Every night I ask my wife if I can watch the boobie show.

A SPANISH Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.
'House' for instance, is feminine: 'la casa.'
'Pencil,' however, is masculine: 'el lapiz.'

A student asked, 'What gender is 'computer'?'
Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer' should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that 'computer' should definitely be of the feminine gender ('la computadora'), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

(THIS GETS BETTER!)

The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine ('el computador'), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.

The women won.

I am fascinated by WWII, both as a historical event and by the fractal like way it rippled throughout the world. I'm certain all the stories of the war could never be told. Oddly enough I don't read a lot of books about WWII. Mostly I prefer the countless documentaries from the dusty dry to the riveting to the made for Hollywood.

So I finished this book and I'm going to tell you about it:

The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History is great fun for those of us who want both the human stories of the war effort as well as points of to entry for casual examination. Over the course of the book I made a hand full of notes about people, works of art and places that I have really enjoyed looking up. I think book hit a sweet spot between the boots on the ground story of these men and women and a larger view of how the cultural treasures of Europe throughout the war.

I just finished Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. It only took me 3 years reading it on and off.  It is a fascinating book that covers a remarkable sweep of knowledge and history.  I had promised myself I would finish it before reading anything on my new Kindle and I didn't relish the idea of carrying it, yet again, on another airplane only to make minimal headway.

I definitely recommend it and would make sure you are pretty dedicated to powering through it.  This feels like I've definitely accomplished something.

Thanks Laura, this is pretty great.

I flipped over to Fallon last night right in the middle of the DeNiro interview, and the good news is I never have to do that again.  It's not that the interview was flat and lame, it was, but I just found Fallon downright annoying.  After what seemed like 20 minutes (probably closer to 7 minutes)  both my wife and I were sick to our stomach and changed the channel.  So good news is, there is only one late night option for me - Letterman.

So, after the late night reshuffle I will once again be one of those guys who can talk about how good it was in the old days...Let's see how did that go again: "I remember when the Tonight Show was great with Carson at the helm. I can't stand that Leno guy. I remember when Late Night used to be about seeing who was on Letterman and who was on Conan and making some hard choices."

I feel good about Conan on the Tonight Show and will pleased to get back to the business of Carson and Parr

All right, it's a marketing video and it's got all kinds of marketing schlock going on... Yeah I watched the whole thing.  Kinda cool.

I spotted it on a slashdot post.

In nerfing around on the site for Frankie Manning's 95th birthday (who is Frankie Manning?) looking at the bands that are playing and the Cangelosi Cards caught my eye.  So I clicked through.  Turns out they are an old time jazz swing band, or something the like.  A search yields a link to Down Home Radio where they appear to be a frequent guest band.  There are also a few video's on youtube of varying quality.  All in all there stuff sounds great.  Their vocalist, Tamar Korn, makes the old vocal style sound effortless.  They play some dates around the city (New York City) and so I must go out and find them.  Ive also subscribed to Down Home Radio's podcast and look forward to consuming the back episodes.

Reduce costume and theme parties... ha ha hah.

First of all the piece is hysterical. As I was watching I realized the BestBuy looked familiar. And while I don't have confirmation, I'm pretty damn sure they shot it at the location below. Let's have a look at street view and see.

View Larger Map

Yep, tree, billboard, brick color, narrow street. I'd say that's the one.

Improv Everywhere's 8th No Pants subway ride was January 10th.  And as you can see from the video it was pretty freakin hilarious.

Guy Walks In to a Bar

Two guys are walking their dogs. One has a big German Shepherd, the other a tiny Chihuahua. They pass by a very fancy restaurant and the guy with the Shepherd suggests they stop in for a drink. “They’re not going to let us in with the dogs,” the man with the Chihuahua says. Just do what I do, his friend assures him. The guy with the Shepherd walks in first and the maitre d’ stops him. “We don’t allow animals in here, sir. Sorry.” This is a seeing-eye dog, the man says. The maitre d’ apologizes and the man with Shepherd sits at the bar. Then the man with Chihuahua comes in.

“We don’t allow pets in here,” says the maitre d’.

