firsttube.com

My New Lost Theory

2008-05-09T15:13:57-05:00

Haven't thought this out too much, but here's the gist of it:

Richard Alpert, Charles Widmore and "Jacob" were passengers on The Black Rock, and for some reason, are unable to die. John Locke and Michael were also passengers on the same ship, but again - for an unknown reason, they are in some sort of time loop or reincarnation cycle so that they don't realize who they are. We know Michael can't be killed. And it looks increasingly like Locke can't either - he survived as a premie, despite the odds, he fell 8 stories and survived, and was shot by Ben. Locke may even BE Jacob, but it's irrelevant, the point is, the survivors of The Black Rock are duking it out for control of the island. Not sure what to make of Christian Shepherd just yet - he may be another passenger on the Black Rock, but I think it's more likely he's just the form Jacob is currently taking, or possibly the form future- or past-Locke as Jacob is taking. Also, I don't think Ben is a passenger. If he was, he would not be so helpless now. No, he knows the backstory, and realizes "his time" is not only over, but it never really existed.

I suspect it will eventually be revealed that Widmore is both Magnus and Alvar Hanso.

I'm just piecing this stuff together on assumption, not proof. But I think we'll see some serious stuff revealed soon, because these types of reveals won't explain much, and yet, will explain everything. Is Locke's mother "Emily" the same woman as Ben's mother "Emily"? Is Christian Shepherd more than a hallucination? Does "moving the island" mean moving it geographically? Or will all of this be revealed to circumnavigate the bendiness of time?

Because that's where all of this is going. Time is the key, and if time is pliable and actually bent, nothing is certain. It explains how Richard Alpert is everywhere, he can go back later and be right on time. It's how Ben is so powerful. It's eventually going to explain Adam and Eve, Christian's empty casket, Desmond's flashbacks, etc.

It's all very exciting.

American Idol: Worst Season Ever

2008-05-07T16:59:40-05:00

Must the judges continue to lick David Archuleta's balls after every single song this "Aw shucks!" nerd delivers? His silky smooth voice hasn't found its niche, except perhaps as a second rate Michael Buble/Josh Groban. Archie never met a run he didn't like, I can't remember the last time I heard the dude sing a melody. Is he so "cute" and non-sexually threatening that no one dares critique his completely boring adult contemporary ballads lest he not become a marketing machine to pander to 14 year old girls? Yuck.

The reason I think this season stinks is because through the entire season, I have only had one "gave me chills" performance: David Cook's take on Lionel Ritchie's "Hello." Everything else pales in comparison.

Usually, there are songs that make me shut up and songs that can give me pause as I think "this is awesome." There were several great moments - I loved Carly's "Crazy On You," and I really dug Jason Castro's "Hallelujah." Many will rally for some of Chikeze's performance during Beatles week, but for me, I can count the "Wow, cool!" moments on one hand, and the "gave me chills" moments number just one. And while Syesha gets better and Cook solidifies his fan base, tweenage girls everyone should prepare to be let down by AI7 Idol winner David Archuletta's utterly dismal first album.

A Pair of Steaks

2008-05-06T09:31:24-05:00

Sunday night was steak night at our house, and I decided to go with an old favorite and a new experiment. On the right, Jenn was served as silly-sized black angus ribeye, supposedly from a noted black angus farm, cooked a blissful medium rare. We are big ribeye fans in our house, as we generally agree the ribeye is the most flavorful steak in the steer, with its marbling and tenderness.

Although I rarely cook the cut, I coated a Flintstones-sized porterhouse with chimichurri and grilled it. As always, it re-affirmed my belief that the porterhouse is far from "king of the steaks," largely because as good as the filet can be - as tender and juicy as possible - the strip is never as good as I imagine it could be under other circumstances.

I consider myself pretty particular when it comes to beef, and I believe that short of preparing it over wood smoke on some 1100 degree grill, I don't think the strip can be prepared to taste as good as several other steaks. Like many cuts of sirloin, it really requires marinade or a rub of some sort to bring out any powerful flavor, and with some sort of aid, it's usually not natural steak flavor. In general, if a steak can't be seasoned with just extra virgin olive oil, kosher salt, and pepper, it's a second class steak in our house. That doesn't mean we won't eat it, it's just second tier. Nonetheless, it was plenty tasty enough to accompany the meal.

