Amazon Announces Streamed Content for IMDb – Tom’s Guide.

I am still not a full fledged Internet Watcher.  That is, I don’t routinely watch full length movies or shows over the Internet.  Eventually I will have a media PC in my living room hooked to a TV several notches nicer than my current one.  But until then, the world of streaming video for me is mostly limited to an occasional You Tube clip or something on Hulu that I just couldn’t live without.

The kids are a different story.  They are both pretty satisfied to watch whole episodes of things on YouTube, or catch their favorite cookie-cutter Nickelodeon show online. (As a side note, whoever thought up iCarly was freaking brilliant.  The premise of the show drives kids to the web where the brand saturation reaches entirely new levels.)

But even without the benefit of a 42 inch screen hooked to a media box, I am going to watch the IMDb streaming develop with some interest.  Particularly how they handle ads.  Hulu already seems to do a pretty good job with this and one of the reasons I use them when I do is that I can watch a 1 hour show in around 50 minutes or less and still feed the advertising monster in a small way.

I am a huge fan of This American Life.  It is without question some of the best produced media out there.  Even when the stories are light hearted it always makes me think.  It is the only thing on radio that I will sit in my garage listening to rather than get out to go inside and switch on just because I don’t want to miss a moment of it.

This week’s episode really stirred me up.  Specifically, the first half which covers the story of three scam baiters who spend their days tricking the tricksters.  They respond to those foreign money spam emails, the ones promising you a cut of some fantastic sum if you just help the stranded Africans get their money transferred to an American bank.

Three guys who go by the names Professor So and So, Jojobean and YeaWhatever spend part of each day running elaborate cons on Internet scammers. They consider themselves enforcers of justice, even after they send a man 1400 miles from home, to the least safe place they can bait him: the border of Darfur.

What got me so riled was the obvious relish these men took in placing the con man in harms way. As the piece went on I had several different and very conflicting thoughts:

• Sympathy for the con man.
• Disgust with all parties involved.
• Loathing the Americans and understanding why parts of the world do not look favorably on us.
• Wondering whether the ends justify the means (this is normally a no brainier for me, they don’t).
• Trying to sort out the ethics of vigilante activism in a situation where there is no legal authority with any power to affect the situation.

I’m still not sure where I come down on this one.  I was alternately repelled by people on both sides of the story.  In the end, the only conclusion I can feel firm about is that I the Internet is not a place to do business with strangers.

This American Life Episode 363: Enforcers.

While cleaning out my bag I came across the map given to me by the nice check in clerk at the Opryland hotel and I remembered that I promised to share the directions they provided. So without fanfare…

1. Take the path up through the center of the Cascades atrium over the water and make a right after you pass Cascades Terrace Lounge.
2. Proceed up the ramped pathway then straight ahead along the burgundy carpeted hallway to the Delta Sundry Shop on your left.
3. Take a right into the hallway opposite the entrance to the Sundry Shop.
4. Proceed down this corridor and make a right into the first hallway intersection to find elevator (D1).
5. Take elevator (D1) up to level 3.  Your room is on this level.

Some things to note about this journey.

First, it took approximately 7 minutes to walk it with my suitcase.  I was in a hurry and therefore not sight seeing along the way.  I was trying to get to my room as quickly as possible without actually running.

Second, even thought the directions were printed at the top of a full collor map of the hotel which included my route being highlighted, the clerk took a couple of minutes to go over it with me turn by turn and actually provided some additional pointers without which I never would have made it on my own.

Finally, step 5 is deceptive.  While it would appear that getting off the elevator (D1) would put you within striking distance, I was still a couple hundred yards from my room.  This is complicated by the fact that even though I was in the correct hallway with no turns remaining before I arrived, the whole damn wing is built on a curve.  This meant that I couldn’t see anything beyond the next 30 feet or so.  The constant left-turn made me appreciate how hard NASCAR drivers must have to focus in order not to be hypnotized by the repetition of constantly bearing left.

I will say that the walk was breathtaking.  The first time you see the inside of this place it will be a striking experience.  So striking in fact that I actually stopped to hail the gazebo.

My new phone was dropped off by Fedex today and here I am stuck at work while it pines away for me in the rain until someone gets home.

I need a new word for the emotions that run through me when I am so close to a new gadget but can’t get there.  Its not like an expectant father (less worry), or like Christmas morning (I paid for it after all).  There must be a word for the itchy feeling your fingers get when they know they will soon be peeling back bubble wrap on a shiny new gizmo.  I just don’t know what that word is yet.

