Smelly Jen, Internet bellwether January 31, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Intarweb.add a comment
Another user, Smelly Jen, posted her support of the movement, writing: “I did it! So refreshing! Like ripping off a band aid! It’s gone forever!”
- “Fed Up With MySpace? Join the Club and Delete Your Account”, Wired
Meme it like it’s hott: My week in media January 31, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Life.Tags: media, meme
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PR Geek tagged me with the My Week In Media meme. Let’s see what I’ve been consuming!
What I’ve read
I started reading The Hard Way by Lee Child, and a short story by my friend Philip. My co-workers and I normally meet during lunch to read newspaper advice columns to each other and make fun of them, but our workload is so heavy that we only got to do that once. My friend Gregory mailed me an article he clipped out about Peter Gomes.
What I’ve watched
We started Season 3 of The Wire, and a British sitcom called Black Books. Over the weekend we watched Paprika, a feature-length anime. We caught occasional episodes of The Daily Show (renamed “A Daily Show” since the writers’ strike began), bits of The Colbert Report, and reruns of Scrubs.
What I’ve listened to
Lots and lots of podcasts: MacBreak Weekly, Never Not Funny (a new one to me), The Sound of Young America, The Writer’s Almanac, Pray As You Go, Buzz Out Loud, and The Weekly Geek. I’ve also continued to indulge an inexplicable craving for 70s and early 80s heavy metal of the leather/spikes/ridiculous Satanic imagery subgenre. The jewel in the crown here is a mashup of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath I discovered called “Whole Lotta Sabbath”.
What I’ve surfed
A couple of the podcasts prompted me to look for comedy video clips on Funny or Die, YouTube, and Super Deluxe. I watch Twitter obsessively and have been adding people like Mike Monteiro and Scott Simpson to my Follow list. (Whenever Merlin Mann praises someone, I check them out immediately.) I am playing six games of Scrabulous on Facebook. A few people I know joined Pownce and Plaxo so I’ve been poking around those services. I’ve been hitting a lot of blogs by people in PR and marketing with a focus on copywriting and/or social media.
MTV circa 1983 on Google Video January 30, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Music.Tags: 1980s, mtv
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Three hours of MTV captured on VHS back in the day and uploaded to Google Video. Weirdly, that Night Ranger video was my first glimpse ever of MTV. Heck, maybe this moment is EXACTLY when I first started watching.
(Via Wil Wheaton)
What, no love for Corey Feldman? January 29, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Webmastery.2 comments
What brings people to The Journal of Rockett Science?
According to my stats, it’s mostly Google searches for “my coke rewards” and “corey haim”.
That’s one hell of a niche.
Sheeeeeit. January 29, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in cool.Tags: clay davis, mike monteiro, the wire
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Campaign sign for The Wire’s Clay Davis by Mike Monteiro.
Getting the new iPod Touch software update for free January 21, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Apple.2 comments
This Engadget post says that people who bought the iPod Touch after January 1st should be able to get the new software update announced at MacWorld for free instead of paying $20. I can report that this was true for me.
I bought my iPod Touch on January 2nd at the Apple Store in Lynnwood. Yesterday I happened to be near downtown Bellevue so I stopped by the Apple Store in the mall and asked about the update being covered by Apple’s 30-day price protection. The sales clerk asked for my receipt, then entered the transaction as a return, crediting $21.78 to the card I bought the iPod with. Then I went home and bought the software update for that amount. Easy.
If the WiFi at my apartment was working I could actually use the new apps. But I did write myself a nice Note on it.
This is the one thing that drives me crazy about the iPod Touch. It has lots of great features that rely on WiFi. But how often are you connected to WiFi when you’re out and about? Almost never. And so I stare forlornly at my YouTube button, knowing that “Chocolate Rain” lies just beyond my grasp.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the device. But I still wonder whether it would have been better to get a Classic. I’m just glad I didn’t pay for the new update, given that I can’t use most of the new apps unless I happen to be within the radius of free, public WiFi. In the case of Google Maps that means I can only get lost or plan trips when I’m standing in a hot spot.
What I read in 2007 January 19, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Books.add a comment
Answer: A crapload more Star Wars novels than I thought.
My addiction to the Legacy of the Force series led me to read other Star Wars novels while I waited for the next book to come out. But it also prompted me to read more adventurously in science fiction and fantasy than I had in a while, leading to some real gems.
This was also the year I joined the Gravity’s Rainbow Death Pact, in which a group of friends and fellow travelers across the Internet all started reading the massive and often bewildering Pynchon classic at the same time. And I emerged victorious.
January
The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey Into The Disturbing World Of James Bond by Simon Winder (I rarely read nonfiction. This was some wonderful nonfiction right here.)