Lightly sauteed asparagus, tri-color cous cous, and fresh pretzel bread accompanied the steaks and rounded out a great meal.

Image hosted by Flickr

Dope Wars for the iPhone

2008-04-30T10:40:15-05:00

I love my jailbroken iPhone, and I am always looking for a new "game of the week." I've been through several, at first, it was LightsOff, but that ends at 225 levels or so. Then it was Five Dice. Then 4 Balls, Domino, and finally PuzzleManiak. I was so happy recently when someone decided to port Dope Wars to the iPhone in the form of "iDope."

iDope currently has a lot of bugs. Mainly, your jacket storage is irrelevant, you can actually store unlimited items, you just can't buy unlimited items unless you hit "buy all." You can't store money in a bank. It never ends until you die. You are mugged or fight the cops maybe 80% of the time you travel. But most importantly, this:

Notice my dollars? That's right, I have $2,147,483,647. Two billion, one hundred forty seven million, four hundred eighty three thousand, six hundred forty seven dollars. Recognize that number? If you read my blog regularly, you might. After all, it's the upper limit of signed integers. The game is officially boring - no matter what I do, I'm always capped at that number, I can never get more money. I wonder if the iPhone can support BIGINT.

Anyway, I really hope to see iDope get some love and attention, because Dope Wars is a fabulous and addictive game, but as is, I eventually get to the upper limit and have to start over... and over... and over.

The Problem(s) With American Idol

2008-04-29T12:46:21-05:00

EW.com is running a piece on possible changes to American Idol. American Idol is - as we speak - jumping the shark. Everyone is trying to predict why. I'm going to give you all the reasons right now.

## 1 ##
First and foremost, as Howard Stern said in his broadcast yesterday, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Idol used to be one hour for the contest, 30 minutes for results. This season, it was 2 hours for the performances, 1 hour for results. The results shows are way too long, way too cheesy, the divisions are contrived, the call-taking is stupid, the banter is obnoxious and worthless, and the results are purposely not revealed until the last 2 minutes. In the beginning of the season, it aired thrice a week in 2 hour specials, requiring a SIX hour commitment. And most of the funny "bad" auditions are now from actors trying to be bad to get on TV, making it mostly worthless. Recently, the performance shows have slowly scaled back in time, but should just be performances. Which leads me to...

## 2##
The guest judges are mostly worthless. It used to be they were actual judges. Now they are "coaches." But those bits are worthless to me, because I'm judging the singing, not the singer, and the producers are making the contestants into people, thereby making the show a popularity contest. That means the winner is not the best singer (as evidenced by Carly's recent ouster), but rather, the one who inspires the most phone calls. And since it's mostly younger people calling and texting, the winner is really just whomever 14 year old girls like, explaining the continued success of the entirely mediocre, completely clumsy "Close-eye" Archuletta, a semi-decent singer who continues to receive over-lauded praise for completely average performances, frequent lip-licking, and lots of awkward laughing. Time to return the general themes like "the 1990s" or "country" or even "anything at all written in this decade." But instead, we get "Mariah Carey." Yuck. You do not need a special coach every week. In fact, I'd like to see a singer sing something like they might release. I don't see most guys singing Mariah Carey songs on their albums. Certainly Andrew Lloyd Webber was a fun coach, but what does being able to - or not being able to - sing his music have to do with being a deserving Idol?

## 3 ##
The judges are completely worthless, even Simon. The judges ought to offer CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. Unfortunately, this is what we typically get:

Randy: "It was only a-iiight fah me, dawg. It was only a-iiight. It was pitchy in the front, but you kinda worked it out in the middle, I don't know if it was your best performance."
Paula: "Blah blah blah, I'm @#% crazy and make no sense. You look pretty. Blah blah blah."
Simon: "Dreadful."

Entirely worthless. I can't remember the last time I heard something like "you need to focus on annuciating better" or "you should try listening to the words of the song a little closer to get a better connection." How about "You project really well. I'd like to hear some power in your higher notes though"? The judges should be wholesale replaced. They all are completely and totally tired, boring, and empty. They do no good. Their only job, it appears, is to pimp the producers' predestined candidate.

