Comedy Central’s new show Lil’ Bush is not funny. It’s just lame. I give it 6 weeks tops. If you need proof you can watch preview clips on YouTube. The show is terrible, I challenge anyone to state a decent case otherwise.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Finally got my HDTV working! I’ve got a MacMini and an AppleTV hooked up to it… it’s amazing and i’m ripping my first DVD. ‘The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi’ Some Japanese samurai movie my friend Chris made me borrow it a while ago and I keep forgetting to watch it, so I’m ripping it and giving it back to him.

I’m going to have the most awesome home theater setup in the freakin’ world when I get to Chi-town.

Living Room:
40″ Samsung HDTV capable of 1080p
Apple Airport Extreme Basestation with 802.11n
Nintendo Wii via composite wired to basestation
Microsoft XBox 360 via component wired to basestation
Sega Dreamcast via VGA with 2 keyboards for typing of the dead.
Sony PS2 via composite
AppleTV via component wireless 802.11n
Apple MacMini via HDMI with eyeTV Hybrid for recording. MacMini is modded to have 802.11n instead of g! MacMini has a Nyko AirFlo hooked up to it via USB and will be loaded with Emulators.

Last but not least:
Namco TV games Ms. Pac-Man / Galaga. via composite.

In the other room:
PowerMac G5 with a 500gb harddrive, wired directly to airport base station. Drive will be filled with movies, music and TV shows eventually to stream to the AppleTV!

and my favorite part:

At my parent’s house:
SlingboxAV hooked up to digital cable and eithernet to stream TV from NY… to Chicago.
Definition: Free NY cable in Chicago! More importantly - Free Yankee Games in Chicago!

All i need now is the Slingbox and the Wii network adaptor.

Note about the wireless: The MacMini is modded to 802.11n from 802.11g because it’s my goal to have only n wireless devices in my apartment, meaning: really fast data transfer rates between devices. Doing so voided the warranty but that’s besides the point.

My Laptop, the Mini, and the AppleTV all have n. g will be disabled. Hence why the Wii will be hard wired instead of wireless. Any g device on the network brings the whole speed down to g instead of n. Only downside: no online PSP… but I never use it anyway.

I am such a huge fucking nerd. But I know you’re jealous.

My apartment is going to rock! It’s like a mecca for consumer electronics whores like myself. Now I need surround sound… haha

I’m going to go out on a limb and just flat out dissagree with Robert Scoble.In his latest post he cites an EngadgetHD article noting that there are only two years remaining until the government mandated shut down of analog television. Thus completing the switch to the more efficient, higher quality and most of all, media company friendly, digital signals.Scoble uses his own father for the example as to why this shutdown won’t happen. While he raises a good point his arguement is flawed. His point is old people vote, and they vote in large numbers. He argues that when they find out we’re going to take their analog TV from them, they will come out in droves and change the laws. I’ll go on the record and agree if there is anything that would, and could stop this upgrade it’s cranky old people voting it down.But I’m also going on the record to say it won’t happen. The transition will happen without a hitch.I think by the time the analog switch is flipped off no one will really notice. Especially the elderly who are less in-tune to technology. The main reason for this is something I’m not sure Scoble really caught: the switch doesn’t require the average consumer to upgrade their set, only their signal. It just means that pretty much every household who wants a cable connection will have to switch from an analog reciever to a digital reciever. They don’t need to buy an HDTV or anything of the like. My parents 15 year old TV works fine with the digital box and probably so will Scoble’s dad’s.The thing is most people don’t understand the difference between analog and digital, nor do they care, they just know the cable company is offering them a better deal and more channels if they switch the box on top of their TV. Most people won’t even be aware it’s happening, or that they have digital service.In my area, here on Long Island, the transition is pretty much completed already. Cablevision, the dominent provider in the area has made it cheaper to switch to their iO digital cable service than to keep your existing analog one. Combine that with the cheap bundles of broadband with your digital signal and it’s pretty much insane not to. And now more companies are getting into the game. Verizon for example has started to penetrate the once monopolistic grip of Cablevision with their FiOS service and they don’t offer analog service at all.I think Scoble raises a good point, if highly publicized I think people would come out against the transition. But I believe it would be almost entirely based on misunderstanding. Even if people did band together against it, if consumer rights groups got up in arms, I’d argue you wouldn’t hear about it too much. Not to sound cynical or conspiracy theorist but the media companies aren’t exactly going to publicize it when they stand to benefit from the transition and the people who would be up in arms aren’t exactly reading blogs on a daily basis either.Watch, the transition’s going to happen with a whimper. The media companies have been working on this for a while and by the time the clock expires to be done people won’t even know it happened, with a very small handful of exceptions who are too out of touch to have their voices heard. Mark my words.

