The post's title was too easy, but I had to go there. I just saw the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and I had forgotten how much I had liked it, especially its straightforward message about the creeping (well, not so much creeping anymore) commercialism of current Christmas practices and how celebrants should remember and be celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ (historical and political arguments, aside) instead.
But broadcasting it on Nov. 28 is a tad too early, isn't it?
my friend Elaine sent me this blog post about UWO (University of Western Ontario) soliciting comments about how to balance the need for green space versus parking on campus. While that's nothing new, what's really interesting is that the blog is an official UWO blog set up by the administration, called "At Western".
It seems (anecdotally anyways) Western has been more progressive towards using Internet technology and making it standard practice, at least when compared to Queen's. I don't recall, for example, Queen's admin setting up a blog to interact with students. Western's wireless network, from what I've heard, is also campus-wide, whereas Queen's is only available in certain areas (and even then, it's spotty at times). Although, some Queen's admin have Facebook accounts, but that's just weird.
While there've only been a moderate numbers of comments (20ish seems to be the max lately), I would be more interested in looking at the total number of hits for each post to see whether students are actually going to read this blog, how well-known this is and whether it's an effective strategy in communicating with students.
Either way, I find it impressive that the administration is striving to keep up with current technology.
For all its trite and melodramatic delivery of the dialoge, I LOVE Babylon 5. I have likely posted about this before, but I don't feel like digging up the older post as I have yet to go back and add subject links to all my old posts (now that Google has provided this option) so it would take quite a bit of time.
One of my favourite things about the show was that J. Michael Straczynski, the creator, envisioned this series, his story, to have a definitive beginning, middle and an end. I had once heard that he wrote the scripts in order to have the series completed in 5 season. How long did it take the series to complete? 5. It made for very satisfying TV watching because the major plotlines and most of the subplots were resolved by the end.
Unlike Lost, where it seems like the current story's being dragged out because it's become popular so news execs want to milk it and stretch the series for all as long as possible. Consequently, the story's suffering from its poor storytelling and irrelevant plot twists; it's hemmorrhaging viewers to other shows because nothing's being resolved.
The solution of course is to have series like Lost be written with a limited number of seasons in mind, with a definite beginning, middle and end. I'm not the only one who believes this would work:
"Viewers would be both more willing to sign on at the beginning (knowing their investment will pay off) and more inclined to buy DVDs later (either as catch-up for newbies or as a satisfying boxed set)."
"But which would you rather tune in to next fall: a brand-new mystery from the creators of Lost, that entirely satisfying and thrilling limited-run series you loved? Or yet another season of Lost, that show that started out so well but is now meandering all over the damn place? Puzzles are meant to be solved, not prolonged. You can only tease viewers so long before they feel like they’re being mocked."
Like Metafilter, Kottke is a site for me to find out about interesting stories, events and blog-worthy materials. These last few days have seen a smattering of interesting links. For your viewing pleasure:
1) On a desert island, if I could only take 5 comedy movies with me, they would have to be, off the top of my head: 40 Year Old Virgin, Grosse Point Blank, High Fidelity (yes, TWO John Cusack movies), Old School, and Dogma. I could live on those 5 comedies for the rest of my life. What would YOUR picks be?
2) On "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", A good explanation on why contestants blather on about inane stories of their lives on their way to a cool million dollars.
3) Most people barely know about web 2.0 and what that means (while those who do know, generally hate the term), so why do we need web 3.0?!
4) This is supposedly a banned, un-aired ad for the XBox 360. I can totally understand why someone might not want this shown on national television, but man do I love it!
5) Finally, people who know me will know that Google Earth and Google Map are my (not-so) secret nerd-love apps. Well, someone's now provided historical maps that can be overlayed as layers on Google Earth. So for example, you can see existing 3-D buildings in the context of a New York 1836 street layout. This app just keeps getting better and better.
via Metafilter, this is an animation short posted by a YouTube user, Dony, that he created for his Master's thesis...If only my thesis would have as much emotional impact. Anyways, on with the show:
I recently talked to a friend over the phone about what's been going on with her life and she tells me that she's just bought another condo, going to move in with her boyfriend, but rent out her old one. I was happy for her but completely floored. She recounted a similar conversation with another friend who remarked,
"How did you get two houses and a career ahead of me in the Game of Life?!"
And while that was what I was wondering too, all I could imagine in my head was the board game "The Game of Life":
If this was an accurate representation of our lives, it felt like she was cruising with the top down and wind blowin' in her hair down that long straightaway behind the spinning wheel ...
Whereas, I'm stuck at the fork in the road near the spinning wheel with a flat tire and I'm trying to hitch-hike the rest of the way...