I am open to suggestions.  The word must be concise, descriptive and (preferably) have no existing connotations.  This is not a new sentiment by any means and Douglas Adams had a pretty serious go at something similar in The Meaning of Lif.  In case you are unfamiliar with Lif:

Does the sensation of Tingrith make you yelp? Do you bend sympathetically when you see someone Ahenny? Can you deal with a Naugatuck without causing a Toronto? Will you suffer from Kettering this summer? Probably. You are almost certainly familiar with all these experiences, but just didn’t know that there are words for them. Well, in fact, there aren’t – or rather there weren’t, until Douglas Adams and John Lloyd decided to plug these egregious linguistic lacunae by getting a few beers and a notebook and sitting on the beach for a couple of weeks. They quickly realised that just as there are an awful lot of experiences that no one has a name for, so there are a lot of awful names if places you will never need to go to. What a waste. What a terrible, senseless waste of the linguistic resources this planet. Did you know that at the current rate at which new places and things are being generated, we will exhaust all possible names for them by the year 2015?

HeroBuilders.com lets you create an action figure out of anyone. Now my dream of being an overly muscled, plastic gun toting caricature of myself can come true.

Now the only question is, what kind of accessories/weapons does a mild mannered database administrator carry?  An exploding USB drive? A computer mouse bolo? Maybe all I would need is the DataStorm.

They also do custom PEZ dispensers, plush toys, and wedding favors.

In one of the 1000+ football games that took place this weekend, our safety-first, we’re-all-special-snowflakes culture finally got the best of the most hardened among us. College Football referees.

After scoring what should have been the tying touchdown, the quaterback for Washington threw the ball behind him and leaped into the arms of his onrushing teammates while 80,000 fans screamed deliriously.  If it were a movie ending you would think it was a bit cheesy but since it was an actual event that was happening spontaneously it gave me gooseflesh despite the fact that I was in my car listening to the game on the radio and had no rooting interest at all in either team.

Naturally the officials took exception to the celebration and flagged Washington 15 yards on the extra point which made it a 35 yard attempt to tie the game with no time left.  The kick was blocked.  Thanks for coming.

My response?  F-ing refs need to get laid, have a beer and loosen up.  But Tim Keown says it so much better…

ESPN Page 2 – Keown: NCAA’s emotional void.

Starting Saturday, 15-yard penalties will be assessed for any outward display of excitement, amusement, frustration, eagerness, disappointment, disbelief, anger, confusion, self-consciousness, ambition, bitterness, disgust and, of course, happiness.

Minor irritation, skepticism, latent anxiety and quizzical facial expressions will be assessed a five-yard penalty. From here on, the lesser penalties will be assessed on what is to be termed “infractions of thought.”

I got an email this morning from a website I had forgotten all about.  Three years ago I was an avid user of my Palm Pilot.  Not for organization but for entertainment.  I played games, listened to music and best of all, read e-books.  Once I had chewed through a bunch of classics from Project Gutenberg and other sources I was ready for newer material. To that end I found ereader.com and downloaded a dozen or so titles for a pretty reasonable sum.

First, let me say that ereader.com has a pretty nice model that works well in its own narrow way.  You download their proprietary reader program for your platform, download the books and then verify your right to own and read the book.  The way you do this is by entering the credit card number used to purchase it.  This has several advantages from the company’s perspective.  First, the verification number is something both the user and the company have access to.  Second, unlike any other kind of verification, the user is actually incented to not share it with friends or the public because the number has value to the user beyond just reading the ebook.  You are not likely to give a friend your credit card number just so they can read a copy of the book.

Back to the present.  ereader.com sent me an email anouncing the availability of Neal Stephensons’ new work Anathem.  This is because way back when I had asked for updates on any new Stephenson work.  I am really looking forward to Anathem as I am a huge fan of all of his work. So it was with great excitement that I clicked through to the site only to be confronted by a problem that will probably keep me from using ereader.com for the foreseeable future.

I gave up the Palm Pilot a few years ago and have sinced switched to the truly wonderful Nokia N800 as my portable device of choice.  ereader does not provide software for the N800 or any device using the Maemo platform.  Their list of supported devices is not small, but a niche platform like Maemo isn’t likely to make the cut anytime soon.  This is especially apparent when you realize that they have yet to release software for the Blackberry and its user base is many times larger.

