YouTube has lifted a block on users viewing official music videos after the website reached an agreement with songwriters' group PRS for Music. This should mean that a couple of my major label videos should be viewable again in the UK on YouTube: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8234125.stm

Two of them for Universal Records were hit almost immediately by the ban, and although I don't get PRS as the video director it sucks for viral marketing obviously.

The good news is that despite the ban one of the videos has had well over 800,000 views from other regions anyway.

I'd nearly forgotten that in my first major video I'd put a hidden badger. It's in the 'Save The Robot - Battle of the Mind' video, near the start.

I stumbled across it again while edting my showreel.

Obviously this caught my eye because of Ledger’s name but being animation I gave it a look. Stick with it; it turns into stronger stuff towards the end (might not be safe for work)

Modest Mouse - King Rat (Directed by Heath Ledger)

I'm working on a new showreel and would like to know what you think are the key shots or scenes from my videos/animation:

www.pushingnormal.com/default.asp?section=video

Any feedback would be useful. Thanks

I've just put online my video for Chris Boehk's 'All Wagon No Star'. This video, although quick in terms of production, had gone through a long period of gestation as just as production started I had a run of larger contracts.

Originally I wanted to do something a bit 'light hearted' and with a quick turnaround as an exercise, ironically the work that stopped production on this video proved to fulfil both those criteria and the point of the exercise was achieved elsewhere. So on returning to the video I upped the amount of detail and gave it a (ever so slightly) darker angle than the original concept.

Also viewable on my website.

I managed to find the time recently to update my own website, www.pushingnormal.com, ahead of a new video release next week, which will be added to the site then.

I'm still sort of Beta testing at the moment so if you do get a chance to have a look and find anything odd then just let me know. Although it's been tested on Safari, Firefox and IE it uses a fair bit of Flash so portable devices may not like it. But hey, you can't please everyone.

This seems a good time also to mention that two commissioned music videos, for Universal Records Ireland, are now available to view on my site.

Released last Winter, both these videos were minor internet hits in their way (one receiving about a million in its first four weeks of release). However they got caught up in YouTube's ongoing royalties battle with the record industry and were not easily available to view in the UK online. They are, essentially, novelty records so please, tongue firmly in cheek when viewing either 'There's no-one as Irish as Barack Obama' or the follow-up single 'An Irishman Invented Rock and Roll'.

I also took the chance to update my YouTube account with higher quality versions of my other videos and although more are on my actual website, if you share any of the videos other then the ones I just mentioned please link to the YouTube version to save bandwidth.

You can of course also leave comments there and any feedback is always welcome.

I'm going to be spending a great deal of time up in Wakefield this month with work and am thinking to popping across to Leeds once or twice in the evenings. Just wondered if anyone had any tips on Alt friendly bars or decent places to eat in those areas?

Also, can anyone recommend a free or cheap but decent (the eternal question!) 3d animation software for simple modelling. Must, though I know it's pretty much standard, have the ability to map images files as surfaces. Also, quick learning curve! (EDIT: Going with http://www.blender.org/ for the mo')

TIA