Hail to the Chief...

While I watch a lot of TV, I usually never watched primetime dramas; I'd always preferred to watch comedies (and even those I've shied away from over the last ten years or so). There was a time when I watched Law and Order SVU, because I liked the stories and it was a really good show to watch, but even that didn't last too long.

However, one TV drama that I had never watched, and never really cared to watch at the time it was on TV (assuming that it had a massive political bias) was The West Wing. All I really knew about the show before really sitting down and watching it was that John Spencer died while the show was filming its final season, and that led into a discussion of the resulting situation. I didn't know anything about the characters, or really about the content of the show.

Ironically, last year, one of the new shows that I watched was the ill-fated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - created by Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme - who also created West Wing, and Sports Night (all three of which have a season 1 finale titled "What Kind of Day Has it Been?"). It was an alright series, but after a couple of weeks I lost interest - mostly because it was on at 9pm on Mondays, but also because the storylines were somewhat confusing and hard to get into.

Then, Snoskred got hooked into the show, big time. Eventually, I was convinced to, ahem, procure, a couple of episodes - you know, take the show for a test drive. I think it took about three for me to be sucked in.

The thing about The West Wing is that it is an intelligent program. It's not filled with the double-innuendo that you see in most comedies nowadays, and it's not filled with blood and guts and murder investigations, like most modern dramas. It's a show that goes very far to give an insight into the world of Washington and of politics. As someone said in a review of Studio 60 on Amazon - "Could it actually be that if "West Wing" was first being premiered this fall that it would also not last one season?"

Unfortunately, I think that would be the case - in early 2006, the West Wing was not performing very well on its way to the end of the series; in fact, NBC put it on Sundays at 7 - against the Simpsons and Extreme Makeover Home Edition and whatever was on CBS at the time, mostly to just let it finish its run. Today's TV is all about the ratings - not the quality. Luckily, we have had the priviledge to have quality television in the West Wing.

Part of the reason I've loved watching the show so much is that the writers knew how to tug at all of your emotions - from humor to fear to just times where you want to cry (the end of season 2 was the first time that I really cried at the show, and the final episodes of the series were awfully difficult to watch). Another great thing is that, in the final season, they knew that the show was coming to an end, so John Wells did an excellent job to close the series - letting you know what the characters would be doing in the future, and even bringing back an old friend and putting them back into the fray. It was, really, a great way to end a show, and it reached a logical end with the end of a Presidency, and the beginning of another.

Yes, the show did have some less-than-stellar moments; an episode from season 5 - "Access" comes to mind with that, but almost all of the 150+ episodes were of excellent quality. Like Snos said at one point - it's hard to believe that people had to wait four and a half months between seasons hwen the situations at the end of one season make it necessary to watch the next one, two or even three episodes. At one point, I even watched half of one season in one day, and I think that if you were determined, you could watch all 7 seasons in a sitting, but that would take a massive effort. :)

The only thing that I missed out on with the way that I, ahem, procured, the series was the commentary tracks to the episodes that they put on the DVD sets. One day soon, I hope to be able to get the full series DVD set; that will be a major acquisition for me, but that doesn't mean you can't go and buy it for yourself. However, if you just want to take the "test drive", I think you know where to find these things. ;)

Now, I have to find another show to watch at lunchtime....anyone have a suggestion? ;)

And, I want to leave you with a couple of my favorite scenes from the show -

First, from Season 3, President Bartlet calls the Butterball Hotline and tries to not reveal that it's him....

And this other clip from Season 3, CJ lays down the law to Josh -

Raiders of the Lost Ark

If you're like me and haven't watched this movie before, you need to watch it. You will not be sorry. Honestly, it's one of those essential movies that you need to watch to have experienced the world. And seriously, you should stop reading and go watch it. I'll wait for you. :)

Having said that, those of us (now that I can include myself in this group) who have seen the movie know why it's such a great work. Here's my take on why I think it's so good.

Mixing of adventure and scare


Ok, so maybe "scare" isn't the best word for it, but there are definitely some moments that make you tingle. For example, right at the beginning of the movie when Indiana and his Peruvian counterpart are exploring the cave and all of a sudden tarantulas appear on their backs. Like I said the other day, I don't mind small tiny spiders that don't do much, but tarantulas give me the creeps! Of course, then the wall comes out with the decomposing skeleton hanging off of it. Which moves. Need I say more about that?

