Disorderly Content

You gotta love people. A report on Ananova talks about a Baptist couple in the UK who bought a DVD of Doris Day in Pajama Game but got Italian porn instead. But the best part of the story is that the retired couple had to watch the entire movie before they expressed their shock. You'd think that if the over-18 warning didn't tell them something was wrong, all the topless women speaking Italian might have told them they weren't getting Doris Day.

Their explanation? "My wife and I were very shocked, but we watched it until the end because we couldn't believe what we were seeing."

Yep. That's always been my reaction to smut too.

My second volume of the Farscape Starburst Edition DVDs finally arrived from Amazon, courtesy of its poky but free shipping via snail mail. And I got to listen to the long awaited commentary track for Jeremiah Crichton. The title of this entry is the subtitle of the commentary; even by the more forgiving standards of a television series' first season, Jeremiah Crichton is not great entertainment. But it's fun to listen to executive producers Rockne O'Bannon and David Kemper and stars Ben Browder and Claudia Black wax poetic on what went wrong and why. They're far more critical than I ever was about JC, pointing out embarrassing coincidences and little bits of unavoidable miscasting. Like a native civilization of mostly slender dark skinned people, except for the bulky white guys when stunts are called for.

As the commentators themselves say, no other commentary would be as honest as this one. Or, I would add, as witty.

Sometimes things really do come in threes. Back around Thanksgiving, I wrote about having to replace a headlight on my car. Then a week later, a taillight decided to go. At the time I wondered when the next failure would occur. I suppose I could have counted my iPod mini, which decided to make some seriously unmusical sounds a week and a half ago and is being repaired as we speak. But then last night something happened that feels slightly more connected, if only in a cosmic sense.

I was home, enjoying my usual Friday night activities (computer, DVD player, television; pathetic, isn't it?), when the lights started to flicker. At first I thought it was a power outage, until I realized that only one light was misbehaving. That was in the living room, a Restoration Hardware lamp with an energy saver bulb. Except at the moment, it was behaving like something out of The Exorcist. Flickering, then stable for a couple of minutes, then flickering.

If I'd had any sense, I'd have unplugged the lamp the moment the flickering started. But that would be uncharacteristic. So I waited to see what would happen. And a few minutes later, the flickering turned into a buzzing, then a crackling, and then, with a couple of very bright sparks, the bulb decided to end it all.

After unplugging the lamp and removing the bulb (which smelled terrible; something had really decided to fry itself in there), I found another bulb to see if the lamp had suffered any damage. All seemed well. So this morning I went in search of another ring-type energy saver bulb. And then I remembered this peculiar little neighborhood store that specializes in batteries and bulbs. When it had opened I thought that was a peculiarly narrow focus for a shop. But now I'm not so sure. After all, they had exactly what I was looking for.

So now I wonder what the next thing will be to fail. And given the seven weeks since the taillight incident, is it really fair to link it to this one, even just for its anecdote value? What is the statute of limitations on serial events?

Buyers and sellers on eBay do their best to have high feedback scores. Your score is a measure of both the quality and quantity of your transactions: add one point for every positive experience and subtract one for every complaint. If you do get a complaint, you can reply to the feedback to try to explain why it wasn't your fault. That's the only use most people make of the Feedback Reply feature.

But not this guy, oh no! This eBay bozo who goes by the name of mizzelphug never saw a remark he couldn't one-up. Even his own feedback shows a certain attitude and a disdain for proper eBay etiquette. I wonder if he does funerals...

"Ya gotta have a gimmick." I learned that from watching Gypsy, although I was far too young to realize that that's what they were talking about. But I'll assume that they're right. And what was true of strippers is just as true for websites. A gimmick can make all the difference.

Like this one. Babes in Space is a gallery of cover art from 50s SF pulp magazines, with a focus, one might even say an obsession, with the depiction of women. Sometimes human, sometimes not. All categorized and analyzed. And like Playboy, the kind of thing you'll claim to enjoy for the articles.

Salon reports that a third columnist has been caught taking money from the White House to promote its agenda. This time it's Michael McManus, who writes a syndicated column called Ethics & Religion. One can only hope that he's better acquainted with religion than he is with ethics.

I was going to call this one "Use a browser, go to jail" until I tried to compare the Boing Boing blog entry to the BBC entry it references. The first link talks about someone who tried to make a donation to tsunami relief using the text-based Lynx browser, which triggered fears of a hacking attempt. The attempted donor was arrested and is out on bail. The tone is of confusion by a paranoid charity and overzealous police. The BBC article, on the other hand, has none of this. They give no indication of a misunderstanding. As far as any reader can tell, this is an unsuccessful hacker who hasn't been convicted. Yet.

