Category: Uncategorized

…and I’m getting a few things set up here on a new server. It’ll be a day or two before I load all the articles and images back into the blog. Until then, things are going to be a bit sparse until then.

My thanks to John Keegan and the fine folks at PressHarbor for giving me a new won’t-flake-out home for the blog!

I couldn’t resist checking out a picture with a name like that, could I?

Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

No, not the “King of Pederasty Pop” Michael Jackson, but the “Beer Hunter”/Scotch expert Michael Jackson. He had Parkinson’s disease and died earlier this morning.

Most of what I know about beer came from Mr. Jackson, thanks to his Great Beer Guide as well as his Beer Hunter TV series. That’s why I plan to salute him with a toast with some fine Belgian beer, of which he was especially fond.

Requiescat in pace, Good Sir.

I was sick in bed with a really bad cold for most of the weekend. I alternated between sleeping, drinking lots of juice and water, watching a little TV (I’d never seen Good Will Hunting before) and a little light surfing on the laptop.

While poking about the web, I stumbled into a site I’d never seen before: the TV Tropes wiki. It started out as a catalogue of TV writing tricks of the trade, formulas and cliches, but has expanded slightly to incorporate movies, literature and even videogames. Here are just a few of the tropes you’ll find on this site:

• The “Falling in Love” Montage: Two characters are becoming romantically entwined. Their first date is shown normally and the audience is shown how amazingly compatible the couple is. A montage follows, usually with no dialogue and an upbeat or romantic soundtrack, showing the couple during a series of classic dates (the picnic, the carnival, the unexpected kiss, the meaningful eye contact, The Meadow Run, etc). The montage segues into the end of a date and the audience is shown just how in love the couple has become.
• Odd Couple: Mr Neat/Tidy/Law-Abiding/By-The-Book forced to work/live with Mr Messy/Slob/Zany/Risk-Taker/Plays-By-His-Own-Rules. The couple might be cops. See also: Salt And Pepper, Different As Night And Day. Compare Heterosexual Life Partners.
• We Want Our Jerk Back: A common Sit Com plot where the total ass learns his lesson, turns sweet and benevolent -– and becomes absolutely intolerable, making the other characters yearn for the original tool. Eventually the character in question will revert to normal, and the reaction will either be relief, or realisation that he really is worse in his obnoxious form. A subset of Flowers For Algernon.
• The Obi Wan: The protagonist is not the best at what he or she does. There is someone else — a friend or mentor — who is better, faster and more experienced. However, they aren’t the hero — the lights don’t dim and the music doesn’t swell when they enter the room. The goal of the Obi Wan is to pass the torch to the protagonist, before dying. Which they almost always do, then becoming a Spirit Advisor, either as a literal “spirit” or in flashback. If they don’t die, they will stick around giving advice, but not actively adventuring (unless Gondor Calls For Aid). The Obi Wan character, by having a mentor role, can also play Mr Exposition. In film, the Obi-Wan typically bites it at the end of Act 2, passing the torch to the young hero who then goes on to avenge his death. The Obi Wan is an Archetypal Character.
• Lampshade Hanging: Pointing out the use of a trope, as when a WWE announcer said “If I live to be 100, I will never understand why they keep so many damn weapons under the ring. It’s like they want the wrestlers to use them on each other!” Another example: when a character says something like “This idea is so crazy, it just might work!” or “I feel like I’m in a badly written TV show.”

If you don’t know where to start, go visit the wiki and hit the “Random Item” button at the top of the page, then start following links. It’s an entertaining read.

(This was cross-posted to Global Nerdy.)

What’s a blog for, if not to toot one’s own horn, or at least the horn of the company for whom he is a spokesmodel?

Tucows, where I’ve worked for four years and where I hold the title of Technical Evangelist, is on Canadian Business’ 2007 “Tech 100” List, their annual listing of Canada’s 100 largest publicly traded companies. We’re right by the median, ranked at number 49 on the “Performance” list.

I like to think that at least a little chunk of that was my doing.

Back in July, I pointed to a YouTube video of an NBC Nightly News broadcast from July 4, 1972. Here’s another one, found via Boing Boing, featuring a young Karl Rove in his role in the Young Republicans as the “GOP College Director”. Then-reporter “Gunga Dan” Rather describes Rove’s group in a voice-over as “an operation aimed at embarrassing pundits who say that Nixon doesn’t appeal to youth.”

The voice is the same, but this is a skinnier Rove, sporting a look that might have been considered a little “square” among some of his college peers in 1972, but would give him indie rocker cred today:

Rove interviews quite well, and you can see the future Republican strategist in the young fella in the video, talking about how to reach a younger audience.

Here’s an interesting still from the piece: those are Karl Rove’s hands holding the “Generation Of Peace” bumper sticker, which highlights the first letters in each word. For those of you not familiar with American politics, “GOP” — short for “Grand Old Party” — is a nickname for the Republican Party, in the same way that word “Tory” is often used to refer to the Conservative Party in Canada and the UK.

It’s interesting, because only a few years prior to this newscast, the use of the word “peace” was considered to be controversial. I remember reading in The Pop Sixties: A Personal and Irreverent Guide that the “goodbye” segment of an episode of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was cut because Tommy Smothers said “Please talk peace”. I get the feeling that these bumper stickers must’ve raised a few eyebrows in the upper echelons of the Committee to Re-Elect the President.

As for Rove today, does he still know how to reach the kids through their culture? Watch this video of Washington’s latest hip-hop sensation: “MC Rove” at this year’s Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner: