After years of not bothering, the Internet is now finally fast enough to make this usable for me.
I have Netflix.
My list has:
- Tig
- Grace and Frankie
- Daredevil
- The 100
- Sense8
Please add suggestions. Y’all know what I like.
tv
Take My Advice
Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice. Remember to pull down your pants and slide on the ice. — Dr. Sidney Freedman
RIP Leonard Nimoy
NBC’s Olympics Still Suck
Every two years I post something like this. I’ll stop when NBC understands what’s going on. And I’m not the only one who gets annoyed by this, per the Verge.
Here’s the deal. NBC pushes the Olympic airing of the ‘big’ events until primetime US hours. The Olympics are in Russia, which means we’re about 12 hours off Pacific time when it comes to that, so a whole half a day passes between when an event occurs and when NBC deigns to show it.
Why does this piss me off almost as much as calling someone names? Because I want to watch the Olympics!
What I see as ‘prime’ Winter Olympic events are the ones like the Luge, Skeleton, Curling (shut up), and other weirder events, so I generally get to watch them when they air, or not at all. This means it’s all airing overnight for me, and I watch it when I get up… How annoying. But hey, I live 12 hours off, it’s what it is. I accept that one, and highlight reels are my friends. I’ve already watched the guy who fell off his luge and got back on.
So there it is, about eight in the morning in California, and the Opening Ceremonies are happening right then. And the entire USA was blocked from watching it, unless we break the law or use a VPN.
Why? No, seriously. Why?
The theory is that NBC wants to air it when “everyone” will watch it and get better ratings. And better ratings means ‘primetime.’ But what is primetime anymore? Back in the 40s through the 90s, it made a little sense. We didn’t have the ability to watch TV on a phone after all, or even get the news reliably, so if we wanted to catch up on sports we missed in prime time (and believe me, we did), we read the paper. I read the paper every single morning to get my Olympics fix back in the 80s!
But then times changed. An AOL chatroom, or an ICU meetup, had one person in Lillihammer who said “I just say the speedskaters and Johann Olav Koss just swept the long distance events!”
That happened to me. I was DELIGHTED. “What about Bonnie Blair? The American? Did she win gold?” And she had! So when I tuned in that night, with my father and brother and step-mother, we watched and cheered to see her win. The fact of winning isn’t the concern of most of us. The ACT of winning is what we want to see.
Okay… Let me turn this around. The Super Bowl was last weekend. It got the highest ratings ever. Was it tape delayed? No! It was set to air in the afternoon in Pacific, and I’m willing to bet it still got great ratings! Why? Because people want to watch it.
Why not show the Opening Ceremonies on a cable channel (MSNBC? NBC Sports?) that most people get at the ‘real’ time and then air it again at 8pm. That way people can watch real-time if they want, or not!
Do the same with the events! Show ’em all live, on line and on the TV (you have enough channels, NBC), and then show us the highlights at primetime. The best, the worst, the bloopers, and everything that makes good TV. Heck, go an extra step and have the people who watch live VOTE on what’s the best, and then have a half-hour for “Viewer favorites!” around 9pm.
People who don’t want spoilers already avoid the news. The rest of us have the apps on our phones already. Oh here’s an idea, why not see how many people visit your site to get updates or use those apps? Those are the viewers you’re losing because of your shitty coverage, NBC.
I Like DirecTV
Yes, I still have a real TV with a cable company. Look, I just don’t enjoy watching TV on my laptop, and I like to be able to use my laptop while watching TV. For me, having a TV works, I like it, and I especially like the random TV shows I run into. You can judge me all you want, but it works for me.
That said, I’ve been having trouble with my TV. Or rather, the TV service. See I have certain requirements that for TV. Like I need closed captioning to work. Yes, I watch TV with it on. This is not negotiable. Secondly, I need CBS (at least until CSI goes off the air) and while I had no worries that TWC and CBS would kiss and make up, the bullshit was annoying. Third, I need the picture to not break up. Fourth, and this actually is the key here, I need my over-the-air content not to be double encrypted.
What’s that? Oh, Time Warner encrypts everything so you can’t download it from your DVR. Let me explain. Your DVR is a harddrive, right? You can download crap from a hard drive right? Not exactly. Back in 2006, I stumbled across some information about how to record shows from the DVR onto my computer. In the post comes the warning “The cable company can add copy protection to the signal” which means you can download it, but you can’t play it back. It’s basically a ‘copy once’ encryption, and they consider their recording to be the once. After all, the courts determined that personal copying for the sake of time-shifted viewing is acceptable (i.e. no they can’t sue you for video taping your favorite show and watching again later).
Here’s where it gets weird. It was easier to record things on a VCR than it is today on a DVR. Well… not on a TiVo. There’s legal software called iTivo which lets you download. Oh, and TiVo even has directions on how to connect to your TiVo to the internet and download. Except that even with a TiVo, the encryption is handled by the cable company, and Time Warner locks your downloads. Even the over-the-air stuff like CBS, NBC, and ABC.