From there you move to the adventure of grabbing the idol and getting it out of the cave, and the escape from the rainforest. That leads into the race to get the Ark and trying to beat the German expedition team (I'm not sure that they were referred to as Nazis in 1936, even though it is three years into Hitler's rule).



Then, when Indiana finds the Ark's true location (the Germans having erred on the calculation on the height of the staph), he finds a pit of snakes. Nothing but snakes which are slithering along the floor. He even faces down a (what looks to be) cobra, but they just mention asps in the dialogue. Then Marian falls into the pit, and while leaving, she winds up in a hall of more moving skeletons, including one that has a snake coming out of the mouth. Again, very creepy!

However, it all winds up balancing perfectly as there are only a couple of moments where you want to ball up but the rest of the movie keeps you so engaged that you keep your focus on the movie and nothing else.

Little bits of humor



You could say that all movies have some elements of humor in them, but Spielberg is one of the best to do it. For example, when Indiana is teaching after his quest for the idol, he gets distracted - first by his head teacher, and then by a girl who has put "LOVE YOU" on her eyelids. Even today, that's a pretty creative way to signal your feeling, and one that is very blunt but would probably land you in hot water for sexual harassment. Then, after Indy gets out of the Well of Souls and gets back to Sallah, he says that he's going to get the truck. How? Sallah asks. "I don't know. I'm making this up as I go." Simple line, and in the context of the movie, completely accurate, but it's worthy of a chuckle.

The rock chase



Now, even if you haven't seen the movie (What are you doing reading down here if that's the case? I told you to stop reading and watch it! ;)), you are probably familiar with this scene. I had been under the impression that it came towards the end of the movie, but it comes right at the start. It's still amazing to think that Indiana didn't get run over by it. Of course, it's been immortalized as part of the ride at Disneyland, which I took when I was there in 2001. One of the things that they said is that there are infinite combinations of the ride to go on. As it happens, I wound up on the one where you go past a wall of snakes, which do move. Below is a great clip of the ride and the area around it - there are a couple of other videos on Youtube of the ride, but this is the best of the ones I watched.

A couple of questions
- Why did Indiana keep the monkey after he was the cause of the first attack in Cairo? (Of course, not that it was a bad thing considering that it found the "bad" dates)
- What happened to the ship that Sallah had hired to take the Ark, Indiana and Marion to London after the encounter with the U-Boat?

This was the Week that Was, Vol. 3

It's been a relatively quiet week around here. I've done a bit of work, but the big highlight of the week is that we're getting into the hot season of the year; yesterday was the hottest day so far, with a high reported locally of 96.4°F (35.8°C). I love my air conditioner - set to the recommended 78°F (25.6°C), you only notice the heat when you leave the area bounded by door curtains ;).

Today we got over an inch (250mm) of rain, and they're saying that it's going to be similar tomorrow with heat and then rain. With that information out of the way, onto the update :)

Posts I liked -

• Kate at DatingGod gives some great lessons in the art of the salad.
• Kirrily Robert's discussion of the unique challenges faced being an Aussie geek
• Radioactive Jam has some questions which need to be asked.
• The Reader Appreciation Project explores the image that website badges present to your readers.
• Duncan posted a brilliant ad which shows what life would be like if everybody owned a Ford XR8 Ute. I've posted the video at the bottom

New Blogs I'm reading in Google Reader -

• MeAndMyDrum, home of the iReply movement.
• Reader Appreciation Project, a blog focused on its readers :)
• Sydney Daily Photo, featuring one of the world's best cities

New blogs this week in the US Blogs community at BumpZEE -

• Wonderland or Not
• Pointlessbanter.net
• PhilosYphia
• Terence Chang - Blah Blah Blog
• The Beef Jerky Blog
• On My Mac
• History Survey
• History Survey Links

On the blog, I posted about Salmon and pesto, told a story about a bit of karma in my life, and focused on two interesting websites - MyBlogLog and Alexa. I also shared a bit more of my life, including my recent lack of focus.

