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FaceBoof!

2011-04-02T19:50:00.000-07:00

My latest app for your enjoyment: FaceBoof! is now available on the Mac App Store!

SIGGRAPH

2011-02-08T18:22:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile, but I'm off to SIGGRAPH LA tonight for a presentation on 3D footage acquisition and post-production.

I think the last SIGGRAPH I went to was about the motion capture tech in Beowulf. Wot!

Can I Touch Your Apps?

2011-01-20T14:58:00.001-08:00

Reducticon - nerds about iOS.

More apps on the way, because everyone loves a tight app!

Two New iPhone Apps

2010-12-08T15:30:00.001-08:00

After wading through some minor problems getting one of my new apps approved, here they are: FotoRoid and SupaPink.

Jose Guadalupe Posada

2010-10-31T01:27:00.000-07:00

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Guadalupe_Posada

RIP Terry Southern

2010-10-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

Q: As writers, you and I come from different worlds. You--as I understand it, correct me if I am wrong--are the pure writer who eschews any relationship between successful writing and commercial success.

Terry Southern: I think you are trying to draw a distinction between an artist and a professional. That is the difference between a party girl and a hooker. A party girl is somebody who does it for fun, but a hooker is somebody who does it for money. I'm just talking about the distinction this way so we can limit it to this dichotomy. I'm a party girl. No, I would prefer it, and that's on record now, if you would say "party person."

I'm a party girl.

It's Paaaat!

2010-08-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

And here I thought I was the only computer guy with a penchant for sketch comedy...

Following high school graduation, Morita worked his way up to head of computer operations for an aerospace company. Itching to perform, however, he quit and followed his passion to Los Angeles, where he became a member of The Groundlings.

Source: www.onlythebravemovie.com/cast.php?pat_morita

Shake Weights

2010-07-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

Weight Shake Sim

All drinking water is the same, and that's why I drink Pacific Ocean seawater.

No Negro Dialect

2010-04-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

New Directions...

2010-02-09T20:23:00.000-08:00

Some videos I directed:

youtube.com/watch.php?v=mxoqbqFI4lQ

youtube.com/watch.php?v=8pWWMwSiER0

youtube.com/watch.php?v=iqXHxZ4-dx4

youtube.com/watch.php?v=BuHJiryT8sw

2010... Possibly Not Like Kubrick Predicted

2010-02-07T18:09:00.000-08:00

The zeros. The '00s. The 2000-2010. The decade that... what? I remember working a lot.

2010 is here.

The Ferg

2009-10-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

Ferguson's research dept. is good, but you know, not everything is on the internet! I heard a rumour I'd been recruited by the Canadian conspiracy. I can neither confirm nor deny this.

Bart

2009-10-13T06:08:00.000-07:00

Ms. Mellon: Bart, what other paradoxes affect our lives?
Bart: Well... you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't.

Eleven

2009-08-04T01:23:00.001-07:00

I have an amp with a volume knob that goes to 11. Mesa-Boogie.

Flash Ads

2009-07-10T02:12:00.000-07:00

I can't wait for the day when I open a web page and three Flash video advertisements with sound and popup overlays take over the screen and start buying stuff for me on Amazon.com.

More winning strategies from the people who can't quite understand why Google has such a large market cap. Surely they would enjoy more 30s advertising spots?

Official

2009-06-16T14:23:00.001-07:00

I think I can safely say it's official: two nerds from the Bay Area with a penchant for mischief and meritocracy have changed the world. Maybe more than once. Maybe some additional changes coming.

In retrospect, I think it's really swell that those two guys didn't get distracted by the allure of Hollywood and end up making a movie about the future instead of inventing it.

One for Seth

2009-06-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

Really enjoyed this Webby monologue, which was well-crafted and wryly delivered.

But best of all, there's nothing that says cutting-edge Internet more than the voice of the most revered Canadian comedy institution on television.

And raise your hand if you ever had an email address that read gen@cerf.net.

With all the research pointing to internet users watching only the first 10 seconds of a web video, I find it amusing that most ad-powered video sites pre-load creative content with 15-30s of ads. Another winning strategy!

DTV Transition For Real Today

2009-06-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

(evil laugh) You're in my world now!

Learned

2009-06-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

Just learned that a failed musician will never amount to anything in comedy.

Spotlight

2009-06-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

I had the spotlight. I hypnotized a nation with comedic bit. They went catatonic in a light daze. I could have done anything. I could have changed the world! I sold them 30s of "Gee, your hair smells terrific."

Land of the Lost

2009-06-06T01:45:00.000-07:00

Saw Land of the Lost tonight at the Arclight. The critics are probably going to hate this movie, but I thought it was really interesting. It's as if Will Ferrell wandered into a Salvador Dali painting. I can't comment on whether it's true to the original series. Surreal. Limited narrative. Really imaginative sets. In particular, the Motel half baked into the sand with the boys half baked on the psychedelic pineapple juice was really fun.

People who like this film should really investigate some of the strange alternate historical theories of Earth, including Zecharia Sitchen and David Icke.

And a tip of the hat to Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs.

Still, my favorite Will Ferrell movie is the one he did with Woody Allen. A reminder that just because you're famous for wearing an FCC-approved patriotic thong on national TV, it doesn't mean you can't hold your own among the greats.

Joe Eszterhas: The Devil's Guide to Hollywood

2009-06-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

Read it. Learn it. Love it. Page 183.

Bambi vs. Godzilla (David Mamet) is another favorite textbook of mine.

Film at 11.

SoANL: Analysis!

2009-06-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

It's about 9 days to the DTV transition. Let's check in with the over-the-air ATSC HDTV signals and see what the big networks are doing with that 27 Mbits/s channel that they've been granted by the American public. It's a priviledge, not a right!

Hmmm. The local NBC affiliate is only using 10 Mbits/s of the 27 Mbits/s channel:

Leading to spikes in the compression, resulting in a low picture quality at critical material:

That guy in the black shirt is annoying! Who's he supposed to be again?

Wow, those guys look like a bunch of hockey players. Unfortunately, hockey players and movies about hockey players are only famous in Canada.

Speaking of Canadians. The encoder used by this affiliate inserts I-frames, or key-frames, whenever it detects a scene change.

Back from Hell-eh? And ready to party. NBC broadcasting SNL in 1080i, top field first, resulting in about 30% wasted bandwidth.

Count

2009-06-03T15:38:00.000-07:00

The twitter follower count is the new myspace friend count. Another totally meaningless number that someone wants to ascribe value to. At this point, the Nielsen's ratings system looking very scientific by comparison. Just so we can:

Sell! Sell! Sell!

and for those of you who can't sell:

Buy! Buy! Buy!

Apple

2009-06-03T14:30:00.001-07:00

Apple. Formerly Apple Computer Inc. Now there's a company that has no business in show business. Somebody should tell Apple and Alan Kay that nobody will ever carry a computer around in their pocket and use it to communicate, listen to music and watch millions of quirky home made videos. Computers are too complicated for ordinary people, they're for nerds!

I think they said exactly the same thing about radio. Nerds only.

