re-run

Coffee Cups on TV - Stop Being Broken [2]

2009-05-23T17:32:12Z

Continuing to evolve my tiny show. This time we added other people, multiple angles, a memorized script and production stills.

Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous [1]

2009-01-13T14:13:28Z

My friends and I made a music video for a Flight of the Conchords lipdub contest:

Please watch it in high definition.

I’d join you on Christmas... [2]

2008-12-23T14:38:20Z

but I’m afraid I’m all booked up:

New Favorite Submit Button

2008-11-04T16:12:14Z

Instead of “Submit” or “Go” or whatever, they use a little e-mail icon to start a new e-mail newsletter subscription.

Hottt.

Saying it better than I could [2]

2008-10-23T01:55:30Z

Three Admirable Reasons to Vote McCain [2]

2008-10-20T12:42:28Z

1) You think his tax policy is sound

This is either because you are incredibly wealthy and want to retain all the money you can, or you’ve been misled by the Republican promises of “trickle-down economics”. But all the evidence of the Reagan and Bush tax plans points to the contrary. Rich people, when given tax breaks, don’t invest in the country’s future, they invest in their own futures.

If it’s because you’re very wealthy and want to conserve your money, well I can’t argue with that, except to suggest that maybe you want to show a little compassion to your fellow citizens. Besides, I’m not worried about this group, since they’re in an extreme minority. What worries me is that in order to make sure this minority achieves a majority vote, Republicans have tied their provably-false tax policies in with more morality-focused promises:

2) You want to stop abortion

I totally sympathize with this. Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where abortion could be avoided?* (Maybe abortion doctors, but they can find other jobs.)

But the truth of the matter is that five Republican Presidents have had twenty-five years between them to outlaw abortion, and we’re still deeply divided on the issue. Even John McCain seems not particularly committed (when asked to vote whether he supports Roe v. Wade, he declined to vote either way).

I believe with all my heart that McCain is yet another Republican Presidential contender who is promising change on the abortion issue, and who has no plans at all to deliver on that promise. I can’t predict the future, but I have twenty-five years of evidence. Instead of potentially wasting your vote on this heated issue, you should probably do more to prevent accidental pregnancies, like Obama wants to do.

3) You want to win the war on terror

It would be great if we could clean up every single terrorist, brush off our hands and say, “whoo! That’s done. Everybody loves America, again.” But we’re fighting an enemy whose goal is war itself, and by bin Laden’s own words: destryong America’s economy. How do you fight an enemy whose primary goal is war?

* There are, of course, many more reasons why abortion shouldn’t be made unsafe and illegal, but I wanted to concentrate on the aspects that McCain voters would agree with right away.

Helping Sarah Palin

2008-10-13T14:13:12Z

I’m writing this in a sincere attempt to help Governor Sarah Palin out of a really weird place that she put herself in. Her sister used to be married to an Alaskan State Trooper who by all accounts acted like a jerk and wasn’t a particularly good cop.

Later, we found out:

An Alaska ethics inquiry found that Gov. Sarah Palin, the U.S. Republican vice presidential candidate, abused the power of her office by pressuring subordinates to fire a state trooper involved in a feud with her family, a report released on Friday said.

She knew this was coming, and could have responded one of three ways:

She could have apologized. Americans love this, and reporters almost never argue with it.
She could have said she didn’t agree with the findings of the legislative panel that put out the report (nevermind that the panel was 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats).
She could have pointed out the inconsistencies in the report, which simultaneously condemns her behavior and says that she didn’t do anything illegal or improper.

Instead, she chose option four, and said, “There was no abuse of authority at all in trying to get Officer Wooten fired.“

I don’t know, maybe that’s her way of saying, “I disagree with the report,” but to me it sounds like she’s saying, “I didn’t read the report and I don’t intend to.”

It’s not too late to apologize. Seriously. We’ll eat it up, and we can move on and talk about differences in policy instead of who is the most corrupt candidate.

I live in Florida.

2008-09-12T20:12:21Z

But these pieces are written by intellectuals who live in an environment where reasoned argument is prized. I live in Florida.

the zombie apocalypse

2008-09-11T12:45:50Z

I had a dream about the zombie apocalypse last night in which I was busy taking pictures of the dramatic sky.

The Difference Between Cats and Dogs

2008-07-24T20:11:46Z

A dog will be your friend even when it seems like nobody else will.

A cat will be your friend only when it seems like nobody else will.

It takes a bit of concentration/practice

2008-07-18T20:57:08Z

It takes a bit of concentration/practice, but during a meeting last week I used the bottle several times in the space of an hour without any chirping.

oh Dear God.

