Podcast 115 - An Idiotic Ramble in Search of Inspiration

A long-winded impromptu ramble on topics including:

  • the impending holiday season, 
  • the music associated with the holiday season, 
  • being thankful for not having to awake for weekend work, 
  • the front yard attached to the holiday season, 
  • the good faith of neighbours, 
  • the proliferation of driveway garbage bin rentals, 
  • on the habit of collecting and purging, downloading via Bit Torrent, 
  • the ridiculous legal remedies being suggested by music publishers, 
  • the impact of big business and lobbyists on government and citizens, 
  • the obfuscation tool that is H1N1, 
  • the Harmonized Sales Tax in Ontario, 
  • the waste of taxpayer money on H1N1, 
  • the reflection on the process of this podcast.

lovehate: 3 Found Websites, 300 Subscribers

It's not often I just start picking up new websites/services. It's not that I intentionally avoid such things, it's simply that I spend more time writing and recording than exploring. This past week, however, I've jumped in on betas of a few sites that range from the popular to relatively unknown: Brizzly.com, Flowchart.com, Deals.Woot.com.
 
Brizzly has certainly been the darling of the social media set for the past couple of weeks as every strained to get their invites after being pissed off that they didn't find invites for Google Wave. Combining your Facebook and all of your Twitter accounts into a web interface is fairly cool, although it's been done by sites like Hootsuite and Friendbinder plus others.
 
I haven't really explored Brizzly enough to find how different it really is from the sites already out there. Maybe that's because I really enjoy the functionality of a stand-alone app for Twitter. I've been using Tweetdeck for the better part of a year now, and I have no real plans to turn back to the browser. I can appreciate the pull toward a browser-based solution by people in Enterprise environments where installing Adobe Air and a Social Networking app is a pipe dream at best. Perhaps in such an environment I would be looking for the best browser solution as well.
 
I like that Brizzly is doing what it's doing; I just don't know if I want to be doing it.
 
In looking for an online solution to creating flowcharts, I suppose I should've guessed that flowchart.com would've been a best guess - but I'm not prone to thinking things are that easy and it actually took me a bit of searching to find it. I'm becoming increasingly impressed at the interfaces that are being developed for web applications that create/edit graphics, sounds and video. While this is also a case where a freeware stand-alone app would probably be my first choice. I appreciate that I can do this online.
 
Flowchart.com does offer a pretty simple interface that I found it really easy to get used to. Admittedly, I have very rare occasion to ever create flowcharts, but I was thinking of making one for a blog post the other night. I realized that, where 10 years ago I used to have a bunch of apps installed on my PC that I could use for such a task, my lack of need to make flowcharts had diminished my software options. At least if I need to make a flowchart in the future, the URL will not be easy to forget.
 
Wrapping up my triumvirat of web exploration came perhaps the most appropriate site for the upcoming gift-giving season: deals.woot.com. For those of you that fondly remember Woot-Offs when a series of deals would revolve around at woot.com, the makers have basically added Digg functionality to deals. Users can submit their own deals and rate and rank them. What you essentially end up with is a dynamically-changing deals network. As you start to shuffle through some of the deals, you'll be able to sort by keywords, online stores or users and vote up the deals that you like. They've even aggregated a leaderboard that allows you to check out all of the deals stats that you could want.

Living in Canada, there are many of these deals that I can't take complete advantage of, but that's what snowbird parents and VISA are for. Not a brilliant trio of websites for sure - but certainly functional for the right reasons at the right times. I don't regularly "review" websites anyway... I know, a pretty weak lovehate right?

Actually, all this is a prelude to saying thanks to my 302 subscribers on Posterous. I had to wait a week to break 300, but I've been busy and beat and bereft of ideas when I get home most nights. (I hope at least some of you are enjoying the eclectic video embeds.)

I know that when radio stations get one caller for a contest, they have the market research that establishes the ratio of callers to listeners. I have to say that the community here at Posterous has been a joy to share ideas with and to gain so much knowledge from. Thanks Garry and Sachin for kicking things into gear a year and a half ago. Thanks to the new team members for the great additions. And thanks to everyone who has read even one full post from lovehatethings.