You don't believe in Metcalfe's law. And so the twitter phenomenon mystifies you. Film at 11.

1

2009-06-02T05:47:00.001-07:00

The first education I got in Hollywood was from a Roger Corman alumni. Then I met a director whose Corman films had been the inspiration for Tarantino and others. I'd rather be a burgeoning Roger Corman than an actress. I don't think I'd make a very good actress. The main problem with being an actress is that I'm a heterosexual male. The fact that I can't act doesn't seem to be a significant problem in modern film production.

Will Forte really killed it in the funeral sketch during the SNL finale. I noticed the funeral sketch started at around 12:00 midnight. Seems appropriate.

Run, Conando, run!

Lonan!

2009-05-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

Moments after finishing the article about Conan's new gig in USA Today, I tuned my brand new handheld radio to 104.3 and caught a brief interview with Jay Leno regarding his new 10:00 p.m. show this fall. He waxed philosophical about the conditions leading up to the creation of his 10pm show and articulated some lucid thoughts about going up against CSI:MIAMI on Monday nights. Mr. Leno sounds really intelligent. I hope nobody in entertainment holds that against him.

AFTERTHOUGHT: If NBC really wants to stick it to CSI:Miami on Monday nights, they should hire a blimp and put the Peacock Logo and an ad for Jay's new show on the side of it and fly it low on the Long Beach horizon on CSI:Miami production days.

SNL Finale!

2009-05-26T03:12:00.000-07:00

Set your TIVO's to stun, I mean Conan. Goodbye SNL and hello Conando, Andy Richter and Friar Sweeney.

Still to go BSG and LOST...

To all comedy GIANTS! Thanks for the scraps and welcome to lilliput!

Cocoa Pebbles

2009-05-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

I just saw a box of Cocoa Pebbles on Fringe. Of course, they didn't use the Post brand (whoops!). No sense in doling out free product placement. Or is it a legal liability. Such a fine line.

Speaking of Fringe. That'd be a fun show to write for. But where are you going to find someone who can write a procedural scifi crime drama with a comedic streak? Other than the show writers, of course.

Fork

2009-05-18T20:14:00.001-07:00

"The journey is the reward."
- Zen Koan

There's a fork in the road. One path leads to truth in comedy. I'll probably follow Del, but not too closely. Recently, I met Andy Dick who was a student of Del Close. A bit too close.

Right now I am so far behind on TIVO: have not seen BSG finale, 4 episodes back of LOST, one SNL in 2 months. But I did tune in to Hulu for Tu-Spock. I think Jimmy might have landed on the Lonely Island in spandex and under the influence of B.C. 'shrooms. Hard to tell.

Yesterday I met a BigNews director (Gregg Lopez) at i.O. who worked at Wetlands in the early 90s. He remembered the Skadanks (friends of a friend).

Idea!

2009-05-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

I was reading the newspaper. I got a really funny idea that would kill on the DAILY SHOW. I made a mental note to be funny tomorrow. When tomorrow rolled around I scrawled my idea on a cocktail napkin that was stained with Beck's, cocktail nuts and something that was oozing out of Cindy's elbow. Bleeding? Twitter me. Too busy to elaborate, but I tucked the napkin into my pants pocket. Happy to report it went through the weekly wash in my pants pocket A-OK. It's almost legible. Finally got some time to cozy up to Microsoft Word to hunt and peck that laugh-o-rama into a sketch-like form. "I'm brilliant!" I thought to myself. Oh, but then LOST was on so I quit my comedy writing to go do what everyone else was doing. Later that night I wanted to review my thoughts but the smell of pizza was driving me like !crazy! so I did that instead. John Locke told me Jacob told me to do that instead of writing comedy. SMASH CUT TO: A week later and I'm still thinking my comedy bit will be great for the daily show. Better rework it from a greenscreen remote into a sketch just in case I want to expand the reach of my sketch packet to include some of the other, um, comedy guys. No time for that this week, though, because I heard that Jennifer Aniston will be on TV and I love her boobs and don't want to miss out on that. No way! DISSOLVE TO: Jennifer was in the TIVO keywords but apparently won't be appearing on Spike Feresten. That's awright 'cause I set a new high score on Wii Tetris, you know, the one where you have to turn a cartwheel to spin the shape. I'm dizzy, but it was worth it. I called some actor friends over for a table read and the only way I could get them to show up was a vague promise of FDA Schedule I hallucinogens. I'm happy to report after a delay caused by a spontaneous game of CLUE, my Daily Show sketch about the breaking Bernie Madoff story is generating major laughs. If you never heard of Bernie Madoff don't worry because, in a couple of weeks he'll be all over the news. However, during the read, one of my actor friends noted several instances where a period was followed by one, not two spaces. It irritated him. He majored in English lit and minored in cracking walnuts with his sphincter. Wow, this comedy sketch for the Daily Show is really funny.

But every screenwriter knows you don't ever go with that rough stuff. Nope, put it in a desk drawer and let it cook for a couple of months so you don't let anyone read the bad stuff. I didn't have a spare drawer so I simply stashed it among the unpaid parking tickets my out-of-work actor roomie keeps on the tank of the toilet just in case he runs low on T.P.

Then, 3 months ago I had a fit of inspiration as a result of a shopping binge at Target. Not only is my kitchen filled with spanky new plasticware, but that clip-on lamp is just what I needed to punch up the dialog on the last page of that sketch. Page one and two were already totally smokin'. I was still kinda worried that the comedy gods might frown on my work, so I used a voice recorder to stage a radio play of me doing all the parts, but in Disney voices. Surreal, but definitely a pragmatic tool for the analitically inclined. As I transcribed the radio play I tried to imagine Jon Stewart's Mickey Mouse face and that really got the comedy juices flowing. I was so happy I printed my sketch out on bright orange paper and drew little flowers in purple crayon around the edges. "Wow! That totally kills!" I thought to myself.

I'm really serious about writing for the Daily Show and so I tucked that comic masterpiece into a manilla folder along with my other 3 sketches. I figure, in about 7 months I'll be ready to submit my seven killer sketches based on topical news stories from the past decade. I think it's safe to say everyone is still really riled up about who John McCain is gonna pick for his running mate. Yeah, cause if I know Jon Stewart, he can really smell that comedy aroma wafting from the headlines of the NYT, and I wanna join his crack staff of writers churning out really funny sketches for the Daily Show at the rate of 9 per kilo-bagel. At one bagel per trip to Daniel's, that translates to 9 sketches every 1000 days. That WGA scale is starting to look really sweet to support my Command and Conquer habit.

My only worry is that I might not be fast enough for the Daily Show and might need to write for some weekly comedy like SNL, MadTV or American Idol Gives Back. I have some friends "in-the-know" that assured me that if there were any cancellations this season, SNL was definitely getting the axe because MadTV is like the little engine that could. Nobody can stop it!

Nappy Fallon

2009-05-14T00:14:00.000-07:00

Saw Twallon Twitter about something nappy, but unable to check in as, gnarly sitcom homework! Grinding through multiple seasons of reloaded dick jokes on Two and a Half Men. I mean really, how many ways can you say penis without saying penis?

