Blue Glow

Video Covered the Radio Star

2008-05-15T13:01:00.001-07:00

After hearing yet another cover of "Video Killed the Radio Star," I set about figuring out just how many covers are out there. Turns out there are a lot. A perfect use of Amazon's new MP3 widget! I think the Minipops Kids version is my favorite.

Wall-E on the streets of LA

2008-05-14T16:17:00.001-07:00

Wall-E Spotted in LA! from Blink on Vimeo.

Via Cabel.

When life hands you lemons...

2008-05-14T14:00:00.001-07:00

Hate Vista? XP Computers in Stock sign, Joliet, Chicago, IL.JPG
Originally uploaded by gruntzooki

From the photostream of Cory Doctorow.

The Giant Pool of Money

2008-05-13T15:41:00.001-07:00

I'll admit, the sub-prime mortgage disaster was largely a mystery to me -- I understood in vague, abstract terms that a lot of bad loans had been floated to people who couldn't afford to pay them back, and that eventually the whole system collapsed. What wasn't clear to me was exactly why this had happened, or what inspired the lenders to such madness.

Fortunately a recent episode of This American Life (one of, if not the best radio show currently on the air) took a comprehensive look at the whole mess, delving not only into the lives of those losing their homes and the fortunes of those at the top who represent the tip of the iceberg, but at every link in the chain in between. It's a fascinating and depressing story of mass collusion -- hundreds if not thousands of people looking the other way as they aid in certain financial disaster.

I'm no financial wizard but I'm a heck of a lot better informed now than I was before. If you have those same feelings of vague uncertainty about the whole sub-prime mortgage mess as I did, you should give it a listen. You'll probably end up feeling bad, like I do, about Ira Glass' laryngitis, but it's worth suffering through briefly to get to the story.

Listen to "The Giant Pool of Money" at the This American Life web site.

Karl Rove goes all journo on us

2008-05-13T15:36:00.001-07:00

Karl Rove recently joined the ranks of the media, appearing on Fox News (duh) and writing for both Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal.

[Newsweek Editor Jon]Meacham said Mr. Rove had been received surprisingly well in the magazine’s newsroom, where he has been a reliable colleague who files his articles on time and works diligently with fact checkers.

“After one editor dealt with him,” Mr. Meacham said, “the editor called me and said, ‘This just complicated my world view. I may like Karl Rove.’ ”

Read That Pundit on Fox News? An Upstart Named Rove in the New York Times.

Queenie in Trouble

2008-05-13T15:23:00.001-07:00

The things filmmakers used to be able to get away with... this excerpt from Dogway Melody.

Thanks to Mitch O'Connell for bringing this to my attention, and for pointing me to some historical context as well.

Spider

2008-05-05T11:11:00.001-07:00

Saw this short at the Marfa Film Fest this past weekend -- I particularly like the Ione Skye song at the end.

Goodbye to the Normals

2008-04-29T09:30:00.001-07:00

This little short is brilliant -- four minutes of pure comedy. Strange that it only played a handful of festivals. Oh well, now it's on YouTube for your enjoyment.

Forsooth.

2008-04-24T20:42:00.001-07:00

Best reason to use NetNewsWire ever

2008-04-22T17:43:00.001-07:00

My schedule hasn't allowed me to do much casual blog-surfing lately; I've been restricted to hitting Daring Fireball about once a day and reading 2 or 3 of the more important industry news blogs at work. The authors of my varied RSS feeds, meanwhile, have been dutifully pumping information and entertainment into the blogosphere, which NetNewsWire collects for me.

The difference between NetNewsWire and a reader like Bloglines or Google Reader, however, is that NetNewsWire keeps all that info cached on my laptop. (NNW syncs with NewsGator, so if I want to read on the web or on my iPhone, I can do that too.) When I'm thirty thousand feet in the air and completely cut off from the net, I can still catch up on my blog reading. And since I'm out of phone and email range, I really don't have anything better to do. Sheer bliss.

Gasoline vs Ethanol commercial

2008-04-21T17:43:00.001-07:00

My friend Glenn entered an advertising competition called "Fuel the Change."

Rate my video in this contest!

Submit entry

Contest details

Check out the rest of the commercials but I think Glenn's is the best I've seen. Please vote!

Wacky divorce video on YouTube

2008-04-16T09:16:00.001-07:00

This is apparently really, really big news.

I don't doubt it has divorce lawyers alternately licking their chops or gasping in horror, but I'm pretty sure Andy Warhol is somewhere out there, laughing.

Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back - Response to Monster Cable — Audioholics Home Theater Reviews and News

2008-04-15T18:00:00.001-07:00

This response to a cease and desist letter from Monster Cable makes me want to spend money with Blue Jeans Cable -- and I don't even need any home stereo cabling right now. Never has a company been more aptly named: Monster has been ripping people off with grossly overpriced cabling for years and threatening capricious legal action against their competitors. What they didn't know is that Kurt Denke, the president of Blue Jeans, is a former attorney. Here's my favorite passage from the letter he wrote back to Monster.

