collected
I’ve created a link to my current projects list on the list of static pages here. That way, since I know you are all so fascinated, you can find out what I’m working on. Right now it just links to shownotes.info and the soon to be launched podcast Showbiz News - Online.
There’s a cable television network A&E, which stands for Arts and Entertainment. It’s been around for quite a while and if I recall correctly they first got a lot of press a few years ago for their Biography series. Then several years ago they started carrying syndicated reruns of Dick Wolf’s juggernaut Law and Order.
It seems like the Law and Order theme has gone to their head. Every time I turn on A&E it seem as though it’s some really depressing criminal investigation show or crime documentary. Case in point, I turned on my TV earlier today and it was on A&E. The first words I hear as the television turns on are, “he shot them both in the head, then he took (some guy whose name I wasn’t paying attention to) inside and slit his throat. (some guy) and his mother were killed immediately, but his wife wasn’t dead. The killers thought she was, but despite the bullet in her head she was still alive…” so I changed the channel to CNBC cuz that’s not relaxing for me in the morning to be hearing about.
Getting a bit morbid over on A&E these days. More like Court TV 2.0 than Arts and Entertainment.
I saw the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line, today. I’ve enjoyed his music for years, but didn’t know much at all about his personal life. So the movie was pretty interesting, and I found that I relate very well to his personal struggles. Probably more parallels there than I’d like to admit.
But even if you’re not totally screwed up, I bet you’d still enjoy the movie. So go see it. Michael says, “Two thumbs up.” (unlike Siskel and Ebert, if I like a movie I will use both of my thumbs)
I was listening to Metro Connection, the only locally produced show on the DC NPR station that doesn’t suck hard, and they had a music review of the local DC band The Positions. I wasn’t familiar with them prior to hearing the review on Metro Connection. Mark Jenkins, the reviewer, compared them to the UK sound of 20 years ago. And he may be right, as apparently I’m not familiar with the UK sound of 20 years ago (well, I like Sisters of Mercy, but I can tell you they don’t sound like Sisters of Mercy, so I guess Mark was talking about some other sound).
I was listening to the song excerpts they were playing and it had a style, vocally, musically, that reminded me of something. But what? I couldn’t place it. I was thinking maybe Belle and Sebastian since he had made the UK reference. But no, it wasn’t particularly reminsicent of Belle and Sebastian.
And then I realized, the UK reference was a red herring. I should have been thinking more locally. The sound I heard in their music wasn’t a UK band from 20 years ago, it was Velocity Girl! And sure enough, I checked out the Positions web site and Archie Moore, of Velocity Girl, is working with them in a production capacity.
So, if you like Velocity Girl, and you’re sad that they’re broken up and not releasing new music, well check out the Positions as they have a very complimentary sound.
Tags: The Positions, Velocity Girl
It seems like lately digg.com is turning into Consumer Reports. I don’t really have an opinion, this is just an observation. All these stories lately about questionable business practices on the front page (Sony Using Fake Graffiti, Best Buy’s xbox 360 practices, etc.)
So yesterday there was this whole big brouhaha about Adam Curry’s wikipedia editing. Apparently he was trying to correct some attributions in the podcasting history section and ended up messing up some edits and deleting a couple lines from the entry instead. So of course then everyone decided that he had an evil agenda and was trying to throw Dave Winer and company down the proverbial memory tube.
Adam responded with his side of the story, indicating that he hadn’t intended to erase others contributions and was actually trying to rewrite the Kevin Marks paragraph to properly (as Adam understood things) reflect his rather important role.
Of course that was then interpreted as a cover-up, and perennial victim Dave Winer felt compelled to reference back to an eariler essay he’d written entitled People With Erasers. His point being that Adam’s real intent was to rewrite history serrupticiously.
Then later yesterday, Dave wrote another post on his weblog which stated that Adam Curry and the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers had defrauded him out of his stake in PodShow. He claimed that he was a 50% owner of PodShow and that when KP funded it they instead improperly funneled all the money to Adam.
Adam responded to this on his web site by stating that at no time was Dave Winer ever an employee, officer, or owner of PodShow. And now, mysteriously, that post has been removed from Dave Winer’s site. Almost. He removed it from the main page, and he removed it from the monthly archive but he did not remove it from the December 2nd day archive. Or at least it’s up at the time of this writing. If he’s removed it later, there is a screen capture available on Adam’s site.
Hmm…now who is the person with an eraser? Pot, kettle, black. Kind of ironic. I wonder why he removed the post…perhaps he realized that publicly libeling one of the richest organizations in the world (KP) was not a good idea? One can only speculate.
EDIT - Dave Winer commented that this was just a “glitch” in the publishing system and it’s resolved now. Apparently Dave is allowed to have publishing glitches. It strikes me that it may be hard to believe that Adam could have problems figuring out how to edit a MediaWiki page, but it seems far more difficult to believe that Dave Winer can’t use a blogging system that he wrote. But who knows…
I was clicking around the Internet yesterday, as I often do, and somehow I came upon WirelessImports.com. They sell unlocked imported phones that are not readily available on the US market. That’s not really noteworthy, as there are many web sites that do that.
But they also sell prototype phones. How does that work? Is that even legal? And more importantly, how does one get a stock of prototype phones when presumably very few are ever made? I’m assuming this is legit, although I don’t know. Maybe it’s a scam. Perhaps someone out there is more impatient than I am to get their hands on the RAZR with iTunes or the Motorolla Q (only $3,995) and wants to go buy one and let me know how that worked out for them.
At the moment I am not in the market for any $4,000 cell phones, but if you are then I guess check that site out.
Tags: Cell Phones, RAZR, Q
I was editing the shownotes for the Daily Source Code today, and because I am a masochist I decided to enter in the gianormous list of artists who contributed to that PodShow holiday song. Anyway one of the contributers apparently is Pippa Rogers. I will confess that I checked out her site mainly because her picture on the Podsafe Music Network was…compelling. Yes, I’m shallow…whatever.
But I downloaded her mp3s and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Certainly she’s a bit softer than what I might normally listen to. But my tastes are eclectic and she has talent. Her bio states that she’s influenced by the Carpenters, and it’s clear. I checked out her music video and it’s very…Abba meets the Carpenters. Worth a listen if you’re into that kind of thing.
She reminded me a bit of Blake Hazard, who does not get enough press in my view. So check out Blake as well…I met her at a show in NYC a few years ago at the Mercury Lounge and in addition to being a talented musician she was a cool chick.
So there was a story on digg that Tivo Online Services (signup page) has been officially announced. This will allow various Internet-enabled features on broadband connected Series 2 DVRs. They’ll offer Yahoo!-powered photo sharing, weather forecasts, traffic info, etc. That’s all handy, but it’s not the bombshell. The real news is that Yahoo is also integrating Live 365 streaming audio and…wait for it…podcasts into their Online Services portfolio.
What the fuck is this? Yeah, let’s definitely work as hard as we can to perpetuate this society of victims and advance this false sense of moral superiority by specifically targeting jobs to people with brown skin or minority sexual proclivites.
That’s not racist or prejudicial at all.
I remember when I was growing up, how women couldn’t vote. Oh, wait, no that’s right- that was like 100 years ago. And back in high school when the negros had to sit in the special classes and learn about how to operate the cotton gin. Oh, no, again, that wasn’t the case either.