I've got to keep writing for sanity alone. If someone enjoys the reading, that's an added bonus. There are plenty of other communities out there. I'm glad I found this one when I did.

thinglets: Roger Ramjet Meets the Vampire

via youtube.com

Okay... Roger Ramjet, Count Bat Guy, and a Proton Energy Pill battle... give yourself a five minute levity break from whatever you're doing and drink in the nostalgia of almost 45 years. You can have your Twilight with it's dark, broody, angst-ridden vamps, but Count Bat Guy is the real deal.

And what better group of dysfunctional kids than Yank, Doodle, Dan and Dee? This is the culmination of some crazy superhero meets the supernatural story arc that no teen based fiction could ever match.

thinglets: Top Ten lovehatethings Posts By Views

1) lovehate: Scope, Scale, Setting and The Watchmen (18580 views) - While I really enjoyed writing this, I suppose it's popularity was tied more to opportunistic timing and tagging than anything else.

2) thinglets: Tanzania's Albino Genocide (18503 views) - I can't believe how much this post took off. I originally commented on a situation that I found horrifying and absurd at the same time. I suppose I managed to catch onto a topic that very few other people had chosen to talk about.

3) lovehate: The Ten Commandments of Not Pissing Me Off (8208 views) - It's nice to see that when you include a religious reference in a blog post title, you invariably get hits. I don't think this was the blog they were looking for.

4) thinglets: the power of tagging (7201 views) - Prompted by the Watchmen post at number one, I waxed on the serendipity of finding the right tag at the right time.

5) thinglets: Film-a-month Favs for 2009 (part two) (6439 views) - Again, the power of including a bunch of upcoming film names in one post proves the power of tagging. While I haven't tracked the views on this post too much, I'm assuming its numbers are pumped up each time one of these films comes out.

6) thinglets: The Fast and the Foodiness (6295 views) - An absurd exercise that's been found by a bunch of folks... really quite ridiculous.

7) lovehate: Fan to Store to Con to Web (6088 views) - Examining the path that fans take as their passion for popular culture evolves.

8) lovehate: The Church of Baudhism (6080 views) - If religion consumes faith and passion, how many of us have turned to the web on Sunday mornings as the new altar of worship.

9) lovehate: The Immaculate Waffle (5558 views) - A consideration of the lengths that travelers will go to in order to "cash in" on a free breakfast while on the road.

10) lovehate: Footnote to Favicon (5208 views) - How the conversation around web browsing can be reduced to a row of favicons across the top of your browser.

lovehate: 2012 - Roland Emmerich's Hollow Men

SPOILER ALERT: There may be some implied spoilers below, but nothing too specific that you wouldn't expect from a film about the end of the world.

First off, it's always easier to rip on a film than to critically explain the positive things about it. 2012 looks great. The special effects are over the top. There were not any instances where I thought "wow that's just horrible CG". Considering that Roland Emmerich has been held to tight budgets before, I would hazard to guess he at least was not held back by money. And so I suppose that eliminates one of the excuses he could use for delivering a paper-thin 2 hour and 40 minute chase scene where fireballs chased a car, chunks of earth chased a motorhome, chunks of skyscrapers chased a plane, and tsunamis chased boats.

You know that when you go to see an epic action film, you don't expect to see much in the way of character development and, in this regard, the film didn't disappoint. John Cusack plays John Cusack. I've seen characters with more depth in an episode of Pigs in Space.

Here's the basic flaw with 2012. Right from the first teaser trailer I saw for this film, it seemed they were targeting this film to being somewhat ominous in addition to being an action film. For this ominous tone to work, one would have to at least be able to suspend disbelief for a long period of time as the plot was building before some of the craziness (that was bound to occur) could simply be glazed over as part of the roller coaster ride. 

