Mentalechoes

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.

Tags: Jericho, IPTV

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

After another 48 hours of having to watch a shopping channel at work, of which 24 hours was a marathon promotion of Technibond jewelery, I’ve come to realise something; you can call junk any name you like, but at the end of the day, it’s still bloody junk! No matter how much you try to dress it up, or give it fancy names, or get presenters with face lifts so tight their heads double up as snare drums, to say fabulous things about it - junk is still junk!

The only thing amazing about Technibond, is that people buy it!

Andy!

Tags: technibond, homeshopping, rubbish

So I woke up this morning and it was a bright and beautiful day, albeit the threat of rain later in the day was hanging over our heads, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me enjoy the warm weather that was just outside my window. Firstly though, as has been the routine for the last few years, I had to make a phone call home to me Ma, and do the weekly catch up with the family. Mum was good, but she was telling me again about some of mischief that my sister has managed to create with the in-laws. It seems that her mother-in-law wanted to do something for her son, namely make a doctors appointment for him because he wasn’t feeling well, and this in turn resulted in my sister losing her block, and going off at the mother-in-law for interfering. By all accounts, there was plenty of ranting and raving, and pistols at dawn talk, with bad voodoo curses thrown if for good measure. In my head I could just imagine it, because I’d seen my sister doing stuff like this when we were growing up, for the slightest insult, or imagined wrong doing against her.

I see a lot of siblings that although having their fights, and differences when they were growing up, become very close to each other in adulthood. I’m never going to be one of those brother types. My sister, while actually coming from the same mother and father I had, is pretty much a person with a diametrically opposed personality type. We never really got on as kids, and now living half a world away, I’ve made a choice to not be close now. The truth of it is, I just am never going to be close to my sister, because we’re just too different, and she’s someone with a lot of personality traits that I don’t really like in people.

I have often wondered if that’s wrong or bad of me; I’ve come to realise now that it’s not. We are just different people, which isn’t about being right or wrong, but is just about being ourselves. You can’t choose your family, that much we all know, because if we could, we most likely wouldn’t choose half of the people in that group to begin with. My sister will always be my sister, but I’m happy living half a world away, and not being an active part in her life, or her in mine. Which is why I’m very comfortable now when someone asks me if I have a sister, saying back, “Yes I have a sister, but I’m sure we are not related”!

Andy.

People are funny; but doubly so when they are on a chat forum typing away in the complete safety of a physical location far far away from the virtual place you exist for that moment in. Face to face people are mostly polite, respectful of others feelings and conform to - some kind of - social norms. However take away this face to face element and put people behind a computer and let them say what they will without having to look you in the eye, and that same respectful person will most likely turn into a right prick quite deserving of a kick in the nuts. Well a portion of them anyway.

I don’t know what it is in the human condition that removes the social centers of etiquette when you can’t see the person you’re talking to, but instead must abstract an image of them in a virtual environment. It could be that you don’t have to follow any social pretense of conforming to rules of social conduct. Or perhaps there is no need to worry about having to deal with the repercussions of upsetting someone who is in the same room and may call you out. Maybe there is a another center of the brain that becomes active in a virtual setting that operates in a very different way from the I-can-see-you social part. It seems age exacerbates this behavior and compounds the effect of etiquette loss, turning young people into trash talking little monsters.

Whatever it is, I hope they find a drug to cure the really bad cases of this, because I had to spend some time in a virtual community tonight, and the amount of abuse some of the people there were handing out, I happily would have thrown a few of them into a volcano. Oh stop being so sensitive, I hear you say! Well yes, you’re probably right, maybe I should just let all the trash talking slide off me like water off a ducks back. But you know, doesn’t that seem like it encourages bad behavior? So I’m actually endorsing trash talking by not taking a stand.

Where will it all end? Today, trash talking in online forums; tomorrow, chaos and the end of the world! This is how wars start you know!

Andy!

Tags: trashtalking, online, communities, etiquette

For those readers who live in the US, they will be familiar with a television channel called “HSN”, or “Home Shopping Network”. For the last two weeks at work I’ve had near lethal doses of viewing because we’re trialling a broadcast of the channel on our IPTV service. On any given day I’ve been passively watching anywhere between four and six hours of plastified glorified snakeoil salespeople flogging everything from, genuine imitation looks-cheap-and-is-cheap jewellery, all the way through to DIY exercise equipment that requires only one minute a day to transform you from fucking ugly, to gorgeous.

I’ve noticed over time though that the voices of the presenters gets in your head, and you start hearing things. I get urges sometime to pick up the phone and call the number for the Estebaan Guitar, including 5 DVD instruction set, plus the 5 CD best-of-Estebaan no extra cost gift. For USD$204.99, not including postage and handling, you feel compelled… COMPELLED I TELL YOU, to buy it!

I’m convinced there is something like subliminal messaging happening on HSN, and probably TV in general. How else can you explain how people are brainwashed into buying complete crap, that you in your right mind, would never want, or consider pissing on, let alone buying!