Traffic was pretty good for the week, with 120 visitors stopping by, including a couple stragglers from the massive Stumbleupon influx that lasted a little into last Monday. :)

This week, my aim is to comment on 10 to 15 blogs a day, keep up with other sites that I've commented on, keep track of things on here. Also, I am setting the ball in motion to make a major change in my life - something that should have happened about 7 years ago, but didn't happen for no good reason. On top of that, I'll have some items for this week's Hump Day Hmm... - "The things I carry with me" - I'll let you in on one thing - there are a couple of sayings, one is fairly logical, and the other one is totally mangled, but of my own creation. :) I must not forget, too, to mention that the idea for this week was one from my good friend Snoskred :)

This was the Week that Was, Vol. 2

This has been an interesting week, for sure. I've rediscovered my passion for "driving in circles". The story is certainly an interesting one, and somewhat of a long one. Check back later this week for something about that. :)

Mainly because of that, along with finishing the whole second half of the 5th season of The West Wing (which features one of my favorite lines, spoken by Josh, about the space program - "It's all low-earth orbits. It like if, 30 years after Columbus, Spain expected people to get hot and bothered about a trip to Mallorca.", and generally not having much time in front of the computer this weekend, the update's going to be somewhat short this week.

Posts I liked this week -

• Computerworld highlights some great ads over the last forty years of their magazine (via Neatorama)
• mrbrown shared a video he found of Bill O'Reilly getting taken to school by a 16-year-old who was defending his school's seminar on drug use and other "risky" behaviors
• deanpence bought an iPhone and gave it a very thorough review; the phone's definitely not for me, but it's good to see that it does live up to the hype
• Allie at Memoirs of a Gouda has found a way to stop Jehovah's Witnesses from visiting - put a Buddha statue in the front garden; that works most of the time. However, I find that living in a hard-to find place helps too :)
• Directions, 1937 style, can be found at Shorpy (a great photo blog featuring old photos from at least 50-60 years ago.
• I know that y'all may have seen this already, but Craig Harper says that if you want something, you actually have to do something to get it. Take that, "the secret"! (By the way, if you haven't seen it, the Chaser's War on Everything tried out the secret and it didn't go as planned.....I'll put the video at the end of the post ;))
• How would you react to getting a Lexus for your birthday? You'd be over the moon, right? Well, Matt at Fireflies in the Cloud found a video showing how a kid reacted to getting a Lexus...
• Thiru's How to Live Online has a very interesting graph showing what people do online by age group. Not surprisingly, the younger you are, the more likely you are to participate in various aspects of internet life.
• Ray at FreshBlogger has a quick how-to on finding your blogging voice. It's something that I think can help almost any blogger be better. :)
• Lastly, cars are being delivered all over Australia, but two really nice cars are going to my friend Snoskred, one for her parents, and one for herself ;)

Only one blog on the new blogs list: The BenSpark. If you're willing to put your face out there to be seen, you can enter his contest to win an "xshot" which makes self-portraits much easier.

It has been a bumper week for the US Blogs community at BumpZEE. These are the new blogs -

• Declaration Photos
• Advertising For Success
• CoolAdzine for Marketers
• Endangered Spaces
• Texas RV Travel Blog
• Homeschooling In The Ozarks
• ITheTwilight
• n E o A u T e U r
• Principled Discovery
• Life With Heathens

Around here, something happened on Tuesday. I forget what it is. Oh yeah, that's it! I bought a domain! I also discussed my Fear of Failure and the movies I've watched (I'm open for suggestions).

Traffic was about average for the week, until Sunday night after someone submitted the site to StumbleUpon, which caused over 100 people to show up, for a total of 147 unique visitors yesterday, making the total number for the week 236.

This week, it's the 4th of July, so that means there will be a "war" of sorts outside. I'll explain that later. I'm also up to episode 5 of The West Wing season 6 - it's been eventful so far, and I expect it to keep going. I'll also have a post for the Hump Day Hmm about Karma, and more :)

Lastly, here is the Chaser video, as promised :) -

Summer's coming

Seeing that it's almost the end of May, that can only mean one thing - Summer's on its way. Something that is new this summer is the availability full-time of an air conditioning unit. We got it last summer after it was so hot in the latter part of July and basically we reached the breaking point; and now it's just been re-installed today after sitting in the garage over the winter.

