| Sunday, 29 April 2001, 6:06 am Tags: Blogging |
Thanks to Brandon Clark, you can now see eMale’s one and only video as it aired on Call for Help. (It’s a high quality Real Video file. I’m not sure how well this will play on a modem connection, but give it a try. You can also download the file and watch locally. Requires the Real Player.) This may be the best thing we ever did on Call for Help. Or the worst. Or both!
[[I'm removing the embedded version - it was messing up some people's blogging. If you want to see the video, right click "download the file" above and select Save target as...]]
Credits:
eMale is Chris Kraus, Greg Melton, Martin Sargent, Rich Statter, and Christopher Swanner. Special appearances by Becky Worley and Leo Laporte. Produced by Becky Worley and Martin Sargent. Download My Love is also available on MP3.
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| Saturday, 28 April 2001, 5:29 pm Tags: Blogging |
The TechTV third anniversary party was last night at a nightclub in San Francisco. Actually it was just a couple of blocks north of PacBell Park so parking was a little tough. I found a spot relatively nearby, though, which was good because I didn’t stay too long.
I’ve been working for the company longer than anyone else there – seven years in July. The next most senior employees are folks hired for our old MSNBC show, The Site (including Kate who was in IT at The Site). That’s only a handful of people who have been around more than five years. Now there are over 500 employees, most of them hired in the past year. I hardly knew anyone. It was very weird!
The music was too loud and it was hard to talk and I’m an old fuddy-duddy so I left after an hour or so. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to talk with any management types, anyway. I might have said something I’d regret. (When have I ever done that? 
Now if there had been dancing that might have been a different story.
In any event, I have no gossip. Anything truly tawdry happened long after I drove off into the night. In years past these parties got quite wild – and I admit to having some hand in that. I guess we’re all getting a little more staid as we get to be a real corporation. Or maybe everyone’s just too tired!
I have a feeling we’ll have a little more fun in Austin, though. Nearly the entire Screen Savers crew is coming. And we have Saturday evening off. Heee yaw!
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| Thursday, 26 April 2001, 10:44 pm Tags: Blogging |
Interesting article about TechTV on TelecomClick today. The “cable insider” sounds like he’s a little bitter, to me, but it’s otherwise fairly accurate.
Well except for the part about Paul Allen sending e-mail to the show hosts daily. He’s never sent even one e-mail to me. But, Paul, if you’re reading this, it’s leo@leoville.com.
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| Thursday, 26 April 2001, 7:35 pm Tags: Blogging |
It’s Take Your Daughter To Work day and Abby and her best friend, Bianca, have joined me today. You’ll see glimpses of them on both TechLive and The Screen Savers. Maybe more if I can sneak them in.
Incidentally, we’ve cut way back on the financial news during my 90 minutes on TechLive. I’m really liking it much better. Much more time for tech info. What do you think?
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| Wednesday, 25 April 2001, 4:01 pm Tags: Blogging |
Someone suggested that with his new look, Marty should join a boy band. As some of you remember, we created a boy band for the old Call for Help (I’m calling it Call for Help Classic). We aired their video once and managment informed us it was never to air again. Maybe if you listen to the MP3 of the song you’ll understand why!
Speaking of one shot appearances, Monday’s show aired only once. In a weird combination of errors, neither the master nor the backup tape of the show was mode. So we had nothing to re-air. We decided that the Pentium IV 1.7 Ghz benchmarks were important enough that we repeated the segment last night.
Bottom line: with current software the 1.7 is no faster than the 1.4 Ghz P4 and the current AMD Athlon 1.3 smokes ‘em both. That may change when P4 optimized software comes out, but we don’t recommend a P4 at this time. Especially since it requires the dead-end RAMBUS memory.
When P4s work with standard DDR-RAM and P4 optimized software starts appearing, then it might be a good choice. But that’s at least six months off.
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| Wednesday, 25 April 2001, 3:27 pm Tags: Blogging |
Raymond Angel writes:
Hiya Leo,
As you know lots of Windows ME users can’t get into real dos mode.
Thats why I created a disk last night that will let ME users get into DOS mode.
I have full details online at…
http://www.thirdgeek.com/tools/medisk.shtml
Thanks,
Raymond
Cool tool. Thanks, Ray.