When I went to see Live Free or Die Hard, otherwise known as Die Hard 4: The Revenge of the Sequel, I was able to suspend my disbelief until the point that John McClane leapt from a collapsing highway overpass on the wing of a hover fighter jet. Call me a sucker, but everything to that point met my threshold limits; overpass to plane - not so much. In the case of 2012, that threshold was breached in the first 20 minutes and from that point on the so-called ominous end-of-the-world tone that the film tried to convey was lost in the chase scene after chase scene romp that stretched for a near 3 hours.

This is NOT a horrible film. This is, however, a film that had too many billions of people dying to be a fun action film and too much action and knowing glances with one-liners to be thought-provoking. I swear at one point that Danny Glover wanted to say that he only had three days left until retirement.

To allow an end-of-the-world concept to be realized as a dark subject on film, more drama and real acting needed to be injected. While I can often suspend my belief at the circumstance of the apocalypse, I shouldn't be thinking - wow, that line was telegraphed. In summing up the inability of Emmerich to create atmosphere: billions of people died, and I really didn't care. And, at the end of the film, three weeks after this apocalypse, many of the characters didn't seem to care too much either.

Maybe I just expected to see Cusack and Amanda Peet in a cliched romantic comedy about two mid-life divorcees and how their opposites attract relationship ends up in a Shakespearean wedding ending. Maybe I expected Oliver Platt to be something other than Oliver Platt. Maybe I expected Chiwetel Ejiofor to... well I didn't expect him to do much, because frankly, until I refreshed my memory on imdb.com when I got home, I wasn't sure where I'd seen him before; turns out in a whole bunch of things - his character was definitely the best of the lot.

I know that my final word on 2012 will sound really damning, though to me it's not as bad as you'd think. If you liked Armageddon, Day After Tomorrow, and Brendan Fraser's turn in Journey to the Center of the Earth, you'll probably like this... I kinda liked Armageddon - it crossed the line of being a romp without reservation and never looked back. The chase scenes were more akin to the Blues Brothers instead of Bullitt. 2012 had too much action to be taken seriously... at least no fruit carts were harmed in the chase of this movie, and I didn't have to put on 3D glasses to watch it.

I am anxiously waiting for James Cameron's Avatar to disappoint me further.

To quote T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

thinglets: Real v. Weird News

Call me weird if you want, but when I look at the "Weird" News section of a "news" website these days, things really aren't that different from the "real" news. In fact I sometimes wonder if perhaps the only difference between the two is that the "real" news is about weird people doing mildly out of character things, while the "weird" news is about "real" people doing things that are often completely "in character".

I'm not in the UK, but I do love telegraph.co.uk's "Weird News" page.

thinglets: Why Remembrance Day Makes Me Think of Pink Floyd

via youtube.com

A couple of days late for Remembrance Day, but I was busy celebrating a birthday after a moment of silence at 11am. Every November 11th, I think of Pink Floyd for this three minute song: a stirring indictment of a young boy who blames the powerbrokers for taking his dad into the service during WWII.

"The song sets up the story premise for The Wall movie, set over footage recreating the British contribution to the Anzio campaign's Operation Shingle, where Allied forces landed on the beaches near Anzio, Italy with the goal of eventually liberating Rome from German control. These forces included C Company of the Royal Fusiliers, in which Waters' father Eric served. As Waters tells it, the forward commander had asked to withdraw his forces from a German Tiger I tank assault, but the generals refused, and "the Anzio bridgehead was held for the price / Of a few hundred ordinary lives" as the Tigers eventually broke through the British defence, killing all of C Company, including Eric Waters.

In the second verse of the song (which makes up the reprise later in The Wall film), Waters describes how he found a letter of condolence from the British government, described as a note from King George in the form of a gold leaf scroll which "His Majesty signed / In his own rubber stamp." Waters' resentment then explodes in the final line "And that's how the High Command took my Daddy from me". - Wikipedia

When the Tigers Broke Free
(Roger Waters)

It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black 'forty four.
When the forward commander
Was told to sit tight
When he asked that his men be withdrawn.
And the Generals gave thanks
As the other ranks held back
The enemy tanks for a while.
And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives.