So which is it? Where did Boing Boing get the misunderstanding story? And why isn't there any corroboration for that more benign and far more entertaining version? Enquiring minds want to know...

In its quest to provide the most relevant results, Google's AdWords program sometimes goes beyond the bounds of good taste. Witness the example at right, which you'll encounter if you attempt a search for "dead".

Personally, I consider "sexy" and "dead" to be mutually exclusive.
(Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for this one.)

Yeah, I know; that's what this blog, indeed, this entire site, is all about: me showing off. Heck, ignore ecommerce and news and most of what's left could qualify as ego trip. But work with me here.

Having seen repeated mentions of flickr in other people's blogs, I finally decided to give it a try. So I created an account for myself and uploaded a few pictures from my recent visit to Colorado Springs. And over time I'll add other pictures I like, but that don't fit my travel pages or my desktop background collection or inspire pages of their own.

Stop by: www.flickr.com/photos/disorderly.

I'm a vidder. That's someone who makes fan music videos. Mine are based on Farscape; I take a song and string together clips from the show to match the lyrics or the pacing or something. It's a hobby, something I do because it's fun to create them and fun to share them with other fans. And on occasion to introduce somebody to the show, the music or, on rare occasions, both at the same time.

I mention this because a pall has been cast over this activity. Because Farscape Fantasy, the largest and best collection of Scaper videos, received a Cease & Desist letter. It seems representatives of Enya do not appreciate her music being used in fan videos and shared on the web.

An argument can be made that fan vids are good for the musicians whose work we borrow, that we introduce their work to people who might not otherwise discover them. I know that my own videos have helped sell a few CDs. But that's beside the point; we are using copyright protected work without permission. And if the copyright holder tells us to stop, that's what we have to do.

The damage to the hobby has been contained so far. Farscape Fantasy will remove anything that uses Enya's music. The rest of us will hope that other artists will be more forgiving, if not more appreciative of our enthusiasm for their work and our willingness to share it with others. And maybe things will go back to normal.

My visit to Colorado Springs last week was my first since switching over from my old AT&T Wireless phone to Cingular. So imagine my surprise when I tried to use my new phone and got a yellow road sign indicator and the message "Emergency Calls Only". Trying a different number later on, I got a different display with the same meaning: you can't do what you want to do. What's going on? I was supposed to have nationwide long distance. And if there's a signal, and the phone claimed there was a good one, shouldn't I be able to use it?

I tried the phone in Phoenix during my trip home and was able to call out. So this morning I called Cingular to find out what the heck's going on. From what the service person could determine, the problem wasn't with my calling plan; there was a service outage in parts of Colorado Springs. And the message that I interpreted as "we won't let you use your phone here" really meant "we'd be happy to let you use your phone, but we can't do it right now, so try again a little later".

I guess when you only have room for a couple of words on the display, getting across subtleties becomes something as a challenge. And here's one more demonstration of my talent for misinterpreting any message I'm given. Assuming of course that my new understanding is correct and the phone works correctly the next time I'm in town. We'll see.

Having enjoyed my time in Colorado a whole lot more than what it took to get there, I was a little bit nervous about the return trip. Especially since the forecast for Salt Lake City kept referring to fog. Granted, it was unlikely to be the pea soup of two days ago. But never let it be said that there was worrying over nothing to be done and me not doing my fair share.

So I arrived at the Colorado Springs Airport in plenty of time, got through security and sat at the gate. Whereupon I caught the tail end of an announcement. It seems they'd oversold the flight and were looking for volunteers going to a few specific destinations who would take different flights for some nice travel vouchers. But there wasn't even any inconvenience involved; the replacement flights would arrive around the same time as the originals. Even better, mine would go through Phoenix, which was far less likely to be troublesome than Salt Lake.

So I jumped at the chance. Switching from Delta to America West, I got home a half hour sooner and was enriched by a pair of $200 travel vouchers. So now I just have to decide where I'd like to go. Somewhere I haven't been before? Or maybe that SF convention in Atlanta this summer. Decisions, decisions...

Twinkies sushi. It's sushi, but made from Twinkies. It's Twinkies, but made to look like sushi. What more is there to say?

(Well, how about "thank you, Backup Brain"?)

Having survived my torturous journey to Colorado Springs, and with the work out of the way, I'd given myself a free day to explore before heading home. The weather had turned cold, with a high in the 40s. But I decided to head west into the mountains, figuring that I could always turn back if things started looking grim. I found the road that leads to Pike's Peak; seemed a likely destination. By an amazing stroke of luck, I arrived about two minutes before the gate opened to the mountain road. Even more amazing was learning that the road was open all the way to the top of the mountain, fourteen thousand feet above sea level.

