Open Memo to Netflix

To whom it may concern at Netflix,

First, I LOVE your service. You have absolutely revolutionized the way I watch and keep track of movies.

One suggestion: Fix your "Queue" feature so that it can hold more than 500 titles at a time. Currently, I have a queue, and so do my girlfriend and two of our cats. The cats let me keep some of my movies on their queues. It would be much easier to manage the total number of titles that I want to keep track of if I could have them all on one list.

What's the magic about the number 500?

Many thanks.

Clearing Out Some Links

Here are a bunch of links (some of which my friend SSMW showed me) that have been stacking up, patiently waiting to be posted:

• Stephen King's 24 greatest rock songs ever. I have to admit, a number of these were new to me -- For instance, 'I Want to Help You Ann'' by The Lyres.
• A great wiki for the Marvel Universe.
• Free Documentaries dot org: Q: Who are you guys? A: We are just a few people that want to make a difference and thought putting all these films in one place would make a cool website and a good resource.
• "Baby Got Books" --
  

I like big books and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with an big fat book
And glasses on her face
You're all thrilled, wanna talk to her quick
Cause you notice she's reading Dickens

• The What on Earth catalog has some fun stuff, like this voodoo doll knife set and holder.
• The Parallel Information Universe: What's out there and what it means for libraries: Regardless of type—public, academic, school, or special—libraries increasingly provide more people with improved access to a wider range of resources and services. Beyond the improved catalog, for example, electronic databases are superior to printed periodical indexes, digital reference provides expanded availability to assistance by librarians, and networked computer workstations in the library provide users with access to global multimedia resources. There's much more potential. That's the purpose of this article: to take a look at what's out there (WOT) and do a brief analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOTs) in terms of what's good, interesting, or desirable for users (including those whom we might currently label nonusers), libraries, and librarians and the implications for library and information science education.
• Looking forward to seeing "Fog City Mavericks" about the cadre of directors from the San Francisco Bay area, including George Lucas, Clint Eastwood, and Francis Ford Coppola. After I get a look at it, I am going to have to help bulk up its Wikipedia page.
  
• Here's where you can buy a T-shirt with a Venn Diagram that explains the vowel/consonant situation of the letter "Y."

Google criticisms; The Nature of Math; Digital Careers

Items:

• I love Google -- It's changed the way the entire world can access information. But, there's always room for improvement. Eleven items here, plus comments.
• Was math discovered or invented? Science News article here, Wikipedia articles on Philosophy of Mathematics and History of Mathematics. Science News excerpt: Those who espouse discovery note that mathematical statements are true or false regardless of personal beliefs, suggesting that they have some external reality. But this leads to some odd notions. Where, exactly, do these mathematical truths exist? Can a mathematical truth really exist before anyone has ever imagined it? On the other hand, if math is invented, then why can’t a mathematician legitimately invent that 2 + 2 = 5?
• Three Emerging Digital Careers to Watch. -- The Chief Customer Experience Officer (and those who work for her); Digital Storytellers; Super Crunchers. Last year I read two of the three books referred (Made to Stick and Super Crunchers) and I have to recommend them both. Excerpt: The digital space is the most addressable media and marketing platform ever. However, most marketers are not “quants” and data is largely under utilized by many companies. Data mining and visualization tools reduce risk, make business more efficient and measurable. Great rewards will come to those who know how to dig into data and make sense of it all and can parse that into insights that help companies optimize the dollars they put online. Be that guy or gal.

Redshirts Bite the Dust

I think this has been around for a while, but it's great. (Redshirts on Wikipedia.)

Not Dead Yet!

Geez Louise - Two months since posting. Not the blogospheric death knell, I don't think, just that work has been absorbing 95% of my brainpower for the last long while. About a year ago we got a ton of new responsibilities at work, and (not to belittle 9/11) it kind of reminds me of the phrase that came into some usage after 9/11: "The New Normal."

