Saturday, June 30, 2007

iPhone-O-Rama

So I have successfully resited the temptation and seductive lure of the iPhone. I even fondled one in person. It was tough not want to run out on dinner and go nuts with the credit card as quickly as possible. It’s an absolutely lovely device. Puts any other “smart phone” to shame. We just signed up for a two year torture plan with Sprint, so I won’t be getting one anytime soon. But in two years, I’ll be throwing down for the version 2.5 device so fast your head will spin.

Anyway, for the total nerds in the room who might be curious about such things, here is the User-Agent string for the iPhone as it surfs the IntarWeb:

IP Addy redacted - - [30/Jun/2007:18:06:40 -0600] “GET /images01/the-head.jpg HTTP/1.1” 200 95840 “http://www.ransom-note-typography.com/” “Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3”

“CPU like Mac OS X” Hmm. It’s an ARM processor in there. Which is probably the main reason why there is no Flash joy on the device yet. I don’t think Adobe has written a Flash player that will run on the ARM processor yet. But I’m guessing they will.

I wished I’d surfed to a site with QuickTime on it. I wonder how Safari on the iPhone handles QuickTime? Anyone out there with an iPhone want to go peek at a movie trailer at Apple and then get back to me? Since it can handle H.264 (the YouTube stuff), stands to reason QuickTime movies would be OK.

And Jon, I’m sorry if I got drool on your precious.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Classic Maneuver

Every man in a serious heterosexual and monogamous relationship, who wants to stay in that relationship, has learned possibly the most important lesson there is in life.

Lie about your wife’s butt.

Well, technically, you don’t have to lie, but we all know, you try your hardest not to speak ill of The Booty. As in the classic, “Do these jeans make my butt look big?”

“Nope. Looks great to me!”

Now, as you can tell, the key phrase here is to point out that the hiney looks great to YOU. Since this is a long term, committed relationship, your opinion as the male is the important one.

Well, no, it’s probably not, but let’s pretend it is.

Anyway, Reha and I were having a discussion about exercising. She’s taken up running and is starting to work out at the gym and is still at that stage where there is only pain and she hasn’t felt any real gains yet. She’s committed to carrying on with her program, but would like to see results faster. Standard exercises gripes.

“But seriously, your butt is totally smaller these days. Not like it was huge before, but I can tell it is smaller since you have been running. Absolutely.”

“I can’t believe you would even say that.”

“What? It’s true, it looks smaller. I love your butt, it’s awesome.”

“See, that’s just unbelievable to me.”

“Well, I do.”

“…”

“Plus, it’s the only butt I’m technically allowed to love.”

“So it’s more of a ‘love the butt you’re with’ kind of thing.”

Just to Make It Official

I want an iPhone.

OK, are you happy now?

No, I’m not getting one.

But I am betting that the next iPods will be amazing and I wouldn’t buy a new video iPod anytime soon. Wide screen video goodness, with the touch screen is coming down the pike in that device. I’m just guessing, of course, but I’d count on it.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Swan Song for Studio 60

I don’t watch a whole lot of TV. And not because I’m some snobby, “TV is the scourge of modern life” fellow. TV may indeed be the bane of modern life, but it’s still pretty entertaining. So no, I don’t watch a lot of TV, but it’s because I have limited time to sit and watch TV. And no, I’m not out healing puppies or doing anything particularly productive, but merely having a family as large as ours, (17-20 kids at last count), demands a decent chunk of time every day. Plus all this episodic TV (Lost, Heros, 24, etc.) requires a fair amount of concentration and you can’t just mindlessly watch that stuff. You really do have to pay attention. But Jon, you say, “TiVo will fix that for you! Que up the whole season and you’ll be set!” True, but then I’d still have to find free time, wrestle control of the TV away from the kids who are playing video games or watching educational programming (read: the Boomerang channel, which seems to play awesome old skool Hanna-Barbera cartoons, 24/7) and watch the programs I’d recorded. And who has time to beat the kids into submission so they don’t all gang up on me and steal the remote?

So TV just doesn’t happen in my life that often. Seriously, I had the last FOUR episodes of Heros—a show I enjoy quite a bit, being the huge geek/nerd that I am—DVR’ed and waiting for me to watch for WEEKS after the season finale before I finally got around to watching them. What kind of nerd/geek am I? For shame! And don’t tell anyone, but I don’t watch Battlestar Galactica in real time, either. I usually end up waiting for the DVD to some out. (Bad nerd! No Star Wars for me for the rest of the year!)

But occasionally I notice a program that I know I must watch. And I will go through all kinds of hoops to make sure I can have it in my life.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was one of those programs. I was initially drawn to it because it was written, created and mothered my Aaron Sorkin, he of West Wing fame. I like the West Wing a lot, but I really liked Sports Night. And it seemed to me that Studio 60 was going to have a Sports Night vibe more than it was going to be West Wing-ish.