The one thing that I had forgotten about the unit was that (as it sits in the window right next to me) it really blocks a lot of the light. It's not a lot, but it is enough to be noticeable. Look at it this way - it's better to have a little light taken away for being able to survive a hot summer day without a fan blowing full blast on your face. :)

Also, the US Blogs community on BumpZee is growing quite nicely - we're up to 16 members now, and I think know that it'll be on the first page of communities within a couple of days. Not too shabby if I say so myself. :)

And to close, a musical interlude -

Warning: This video is addictive

You don't have to listen to the whole video, but make sure you listen to the first part - it's not in English, but I dare you to not get it stuck into your head. And that backing track, it's something else :)

I think that the name of Palito Ortega started to be known in Spain first as a writer. I want to remember now the first song Palito Ortega song that was recorded here in Spain. It was recorded by a friend, a singer of the time named Ricard E. And this first song, from 17 or 18 years ago already, said:

Al lado
Al lado
Justo al lado
Justo al lado
Vive
Vive
La que me tiene un amorado
ilusionado, trastornado
yo la tengo de vecina por desgracia
está viviendo justo al lado
bien el lado
justo al lado

Or, to say in English (very roughly):

At the side
Alongside
Lives
That I have a lover,
I'm disillusioned, upset that
I have an unfortunate neighbor alongside
well the side
alongside (and it repeats)

So, without further ado, Al Lado written by Palito Ortega and performed by some random Spanish guy on TV -

The foibles of copyright

I was looking at my site logs just now and spotted that someone searching for the Larry and Gary show from the old Thursday Night Thunder shows on ESPN, which led them to this post where I discussed jumping from video to video on YouTube. I even linked to the videos there.

Now, some 6 months on, there are no videos to watch. With the exception of one, they've all been taken down (some specifically reasoned as this and others under the banner of a Terms of Use violation) due to a copyright claim. I totally understand that some clips (i.e. ones of current tv shows or of movies) might not belong on YouTube, but some of the things that have been taken down recently are just pushing the boundaries of logic.

In the case of one of the videos, are you seriously going to see ESPN Classic showing a World Series game in full, with original advertising and news inserts? No, so why can't people be able to see what news delivery was like in the early 80s? For that matter, you never see full NFL games rebroadcast.

Generally, when games are rebroadcast, it's usually compiled of NFL Films footage (which is filmed using proper film cameras, instead of TV cameras), narrated by, according to their site, one of four narrators - Harry Kalas, Jim Birdsall, Earl Mann or Jeff Kaye; generally, they will mix in the audio of the radio broadcast for certain important plays. By all means, the NFL Films product is generally superior, thus making the original TV broadcast that much less relevant.

I could go off on a tangent here about how to properly watch a sporting event, but I'll let it go for another day :)

My main point about this is that I don't see where it hurts a company to have their old identity out there for people to see. In fact, some of the coolest videos (or maybe it's just because I'm a dork) are the ones from old TV. If you take a look at my favorites there, you'll see it's generally a mishmash of randomness, but a lot of it is from older recordings (though some are remasters such as the World Of Sport adroll).

My point is that by having videos on Youtube, you'll get people who might not have seen something to see it. The Cricket World Cup is an example of someone not getting that point - though the uploading went on relentless even after the ICC decided to jump on those who are sharing the game with the world.

Oh, and one last thing - try searching for Benny Hinn. If you find a video that works, I'd be interested.

And I'll throw one more last thing, this video from my favorites ;)

Web 2.0 in 5 minutes

One of the blogs that I've put into my Google Reader is Google Operating System. It's not an official Google Blog, but it is a blog that highlights many of the things that Google influences, including how the web has changed.

Today, this item was posted, which was a link to a video made by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. It's a great primer in what Web 2.0 is, and how it is really changing things. I think the most interesting aspect is looking at how Yahoo was back in 1996, a basic page built on simple HTML - i.e.

<HTML>

<HEAD><TITLE>Yahoo!</TITLE></HEAD> et cetera

To the code for the CNN Top Stories RSS Feed, in full XML. Do watch this, it's less than 5 minutes, and the music is pretty good to listen to :) -

9 years ago....