I like Hulu, but if it's not visible on the iPhone, what use is it? The iPhone is going to change the world of media like an Othello board changing from white to black. And if you're not ready, hasta la vista baby!

Shane Hartline

2009-05-13T08:22:00.001-07:00

Nice guy. Can turn on the weird for the funny. Very personable.
http://www.shanehartline.com/

Samurai Levinstein

2009-05-11T02:46:00.000-07:00

I'm fascinated by geneaology as a road tale. Which is why I used one of those Mac geneaology programs to trace my maternal family tree back to Somerled. It was during that excursion I realized I might be related to historical Macbeth, and, if that was the case, should bone up on the cursed play by Shakespeare. Which I did.

When the threads of geneaology disappear, one must rely on theories of origins. One I think is cool:
http://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Hebrew-Origin-Japanese-People/dp/9652293393
Theories about the origins of things are always theories. But then there's the problem of the shape of my nose.

Which just goes to show, the more you look into things, the more in common everyone seems to have. Litigators have a saying: "Don't ask any question that you don't already know the answer to."

They're called the "Lost Tribes of Israel" because, er, well, they lost track of them. Maybe they weren't lost. Maybe they went to Japan to invent karaoke and sushi and live in relative paradise. Fine with me. Fun to think about.

Which would mean Samurai Levinstein vs. Samurai Kiyooka might be a matter of semiotics and not genetics. Or, in other words, two ways of describing the same thing.

TV TV

2009-05-11T02:03:00.001-07:00

I am so far behind on episodic TIVO, I'm losing them due to % loss. In fact I thought Jimmy Fallon's "week off" was due to wrong keep settings. Until he said "had a week off" during the monologues. Which I'm watching until Conando disrobes, er, I mean unveils.

Hopefully soon I'll be too busy shooting and post-producing sketches I won't be watching anything.

Craigslist says this is probable. Fortune cookie says something intriguing and non-sequiter. Frankly, I don't know who to believe.

Things you can learn in books.

2009-05-08T12:50:00.000-07:00

... he had done a short film The Hockey Puck Crisis, which was great: Hockey pucks grew on trees, and there was a blizzard that destroyed the crop, so you couldn't play hockey in Canada that year.
- Bernie Brillstein

Actually, we wrote a perfect submission for Saturday Night Live, a package of things we'd like to see on TV -- a news parody, a commercial parody and a couple of sketches.
-Al Franken

There was a feeling even before it started that something important was happening. It was almost like all the leftover spirit of the sixties found its way into this show -- that spirit of rebellion, of breaking through whatever boundaries were left.
-Neil Levy

My favorite Wayne and Shuster sketch goes like this: W&S are monitoring radio transmissions from outer space. A message from aliens begins arriving on a teletype machine. They, the alien species, want to trade... unpronounceable alien name, unpronounceable name, unpronounceable name for... Gretzky. I can't recall if that sketch aired before Gretzky moved to L.A. I was living in the Edmonton area at the time and it was a really big deal. The defection of Gretzky to Los Angeles.

It's just a movie but...

2009-05-06T12:13:00.001-07:00

I saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop in the theater. I thought it was really funny. I didn't think the script was all that good, but the movie was elevated to the funny by the performance of the lead actor who was 100% comedy. And man, it made lots of money at the box office.

Observe and Report. Not so much money at the box office. Not as funny. But from the perspective of cinema, and the telling of a story, there is no comparison. Observe & Report tread artfully on a thin line between dark social commentary and dark comedy. The characters had depth and their world was morbidly fascinating. Not a Disney movie, nope.

Ten years from now, if there is still such a thing as Blockbuster, I might be standing next to someone looking for a movie to rent from in the Seth Rogen section. Chances are, Observe and Report will be one of the ones they missed. I'll be the guy insisting they watch that one.

CBS

2009-05-05T15:20:00.000-07:00

So the CBS web site says "watch full episodes online" apparently as a manifesto to confuse consumers. And they have only Seasons 1-4 of Two and a Half Men on iTunes.

Make it as hard as possible for new viewers to get into the show. Another fantastic online strategy from giant corporations run by people who have MBAs from ivy league schools.

As media consumers reorganize their habits in a changing world, go ahead, wear that dunce cap with pride.

New Standup Date

2009-04-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

I'll be in: Da Nappy Fro Show hosted by the hilarious Cathy Lewis.

in the "Main Room" this Thursday May 7th, 2009, Around 8:00 p.m. Tickets are $15.

The World Famous Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.
http://thecomedystore.com/

Tracey Ullman...

2009-04-28T04:52:00.000-07:00

Apparently doesn't like democratic media. Curiously, the type of blogging comments she objects to sounds remarkably similar to many of the jokes in Jay's monologues. Oh, the irony!

Because everybody knows that for art/expression to be valuable it has to first be validated by a vertically integrated multinational media corporation. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that the purpose of art/expression is to sell 30s advertising spots.

I'm with Tracey on that 100%.

I think it's hilarious when people in television express "worry" about the internet. Like the revolution hasn't already happened. But don't worry, we still have radio stations so I'm sure TV stations will be around for awhile as well.

NBC has a lot of funny shows. But I think the funniest thing that NBC ever did with their lineup was to remove it from iTunes just as the iPhone was becoming the dominant smartphone. Yeah, that was the master strategy!

I don't want to brag but...

2009-04-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

I didn't really see it coming.

In retrospect it seems clear, but this is a true story. In 1998, after helping what seemed like every doomed indie band in San Diego put out their first and only records, I made one of my own. At the time, I had reached the point of revulsion over the techniques used to create pop/rock/alternative records. For those of you that have never done it, it basically amounts to doing take after take of the exact same song ad-nauseum and then later spending an additional week or so in Pro Tools correcting all the errors.

So I made a folk album and recorded every song using one take. That's called a reactionary, but not necessarily intelligent, response. Or some might say contemporary musical suicide.

Later, I was at an open mic in San Diego promoting my record. I sat down at a piano and played what I thought was a quirky, touching little love song. The entire house burst into crazy laughter. I didn't get it.

Then one day, ten years later, I was watching Comedy Central and this really, really bad comedian got up and did a half-hour special. He wasn't funny at all.

I was like, "I could do that."

UPDATE: It wasn't Daniel Tosh. Comedy is subjective. Which is why anytime a bad comic comes on Comedy Central I cue up Bonnie MacFarlane or Maria Bamford. I have their CC specials on permanent keep.

Here's a Funny Story

2009-04-24T09:28:00.001-07:00

I had a class assignment to write a short parody sketch. Because it's hard to find actors in L.A. that actually keep appointments, I scripted it and filmed it using my own lame self. The segment included a dry context, a very dry setup followed by a dry delivery. And then I put in a weird sequence that involved masquerading around in a pink jelly dildo before cutting back to the dry closing.

