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Sunday, February 29, 2004
This and that about TV (and just enough about Alias to allow me to use a SpyDaddy picture)  Though I loved Seinfeld, I can't really imagine wanting to buy the DVDs (okay, maybe the seasons with Susan and George's Twu Wuv); still it's good news that Seinfeld and his costars have settled their royalty dispute, at least for now. Turns out that Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards were not making the big money on all those reruns of the show - it was just Jerry making an alleged billion dollars. Wow, I had no idea about this. Good for the costars and while it makes me think a little less of Seinfeld himself, I know his side is not represented here at all.
I haven't watched General Hospital for many, many years (pesky working life!), but this wrapup of their sweeps month fire storyline makes me wish I TiVo'ed. Camp comedy classic, indeed. I always assume that the non-Passions soaps worry about having a modicum of realism, but I'm obviously being naive. I mean, Marlena's a serial killer now, for goodness sakes. E!Online says that President Bush is for some reason endorsing a television show about terrorism. My guess would be that it's so we'll all stay scared and want him to stay President, but wouldn't he be better off trying to stop John Ashcroft from invading the privacy of women or actually finding Osama Bin Laden and not just talking about getting tough? Justifying my use of Jack Bristow as pinup boy: Though some Alias fans are severely peeved about the Vaughn/Lauren marriage, I am enjoying this season so far, especially the new and twisted and wrong Lauren/Sark relationship (I love evil hotness). David Anders, who plays Sark, has a kinda nice official site, run by his brother (how cute!). On the site are some fabulous comics of the cast. I love the Sloane-as-puppet master one best. I still wish SpyMommy would come back though. Reminder: Tim Minear's show, Wonderfalls, starts on the 12th of March. Watch it, please, so I don't have to wait for the DVDs to see all the episodes in the right order. And really, after that Freddy Sue crap that Joss Whedon spewed at us last week during Angel, we need Tim to save us more than ever. And finally, set your TiVos. Colin Firth will be hosting SNL on Saturday. That makes the week look much brighter already. Thursday, February 26, 2004
Scrap Iron Chef  Via TV Tattle, geek TV chef Alton Brown from Good Eats will be the commentator for Food Networks' new "Iron Chef America" series of specials, due to start airing April 23. Set yer Tivos.
Alton now has a blog of sorts, updated about once a week. And speaking of Food Network: Is the bimbette on "How to Boil Water" genuinely that annoying, or is she attempting a bizarre homage to Nicole Sullivan from MadTV? Tuesday, February 24, 2004
The flag burning amendment, 2004 edition Today George Bush made me join the ACLU by making a statement in support of an amendment to the Constitution to outlaw gay marriage. I am beside myself with anger at this foolish pandering to the most extreme elements of his party. Even though I personally won't be participating in a gay marriage anytime soon, I see no reason that we should be amending the Constitution to remove rights from citizens and I am mad as hell at Bush and his wacko cronies for trying it. You can use the ACLU's site to fax, email, or snail mail your elected representatives. Unfortunately one of my elected officials is Rick Santorum; he'll get my fax, but I doubt he'll care. Edited to add this: Andrew Sullivan, a conservative, has extensive discussion of this topic here. His heartbreaking conclusion: Some journalists are reporting that White House sources are telling them that they do not expect this to pass but they need to fire up their base. They'd go this far for purely political reasons? I guess I really was naive. I don't agree with his politics (mostly), but I do feel for somebody who has just been disillusioned so badly. This should go nicely with the 52x cupholder  I have spent the past several days coping with hardware issues, the most serious of which is probably due to an overheating Athlon chip. My search for cooling solutions (did you know you can water-cool your CPU like an old VW bug?) has led me deep and unwary into case modding sites.