“This is a seeing-eye dog,” says the man with the Chihuahua.

“That’s not a seeing-eye dog, that’s a Chihuahua.”

And the man says: “They gave me a Chihuahua?”

I just wanted the trailer for the new Star Trek movie, a prequel around the life of Kirk, and I'm pretty excited.

Thanks go to Foo for posting it.

I've been following sweetafton23 for a bit now, after the Harvey inspired by the Bruner turned me on to her. I was working a bit late tonight and wanted a short reprieve from work so I happened over to youtube to see if there was an update. I was surfing her old posts and saw she had covered "Still Alive". It sounded familiar enough so I clicked play. Little did I know that Mike had already played the song for me after privileging me with watching him complete Portal on his Xbox 360. At any rate, it's pretty funny little song written by Jonathan Coulton. So without further ado, except thanks to Mike for keeping from falling off the edge of cult hits into the mainstream, I give you sweetafton23 doing "Still Alive". (be sure and listen to the words)

Through various circumstances and noble pursuit I ended up having a spare $200. So I bought myself a Flip Mino HD (from Amazon whose affiliate link creator is screwy with this product for some reason), the deliciously pocket sized HD camera. In case the Flip people ever make it here, it was David Pogue's review in the New York Times that introduced me to the HD version of the product and ultimately was the factor that put me over the edge to purchase one.

So this Christmas I took a brief 3 day road trip from Phoenix, AZ to San Diego, CA. I had the camera shipped to me in San Diego and took some video on the way back. Then I used the footage and iMovie HD on my mac book pro to make a short (6 min 21 sec) video. With the learning curve and my aesthetic sense it took about a day to edit 6 min of video from less than an hour of raw footage. I think it looks pretty good, but there are some obvious rough spots. One of which is the trans coding to post on Vimeo.com. It comes through a little pixelated. The original is very crisp and the overall quality of the end product is fantastic. Have a look for yourself:

I also wanted to mention the fantastic artists whose music influenced the video and whose albums I really enjoy. Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers: One Hour Mama

and The Airborne Toxic Event

The New York Times has a piece on the Freakanomics blog about Rice and Prostitutes - What do rice and prostitutes have in common? by Steven D. Levitt. I'll admit the subject matter was the hook that lured me in, but the discovery of a Giffen Good is what kept me. Here is the first couple sentences... I definitely recommend a quick read:

Rice Girl. Italian movies, posters and publicity. A film that played on the success of Bitter Rice. La risaia/RIce Girl, Raffaello Matarazzo, 1956.

Thanks ItalianGerry. It's pretty great.

Yes, this is what I've gotten myself into.

There once was a girl from St. Paul

Who went to a birth-control ball,

With high expectations

To give demonstrations,

But nobody asked her at all.

I don't really know how to set this up other than, The Muppets:

I was surfing forgetfoo.com while waiting for a build to complete. This video caught my attention and I just thought it was seriously cool.

Here is the resulting commercial

and now you just watched a 2:45 ad for Sony... you hear that Sony... send me a check.

Tonight I attended a vloggers meet-up at the rocketboom studio here in NYC where my friend Kathleen and her producing partner Tom of Dinosaur Diorama productions spoke about the realities of producing video for the web.  It was a good time, and Kathleen and Tom did a good job of laying out there both their understanding of what it takes to get video on the web and the enormous economic and logistical challenges that they wrestle with to get their bumble bee to fly.

And then the night got interesting.  We went over to a bar called Two Eighteen and happened into what appeared to be a wise-guy convention complete with a fellow standing just outside an alcove opposite to the bar SINGING the tunes (with a microphone) over the bar's speakers.  Some serious "fly me to the moon" going on.  Kathleen remarked how fantastic this was to have what looked like a wise guy singing rat pack for us while we drank.

And then it got better.  Vinnie Vella walks up to us (yes, THE Vinnie Vella) and tells us he's the emcee for the night and that there is quite a show coming up.  He then proceeds to got on the microphone and tell the whole bar not to worry about the dozen or so dudes who look like wise-guys, they're just actors.  He then proceeds to introduce a Barbara Streisand look alike who sings a Streisand song in a full length sequined evening gown.