Now having said that, I really think I’ve put off buying the Estebaan Guitar Set for long enough. Where’s my phone?

Andy.

There was a computer game that I came across when I was 16 years old on the C64 called Crystal Hammer. It was this really cool game that looked like it was from the same family as Tetris, and if you don’t know what Tetris is, then you really weren’t into videogames at all, in which case I feel sorry for you, and think you had a cheated childhood. Anyway, Crystal Hammer had this absolutely wicked intro tune, that I used to leave on loop and dance around my bedroom to. I loved it so much, I even filled both sides of a blank 90 minute cassette tape, just so I could listen to it when I wasn’t allowed to have the computer on. It was this intro loop that made me realise, that I was definitely an electronic music lover, and techno-head.

I’d completely forgotten about it, until some bizarre moment this afternoon when I was at the computer doing some work stuff, and the thought came into my head - CRYSTAL HAMMER! Well after a quick search, Google turned up that site, which had the original game mod (computer music file), to download. Seriously listening to that intro loop again for the first time in something like 20 odd years gave me so many happy flashbacks of being 16 again, I haven’t stopped smiling in three hours.

Nostalgia is a funny thing; back there in the day, we were always looking forward waiting for everything to be different, and now in the future, we look back and wish we could have the good old days back again.

Ah you know, bring back the 80’s, and big glam hair! And parachute pants, and…

Andy!

Tags: computergame, crystalhammer, nostalgia

My boss said to me yesterday, don’t get involved with that work activity, I need you to stay on these other things, and you are way too easily distracted.

At the time I took some offense at that. But now I’m starting to think she might be right. My head is much like a whirlpool; things to do now; things to do later; stuff that has to be done at some point, all start at the edge of my mind. Then as the day goes on it gets sucked closer to the vortex which is me running around physically doing stuff. I don’t really plan anything, but instead as something gets sucked into the vortex of activity, I just do it. I try to prioritise stuff, but that just means I speed up or slow down its trajectory into the vortex of activity. Anything that drops in ahead of other things, gets done as soon as it gets sucked into the vortex. In the end, I’m running around doing ten things at once, but a lot of stuff gets missed.

So yes, I can see how someone would call me ‘easily distracted’. I wonder if this is what they call ADHD? Or maybe I’m just really shit at organisation.

Andy.

Tags: distracted, adhd, organisation

I realised today that my life is one big living irony.

* I want to lose weight and see my abs; I exercise, and yet eat chocolate and packet chips every day in eyebrow raising quantities.

* I love my job, but every morning when the alarm goes off I try to find excuses not to go.

* I worry about being socially accepted, but I never return anyones phone calls.

* I am really quite a sensitive individual, however I have enough tattoos that other people look at me and think I am an uncaring macho bastard prick who spits on people for laughs.

* I love writing, but I always find excuses why not to write blog posts.

I could go on and on, but I think I’ve made my point.

Time to go to gym and get some exercise. If I can change one thing at a time, perhaps I can at least change the reduce the irony in life to a smaller font.

Andy.

Today I found myself in Ikea again. My friend kindly offered to drive me there when I complained for the umpteenth time about not having a desk lamp that worked; not having a sharp bread knife; not having a sharp vegetable knife; and not having any more Ikea soap (the stuff that smells nice and makes my skin feel soft and is cheap has hell when you buy it by the liter). So off we went on a casual Sunday drive… at a little over 130 kilometers an hour, because my friend doesn’t really like to do slow comfortable drives unless she absolutely has to, to the Ikea in the south of Amsterdam.

Immediately inside, I got this feeling again of being really middle age old! I was surrounded by families and kids of all shapes and sizes, and couples deep into the nesting phase with each other. Jezuz… at one point it almost became too much to bear, I swear my skin started to smoke and turn black! I could only handle about 10 minutes in the kitchenware department before I had to get out, the pain was starting to get too much. Particularly watching the other men around me, with youth and life sucked out of them - probably through their eyeballs by a womans evil spell - to be replaced by a broken will and Ikea kitchen goods.

Fortunately 10 minutes was still long enough to get a six peice stay sharp knife collection in a handy plastic holder that is really quite stylish. Not too mention a great deal on two white plastic cutting boards which on their own was a wicked buy, but taken with the knives was truly excellent. To top it off, I also got a fabo replacement desk lamp in white decor, and about 3 liters of soap. For a total of 35 euro, it was as good a bargain as you can get this side of the Anjuna open field markets in Goa.

I wouldn’t mind going to Ikea a little more often to replace some of the very old items in my flat that look like they have outlived their usefulness - in some cases, a half a decade ago. But the place makes me feel so damn middle aged in an old way, I just can’t bring myself to go there more than once every half a year or so, otherwise I would start to visibly age and lose my hair like all the rest of the regulars.

Hip people who look young (even when they are my age) go somewhere else to shop for these things, but as yet, I haven’t found out where. But they have to, otherwise how do they manage to be so hip?

Andy.

Tags: ikeakitchen, shopping, knives