Case modding, if you're unaware, is the art of customizing computers with case windows, internal neon lights, custom grilles, glowing case fans, and other tasteful flourishes. (More about this when I have time.) Read through enough of these sites, and you get the urge to put a few lights inside your desktop: just something small and discreet, maybe in flashing UV pink. My favorite accessory by far is the cigarette lighter that fits into a 5.25" bay (like your CD-ROM drive does). Charge your cell phone! Charge your laptop! Light your smokes! Bizarre visuals aside, the car cigarette lighter is a standard that has far outgrown its original purpose. According to Money Magazine, they're spreading inside cars like measles: In model-year 2004, there are 47 vehicles that come, standard, with five or six lighter sockets, according to Carsdirect.com. In 1998, no vehicles came with that many.If you're sprinkling electrical sockets around a car's interior, why not use normal 2-prong sockets? Sunday, February 22, 2004
Tivo love and the New York Times  Via TV Tattle, this New York Times article discusses the design decisions and experimental efforts that went into the Tivo remote. It includes a quote from Jakob Nielsen calling the big yellow pause button "the most beautiful pause button I've ever seen."Because of the nature of the TiVo video recorder, the remote is held for long periods as users continually choose shows to record, skip commercials, fast-forward and rewind recorded shows, rate programs by pressing the thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons, and even pause live TV. Designing a remote that consumers would find comfortable was a high priority.I'd love to see the discarded prototypes. Incidentally, while the NY Times' long-standing practice of making articles disappear behind the paywall has irritated blogreaders and search engine users for years, there is now a workaround. Old articles are available for blog partners if a valid partner code is in the referring URL. If you link to the NYT, make it easy on yourself by running the URL through Aaron Swartz's New York Times Link Generator. Speaking of newspapers that demand registration, the login/password combination bselig/bselig will get you into any online paper that I've tried. (And if you find one where it doesn't work, register it, so it works for the next person!) Saturday, February 21, 2004
More about Pepsi  You've probably heard about the Pepsi/iTunes giveaway, in which 1 of every 3 Pepsi bottlecaps has a code that allows you to download a song for free on iTunes.
Via CNN, college student Jon Gales figured out that you can identify that an unopened is a loser if you tilt it at just the right angle to see the word "again" (from "Please try again"): You might find it easiest to practice while not in the store. Just buy a few and take them home. Get the knack for the angle, and it isn't that hard to pull off without looking like a huge tool.I drink at least a liter a day of Diet Pepsi (good-bye stomach lining), but I haven't seen the yellow caps appear in Pittsburgh stores yet (and I've been looking). Songs are only a buck apiece, but it adds up fast. Friday, February 20, 2004
The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist  Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was a pretty good book - I loved the style and that period in New York, but truthfully it could have lost 100-200 pages and been even better. I thought it dragged in the middle (though not as bad as Life of Pi mind you), but I loved the descriptions of the comic books that Kavalier and Clay created. Apparently I was not alone, because Michael Chabon and Dark Horse are now producing The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, the comic described in the novel. The Escapist is a magician who fights the Nazis with feats of illusion, which sounds a little wanky but will probably be charming. The first edition is scheduled to be released in April and will include a short story by Chabon.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Fury being controlled by the puppet was a little too meta for me, but clever nonetheless  So last night's Angel was about the funniest thing ever - the puppet power shot, the puppet in vamp face, PuppetAngel beating up Spike, the whole nose removal bit. Everything not Wes and Fred related, at least, was a joy. If you missed it and need to catch up, this review sums it up perfectly and hilariously.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Oink oink flap flap  There's some fairly odd music in my CD collection, but not much that approaches the sheer cognitive dissonance of the songs on "When Pigs Fly: Songs You Never Thought You'd Hear". The prize oddity is "Unforgettable" sung by the duet of Ani DiFranco and Jackie Chan, who has a surprisingly smooth voice.
Don Ho sings a mellow "Shock the Monkey". Bad-girl Lesley ("It's My Party") Gore performs "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap". The Fixx perform "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'", which works pretty well with a New Wave sound. Herman's Hermits perform "White Wedding". You get the idea. You can listen to sound clips at CD Baby, which sells it for nineteen bucks; I assume the steep price is due to licensing fees. It's worth it just to hear Jackie Chan croon. Monday, February 16, 2004
Rob's got a crush Because my last little bit about Theresa Heinz Kerry was so popular (and because I am an attention whore), today's quick link is this delightful little love-note from Rob Rogers - editorial cartoonist for the Post-Gazette - to Ms. Heinz Kerry. I guess she was a guest speaker at a cartoonist convention last summer (which sounds like a fun time), and stole Rogers' heart by being witty, sweet, and able to make a joke about herself - admirable traits all. Shockingly, she didn't mention her husband's excessive caricature-friendly hair, for which I am sure all the cartoonists are grateful. Saturday, February 14, 2004
Wuv, twu wuv, and other Valentine's thoughts  From the fine people behind the Church Sign Generator, here's the ACME Candy Heart Maker, and here are a bunch of hearts recently generated by the script.
