From the monthly archives: August 2008
Sitting in my flat on a Sunday afternoon, the temperature feeling like it’s around mid 20′s, reminds me a lot of Brisbane on Sunday afternoons at the end of summer. Sitting in a chair in just a pair of long shirts, enjoying the feeling of being hot. Just a little bit of a sweat going, and wanting to have a cold can of drink in your hands to cool you down. Lovely!
It’s one thing I do miss from back in Brisvegas; the summer heat. There’s something very relaxtastic about sitting on a couch of an afternoon on a verandah, drinking a beer, while the stereo plays in the background. Maybe a mate or two to complete the ensemble. Perfect!
It’s been a bit of a shit summer this year, all things told. And I’ve been told by more than a couple of locals that this weekend is the last warm weather of the year. I do find that hard to believe after all the stuff I’ve been forced to swallow about global warming. If anything, I would expect we’ve got another 3 months of fine weekends until the temperature cools slightly and I need to put on a light skivvy around the end of December.
I live in hope!
Andy.
Tags: Brisvegas, summer time, hot afternoon
i noticed tonight for the first time that the nights are getting longer, as the sun sets earlier in the evening. It didn’t seem that long ago that we Europeans were getting sunlight until 11pm, with a few brief hours of darkness before first light at 4.30am. Now though, slowly you can feel the change in the sunlight hours as the evenings draw to an end just that much quicker, and the night covers us with a steadily increasing length of blanket. There will be change of season upon us soon enough.
I’ve always been someone that has liked the changes of season. Truth be told, autumn is my favourite. I love the soft rustle of golden brown leaves as they fall from the trees onto your head as your ride you bike through the pathways of old Amsterdam. There is something old worldly that captures my imagination.
But no talk of autumn now, that time will come soon enough. For now, let’s enjoy the next month of summer and give it a good send off with a few drinks in hand! 
Andy.
Tags: autumn, nights, days, “change of season
It never ceases to amaze me how our own self image, and the external image the world sees, can be so at odds. Friday last week I was out at a tree hugging day for work when during one of the group sessions someone called me an “alpha male”, and said I should go first at the kind of dangerous Segway activity. I was pretty surprised to be called an alpha male, because I’ve never thought of myself as an alpha male ever before in my life. I’ve known some alpha males, and I’m pretty sure I don’t classify as one when I compare myself to them as benchmarks. The image I’ve always had of myself is something far away from being an alpha male, and I think that comes out in the way I act. So I wonder what it was that this person saw that made him think, I was an alpha male? I often wonder now, just what it is, that the rest of the world sees when they see me, and how different it must be to what I see in the mirror every morning.
Andy.
I was a hardcore smoker for about 5 years, from 31 to 36. Generally in the order of about a pack a day of Marlboro lights, and two packs a day on weekends when the socialising would hit high gear. It was sometime during 37 when I thought I’d better give it up while my lungs were still in my chest and not in a science exhibit labelled “THESE ARE A SMOKERS LUNGS… WE’RE NOT KIDDING”.
So I made a few attempts to quit, unsuccessfully. I always ended up going back to the smoking team after brief hiatuses when I thought that I could smoke just a couple and it would be fine. And from there, it wouldn’t be long before I was up to a half a pack a day again.
Then over the course of the next year from 37 to 38, I had such a busy job, I could only really get outside to smoke maybe twice in a day. I just couldn’t spare anymore time and so I naturally got down to about 3 a day, which I kept up with for about a year.
Now, at 39, I find myself actually not smoking anymore because I have days where I just forget to go out and smoke. I’m in that enviable position where I don’t get nicotine cravings. If I do smoke the odd cigarette, it’s because I feel like being social and enjoying one with the group. But now I can smoke one, and then forget about it again.
I think it’s good to be able to tolerate a cigarette every now and then. After all, it’s an important social skill, and necessary when mixing with a drinking crowd. But if nothing else, I think I’ve conclusively proven that it is possible to quit smoking by forgetfulness. Sure, it might take 3 years, and results may vary depending on what type of job you have. However I think it would make a good alternative to traditional treatments such as patches, and doubling your food intake.
Andy.
Tags: smoking
Following on with yesterdays rant about Jericho being taken off the air because a few CBS execs high up in a high-rise office decided it was a failure. I came across a very interesting article from a Jericho fan who wasn’t prepared to sit back and watch the show die a natural death. This individuals name is Jason Moore, and he produced a television advertisement with funding from the Jericho community to help stir the TV masses into action. In a blog post article, Jason talked about how television shows are considered successes or failures.
