There may be no substitute for MTV with today's addlepated and over-hormoned teen critters. Oh, there I go old-fogeying again. In fact, I'm so fogeyed-out that I can remember when MTV played music videos. This occurred in the late Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas blogged about it.
The game show Substitute is MTV's upcoming Cash Cab knockoff. The premise is that a phony substitute teacher surprises a high school class of non-honor students with: "You're on Substitute! It's a TV game show played right here in my taxi, er, classroom!" (Okay, he doesn't really say that. At least, I don't think he does.) The fake subber then quizzes the kids. No word if errant answers bring detention.
As derivative and vapid as the format sounds, this might be a semi-reasonable quizzer by MTV's loose (in every way) standards. The linked story wonders how the schoolkids wouldn't suspect anything "despite the presence of cameras and a production crew." But MTV has never had problems locating sub-genius-level folks - see Shore, Jersey - so fooling the teens probably won't be a daunting task.
No word yet on exactly when the show might turn up. Maybe when Skins gets old and wrinkled. Comic Jon Gabrus will play the faux teacher. Somewhat surprisingly, Michael Davies is the exec producer.
The British Museum's online catalog has a great collection of 16th century game boards. On top of that, they'll send you high-resolution scans for free! Search for 'game board' 1500 to 1600 and admire the pretty.
The reason Clone High was cancelled after a single season was due to the costs involved with removing Gandhi from the material they had already produced.
And now I have closure, knowing that it will never return to the air to resolve the cliffhanger. I always figured it was gone for good, but I never knew why, and now that I know, well, it is still a little sad.
Sometimes the gap between "The Bachelor: After the Final Rose" and the season premiere of "The Bachelorette" can seem like an eternity. It leaves you feeling a little empty. It's sort of like if your youngest child left home for good, and you knew you had to wait for two whole months until that child decided to drop out of school and move back in with you. It's just a hard transition. So we asked our Facebook followers to suggest the reality show they'd like to see us use to fill the vacuum, and the response has been overwhelming. Two people suggested we cover one of the "Real Housewives" programs on Bravo. GTOG is not about to ignore that kind of mandate.
We're going to give "Real Housewives of New York City" a shot. Here's the issue: it's already Season 4. We've got some catching up to do. I don't want to offend anyone, but you might be in the same boat. That's why beginning Friday and continuing through the season premiere on April 7, our special guest blogger, the very funny and talented Sheer Elegance, will give us the lowdown on all of the key players. Yes, she sounds like a shampoo, and yes, you're going to like her. As for the show itself, no idea what we're getting ourselves into here. But we'll be in it together.
By Andrew Oates and Richard Rabbat, Page Speed Team
At Google, we’re striving to make the whole web fast. As part of that effort, we’re launching a new web-based tool in Google Labs, Page Speed Online, which analyzes the performance of web pages and gives specific suggestions for making them faster. Page Speed Online is available from any browser, at any time. This allows website owners to get immediate access to Page Speed performance suggestions so they can make their pages faster.
In addition, we’ve added a new feature: the ability to get Page Speed suggestions customized for the mobile version of a page, specifically smartphones. Due to the relatively limited CPU capabilities of mobile devices, the high round-trip times of mobile networks, and rapid growth of mobile usage, understanding and optimizing for mobile performance is even more critical than for the desktop, so Page Speed Online now allows you to easily analyze and optimize your site for mobile performance. The mobile recommendations are tuned for the unique characteristics of mobile devices, and contain several best practices that go beyond the recommendations for desktop browsers, in order to create a faster mobile experience. New mobile-targeted best practices include eliminating uncacheable landing page redirects and reducing the amount of JavaScript parsed during the page load, two common issues that slow down mobile pages today.
Page Speed Online is powered by the same Page Speed SDK that powers the Chrome and Firefox extensions and webpagetest.org.
Please give Page Speed Online a try. We’re eager to hear your feedback on our mailing list and find out how you’re using it to optimize your site.
Finesse: It was with a strange mixture of complete shock and overwhelming indifference that you and I found out just this morning that today is the start of another baseball season. So far in 2011, our baseball coverage has been limited to breaking down the legal philosophies of the phlebotimist on the Barry Bonds jury and playing our daily "Guess The Real Pittsburgh Pirate" competition, in which we Tweet out two names, and leave it to our fans to decide which one is on the Pirates and which one is completely made up. But now that Opening Day is upon us, don't you think that we owe it to the people to give our perspective on the 2011 season?
