Android Tumblr

I just got the Tumblr app for Android. So far it’s pretty snazy.

The Golden iPod

Everyone by now should have Jammie Thomas-Rasset Trial.  If you haven’t the simple facts are:

- She was sharing 24 songs online.

- She was found of willful infringement.

- The penalty was for $1.92 million.

It’s fairly obvious news that she is appealing the verdict.  Who wouldn’t?  The funny thing is that recently someone mentioned that a copy of Guitar Hero 4 may cost you $7 million.

This of course got me thinking at work today.  If it was possible that someone had filled an entire 120 gig Classic iPod with pirated music, you could be liable for $2.4 Billion dollars based off of Apple’s 30,000 songs to fit on a classic.  I find that these numbers to mind boggling, especially with songs costing around the .99 margin.  What does everyone else think?  Are these numbers as insane as I think?

Geek Tax

I’ve been reminded recently of the dreaded Geek Tax.  Many of you may not know that one existed, but it does.

The guys of Penny Arcade talked about the Geek Tax in one of their podcasts back in the day.  Their example was when HD DVD was coming out all of the movies were 29.99 except Serenity which was 34.99.  Why would it need to be 5 dollars more?  The obvious, the people who were going to invest in HD DVD first are going to be Geeks who will most likely purchase Serenity as their first title.

Now there is the mother of all Geek Tax, Star Trek.  Of course with the movie coming out I’ve been looking at the box sets.  My roommate purchased the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Now I would expect that a TV show that’s been out on DVD for a few years would be 19.99 or 24.99 for the first season.  My roommate paid around 70 dollars… 70 DOLLARS?!  Why does this need to be so expensive.  Geek Tax.  It’s annoying that if it were reasonably priced I would buy this series in a heart beat.  Of course all of the Star Trek series are outrageously priced like this.  The Original Series all together is 200 dollars ON SALE at amazon.com.

Damn Geek Tax.

Wait... The rash is from WHAT?!?!

So I heard this story at work a little while ago and have been meaning to post it here for everyone to read.  A friend overheard this from his girlfriend.  Where she heard it I can’t exactly remember.

A girl was visiting Cancun recently for her spring break.  She was down in the hotel bar the last night before having to fly back the next morning, when a cute guy starts buying her drinks.  To be nice she went over and started talking to him.  Of course since the guy was in Cancun talking to a cute girl he asked her if she wanted to go back to his room.  She of course needing to leave early the next day turned down the invite.  Instead she made out with the guy.  Partly because he was attractive, partly because he bought her drinks.

Well she went home and after a little bit the girl developed a rash all over her face.  So said girl and her mother go to the doctor.  While there the doctor expresses concern that they need to know what the girl did in Cancun.  Her mother even stresses not to worry about the fact that not to worry and tell them about what happened so they could take care of the problem together.

The girl of course mentions she made out with a guy and that it only went as far as that.

The doctor responds that the rash is something they see in Cannibalism…

YEAH CANNABILISM.

So said girl gives info to the Cancun local authorities on the guy.  They then catch him in his hotel room with a couple bodies he had been eating.

Now like any self respectable person that is going to post a story like this coming third hand, I checked Snopes.com.  The link can be found here.  Also when looking I found no evidence that a rash associated with Cannibals existed.

If you read it on Snopes this is considered a Legend.  I of course did not know this till I checked it out before posting and after passing the story to several people.  I guess it’s a variation of one about Necrophilia.  The other thing it reminded me of is the difference between word of mouth and email.  If this had come to my email I would have went immediately to Snopes.  Since it came from a friend I did not.  Regardless it’s definitely a good story to tell someone before they go to Tijuana or Cancun to make sure they stay away from strangers.  It’s also a reminder that in our world people are indeed deranged.  I say this because if I hadn’t of done the research about rashes and cannibalism along with checking Snopes I would have and did completely believe this.

Why did I believe it?  Simply put, in a world where John Jamelske, Ted Bundy, Victor Zsasz, Jefferey Dahmer, Patrik Kearney, John Wayne Gacy, Patrick Bateman, Aileen Wuornos, Ed Gein, Jonathan Kramer,  The Zodiac Killer, Jack the Ripper, The Torso Killer, Josef Fritzl, and Dennis Rader exists or existed, this story moving around doesn’t seem to far fetched.

TWC Bandwith Structure Billing

Recently Time Warner Cable tested in a few different cities some different bandwith capping plans.  Suffice to say they didn’t work out, but it looks like the still plan on trying.  They made a post on long reply that can be found here.

There is only one way I can see this working for TWC, if everyone does it.  If my provider for cable did this, I’d be looking at the first available alternative and jump ship.  The only people who will be okay with these are people who only use the internet for browsing purposes or light gaming.  This seems to me as another play at trying to cash in on new technologies, the big one being streaming video, more specically Netflix (which if it did streaming a while back when a certain Tubes remark was made…).  Of course the best part about our society is competition.  Which is why I feel this will never work.  As long as the competition can offer “unlimited” internet why go to TWC?

I could maybe see my parents using a lower tier so that they could pay less, but they only use the internet for surfing because they are on dialup.  As soon as reasonable broadband is introduced into their area, my guess is that they will upgrade.  I also forsee them getting into streaming video and purchasing video which would take them up a notch.  I make this statement because after I took my Apple TV up north my Dad informed me that I was not allowed to take it back with me.

Is there anyone out there that thinks this is a good idea?  I’m really curious to see what people think.  You can email me, the link can be found to the left.

This article can also be found here on Murmur.

leo:

32 songs in 8 minutes (via Freddie25)

Thanks Leo Laporte for this video.  It’s pretty fantastic.

Joss Whedon is my master now...

I have been mucking my way through the new Whedon show Dollhouse.  Everyone has been talking about it, mostly bad.  Well I love Joss Whedon’s work and even though the first 1-4 episodes were lackluster (some even terrible).  I now am on the bandwagon.

I just finished Episode 6 of Dollhouse.  It is the best episode that has come out thus far.  Episodes 1-5 were pretty much filler, they felt more like 8-10 should in the future.  We finally get into something other then a formula episodes where Eliza Dushku wears something hot and possibly has an attitude.  We also see that the Dollhouse is an odd way can help people.

This episode showed that a man who uses the service helps him have closure with his dead wife.  This was something I didn’t really see coming and it was a great change to the overall, I need someone to be my sex slave/kick ass chick/spy that the show has been formulating thus far.

My favorite part of the episode (and series) is Agent Ballard.  He has been by far the best part of this show.  Since the first episode, I would actually pay attention to scenes with him in it, unlike most of the show thus far.  We got a full helping of Ballard and I want to see more.  He’s one of two characters that I like that I feel actually have drive and are worth paying attention to.  I really want to peg him for Alpha, but it doesn’t make sense unless Whedon pulls some super curve ball.

This episode was full of what this season should have been thus far.  It had FORWARD MOVING plot worth following, awesome action (the fight with Echo and Ballard was brutal), romance, deception, rape, and death.  Holy crap if every TV show had this much in an episode I don’t know how I’d find the time to do anything else.

Well done Mr. Whedon, you asked me to wait till episode 6 and I’m glad I did.

This post can also be found here

Wondercon 2009 Day 3

Day 3 was the last day.  I of course started it off right by getting to the convention without my Badge.  The reason this was so bad was that I wanted to make it back in time for a panel.  In order to do so I had to grab a cab back to my brother’s apartment.  I was able to make it back about 5 minutes before the panel I wanted to see started.

I waited most of the weekend to go my last panel so I was not about to miss it.  The panel is question was titled, “25 Years of Usagi Yojimbo.”  After meeting Stan Sakai in the first 10 minutes of the con I was super excited to watch him at his panel.  Any creator that tells me I should buy one of his books off of Ebay because it will be cheaper is awesome.  It obviously shows how much he cares about getting his work into people’s hands.  For those of you who sadly don’t know who Usagi Yojimbo is check out his Wikipedia page.

Stan Sakai really put on a show for the panel.  He talked about some of the history around publishing Usagi Yojimbo.  Did you know that Croatia was one of the first places to have Usagi Yojimbo in other then English?  When Sakai talked to the people in Croatia that wanted to localize it he asked them about the war going on.  They assured him it was nothing to worry about since it was 50 miles away.  The other fun tid bit was at one point Oliver Stone had the option to make a Usagi movie.  It would have been interesting to see.

I was awesome to see the man at work as well.  Seeing him sketch was fluid and fast, it’s obvious he has no plans of slowing down at any time.  It was also interesting to see him go over his process a little bit.  When someone asked him if he had an end to Usagi he responded that of course there would be an end, but not anytime soon.  Sakai very much made it sound like he plans on doing Usagi Yojimbo as long as he can.  I of course plan on reading it for as long as he can produce it.