So now I am faced with a dilema.  I can use the Garnet emulator on the N800 to read the books in Palm format but this is not ideal.  While the emulator has gotten much better, it is still essentially beta software that doesn’t have all the rough edges off it yet.  Worse, it is not optimized for the N800 and things like screen real estate and button functions are less than desirable.  I suppose I will end up loading the emulator and giving it a try with some of my previous purchases but overall it leaves a sour taste when you realize that the N800 has the excellent FBReader available already.

I realize the reason for DRM in this case and ereader’s implementation is better than most but there has to be a better way to implement this type of control than locking people into a specific technology.

Haven’t done a completely pointless and self-serving fitness update in awhile and I don’t want everyone thinking that I’ve forgotten about it.

Three important notes discovered over the weekend have re-energized me a bit to keep on keppin on:

• I am definitley three to four pounds lighter than when I began.  I can only assume the scale wouldn’t be so cruel as to lie to me.  Onward with the diet!  While the weekends have been my downfall for serious progress on the calorie intake end (damn you giant turkey leg!) I am still being fairly responsible about what I’m putting in my body and the results are starting to show.
• While I fell off the push up schedule awhile back I have still been doing 80-100 push ups several times a week.  This weekend I decided to see what kind of progress I’d made.  Turns out I can now crank out 40 consecutive reps.  This is up from the 15 I could do when I started.  And the really good news is that my body doesn’t scream bloody murder at me afterward like it did a month ago.  I actually rallied back to do two more sets of 30 after a break.
• I played my second indoor soccer game last night.  This was my first time in the field (last week I was the keeper) and for the first time in my adult life I wasn’t a wreck afterward.  In fact, I actually felt like going for a run when I got home.  The run was replaced by a pleasant walk with the Wife, but the fact that I didn’t immediately collapse into bed for a 12 hour recovery was really exciting.

So this week I will push on.  More reasonable meals, more pushups, more cardio and hopefully less of me to love. Now if it would only stop raining so I could run outside again.

Macropayments: Why I don’t take tips for my books – Boing Boing.

I don’t care about making sure that everyone who gets a copy of my books pays me for them — what I care about is ensuring that the everyone who would pay me decent money for a book has the opportunity to do so. I don’t want to hold 13-year-olds by the ankles and shake them until their allowance falls out of their pockets, but I do want to be sure that when their parents are thinking about a gift for them, the first thing that springs to mind is my latest $20-$25 hardcover.

This is precisely the vision that is missing from most American businesses today. Viewing the customer as a piggy bank to be broken open and raided rather than an investment to be cultivated over years.

Working in a non-profit area where most of our revenue comes from fundraising, the cultivation of a customer over a long period is essential.  If we tried to go for maximum short-term dollars, the donor base woudl dry up in a few years and we would disappear.

What Doctorow is talking about is not a hippie “pay what you want” strategy.  Rather, he is providing avenues for people to discover his work in the belief that over time he will see more return from that customer than he would have if he insisted on profits today.

In the case of my house this is already working.  I printed off the free PDF of Little Brother for my son and he loved it.  We bought a copy at Borders and then my daughter read it.  Now the boy has donated that copy to the school library where more kids can read it.  On the surface, Doctorow only sold one copy of the book.  Beneath that is the reality that he got new fans who will be interested in his next work as well.

In the long run (say, the next 5 years) he is likely to sell at least 5 or 6 copies of his next couple of works due to the exposure our experience gave him.  All of that without really surrendering any revenue on the initial transaction.  Assuming that I would have bought Little Brother without having read it first, I still would have only bought one copy.

What would happen if the rest of the creative works industry followed this example?  I’m not sure, but there would certainly be fewer lawsuits, fewer disgruntled customers, a much larger audience for creative works and a culture that valued and rewarded the producers of new work.

In the days of yore fathers guided their sons into manhood in many ways.  Making your first kill on the hunt, helping to plant or harvest their first crop, helping with an oil change on the family car or doing household fix-ups.

My how times have changed.  I find myself initiating my son into the world of young adults with truly post modern methods.  With that in mind it bears mentioning that the boy has passed another milestone.  We made our first 6AM visit to Kinkos to get some presentation materials for one of his classes.  I pointed out the distinct smell of missed deadlines, sweat and desperation that pervade the place.  But as has always been my experience, the staff was of great help and the results were well worth it.

As a side note; yes, I am aware that they are technically not called Kinkos anymore.  But I will never be calling it FedEx Office.  Just can’t do it.  Some traditions need the old world names to be more real.