So, armed with my camera and my trusty rental car, I set off, one of only three cars on the road at that moment. I'd bought an audio tour on CD at the entrance, so I'd have some idea of what I was seeing. And as I made my way up the mountain, nineteen miles forward and about a mile and a half up, I stopped and enjoyed the different climates along the way. Including the moment when I broke through the clouds to the most beautiful blue sky and white snow.

It's bleak at the top. Windy and cold at 14,000 feet. And with the timberline a thousand feet or so below, with nothing to keep that wind from doing its worst. So I didn't spend a lot of time there, especially with the visitor shop closed for the season. It was back down the hill, catching the photo ops I missed on the way up. And doing almost the entire return trip in first gear. Because, as the tee shirts in the gift shop point out, real men don't need guardrails.

Funny how things connect up. I was in Fry's Electronics a couple of days ago to pick up a cyan ink cartridge for my Canon printer. And I just had to stop and check out the DVD ranks. Especially the el cheapo DVDs; I generally don't buy them but I can't help but look. Some movies are too expensive even at $4.99.

Anyway, I saw a copy of The Magic Sword, a thud and blunder flick they showed us for some special treat in seventh grade or thereabouts. I remember it fondly, although I know all too well that seeing it again likely won't improve that memory. Aside from being one of Basil Rathbone's later and much lesser roles, it doesn't have too much to recommend it. Still, I thought hard about it before I returned it to the rack.

And then I saw a copy of Lady of Burlesque, a great 40s comedy/mystery starring Barbara Stanwyck and based on The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee. And I couldn't resist. So I got both.

The next day I was scanning the paper and saw an obituary for Virginia Mayo, whom I remember so fondly from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The obit mentioned Mayo's late husband, an actor named Michael O'Shea. O'Shea's first film? Lady of Burlesque.

There's an old saying about how generals are always ready to fight the last war. What brought it to mind is my current business trip to Colorado Springs.

Having run into a bit of weather trouble in Reno a few weeks ago, I thought long and hard about the best way to get to the Springs from San Jose. Two options, really: fly to Denver and drive down; or fly into the Springs, likely by way of Salt Lake City. Not knowing what the weather would be more than a week ahead, I decided the second solution was safer. If the Interstate was clogged with snow, I might have trouble getting out of Denver.

So came the day, yesterday, I got to San Jose Airport an hour before my 1pm flight. At which point I discovered that the flight was delayed until 2:30 because of weather at Salt Lake. But no worries about the connection; even if I missed my 4:30 flight to the Springs, there was one at 6:30 and another at 8:30.

We finally left at 3 and arrived in Salt Lake just before 6. To the most amazing fog I think I've ever seen; you could just see the edge of the runway from the windows of the plane. How the pilot got us to the gate I have no idea.

Once I got off the plane I went in search of the customer service desk, so I could find out when I could get my second flight. And there was one bit of good news: I passed a couple of Delta's electronic kiosks. Hold my boarding pass under the scanner and in five seconds I had a new boarding pass for the 6:30 flight, which they said would depart at 7:37.

Next stop was the commuter airline part of the terminal, which was bedlam. Lots of people in line, lots of flights delayed. Oh, and fog; have I mentioned the fog? I sat down to wait. And became more and more concerned as flight after flight was cancelled. And then as I overheard a conversation about some big convention in town that was taking up all the hotel rooms; if we didn't fly out, would there be anywhere other than the terminal floor to sleep?

The only flight not cancelled was mine, although it was delayed a couple of more times. Oh, and the 8:30 flight to the Springs. And then a few other short distance flights were announced. Hope at last!

To make a long story short (yeah, I know: too late for that), they announced boarding for the 8:30 flight, while mine now showed a delay until 9. And then final boarding. And then a call for six passengers from my flight to take free seats on the other one, the one that actually had a plane and a crew. I was the first to rush to the counter. Then to the other gate. Then the long slog to the plane. But I got on. And after deicing and another run to salt the runway, we were off.

If there's a moral to the story, it's that trying to calculate the odds doesn't always help. As it turns out, Colorado Springs is having spring weather: 72 degrees yesterday! So if I'd used option A I'd have gotten in a whole lot earlier and with a lot less grief. Then again, I'd still be looking for today's blog entry. That's something, isn't it?