Artistry: Considering that we feel we owe it people to give our perspective on the Real Housewives of New York City, I'm going with "Yes." Already there is reason for optimism today, as team officials revealed that the Pirates have pulled their 25-man roster's total payroll to within $162,863,389.00 of the New York Yankees. Pirates president Frank Coonelly says bonuses and "other variables" could shrink that number to as little as $156,738,389.00 by season's end. Progress. I think on the field the question on everyone's mind is how will the Philadelphia Phillies match up against our starting rotation of Kevin Correia, Paul Maholm, Ross Ohlendorf, Charlie Morton, and James McDonald.
James McDonald?
Finesse: Any time the Pirates' opening day starter is coming off a 10-10 season with a 5.40 ERA, you can be sure of one thing: he didn't pitch for the Pirates the previous year. Because if he had, he'd be coming off a 1-11 season instead. I don't know about you, but I'm excited that the Pirates were able to sign Kevin Correia, a 31-year old pitcher who has won 34% of his career starts. I imagine that the Yankees and Red Sox were showing tons of interest. Huge coup by the Buccos, don't you think?
Artistry: Kevin Correia sells tickets. I think it's striking that Correia compiled his 5.40 ERA in San Diego, one of the best pitchers' parks in baseball. Thank goodness our bullpen is so strong.
More Buccos analysis and predictions, after the jump... Finesse: Correia is a bonafide top-of-the-rotation guy, but the guy I'm excited about is Charlie Morton. A 27-year-old prospect coming off a 2-12 season with a 7.57 ERA. How is he only our 4th starter?
Charlie Morton?
On the subject of statistics, are you doing fantasy baseball this year? If you recall, you assisted me with my brief reentry into the fantasy baseball world last season, and I didn't finish in last place. I finished in second to last. I think my problem was that I only knew players from the last time I had done fantasy baseball -- in 1999. Much to my dismay, guys who were good in 1999 weren't necessarily still good in 2010.
Artistry: Can't do it this year because, despite appearances, I have a job. But if, as expected, we're pulling in seven figures worth of ad revenue by 2012, sign me up for next spring. The thing that is legitimately compelling about the Bucs this year is the fact that they do seem to have three potential thoroughbreds in Andrew McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez, and Jose Tabata. McCutchen is essentially a proven commodity now. What do you expect from the other guys? How much mileage do you think we can get out of these kids before we trade them for a relative of Adam LaRoche and three middling prospects?
Finesse: If history has proven anything, it's that while you might finish in last place without a guy named LaRoche on your team, you will definitely finish in last place with a guy named LaRoche on your team. Unless you're the Braves. But back to the positives. Yes, McCutchen, Alvarez, and Tabata seem to be legitimate major league players, and I'll throw Pittsburgh's own Neil Walker in that mix even though I'm too lazy to look up his stats. Always nice when your 25-man major league roster has 4 legitimate major leaguers. As for McCutchen, I'm a big fan, but sometimes I think the hype is a little overboard. He was .286 with 16 homers, 56 RBI, and 33 SB last year and I'm going to assume that he was batting somewhere around the middle of the order. Is 56 RBI enough? Or is it attributable to him being surrounded by garbage in the lineup? Or is he already counting down his time until he is a free agent?
Artistry: We really can't go far enough in hyping McCutchen. I have it on good authority that he will definitely leave Pittsburgh, either as a free agent or through a trade. Really, I have a source. In the meantime, I think we're obligated to turn him into the second coming of Barry Bonds, so we can demand at least two LaRoche cousins for him in a trade. The Bucs will bat him third on opening day, and he will be protected by the fearsome Lyle Overbay in the cleanup spot. I just looked this up.
Finesse: Just to be clear, you are talking about Lyle Overbay, not to be confused with longstanding Pittsburgh villain Lyle Odelein. Does Overbay also think Matthew Barnaby's wife is "god-awful to look at"?
Artistry: Ah, yes, Cornelius, from Planet of the Apes. Different guy. This is Lyle Overbay, who hit .243 last year. The biggest star on the Pirates may turn out to be new manager Clint Hurdle. He's showing a lot of enthusiasm. I look for him to bring it every night.