## 4 ##
Stop allowing unlimited votes. Period. Limit it to 10 votes per number. Or 1 vote per household. Or 2 texts per phone. Something, anything, to prevent speed dialing tween girls from monopolizing the vote. I know, I know, they are your target, since they are the only ones dumb enough to buy your pre-packaged, vanilla, over styled, dumbed down package you'll eventually call the Idol, but you condescend to us and we lose interest. We all know when someone has been chosen by the producers to fail and when someone has been blessed by Mr. Lythgoe to succeed.

## 5 ##
Last but not least, get rid of your silly "mosh-pit." The screaming and over-abundance of teenagers just reminds me, and a large part of your audience, that we are not your target, and we should really be moving on to a new channel IINS.

Slashdot: Slowing Rotting from the Inside Out

2008-04-28T14:46:43-05:00

Sometime ago, say, 1999, Slashdot was the king of the online tech world. In fact, from a "hits" standpoint, they may still be, if not second to Digg. Slashdot has always been the first big blog-style tech site, long before the word "blog" meant anything to anyone, and somehow, Rob Malda and crew are still relevant in the scene.

Not too long ago, Slashdot started overhauling their incredibly horrendous HTML and rewriting in mostly compliant HTML. The goal of the rewrite, amongst many other things, such as incredible bandwidth savings, was to support stylesheets and graceful degrade. When all was ready, Slashdot held a contest to solicit new stylesheets and received tons of submissions, some really cool and others really ugly, and chose a very nice, very reserved, very modern-but-conservative one as their new default style.

Let's back up a bit: Slashdot is written in Perl - ack! - and is built upon an open source system called, simply enough, "Slash." Slash code is horrendously out-of-date and the last download is pathetically old. In fact, the only way to get Slash in any recent form is via CVS access. Slash requires mod_perl and tons of Apache and perl customization. Since Slash is tried-and-true, it's not really "new" code. And it shows in many ways.

Not too long ago, the Slash folks started realizing that new technologies and new sites were introducing amazing interactive features. Perhaps they realized when a chunk of their userbase got fed up and left for sites like Digg, Techcrunch, Mixx, or some other aggregation type site. Nonetheless, the Slash team started hacking in features that emulated many of the Web 2.0 sites. First it was tagging. "Taggging" has been in beta for some time now. It allows users to arbitrarily tag a story with keywords. The FAQ says that once enough people use a tag, it shows up as a suggestion for others. But I always see weird tags suggested. Either way, it's pointless, because I don't know what good tagging does for me.

Then came the "firehose." The Firehouse is essentially Slashdot's answer to Digg. The diea is this: users submit stories, links, bookmarks, journal entries, etc, and other users vote on the stories. As the stories get "warmer," or redder, the entries because available to the editors to convert into real news items. Neat, huh? The idea is cool, except the interface is nowhere near as dynamic or alive as Digg's, and the content doesn't rotate as fast. And the load time hurts. So I never use it.

In the last 6 months to a year, Slashdot began rolling out "D2," their new dynamic discussion system. It is a replacement for the static comment system of days past. The problem is multi-fold, however. Firstly, the layout is a screaming nightmare. There is so much whitespace and what is there is totally overwhelming. Big garish buttons take the place of links or real buttons. Dynamically fetched text takes many seconds to load, even generic insertions like a comment form takes 5 seconds plus to appear. Slashdot has become flat out slow. And D2, which should have remedied a lot of that, has not lived up to its promise.

All the places where things got dynamic on the site feels like a new paradigm being smashed into old code. I wonder if Slashdot might be better off rewriting the entire engine as version 3.0. I know that sounds scary, but when OSNews was starting to feel the pain, we ditched the entire front end and rewrote it - every single line of PHP and HTML and CSS and JS. A combination of creative time-based caching, caching on request, and sleek, optimized queries resulted in a snappy and very responsive front end with smooth ajax integration, a super fast loading page (minus the ads, subscribe today!), and a zero lag experience. The differences between the v3 backend and v4? None. If you exclude new features we built in (news tags, extended user preferences, and conversations), the backend is exactly the same.

Slashdot's database likely won't have to be dumped or modified at all to rewrite all of their Perl and Javascript/Ajax. But it might result in a faster, smoother, nicer looking front end. It's time to reel in the speed issues - the entire site takes forever to load (a 200K front page plus externals doesn't help). It's time to fix the ajaxian display weirdness. It's time to get your JS working well in Opera. Fix those and then perhaps we can deal with the elitist userbase.