From what I've read, a lot of the more popular blog sites have been having terrible problems with comment spam. What's comment spam? It's where people generate large numbers of comments to blog entries. These entries contain URLs of the sites they're trying to promote. But not in hopes of people reading the comments and following the links, oh no. Their real target are Google and the other search engines. The theory, apparently, is that the more sites with links to the spammer's site, the more popular a search engine will believe the site to be. So it's all about getting higher up in Google.

My blogs haven't been the victim of comment spam, which I guess means they don't qualify as spamworthy. (Sad, isn't it?) But those that have are getting some potential relief, as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others agree on a new tag that will identify links that search engines should ignore. By using rel="nofollow" on the links to comments, we're helping the search engines to distinguish between the blogger's content and stuff coming from visitors.

I've added the tag to the links to my comment pages both here and on my other blog, so anybody planning to spam me is wasting their time. And mine, since I'll still have to clean up the mess, but I'm sure the spammers don't care. If you run a blog and aren't using one of the big services like LiveJournal or Blogger, you might want to consider adding rel="nofollow" to the links to your comment pages. Just a thought.

In most parts of the country, banks, government offices and some businesses were closed in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King. Things were quiet in Mississippi too, although as this recording from the State Tax Commission demonstrates, not entirely for the same reason. Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

A blog called monkey methods has some shocking pictures of Bill Gates, taken for a photospread in Teen Beat magazine. Horrifying then, horrifying now.

(Thanks to Boing Boing for the link. I'll be sending you the therapy bills shortly.)

Okay, maybe just clever. But I think it's inspired; see if you agree...

With all the noise over Apple's new iPod Shuffle, the stick-of-gum-sized music player, the biggest complaint is over the lack of a screen. And that mostly focuses on the user not knowing what a song is, assuming of course that he or she doesn't recognize it right off. (Hey, it happens to me all the time. Then again, maybe that's just old age taking over.)

Anyway, here's the brilliant idea. Mac OS X has voice technology. So what would it take to have iTunes add a voice that speaks the song titles and artist at the beginning of each track? It could be an option you turn on for the iPod Shuffle, or even for the regular iPod in situations where you really ought not to be looking at the screen. (Like driving, for example.)

Like I said: brilliant. And I won't even try to patent it. Although if somebody does implement it and wants to send me an iPod out of gratitude, I wouldn't say no...

Update 03/11: Am I ahead of my time or what? According to Daring Fireball, Apple has just implemented my brilliant idea. So if I'm so smart, how come I'm unemployed?

There's a wonderful dissection of the Wall Street Journal's piece on two bloggers who worked on the Dean campaign at the blue lemur, a site that subtitles itself "Progressive Politics and Media News". In brief, the WSJ's chief editorial writer, who attacked the bloggers over a conflict of interest because (he claims inaccurately) they didn't report being paid by the campaign, himself serves on President Bush's fellowship board (Armstrong Williams is another member) and is in the process of being hired as chief speechwriter for the administration. So I guess it's only a conflict of interest when progressives do it.

It's your basic good news/bad news joke. Or it would be, if it were funny. The good news: the unemployment rate in Silicon Valley is down: from 5.1% in November to 4.7% in December. The bad: it's only down because the number of people leaving town was slightly greater than the number of lost jobs.

You can read about it in the Murky News. But what it makes clear is that the job engine here is still slowing down, although the rate at which it's slowing is itself slowing. Hardly cause for celebration, unless you have a job and are hoping for lower prices in the local housing market. Which still hasn't happened, despite all the air that's been sucked out of the economy since the Internet bubble burst. Maybe next month. Or the one after that.

I never got into the Star Wars collectable thing, even as big a fanboy as I was. I did own a radio control R2D2, which may still be in a box somewhere. No, not the original box; that would be far too forward-thinking for one such as I. But I may just have to rush out and get this latest Star Wars toy. It's Darth Vader! Or his subterranean tuber cousin, anyway. Who thinks of these things? What was the meeting like when somebody suggested Mr. Potato Head with a light sabre? And why can't my meetings be like that?

Thanks to Boing Boing for giving me my first good laugh of the day. I needed it.

Joi Ito writes about how PeopleSoft employees are joining LinkedIn like crazy in anticipation of the post-acquisition layoffs. Almost 4000 new members in the last month.

If you haven't discovered it yet, LinkedIn is a personal connection network, sort of a Friendster for business relationships. I joined about a year ago, although so far I haven't seen any real value. Still, it's free. And it's a chance to reconnect with former colleagues. Including 6000 soon to be ex-PS employees, if the layoff rumors are true.

