Disorderly Content

Television Without Pity may be without pity, but it is not without a social conscience. For a year or so, they've been holding quarterly auctions for some worthy charity, where devotees to one show or another (also known as fans or, more accurately, nuts) pool their resources to outbid each other. The prize is a recap of an episode of said show, done in the inimitable TWoP style. We Scapers have won two such auctions, which got us recaps of Crackers Don't Matter (well, they don't) and the series premiere. But try as we might, we were outbid in the latest auction by the Days Of Our Lives crew. And now their recap is up, demonstrating that even I am insufficiently ironic to appreciate soap operas daytime dramas. But not to worry; a second auction was held immediately, which we Scapers won. And although I know the Full House crowd is furious (and who can blame them), their hostility is more than compensated by the joy of an upcoming recap of A Human Reaction. Personally, I was pushing for Won't Get Fooled Again, if only for the higher degree of difficulty in having to explain all those back references. Ah, well; maybe next time.

I was visiting friends tonight, including a barbecue that was only slightly affected by the pouring rain we've been enjoying all day. And on my arrival back home I noticed that the neighborhood looked considerably darker than usual. Took a moment for it to penetrate, I'm afraid, as I went from "hmmm... interesting" to "guess the power's gone out". And then I had the challenge of getting from my parking space under my building to the door, finding the right key and getting it into the lock (no more than a 3.5 on the difficulty scale), getting up two short flights of stairs, finding my apartment door (maybe a 5.2), working the two locks and getting inside. Which was strangely bright, as I'd left my laptop open. That made it easier to find the little LED flashlight in my computer bag, close my laptop (its battery down to 14%) and settle in for an early night. Which was a lot earlier than I expected, as everything started to come back to life a mere half hour later. Nice job on the repairs, PG&E guys. I was starting to feel the pangs of net.withdrawal there.

It's official: George W. Bush, the most powerful man on the planet, is also a "moving/falling object". That's how the President was described in an official report on his two wheeled collision with a Scottish constable. The Scotsman newspaper quotes from the recently released report on the incident last July, where Bush demonstrated an inability to ride, wave and speak at the same time. Apparently, the most powerful man on the planet has the attention span of a small child. Which explains a lot, come to think of it.

And to think I actually considered relocating to Florida. Well, not seriously. But I did fly out for an interview, although I think I knew it was a bad idea shortly after getting off the plane.

What causes me to muse so? A followup to a piece I first saw yesterday on Boing Boing about cops in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties who threatened people who asked for complaint forms. An undercover reporting team got hidden camera footage of one of the officers browbeating a requestor, which I suppose is still better than the other kind of beating. The cop even chased him out of the building when he refused to knuckle under.

But the story even gets better. Today's update has that officer trying to take the news station to court to keep the public from seeing the story. The judge in essence told him to get stuffed. As well he should.

Sorry for the paucity of posts (with their absence of alliteration, of course). Last week my new job had me actually working, which plays havoc with my blogging time. And energy. And time.

But this item I saw in a couple of places was too good to let pass without acknowledgment. It's a big deal when H&R Block has to report a hit to earnings. But it's even better, in that wonderful schadenfreude sense we can all relate to, when the reason for the shortfall is that they botched their own taxes! Makes you wonder how anybody can trust these guys to keep the IRS from the door. Me, I did mine with TurboTax. And I already have my refund, although some spammer claiming to be the IRS is offering me a sixty-odd dollar refund if I'll just click on some link they've thoughtfully provided. Yep, tax time just gets better and better.

(Read about the H&R Block story on Slashdot.)

Former Murky News columnist Dan Gillmor on right wing hypocracy concerning Dick Cheney's little shooting incident. I couldn't agree more.

From Boing Boing comes news of the latest takeoff on Russian Roulette. Last time it was electric shocks; but now it's capsaicin, the active ingredient in chile peppers. Read all about it at the appropriately named Firebox.com.

Just be sure to take pictures when you play. The expression on the loser's face just has to be preserved for posterity!

From a former employee of a former employer (but not a colleage, since our tenures had no overlap) comes news that said employer is no longer. Nazomi Communications, once known as JEDI Technologies until Mr. Lucas's lawyers took exception (and who couldn't have seen that coming?) is now history, a dotcom-era technology company whose investors finally had enough. Their website is still up, at least as of this writing. Which brings to mind that old saying: "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." I guess they figure it out eventually, even on the Internet.

As bad as spammers are, I really have to wonder about the ones who are too stupid or too lazy even to get their messages right. In the past few days I've had several pharmaceutical spams that squeezed past my filters. They're the usual stuff: misspelled words and special characters to bypass dictionary-based filters, a minimum of words, a different variant on the same phrase, this one reading We are your One Stop Shop for Substantial Dicounts. (I've never been much for dicounts, much less substantial ones. You of course may have your own opinion on the subject.)

But what's really special about this bit of canned luncheon meat is the URL, which is of course the real cargo of the message. And yet somehow I don't think they really want me to point my browser at <http://www./>. Or maybe they do; maybe they're trying to make me crazy, so I'll need the psychotropic drugs they're planning to offer me in a later mailing.

Or not. Maybe these particular spamming b@stards (hey, I can do it too) aren't even smart enough to use their own spamming tools. Yeah, that'd be my bet.

Over at Google Blogoscoped there's an article about how a search engine optimization (i.e. "Let's game Google") firm called Traffic Power and its clients have been removed completely from Google's index. As a naive believer in fairness, I think SEO ranks just below spam on the list of modern tech evils, so I can't help but feel that we're seeing a little frontier justice in action. Or maybe I'm just jealous that these guys have the money to get attention on the web. I have to do it the old fashioned way: through wit and charm and useful information. And we can all see how well that's working.

Much as I like DVDs, I hate those Fascist warnings and menus the content providers force us to wade through before we can get to the actual content. But not nearly as much as I hate region coding. Why shouldn't I be able to buy British or Australian programs, or Chinese if that's what floats my boat? But nooooo, say the people with the power. You'll watch what we let you watch. And only when we let you watch it. And we follow, sheeplike, where they lead us.

Mostly, anyway. I've been pleased with the ability of apps like VideoLAN Client to bypass region coding on some discs, so I can see the Farscape extras the Brits get. But even VLC isn't perfect; I had to actually change my DVD drive's region to watch the even smuttier but still just as dull Region 2 version of Eyes Wide Shut. I kept thinking how pleasant life would be with a hacked DVD player. But that sheeplike thing kept me from acting on that thought.

Until recently, when my Sony 5-disc DVD carousel player started acting up. First it was a series of ripples in the picture when I powered it on, but which cleared up in a few minutes. Then it was more than a few minutes. Until finally it was all the time, and getting worse. Time to get a new player, I thought. And as long as I'm getting a new player, why not get a region free one?

But of course that would be wrong. The powers that control the content say it's wrong, don't they? And they wouldn't lie to us, just to protect their phony baloney jobs. They wouldn't, would they?

Okay, my high school did have computers, although you modren kids wouldn't recognize them as such. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. No, I want to alert you to the latest scourge on the Internet: popularity by promiscuity! The site is called Slut-o-Meter, and it calculates your promiscuity by asking Google about you with SafeSearch enabled and then disabled. The ratio of good vs. dirty results determines your score. Me, I'm 1.3% promiscuous. Which is better than I feared but less than I hoped.

(Spotted on Google Blogoscoped.)

We all know that spammers are scum. But every now and then they do something that's at least momentarily entertaining. Like this call from beyond the grave of jobs past I just received. Actually, I've seen a couple of them in the last 24 hours. And they're all addressed to me at my current email address. But what's interesting is that they're addressed from me as well. But not at that address, which of course wouldn't be interesting at all. No, they come from, and I quote:

From: "Shiffman" <shiffman@slappy.engr.sgi.com>

Which used to be me, back in the 1990s when I worked at Silicon Graphics and had a computer I'd named in honor of Slappy Squirrel of Animaniacs fame. Speaking of which, when d'ya think we'll see Yakko, Wakko and Dot on DVD? Anybody?

I spent time in the dentist's chair this morning, after two reschedules due to a work trip and the bug I brought back with me. Things were going along fine until the technician decided that one of my wisdom teeth was getting way too snuggly with the next one over. My dentist concurred, so it looks like that baby is coming out! Never having experienced dental surgery, and not being much of a one for pain, I'm facing the prospect with a combination of fear, trepidation and dread. The only consolation is that I'm some kind of genetic freak, but in a good way: I only have half the usual complement of wisdom teeth. Guess that's something else I can thank mom and dad about.

(Yes, of course this was about my teeth! Why, what did you think I meant by that coming out title?)

Tonight was the night of our semimonthly blogger non-Meetup at Barefoot Coffee Roasters in... Cupertino? It was the usual congenial group around the big round table, with the conversation racing hither and yon as it is wont to do. I was among the few not taking advantage of the free WiFi, which I grant is a lot easier if you actually have a computer with you. Elke and Elasaid were blogging in real time, as opposed to the imaginary, or at least complex, time in which the rest of us dwell. I got to congratulate Elasaid about her appearance, or at least the auditory equivalent, on an episode of Cinecast, one of my favorite podcasts. And also about her new job at Tivo, which will start in another week or so. And Elke and I riffed on men's basic fear of women, which I said explained why we never look women in the eye. Our lowered gaze is out of respect and fear, not the mammary fixation of which we're always accused. Hey, it's just a theory!

I refer not to Shakespeare, but to Valleywag, the latest blog effort from Gawker Media. Aspiring to do for Silicon Valley what Wonkette does for Washington, so far all it's done is demonstrate that Silicon Valley gossip is a contradiction in terms. Granted, they've only been publishing a few days, but really! If whining about the free snacks at Google and Steve Jobs somehow getting by without license plates is the best you can do, how long can it be before the only sound you year is that of dozens of RSS readers deleting their feed? My advice: read it now while you can. It's better than Sominex if you're having trouble sleeping.

Or maybe both. I speak of Cherub, the vampire with bunny slippers, who is filled with remorse for his evil past but may revert if he ever has a moment of perfect back adjustment. Yes, as you've already guessed, this is a parody of Angel, Joss Whedon's spinoff of his own Buffy The Vampire Slayer. And if you think it sounds like fun, I'm going to suggest that you not watch the trailer. Would that I had received such good advice...

(Spotted on TV Squad.)

Okay, I've had my Blackberry for two and a half weeks. And I like it, sure. But I'm just not feelin' the love like this guy. That's just sick.

Now my iPod, on the other hand...

I was just installing iLife '06, the latest version of Apple's media editing suite. Like most every install I've done since OS X, it was an uneventful process. Right up until the end, that is, when suddenly something odd happened: my dock disappeared! I tried a few things to bring it back, with no success. So I logged out and back in, and now everything's back to normal. Well, aside from Apple's annoying insistence in putting icons for every one of the iLife apps in the dock. Really, guys, if I want 'em, I'll put 'em there myself! And of course I can't help wondering if that dock population stunt is what made it go bye bye. At least the effect was only temporary...

I just finished watching Bride & Prejudice, which translates Jane Austen to modern India, adds singing and dancing and still manages to wrap up the whole thing in 111 minutes, including credits. (The Hindi version is 11 minutes longer, and almost all of that is longer versions of the songs.) That's even less time than last year's Keira Knightley vehicle, which took 127 minutes without a single song. And it's positively evanescent compared to the BBC version's bulky 300 minutes. To say nothing of the unabridged audiobook versions, which clock in at upwards of 11 hours! Which makes me wonder where you, my gentle reader, stand on this important issue. Is less truly more? Or is more more?

I suppose it depends on the subject. Sometimes less really is better, especially in this short attention span world of ours. Which is why I'm so grateful to have discovered FiveMinute.net, which condenses a selection of modern works to more reasonable lengths. And if that's still too long, there's always Book-A-Minute, which reduces all of Ms. Austen's works to this:

Female Lead

I secretly love Male Lead. He must never know.

Male Lead

I secretly love Female Lead. She must never know.

(They find out.)

THE END

Yep, that about says it.

The title of this post is in honor of Mille Bornes, a French card game I used to play as a kid. The name translates to One Thousand Milestones, and refers to the stone markers along French roadways. Anyway, that's all irrelevant except for the fact that this blog has reached a milestone itself. Yep, my last post was number 500, which puts me halfway to my own mille bornes. It took sixteen months to get there, which works out to 1.02 posts per day. Pretty dedicated, I'd say. And that doesn't count the 240 music reviews on my other blog, which started just a couple of weeks before this one, or all the other stuff I've added to my website since then. Wonder how long the next 500 will take.

Yeah, I know; it's only news when he doesn't. But you have to love it when Mr. No Spin gets it right back in his face, as he does in this video from MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. Keith's channeling of Bill as Ted Baxter's just gravy.

(Thanks to TV Squad for this one.)

This will require a bit of explanation for those of you who can't remember back to the dark ages of computing, when a phrase like personal computer was a source of amused speculation. Back then, real programmers worked on Teletypes that spat out long streams of yellow paper with little chunks of wood embedded in it. And a very lucky few got to use primitive CRTs with flickery green screens, saving a few trees at the expense of their eyesight.

But now those days can be yours, at least if you're on a Mac. From Boing Boing comes news of GLTerminal, an OSX app that simulates the joy of typing to a glass Teletype, as some of us called them back in the day. I get all tingly with nostalgia just thinking about it!