The rest of the day was relegated to last minute shopping.  I planned on going to another panel, but I just didn’t have it in me.  I got a few last minute steals, such as Fell Vol 1 for five dollars and Blankets for twenty, so overall it was a good day.

As for the con as a whole, I really enjoyed myself.  I can’t wait to go again next year when I have the chance.

Wondercon 2009 Day 2

Day 2 of Wondercon continued with craziness.  It involved more purchases and some signatures.  I managed to get quite a few signatures and a couple sketched.  One of my goals was to see Mike Mignola and Matt Wagner.  Wagner did a couple sketches and was pretty cool to meet.  Mignola cracked a joke about how he thought he had already signed all the copies of the books I brought him.

On day 2 I also hit up a couple panels.  The first was the Spotlight on Alex Robinson that was moderated by Josh of iFanboy fame.  I went to the panel because I had heard about Alex’s work several times, I also wanted to support iFanboy in anyway that I could.  The panel went really well for everyone and involved candy, which it is pretty great. After the panel I went almost immediately to Alex’s booth and bought both Box Office Poison and Too Cool to Be Forgotten.  He did sketches in both and signed them.  Meeting creators such as Alex is great, he was really happy to meet someone who even wanted to be a fan.  I can honestly now say that I am after reading Too Cool to Be Forgotten.  The book is amazing and a real tear jerker.

The second panel I went to was about Podcasting and comics.  The awesome thing about this was that they pulled people from the crowd to participate.  So oddly enough you will hear my voice on a future podcast.  I as usual brought some completely useless knowledge about comics to the table.  I’m not going to say what it is now, you can find out when the show comes out.  Also we talked about a couple of the things I bought.  It quickly became apparent to Ron at least that I love the big hardcovers.  Sometimes I don’t think I’ll be contempt until I can replace a coffee table with the ones I have.

The last thing I did that day was hit up the Isotope Comic Lounge for the 100 Bullets party.  That place was crazy and it was cool to have a beer with some of the most prominent creators in comics today.  Also it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see Dave Johnson’s art in person.  He has never displayed his art before and he’s never sold it.  Obviously you can get him to do sketches when he’s at a con, but that’s different.  To see some of the original covers of 100 Bullets hanging about was awesome.  I ended the night by passing out, sadly at 12:00-12:30.  With as little sleep as I had received the night before I was ready to get some sleep.  I didn’t leave without some signatures and some glasses from the party.

Wondercon 2009 Day 1

Well Wondercon 2009 is over with.  I had a blast for the entire thing.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been this sleep deprived.  Well how did the weekend turn out for me?  Let me start with Friday…

Friday was a little bit of shopping, when I hit the floor within 30 minutes my bag was full and killing my back.  I have an affinity for giant Hardcovers and since I was able to snag six for anywhere from 60-65% off I went for it.  A little ways in I decided to go to the “Everything You Wanted to know about Retailing in Comics” panel.  On my way there I met up with the iFanboys.  When Josh heard I was heading to that panel he asked me if I hated money.  I informed him that obviously I did if I spent over 100 dollars in the first 30 minutes of the Con.  I didn’t stay at the panel long since it seemed to be for older people as I was one of maybe half a dozen under the age of 35 in the room.  It was also a little on the boring side since it was a discussion about business.

After that I hit up the DC Nation panel.  I got to find out juicy details such as, Paul Dini getting two new books.  One is going to bring back the Batman as more of a creature of the night that no one sees.  It sounds like it’s more of a mythology book from the point of view of the streets of Gotham.  The other book I’m super excited for, it’s titled “Gotham Sirens” and is a team book with Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, and Catwoman.  My guess is that it will of course be tons of fun.  I also asked a question for fellow iFanboy community member Luthor, and myself, about getting a Batman Beyond comic book.  The best answer we could get was maybe.

The last thing I did at the con was go to the Wonder Woman premiere. You can find my review of it here on Murmur.

After the preview I went out for the iFanboy Tiki Tour.  The night went way longer then it should have and was incredibly fun.  The iFanboys are awesome dudes to hang out with, we all had a blast for sure.  I think the two highlights were riding with two new awesome dudes I met, Chunk and Brandon, in a Taxi I thought we surely would die in.  The other being a conversation with a few different people about how dreamy Ben Templesmith is.  Here are a couple pictures.

Chunk, Brandon, and myself at the end of the night.