I'm getting sick of those eHarmony commercials. Their corporate image is carefully innocuous, and the founder, Neil Warren, comes across as an annoying but harmless Mr. Rogers wannabe. But while the eHarmony website makes no mention of any religious affiliation, Warren says in this interview (via a friend's LiveJournal) that it might as well be an exclusively Christian organization. It's a surprisingly candid interview; I suspect it was conducted before the company hired a competent PR manager. There are stories of the dangers that accompany Internet matchmaking. How do you prevent dangerous occurrences from happening? And finally, it seems appropriate to point people at romance author Jennifer Crusie's Romantic Trivia Lists: Greatest Romantic Comedies, Romantic Movies with the Dumbest Mistakes, I-Cried-Until-I-Threw-Up-It-Was-That-Good Movies, and The Romance Heroine Rules: If I am ever a Romance Heroine, I will not:Crusie's new book Bet Me is just out; start with Welcome To Temptation and Fast Women. Friday, February 13, 2004
Tiny Pepsi hand grenades Yesterday's Real Life webcomic amused me. I love the half-height Pepsi cans, but they only seem to appear briefly and unexpectedly; I spotted them once at a Pittsburgh Target, and I saw half-height Vanilla Coke cans at a Publix in St. Augustine Beach. Maybe the cuteness-to-caffeine ratio makes them unstable. The half-height Mt. Dew cans are especially adorable.  Thursday, February 12, 2004
I'm sure someone, somewhere is writing PuppetAngel/Ms. Piggy fic I have no real point here today, just a reminder to set your TiVos for next Wednesday's Angel, wherein Angel himself will turn into a puppet. So far I've considered this season a major disappointment, especially considering the perfection of last season, but maybe puppet wackiness will signal a turnaround. And how could you not laugh at this:  More photos on MediaSharx Tuesday, February 10, 2004
We all scream for ice cream From Yahoo! News, CNN and other news organizations are owning up to having overplayed the Howard Dean "scream" speech a few weeks back. Dean's campaign went into a freefall shortly after the speech and it surely seems like the coverage was largely to blame. The speech was replayed 633 on major network news, which doesn't count Channel 4 or Jon Stewart or the like, and then people started talking about the fact that the others were talking about it, causing an ugly news spiral. To me the most interesting part of the linked story was a report I hadn't heard of before: [Paul Slavin, senior vice president of ABC] said his only regret was not airing an intriguing Diane Sawyer report on the coverage earlier. Sawyer reported that Dean was using a special microphone that night that filters out crowd noise to heighten his voice; other videotapes taken illustrate that his "scream" was barely audible to his live audience. Guess that bit didn't play as well. Thanks for flying with us By now you've probably heard about the recent American Airlines flight on which the pilot called non-Christians "crazy", asked Christian passengers to raise their hands to identify themselves, and generally freaked out everyone on the plane. All the resulting jokes about the rapture have got the Camille West song "The Rapture" (mp3 here) stuck firmly in my head on continuous loop. In an attempt to exorcise it, I present the relevant lyrics: I was staring at the clouds from a 747 Monday, February 09, 2004
Bring on the pain  Pitchers and catchers report very soon and while I'm looking forward to my Spring Training trip in March, that has much to do with the nice Florida weather and the kick-ass old Red Sox fans we've met at McKechnie field in the past. The Pirates themselves are giving me not much of anything to look forward to. Sure, I'm not cutting them a break based on my long-lasting bitterness over the Aramis Ramirez thing, but they've not exactly given me much reason to reconsider. First they lost five players in the Rule V draft, leaving open spots on the roster for no discernible reason. Perhaps they were leaving those spots for Rick Reed, Jose Mesa and Juan Acevado (picture me rolling my eyes excessively here at these tired retread arms)? Then they talked and talked about trading Jason Kendall, only to have the San Diego Padres pull out at the last second - maybe the Padres don't want a malcontent liability at the plate? Of course there is a plus-side to them not finishing that deal - we'd probably have gotten taken in the trade like we did in the Lofton/Ramirez deal last year.