Here's the thing: I don't feel guilty about not getting around to blogposting. I would have felt guilty had I not devoted my attention to personal and work matters that needed attention, and so my little observations and links and jokes and opinions and things just had to hold on for a little while. I'll be posting a bunch of stuff that has come my way over the last few months that I thought were interesting but didn't get around to posting.

Meantime, here's a Star Wars/Simpsons mashup to enjoy:

Wikipatterns; Falco; Movie Posters; Books That Make You Dumb

Been a while since I got some blogging in; No time like the present.

Items:

• I just finished reading Wikipatterns, Stuart Mader's book based on this website (or maybe the site is based on the book, or both go hand in hand, or whatever). Blog here. Excellent summaries of wiki philosophy and practice, but obviously in my case it was preaching to the choir. Two things the book did introduce me to: Geek and Poke -- Very funny! It's kind of like Dilbert, but geekier. And, the screencast of Heavy Metal Umlaut: The Movie. Also, the author has a blog hosted by Amazon -- interesting.
  
• Remember Falco? (The "Rock Me Amadeus" guy?) Check out Falco Reloaded. Very entertaining!
• Check out the 100 greatest movie posters of all time. Lists like this are made to be argued about, and this list doesn't disappoint in that regard. (For instance, if person "A" doesn't think movie posters should feature attractive women in various states of undress, and person "B" does...)
• Virgil Griffith is the guy who developed the revolutionary Wikiscanner. Now, he has put together a visual study of Books That Make You Dumb. I'm glad to see that my favorite American novel of the 20th Century, Catch-22, was one of the closest to the not-dumb side. And, we were just talking the other day at work about 100 Years of Solitude, which I have never read but would like to. I thought it was interesting that people who listed The Bible as their favorite book scored 150 points higher than those who listed The Holy Bible.
  

A Poignant Plea from Ghostface

Ghostface Killah -- You've just got to watch it yourself.

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Presents Reservoir Dogs

Snow Pictures

Here's the baby in his snow. We watched Dr. Zhivago the other day, so now I call him "Comrade Gilbertovich" and when he goes out to poop I call it "being exiled to Siberia."


(Side note: If you get a chance to watch the commentary tracks on the Zhivago DVD, keep an eye (ear) out for Rod Steiger. OMFG, he kills! A dirty old man! As he describes the scene where his character is about to assault Lara, he says things like "Oh, you sly, sly Devil...." and (when he grabs Lara and starts to kiss her) "I Strike! Bwah hah hah hah hah!". He describes the instance where he tells director David Lean that he is going to fake-kiss Julie Christie and then get his desired surprised look from the actress by kissing her again (without her prior knowledge) and slipping her some tongue. He comments "But of course, you know I'd kiss her twice for free!")

Here are some shots of some X-mas lights that The ♥G♥ put up on our fence that got covered in last week's precipitation. I thought it was kind of cool how they glowed under the snow.

Henry Ford Museum Pics

Over Christmas, we went to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Lots of nifty stuff. Here's the bus Rosa Parks sat in the front of. Someone in Birmingham must have been a GL fan.


Cool old Harley:


Here's a poem about Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House:

Happy Birthday David Bowie

Happy B-Day David Bowie. In honor, here's Thuggy Stardust -- A bunch of Ziggy/Hip-hop mashups.

The Dot and the Line

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics is a very clever cartoon short by the great Chuck "Not just Bugs Bunny" Jones, based on a book by the great Norton "Phantom Tollbooth" Juster. See for yourself:

Here it is performed live:

Nerds Book

This book looks good -- Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them. Excerpt from WaPo review: The nerd stereotype is a peculiarly American prejudice, which Anderegg (with substantial help from historian Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life") traces back to our nascent literary days. Indeed, he places the blame for American nerd aversion squarely on the shoulders of Washington Irving and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, in the seminal 1837 speech titled "The American Scholar," gave "voice in the loftiest academic diction to a repeated theme in American history: that Americans are, first and foremost, men of action, not men of reflection." Irving had already put imaginary flesh on those bones, in the person of Ichabod Crane, the awkward scholarly schoolteacher scared out of town by his romantic rival, the pretend pumpkin-head Brom Bones, "a new American type: the anti-intellectual hero." Anderegg very seriously advises that "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" should not be taught until college for the damage it could cause to young psyches.

From the author's website:

The Last Nerd Self-Test You’ll Ever Need!

1. Are you sometimes so enthusiastic about your interests that you get carried away, and lose your self-consciousness in your passion for your subject?

2. Do you believe that people can be beautiful and smart at the same time?

3. Do you sometimes get interested in a book or a hobby that’s really difficult to get into, but you do it anyway because it seems like such a cool thing to learn?

4. Do you like precision or exactitude, maybe even so much that a right answer is an aesthetically pleasing experience?

5. Do you find tracking what’s fashionable just a teensy bit boring?

6. Do you admire people who are very knowledgeable even if their topic is a little arcane?

7. Don't you just love the word “arcane”?

8. Do you enjoy vivid imaginative accounts of alternatives to mundane reality?

9. Are you comfortable with the fact that Harry Potter wears big spectacles and is also a big athletic hero?

10. Do you find anti-intellectualism just a little bit….stupid?

Among the reviews of his book:

Publishers' Weekly, 12/17/07:

"In this intriguing treatise, child therapist and psychology professor Anderegg takes a wry and well-rounded look at the legacy of everyone’s (least) favorite schoolyard epithet, getting deep into the history of an idea as well as the nuts and bolts of childhood 'stereotype acquisition.'

Now here's the thing: There is no apostrophe in Publishers Weekly!

How to Become a Famous Blogger

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

New(ish) Band I Like: The Bird and the Bee

I came across this two-person indie band recently, The Bird and the Bee. Here's a video profile.


Polite Dance Song:


F*cking Boyfriend:


F*cking Boyfriend remix:

LOVED Tin Man

I thought the recent Sci-Fi Channel series Tin Man was awesome! At least I thought part one was awesome; I haven't watched the rest (yet). I've been interested in learning more about the Oz Universe, at least ever since we saw Wicked, and this is yet another prompt to do so.

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
  

Links for Boxing Day

Happy Boxing Day! (Long time no blog.) Items:

• DJ Lobsterdust vs. the 1980s: Six good mashups here, including Van Halen/Soulja Boy and The Scorpions/Luda.
• Speaking of non-traditional music, here's David Byrne in Wired on the future of the music business. Excerpt: First, a definition of terms. What is it we're talking about here? What exactly is being bought and sold? In the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions. It was communal and often utilitarian. You couldn't take it home, copy it, sell it as a commodity (except as sheet music, but that's not music), or even hear it again. Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone — a memory. Technology changed all that in the 20th century. Music — or its recorded artifact, at least — became a product, a thing that could be bought, sold, traded, and replayed endlessly in any context. This upended the economics of music, but our human instincts remained intact. I spend plenty of time with buds in my ears listening to recorded music, but I still get out to stand in a crowd with an audience. I sing to myself, and, yes, I play an instrument (not always well).
• Freakin' GOBS of great stuff at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.
• Via Mind Hacks, an optical illusion called (I'm not making this up) The Purple Nurple:
  

Fun Mashups

Unk & Avril & Oh Mickey:

AC/DC & J-Kwon:

Gilbert's First Day in the Snow

Here's our doggy Gilbert on his first day in the snow! The ♥G♥ and I played with him and threw some snow on him and took a bunch of pictures. (He's a big boy now -- He clocks in at 100 lbs. +.)

Crank Dat Soulja Boy!

Soulja Boy:

Snowy Afternon; Being Spent Inside

First snowstorm of the year hits the Midwest. Nice day to spend inside -- Right now we're watching Walter Matthau in Hopscotch. (Inside of course except, that it was Gilbert's first time to see the snow! Pics to follow.)

