Arrested Development Season 3 is cut to 13 episodes, and Kitchen Confidential is cancelled.
Here is David Cross explaining the situation so elegantly
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“Texas voters add gay marriage ban to constitution” No big surprise really. The outcome was as predictable as the tides. It was just another dirty trick perpetrated by the Republican party.
This amendment had no real reason to exist. The PDF that Kelly posted from the League of Women Voters stated it pretty well,
Arguments Against • Changing the constitution to define marriage and ban same-sex marriages is not necessary to set legal principals, as there is a statute already prohibiting same-sex marriages. • Texas should provide equal protection to all its citizens and should not discriminate against a group of citizens in the state constitution.Years from now, our children will look back and think we were all a bunch of morons.
Anyways, here is The Arcade Fire covering Boys Don’t Cry at an impromptu gig in NYC near Union Square this past weekend,
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The Nokia 770
I want one so bad.
Sure there may be problems with the software, but it’ll only get better. It’s the perfect device. Rather than stuffing the kitchen sink into a 5in x 3in rectangle, Nokia decided to focus on making one thing really excellent. Notice there’s no camera, hard drive, or phone attached to this. Nokia were after building an “Internet Tablet”, and they succeeded. Nokia finally got the memo that convergence devices don’t work. There’s a balance between size, usability, durability, and battery life.
So why do I want one? To surf the internet while I’m on the toilet. And when I’m in bed. And when I’m watching tv. And when I’m outside. And basically, wherever. The fact that it’s running Debian Linux is wonderful as well. I imagine there is going to be a lot of community support for this device. Nokia is making the effort, maemo.org. I can’t wait to ssh into a server with this. Plus it’ll make a cracking good eBook reader.
And you know what I really love about the 770, it uses standard cell phone batteries, Nokia B5-PL.
Brilliant.
Did you know that MacOS X has faxing built-in to the OS? It’s true, take a gander at this page on Apple’s site.
Like a chump, I’ve been going to The UPS Store or FedEx Kinko’s to do my faxing, and taking a hit of about $3 every time. It didn’t occur to me this morning that my laptop had a fax/modem built-in. I was about to go dig through my scrap heap to find my old fax/modem and save myself the cost of a #6 Spicy Chicken. Seems those old dinosaurs aren’t useless afterall.
And you know, using the fax feature is easy as pie.
The option to fax is right there in the Print Dialog.
After filling out the relevant information, you just hit fax and you’re part of the 20th century again.
If you use Windows, you can do the same thing. It’s just not as nicely presented. Here are instructions how.
Digging into the archives for today’s song. Jenny asked me earlier “Who’s your favorite voice of all time?”
Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings came into mind. It’s not a voice that will send chills down your spine, but it’s infectious. I don’t know if “infectious” goes with “favorite voice”, but it works for me. It’s definitely distinct.
Life Without Buildings only ever release one album before they broke up. When I heard the news I was disappointed. Also note that they too are named after a song by the band Japan. Life Without Buildings won’t be for everyone. It’s not something you’ll hear on the radio. I guess you could classify it as ‘experimental’. Honestly, I doubt you’re even ready for it, but here it is anyway: Life Without Buildings – The Leanover Did my reverse psychology work?
Raishad.com has went under the knife and came out looking like a million bucks. Long was working on a theme, but I decided to trash all his hard work and steal this theme, Almost Spring. I modified it a bit, and I think it looks pretty good. I added some calendars, navigation links, and tweaked the colors. Plus, I revamped the video playing system. Videos now open in a popup. Also, that new button you see on the right, “Get Firefox with Google Toolbar”, is supposed to give me a buck everytime someone installs Firefox. But so far it hasn’t worked. It’s registered clicks, but no money has come in.
If you didn’t know, Savannah Armstrong, was on MTV’s Miss Seventeen. Notice the was. She got kicked out on tonight’s episode. It was a very dirty trick. Her team was wrapping up a photoshoot, and the cameraman was like, lemme take some pictures of you. And apparently if you’re on a show about modeling, taking pictures is a faux pau. The way it was explained, her accepting the photographer’s offer to take extra pictures showed she was selfish. It would’ve been wild if she actually won. She was at the New Year’s Eve Party where I got plastered.
I probably won’t go out of my way to watch the show again. It’s not as great as “My Super Sweet 16″, in terms of laughing at people and finding out how horrible people can be but it has it’s moments. Like on today’s episode, some girl started crying because her photos were a little too “racy”. I’m not a girl or anything, but of all the things to get upset over, showing some skin shouldn’t even register.