RIP Audioslave.

I kinda saw it coming when Chris Cornell did that song for Casino Royal with another band.  Now all this talk about a Rage Against the Machine reunion?

The writing was on the wall. But it came officially today via Cornell’s MySpace page that he has left Audioslave. Since Audioslave was basically Rage minus Zack plus Chris, I think it’s safe to say they are done.

I’ll be happy if Rage gets back together but I’m still dissapointed, I really liked the blend of styles that Audioslave created and I felt like they were pushing music forward in a stagnating market.

Maybe it’s time for a revolution though? Rage could certainly kick things up a notch.

(Via Punknews)

So, I’d like to actually write an entry but there isn’t much going on right now that interests me right now. The biggest, most interesting thing going on in the media right now in my opinion has got to be the whole Boston v. Aquateen Hunger Force scandal. It has got to be the most ridiculous case of paranoia and stupidity I’ve ever seen in this country.The city officials in Boston should be the ones facing trial not these two guys. They caused mass hysteria and wasted tons of taxpayer money with this whole affair and insane. I especially love their insistance on calling a glorified Lite Brite a “Hoax Device” seeing as their whole case exists on some bizarre premise that light up advertising boards with cartoon characters and D-Cell batteries somehow look like bombs.To be perfectly honest I think this is one of the most interesting things to happen in our country for a long time. If these guys get any sort of punishment it’ll be a grave injustice in our legal system.I’d like to contribute something to the discussion about it but to be perfectly honest.. I don’t think there is anything left to add from my angle.For those uninformed, the best place I’ve found to get info regarding the topic has been Boing Boing.

CEO of photosharing site Zooomr, Thomas Hawk is taking Flickr to task for the changes they announced yesterday.

In his post he uses customer complaints from Flickr’s forums to make his point that Flickr has lost it’s way with these changes and they need to reconsider them. After reading through the post it seems to me like just a bunch of noise and childishness. Let’s take a look at what is actually changing here:

1. In our ongoing efforts to Make Flickr Better^TM, we’re introducing two additional limits: the new maximum number of contacts is 3,000 contacts (good luck with that), and each photo on Flickr can have a maximum of 75 tags.

Okay.. well I could see this complaint as somewhat half valid.. there are people out there who use Flickr to promote their work professionally and they want to reach as many people as possible, putting a limit on the number of people they can have as contacts kinda does suck. But at the same time Flickr’s contact system is a lot different then say MySpace’s friends list system. Just because someone makes me a contact, doesn’t mean they have to be mine. Me personally I only make people contacts under a very small set of circumstances:

1. If I know them personally
2. If I read their blog regularly
3. If I LOVE their photo work

I think it’s a safe bet if you have upwards of 2,000 contacts that you really aren’t looking at everyone’s photos that much in depth and I also doubt you know all of these people personally. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that if you have that many contacts it’s in effort to get people to add you to their contact list as self promotion. While that’s okay it’s a little disingenious, as really, I doubt you care about them all that much and isn’t there enough shameless self promotion on the web these days? Where’s the line between it and spam really? Maybe I shouldn’t cast judgement but with their ‘Good luck with that’ comment it would seem that Flickr feels the same way. There is also a positive benefit to this, it requires people to be more mindfull of the people they add to their contact list. In the end it strengthens the community, as it requires people to consider things more heavily. Flickr also claims it will allow their systems to run better, and I can imagine that being so, having more than 3000 of anything in a database will bog things down, capping people’s contacts will almost certainly improve speed and take load off the servers. Yes it will save them money.. but they are a business, it doesn’t make their service any less awesome.