Yesarooni Positooni

2008-04-25T08:05:42-05:00

I have no real reason to be excited for the weekend, but I've been really looking forward to it since Wednesday. I think the idea of going home, relaxing, and spending some time with the baby is really appetizing right now. The kid was really good last night, she was sitting on the spare bed while I was fooling around on the computer. The dog got on the bed -- he's great with her, because he really has a huge amount of patience with her. She smacks him, pulls his facial hair, punches him, and he just takes it. The only problem is that sometimes he just tries kissing all over her face and she's clearly annoyed and can't escape him.

Either way, somehow, he laid down and she reached over, so he put his front leg across her legs. She was sitting on her butt playing with his leg - drumming on it, petting it, etc, and he actually closed his eyes and let her just tap away. It was pretty amazing, given that he's rarely that relaxed around Jenn and me and she's so innocently rough with him.

Every time the dog pisses me off - which is often, since the big galoot is usually following us around and thus generally "in the way" - I remember how incredible he is with baby and how great it will be when she's old enough to consider him a friend. I can sense he's going to be fiercely loyal to her and she's going to be really affectionate with him. The seed is already planted.

The entire scene just made me really long to spend some quality time at home with them, maybe let Jenn sleep late and pack up the baby and the dog for a good walk or something.

On Fatherhood

2008-04-22T14:37:17-05:00

They tell mothers-to-be that they may not feel that motherly attachment to their baby the minute the baby is born. It has a lot to do with hormones, societal expectations, and culture. But they do tell them that the baby may seem foreign and unfamiliar at first, and it may take as long as two weeks or more to become familiar with this new life.

I didn't take to fatherhood at first. I guess that's unfair, I took to it just fine, but the minute Jillian was born, I was much more concerned about my wife who had just had a C-section than I was about the little baby. After all, if something happened to the baby, I'd still have Jenn and life would go on, albeit tragically. But if something happened to Jenn, I'd be crushed; devastated without direction.

I guess I could say I loved Jillian on day 1, but the truth is it took a few days to warm up to her. Babies really aren't much - they don't really tell you this - but they don't do anything. They just lay around, sleep, cry, crap, and occasionally feed. They don't smile, focus, laugh, or express any emotion. They mainly sleep and cry.

As time went on, each day, I'd find myself a little more enamored with baby. Each day, really around 2 months, she started becoming more and more a real person. She started smiling. She stopped crying all the time. She started expressing preference for one person over another. And I realized that I had a nice emotional bond with her.

Around 3 months, she started to actually develop some muscle and was able to hold her own weight on her knees if you balanced her. She chortled her first laughs and started being more comfortable in her own skin. She began to understand diaper changing and bottle preperation.

She just turned 6 months, now entering her 7th, and I just realized - I am paralyzed by how much I love my daughter. Now she sits up and rolls over. She communicates with us in so many ways and understands her surroundings like I never anticpated. She likes playing with the dog. She focuses on the TV and even prefers certain shows. She's a full fledged person - she's graduated from baby to infant.

As a new parent, you're pre-conditioned to think you will love your child in a magical way. But I'm not sure people are capable of turning love on and off like that. Maybe mothers, who have a different kind of bond with an in utero child, but certain fathers are challenged to go from 0-60 on day 1. But the truth is, it doesn't take long before you are won over by the absolute magic that is parenthood.

I can't imagine life without my baby girl, and, as a parent, I worry about things that never would have crossed my mind. I spend time daydreaming during the day about hanging out with my kid and think about how much fun we'll have when she's just a little older. The other day I literally broke down in unexpected tears listening to the Beatles' Golden Slumbers thinking about her, and I honestly can't remember the last time I cried.

Being a parent subjects you to strong emotion and deep love in a manner I'm not certain one can truly understand until they experience it themselves. The idea that a piece of you is alive in this person, this person you have to strain to see as anything but perfect, it's overwhelming. And it's absolutely, positively wonderful.

Damn, Dustin Diamond is a Douche

2008-04-14T14:06:31-05:00

Somehow, I'm embarassed to admit, I got sucked into watching VH1's Celebrity Fit Club this weekend. Normally, I find the show to be an uninteresting train wreck. Over Christmas break, a few of us were sitting around in front of the TV and I caught several episodes in a row where Dustin Diamond, the guy who played Screech on Saved By the Bell, mouthed off to the drill seargant and got himself the title of "bad boy." To make a long story short, he became a pain the ass by continuing to eat cheeseburgers and generally annoy everyone throughout the "season." He also made a very loud and obnovious point to pimp his sex tape - yes, seriously - at every opportunity.

