Star Wars Trilogy (as described by someone who didn’t see it)


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Online Advertisers – Listen Up

You know when you browse to a Web page, and for some reason the page takes forever to load even though it’s not that complicated of a site? Well, more times than not, that lag is caused by an ad on the site taking forever to load. For example, you might go to coolstuff.com, but there’s an add on the site that’s hosted at annoyingad.com. Before coolstuff.com can be displayed, all the appropriate demographic, and statistical data used for specialized advertising must be sent to annoyingad.com along with simply loading the ad itself.

So here’s my message to online advertisers and the websites that use them. Do you know what that lag makes me do? Hit the “Stop” button in my browser, and browse somewhere else. If your ads make the end user experience annoying, your site’s not going to get the number of page views you’re hoping for. So, the thing on your site who’s sole purpose is to make money is actually costing you money and readership. Don’t load your pages down with ads. Too many sites out there don’t know where the advertisement/site responsiveness tipping point is, and many of them have crossed it.

Performance testing would be a good idea, BTW – and I happen to know a guy who could do that for you. 😉

Top Gear – More Than Just a Car Show

In case you’ve never heard of it, Top Gear is a BBC automotive television show featuring the perfectly complimentary personalities or Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May. What’s great about the show, is not necessarily the car reviews but the interactions between the show’s hosts. Jeremy, a tall sarcasm-filled, wiseass with an equally tall ego, is the guy everyone in your group of friends love to complain about. Richard Hammond, a short boyish speed-loving car junkie is your scrappy little brother that your friends like tagging along, because he doesn’t take any of their crap. James is well, James – your stuffy older brother who thinks everything is stupid unless it’s “dignified”, bland, and super-practical. Each one of the hosts checks and balances each other, and the friendship between them as depicted on the show really makes for some entertaining television.

Another impressive aspect of the show that’s rarely mentioned is its production quality. Whoever the director of photography is for the on-location footage needs an award. The landscape shots are simply gorgeous. The editor needs some recognition as well because the editing of all the driving and on-location footage is just excellent.

Even if you’re not a car guy, the adventures of these 3 TV hosts, along with excellent production value makes this show well worth the watch.

Time Warner Cable to Lose Viacom Channels

It seems that Time Warner and Viacom are in a contract battle regarding the fees associated with Viacom channels appearing on the media giant’s cable system. HuffingtonPost.com states :

“Media giant Viacom Inc. said its Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central and 16 other channels will go dark on Time Warner Cable Inc. at 12:01 a.m. Thursday if a new carriage fee deal is not agreed upon by then.

The impasse over carriage fee hikes would mean “SpongeBob” and other shows like “The Daily Show” will be cut off to 13 million subscribers, said spokesman Alex Dudley, a vice president at Time Warner Cable. The nation’s second-largest cable operator primarily serves customers in New York state, the Carolinas, Ohio, Southern California and Texas.

Viacom has asked for fee increases of between 22 percent and 36 percent per channel, an amount that could increase customers’ cable bills, Dudley said. Viacom spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew said the requested increase was in the very low double-digit percentage range.”

I’d hate to lose Comedy Central, and the children’s programming but on the bright side, if I lose all these channels there’s no reason to pay for cable anymore, so I could save a lot of money every month. 😉

Bonjour for Windows – mDNSResponder = BAD

Today at work I was informed that my work laptop was “spamming” the network and bringing down cell relays. The network traffic sniffer identified the offending traffic as “Apple TV” related. So after some digging in iTunes (which I have installed only for Outlook calendar syncing with my iPhone) we disabled the “Look for Apple TVs” option, the “Look for Shared Libraries” option, the “Look for AirTunes ” option, and the “Look for iPhone and iTouch Remotes” option. As you can guess all that “looking” creates a lot of broadcast network traffic. So, if you don’t want a stressed Network Engineer coming to your desk at work wonding what you’re doing to his network, I recommend that you disable the Bonjour service all together.

Go to Start-> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Services, select “Bonjour Service”, right-click, go to “Properties”, set the “Startup type” to “disabled” and then click the “Stop” button. Trust me, your friendly neighborhood Network Engineer will thank you for it.