I just finished watching last night's episode of Law & Order on my ReplayTV. And the last couple of minutes of the show have to be the most bizarre, not just in the history of this program, but in any program produced in the last decade. What on earth were they thinking?

I'd heard that Elisabeth Röhm was being written out of the show. And I could see her departure coming in that last scene. But the way they handled it was hamfisted at best. And that final line? I can not believe they were serious! Granted, not every revelation will be "Luke, I am your father." But really.

Thanks to Google Blogoscoped for this one: it seems MSN Maps & Directions needs help with both its maps and its sense of direction. As you can see here, it routed a trip between Haugesund and Trondheim in Norway via England, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Why do I get the feeling Microsoft's plans for world domination got mixed in with some 1940s invasion plans?

A quick pointer to an article about Car Talk, the best show on National Public Radio. And this from somebody who is a total idiot about cars (I offer into evidence People's Exhibit A) and cares even less than he knows. If you haven't discovered Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers, do so immediately. These blogs will be here when you get back.

(Thanks to Joho the Blog for the link.)

Watching the extended version of The Return of the King last night, I was struck by the image of the One Ring against the fires of Mount Doom. I just had to see how that frame would look as a desktop background on my PowerBook. Pretty good, as it turns out.

Not that Apple made it easy. The standard DVD player application prevents you from doing screen captures. Fortunately, there's an Open Source alternative: the wonderful VideoLAN Client, a player for a bunch of video formats. Including commercial DVDs as it turns out. And even including a few region-protected discs. (But not all, sadly. Some still require changing the region code on my DVD drive before they'll play.)

Anyway, freezing to the right frame with VideoLAN Client, I could do a screen capture. And then into Photoshop Elements, the junior and much cheaper subset of Photoshop for those of us with less money and fewer delusions of our graphic skills. Which did a nice job of scaling the image up to the resolution of my screen. A little cropping and I have this nice new desktop background to add to my own photographs. But now that I've been bitten, I wonder which of my other movies have scenes that would make neat desktops. I may regret having started with this...

With things kind of quiet at work, at least for me, I decided to take some time off today and head into San Francisco to visit MacWorld. There was once a time when I could spend three full days wandering the aisles at MacWorld; this one took me about an hour and a half. Some of the difference is the web; we get so much information thrown at us every day, at least if we want it (and I do), that there are a lot fewer surprises when you get to a trade show. Some if it is that Macs are a lot more mainstream than they used to be; thanks to USB and all sorts of other standards, there's less need for special Mac devices. Some of it is that Apple's more available, thanks to its own stores and local retailers like Fry's Electronics. Every time I visit either one I get a good look at a wide range of goodies.

But there's one place where Macs aren't mainstream: software. With a different operating system and GUI, software has to be written specifically for the Mac. And I was surprised at how few software makers were present at the show. I guess they don't feel the need to exhibit any more. Which is a shame, since there's nothing better than seeing a demo of a cool product by somebody who really knows how to exercise it.

So what was there to see? Apple's new products, of course: the Mac mini in all its teenyness. And the iPod Shuffle, which takes teenyness and minimalism to a whole different level. I want both, although I'm less than pleased to note that the Mac mini is completely unupgradeable by the user -- even memory has to be factory installed. Still, it's three times faster than my G4 Cube, one third the size and, even after adding memory, less than half the price. So we'll see.

Oh, and there were lots of iPod accessories. And lots of notebook bags and cases. And all the digital camera and printer makers, which was nice. I need a new laser printer. And even if I don't need another camera (my D70 isn't even out of warranty yet), there are some little pocket sized models that are just crying out to be taken home.

But I so miss the old days of MacWorld. The love fest. The objectionable software. The giveaways. The spending way more than I ought to have spent on stuff I didn't need and never... well, maybe I don't miss that part quite so much.

Update 01/13: A correction: According to Cult of Mac, you can upgrade the memory on a Mac mini yourself. It's not recommended, but it won't break the warranty. So I guess this thing's back on my list as a replacement for my Cube.

I had a quick "double take" moment just now. Catching up on RSS feeds with the wonderful NetNewsWire, I came upon the following headline at Slashdot:

Microsoft Releases Malicious Software Removal Tool

Ah, the challenges of writing unambiguous English...

No, not this entry; no spew warnings apply here. But if you follow my recommendation (and my link) and visit The Impulsive Buy, you would be well advised to finish whatever you're eating or drinking first. TIB is a product review site. Or maybe it's a comedy site. No, wait; you're both right! It's a comedy version of a product review site. Which is different than a comedy product review site, which one assumes would talk about whoopie cushions and fake vomit and the like. Not that I would put it past this blog; his review of Post Carb Well Golden Crunch Cereal has certain fake vomit allusions. Or should that be aspirations?