When I screened it in class, all my jaded comedy peeps went glassy-eyed during the ironic parts. They didn't get any of the irony about the cult of the beautiful, articulate television personality. They didn't get the pun on the name. But the dick joke, which was just retard humour, got major laughs. Class feedback: get to the "jokes" quicker.

So when I re-cut it for brevity, naturally, I took out all the dick joke material and left it totally dry.

Unfortunately, also on the editing room floor is a really swell history of the Russian space program starting with Sputnik and culminating in Lunatik. And a bit about the Europeans at the ISS running low on cigarettes.

But that's not the funny part of the story.

Come to think of it, there's nothing funny about this story.

But not too long ago Jimmy Fallon had a Japanese guy delivering his monologue with subtitles. That was f*cking hilarious. I'm sure if my dad even knew what a Jimmy Fallon was he'd have loved it too. AFAIK still no Fallon on the CBC. So it was lost on him. Lots of broken Engrish in my childhood. Rock on.

I had a nightmare the other night. Yeah, I dreamt I woke up in a white office wearing a suit and was getting paid WGA scale to write something funny every day. I was like, "That sounds hard. That's harder than figuring out the exact formula that gives Nancy Pelosi an orgasm!" If I'm going to figure out the exact formula required to give a girl an orgasm, you can be sure I won't be scratching it out on a yellow legal pad with a Flair pen. Let's get roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, people!

By Monday I could have recanted this and everything else in my life philosophy.

CSI: Space Oddity

2009-04-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

Fantastic. Didn't like it, loved it!

That Sarnoff guy was delusional, thinking he could deal with both the technology of creativity and the creativity afforded by technology.

Still Using the Old Laws, eh?

2009-04-14T02:52:00.000-07:00

Sarnoff's Law: the value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers.

Metcalfe's Law: the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2).

O!M!G!

2009-04-14T02:18:00.000-07:00

I just saw an Asian person on SNL! OK, well, she was half-asian.

In loving memory of my Polish-Canadian godfather, Joe Nowiki (1929-2009). My parents attended the memorial service at Our Lady of the ~~Blistering Slapshot~~ Foothills. I wonder if Father Claude LeMieux was in attendance?

That Mac!

2009-04-06T03:46:00.001-07:00

The multi-touch pad on the new MacBook Pro is soooo cool. Too bad they didn't bother to test it before shipping it to millions of people. It reminds me of the cover from the book "Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman. I can hear the fan-boys croon over the sleek aluminum stylings as they pour hot liquid into their laps, soaking the package in their jockey shorts. With the hand that's not crippled with RSI (read: multi-touch user interaction).

The irony is that the multi-touch pad on the iPhone works great. Just as long as you want a lexically-retarded computer program to "correct" all your typing "errors". I long for the good old days when the cat would run across the inkpad and leave a trail of footprints on a freshly typed sheet of white bond. Yes, it's true. The iPhone has replaced the typewriter and the cat with one fully-automatic, self-cleaning source of frustration that is also a fully-functioning iPod.

I love progress.

This blog post contains a variety of Hollywood-friendly sentence fragments. Scratches his butt. Sniffs.

Hard to Believe

2009-04-04T10:19:00.001-07:00

In the:
UNIVERSAL COMEDY SHOW
DOORS 8:00 p.m.
SHOW 8:30 p.m.

Some of the worst Star Trek jokes you've ever heard and that's a fact.

Craig Ferguson

2009-03-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

Apparently he didn't see my FB post congratulating Molly Prather. Craig, me mum's Scottish. Aye. Chewbacca and the governator?

House o' Dolls

2009-03-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

Nothing like an episode of Dollhouse written by Tim Minnear to draw a sharp contrast between good writing and... episodes not written by Tim Minnear.

Speaking of Tim Minnear, isn't it about time they gave him his own show to run?

Congratulations Jimmy Fallon!

2009-03-03T06:05:00.000-08:00

I thought the blonde housewives was a highlight, but Justin Timberlake won me over with his Bud commercial. Your band has too much soul, dude. They are sick!

Yeah, I had an unfair advantage. My dad was a schoolteacher.

Go Emo!

2009-03-02T09:37:00.000-08:00

Before Emo was a music 'genre', it was the first name of a comic. After giving me a second pep talk (we tend to gravitate to the same venue on Sun nights) I finally took to the the mic to run a set of trekkie two-liners.

Rawr!

2009-02-27T06:55:00.000-08:00

Kimmel-san, I like your monologue delivery: you don't tell the audience where the punchlines are supposed to be. You let em figure it out on their own, usually a couple of beats after you've moved on. Every tank of gas is a vote for Bush and his oil cronies.

CSI:NY

2009-02-26T05:48:00.000-08:00

There is another kind of forensics. Less exciting. It's called forensic accounting. Wow, does that sound fun! Anyway, when you start up high tech companies it generally reaches a point where you have to make a decision about whether you're going to sell your soul to people like Bernie Madoff or R. Allen Stanford. You know, the money guys. In exchange for some infinitesimal percentage of a vaporous cloud of investment bank snake oil called financing, or, in technical terms: a high-yield financial instrument.

Going into business with Bernie Madoff? What were you thinking? I expect Bernie will be deeply probed by the S.E.C. and the F.B.I. and then repeatedly by his future cellmates. But if you had gone into business with Bernie, you'd be developing a real interest in forensic accounting at... oh... right about now.

And that's what I call tying the closing scene to the opening scene with a unifying idea.

OMG, it's Kimmey Jimmel!

2009-02-26T02:31:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or does Jimmy Kimmel look great in drag? Race you to ATSC HDTV, Jimmy! Oops! Might be too late for that. I shot my remote in HD. HD post is just getting cheaper and cheaper!

Ever notice how the LOST logo (I'm a fan) gets all pixelated around the edges as we push past the O in the opening credits? It sure didn't look like that on the AVID! It's because the letters are in a slow defocus and the bi-directional motion prediction is unable to find a 16x16 pixel block with an edge from a future frame in order to construct the intermediate B-frames. And B-frames are how we get a 200 Mbits/s 1920x1080 picture into 20 Mbits/s. There are ways to deal with this problem. But involves knowing the limitations of the distribution medium (HDTV at both ATSC and DirecTV data rates) and then making appropriate artistic choices that respect the underlying limitations of the medium. Wow, that's just like shooting and finishing on film. Whoda thunk it? Looks like a deep knowledge of digital might be useful after all.

Art without science is like a kiln that doesn't fire at the right temperature. That bowl might look good for soup, but if the science was wrong, it's gonna taste like clay.

Political Humor in America is dead... for now...

2009-02-25T05:06:00.000-08:00

Good thing the Wall Street bankers are picking up the slack.

Congratulations

2009-02-21T16:54:00.000-08:00

Congratulations Conando and Ross the Intern.

No Apology Needed

2009-02-20T03:01:00.000-08:00

I don't think a comic should ever apologize for a bad joke. Because there is no such thing as a bad joke. Sometimes, I'll be watching the Tonight Show monologue and Jay will get a silent audience from a two-liner and start apologizing while meanwhile back at the ranch here, I am busting a gut over the exact same bit.