These aren’t that hard, and any reasonable company could have some sort of a solution for, at least, the CC issue. I understand the CBS mishegas is what it is, and yet since I’m in a deadzone for over-the-air (no antenna will get CBS for some reason), my choice was to switch.
I made a bunch of calls to other companies, chatted with people, got price quotes, asked my TV buddies for advice, speculated on Twitter, and eventually ended up with DirecTV. And I’m happy.
So here’s my experience with DirecTV.
I called them on a Tuesday to get a price quote, and she was nice. I’m always polite to the people on the phone, they have a shitty job, and there’s no effort required for me to just be polite. We chatted, I explained what I wanted out of my service, she came up with a decent setup, and we got all the way down to making a note of my wishes when the poor woman’s computer crashed. Look, I work in IT. I always forgive you when networks or computers misbehave. I used to work on that kind of software, it’s janky, and when you have hundreds of people entering stuff in a system, sometimes it barfs.
The problem was that this happened twice. At this point, I had to go, so I said I’d call back the next day, took down her name, and proceeded to do exactly that! I know, shocking. That day, the fellow saw my record, apologized, gave me a discount, and then got everything scheduled for that very Sunday between 8am and noon.
I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with a company coming out to do work on your place, but in my experience, those timeframes are wildly inaccurate. Boy, I’m glad I got up at 8am! The phone rang at 8:15, it was the guys, they were 15 minutes away. They showed me badges, went over what they were going to do, checked my condo bylaws (which I had done), determined where to install, and then hit a roadblock. The bylaws were out of date. Thankfully, the condo VP is my neighbor and likes me, and got it sorted. By 9am, they’d run cables, secured them, and were drilling into my wall in a non-obtrusive location. They even puttied the hole with waterproof sealant and asked if they could vacuum it up for me (I said no thank you, and did it later, since I was going to mop).
They set up everything, showed me how to use it (including installing and configuring my iPad!) and then went over everything, one more time, to make sure we were good.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had service like that from a TV company.
What I love:
- Polite service that treats me like a human
- Watching TV on my iPad
- Controlling the TV via the iPad
- Picture quality
- Readable closed captioning (good font)
- Storage capacity (1 TB)
- Records more than 2 shows at once (5)
- Being able to download shows I missed to watch later
What I like
- Being told how to download to my computer
- The remote
- Everything defaults to HD if you use HDMI
- Speed – not many delays when clicking through menus
What annoys me a little
- Having to buy an extra device to download stuff
- All the emails and calls to ‘welcome’ me
- Searching for shows on the TV via the remote
- Paying extra for MLBTV (then again, I get BBC America in HD)
- The name: DirecTV … you think you’re so clever
Was it worth it?
For me, yes. I like the TV. I’m a news junkie when I’m working from home, and having the iPad be a portable TV is great. The quality is leaps ahead of what I got with Time Warner or AT&T, and the only thing comparable was when I had RCN in Chicago. Yes, I will forever recommend RCN in Chicago, they were wonderful. Miss them.
What about the downloading? Well, that’s a story for another day. Suffice to say, yes, you can.
Lessons from Fandom
For much of my life I’ve been a fan of various things, and I was reminiscing on all the fandoms I’ve been a part of, and what that’s taught me. For what it’s worth, I consider WordPress a part of my fandoms. I’m a fan, but I’m also a WordPress developer (and unicorn).
This is just a list of things I’ve learned from fandoms.
- Be gracious in accepting thanks
- Scheduling meetings with people across the globe means someone will be up at a crappy hour
- Reading between the lines is an art form
- Attribute/credit people for their contributions
- Sharing is fun
How to build websites- It’s okay to walk away when I’m angry
- How to code
- How to ask the right questions
- It’s okay not to be humble, but not all the time
- Why we don’t get drunk in public
- Don’t put anything online you don’t want people to see
- You will never successfully explain fandoms to some people (“Taf, it’s like being a Base Belle!”)
- A percentage of all groups is out and out nuts, it’s okay to ignore them
- A smaller percentage of all groups are giving, caring, and amazing wonderful people (and they matter more)
- Trust your gut
- Being a fan doesn’t mean you have to like and approve of everything they do
- It’s not your job to stop people from being wrong on the internet
- ‘Block’ and ‘ban’ buttons exist for a reason, but it’s a last resort
- Inspiration comes from everywhere, so don’t feel bad if you became a foster mom just because of people on TV
- There’s a line between fan and creepy-stalker-fan, and if someone tells you you’ve crossed it, they’re probably right
- Never ask a friend for something you wouldn’t pay for if you could
- If it’s not fun anymore, it’s time to move on
- People are amazingly artistic
And most importantly? You can meet some of the best, most important people, in your lives via fandoms. After all, they like some of the same things you do.