This past weekend was PirateFest and the powers that be on the Pirates (though not Kevin McClatchy, mind you) were out answering the hard questions with answers that only made this fan more disgruntled. David Littlefield says that he is impatient just like the fans - of course he has power to change the situation and we don't, so his impatience doesn't move me much. Lloyd McClendon is offended that anybody could suggest this team could lose 100 games, but even he jokes that his lineup may end up as an homage to Abbott & Costello's "Who's on first" routine. Sigh. Maybe we'll get 'em next year. Saturday, February 07, 2004
Do you know who we are? Salon has some things to say about anonymous blogging - which they say is on the rise (though it seems to me to have been happening pretty steadily since blogging began). They cite that journalistic standards say you should own up to what you say, but I don't believe that readers would confuse the writings of an anonymous blogger with the New York Times. It seems to me that everybody has to reach their own level of comfort with how much information to give away here on the Net, and I can't disagree with those who don't want to publish their names, but they can't expect that their serious and deep entries will be treated as journalism in the way that Talking Points Memo is. Anonymous blogs are however, often insightful and provocative (in the good way) and well worth my reading time. The Gothamist blog has a debate going on about this right now. There is some excessive position-taking going on here: And let me be even more frank, just to show you that I'm not a hard-hearted man: I can understand the desire not to expose yourself to the sort of ridicule and humiliation that blogging invites. But blogging is not child's play- it's something that you should take seriously and approach with a great deal of forethought and care. First, much of blogging is in fact the grown-up version of child's play, and the suggestion in that thread that bloggers who work for companies that would fire them for blogging need to just get new jobs is obviously the work of somebody who hasn't been in the same job market as the rest of us lately. Regardless, I think those of us who blog from work are taking advantage of our employers (and so I try to only do it during my lunch break) and as such, if they say we can't use their network for our blogging fun, well that's their right. Friday, February 06, 2004
Water, water everywhere Late last night, while working at my desk, I realized that the persistent "thap" sound I'd been ignoring was a leak dripping from the top of the nearest windowframe. I've been a homeowner for two years now, and so far, nothing makes me feel quite so helpless as a leak with two more days of rain in the forecast. Like a dental emergency or broken muffler, it's not something you can ignore until it goes away. I piled towels under the leak and removed assorted electrical cords, then slid outside through rain and ice to take a look at the wall. Everything looked fine except that my gutters were completely iced over; it seemed likely that this was forcing the rain to drip down the wall and into the window frame. So if any of my neighbors were awake at 3am last night, they were treated to the sight of me standing on my tippy toes in the freezing rain, up to my ankles in snow and ice, whacking dementedly at my gutters with a broom, and trying to dodge the loosened shower of ice chunks. This seems to have alleviated the problem, at least for now. Next stop: The caulking aisle at Home Depot. Do something nice for your gutters today. They are your silent drippy friends. Thursday, February 05, 2004
Everybody wins In the past few weeks, high-profile Pittsburgh tech startup Freemarkets was bought out by a California competitor, and lower-profile tech startup TissueInformatics was acquired by a company in North Carolina. It bugs me that successful Pittsburgh companies never remain Pittsburgh companies. And I was bored and snarky, and felt like writing a little PHP, so I coded up Pittsburgh Corporate Buyout Bingo. Here are the rules: Print out a bingo card. Pin it up on your cubicle, office door, fridge, wherever.If you want the PHP source code for your own nefarious purposes, email me. Wednesday, February 04, 2004
They don't stifle enough of them In a continuing writerly vein: Teresa Nielsen Hayden casts light on the mysterious process of slushreading, and has lots to say about why writers shouldn't take publisher rejections personally. Buried deep in the raging comments thread for this post is a pointer to Tappan King's "Sobering Saga of Myrtle the Manuscript: A Cautionary Tale". "Myrtle" will make you very happy indeed that you don't work for a publisher. (The pointer to "Myrtle", incidentally, comes from James D. Macdonald, whose novel The Apocalypse Door is currently riding around in my purse. It's a fast and amusing combination of "Alias" and the Knights Templar.) TNH's blog is a neverending source of timesinks; another recent marathon comments thread led me to Terror on Flight 789, a former Mormon missionary's extended tale of how he was kicked out of Canada for making a bomb threat. Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Lots about Elmore Leonard and a little about the Stone Coyotes  Elmore Leonard has been in the news a lot lately, not least because he has a new movie out now and a new book due out next month. His PR agent must be all tuckered out.
