Warning: UK Context. Read this out loud in your best English accent.

If you read the title of the post and thought I may have had a bout of dyslexia, you are, in this case, wrong. The Two Ronnies are one of those wonderful things from the BBC that simply didnt make it over the pond. Although I didnt benefit from a childhood of The Two Ronnies or Basil Brush, I do have an appreciation for the uniquely British nature of dead dry humor. The whole skit is pure genius but the part where he’s asking for “ose” is epic. Gillian had a moment today that was out of that skit and reminded her of home.

One of her co workers announced that he had some “sokerose”. For the life of her she had no idea why someone would be giving away football stockings (socks worn by soccer players). She looked at him puzzled, “uh, I dont know why you would offer used “sokerose” to anyone. She went through all of the possible things a sokerose could be. She then thought he was talking about soccer hos, which would have been pretty vulgar for work and weird to boot.
“Well, you have a bag yard, dont you need sokerose?”.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about”.
“Soaker hose, hose for the yard, like a sprinkler”
“OHHHH!. No we have a sprinkler system, what kind of people do you think we are.”

And now, The Two Ronnies.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Cz2-ukrd2VQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I’m not very interested in the goings on of the HWD jet set but… When DIGG told me that Paris was cut out of the family money, I just had to take a peek. Grandpa blew a gasket after the jail thing (obviously he didnt mind the sex tape nearly as much) and pulled the plug on her 60M pay day.

She makes her own money and certainly won’t miss a meal but that’s some serious bread. She thought 23 days in jail was bad? Imagine how she’ll feel when her Netjets card stops working. Oh the agony.

Scanned this one in today. Wanted to test out the image loader.

As an avid reader of Dwell and Met Home, this “furniture” is about as offensive as it gets. It’s only missing a strobe and a video screen. What’s worse is that they are allowed, by law, to make and sell these. To people. To have in their HOMES, where other people might witness it.

ATHF is good stuff but they do lack in the swag department. What’s a new mother with mad knitting skillz to do? Make a little Carl body suit for baby. I’m torn between cute and horrified.

The UK equivalent of Girl Scouts is Girl Guides and the difference is more than just a name. 1000 Guides were polled on what they were interested in learning through the guides. Top picks? Managing money, safe sex and building flat-pack furniture. Basket weaving seems a bit medieval now, doesn’t it?

With little Bush’s approval ratings in the toilet and nearing a record low for any president in modern history (66% of people think he’s not l33t) people are focusing on who the next Oval Office resident will be.

I watched the debates and found that a number of them were actually pretty decent. The spat between Hillz and Barak is a little too dramatic for my taste and I found them to be too evasive for my taste. Here’s a short rundown:

Edwards came off as not wanting to talk in specifics about anything unless he was 100% sure people wouldn’t find him in a position where he took a position. His views are a little conservative for the blue team and just seemed to be focused on not answering questions

Kucinich is a guy I imagine sits in a room with the entire X-Files box set and watches them non-stop. His lunatic outbursts and paranoid ramblings kind of scared me. His seemingly random barking of numbers to text to vote for something was weird.

Biden was good, he works the camera well and breaks out of the Gore Dem mode with some real opinions. He did answer most questions directly. I kind of liked him, or to be clear, I liked him more than most of them.

Hillary, I don’t have a read on her quite yet. With as much as we all know about her I don’t have a strong opinion yet. She did a good job on stage but got into spats with people and frowned a lot.

Barak was someone I expected to be a straight shooter. He diverted every question into opportunities to hit talking points and some questions which could have been yes/no were danced around. I was very disappointed.

Dodd didnt say anything terribly memorable. He was better as being straight in his responses but didnt ring the winner bell for me.

Bill Richardson. I lived in New Mexico for a number of years. My mother has been there for 18. In the time BR has been governor he’s not been able to do anything for New Mexico with regards to corruption, drunk driving, domestic abuse, nearly last place education and the list goes on. If he cant manage a state with less than a million people, how can he manage a country that needs real help. Track record, F.

Ok, Mike Gravel. I liked this guy. He was articulate, strong, had good opinions and answered every question with an air of authority. His ideas are pretty advanced and I don’t know if this country can be as progressive as he wants it to be. This isn’t a shortcoming on his part, we own that baggage. He was a real stand out here. I sincerely hope he moves forward in this process.

While the Dems are fighting their little popularity contest, where is Mike Bloomberg? He’s being the CEO of New York. Yeah, that little berg. He’s being a real tease but the url www.mike2008.com goes right to his own website. He’s denied being in the running many times but so does everyone else until they’re ready.