Also, I’m rescinding my full endorsement of Smackage.com. One of the writers over there seems to have a problem with Steve Jobs, and it’s to a point where it hurts the site. I’m not saying you have to love Steve Jobs, but he’s a good guy. He’s no worse than any other company figurehead. So I’m tacking on a caveat before I re-endorse Smackage.com, Don’t Read Articles With The Words ‘Steve Jobs’ In Them.
How many bands do you know from Derby? Take your time.
Well if you feel you there is room on the list for one more, here is Komakino. If you’re cool you’re thinking “Komakino”, isn’t that a name of a Joy Division b-side, and you’d be right. Naming your band after a song is a pretty good technique if you can’t think of a good name. It assures that if someone is searching on Google for the lyrics, they might stumble upon your band. And hey, it worked for Radiohead, they’re doing alright.
Here is their debut single, Say Something. They’re part of that “New Wave” revival, so if you’re into that you’ll probably like this.
Do you remember The Cardigans? Sure you do. They had that song “Lovefool”, the one that goes “Love me love me/say that you love me”. And they had that really sexy video “My Favorite Game” with the singer driving recklessly on a 2 lane highway. And that was probably the last you heard of them, way back in 1998. Probably figured they broke up or something.
Well they’re back with the album Super Extra Gravity. And let me tell you, it’s Super Extra Awesome. The opening track, “Losing A Friend”, is deliciously catchy. After listening to it you’ll spend the whole day muttering “You’re losing a friend” and drumming on your desk. You should probably take the day off, just to be safe. One of the best opening tracks of the year.
Here is “Losing A Friend” by The Cardigans.
What a crappy cover for such a great movie. “Experience The Ultimate Action Adventure”, what a cheesy tagline. Any of the movie posters would’ve been a better cover. I guess the good news to take from this is that the DVD is being released on December 20th. There is more info and menu screenshots at DVDAnswers
If you haven’t been paying attention, Serenity is the movie sequel to the cancelled Fox series Firefly. Firefly was given the usual Fox treatment, air it on a Friday, show episodes out of order, and preempt episodes with specials like “When Animals Attack”. It was cancelled after 11 episodes and released on DVD, where it sold extremely well. The sales were strong enough to convince Universal to secure the movie rights and to allow Joss Whedon to make Serenity.
Serenity did poorly at the box office. After the first weekend, ticket sales dropped 50%. And that is with strong word of mouth. From what I’ve heard, the people who saw Serenity without watching Firefly/knowing Firefly existed thought it was wonderful. But it still did miserable at the box office. Even with strong DVD sales, it’s unlikely there’ll be sequels to Serenity. And you know, Serenity needs a sequel real bad.
As much as I hate Fox for cancelling Firefly, you still have to appreciate the work they do. They constantly take chances on shows. Some of the best network tv is on Fox. But Fox is a business, and they aim to make money. So they play it smart, and even if they cancel a show, they still put out a DVD box set. If it weren’t for the Firefly box set, I never would’ve watched the entire series and fall in love with the show.
But you know what is amazing, I would’ve sworn that I had never seen Firefly before it was released on DVD, but Long dug this up
Session Start (AIM – vonstroodl:MadTobago1013): Sat Sep 28 01:02:14 2002 [20:39] vonstroodl: firefly’s a pretty good show [20:39] MadTobago1013: and i noticed that there is that one scene where trinity kicks a guards shotgun and flips it over and shoots him in the back that fox skipped over [20:39] MadTobago1013: yea it is
Update:
I’d like to take a moment to welcome Xanga into the world of “Web Standards”. I noticed that the Xanga RSS Fixer I use was broken. Wondering what’s up, I tried using the rss feed that Xanga provides, http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=. And amazingly, it’s a valid feed.
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.raishad.com/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
And yes, you don’t have to mention that my site isn’t valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I’m working on it. The problem comes from embedding the Quicktime movies. “embed” isn’t a valid XHTML tag. But that’s the only way you can embed a Quicktime movie so it’ll work on Mac OS, and I assume other OS’s like FreeBSD. The “object” tag is there for Windows.
Now, if you’ll shift your eyes to the sidebar on your right, you’ll notice 2 new links, Photos and Smackage.
Photos is a link to my Flickr-based gallery. I’m using the FAlbum WordPress Plugin. I feel it integrates very nicely.
Smackage is Jenny’s new project. It’s your general web entertainment site. I’m supposed to be writing for it, but I’m absolutely rubbish at writing. I peaked at 11th grade. I’m especially bad with reviews. All I can say is if something is decent. I’m not good at putting the reasons down into text. Partly because I feel like such a phony, and like I mentioned, I’m just not good at writing. So look forward to my one word reviews, I guess.