2008-06-17T15:40:18Z

what do you think about putting a little graphic up and a “sign” that says “Under Construction”? Something that looks like a little cartoon perhaps?

salmonella

2008-06-11T13:43:29Z

salmonella
oops, ha. meant to google that.

Free rating card artwork [2]

2008-05-22T21:09:08Z

I was annoyed that I couldn’t find any high-quality artwork for this movie / film / trailer / preview / rating card / green screen image anywhere online, so I recreated it (then I cleaned up the spacing and alignment a little).

If I were a screenwriter, I’d make a poster of this and hang it on my wall for inspiration.

Download the full version in glorious 1920 × 1080 PNG format.

Yeah. “Beautiful.” Sure. [1]

2008-05-21T13:14:56Z

The temperature has been in the High ’90s this week. This morning on the elevator ride up, Mr. Friendly Stranger wanted to talk to me, and he said, “It’s supposed to be a beautiful day, just like yesterday.”

So, one of the following has to be true. Either

a) I am at least ten degrees more sensitive to heat than everybody around me, because miserable weather starts at around 82°, or

b) everybody who lives in Dallas willingly is at least a little bit stupid.

Of course, the elevator is no place to have a disagreement with someone, especially someone who is just trying to be friendly, so I smiled and answered, “Let’s hope so.”

(I should say, since I didn’t before, that I am very proud of Texas for having a Spring that lasted through all of April. That was fantastic.)

At $9.95 per domain, failure doesn't cost that much

2008-05-12T18:31:30Z

This might be seen as somewhat embarrassing, but I thought it would be interesting to recap some of the domains I’ve registered over the years:

NJFilm.com

This was my very first domain, registered in 1997. It was supposed to be a community hang-out, idea-sharing site for independent filmmakers in New Jersey. It failed utterly, except for the parts where I got to practicing building Web pages.

ActuallyHappened.com

I think this is before I knew about Fray. I wanted a place for people to contribute true and unbelievable stories. It got zero submissions. Oh, well.

LifeAfterMTV.com

This was a meta-blog that aggregated (manually, of course) the blogs of people who were previously on MTV’s “The Real World” and “Road Rules”. It was extremely snarky, and pretty well received. I think the highlight was getting a link from somewhere in Yahoo!‘s entertainment division. I got bored with the topic after about a year.

AdGrinder.com

AdCritic.com was so great, and I wanted a place to store fan-made parodies of advertisements, which I had a few ideas for. Nobody really had any interest in contributing. I’m still proud of the header graphic.

Webgeek 0lympics

It was supposed to be an annual one-day competition with lots of various events that all related to Web design-y stuff. Besides getting together a great list of celebrity judges, almost nobody participated. I think some of that might be because in order to enter, you were supposed to send a trackback ping to a specific weblog entry. Nobody understood Trackbacks then, just as nobody understands them now. The other reason it didn’t work is probably because it was a dumb idea. But I had to try.

theynow.com

My first – and so far best – experiment with podcasting. Despite the infrequency of updates, I have more than a thousand listeners and the support of the rock band that I’m podcasting about. I’ve gotten to interview people like Jonathan Coulton and Common Rotation, and other high-profile podcasters have contributed to the show. I should really pay more attention to it.

coderwisdom.com

This was a total impulse buy, and did little more than translate inspirational quotes into various programming languages. It’s one of those things that you think is really funny and other people mostly don’t. Oh, well.

LunchCorp.com

Also soon to fade into archive-land, it’s a clearinghouse for ideas I’ve had that I wanted other people to pursue. In retrospect, I probably should have just kept them on re-run.

StopBeingBroken.com

I am having a great time making this (really, really) short show. Looking at it from the outside, I can see why someone might now know what to make of it. It’s not a news show, and it’s not strictly entertainment. Individual episodes get watched (as of this writing) about 300 times each, so I’m considering it a success. And every time I make a new show, I learn (or re-learn) something about lighting, camera placement, editing, etc., which feels really good.

DeepHub.com

Nobody was writing about the new age of entertainment distribution, so we have to. I think it’s fascinating, even if I’m not doing a lot of it myself.

There are a few sites that never got off the ground, like The Frightened Chef (don’t have a studio), Robot News Now (don’t want to do the news), The Songwriters Studio (don’t ask), and The Show Music Show (don’t want to pay licensing fees).

I’ve tried a lot of things over the past ten years. Most of it went badly, but each failure was worth every penny. I think the only regret I have is that I didn’t find someone to take over LifeAfterMTV.com. I must’ve tried, though. That sounds like something I would do.