Items:

• WikiMatrix has a whole bunch of different options for Wiki software.
• Speaking of wikis, I'm currently reading Wikinomics (I just saw that there is a new edition coming out in a few months. My first reaction was "Aargh!" because I am partway through an already not-current book, but after a moment's reflection, it occurred to me that this is just par for the course with the topic matter.) Here's their blog. Next on the agenda, I want to get WikiPatterns... (Website here, blog here.)
• SF Chronicle interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on the move of the Wikioffices to San Francisco. Q: Do you worry that people at some point will feel like their work here is done? A: I used to worry. Part of the appeal in the early days of Wikipedia (was that) you could click on Africa and there (would be) nothing there and you (could be) the first person to type, "Africa is a continent." Whereas now to write a brand new article on something that does not already exist is kind of hard in English. You're writing about fairly obscure topics. But we haven't seen participation decline at all. It continues to grow.
• Here's one of many Ron Paul fansites. I'm going to see if he has some site buttons or ribbons to put up here. Agitator post about Washington Post piece on the RP phenomenon. Agitator excerpt: The trick is to show the Paul supporters how it all fits together, how the same flaws that caused government failure in rebuilding Iraq are also at play when it comes to, for example, distributing welfare, or protecting the environment. Sites like Digg and Reddit buzz with libertarian sentiment. It’s just a matter of convincing them that the same bad incentives and bureaucratic behavior that gave us the violent, corrupt, futile drug war will be in play when, for example, Hillary begins implementing her plan for universal health care.

Guided Tour of Wikipedia

This is over an hour long, but it's a great guided tour of Wikipedia by a University of Wisconsin, Madison librarian named John Hubbard explaining it in plain terms.

What Is Wikipedia?

This guy is a little spazzy (he keeps pointing out that he's not high) but check it out:

Various Items

Here's the story: Work is busy, life is busy (we finally cleaned out the garage loft today) and despite my best wishes to blog effusively, I get to what I get to. That's my new motto.

• Documentary being worked on about Wikipedia and wikis in general. You can contribute ideas to the film's own wiki site.
• Chris Anderson says the music biz is UP UP UP, except for CD sales.
• Map of the Star Wars Universe. Also, comparison of Star Trek and Star Wars spacecraft.
• The other night, The ♥G♥ and I watched F**k: The Documentary. Highly fucking recommended! Comments on profanity, free speech vs. censorship, the fluid nature of language, and just how silly we Americans can be about certain syllables, from Drew Carey, Alanis Morissette, Ben Bradlee, Ron Jeremy, Ice-T, Tera Patrick, Sam Donaldson, Janeane Garofolo, Kevin Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, et al. Not just them, but the no-fucking-fun crowd: Alan Fucking Keyes, Pat Fucking Boone, Dennis Fucking Prager, Michael Fucking Medved, and Miss Fucking Manners!
• Also watched 28 Weeks Later. Spoliers! I think this was even better than Days. Interesting things to note: The central family essentially doomed half the world or so by their own inability to realize that almost all of their countrymen had perished from the Infection. The whole U.S. Army involvement was very Iraq-ish, but here's the thing: They (Army) had the wrong idea about putting everyone into a confined space, but they had the right idea about trying to get rid of everyone afterwards. Very Planet-of-the-Apesesque ending.
• Django Reinhardt/Paul Simon mashup. Awesome!
• The math of vampires, ghosts, and zombies. Excerpt: Let us assume that a vampire need feed only once a month. This is certainly a highly conservative assumption, given any Hollywood vampire film. Now, two things happen when a vampire feeds. The human population decreases by one and the vampire population increases by one. Let us suppose that the first vampire appeared in 1600 c.e. It doesn’t really matter what date we choose for the first vampire to appear; it has little bearing on our argument. We list a government Web site in the references (U.S. Census) that provides an estimate of the world population for any given date. For January 1, 1600, we will accept that the global population was 536,870,911.2 In our argument, we had at the same time one vampire.