So I had mentioned that I was in search of the power cord for my scanner (a search that did turn out in the end to yield said cord). I figured that I may as well use it to scan a photo and share it ;)

This was taken (as the datestamp notes) in May of 1998. This is in the southeastern part of Tennessee, near the Great Smokey Mountains. The focal point of the photo is the runaway truck ramp that goes off to the left. So, without further adieù, here it is -



And, as a parting thought, a quite long (26 minutes) video of a trip that didn't go quite as planned..or did it? From BBC's Top Gear...

Measuring things up

A thought came to me today while I was watching this video on YouTube - Why can't we start doing something like this over here in the States?

It's not like the TV stations could easily whip up a way to stick a couple of more characters on the weather graphics; I can see this happening - the person reading the weather could say "For Tuesday, Partly cloudy with brisk northwest winds at 20-30 miles per hour and a high of 28 or two degrees below zero celsius. Tuesday night, Clear, low 18, that's minus eight Celsius; winds west at 10 to 20 miles per hour with gusts up to 30." Doing something that simple would go quite far in getting people more literate in this odd thing called "international standards", because let's face it folks, we aren't the only country in the world here.

As it is, it's not like we're not exposed to metric units in every day life as it is - there are some banks who put Celsius temperatures on their thermometer displays; the National Weather service has the option of viewing forecasts in degrees Celsius (though they don't convert the wind speeds to kph or m/s). Almost all products sold in grocery stores have both conventional and metric measurements on them. Bottled water is sold in metric sizes - the most common being 500 mL (marketed as 16.9 fluid ounces). Soda is sold in 2-liter bottles. There are also some dry goods sold in metric units - I've seen 20kg bags of dog food, even 17kg ones. Even taking the simple step of making the metric unit the primary unit of measure on the product would be beneficial.

The one area where you'd probably see the most resistance, however, is distances. For the longest time, when you drove to Chicago, you would see a sign just south of the Airport that read - "Chicago 81 mi 131 km". It was a peculiar oddity, but a neat one. However in the late '90s, the Department of Transportation replaced the sign with one reading only in miles. Again, as with the weather forecasts, it would be quite easy to start to integrate metric units into road signs - most of them have enough space on them to add a little piece of extra material that would read the kilometer equivalent to the mileage listed. Admittedly, it would be strange to see a sign that says "Airport Exit, 1 mile (1.6 km)" but you would adjust to it, and eventually some states would swap the distances.

However, in an odd coincidence, I believe that the UK still has everything measured in miles on road signs and in cars like it is over here. I think that Ireland just made the switch to kilometers in the last couple of years.

The only questions that would linger are ones of people being willing to accept having to finally learn how people outside of this country measure everything. It's by no means trying to force it down the throat; I mean if that were the case, we'd just say "Ok, from July 1st 2007 we're only going to be measuring things in metric units, you better know them now." All I'm suggesting is to try to encourage the integration of the international standard into everyday life, and allow it to become acceptable to use these units.

I will add that I sometimes have to convert back to conventional units to allow myself to get a grasp of things.

Oh, and one last thing - if you switch to kilograms, the number representing your weight reduces by a fact of 2.2...

Whatever happened to...?

Two of the shows that I loved to watch when I was growing up were The Flintstones and The Jetsons. In the days before pay tv was available in my area (and if I remember correctly, for a short while afterwards), the shows aired in syndication on one of the independent stations (though one was affiliated with Fox, but I think the programming was only the prime-time block), but in the mid-90s - about the time that Turner bought out Hanna-Barbera - they wound up, along with the Looney Tunes cartoons, only on the Cartoon Network.

However (this is something outlined in the Cartoon Network article linked above), some brainiac decided that it'd be better to ditch all the good shows (in my opinion of course ;)) for some lame original programming, likely geared towards 8-15 year olds. Instead of saying, alright, here are the shows for the kids and here are the shows everyone likes on the same channel for the enjoyment of all, said brainiacs decided to move all of these older shows (and by older, I mean older than about 10 years or so - with some rare exceptions) off to a network that hardly anyone gets called Boomerang. I think the only way to actually get the channel is to be in one of the areas served by Turner's cable system (Time-Warner), or by satellite.

Though they did do something good with introducing the Adult Swim programming block - responsible for bringing Family Guy back to screens with new episodes after rating well and an excellent DVD release; the same was rumored to be happening with Futurama, but I haven't heard anything more.