Finesse: When you are talking about a baseball manager bringing it, you're talking about a 65 year-old man putting on skin tight pants to sit still for 3 hours while eating. For Clint Hurdle, it's already been broughten.
Does any part of you feel bad for Hurdle? He's in a no-win situation. Not because there are two equally bad alternatives but because the only alternative is literally not winning.
Artistry: Nah. The only thing the guy needs to do is make periodic trips to the mound. He'll just have to do it earlier than other managers. Clint Hurdle is in a great position. All he can do here is over-achieve. If he manages to show a little fire and keep his sense of humor while losing less than a hundred games, they'll name a street after him. Any predictions?
Finesse: Let's break out my tried and true Pirate Prediction Formula. The formula starts at the eternal goal for these Buccos: 81 wins. Then, we apply the "variables."
The Charlie Morton-effect: Subtract 10.
McCutchen, Tabata, Walker, Alvarez being decent: Add 5.
Clint Hurdle seeming like a nice guy: Add 1.
Charlie Morton-effect part 2: Subtract 4.
If Zach Duke is still on the team: Subtract 5.
If you just found out Duke was on Arizona from a Google search, Subtract 5 anyway because we must have gotten someone horrible for him.
Sold out crowd on a few fireworks nights: Add 2.
Salary dumps at deadline: Subtract 5.
General indifference after finding they are 10-games out on May 1st: Subtract 4
Because they are the Pirates: Subtract 1
Hope that this will one day go away: Add 0
Bottom line: 60-102.
And you?
Artistry: Can't argue with your formula. Add 2 because Dejan Kovacevic is a reassuring presence in the clubhouse. 62-100. Let's Go Bucs.
By Scott Knaster, Google Developer Relations Hello, esteemed Google Code Blog readers! My name is Scott Knaster, and I’m the new editor of this blog. I’m interrupting the usual flow of posts to let you know about some new things happening around here. This blog has the company’s name on it, but of course, like all blogs, it’s written by individual people, to be read by other individual people, like you. We want to do a little more to celebrate that, starting with these small steps:
We’re adding a photo and some info about each post’s author. Googlers get around, to hackathons, conferences, and GTUGs, and now you’ll have faces to match up with names when we meet in real life.
We’ll spend more time responding to comments. As always, we encourage and appreciate your thoughtful, on-topic comments.
We’ll be tweeting more at @googlecode over on Twitter, too. And you can find a list of Google developer-related Twitter accounts here (choose Developers from the Category drop-down).
I’ll be hanging around here a lot. Think of me as the host of a big, geeky dinner party. Mostly I’ll be helping edit posts written by others—experts who work on the products they post about—but I’ll also write a few posts myself.
I’ve been working with APIs and platforms for a long time, mostly by writing docs about how to use them. Platforms are full of promise, but they’re only interesting and worthwhile when people build on them.
Please email me at sknaster@google.com if you have any thoughts or feedback for improving this blog. Or, just leave a comment on this post.
We apologize to those loyal fans who were so accustomed to seeing an enormous "Subscribe on iTunes" box that we couldn't figure out how to make smaller on the upper right hand corner of our sidebar, but in making our decision to enable advertisments, we were just being economically rational people. Owning the machine that is GTOG is like sitting on an oasis of crude oil - at some point, you have to drill, baby, drill. Have we sold out? Of course. Will we actually be able to buy anything with our ad revenue? Of course not.
For those who hate the new ads on the right, give it a chance. It's pretty intuitive. For example, we are working on our 2011 MLB preview post to preview the season that we just this morning remembered starts today, and in conjunction with the preview, we searched our site for "Barry Bonds." The two ads that came up? "Helping Africans in D.C." and "Music for a Visual Media."
This was my first 54mm and resin model alike, bought it at the same time as the Russian grenadiers http://anatolisgameroom.blogspot.com/2010/09/borodino-7-sep-1812-vignette.html and it was painted around the same time. For some reason I had not matt varnished this model, so I made a few touch ups on the paintjob, mainly darkening the gold and fixing the text on the parchment, and matt varnished him today.
Some of you might have seen this model before, but I hope that the matt varnish brings out more of the paintjob than could previously be seen.
Chitchat continues on the GSN schedule board about current and upcoming schedule changes. And you know I can't resist chitchat...
Other poster: I always had a feeling Power of 10 would sooner or later come to GSN, but I have to agree that the rerun abuse of it will be similar to the rerun abuse of Deal or No Deal.