Fast forward to this weekend, when they are airing "Celebrity Fit Club: Boot Camp." In some weird twist, they have "brought back" some previous contestants (read: cheap Omarosa-style publicity stunt) to revisit the Fit Club. Now, unlike a show like The Biggest Loser, where contestants work out, eat healthy, live on set, and lose up to 12 to 15 lbs or more each week, these celebutards are given fluff goals like 1 or 2 lbs to lose each week, and they routinely fail because it's a joke: they show up for a day or two each week, they eat whatever the hell they want, regularly talking about how they fell short, and admit to working out a day or two each week. It's not a "fit club," it's a few attention-starved chunky idiots who can't stick to a diet.

Anyway, leave it to worthless Dustin Diamond to start his princess behavior again. After carrying on, he let the "drill seargant" get to him when he quit...again. He quit one challenge before it started. He quit another when he claimed to be "out of lung capacity." Then he skimped on a third the WWE "Divas" hosted. He claims they pushed him too hard and then, when the drill seargant said he wanted the WWE Divas to kick his butt, he suggested he couldn't be a party to an illegal threat of violence.

But the part that kills me is how Diamond is suggesting that he's being targetted because he's Jewish and not because he's en effing pansy. He's a whiny, arrogant, big fat baby and he acts like a spoiled child who needs to be shipped off to military school. Every insult - for which these shows are known! - prompts a phone call to his lawyer or to his "manager" (aka his wife). It has nothing to do with being Jewish, Dustin, it has to do with being a grade A douche bag.

Dustin Diamond is effing worthless. He, much like the previously mentioned Omarosa, should never be allowed on TV again. Reality TV may be the crack of programming, but there are some people who are best left completely ignored. Dustin Diamond is one of them.

American Idol: The Most Talented Season Ever

2008-04-03T12:43:11-05:00

I've been sick for over a week now. A nasty bug has been going around my office, and last Friday I started developing a fever. I slept for 3 straight days. A week plus later, I'm still with fever and now bronchitis and pharyngitis and I'm on antibiotics and narcotic cough syrup, my chest and arms are sore from coughing so much, I'm a wreck. Yesterday I stayed home, and one of the habits I have is turning on the TV and then sleeping with it playing in the background.

It just so happens that I have the American Idol season 5 final still on my DVR. So, since mid-day TV generally stinks, I put that on. For those who can't place it, season 5 included Taylor Hicks and Katherine McPhee, Elliot Yamin, Chris Daughtry, Paris Bennett, Kellie Pickler, Lisa Tucker, Ace Young, Mandisa, among others. Let me tell you: these kids could sing. They put this year's crop to shame with their tight harmonies. When the women did their medley, I was seriously impressed. In retrospect, even guys who weren't even front runners still had some serious pipes.

I also decided that despite the fact that I railed on Katherine McPhee recently, she really should have won season 5. She was - or rather, is - an outstanding vocalist. She truly outsings everyone in season 7, including the very entertaining David Cook, powerhouse Carly, and even the "can't-do-no-wrong-but-ever-so-awkward-lip-licking" David "Archie" Archuletta. The power and grace she displayed in the finale (and what I recall her displaying the rest of her season -- but then, those memories are a few years old) are really of professional quality.

Take a look at the American Idol website and peruse the past seasons. I think it's a safe bet that season 5 included the most talented singers. Obviously, we'll never know what kind of musicians many were, since until this season, one wasn't allowed to use instruments. I also think it's safe to say that without the use of instruments, people like Brooke White and Jason Castro might have been voted off the island weeks ago, since they both have displayed a propsensity for massive awkwardness without an instrumental crutch.

In reviewing the seasons for the "most talented season ever," I also think it would be neat to have an American Idol "all star" bracket. If I were to compile a list, my top 12 might include Katherine McPhee, Chris Daughtry, Melinda Doolittle, Trenyce, David Cook, Kelly Clarkson, Anwar Robinson, Carrie Underwood, Paris Bennett, Elliot Yamin, Bo Bice, and Clay Aiken; I think it would be hard to leave Clay Aiken out, despite my general reaction to him - measles, a dry heave - you can't deny his killer voice.