And, well, it looks like my favorite Conan segment is not going to be revealed as one of the "final cylons". My official selection: Borat climbing all over the set trying to harvest Conan's "pubis" hair. Lucky for me, I have it saved. On my mac. For all time.

I have to get to bed early. Tomorrow I'm going back to Texas to help bootstrap the Bush Twin's 2012 Presidential Campaign. I can't think of anything more inspiring than seeing those two girls running the free world as President and Vice-President with daddy George W, Uncle Jeb, and Grandaddy George Sr. calling the shots from the shadows.

Oscar: take me from Behind!

2009-02-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

How lucky that I have a close proximity to Hollywood on Oscar's day. There is nothing like the Academy Awards to remind ourselves how important movies are and how dreadfully difficult it is to point a camera at a group of people and shout: "Talk!"

Viva la Meritocracy!

2009-02-19T10:15:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to get the feeling that people think I don't believe in nepotism. Don't be silly. Nepotism played a key role in the founding of America. And nepotism has already produced the greatest world leader of my generation. Hello! If it works for world leaders, it works for entertainers. Because if we're talking about funny, I can't think of anything funnier than a political satirist who has ascended via a nepotistic system thinly disguised as a democracy in order to satirize a nepotistic system thinly disguised as democracy. It's like Lou Gehrig getting Lou Gehrig's disease: what are the chances of that happening?

It's a Riot

2009-02-18T22:48:00.000-08:00

Back in the summer of 1988, I was hanging out in Alphabet City with my chum, Jim Chu. He had lived in the same apartment all his life, on Avenue A between 5th and 6th. I was staying in a bunk in an office in his dad's four story walkup -- on 10th between B & C.

Anyway, we spent most nights walking around the East Village. We did construction for his dad in the day. One night we were walking near St. Marks Place and suddenly there were crowds of people running through the streets and eventually, huge teams of policemen in full riot gear facing off against the protesters. We headed back to Jim's apartment, threading our way through the melee, past Tompkin's Square Park, where they were burning a man in effigy (Mayor Koch -- as it turned out). I used to have photos (taken with my Pentax K1000), along with some other ones taken from the top of the Twin Towers observation deck. But they didn't survive.

Those were interesting times. Between that and surviving three litigations, the notion that a bunch of sketch comics sequestered away in Midtown would ever be able to ruffle my feathers is, quite literally, hilarious.

Always go out with your best work...

2009-02-18T02:10:00.000-08:00

That's one theory. There are others...

First thought, best thought.

-Chogyam Trungpa

I do my best work in bed.

-Mae West

Release often, release early.

Tonight Show Uncut

2009-02-16T03:46:00.000-08:00

Now, if you've been following the saga of Jay Leno and his Tonight Show replacement, Conan O'Brien, you may have seen Jay's recent "As Seen on eBay" desk piece. Nobody is exactly sure what is going to happen after the switchover. However, we did hear that the studio audience was privvy to several eBay items that were not included in the broadcast master distributed to NBC affiliates via pneumatic tube.

Now, the first one might surprise you. Jay showed us a gold-foil bag of hemp-laced coffee that had failed to sell. Hello? Coffee doesn't help you write jokes, but it might help your P.A. learn Final Draft faster. Anyway, a reliable source said this is the real item that they are using to fumigate the writer's room at the Tonight Show. Imported from New York, apparently. Sold or not sold?

Now, if you're a follower of the show, this next item won't surprise you at all. It's a book of over 1000 Paris Hilton jokes from Jay's 2008 opening monologues. Sold or not sold?

I heard a rumor that a half-japanese drag queen in a pink jumpsuit with tourette syndrome was removed by security after disrupting the Tonight Show taping by yelling expletives such as "You can keep your $50, just give me the FAX number to Jay's two-liner farm team and I will THROW DOWN!" and "Even my pet monkey can write Paris jokes: he just has trouble with touch tone dialing!"

Bad News, Good News

2009-02-15T12:13:00.000-08:00

I got some bad news recently. I learned that SCTV, my favorite joint, is no longer on the air. But the good news is that there is another similar show -- that has no name -- broadcast live from NYC most Saturday nights (I've only seen about 9 episodes, but it seems pretty cool). Which is what you get when you only watch TV for afew years in the 80s and afew years in the 00s.

Apparently, many TV stations are still relying on an arcane snake oil "system" called Nielsen ratings to estimate the popularity of a media property. Here on the internet, the word is that Apache logs and Google analytics are the only way to tell for sure. Here's an exercise: take a terabyte and divide by the average size of a mp3 pop song encoded at 128k.

Until last night, my favorite show with Alec Baldwin was the Hulu commercial. Now it's the Wii sketch. Rock on Seth & Paula!

CSI:NY

2009-02-12T16:41:00.001-08:00

Great episode of CSI:NY last night. Interesting subtext. Was it me, or did the chase through Chinatown look more like L.A. than Canal Street? I think they gave up the name of the person in Hollywood I most want to meet. Clues! Send more clues!

Made You Look!

2009-02-01T03:35:00.001-08:00

SCTV Forever!

"Come on down to Tex and Edna Boyle's Prairie Warehouse and Curio Emporium"

And a big thanks to the pranksters in the GE Building...

New Music Seminar Redux

2008-09-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

In 1990 I was at New Music Seminar in New York City, trying to learn the ropes of the music business while I pimped my band's recordings. At one panel on making music videos, I was given the advice to "shoot on film" and then "transfer to video" for editing. I took the advice at face value, but -- at the time -- I had a lingering question about why this was true.

As I was putting together a retrospective on my work over the past few years, I realized that I had answered the question -- to my own satisfaction. As to whether this advice still holds true, I have my own opinion.

Once upon a Time...

2007-07-13T15:42:00.000-07:00

I was a winner (actually I think it was an honorable mention) in Owen Linzmayer's "Great Apple Programming Contest" for my entry, which consisted of about 512 bytes of 6502 machine code which turned the Apple ][ Keyboard into a rudimentary musical keyboard. It was a bit whiny sounding...

512 bytes? Big program.

Twitter, WTF are you Doing?

2007-02-20T21:29:00.000-08:00

Don't you wish?

A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!

http://twitter.com/

Increase Your myspace Friend Count $$$

2006-12-27T20:33:00.000-08:00

MSNBC:myspace.com sees increase in competition

Just ask Brant Walker, a Web design student at San Diego's Platt College, who founded "Fake Your Space" in late November. In just two weeks, his startup found more than 300 customers willing to pay for fake friends for their MySpace profiles. But these aren't just any friends — they're male and female models who leave racy comments and photographs in their digital wake.

Success and the Social Web

2006-10-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

Previously, I blogged about how myspace success is based on the simple fact that they allow outbound HTML links. Of all kinds.

In fact, if it weren't for the rise of the myspace worm, there would still be even fewer restrictions on the types of markup allowed on myspace pages.

Nevertheless, the key to a successful online community is the lack of rules. Most of the social online communities are geared at younger people. The last thing that younger people want is rules. They've got plenty of them at home. And at school. They don't need no stinking old people telling them what kinds of markup, photos or CSS genius (yep, that's right, teenage girls are blowing away your $90K/year CSS ubergeeks) to put on their own personal web pages. It's pretty much that simple.

