I started out on my meteoric rise to Internet stardom back in February 2006. It was where I ran my first blogsite from the beginning of February until May of 2007. I figured that when I stopped blogging on that site, I would leave it up as part of my legacy, but since 360 is going to end in July, I decided that it was time to start liquidating my original site.

After all since then I have expanded from 360 into other areas on the Internet, most notably Myspace, Facebook, YouTube and of course Twitter. But as I begin deleting my blogs from the old site, I am retaining most of the titles of the original blog posts so I can use them in future blogs on both this site and on the new blog I am developing on my new website Blackcatloner.com. That way some traces of my early legacy will be allowed to continue.

Also during the course of this month, I have also been mulling a return to BlogTV for the first time since last July. I was originally planning to return this past Wednesday morning but I found out that there wasn't really an audience at 9 am plus I wasn't completely ready. I hope that when I go on the air this Tuesday morning at 9 am I will have my act together. I am thinking that if this show goes over well, I might do BlogTV every Tuesday morning at that time. I also discovered that everytime you record a show on BlogTV, it is automatically uploaded to your YouTube channel. I think I might record my first show and then air the videos on YouTube. If the BlogTV vids are well-received, I will create a third YouTube channel for my BlogTV shows so that way people can catch up.

And that's not all, I am getting close to 100 blogs on this site. And that will be sometime this week.

Keep On Trekking

Oh, my god. Another month has pretty much gone by without a post from me. I guess that's what happens when you gain in popularity. I haven't even been back to my new site yet to do more updating. Not that I've been idle to begin with. I am still making videos for YouTube and I am getting ready to get back to work on my book since I found out that my competitor won't have his book out till next year. So probably by next week I will be back to work on the book I kept putting off in favor of my growing success on the web.

However, I still managed to find some time out of my busy schedule to go see the new Star Trek movie and do a review on it for YouTube and it is the best Star Trek film since Wrath of Khan. I have sort of been a Trekkie on and off and I was among the disillusioned that felt that the Next Generation spinoffs and the Enterprise TV series ran the franchise into the ground. Well, I gotta tell you, this new movie was totally awesome and I like the fact that they decided to give the franchise the reboot it really needed. If only George Lucas' Star Wars prequels could have been like this.

I have a couple little things that I have on the horizon in addition to getting back to work on the book. Next weekend, I'm supposed to go to Ilion Little Theater's latest play, "On Golden Pond." I'm still not sure if they saw the video I made of the last play they were in. Then the week after that, I have to housesit for my parents while they go away for that weekend so that means I probably won't have too much Internet time. They have dial-up and they can't get YouTube. But I definitely should be able to do my other stuff, most notably Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, but I won't be able to get back on YouTube till that Monday morning.

Well that and my mowing job at the Historical Society will probably ensure that I will not get bored over the next couple of weeks.