And kind old King George
Sent Mother a note
When he heard that father was gone.
It was, I recall,
In the form of a scroll,
With gold leaf and all.
And I found it one day
In a drawer of old photographs, hidden away.
And my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed
With his own rubber stamp.

It was dark all around.
There was frost in the ground
When the tigers broke free.
And no one survived
From the Royal Fusiliers Company C.
They were all left behind,
Most of them dead,
The rest of them dying.
And that's how the High Command
Took my daddy from me.

thinglets: Remembering the Stubby

As a child, my family would go camping 5 or 6 times each summer for weekends. We'd haul the camper behind the Oldsmobile for hours until we found a spot that that had an arcade and vending machines... after all, there's gotta be something for the kids to do that didn't involve "nature" stuff.

One of the things I started to do was collect beer bottles. I was nowhere near old enough to drink yet, but I would raid campsites all over Ontario and try to focus on license plates that were from out of province. Sometimes I'd trade so as not to rip someone off of ten cents. Other times I'd just sneak onto their campsite late and abscond with a forgotten empty laying on the grass around the fire.

In yet another walk down memory lane, I offer up pictures of many of the stubbies in my collection. I wish I could take the credit for the pictures, but they come from a site I heartily recommend you visit - www.Stubby.ca  Go there for a few hundred pictures of timeless bottles from all over Canada. Seriously, go there now!

Even if you're from nowhere near the Great White North, perhaps you can find something in the design aspects of some genuine works of art that were the beer labels of the 70s and 80s.

BTW, I'm not even start on my collection of some of the US stubbies I have... after all, when I lifted them from cross-border travelers I may have run the risk of causing an international incident and I don't know what the statute of limitations is on Stubby Theft.

thinglets: Five Existential Musical Sesame Street Moments

1. Kermit the Frog - "It's Not Easy Being Green"


Kermit's existence ranged from being a frog, to a news reporter, to an uncle. He lived a pretty well-rounded existence for a frog. That said, in this one defining musical moment from Kermit's first season existence in 1970, he expressed the concerns of a generation embroiled in midst of civil rights and racial struggles.

2. Cookie Monster - "C is for Cookie"

Cookie Monster sums up his entire life in two simple sentences: "C is for cookie. That's good enough for me." You can chase down all the self-help books and 12 step programs you want. You can watch Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, or Dr. Who, but you'll be hard-pressed to come up with a simpler, fresher approach to celebrating the small things in life that are positive.

3. Ernie - "Rubber Duckie"

A tragic tale of a man who, even though he lives among plenty of other muppets, including a suspected relationship with roommate Bert, who privately admits that his only friend is a rubber duck. Though this song often sounds like it's an upbeat number, Ernie exhibits perhaps one of the most tortured souls on Sesame Street. At least Oscar didn't even try to have friends. Ernie was living a hidden life as a depressed toy fetishist enveloped in the forced "happy" structure of Sesame Street.

4. Snuffleupagus - "Snuffy's Cloud Song"

Snuffleupagus cannot overcome his tragic dependency on the infantile Big Bird. Much like Vladimir and Estragon they wander Sesame Street waiting for something to happen that never comes. Snuffy spent 15 years as a figment of Big Bird's imagination only to become realized as a bit player who has to depend on Big Bird for screen time. Sure, maybe if was Kermit or Grover, you'd actually get some good lines and character development to work with, but being opposite Big Bird all the time must feel like Sandra Bullock felt having to act with Keanu Reeves in Speed, or how Jason Patric felt having to act with Sandra Bullock in Speed 2. Would that Snuffy could just fly away, but how can you fly away from a bird?

5. Yip Yips - "Discover Radio"

Sure, I know Snuffy and Ernie were downers, but the Yip Yips had it going on. They found sheer joy and amazement in basic exploration. Sure, you may think they were stupid, but they did manage to get here from another planet. They couldn't have been THAT dumb. They had a unique ability to find something positive, negative, scary and joyous in everything they discovered. The Yip Yips were the total package. They had to be aliens; they were far too cool to be native to Sesame Street.