Can an Independent win? I would like to think so. What are the effects on the partisan nature of American politics? I have no idea. But I like Bloomberg. He’s a proven leader with a much better understanding of finance than anyone else running. I’m always a dark horse guy so I’ll follow Gravel and Bloomberg while everyone else jumps on the Hillary / Obama fanboy train.

It’s well known that having animals around makes people happier. Many nursing homes keep a small gaggle of pets around to make the residents feel better. Oscar, a feline resident at a nursing home in Rhode Island has a different way to contribute, he tells patients they’re going to die.

A benefit here is that when Oscar curls up on someone’s bed, the nurses call the family so they can say goodbye. What are Oscar’s stats? 25 predictions in 2 years always within 2-4 hours.

As nice as it is to be able to notify family, having the cat around can also be a little unsettling. Imagine you have a roommate, and that roommate happens to be the Grim Reaper. You’d freak a little every time he popped his head in.
“Dude, I need-”
“Hey man, you startled me. Am I going to die now?”
“You need to settle down, I just wanted to grab the hoodie you borrowed”
“So I’m not going to die now?”
“No. Just the hoodie”
“Phew, yeah, cool, take the hoodie, it’s in the closet”
“Thanks. Oh, you’re going to die tomorrow”
“Fuck. That’s not ok. I have so much to do, to see-”
“I’m just kidding, you’re not going to die tomorrow”
“Asshole…”

I watched the Next Food Network Star finale the other night. (ok, laugh, get it out of your system) After the show was aired I went to the site to follow up on the story as they announced that the next day Amy Finley (winner) would be setting off to work on her new show.

I type in www.foodnetwork.com and before I even see their main page, a full screen flash ad for MasterCard is in my face and makes me chase a little X around for 5 seconds to close it. Then, the main page has a huge image showing a teaser for the finale show. They didn’t have the content up for the winner / results, right when people are heading over to their computer to hit up the site, old content. Having worked for the interactive portion of Sony Pictures, I witnessed many a late night where designers and webmasters were setting up content for the moment something was planned for the show. Even with all those movie sites the folks at SPDE were on the ball to get fresh content up when critical things happened and the public was expected to visit the site.

I love food network. Its one of the few stations I know the number for on my remote (BBC, Speed, Golf, Discovery) but their website is drowning in advertisements. It’s unruly and frankly, a turn-off. I suppose they make money from the ad revenue but the site is so completely and utterly festooned in ads it’s impossible to look at.

Irony: Their VP of marketing is one of the judges on Next Food Network Star. Whose watching the shop here people?

A little homage here to the TU-Report

I try to stay away from tabloid news but Lindsay Lohan, man, she just cant keep it together.2 DUIs in 6 months? That’s a problem. One of these silly starlets is going to kill someone… It’s been a while since we’ve had a good celeb trial in Hollywood.

Mug shots never do anyone any favors (Nick Nolte had the worst one I’ve seen) but this one screams “I’m wasted”.

Ok, enough of the scandal stuff…

The Simpsons is a good show. I think that Futurama is far more clever and interesting but after as many years as the Simpsons have been on, they’re still funny and that counts for a lot (yes, Lorne, I’m talking to you).

With their new cash cow milking right around the corner, all the Flash designers around are being sucked up to make on-line gadgets to get people even more crazed. Their avatar generator is pretty sweet. There are 2 flavors, the DIY version where you pick from templates and one (linked from that page) where you upload a photo and it makes one for you. Of course, thats the one that I wanted and it’s broken. I assume its being hit pretty hard right about now.

So I did the dorky thing and did avatars of wifey and I. I ended up looking like an unemployed cartoon illustrator and Gill looks like an off duty flight attendant. Go figure.

Go ahead, make fun of me but your wife will see it and ask why you didn’t do one (hint: use the thin body no matter what). Get crackin.

Remember the opera singing guy on Britain’s Got Talent. Oh, I’m sure you saw the YouTube video… Well, the follow up shows where he pwn3s the competition is just as good.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/nHYYz_mGP1U" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

And the final:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/mUyKYB4zYCQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

This is how good reality-talent shows are done.

data data everywhere and not a drop that’s useful. The Internet boom started a huge wave of database consolidation and development that churned behind the scenes for years. Recently that data has moved out of the shadows with the help of some enterprising people who saw that massive amounts of data in a single area of research is interesting but layering it over other data (like maps) is powerful and transformitive. I may have made up a word there. Still, things like Google mash-ups prove that mundane datapoints suddenly become critical resources when blended.

My current fav? Zillow. In spite of it’s oh-so-Internet name, the site is exactly what it should be. Layer real estate information over a map. Sure, it sounds simple but once you see the depth of how it’s actually mapped over homes, you realize that this is no small feat. Talk about simplifying comp research before buying or selling, this is massive. It’s also cool to know what your friend spent on his house.

How about renting? This guy took Craig’s List info and layered it as a heat map over Google Maps for the SF area. Did we need a heat map to know SF was expensive?

I love MP3s. I have a pretty big collection that I’ve put together over the years. In fact, I couldnt listen to it all if I tried. But I collected some cool stuff. With everything I could want to listen to in my collection, what do I play all day? Pandora… I am a slave to Pandora and I love every minute of it.

In case you’ve not been indoctrinated, it’s a “radio station” or actually stations, that you make and can listen to from anywhere. You populate it with artists and songs you like and it uses that as a base for a new “station” while suggesting new stuff. I learn about more new and interesting groups than I ever have before. Who knew I liked Wolfsheim? Not me. Pandora did.

If you didn’t already know, the RIAA is flapping it’s wings wanting Internet radio stations to pay through the nose. What no one in Congress or the music industry seems to understand is, they’re continuing to alienate the very people they need to make happy. It’s all very silly, and will get worse before it gets better.

The solution? It’s not all that complex actually. It works for all media but movies and music have such convoluted licensing schemes attached to each work that unless a larger body imposes a blanket program for paying people for their contributions, it will never get to the next level. In essence, a flat licensing scheme is step one. Step one may never come but lets see about step 2.

The second step for movie studios and music companies to save their own bacon and better serve a community that “steals” media rather than buy it is to provide it in the ways people want. Meaning, DRM that locks a song to a device makes people annoyed enough to say, “I’d pay for it if I could use it anywhere but since I have to pay for it to just play on my iPod, I’ll just download it elsewhere for free and use it on my other devices”. Sale lost. Multiply by 25 million.

How does that get fixed? price it right and remove the DRM. I don’t want to argue with people about this concept, my blog, my concept. I have seen the media companies flounder with their DRM and it’s just not working as is. Try again guys.

Movies and TV – The solution
Here is the Big Idea that uses existing technology:
Build a single content management system that houses ALL movies / TV / news clips / everything recorded in video and film. Connect that CMS to the cable operators with a nice big caching server and provide a search and VOD utility on the set top box (Scientific Atlanta may have to join us in the 21 century to assist here). Allow people to access the entire back-catalog of everything-ever and pay-per-view it to them for a small range of prices (first run premiums, old show discounts, freebies).

If you provide access to this massive VOD archive, people will consume that media like never before providing HUGE profits to everyone while making the public happy. Want to watch every episode of Law and Order? Sure, $0.99 each please. DVD sales will go down but the profit margin of squirting a data feed down dark fiber is much better than printing and distributing DVDs. It s a better model, that digital distribution stuff!

Why is this an issue? Step one. The owners of media hold onto their content so tightly they’re making themselves tired and poor. Put it in the system and watch the register ring. Will this combat piracy of digital video media? I think it would eliminate 95% of piracy. People are pirating media they CANT GET because they have to wait for it to be re-broadcasted if it ever is. Or, wait for the DVD set. What if you just want one episode? You have to pay $50 for the set? That’s silly. So, it’s still non-US piracy that’s the issue? Provide the VOD API worldwide. Connect it to the UK, China, Japan, Europe, Eartern Europe, everywhere. Suddenly, billions of people can browse and buy content. It’s a cash cow.

For the cost of a decent CMS, disk storage and network access, a whole new way of making money is born. Oh, wait, this isn’t new, the technology ALL exists now… So what’s the issue? Oh, right, the license holders are waiting for something to happen where all the pirates are arrested and no one steals video anymore. Ok, well, when that never happens, then what?

The day everyone with a set-top-box (or even better, cable card) can VOD any media from any country, access any TV station from any country, piracy will die. Piracy is born from lack of access. People download episodes of Alias because they missed it and just want to see it. The effort of finding it, downloading it, burning it to disk, everyone who does it would just rather pay $1 and push a button.

As far as the technical infrastructure, I have it in my head, it’s all pretty straight forward actually. If someone wanted to implement it, I’d be happy to give them a blueprint. I think it would be of minimal cost to set up properly, about $30M for US VOD operations.

I wont hold my breath, I think there are a lot of people out there that think they know a better way. The truth is, there is only one way to quickly and effectively turn this around. When they’re done beating their heads against the wall, I’ll be here, happy to give them the recipe.

YouTube, I *heart* you. Why? Today, it’s Falcor. Tomorrow, it will be something else. Must see TV? It’s all day, every day on YT.

I don’t know why this is funny. I have no idea. But, alas it is and I laughed out loud.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/pC3n-LC3Em4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Mark Malkoff, clearly a man with too much time on his hands decided it was time to be clever and create his very own 15 minutes of Internet meme. His quest, to hit up all 171 Starbucks in Manhattan all in a single day.

Is it easy to poke fun at how many Starbucks there are in NYC? Sure, why not, they are all over the place. In fact, I think that at St. Marks, or Astor place, from one starbucks, you can actually see 3 others. That’s funny. I get that. Hah. See, I laughed. And that commentary would be enough. Oh, the irony, I can see 3 other ones from here!

I opened the link to his site, 171starbucks.com and let the ready-to-play video opening frame taunt me for a while before handing over 10:38 to Mark’s oeuvre.

If you’re dying to see what looks like a Letterman / Daily Show skit with skinny hipsters in silly helmets talk fast while simultaneously eating biscotti and running, this is for you.

If I want so see overcafinated hi jinx, I’ll go right to the source

When I was a kid my father let me tag along to some places that people now would think better of. Looking back at it, letting me stand behind the bar at his friend’s restaurant in SoHo, learning how to perfect the Bloody Mary was a good lesson. To this day, my Bloody Mary has no equal. At 10, I also knew how to bet on the exacta box, sharpen a chef’s knife (as well as throw it pretty well) and a few other neat things most adults didn’t know how to do.

But did he ever put me in direct danger? Well, we did go to a few rough neighborhoods but New York in the 70′s was one big rough neighborhood.

When I saw the story on this blockhead who took his kid to Pamplona and ran with in in front of bulls, I thought, wow, that’s seriously stupid. Why didn’t you at some point say, “hey, this might not be the best idea”… Fail.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/QXhD8B2TjaQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

To quote a blog I like, dad, tighten up.

It seems that the post I wrote on 80′s cars brought back some strong memories for some people including David Traver Adolphus of Hemmings Motor News.

First things first, I did a crap job of researching the article or my comments. DTA, was nice enough to correct my work (I swear that was a Bentley) and add some good comments.

His list of movie MIA cars is damn good:
* The Stripes GMC motorhome
* The Delta 88 from Blue Velvet
* Continuing the Tom Cruise theme, the Top Gun Kawasaki and Porsche Speedster
* The Sixteen Candles Rolls-Royce, and on the John Hughes theme, the Pretty in Pink Karmann-Ghia and Ferrari Mondial in Weird Science

When I saw Stripes that GMC battle-camper was all a 14 year old could ever hope for. I think GI Joe had a similar RV… Either way, I can count on DTA to set that straight.

I have one more that may be worthy of the list although I think I know where it is.
The Landmaster from Damnation Alley.
I believe I have seen this vehicle parked in a fenced-in lot on the San Fernando-Side of Sepulveda Blvd, Southbound side of the street.

The Cherokee from Goonies, I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

Some more finds on Area 51 1/2. I’m not kidding…

So the new book ending is out in the wild [The Tighten Up Report] and I am SURE some fans are seriously cranky.

I happen to think spoilers suck and people who leak that stuff are doing to in a mean spirited way. I’m trying not to think how many grown-ups are at work today complaining about it to their co-workers and putting up little signs on their desk to not tell them the ending.

I think they’ll get over it if they take out their trusty Nimbus 2000 vibrating broomstick and relax a bit.

This leaves me without words. But, I’ll smith a few to jazz up the post a bit.

I remember working on complex models as a kid with my grandfather. He was meticulous and made amazing models. He loved WWII ships and planes and was a pilot himself in the war. I could spend hours painting figurines (net all creepy like on CSI) and holding things in place until the Testors glue dried.

I once worked on a 1:8 scale Jag that ended up a bit of a disaster due to my lack of patience and without the benefit of grandpa helping me. When I saw that this man had done I felt silly rushing through the model and ruining it. This guy spent 20,000 hours making this 1:3 scale model and it all works.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/SeUMDY01uUA" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I’m picky about keyboards. Since I sit at one for about 12 hours a day, it’s my touch-point and I have to like it. I don’t spend gobs on some fancy g@m3r rig, I like the logitec ones that have a few media controls and good feel.

Some people, take their keyboards FAR more seriously.

And thats pretty cool. If you have that kind of time on your hands and the skills to do so.

What I like about this Steampunk movement is it’s tie to both the industrial revolution and the style of Machines at the time applied to modern things. In this case, the craftsmanship is outstanding and I applaud his effort, not that he cares what I think. But, still, very cool. I’d like to see what he did with a PC case.

I think back on when Bush Classic went to the grocery store and had no idea how much bread cost and wonder if anything has changed about what kind of candidate we’re likely to be forced to choose from. It’s like a closed buffet where you can have anything you want, as long as it’s Beltway Brand politicians. Why is it not possible to get an actual American to run for office? someone who doesn’t spin everything and might, once, for even a minute, go off-message? When conspiracy bozos talk about the elections being fixed, the may be on the right track, but off base. The numbers are not rigged, it takes too many (smart) people who don’t tell tales to pull that off (or just one Diebold exec and a developer). I think what happens is that the system we create by electing mealy-mouthed politicians just lives to perpetuate itself and only offers up what they want us to pick from.

As social networks grow and we get more wired (or wireless if you will), it’s harder to hide the stink so we just get more bland offerings from non-threatening candidates. We get the standard conservative fare: moderate, firm and christian coalition flavors for the red team and the blue team offers up ultra-liberal, kind of liberal and tofu. Tofu being, it takes on the flavor of anything around it so it’s more appealing. This year I’m seeing a lot of tofu. Why are the dems so afraid to take a position and just stick to it? The republican candidates are good at taking their ideology and beating it over the head of their constituents like a good Nascar driver flogging their sponsors. The Dems, they lack a platform other than “we’re not republicans”. That’s just not going to cut it.

I want to vote for a Dem, it’s all I know, it’s what I believe in but I’m not hearing anything I can grab on to. I’m left listening to some of the more interesting (and not scary) moderate candidates from the other side of the aisle. Hey, Guiliani looks pretty good, I like him. He’s smart, fiscally conservative, liberal on some of the non-issues (that some people care about but I just wont mention because they’re non issues), has leadership skills. He wouldn’t offend me. Not like Fred Thompson who is a truly scary man. How about Bloomberg? That guy is a proven leader, great business man and found himself in the middle having left the right side of the aisle. He said he’s not running but if he did and took on a strong partner like McCain or Rudy, he’d be unstoppable. McCain? He’s a little in the weeds right now but a truly decent guy. Just needs to get all the way off the Bush train and go back to the old McCain. We’d love him all over again.

Hillary and Barak, it seems more like a popularity contest and as much as they seem to be fine, are they ELECTABLE? If either one got the nomination, could they carry the blue team to victory? I don’t know. I’m not electrified by either one.

November 2008 is still a long way off and I think all these debates are premature but it seems the political climate demands it. The culture of reality shows with elimination-rounds also demands it, so it is what it is.

For now I’m on the Bloomberg train. Not a candidate yet? Don’t care, he’s my guy. He’s the guy for those of us tired of Blue Vs. Red where America always loses. It seems fitting that he’s not thrown his hat in (yet), thats exactly what our guy would do.

[CNN's Youtube Debate Questions]

Since my wife is in HR, things relating to the field interest me. One of the things that I find interesting is the hiring process. Having been on both sides, hiring and being interviewed, I enjoy discussing the process. Career Builder seems to grok this whole bizarre dance quite well and their monkey themed spots are classic.

This one can only come from experience:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/b4WVZDljBfk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I’m naive in thinking that I can turn off required registration for commenting and not get spammed to death but I’ll try it out. The first spammer will get a ping of death sent to their IP address… Let it serve as a warning to others.

When Gillian and I talk about fun places to go and things to do, we tend to want to do things that don’t seem to be on the awards redemption program with Wells Fargo.

Last year we were watching the Dakar rally and she looked at me
“That would be fun, can we do that?”
“Um, yeah, it does look like fun, I’d love to. I suspect it’s not cheap”
“Great, can you work out the details?”
“Errrr, yeah, I’ll look into it”

Now, if this was a question about going to TPC Sawgrass to play the stadium course, I’d just call the travel agent and see about some golf but this was a question about competing in a world-class, renowned trans-continental off-road rally. It would require a little more than the local American Express Travel lady would be able to handle. In fact, I just skipped her altogether, I didn’t want to freak her out.

Finding info on participating in the 75 year old race program was pretty straight forward and they have done a great job of providing specific detail about costs, requirements, vehicle classes, vehicle shipping, logistics, fuel, lodging and everything else. While it’s not show-up-and-race, it’s nearly that simple. You just need a prepared car and about 60K.

With this new information I present to Wifey the details, what car / class we’d likely need to be in (cost was the factor here) and that if we were smart we’d be able to do it for about 70K all in.

While she was a little surprised at the cost, she was undeterred, “Ok, that’s more than we can do this year but lets plan on it for a few years on, this looks like too much fun not to do”.

Autoblog had a cool post on a 1 series BMW that was prepared for the challenge next year. I think Wifey and I would put in a good first run in that, we just need to convince BMW to make another one just for us. Free, of course.