Blogger continues to grow without bounds. Despite abuse by the googadporn and seospammers.

You see, it is the lack of rules which provides the greatest opportunity for something creative to happen.

Free Webcam Downloads Mac

2006-10-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

Bored and looking for cool new ways to use that built-in webcam on your new Mac? Get a copy of DotMatrix webcam (free download). Between posing and trying different effects, you'll keep busy for hours...

Best Screen Capture Mac

2006-10-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of free screen grabbing programs you probably haven't seen yet. AsSceneOnTV (grabs frames from DVD discs) and GrabberRaster (screen shots, the easy way).

Photobooth Download Install Mac

2006-10-02T21:36:00.000-07:00

Wishing your Mac had a built-in iSight with Photobooth? No worries, try DotMatrix which is much cooler, works with almost all webcams _and_ external firewire video cameras.

Best iSight Download Mac

2006-10-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

Want to put that MacBook webcam to work? Try DotMatrix.

They have some other cool stuff for Macs as well, like AsSceneOnTV and GrabberRaster.

Cheapest RAW Camera

2006-09-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

The Polaroid X530 may be the least expensive raw camera on the market, but don't let it's size and price fool you ($149). The camera features RAW image acquisition (unheard of in a point-and-shoot camera) and the revolutionary Foveon image sensor.

UPDATE: Sigma has just announced the successor camera to the Polaroid X530. As I mentioned earlier, the Polaroid corporation has been destroyed by corrupt management. The new Sigma DP1 promises to be the best introduction to the revolutionary picture quality of the Foveon image sensor. And it's a RAW camera to boot. I can't wait!

UPDATE: After what seems to be months of waiting for a reliable vendor to list Polaroid x530 on Amazon.com, I finally was able to pick one up. The camera is not without quirks, but it takes amazing photos in RAW format. Here's three of mine. (16-bit TIFF).

Best Digital Camera

2006-09-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

Much of my adult life has been spent staring at pixels, the fine details. If you're in the market for a high-quality sub-$300 camera, the Polaroid X530 featuring the Foveon X3 image sensor is the one to get. That is, if you can find one. Most modern digital imaging technology is based on fundamental assumptions developed for NTSC analog television - the idea that the eye is less sensitive to color (or in the case of still image cameras, less sensititive to red/blue). Not so with the Foveon imaging sensor. [
UPDATE: I finally was able find one. As expected, it takes amazing photos in RAW format.

Since corporate white collar thieves have systematically gutted Polaroid corporation since the death of the founder, you'll be lucky if you can buy any Polaroid based photography products in 3 years, let alone a groundbreaking camera based on an innovative technology like the Foveon X3.

While you're at it, pick up a Polaroid OneStep 600, and you'll be reminded how much fun taking pictures can be - that is, when you leave behind the SD cards, USB cables, ink-jet printers, ink-jet printer cartridges, and computers just to print out a photo to give to your friends. Having trouble printing from your digital camera? Why, didn't they tell you to enable the DHCP on your WIFI printer?

Best Digital Camera Under $300

2006-09-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a trouble-free camera that is small, easy to hold, and convenient, there are a wide variety of cameras to choose from, including the Nikon S3 ($200-$350) (etc) series, the Casio Exilim ($200-$400) and the Sony Cybershot (Pink; $300-). I will say this: for hurried photographs, anti-shake is a very useful feature.

On the other hand, if you're looking to take unbelievable, photographic-quality pictures in RAW format, for just about $100 you can find yourself a Polaroid x530 with the foveon image sensor.

Best Digital SLR (DSLR) Camera

2006-09-23T00:34:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone I've met that likes photography has real trouble learning Photoshop. Even though I understand what they want to do, I can't translate the world of channels into plain english. Today I discovered LightZone. If you're a photographer, and not a computer person, you are much better off with LightZone than anything else I've seen. Simply amazing...

DSLR = Digital Single Reflex Camera.

Best DSLR Camera

2006-09-22T03:18:00.000-07:00

Personally, I am holding out for the Sigma SD-14, which was announced at Photokina and will be shipping sometime this spring.

The reasons for this I covered in my post about image quality.

Best RAW Digital Camera

2006-09-20T03:21:00.000-07:00

While we're on the subject of RAW camera images, I highly encourage you to try Lightzone as an alternative to Photoshop for working with fine photographic images. Instead of wrestling with endless tutorials and tearing your hair out, you can focus on the art of it.

Foveon is a company trying to bring the world of digital cameras to the level of analog film ("kodachrome"). Currently digital still photography is held prisoner by an ageing, obsolete approach to capturing ("image sensor") light in the camera. Foveon has, over a period of some 20 years, produced a remarkable digital technology which rivals analog film in it's ability to capture light in the photographic process.

Currently, this technology is available in the following digital cameras that I am aware of: Polaroid X530 (also the least expensive RAW camera on the market), Sigma SD9 (digital SLR "pro camera"), Sigma SD10. Sigma has also recently announced two new cameras based on new image sensors from Foveon, the SD-14 and the Sigma DP1.

So prevalant is the use of "video camcorder imaging-style" image sensors in professional digital still cameras (by this I mean YCrCb image capture using a CCD and pixels captured with some kind of bayer mosaic arrangement), that Adobe refers only only to this arrangement of pixels in it's DNG (digital negative) specification.

The photographs taken with cameras featuring the Foveon sensor are, in a word, stunning in their clarity and detail. Here's some quick links I dug up:
http://www.pbase.com/mjmorrison/sigma_sd10
http://www.pbase.com/cameras/sigma/sd10

If you are interested in picture quality, and ESPECIALLY if you like to manipulate photos with Photoshop and want to get the state of the art, get a camera with a Foveon image sensor.

There is a great book about Foveon's quest. Along the lines of "Soul of a New Machine", "The Silicon Eye" - I found it a fascinating read. I can't wait to try the video capabilities of the Sigma DP1 (30fps 640x480). We're looking at a camera that captures RGB at the sensor level.

Buy DLSR Camera Online

2006-09-20T03:18:00.000-07:00

TBA

Web 2.0 Rich Internet App Hype

2006-06-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

While I think emerging technologies like Lazlo and DHTML are very cool and have a distinct place in the software ecosystem, one marketing thought promulgated by their proponents and evangelists is completely wacko.

It's a rumour/myth started by Microsoft in 1996

"Dynamic HTML takes the Web out of 'read-only' mode," said Brad Silverberg, senior vice president of the Internet platform and tools division at Microsoft. "It means Web pages can be just as rich, interactive, fun and compelling as any Macintosh or Windows® -based application today. Dynamic HTML will drive the adoption of HTML as a worldwide standard for creating user interfaces."

Rich internet applications are simply richer than regular forms-based internet applications. Compared to regular desktop applications, RIA "richness" is simply a joke. At this point, DHTML www mini-editors, for instance, have yet to achieve the level of interactivity and richness of Microsoft Word circa 1990.

