diff --git a/plugins/gcalc.py b/plugins/gcalc.py
index 521b12e..d92260c 100644
--- a/plugins/gcalc.py
+++ b/plugins/gcalc.py
@@ -1,27 +1,28 @@
+import urllib2
+import re
+
+from lxml import html
+
 from util import hook
-import urllib, httplib, sys
-
-def doquery(argv):
-    query=urllib.urlencode({'q':argv})
-
-    start='<h2 class=r style="font-size:138%"><b>'
-    end='</b>'
-
-    google=httplib.HTTPConnection("www.google.com")
-    google.request("GET","/search?"+query)
-    search=google.getresponse()
-    data=search.read()
-
-    if data.find(start)==-1: return "Could not calculate " + argv
-    else:
-        begin=data.index(start)
-        result=data[begin+len(start):begin+data[begin:].index(end)]
-        result = result.replace("<font size=-2> </font>",",").replace(" &#215; 10<sup>","E").replace("</sup>","").replace("\xa0",",")
-        return result
 
 @hook.command
 def calc(inp):
-   '''.calc <term> -- returns Google Calculator result'''
-   if not inp or not inp.strip():
-      return calc.__doc__
-   return doquery(inp)
+    '''.calc <term> -- returns Google Calculator result'''
+    if not inp:
+        return calc.__doc__
+
+    url = "http://www.google.com/search?q="
+    request = urllib2.Request(url + urllib2.quote(inp, ''))
+    request.add_header('User-Agent', 'skybot')
+    page = urllib2.build_opener().open(request).read()
+
+    # ugh, scraping HTML with regexes
+    m = re.search(r'<h2 class=r style="font-size:138%"><b>(.*?)</b>', page)
+
+    if m is None:
+        return "could not calculate " + inp
+
+    result = m.group(1).replace("<font size=-2> </font>",",")
+    result = result.replace(" &#215; 10<sup>","E").replace("</sup>","")
+    result = result.replace("\xa0",",")
+    return result
diff --git a/plugins/youtube.py b/plugins/youtube.py
index 8561f8b..a3a3502 100644
--- a/plugins/youtube.py
+++ b/plugins/youtube.py
@@ -11,13 +11,14 @@ from urllib import quote_plus
 locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')
 
 youtube_re = re.compile(r'youtube.*?v=([-_a-z0-9]+)', flags=re.I)
-url = 'http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/%s?v=2&alt=jsonc'
 
-search_api_url = "http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?q=%s&max-results=1&alt=json"
+base_url = 'http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/'
+url = base_url + 'videos/%s?v=2&alt=jsonc'
+search_api_url = base_url + 'videos?v=2&alt=jsonc&max-results=1&q=%s'
 video_url = "http://youtube.com/watch?v=%s"
 
-def get_video_description(vid):
-    j = json.load(urllib2.urlopen(url % vid))
+def get_video_description(vid_id):
+    j = json.load(urllib2.urlopen(url % vid_id))
 
     if j.get('error'):
         return 
@@ -59,19 +60,20 @@ def youtube_url(inp):
     if m:
         return get_video_description(m.group(1))
 
-@hook.command
+
 @hook.command('y')
+@hook.command
 def youtube(inp):
     '.youtube <query> -- returns the first YouTube search result for <query>'
     inp = quote_plus(inp)
     j = json.load(urllib2.urlopen(search_api_url % (inp)))
-    if j.get('error'):
-        return
-    
-    try:
-        vid = j['feed']['entry'][0]['id']['$t']
-        #youtube returns a gdata url for this some reason. The videoid has to be stripped out
-        vid = vid[vid.rfind('/')+1:]
-        return get_video_description(vid) + " " + video_url%vid
-    except:
-        return
+
+    if 'error' in j:
+        return 'error performing search'
+
+    if j['data']['totalItems'] == 0:
+        return 'no results found'
+
+    vid_id = j['data']['items'][0]['id']
+
+    return get_video_description(vid_id) + " - " + video_url % vid_id