Well as it turns out from what I can tell the actor Vinny Vella has made living playing mob types for some pretty high powered mob movies.  He played "Artie Piscano" in Martin Scorsese's Casino.  There is a video link on his site of him talking with Martin about a scene he did with Scorsese's mother.

To circle back around it was really interesting talking to people in the independent content generation scene, i.e. vloggers, try and reason out how to monetize through the various avenues of distribution and streamlining content to keep costs down.

Finally, because I pay attention to what Kathleen says and I am unendingly willing to plug my friends work, I offer you the following thought:  Respect your independent web video content creator.  They are likely working on a shoe string trying to squeeze just a little more blood from a stone to raise the money to keep going.  So go watch theburg.tv the allfornots.com and give them your eyeballs and tell your friends.

Thanks go to Kathleen for letting me be part of her entourage.  By the way my entourage name is "Cheetah" - just so we're clear.

So I'm sitting here waiting for a Windows update to install... don''t ask me why and I happened on a link that led to the "top 10 places to buy t-shirts on the web" (thanks foo). Really senseless story short: I am trying to figure out if I could pull off either of these t-shirts.

So, let's have your vote. Leave it in the comments will you. Granted those of you the know me have a better guage, but I'm actually as interested in those of you that don't. This is also a great way to embarrass yourself online: call for user input and then receive none. So don't leave me hanging brah.

I posted on of her video's a while ago. Here's the link if you missed it. She's pretty original, and frankly searching for "Ukelele" on YouTube.com is pretty darn entertaining.

As my regular readers will tell you, my recent posts have been less meaty than usual. Some simple cause and effect later, my direct traffic has been down. Interestingly enough, it hasn't hurt my overall traffic too badly. It has meant that my search traffic has become 59% of my traffic, and Arizona, i.e. searches for "Dave and Buster's Phoenix", has been a big part of that. It just recently eclipsed New York as my primary source of traffic.

I was also noticing search traffic from the term "Dave and Busters Tempe" so I thought I'd investigate what they could be looking for. Turns out Dave and Busters has opened a new location in Tempe, so I thought I would write a post about it.

I was looking at Google Trends after I composed this post. I searched on the term "dave and busters" to find out that the top search city for "Dave and Busters" is Jacksonville, FL followed by my old stomping ground San Diego, CA. So, I wonder what my next D&B post will be about... Perhaps sunny Florida? My only lament is apparently I'm writing a blog about an establishment I don't really like that much. I guess I understand the draw if your life is suburbia, but the one in NYC is a joke.

For those of you who got here by searching "Dave and Busters Tempe" - Welcome. The information you're looking for is below

The Dave & Busters
Address: 2000 East Rio Salado Parkway, Suite 1100, Tempe, AZ 85050
Phone: 480-281-8456
Hours:

Mon - Thurs 11:30am - midnight

Friday 11:30am - 1:00am

Sat 11:00am - 1:00am

Sun 11:00am - midnight

Happy Hour Mon - Fri 4:30 - 7pm

Late Night Happy Hour Sun - Thurs 10pm - close

Power HourTM Mon - Fri 4:30 - 7:00pm

House Policies: (6 minors to 1 adult maximum). 18 and up; Guardian age 25; Non-smoking.

Here is the map of the Tempe Marketplace from their site with Dave and Busters highlighted.

At the time of writing this, Google maps had not posted satellite images of the center

For those of you who read my blog and didn't arrive here via searching "dave and busters tempe", I'm pretty sure you know what I'm up to.

I don't even know what to make of the Toilet Tattoos Frogs in the Moonlight Design. What's worse it was at the bottom of my page as a recommended item. I can only hope this is part of the Father's Day push that retail America is undergoing - yeah that's right, I hope its a phase.

Still, I will be reviewing my recent purchases in the hopes of finding out why I would get this recommendation. I did purchase an HD antenna for the apartment recently. So let that be a warning, if you like free HD broadcast television, you may like a new toilet seat.

Negligent Sign Maker, originally uploaded by astoriahermit.