Among the problems with RIA technology:

No access to clipboard/pasteboard
Inconsistent keystroke behaviour in the UI
Inconsistent availability (see screenshot)
Limited interoperability with other applications.

Doesn't anyone remember client-server computing (circa 1988)? The next big wave? Personal computers as a replacement for "dumb terminals"?

Just Enable mbone On those Routers, Guys

2006-05-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

Boo hoo hoo. ISPs want to charge more for video. What they really need to do is roll back the clock to the mid-90s, re-enable mbone on all the routers on the internet, and let the infrastructure take care of it. Instead, Akamai has become rich and bittorrent has arrived as the hacked version of what mbone was supposed to be. Infrastructure-supported subscribed connections. Alternately, just keep chasing the money, 3-pc-suit-guys.

Internet providers say infrastructure not ready for video revolution

While programmers are in a chaotic race to move television to the Web, Internet service providers are worried that the network infrastructure is not ready for a primetime debut.

Small clips are fine, but TV-quality and especially high-definition programming could make the Internet choke, the Associated Press reported.

Firmware Real Estate

2006-05-17T02:53:00.000-07:00

It cracks me up that portable device manfacturers are devoting resources to putting Flash playback in their firmware.

iRiver - Clix

Let's not get confused with Flash playback on the Sony PSP. The reason that the PSP benefits from Flash playback is because the PSP has built in WiFi networking and a web browser.

OK, let's see. Would you rather spend $199 on a PSP and get a huge screen, a software ecosystem for games, ultra-high quality movie playback, web access, and later, add as many $60 1GB (this year, $30 next year) memory sticks (expanding with your needs). Or would you rather get an iRiver Clix?

Right now, there are only two players in this market. Sony and Apple. Apple succeeds because iTunes makes it easy to acquire 'content'. Sony succeeds because it's hardware is basically jaw-dropping amazing. Sony's software dept is no slouch either. Their media software division was formerly "Sonic Foundry" and they produce excellent software.

Forget about flash. It's for flashy, content-free, web sites. For collecting video content in QCIF or QVGA (352x240, 352x288, 320x240), use MPEG-1 or MPEG-4. Like JPEG, these latter file formats will be good "forever".

Marketing Porn

2006-05-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.i-am-asian.com/

Better Than Digg: Maggie-Q

2006-05-06T01:46:00.000-07:00

Our servers got totally hammered tonight. I tail'd the httpd logs and discovered that our HD MPEG-1 sample clip, a 30s 720p of The Least Likely PSA was getting consumed in vast quantities. Coincidence? The clip features MaggieQ, who is part of the supporting cast of MI-3. I saw MI-3 last night. It reminded me of an episode of Alias.

Apple, Microsoft, Sony Conspire to Pay Musicians Nothing, but More Accurately

2006-05-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

Apple, Microsoft, Sony Conspire to Pay Musicians Nothing, but More Accurately

Apple, Microsoft, the big four music labels, and five others have joined together to form a new organization dedicated to developing and maintaining a robust framework of communication standards to support the digital distribution of digital content.

This technology is actually quite a welcome upgrade from the existing methods that ASCAP etc use (statistical sampling) to track artists (musician) royalties. Of course, since history will repeat itself, it is more likely that the technology will simply be used to more accurately track the penny per song that the artist receives.

After all, without the iPod, how would anyone ever listen to music? Apple invented listening to music and watching video on a computer. Believe me, if these big companies could collect royalties on every set of human eyes and ears, they would.

NEC should have used friendster

2006-05-05T02:36:00.000-07:00

LONDON — While the theft of intellectual property and the copying of products has been a problem in southeast Asia for some time, Japan’s NEC has received the back-handed compliment of having an entire NEC company counterfeited, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.
The existence of the false NEC, which operated mainly in China but seemed to have been controlled by entities in Japan and Taiwan, came to light after two years of investigations, the report said.

The fake NEC had developed a portfolio of about 50 counterfeit products, including home entertainment systems, MP3 players, batteries, microphones and DVD players. In addition to copying NEC products the bogus company had developed products of its own that are not in the legitimate NEC’s range.

In some aspects the fake NEC behaved as a legitimate company, handing out manufacturing contracts and licensing Chinese companies to use its designs, but all the time under the NEC brand, to which it had no right, the report said.

“These entities are part of a sophisticated ring, coordinated by two key entities based in Taiwan and Japan, which has attempted to completely assume the NEC brand,” the report quoted Fujio Okada, senior vice president and general manager of NEC’s legal division saying in written answers to questions.

The report said NEC had declined to identify the offenders for legal reasons and that it was unable to estimate the value of goods sold by the illegal company.

VideoLAN humour en Francais

2006-05-01T05:04:00.000-07:00

This is pretty funny:

About VideoLAN: VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org/) is a project to build open source, cross-platform multimedia tools. Their VLC media player is the most downloaded Mac OS X application according to versiontracker.com.

About Apple: Apple is the creator of the hyped and overpriced Macintosh computer. Until recently, Apple buyers could brag in front of PC users about how their PowerPC-based computer was twice as expensive, but also twice as powerful as the Intel-based counterpart. Now, thanks to the Intel transition, Apple computers are only twice as expensive.

I'm all for the x86 transition (forget Intel) because it means Apple is not tied to the IBM-Motorola architecture (hey, let's add a 3rd CPU architecture - how about MIPS?), but you have to admit, this is a pretty interesting dig from a cross-platform application.

Why myspace Succeeds (as a business)

2006-04-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

My personal opinion is that the reason that myspace.com succeeds while all similiar services languish is due primarily to the fact that the site provides virtually unlimited amounts of outbound links/<HTML> markup. Almost without exception (especially large, corporate controlled sites, which tend to bring a heavy editorial hand) the majority of 'social sites' place ridiculous restrictions on what kinds of <HTML> markup is allowed in user-defined spaces. By experimentation, my results:

Blogger.com: unusually open and free of controls. Does not allow <SCRIPT> in posts, otherwise free. Because of this, and due to full control over the template code, blogger is unusually powerful and useful.
dotMac: due to the client side iApp emphasis and support of WebDAV, dotMac is highly open and customizable. Here's my dotMac/blogger mashup.
myspace.com: as much customization as fits in to CSS and EMBED and TEXTAREA. Unlimited outbound A/HREF and IMG tags. Here's myspacexperiment. The way that music is shared on myspace is another very cool feature.
Flickr: cross-links to other flickr pages, restrictions on how user-controlled markup is rendered on outer pages.
youtube.com: no outbound links. Limited markup. Notes are cool. Flash? Hmmm.
Amazon.com: closed system. Essentially a 'sink' for inbound links. AFAIK, only one outbound link per user profile is provided. Haven't tried the wiki feature yet.
livejournal.com: probably as good as blogger if you're a pro user. Unfortunately, I was a pro user for over a year, and didn't realize it, because my pro purchase transaction failed in the middle, and I failed to realize it had succeeded, and livejournal.com failed to notify me that I had succeeded, but succeeded in notifying me that my year subscription had lapsed.
Yahoo!: with about a bazillion services, who can summarize? Yahoo could have owned this world by leveraging geocities.com, but they fell prey to the 'poverty mindset': limiting bandwidth, limiting web pages, and plastering user sites with ads. Now geocities is basically a dead zone of link rot. Yahoo!360, of course, features the ultimate in professionally designed web stylings, and, as far as I can tell, almost no users.
orkut.com: allows outbound links, but limited visual customization. orkut is over.