On a related note, I’ve been getting e-mail about a program called WinFix that claims to make Windows more reliable. Sounds unlikely, but I’m getting a copy to try. I’ll report back. Meanwhile, they do have some excellent advice on their web page for improving all-around Windows stability. That, at least, is right on.
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| Monday, 23 April 2001, 2:50 am Tags: Blogging |
Ahhh. We had a wonderful time in Big Sur. We stayed at Ventana - a luxurious inn near Big Sur village. It’s where we honeymooned 10 years ago and it was just as we remembered it. Quiet, romantic, cozy, and comfortable.
Saturday we had brunch at the new Café Kevah at Nepenthe. Nepenthe, for those who don’t know, is a Big Sur institution. Orson Welles bought the property for Rita Hayworth for $167 during the war but they never returned. Since 1949 it has been a restaurant and hangout serving a famous hamburger around the open phoenix decorated fireplace. Check out their webcam for an idea of how lovely the view is.
But our best meal was Saturday night at Sierra Mar, the restaurant at the Post Ranch Inn across the street from Ventana. First of all, the view is remarkable. The Post Ranch Inn is built on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. We sat in a corner of the restaurant that feels like it’s flying high out over the ocean then watched the sun set as we ate one of the best meals we’ve ever had. (If you look at the picture of the restaurant on their webpage, you can see where we sat. It’s the table for two in the center of the picture at the very back.)
We’ve decided to stay at the Post Ranch Inn for my birthday this year! I can’t wait to go back.
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| Thursday, 19 April 2001, 5:31 am Tags: Advertising |
I know I’m just falling for BMW’s viral marketing ploy, but I can’t help but admire the clever ad campaign they’ve created just for web junkies. If you like a good mystery, visit the Apple MPEG-4 page and click on the :k: link at the bottom. Just remember, like a polar bear in a snow storm, not all is as it seems.
Thanks to RyanR who pointed this out on the message boards. For bonus fun try Tron20.net. (Thanks to Tallyrus for that one.)
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| Wednesday, 18 April 2001, 6:02 am Tags: Movies, TechTV |
I took down that last post because it was just a little too dark. Sometimes I think blogging takes the place of a shrink. It’s cheaper anyway. I really appreciate all the kind feedback and emails I received in response. I’m over it, thanks to you. No more drama.
Meanwhile, quite the buzz around TechTV about the article on our site posted by a disgruntled former employee. Guess someone forgot to cancel his VPN account and he wrote a scathing piece on the “top ten reasons why TechTV will be out of money by next year.” He was very kind to me but not so nice to others at the channel. For example:
“TV people are in general more stupid, shallow and less pleasant professionally than anyone I’ve ever worked with. I think this is because of the medium they work in – which by its very nature is superficial, stimulating without being intellectual, and sometimes outright boring. They don’t call it the boob tube for nothing. I just wish the boobs had stayed away from TechTV.”
A few sharp eyed viewers caught the page before it was taken down. I imagine the text will surface somewhere but I don’t dare post it here. Meanwhile it’s being passed around TechTV with lots of surreptitious looks. What a hoot.
Jennifer and I took the night off (I’ve got the usual column, web questions, and a speech to write but they’ll keep til tomorrow) and watched Almost Famous. Much better than I expected, but really, Kate Hudson for Best Supporting Actress? I loved Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs. Has he ever done a bad job. Just a joy to watch. Like Cameron Crowe, Jen and I graduated from high school in 1973 – when the movie takes place – so we really identified with it. It’s good to be a boomer!
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| Monday, 16 April 2001, 8:49 pm Tags: Blogging |
Oops. Let me try that again! (missing quote in the HTML):
I don’t use Blogger any more to maintain this web log, but it’s a great service and one of the few good ways to do a blog if you don’t have your own web host. One of the reasons I looked for an alternative to Blogger.com was the fear that they might go out of business.
Good news. That’s a lot less likely now that they’ve found an angel in the form of Dan Bricklen and Trellix. Ironically, Dan’s original company, Software Arts, the creators of Visicalc, was saved in a similar way by Mitch Kapor at Lotus. Read How the Blogger Deal Happened for details.
Good karma comes around.
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