Doesn't the sign maker have some responsibility to say, "I think you mean
'Salon'?"

Am I just crazy? I'm mixed about places like this. On one hand you want to write them off as imbeciles, but on the other hand, perhaps they just don't spell well, but they are perfectly able to perform their business with aplomb. Granted, spelling is FREE. So I guess if you're keeping score, they definitely lose points - but enough not to frequent the business?

An example near and dear to my hear is my local deli. It's run by two Bangladeshi brothers. Initially they were going to take this Greek Deli and make it a coffee shop, but for whatever reason (likely funding) they have been operating it as a Greek Deli. Actually, they have a fantastic beer selection. They really have found a great business selling beer (my post about beer that includes them).

The only thing that is kind of akin to the Solan #2 is the official name of their business is "Expresso Plus" as it appears on my bank statement when I pay by debit. I don't have the heart to tell them you spell Espresso with an 'Es' not an 'Ex'. Meh, forgivable - beer selection good.

Taking a break from cleaning up my file system to free up space and make sure I have a good back up of the stuff I want and I came across a great commercial from a few years ago:

Thank you Mr. Harvey... this is beautiful

My team and I left a little surprise for about 60 co-workers this morning.  Let's just say it involved the little stickers pictured here and the optical sensors or trackballs on the bottom of their mouse.

Actually, thanks go to Noam for giving me the idea by pulling the prank on me a while ago. It takes people a bit to figure it out. Usually one or two unpluggings of the of mouse and a restart - or at least that's how long it took me.

And, before they try and weasel out, my accomplices:

If you've seen the Google April fools joke, it's a good one, but there is an Easter Egg.  If you expand the browser further and further to the right the image of the Martian landscape keeps going.  It should be mentioned that I have a dual monitor setup that extends 2560 pixels across.  Now I haven't been able to reproduce this, but when you expand all the way out to 2560 a little text bubble appears at the far right on the martian horizon in the photo that says "Welcome to Mars. Nice monitor". So pay attention as you do it, and if you figure out how to reproduce, please let us know.  Guessing it's a cookie thang.

Here is what it looks like on my screen (click the image for the full size):

I have yet to explore the questionnaires, etc.  But you better believe I'm signing up.

I love April Fools.

Saw The Darjeeling Limited last night and I loved it. First of all I'm a huge Wes Anderson fan - like back to Bottle Rocket big.  If you haven't seen this one you need to.  I've conveniently included the trailer here for your viewing pleaure:

I'm not going to drag you down with great themes and symbolism, but they are all there and delivery. You should see this movie for no other reason that the visual richness, but the music is great as well. And if all that weren't enough the movie was shot on a freakin train - no really, like on a train underway not just some we'll-CGI-it-in-later train. I'm kind of sad I already put it back in the netflix envelope.

FYI:You more or less have to have seen "There Will be Blood" for this to make sense

From the New York Times

Technology

Toshiba Concedes Defeat in the DVD Battle

By MARTIN FACKLER

Published: February 20, 2008

The Japanese electronics giant threw in the towel on its HD DVD technology, announcing that it would no longer develop, produce or market disc players for the format.

In case you were wondering as I was, what is the difference this little FAQ helped me out. Here are the specs:

This is probably old news, but I can't stop watching it. It seems like it should be a cartoon.

I actually saw this as a demo while looking at Shadowbox.js that foo tipped me off to.

Over a week ago my wife and I moved around our apartment - make office bedroom and vice versa. Part of that was breaking down my killer media setup - 1970's Pioneer Stereo

Awww, yeah you know what I'm talking about. And my killer Philips one notch above bargain priced DVD player, my needs-to-be-replaced 20" CRT television and... My late 90's high end Sony VCR. This is when it occurred to me. I own all of 6 movies on VHS and the last time I used the VCR may have been 2002. So it's time for the VCR to go... Now I have to figure out what to do with it. Do people still buy these things?

Mashable has a post Star Trek Comes To Joost, Nerds Rejoice!. I will confess I will probably be checking this out, much to the chagrin of my wife.