Maybe they figured that, when they decided to put the good stuff on the "premium" channel, TV shows on DVD would prove to be a successful concept. Though it makes you wonder why they don't allow syndication of these shows anymore.

I'll leave you with these three videos from youtube. These are ones that you will definitely not see on Boomerang (or probably on these DVD sets). When The Flintstones premiered in 1961, it was aimed at an adult audience and as such had an adult sponsor - Winston Cigarettes. I had never seen two of these videos before just now when I went to look for the one video that a lot of people have seen, which is this one -

These two videos are rarer than the one above; I wonder if any TV shows would actually do something like this (be in character for an ad) again (and yes, I'm aware of the Bart Simpson Butterfinger commercials)?

Late Night TV

I have been up late the last couple of nights so I've had the pleasure(?) of being able to watch something that really should have stayed where it started - the late night quizshow. I believe that it first started in the UK, then spread to Australia with the Big Brother Uplate franchise, but then it expanded to all year last year, so all three of the commercial TV networks there have shows.

Here, we're fortunate as only three cable networks - Superstation WGN, TBS and Game Show Network show versions of these shows - usually for an hour or two and not every night of the week.

Last night, the WGN show Play to Win, where you can text or call at a cost of $1.50, or use their website to enter for free, had this puzzle for a word unscramble -

LA CINPAO

Hmm...I wonder what that could mean? I mean, seriously, if you don't get it in about 15 seconds (and that's being generous I think, even though it took me about a minute to figure out Dentist earlier in the show), you have to be kinda "not with it".

Now, if that wasn't easy enough, the other night, they had another shuffle puzzle "shuzzle" -

EPNGUNI

I mean..come on people! Hey, it's an animal that might wear a tux ;)

If you mightn't have figured out by now, I really like the Chaser's work, and they did a piece about the Aussie quizshows during their War on Everything. Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Where the bloody hell are you?

If you're somewhat aware of the ads, you'll know that this is really a rhetorical question, as the intent is to get you to get your arse in gear and get down to the land of the Big Thing, Australia. The only reason I mention it tonight is that there was just a show on the Discovery Channel about the "Great Australian Outback Cattle Drive", which is acutally a recreation of an outback tradition intended for tourists who are willing to make the trip out to the area of the Oodnadatta Track in Outback SA, some 800kms from Adelaide.

Naturally, the main sponsor of the show were Tourism Australia who made a splash earlier this year with the introduction of "Where the bloody hell are you?" as the new catchphrase for their tourism spots. This is one of the longer editions of the adverts; the version shown here is a 30-second version, and is shown in fullscreen.

Now, the good folks at The Chaser decided to see if they could come up with some better slogans to sell the country to foreigners. I think some of them might fly, but of course there are some government-types who might not think the same...judge for yourself ;)

More fun with YouTube

YouTube is really a site where you can totally get lost in watching what's out there. For some folks, it's music videos, for others, the totally random stuff. For me, it's seeing videos of sports from the recent past. Today's journey started with watching a clip from Ken Burns' "Baseball" about Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. That then led me to searching for the game announcer, Vin Scully. A video of the Shea crowd singing along with Queen's "We Will Rock You" led me to this video from 1985 featuring Bob Costas.

That led to the following -

• A clip from Game 5 of the 1980 World Series with Bryant Gumbel in the NBC NFL studio


• NBC News Update during the pregame for Game 3 of the '80 World Series, featuring a commercial for Polaroid and a network promo


• The Intro to Sunday Night Football from 1989 on ESPN

That got me searching for ESPN; watched a few videos of that, then added Nascar to that search, and then I got lost :)

I watched racing videos from all through the years, from the 1976 Daytona 500 to the IRL race at Watkins Glen in June this year - with the "international" commentary with Larry Rice and Gary Lee - those who might remember the old Thursday Night Thunder on ESPN would remember the old "Larry and Gary" show.

The search for nostalgia ended in watching this video where I find the commentary absolutely hilarious.

In all, I've thoroughly enjoyed the hours I've been spending on the 'tube (and on Wikipedia). It's definitely something I need to do more often, and stop worrying about what people are talking about in different sections of the internets. :)