Anyway, my point, assuming I have one, is that the reviews here are both cautionary and hilarious. Makes you wonder why Consumer Reports never thought of that.

Thanks to Slashdot for pointing to a BBC News story about someone using eBay to sell advertising space on his forehead. At this writing, he's been bid up to over $15,000! (Follow the auction here.)

Not so amazingly, a couple of other people are trying the same stunt, although with less success. Oh, and I feel compelled to mention that an eBay search on "forehead" also comes up with these belt buckles that are emblazoned with the slogan "Place Forehead Here". Which seems an odd thing to have on your belt buckle, doesn't it?

One of the challenges of working in the ecommerce space is understanding the other firms and their businesses. Is that company over there a competitor? A potential partner? A customer? Often I'll read their websites in search of some insight. And I'll come away just as ignorant as I started.

That's why it's such a pleasure to run into these guys. Because, although they've left me as clueless as ever, they managed to do with without synergizing this or infrastructuring that. They're my kind of company. Granted, they're no ZomboCom. But who is?

(Thanks to "yet another f*$#&@! learning experience" for the link.)

No, I'm not referring to A Series of Unfortunate Events, although I am using the title of the first book in that series for this entry. No, the bad beginning to which I refer belongs to Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Because, having exhausted every episode of Joss Whedon's three shows (I have season five of Angel on order for the commentaries and other extras), I did a foolish thing. I was in Tower Records and saw a cheap copy of the original Buffy movie on sale. It was relatively cheap and, being the completist soul that I am, I purchased it. I knew it was inferior to the series. But I figured that anything that started life in Joss's pen had to have some redeeming features.

Let me say without qualification that I was wrong. This has to be among the very lamest, dullest and least inspired stories I've ever seen. Every single aspect that made the television version of Buffy (and Angel and Firefly) so eminently watchable is missing from the film. The acting is dull, the dialogue is uninspired, the visuals are uncompelling, the music is forgettable. It's all a train wreck.

It reminds me of a joke once told by actor Alan Thicke, who, before becoming a success as the father on Growing Pains, was touted as Johnny Carson's worst nightmare as host of a new talk show called Thicke of the Night. "What's the difference between Thicke of the Night and the Titanic?", he asked. Answer: "The Titanic had entertainment."

Exactly.

This heartfelt tale of the rightness of Windows requires Quicktime to view. Which seems wrong somehow, doesn't it?

I've been following the controversy over the British Broadcasting Corporation's plan to air a performance of Jerry Springer: The Opera. What interests me is that JS:TO was part of the Best of Broadway series a friend and I purchased last year, and which disappeared from the lineup some time after we bought our tickets. No word on why it's no longer on the schedule here. But I have a hard time believing it was due to concerns over content; San Franciscans are traditionally pretty broadminded.

So what's going on? And how do I get a copy of that BBC broadcast? It has to be more entertaining than White Christmas was. Not that that would be much of a challenge.

Update 01/08: And here's an interesting comment on the BBC controversy. The author is Toby Scott, Media Relations Officer for the Methodist Church in England. Mr. Scott violates the Prime Directive of any such dialogue: he's actually seen the play.

I've been slowly working my way through my stack of unwatched DVDs. Latest viewing has been the Star Wars set. I saw the revamped Star Wars (or Episode IV or A New Hope) when it showed up in theaters. And I was unimpressed enough with George Lucas's hacking that I skipped the revisions of Empire and Jedi. So catching them on DVD gave me a chance to see the new effects and listen to the commentaries at the same time.

The best commentary by far is on Empire. And the reason is obvious: it's the only one that isn't dominated by Lucas, and by what I have to believe is revisionist history of the making of the films. Irvin Kershner's comments are more humble, more honest and a lot more insightful about his directorial efforts on the film. He admits to making some things up as he went along, as well as his uncertainty about how the live footage and the effects would look when it all came together. He makes filmmaking seem exciting and dangerous (in the career sense), which is the way it ought to be.

Lucas, on the other hand, seems incapable of doubt or the ability to make a mistake. Okay: one mistake; he does acknowledge that introducing Boba Fett only to kill him off quickly and unceremoniously in Jedi was foolish, especially since he knew (so he says) that he would be so central to the first trilogy. But no other mistakes: all six films came fully formed from his brain before the first film ever saw a camera. And the obvious, if trivial, mistakes aren't mistakes either. Lucas has his explanation for Han Solo's "Kessel run" line (treating parsec as a measure of time rather than distance). And I grant that the explanation is reasonable. But I'm still willing to bet that the line was a mistake and that he's just trying to come up with something to save his own aura of infallability.