Joost just made some folks in the United States very happy as they are now serving up the entire original series of Star Trek (ST:TOS to those in the know).

If you haven't checked out Joost it's time. I was in on the early beta and watched a bunch of their National Geographic shows - I don't have cable and I really miss the The Learning Channel and the Discovery Channel. Their content is really becoming pretty compelling. They apparently (according to their site) have 408 channels, but that looks a lot like several flavors of different channels. Now all I need is a media PC and a 32" flat panel - why 32"? That's about all my apartment will handle.

I've actually already taken considerable advantage of the Netflix movies on demand functionality. I didn't really watch Heroes when it came out, but it was available on demand from Netflix - you still can't do more than save it to be added to your queue. So I was able to catch up to the current (last) season. Luckily I did so just before the season finale otherwise I'm sure I would have driven myself mad. I try to avoid getting hooked on series that don't have several seasons available on DVD already. This prevents me from being a slave to television, or at the very least keeps it on my own terms.

At any rate, Silicon Valley Insider has a tidbit from the AP about the news.

Netflix isn't taking Apple's charge into movie rentals lying down. The AP reports Netflix is set to announce unlimited streaming of films and TV shows on Monday, a day before Steve Jobs rolls out iTunes' movie rental service at Macworld.

Previously, Netflix had capped the amount of time of TV/films that users could stream based on their subscription plan. Under the $16.99 per month plan, for example, users could stream up to 17 hours of programming. Now just about all of Netflix's 7 million subscribers will be able to stream as much as they want, an interesting test of the subscription model, especially compared to Apple, which is expected to offer 24 hour rentals of films for $3.99.

A Netflix spokesman conceded this will raise costs considerably; the financial impact of the switch will be addressed on the Jan. 23 Q4 earnings call. Presumably, the fees Netflix pays to Hollywood and for bandwidth go through the roof, but it could mean fewer DVDs sent in the mail, which would lower some physical costs and postage.

Unlimited streaming is the second recent initiative to defend its turf from Apple. Before CES, Netflix teamed up with LG to build a box to bridge the PC-TV divide, a clear challenge to Apple TV.

Now, I've never bought anything off iTunes - and hopefully will never have to because Netflix will protect me. Presently I have 5 at a time from Netflix which is perfect for having three series (currently on Six Feet Under - The Complete Fifth Season disc 3 of 5) and two movies. I also don't do cable television so Netflix is my primary forms of media consumption.

For those of you who got here by searching for "Dave and Busters Phoenix"

Here is the information you're looking for:

The Dave & Busters (formerly Jillians - I think) is located in the Desert Ridge Shopping center at the south east corner of North Tatum Boulevard and East Deer Valley Drive. It is in the main part of the shopping center.
Address: 21001 N Tatum Blvd Suite 44-1400 Phoenix, AZ 85050
Phone: 480-538-8956
Hours:

Mon - Thurs 11:30am - midnight

Friday 11:30am - 1:00am

Sat 11:00am - 1:00am

Sun 11:00am - midnight

Happy Hour Mon - Fri 4:30 - 7pm

Late Night Happy Hour Sun - Thurs 10pm - close

Power HourTM Mon - Fri 4:30 - 7:00pm

House Policies: (6 minors to 1 adult maximum). 18 and up; Guardian age 25; Non-smoking.

If you got here because you happen to follow my blog

Over the past few weeks I've actually been getting a lot of traffic (relative to the minimal amount of traffic that I do get) from people searching for "Dave and Busters Phoenix". At some point I've seen my blog linked to as the second item on the second page of google search results. This really surprised me because the post I did on Dave & Busters (Dave & Busters Did I miss something) was about how lousy I found it to be.

So at the very least I'm pandering to traffic. I'm planning on doing a post on the web analytics and the blogging related stuff I'm using and on my site . Kind of a state of the blog thing - it is that time of year isn't it?.