Right, and from what I understand, there are like 5,000 Nielsen boxes that determine what every person in this country gets to watch and that just seems grossly unfair. It’s not a true representation of how we view television now.
Even more than that, the thing about when Jericho returned, every week that Jericho was on, for that week, Jericho would have the number one spot on iTunes. It would usually be in the top five on Amazon.com, and we were watching the Tivo numbers – it was always in the top 15 shows on television……….yet Nielsen was indicating we were a failure.
Why do we have to go by numbers from a system that was devised before the internet was even a thought in someone’s mind? I think that’s why we’re fighting. Some are fighting just to get Jericho back. But I think some of us – and I fall into this group – are fighting to change how decisions are made in the television industry.
When I read this I was amazed, I couldn’t comprehend that a modern entertainment company would actually dismiss internet distribution to determine show ratings. But it’s true, the Neilsen system was devised in 1940, and although updated – they say – since it’s inception, one of the largest distribution chains is ignored. To say this system is flawed, is akin to calling World War II a minor inconvenience!
He finishes the interview with this statement.
For all of us, it has been a time consuming thing, but at the same time we feel like we’re really making a difference, not just for one television show but hopefully in the long run for the television industry in general. For that it’s worth it.
And that my friends, is precisely why I – and you should – download content from the internet, and watch almost nothing on broadcast TV! The only way the power of the people who decide for you, what you will watch, when you will watch it, will be broken is by removing yourself from their equation, and putting yourself into another one. If enough people stop watching traditional broadcast shows, and start using interactive internet television, we will all arrive to the new world very quickly.
Andy.
I’ve just finished watching the last episode of Jericho, which in actuality turned out to be only a measly eight shows for season two. If you’re a fan of 24, then this is definitely your style. However I am totally bamboozled why this show had production stopped. Supposedly it was because of poor ratings, but I just don’t get that. I couldn’t watch anything less than 4 episodes in one go, because it was truly nail biting stuff. I’m not kidding about that either, I actually have almost no fingernails left after chewing them all down with nervous tension. I feel exhausted too, like it had been me out there in post-apocalyptic Kansas fighting for survival. If you haven’t seen this show, you should, so either download it (not that I would encourage anyone to do anything illegal). Or better yet, buy it, and help convince producers to make more episodes. For me I find, for any truly great film or TV series, the end is like saying goodbye to close friends you’ve bonded with. It’s hard to let them go out of your life after all the adventures you shared. That’s my benchmark for the distinction between the average, and the outstanding; how much I cared! And for the people of Jericho, I cared a hell of a lot!
The thing is, with a series truly that good, that had all the magic – outstanding actors; outstanding performances; outstanding production crew; outstanding production style – why, oh why, did they prematurely end it? Obviously some schmuck in an ivory tower somewhere, who decides for us, what we can and cannot watch. This is this same shit we’ve lived with since the dawn of 20th century broadcasting (and mass consumerism); a handful of people deciding for us what we consume, and how we consume it! We’ve been forced to watch the selection that others feel we should select from. Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like an old style dictatorship? In fact, that’s because it is!
The control of the big entertainment conglomerates, and legal entities like RIAA however is nearing a time of critical change. The internet has changed the very nature of consumerism, by the very nature of the internet taking distributive control away from the few and putting it back into the hands of the many. Right or wrong, whatever you may feel about it, there is a sea change happening because of a few enabling technologies that put the masses in control of what they consume, and when they consume it.
Here’s a funny story for you, but only if you’re a TV fan, and not a TV exec. On the day that the new Bionic Woman pilot premiered in the US, hardly an hour after the closing credits had scrolled across everyones HDTV screen, high definition downloads of it were available on bittorrent. This was some time around September 2007. In the UK they advertised for months the premiere date on cable TV in February of 2008. Yet, anyone who was a fan in Europe (or the rest of the world for that matter), had not only seen it the day after it came out, they were in possession of new episodes as they came out weekly. I remember reading a lot of angry ranting by corporate types about how this had to be stopped, and how this evil will destroy capitilism!
With each download an individual makes, it is a hammer swing into the wall built up around content, put there by a few powerful people sitting in white towers far away from the world. With the advent of bittorrent, and IPTV, the powerful current of distribution is ebbing away from these people, and they will be forced to either accept it and progress, or fade away.
It’s a movement that is still young, because the few are still deciding what the many will watch (consume), but the many are more and more deciding when they will watch it. Many years from now, shows like Jericho won’t be taken off the air because the consumer won’t be limited like we are today. They will have full voting power to decide what stays and what goes.
A day, I hope comes sooner rather than later!
Andy.
Tags: IPTV, Jericho, consumerism