In any event, it's nice to have the movies on DVD. They look very good, although the additions are both unnecessary and stylistic distractions. (The extra CGI creatures at the beginning of Jedi are too sharp, making it obvious they were added to filmed scenes.) And there's some nice stuff in the commentaries, along with Lucas's howlers. Like talking about all the work to find the best possible actors. Gee, then how do you explain Jake Lloyd?

Now that Bill Gates has declared open source advocates to be "sort of communists", Bill's own color apparently being more the blue of screen death, the pinkos of the non-Microsoft world have responded with a combination of raised eyebrows, laughter and some really cool graphics. The one at right, a Copyleft takeoff on Soviet Constructivist artwork, was created by Jamie at The Nonist.

Funny; I thought calling people you disagree with Commies went out with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Shows what I know.

Which, one has to admit, is preferable to eating what the Brits think of as food. But that's neither here nor there. No, we're here to discuss the international sport of cheese racing. What's cheese racing? It's what happens when you put a plastic-wrapped slice of processed cheese food¹ on a barbecue grill. Turns out the plastic is fireproof, so the cheesy stuff inside bubbles and expands with gas. As we would do if we were to eat it. But I digress.

1. You have to wonder about any product that has to include the word food in its description, as if to assure you that you aren't the incipient victim of a grand practical joke. But I'm sure there's some government agency doing their part to look out for us. Like the folks who won't let California growers refer to prunes as dried plums. Dried plums sound less unappealing, the growers feel. And that's what prunes are. But the bureaucrats are unmoved. Maybe if they ate some prunes...

The Mac rumor sites have been full of stories about what His Royal Jobness will announce next week at MacWorld in San Francisco. The best documented rumors concern an iMac sans display and a new office suite with the possible name of iWork. Which would have been par for the course, if Apple hadn't upped the ante by suing Think Secret over the leaks.

Which also would be commonplace and not worth writing about. Except that Charles Arthur writes in his blog that Apple's lawyers may have an interesting time when they try to serve Think Secret with papers:

$ whois thinksecret.com

   Organization:
      The dePlume Organization LLC
      Nick dePlume
      P.O. Box 71
      New Woodstock, NY 13122
      US
      Phone: (425) 930-47691
      Fax..: (425) 930-4769
      Email: nick@deplume.com
  

Nick dePlume? Is that like a nom de pen?

1. BTW², although the address is in New York, a reverse phone lookup tells me the phone number is in Bellevue, Washington. Isn't that Microsoft country? Curious place for Mac rumors.
2. Oh, BTW is TLA-speak³ for by the way.
3. And TLA is a three letter acronym. Unless you're in the other Washington. Over there it's a three letter agency. CIA, NSA, that sort of thing.

Gizmodo reports on a rumor that new 4GB iPod Minis are actually shipping with 5GB drives, presumably in preparation for an announcement at MacWorld next week in San Francisco. He describes this secret upgrade as an odd business practice. Maybe so, but not without precedent.

I was at Sun Microsystems during the era of the first SPARCstations. The original SPARCstation 1 had a 20MHz processor. And when faster processors became available, Sun released a new and improved 25MHz workstation they called the SPARCstation 1+. They took all the outstanding orders for the SS1 and shipped them the 1+ with a little note. The note explained the change and expressed the hope that the customer wouldn't be inconvenienced by receiving a faster machine at the same price. To my knowledge, no one complained.

Cult of Mac quotes from an Irish Times interview on the @U2 site about the band's decision to appear in an Apple ad. As a big Apple fan (but not particularly a U2 fan), I found their thought processes interesting:

Q: Speaking of which: U2 in the Apple iPod ad?

Bono: We always say that we are a gang of four but a corporation of five.

Larry: It was a very clear idea. They make products that we like, also they have single-handedly saved the music industry, they have developed the technology to download the music and for it to be paid for. Record companies couldn't do that -- they were faffing around suing people. We are big fans of Apple, we're happy to stand up and say that, "yes, these guys design the best stuff." When it came to the single, "Vertigo," they were going "can we use that song" and we were thinking, we want to get that riff out there. They wanted to make an ad and we told them we would be in it.

Bono: No money changed hands.