Actually, the thing that interests me the most is how a random set of words can get you on the search radar. Although, those aren't really random words they encapsulate a certain intent. I guess on angle to SEO is figuring out what those intents are and lining up behind them. I'm somewhat curious what would happen if I just spent time writing posts about directions to the third tier of common places. By third tier I mean things that are not 'A' list places (e.g. Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building) and not 'B' list places (e.g. JFK, stadiums). There is just no way I'll get on that radar, it's too huge. But what about the third tier - shopping malls, Chuck-E Cheeses. Every national chain store site has their store locater but they are all driven around national coverage. What if I decided I was going to do detailed location information of Staples Stores in mid-town Manhattan ("Staples midtown")... Hmm.

Gizmodo has a tidbit entitled Dr. Awkward Sings Backward... that is more or less amusing.

You gotta stick with it. It all gets explained.

You'll get a kick out of this guy's backwards singing, and he actually has a pretty good voice. Halfway through, the video is reversed, and you'll discover what song he's actually crooning. See if you can guess what the song is before the halfway point. We didn't get it until he was nearly finished with his backwards section. Great job of picking out things that look crazy when played in reverse, too. Jeez, how long did it take for this guy to learn to sing that reverse gibberish? Not to mix a maxim here, but jeez, the devil never even lived until he learned how to do that. It was worth it. After watching that, all we can say is, "Did I strap red nude, red rump, also slap murdered underparts? I did!"

If you're looking for something to do tonight I have just the thing. Come see The All-For-Nots play at Mercury Lounge (217 E. Houston Street - corner Avenue A & Houston) at 7:30. This is your chance to notch your I-saw-them-when belt so you are well prepared for when they mahir.

I'll be there tonight support my friend Kathleen, producer extraordinaire. It's also endlessly humorous to me that they are following a band called the The Neverbeens. I can't think of a better opening act for a psuedo-fictional real band.

If you're looking for directions to Dave & Busters in Phoenix click here

Today was my second all time ever visit to Dave & Busters. The first time was in Phoenix. There is a bowling alley at the one in Phoenix (actually Scottsdale) and we had a great time at the lanes with wife's family over Thanksgiving. While technically that was a D&B experience, it was a bowling alley. I did go upstairs there to the game area and play one of my favorite video games from years gone by and get hit on by a cougar. Overall, impression of the place more or less neutral - game room really didn't do much for me.

Today we went to the D&B on 42nd street in NYC for an intern event for work. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not ungrateful for an all expense, open bar, game play on the company, trip to D&B. I just wasn't finding much in the game room that was all that great. The whole place was littered with those terrible dexterity games where you drop a coin onto a shelf in the hopes that your coin will shove others off the shelf. What are those? Other than that it's one Dance Dance Revolution in the corner, a Donkey Kong / Super Mario Brothers / Donkey Kong Junior game next to Miss Pac Man and Space Invaders consoles. On the upside, having it be a Tuesday afternoon with two cocktail waitresses who have nothing else to do but follow us around bringing beverages. So at the end of the day, I don't ever really need to go back to D&B, but then again how does the old saying go, "the worst day fishing is better than the best day at work."

My friend Kathleen's (creator of theburg.tv) latest endeavor has kicked off in anticipation of it's kick-off.  The All-For-Nots is a band out to "conquer the world wide web..."

I'm excited to see what she's got up her sleeve as I really enjoyed the burg.

I still enjoy watching my favorite episode of the burg - Training. What can I say, I live in Queens and I love the Doppelgängers

I promise not too re-point you to or repost EVERYTHING Noam (Pygmy Goats - Man's Best Friend) posts but damn if I can't NOT post this one.

Shawn, I totally get it now. I'd probably go for stew, seems a bit small for kebabs.

Watched the Phoenix Coyotes spank the Toronto Maple Leaf's today. While a hockey game in the burbs of Phoenix is considerably more tame than a Rangers game at the Garden, it's still a rollicking good time. 

<sarcasm>Good news for those of you who like to package your entertainment you can get all you can eat packages starting at $30.

"All You Can Eat" menu items include:

• Hot Dogs
• Fountain Drinks
• Popcorn
• Nachos
• Peanuts

Sign me up!</sarcasm> 

Actually, for someone who follows no sports what so ever, I really enjoy a hockey game.  Moves quick, it's rockus, and well the fights are pretty freakin' cool.