The most distressing factoid is that ABC has cancelled "Karen Sisco" instead of relaunching it in the spring, as promised. "Karen Sisco", based on Leonard's "Out of Sight", was the best new show this season. It was stylish, amusing, sunny, and hip. Catch the midnight reruns on USA Network before it disappears entirely; in particular, look for the episode "Dumb Bunnies", with guest stars Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. Via Ms. Machiavelli, here are Elmore Leonard's tips for good writing; many of the tips are standard, but his examples are concrete and entertaining. If this is the sort of thing you like, see also Gene Wolfe's tips for writing. ("Never name a character Fred.") Finally, I've recently been listening daily to "Rise From the Ashes", a new CD by the Stone Coyotes. I'd never heard of them before hearing a few cuts from the album on WYEP, but according to their website (a masterpiece of wretched design and JavaScript dependence, by the way), their music was the inspiration for Elmore Leonard's novel "Be Cool", the sequel to "Get Shorty". The songs on "Rise From the Ashes" are uncomplicated, melodic, and thumpy. They range from snarly chest-beating ("House of Confusion", "Rock Harder Than You") to melancholy ("The Sailor's Song", "If You See the One") to upbeat ("Heart of a Champion", "The Phoenix"). Lead singer Barbara Keith has the kind of snarly vibrato-laden voice that's particularly irritating on the songs I don't like, but gives the album a distinctive and unusual sound that has grown on me. I'll definitely buy more of their music. The Stone Coyotes' website does deserve to be in a Bad Website Hall of Fame, though. We should stage an intervention or something. Monday, February 02, 2004
Guns don't kill people, cellphones kill people  And speaking of "CMU geeks with guns" (see below), Gizmodo points to this video of someone firing a gun disguised as a cellphone. No word on whether this will be covered by Verizon's "new every 2" plan, or whether New York will allow people to use them while driving.Sunday, February 01, 2004
Navel-gazing fun: tales from the referrer logs We've noticed an uptick in traffic here at IBHQ the last few weeks. Worried that perhaps some crazy anti-manatee group was targeting us, I trolled through the server stats for clues (Luckily Verve gives us many options for server stats. Verve rules.). I guess John Kerry's campaign has really taken off, because this entire surge in readers is due to people googling for "Theresa Heinz Kerry", "Theresa Kerry" or "Theresa Heinz" and finding a short piece I wrote in November with a link to Post-Gazette article about her. She's bumped Michael Vartan and Jennifer Garner off the top of our search phrase list - they were the ones that Britney Spears and John Cusack briefly dethroned, only to regain the top spot once again. Of course there's always a large amount of searching for the word "bitch" and incredibly, multiple searches for "bitch librarian" (whoever you are, get a life will you), and the small but scary contingent looking for pictures of Jim Cantore. My two favorites are still the short and sweet "cmu geeks with guns" and this gem: stories about buffy showing up in la and buffy goes to the hyperion and angel is very surprised to see her and buffy has no strength and someone attacks buffy and she can stop crying and angel grabs buffy and tells her to calm down and buffy is all tied up and she cant move Neither of which I really understand why they ended up here, but I hope they both stayed and enjoyed. And would whoever searched for "squirrel Vanessa blogger" explain that to me (assuming you see this), please, cause it's very curious-making. |