Podcasting For Dummies by Tee Morris and Evo Terra
The Big Book Of The 70s by Jonathan Vankin
February
Star Wars: Legacy Of The Force: Betrayal by Aaron Allston (And so it begins. I picked this one up because I’ve always relied on Aaron Allston to deliver fun SF page-turners. The problem is that he is one of three authors on this series. So to get to the next Allston book, I have to read the previous two non-Allston books in the series, and repeat each cycle until it’s done.)
Overclocked by Cory Doctorow
Time’s Black Lagoon by Paul Di Filippo
Star Wars: Legacy Of The Force: Bloodlines by Karen Traviss
The Word For World Is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin (I’d been meaning to read this for decades. No exaggeration.)
Star Wars: Legacy Of The Force: Tempest by Troy Denning
March
Star Wars: Legacy Of The Force: Exile by Aaron Allston
Star Wars: X-Wing: Wraith Squadron by Aaron Allston
Star Wars: X-Wing: Iron Fist by Aaron Allston
April
Three Days To Never by Tim Powers (He just gets better and better.)
The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld
Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine
Star Wars: Dark Lord: The Rise Of Darth Vader by James Luceno (The author won me over with a description of what it’s like for Darth Vader to be in this big, bulky suit. At every moment he is excruciatingly uncomfortable. No wonder he chokes people a lot.)
May
A Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart (What the hell? I have no memory of reading this book.)
Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path Of Destruction by Drew Kapyshyn
Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command by Aaron Allston
June
Buddy Does Seattle by Peter Bagge
Welcome To Sunday by Christopher Webber
Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt by Nick Hornby (I love Nick Hornby. The only reason that I haven’t yet read everything he’s written is that I don’t want to come to the point where there’s nothing left for me to read.)
July (Gravity’s Rainbow Death Pact begins)
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
August
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (Excellent military SF. He’s got a great blog, too.)
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi
September
Star Wars: Legacy Of The Force: Sacrifice by Karen Traviss
Ex Machina: March To War by Brian K. Vaughan
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman (Heard his interview on The Sound of Young America.)
October
The Braindead Megaphone: Essays by George Saunders (Also heard his interview on The Sound of Young America. Here’s my favorite piece from the book.)
Beluthahatchie And Other Stories by Andy Duncan (Crazy Waldropian stories. Must find more by him.)
Star Wars: Legacy Of The Force: Inferno by Troy Denning
November
The Professor’s Daughter by Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert (A graphic novel about mummies in love in Victorian England.)
Echo Burning by Lee Child
December
In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (FINISHED!)
The Lies Of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (Oh, this was a good find. Pushed on me by my wife, it’s fantasy in the vein of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories - something that’s almost never done well. This was fantastic.)
A cold day in Kirkland January 15, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Miscellany.add a comment
Last night the rain turned to snow, then the snow turned to slush, then the slush turned to ice.
Hey, Netflix! As a subscriber can I watch streaming movies and TV shows at home? January 15, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Technology.add a comment
Not yet. Although Netflix opened this service up to all subscribers above the most basic subscription level, it still requires the Windows operating system and Internet Explorer 6 or above. Why? DRM, of course! The consumer’s friend!
I hope the studios are getting enough profit from DRM to make up for the losses they must be seeing from treating their customers so badly. As a Netflix subscriber, I should have access to all of the Netflix services covered in my subscription agreement, unless there’s some technical reason that it’s impossible for me to do so. In this case, there isn’t. The studios are turning my business away because I use an Apple computer.
Man, what a crazy industry.
From the Netflix FAQ:
A:Currently the Netflix Movie Viewer requires Internet Explorer Version 6 or later running on Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista. You’ll find more detail on current requirements on our Instant Watching System Requirements page.Our goal is for Netflix members to enjoy movies and TV shows on whatever screen they want. We’re required to use Digital Rights Management to protect movies watched instantly online, and right now we only have approval for this protection on Windows Operating systems, not the Mac.Apple does not license their DRM solution to third parties, which has made this more difficult, but we are working with the studios and content owners to gain approval for other solutions. As soon as a studio-approved DRM for the Mac is available to us, whether from Apple or another source, we will move quickly to provide a movie viewer that enables you to watch movies from Netflix instantly on your Mac.
In the meantime, you can use your account to watch instantly on any compatible PC, and Intel-based Macintosh computers can watch movies instantly using Boot Camp, Parallels, or Fusion to run Windows. And, your Macintosh is fully compatible with adding titles to the Instant Queue for Netflix-enabled players on your TV.
IM IN UR PHOTO, WEIRDLY OBSSESSED WITH UR CRUCIFIX MADE BY FRENCH TRAPPIST MONKS January 5, 2008
Posted by Wade Rockett in Miscellany.add a comment