Next up: The 75 tag limit. This is also about shameless self promotion in my eyes. If you’re tagging your photos that heavily, you’re tagging them for the purpose soley of other people finding you, not for accurate results and almost definitely not for easy personal organization. Limiting tags in my eyes is also a good move for the community as it once again will require more thought put into things. And really, 75 tags? I rarely put more than 5 on something. 75 is a very high number. I doubt few people at all will be limited by this.
Oh but it seems with the exception of Mr. Hawk not many people are making a big deal over these changes, it’s more about the second change.

2. On March 15th, 2007 we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

For many this is a big change… but like it or not, those people are by far the minority. Flickr has seen such a dramatic growth in users over the last year that the ‘old skool’ users are dwarfed several times over by the newer users. There are more than a few people bitter about this move but mostly people who were skeptical about the change when Yahoo! bought Flickr. The fear, as near as I can tell is irrational. All the complaining I’m reading sounds really petty and stupid, people afraid of change. They people complaining sound to me like angsty elistist teenagers who stop liking a punk band because they signed to a major label or something. It’s stupid.

In reality… what is the big difference? The only thing this affects at all is your login and password. It does not affect people’s site address or your Flickr screenname. The change is minimal, these users will experience no difference except having to type something different at the login screen. For example: my Flickr account is linked to my Yahoo! ID of ‘reallocalcelebrity’, but my Flickr page address does not reflect that name: http://www.flickr.com/people/localcelebrity/ and at the moment I have my username as ‘reallocalcelebrity’ which does match my Yahoo! ID, but I can change this at any point if I want, it does not have to match my Yahoo! ID.

I thoroughly enjoy that many of the self proclaimed ‘old skool’ users of Flickr don’t realize this. Many of the complaints reposted on Hawk’s blog relate to the misperception that they will lose their user name or be forced to change their page address, neither of which is the case.

The other complaint is that these users will be required to have a Yahoo! ID and many feel that this will open the floodgates to them for spam and marketing emails. I kinda think this is a tad bit irrational. I have a Yahoo! ID / Yahoo! Mail account… and I pretty much don’t use it, except for Flickr. Having the account has not added any spam to any of my inboxes or in any way had any effect on anything else in my life at all. As Flickr also points out you don’t even have to use the account for your Flickr alerts email either, you can give them another account and have them notify you at that account when someone adds you as a contact of comments your photos.

So in actuality… Flickr is making you sign up for a Yahoo! ID, but they are not making you use it for anything other than a login and password.

If you’re getting worked up over this you really need to put your world into perspective. In reality, this whole thing will blow over with little to no impact on anything, maybe a few ‘Old Skool’ users will jump ship to different services but that’s really their loss more than anything. In truth Flickr’s going to work better and continue at it’s gigantic rate of growth while strengthing it’s sense of community while at same time becoming more profitable and integrated into Yahoo! But the end result is more choices and features for the end user. I’ve yet to see how this could be a bad thing.

(via Robert Scoble)

I wrote an article over at MediaRebellion!

Hell is freezing over.

When I was young I really desperately wanted to have an arcade machine in my home. I remember that actually one Christmas I took all the money my family had given me for my birthday and Christmas and invested it in a bank account solely for the purpose of saving up enough money to buy an NBA Jam arcade machine.

Well it’s years later and I still have that dream. My love for NBA Jam has come and gone but something has stayed the same. For years I have put on my Christmas list that I know I will not recieve, but do anyway: A Dodge Viper, a Ms. Pac Man arcade machine and a Guns N’ Roses Pinball machine.

Well, it’s been years and well that money… that account grew a lot, it’s actually enough money to barely cover the purchase of an arcade machine. So I’ve decided, once I’m in and settled in Chicago I’m going to honor this promise I made to myself years and years ago and buy a machine. G N’ R Pinball’s not going to happen, at least not till I’m mega rich… those machines are R A R E. However NAMCO put out something that recently caught my eye:

PAC-MAN 25th Anniversary Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga… all in one machine.

It will be mine.. oh yes, it will be mine. I think younger me would be pleased.

It seems as if Midtown, while not officially broken up, will not be preforming or recording any longer… at least not any time soon… if ever.

I think I’m going to have to suck it up soon and buy the Cobra Starship record and attempt to like it.

…and I was just about ready to accept my inner angsty hipster too.

Oh well.