Cobra Commander `08 [2]

2008-05-12T16:25:42Z

“Attack of the Show” is probably the most creative show that you aren’t watching.

Personal Information Waltz

2008-05-04T18:52:04Z

I really like making videos for spoken-word songs. Here’s the latest:

Warning: there is a single “bad” word used.

the chaos is terrified by the gleam of agenda in my eye.

2008-05-02T15:57:56Z

the chaos is terrified by the gleam of agenda in my eye.

Happy Birthday, Dad [2]

2008-05-02T14:16:16Z

Thanks for being awesome this whole time.

giant foam cowboy hat

2008-04-28T18:31:18Z

I guess what I’m saying is that some people hold their religion close to the vest, and some wear it like a giant foam cowboy hat.

my lawnmower broke.

2008-04-28T15:15:32Z

my lawnmower broke. So now I don’t have to mow the lawn anymore.

Help me name my socks.

2008-04-24T15:41:34Z

Help me name my socks.

Announcing Deep Hub [2]

2008-04-23T13:14:35Z

I’m spinning off another interest of mine into its own web site:

Deep Hub

Deep Hub is a weblog about creative people — authors, musicians, filmmakers — and how they get their works into the hands of the public without traditional distributors or labels.

If you have news along these lines, please let me know.

My "No Gravatar Yet" Icon [1]

2008-04-22T14:47:20Z

I really like Gravatars. They’re an evolution of the buddy icon that you see just about everywhere, especially on social networking sites. These, however, are tied to your e-mail address, and they automatically show up in weblog comments when you use that e-mail address (example).

It’s up to the weblog owner whether to install a Gravatar-enabler on his or her site before the icons show up (though I believe WordPress 2.5 comes with this functionality by default), and it’s up to the commenter to have an account with Gravatar in order for the right icon to appear. One neat thing is that you can have multiple addresses with separate avatars in your Gravatar profile. But on the flipside, you can be displaying Gravatars, and get a comment from someone who hasn’t set one up.

There are a couple of ways you can go. You can tell your weblog not to show any icon for someone without a Gravatar, and rearrange the layout accordingly. This is an elegant solution, with one major downfall: someone without a Gravatar will see the comments of people who do have one, and wonder how they got their picture to show up. That’s what happened to me for a long time.

Alternately, you can let people know how to get their picture to appear by using a default Gravatar when none exists (same example).

Space is limited, so I used the phrase “No Gravatar Yet”. I chose these words carefully because I wanted to explain why a boring gray box was appearing, and include a very searchable word for how to fix it. I fiddled with the font and the sizing for quite a while before I landed on something that worked at a small size:

So I’m officially giving it away for free. Copy, download and use at will, if you find it useful.

Aqua. Easily the best band to come out of Europe, in the '90s, named after a liquid.

2008-04-21T15:30:41Z

Aqua. Easily the best band to come out of Europe, in the ’90s, named after a liquid.

Folding Socks – Stop Being Broken

2008-04-21T13:19:12Z

Pretty excited about this new episode, if only because it’s the first one with my new theme music from Songs To Wear Pants To.

Xbox disappoints me, for once

2008-04-18T19:19:58Z

Usually, I am very impressed with the friendliness and usability of the Xbox division of Microsoft. Given the history of delighting me, I almost let this one slide:

Now, I’d be a total hypocrite if I said that everyone should know how to manage their feeds, since I just recently messed mine up. But the re-run feeds didn’t stop working, they started including more content than before (re-run and re-record were combined), so the worst-case scenario is that someone deletes a feed they don’t need anymore.

These people, on the other hand, need me to re-subscribe to their feed, because they know it won’t work in the future. It must be some terribly complicated change if they can’t simply redirect the old feed to the new one.

I mean, I can redirect feeds, and I have absolutely no budget to speak of. What is going on over there?

Web 2.0 explained in 3 seconds

2008-04-18T13:37:54Z

is the new

How to alienate your savvy customers

2008-04-17T20:00:00Z

LendingTree (I have used them in the past), sent me an e-mail about applying for a Home Equity Line of Credit which included this:

Let’s count the ways in which this is wrong:

Using more than one color to identify links
Showing me a Web address that doesn’t work
Telling me to click on a link instead of manually entering it into a Web browser. I haven’t spent the last ten years doing usability studies, but isn’t clicking on a link kind of the default behavior?
“Don’t cut and paste” — hard as I try, there is no way I can cut this link out of the e-mail you sent me
Forgetting the “J” in “Bryan J Busch”

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure I even understand the metaphor in the name “Lending Tree”. Is it a reference to “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein?