Filed by matt on Saturday, July 19, 2008 at 9:26 am

Joss Whedon is the man. Joss Whedon has created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity and now Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a supervillain musical.

Seems Joss got frustrated during the writers strike and decided to try and launch a project entirely on his own. Or as he puts it, with the help of everyone he’s ever worked with or is related to. The result is reachable through that image on the side. It’s free through midnight on July 20th, then goes to iTunes, then off to DVD release where hopefully the money rolls in.

This is what the future looks like. Creative people putting out content outside of the established production system. Of course the trick is that were it not for the established production system where he made Buffy and all that no one would know who Joss Whedon is. So really the future is how someone like Joss does it without needing the production system to exist at all. But this is an important step.

Also, it’s got Nathan Fillion with a hammer sticker on his chest. If I were at comic-con next week I would so have that shirt.

Filed by Richard on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 12:20 am

Comcast sucks story number 304,934,454: So I was at my dad’s house tonight, and I tested his up and download speed on his cable modem. My dad has a slingbox attached to one of his DirecTV Tivo units; it’s my main source of TV at my house. The signal is always a bit slow and I wanted to see how much upload he had to find out if there was any way I could improve the slingbox signal.

Anyway, it was slow as suspected: 4 megs download and like 400k upload.

 So I went to the Comcast site to find out what options there are for speeding the thing up. Try as I might, I COULD NOT FIND ANY PRICES FOR VARIOUS SERVICES ON THEIR SITE. They just don’t have any page that I could find that lists the various prices for things. I couldn’t even find a page that lists the different levels of cable internet service.

So I called Comcast, and to their credit, an actual human answered the phone, and answered quickly (this was 9pm on a Friday night). I asked them what the options where for speeding up the service, and found out that my dad had the 4 meg service, but “this service choice doesn’t even exist anymore,” so my dad was eligible for the 6 meg service “at no additional cost.” I asked the rep how long the new service has been available, and she said that she thought it was available for about two years. I asked her (rhetorically), “so you changed the level of service for the same old price, but continued to provide my dad the old speed for two years?” Her response: “It looks that way. Customers need to specifically ask for the new speed.”

“But how are we supposed to know about the different speed options? I could not find a single thing about them on your site.”

“That I cannot answer”.

 To her credit, she elected to give my dad 3 months of free upgraded 8 meg service. I suspect everyone gets this free offer, but I’m choosing to believe that she only gave it to us because she felt sorry that Comcast had screwed us for two years.

 Postscript: my slingbox picture looks 10 times better. But the very second that FIOS is available in my neighborhood, I’m signing up (apparently we’re about a month away…)

Filed by Richard on Friday, April 18, 2008 at 9:07 pm

WTF?

Seriously. WTF?

Filed by matt on Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 9:21 pm

So Richard is trying to get a rise out of me, albeit a week ago, by mocking my gamerscore. He knows I stopped trying at gamerscore a while ago so its a pretty spurious argument. I did a whole post on it and everything. Makes one think he doesn’t even read his own blog. Sounds pretty boob-like to me.

Filed by Richard on Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 6:43 am

Is this a surprise to anyone? EVERY child in a recent UK study indicated that they didn’t like clowns. You wonder what compels parents to drag their kids to the Ringling Bros. circus; I mean this isn’t a new phenomenon… WE hated clowns as kids; why would we think our children are any different?

Source: Don’t Send in the Clowns Reuters via MSNBC

Filed by matt on Monday, January 14, 2008 at 7:45 pm

Tomorrow at work I’ll be hitting refresh obsessively on Engadget to follow along with the Steve Jobs Macworld keynote. Most people are expecting an ultra-portable MacBook, probably called the MacBook Air (thanks again Engadget!), details on the next version of the iPhone and probably iTunes movie rentals. I have no use for an ultra-portable laptop and my next phone will probably be an iPhone though I’m not sure when. I have zero interest in digital movie rentals unless they’re super cheap so that doesn’t do it for me either. 

But regardless of the fact that there probably won’t be anything aimed right at me tomorrow I got to thinking about how consistently impressive Apple has been about generating interest, press coverage, and when you drill down to it, products that people clamor to own. As many have pointed out the iPhone doesn’t really do anything super unique – Windows Mobile and open source solutions do a lot of the same things, but the iPhone puts it all together in such a brilliantly comprehensive fashion that you just don’t care that it’s not honestly new and it’s pretty damn expensive. By and large they deliver on the promise of “it just works”. You can complain about all the press and attention Apple gets whenever they do anything but they set a bar that most don’t clear but all should to pay attention to.

Filed by matt on Friday, January 11, 2008 at 8:39 pm

I am happy that Richard finished Halo 3 on heroic instead of replacing the stoned looking South Park avatar thing with the updated one I sent earlier this week. Kudos to you Ricardo! 53 hour work week for Matt = not a lot of end of the week posting. Or seeing my wife. I definitely agree with Richard’s comments on the Cortana colon level. I found myself not necessarily lost but not knowing how to get out of certain sections of the colon. Remembering that Wired article about the intense testing they did I was surprised. Seems like that sort of confusion would be tested out. Or maybe my elite gaming skills aren’t colon-focused enough. I’m okay with that. Also my Rock Band guitar strum bar stopped working on downward strums tonight. I can not fully rock with only upward strumming. Much like inward singing I need all aspects working. Clearly I shouldn’t free associate at the end of a looooong week.

Filed by matt on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at 11:44 am

Golden Globes is cancelled. I never watched and so from a practical stand point don’t care but from a writer’s strike standpoint I think it’s great. The actors not crossing the picket lines in encouraging for SAG to join WGA when their own contract comes up in a few months.

http://www.darkhorizons.com/news08/080108b.php

Filed by Richard on Sunday, January 6, 2008 at 10:53 am

Tell me, what the in the hell does Dr. Phil have to do with the Britney Spears saga? This fat guy who sells diet books has shoehorned himself into her life and is making sure the world knows about it by working with Entertainment Tonight to help spread the word.

“My meeting with Britney and some family members this morning in her room at Cedars leaves me convinced more than ever that she is in dire need of both medical and psychological intervention,” McGraw told the programs.

“She was released moments before my arrival and was packing when I entered the room. We visited for about an hour before I walked with her to her car. I am very concerned for her,” he said. McGraw planned to talk more about Spears on his daytime talk show this week, the press release said.

Talk about the blind leading the stupid.

Report: Dr. Phil says Spears release from hospital [CNN] Photo: KTLA

Filed by Richard on Friday, January 4, 2008 at 5:37 pm

Tee hee; this screed against Alaska Airlines by our favorite curmudgeon John Dvorak has been on his blog for more than two years, yet the only ad I ever see posted by Google is… well check it out for yourself. In fact hit refresh about twenty times; see if anything else comes up.

There’s some money well spent.

 Airline Lament: Whatever Happened to Alaskan [Dvorak.org/blog]

Filed by Richard on Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 6:28 pm

2007 numbers are in, and if the last nails in the album industry’s coffin were hammered in like two years ago, 2007 must represent the first seedlings of grass on the grave. Album sales are down almost 10 percent more than 2006, yet digital downloads jumped 45%. And our favorite borg, Apple, marches ever onward towards it’s eventual role as the proprietor of all of our entertainment, moving into the number three United States music seller.

If there is any greater indication of the sad state of affairs for the music industry, the top selling album for 2007 was a frigging Christmas album, “Please Get Sucked into Buying My Crappy Christmas Album” by Josh Groban.

 US Album Sales Down, Digital Downloads Up [AP Wire]

Filed by Richard on Tuesday, January 1, 2008 at 8:36 am

The Cincinnati Post ceased publication yesterday, leaving the USA with one less daily two-newspaper town.

75 and 100 years ago, every major and minor city and America had two, three, even a dozen daily newspapers duking it out for the hearts and minds of their town’s population. Now we’re down to less than 10 cities. Though it’s clearly inevitable that there will be more shrinkage, and it’s equally inevitable that many will wonder what the fuss it all about in the day of blogs and other alternative news sources, I think it’s a sad day for Kentucky and journalism in general.

read more »

Filed by matt on Sunday, December 30, 2007 at 4:54 pm

Richard wanted a test post.

Filed by Richard on Friday, December 28, 2007 at 3:03 am

An Oregon woman was arrested with a .55 blood alcohol level. Doesn’t your entire nervous system shut down above .4? How the hell did she swallow?

Woman booked with .55 blood alcohol level [Seattle Times]