I am "uncompromising" in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.

In context of the entire letter's it is easy to see that Denke is a reasonable person, and that (at the very least) Monster is half-assing their cease-and-desist efforts. Read the entire letter ("Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back") over at Audioholics, it's a hoot.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

M.C.ドナルドはダンスに夢中なのか？最終鬼畜道化師ドナルド・Ｍ

2008-04-08T12:40:00.001-07:00

No clue what the title says but the video speaks for itself.

Uwe Boll will stop directing if 1 million people ask him to.

2008-04-07T16:35:00.001-07:00

Or so he says.

Sign the petition here - almost 73,000 signatures as of this writing.

Battlestar Galactica complete recap thus far

2008-04-04T13:39:00.001-07:00

I saw this on my Tivo last night and was pretty much intending to download it to DVD for my own nefarious purposes, but now I don't have to. Thank you, intertubes!

The fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica starts tonight.

Mr. T performs miracle revival of comatose boy

2008-04-02T06:06:00.001-07:00

He tells Britain's Empire magazine, "His family put toys around him and one of them was a Mr. T doll. And whenever my name came up, the boy moved his arm."

"Somebody told the doctors I was in town, so they called me down there. I closed the curtains and prayed. Then, as I was walking down the hall, the kid suddenly came out of the coma and hollered out."

"That was my supernatural moment."

Read Mr. T brought boy out of coma.

(Via John Merriman.)

You will be compelled to the edge of sight and sound.

2008-04-01T22:23:00.001-07:00

Guess who went to Trailerthon tonight?

Conan O'Brien on the Jon Stewart Show

2008-04-01T07:53:00.001-07:00

As excerpted on the Colbert Report back in January.

Top Ten Reasons to Watch the New Season of Battlestar Galactica

2008-03-31T08:51:00.001-07:00

Battlestar Galactica's new season begins this Friday on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Google turns out the lights

2008-03-29T18:08:00.001-07:00

Google draws attention to "Earth Hour" by darkening its home page for a day.

On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.

Sprint pay incentives aim to slow cancellations

2008-03-27T00:20:00.001-07:00

Mobile phone company Sprint Nextel, fighting to retain customers, is changing employee bonus plans to double the importance of stopping cancellations, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed on Tuesday.

Sprint treated me so badly that I paid a good amount of money just to be rid of them. Comparatively, AT&T (whose corporate logo used to be called the Death Star as a joking reference to their monolithic presence and evil customer service) has been a dream. Their cell service and their customer service are miles better than Sprint, so I'm not at all surprised that customers are kicking Sprint to the curb in droves. They deserve it.

Read Sprint pay incentives aim to slow cancellations | Tech News on ZDNet.

Good Gear: SkullCandy Ink'd Earbuds

2008-03-20T15:12:00.001-07:00

I have traditionally eschewed earbuds for over-the-ear headphones. Earbuds never seem to fit my ears and I spend half my time repositioning the damn things when they fall out. Headphones, on the other hand, are awkward to carry around, can be uncomfortable in Texas heat, and never provide quite the sound isolation I'm looking for in a pair of really good earbuds. Not wanting to shell out a hundred bucks or more for high end earbuds, however, I opted to suffer in headphone land. Until now.

I'm not sure why I thought these SkullCandy Ink'd earbuds might work for me, but I was attracted by the shiny metal accents and the iPhone-compatible jack connector. (One of the great frustrations of owning an iPhone is that it is incompatible with 99% of the headphone/earbud products on the market by dint of its recessed input jack.) The price ($15) seemed right, though, so I took a gamble. It was only after opening the packaging that I realized the genius inherent in these deceptively stylish earbuds. The silicone earpieces are replaceable and come in several sizes. I'd seen similar adjustable earbuds in the Jabra line of telephone headsets and in high-end stereo products, but not in discount earbuds.

So I thought to myself -- am I a large? a medium? a small? And then I realized -- my ears could be different sizes, and that's why no one set of earbuds ever seemed to fit right.

Sure enough, my left ear snugly fits a small earpiece, and my right ear takes a medium. Now I have a great fitting pair of earbuds that completely block out exterior noise (just ask my office mate) and deliver great sound at a ridiculously low price. I'm going to by a few more pairs to guard against loss or damage. Products this good tend to disappear, so git while the gittin's good is my thinking.

I'm fully aware that I could be completely unaware of similarly great products, so check out Ink'd Earbuds on Amazon and tell me about your favorite headphones/earbuds in the comments.

SxSW MADNESS!

2008-03-10T19:36:00.001-07:00

If things have been a little quiet, it's because I'm swept up in the South By Southwest film festival. Check out the coverage over at Slackerwood and, for you filmmakers in the crowd, Film Festival Secrets.

Cult Movies Podcast Episode 51

2008-03-06T21:44:00.001-08:00

"All The Glamour Hollywoood Can Muster." In this episode we talk about the Oscars, why we hate the Razzies, some summer movies, and the death of HD-DVD.