In fact, if it were not for the myspace worm, which nearly brought the system down, myspace would have the most liberal of policies. Since the worm, access to javascript has been completely eliminated. Recently, the reintroduction of <EMBED> has provided for the proliferation of video content.

The other aspect of myspace which makes it so appealing is that the overall corporate design is so horrible that the standard profile page simply begs to be improved and personalized. And personalization is what invests the members of the community in the site itself.

It just goes to show that even if you have nearly infinite amounts of startup capital to apply to a problem, it really don't matter one bit.

myspace.com - a place for adds and a place for ads.

As to whether myspace.com succeeds as a place to socialize, that will need to wait for a later post.

Mystats:
1989: - first use of CompuServe 'community' messaging and hypertext markup (rtf/WinHelp).

I covered some of these ideas earlier in a post about Wikipedia vs. Amazon.

Fastest PC Laptop

2006-04-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

This space for rent.

Fastest Laptop

2006-04-15T03:13:00.000-07:00

2006.04.24 - Office 2004 Speedy!

$2499.00 from the Apple store. Free Shipping. I believe they have 6 months interest free if you can find it by clicking...

A week in Boot Camp

2006-04-13T22:54:00.000-07:00

A week in Boot Camp
By Peter Cohen

One week after Apple released its public beta of Boot Camp, my Intel Core Duo-equipped iMac has transformed into an impressive gaming system, albeit one with a split personality. It’s also starting to show some warts—its own, as well as those of Windows XP and of Mac OS X.

Best 80s Hits from Canada

2006-04-01T18:58:00.000-08:00

I was a DJ in the 80s (see 80s hair -> right), mostly during college. College dances, a thousand people, trying to get them to dance. (I also started a band in the same period). The Canadian charts during the 80s were different than the US charts. Here are some of my favorites:

Best Canadian 80s Songs You Probably Never Heard of

My #1 favorite 80s Song from Canada. A Canadian band named after a small Canadian town. Not only is this a chart topper, but I dare you. Listen to it 10 times in a row and see if it doesn't foreverafter rule your POD!

Chilliwack - My Girl

Harlequin - Innocence (1980) - Chart Topper Extraordinaire. Big radio hit.

Idle Eyes - Two Rivers - a better ballad you have never heard. Great lyrics.

Red Rider - Lunatic Fringe

Trooper - Raise a Little Hell (Whole album is great!)
Aldo Nova - Self Titled Debut (Whole album is great!)
Streetheart - What Kind of Love is This?
Rush - New World Man (Live)
Loverboy - The Kid Is Hot Tonite

April Wine - Just Between You and Me (Power ballad)

The Payolas - Eyes of a Stranger (Whole album!)
Pursuit of Happiness - I'm An Adult Now
Prism - Armageddon
Saga - Scratching the Surface
ZappaCosta - It's All Been Done Before
Martha & The Muffins - Cooling the Medium
Rough Trade - High School Confidential

Honorable Mentions:
The Nylons - The Lion Sleeps Tonight
Parachute Club - Rise Up
Gino Vanelli - Wild Horses
Kim Mitchell - Go For Soda
Platinum Blonde - Greatest Hits

Google 'branches out' into Desktop Software

2006-03-24T01:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.sketchup.com/index.php?id=1439

What would you buy if the margin account in your stock porfolio was as big as Google's? Internet search, and internet search alone, is responsible for the size of that margin account. Certainly, orkut ain't contributing.

To understand the board game "reversi" is to understand the internet and the business of internet search. You could be #1 and then suddenly, while you were busy on a quixotic quest to "defeat microsoft", some small, unknown player comes out of nowhere and suddenly, the board is all white where it used to be black.

Changing your favorite search engine isn't anything like switching from Windows to the Mac. It takes about 30s to change your search. In any browser.

There's no question that Google is fatcat in search at this time. Nevertheless, all the search engines retrieve good results and fast. I'm sure this could be argued 'ad-nauseum', but there is no objective measure of search result "relevancy". It is subjective.

In fact, when I want a fresh perspective on something, I always turn to either http://search.yahoo.com/ or http://search.msn.com/.

Google's tendency toward censorship does not bode well for a global internet site. In addition to censoring results in China, Google's archives of internet news are highly treated as well. nntp is dead. long live nntp!

Microsoft takes another shot at handheld market

2006-03-24T00:36:00.000-08:00

Microsoft takes another shot at handheld market

By Dean Takahashi
Mercury News
In a bid to capture the huge audience for handheld entertainment gadgets, Microsoft is designing a product that combines games, music and video in one handheld device, according to sources familiar with the project.

Yep. Someone oughta tell the folks at M$ to concentrate on shipping Vista/Longhorn, bighorn, ultrahorny, or whatever the darn thing is called these days.

Most high-tech companies keep fridges stocked with free beverages. Microsoft should get rid of their fridges and replace them with bookshelves containing free copies of Fred Brook's seminal "The Mythical Man-Month", which describes in detail what happens to operating system projects that have too many programmers. After hanging around WWDC for a couple of years meeting Apple folks, I can say that they definitely understand the pitfalls illustrated in this book. Which is why they are able to shoot new versions of OSX out the door at regular intervals. If I was billg@microsoft.com I'd probably feel more powerful than god as well. But, the saying goes, you cannot break the law, you can only break yourself against the law.

Another key thought on software engineering in the large which applies here is Grady Booch's notion that successive refinement is the key to achieving a robust system, not a huge break from tradition. OSX may be new to Apple, but it is anything but 'new' technology. Instead, each year, they roll new fresh improvements into OSX. Accumulated innovation over four revisions of the OS is what we're looking at right now. Not grandstanding.

Vista is doomed. WinTel will remain a Win32/Win64 hybrid until everyone switches to a future VMWARE+MacIntel.

Totally Priceless

2006-03-21T23:47:00.000-08:00

Real Video Quality

2006-03-20T05:36:00.000-08:00

Checking out the new Real Player, along with the Real Guide. At least RealVideo looks better than flash. DVD quality? Not!

The new player and guide are looking pretty good. Just don't click on anything! The RealPlayer jumps around on the screen like it's got a live carp up the leg of its pants...

You can't really browse around the guide while listening in the background. It's impossible to tell what will cause the player to switch titles/tracks. And how long has the iTunes music store been live?

Leslie Nielsen in the Haus!

2006-03-15T00:57:00.000-08:00

Leslie Nielsen (Naked Gun etc.) hails from Ft. McMurray Alberta, Canada. A few degrees north of my first hometown.

The Flash8 Video Picture

2006-03-12T19:14:00.000-08:00

A picture is worth a thousand words...