The thing that Sorkin seems to do very well (besides pages and pages pages of overly witty dialog) is get inside something (like a live sports show or the White House) and tell a story from within that framework. So the show has great insider feel to it. Plus it makes you empathize with the characters. I’d hoped it would “explore” the creative process of the Head Writer (the Matthew Perry character, Matt Albie) a bit more than it did, but I was still hooked. Plus, I have small crush/fascination on Amanda Peet, so that helped. (Don’t worry, Jen, I’m still there for you, babe, but look at Amanda’s teeth! They are huge! How did they get so big? It’s a source of never ending curiosity to me.)

So I was pretty stoked for Studio 60. And it didn’t disappoint me. Unlike the rest of America, who felt that another iteration of CSI (CSI: Miami, The Hot and Humid and David Caruso’s All Sweaty Edition) was just the ticket to Monday night joy, I liked the show and I faithfully banished all noisy people from the living room when it came on. Heck, I even bought the iTunes Season Pass for Studio 60, just so I’d make sure and get my fix. Flakey DVRs being my specialty, after all.

But, as I predicted way back in November of 2006, the show did not find an audience. And NBC’s schedule is barely on life support these days so they couldn’t afford to let it float along until viewers wised up. Which, frankly, given the nature of the show, the acting and the writing, wasn’t going to happen; you either liked it immediately or loathed it instantly. There was no in between where you thought, “this is intriguing and kind of engaging, I wonder what happens next week? Maybe that woman with the big teeth will start eating people with those huge choppers!” Plus, each episode Studio 60 must have cost a fortune to make. The sets were ginormous and the show had some pretty large salaried folks in it. You think Matthew Perry or Bradley Whitford come cheap? I’m guessing “no” on that score.

Tomorrow night is the season/series finale. NBC had to buy the whole season in order to get the thing in the first place and since they are canceling the whole she-bang, they have been burning off the remaining episodes this summer. I’m a bit sad about this of course, because in the end, I did end up caring about the characters. And that’s exactly what I want in my entertainment choices. I know, I know, the sketch comedy show within the show wasn’t really all that funny ("Pimp my Trike!” I mean, come on…), but I liked rest of it. And Bradley Whitford is excellent. And Steven Weber did yeoman’s work as the somewhat scrungy network exec. Certainly Amanada Peet’s mouth should get a Best Supporting Actor Emmy. And the camera work! Outstanding. Because the sets were so huge and Sorkin seems to like to have his characters walking all over creation, there were these amazingly long camera takes. I watch them and wonder how the steady-cam operator didn’t trip and break their face during every take. Just fabulous production values in that show.

One thing I end up noticing about Sorkin’s character’s is that though it seems like they are walking around all the time, they really never go anywhere. Plus, extras or minor characters are always handing them meaningless pieces of paper, which they glance at (while walking purposefully to the other end of the set) and then deposit in some other meaningless location. Maybe I’m just being persnickety, though.

What will be interesting to me is what happens once the DVD of the series comes out. I know, it’s only one season, only twenty-two shows, but these are network executives at NBC Universal we are talking about. Of course, they will release it to DVD. Anything to continue to reap even meager moolah from their intellectual property. Because once it hits DVD, the long tail will kick in. People who buy Season Z of the West Wing or The American President on Amazon or rent via Netflix will get a recommendation, “Hey, you might also like this!” and it’ll point to Studio 60 (and Sports Night, or course). And the show will find its audience and those people who never saw it on broadcast television will say, “Oh man! This is good stuff! Why did they stop making it? How moronic! TV is so dumb, no wonder it’s the scourge of our society.”

That’s my prediction anyway.

Monday, June 25, 2007

The Branches of Government

Based on recent events, turns out the stuff I learned in Civics and U.S. History class was ALL wrong.

Though maybe this is a better way of describing the situation graphically. Our man Cheney, overlord of the universe. Sees all, directs all, answers to none.

Though personally, I like the notion of the Veep out in right field, all alone and at an undisclosed location.

Proximus

 

Favorite Entries

If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

• Help Wanted
• From the Office of Mis-directed Email
• A Word from the Small Person in the House
• RNT Product Review: Chocolate Mix Skittles Left Me Sterile!
• Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago
• Dear Gratuitously Naked Conversationalist at the Gym:
• A Peek Inside the Writer’s Guild and Producers’ Negotiations
• We Regret the Error
• Letters from a Homeowner to His General Contractor
• What I Did There
• Hermaphrodite Administrative Assistants and Receptionists Need Not Apply
• Giving Me an IM Account Was Obviously a Huge Mistake
• Official Ransom Note Typography Vista vs. Mac OS X Shootout
• I Need a Real Hobby
• Beat Down
• Big Fat Lies
• True Love
• Now MY Ovaries Hurt
• Don’t Get Her Started
• Disturbing Trend
• Had to do it
• Mooshy stuff
• Ransom Note Typography End User License Agreement “EULA”
• Diva-licious!
• Just so we’re clear
• PETA may have a point

Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

©2005-2008 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.