Larry: I'm very precious and conservative about the use of U2's music anywhere because I have concerns about the perception of the band. We're not endorsing a product we're embarrassed about -- we use it the iPod, we like it, it's helping us and other musicians to get paid for their wares. Ninety per cent of people will pay for downloads. Apple and Steve Jobs are saving music for the future. It won't be Universal, EMI or Sony running record companies in 10 years' time -- it will be Apple and telephone companies. We don't do advertisements, we did do the Apple campaign.

Bono: We did think about doing a car ad at one stage. We were offered $23 million for one song. Here's a moral hazard for you: we, and I particularly, know what $23 million can buy if you're not going to keep it.

Larry: Yeah, a yacht!

Bono: You can build a lot for $23 million in the countries I've been in. But you either tell people you're giving it away -- then, by our definition, it is no longer charity, in the sense that the right hand shouldn't know what the left hand is doing. Finally, the reason we didn't do it was because it was for "Where the Streets Have No Name." If a U2 show is going askew, as it can, the one song you can rely on to get that room back is "Where the Streets Have No Name," and we didn't want some 16-year-old kids turning to each other and saying "oh great, they're playing the car ad." Now, had it been a different song out of the U2 canon...It's not zealotry that stops us -- in the end we didn't want to embarrass our fans, we didn't want to change the mood in which that song is perceived.

It's not the "in bed with a corporation" usual thing that stops us. We are in bed with many corporations: MTV are a Viacom corporation; Clear Channel -- they play us on the radio; Universal, our label, is a Vivendi corporation. It's not the cash, it's just "don't embarrass us." In my other life as a lobbyist I will be looking for $223 million and I'd prefer to spend my time doing that.

The best thing about most services is that we don't have to think about them. Do you give the electric company or the phone service a moment's thought? Yeah, you do once a month when the bill comes. And you certainly do when a storm knocks out the power, at least for however long it takes for it to come back. But mostly it's in the background.

And that's the way it is with most web merchants. You browse, you order, you receive delivery. I've had most excellent results with most of my web purchases. So when something goes wrong, it's rather a shock to the system. And how the firm handles the failure does a lot to decide whether the incident is a momentary blip or an incident that will affect my view of the whole online shopping experience.

The incident: my order of the extended edition of The Return of the King. The vendor: Amazon. I placed my order back at the beginning of October and waited patiently for Amazon to receive and ship my DVDs. Since I went for free shipping, I expected to wait a while longer. I was notified that the package was shipped in mid-December and should arrive right around Christmas. They even provided a tracking number with the Postal Service.

So I waited. And waited. Christmas came and went; no package. New Years is now history. And still no package. And the USPS still shows the box in transit, having taken almost three weeks to traverse the vast distance between Richmond, California and here. It could have walked here in less time than that. Without legs.

Calling the Postal Service's toll free number got me nowhere. They pointed me back at the shipper. So I went back to Amazon's website. Couldn't find any place to report a lost package, so I sent an email from the Request a Refund link. And had a reply the following morning, with an apology and a promise of a duplicate shipment. With expedited shipping, none of this "transport by snail" business.

I'll add an update when the box arrives. But I have to commend Amazon for their quick and positive response. This is the first time anything's gone wrong with one of my Amazon orders. And they did what was necessary to keep me as a customer. Nice to know they're ready to respond when something goes wrong. Even if it never does again.

Update 01/08: Happy ending, not that I expected anything different. The box arrived yesterday, just in time for me to finish watching the extras on the Star Wars DVD set. So now it's time to watch Tolkien's final act. And then watch it a few more times, with all those wonderful commentary tracks.

Flipping the dial tonight, I came upon a television movie about the making of Dynasty. Is it just me, or has everything on television become about television? I'll admit to having enjoyed the Charlie's Angels making-of show. But that was different. For one thing, it make every single person involved with the show look like either a twit or a lowlife. (And often both at the same time.) And for another, it had Ben Browder as Mr. Farrah Fawcett. I'll watch pretty much anything that has a Farscape cast member.

But a special about Dynasty? I'm just puzzled. Granted, I didn't pay much attention t the show while it was on. But even this recreation admits with every other line that Dynasty was a retread of Dallas, and Alexis Carrington just an estrogen-enhanced J.R. Ewing. Okay, Joan Collins had broader shoulders than Larry Hagman. But does that justify two hours of broadcast time? What's next? Making of specials about the making of a making of special?

Guess it's back to the Law & Order reruns on TNT...

I was expecting this to be a quiet New Years Day, with nothing interesting to report on. Aside from a robot entry in the Rose Parade, it's been a day of reruns and the terminally mundane. Until I discovered this remarkable product at a new site called Bad Ass Reviews. It's Russian Roulette for people who aren't really suicidal, or at least not actively so. The mind boggles...