Rerun abuse of 18 eps of Power of 10 is similar to running 200+ broadcast eps and 180 or so syndie eps of Deal or No Deal? Um, okay.
Really, the much better comparison is Bob Saget's 1 vs. 100, with its 28 episodes. GSN ran 'em ragged. Except Saget actually got some decent ratings in his network run, something Power of 10 almost never did.
Another poster: I think Wheel and Jeopardy! will return sooner or later, probably with the most recent episodes they can get their hands on.
Always possible, but I think it was more likely back when Sony owned all of the network. Now their stake is down to 35%.
RELATED NOTE: Contradictory notices are coming from the screener episode of Improv-a-Ganza. Haven't seen it myself, but a couple folks who did watch the show have posted very different reviews. Alex Davis at BuzzerBlog predictably loved it, Brittany Frederick at Starpulse...didn't love it. Will this show be the next Whose Line or the next Green Screen?
And in case anybody hasn't heard, the Charlie Sheen episode will turn up on April 12, the night after the debut.
I ordered etched Utara dice from GameStation and they just arrived! (You can see the bidding process in this post.) So, for those of you who want to venture in the wild and wooly world of dice games, I'll share some key info.
Here was the timeline: March 4: Sent request for estimate to GameStation. March 6: Receive quote from GameStation. (Next business day, basically.) March 17: Call GameStation toll-free to order 30d. Get a digital proof same day! March 28: 30 custom dice arrive in the mail.
Here are the specs and final numbers: 16mm square-edged opaque blank dice Custom face on each side Etch only Cost+Shipping: $81
I'm happy with my purchase. The rep at GameStation (Jason W) was prompt and very helpful at every step of the process. Plus, the dice look fantastic. I don't know why the etching option is lower-priced. We've roughed up these dice quite a bit over the past few days and show no signs of wear.
The price of the order may seem high for thirty dice, but this was a very small run and many vendors won't even bother producing a set this small in quantity. Now, I have a great set of dice to bring to conventions and run demos. With this strong prototype, I can create promotional videos and pitch to partners or, later, create a Kickstarter campaign. I'm excited about the possibilities!
» Many thanks to Jason at GameStation for making Utara dice a reality. » Super special thanks to Tim Rodriguez of Dice+Food+Lodging for recommending GameStation. » How to play Utara
Am I the only one who gets a little irritated when they go to a supermarket and there are parents and children in front of the store asking for money to support their little league/soccer/hockey team?
I don't mean selling some nominal thing for money, like a chocolate bar or other item of little value at an inflated price for that endeavor. I just mean they are asking flat out for money.
So it is sort of like this strange ritual where every weekend when I do my shopping, I try to slip past them unnoticed because I know that the whole experience is meant as a guilt trip all around. I think the frequency is one of the things that bothers me since it is almost every weekend that kids from one team or another are doing this with their parents in tow.
And the thing is, if it was someone collecting for the food bank or the mission, I wouldn't have a problem with it, and I would likely give them some money every time.
So is it just me being a huge curmudgeon, or does that sound a little suspect to anyone else?
It seems Miley Cyrus is feeling a bit threatened. Now reportedly "hyper-focused" on her bleating singing in preparation for an upcoming tour, the artist who brought us timeless classics like "Closet Full of Clothes" and "Hoedown Throwdown" took time out to warn against a disturbing trend: young, talentless girls taking the nation and its pop charts by storm. "It should be harder to be an artist," Cyrus declared. "You shouldn't just be able to put a song on YouTube and go out on tour."
We feel like we've just been slapped in the face by one of our heroes. Whatever, Miley. We'll have you know two things about Rebecca Black: 1) Her "Friday" video is approaching 70 million hits on YouTube. That number has nearly doubled since GTOG's "Friday" podcast. You're welcome, Rebecca; and 2) she is back in the studio working on her next big hit, entitled, not unexpectedly, "LOL."
"It's not just funny, it's not, ha ha, no nooooo. It's L-O-LLLLL. Textin' on my phone, yeah, got a new phone, gotta make me laugh, gotta make me smile, it's a new phoooonnneee."
Will we eventually devote an entire podcast to this new single? Yes. I imagine we will.
This was what you call a playoff preview. Get used to Bob Errey interviewing Danny Bylsma on the Penguins bench and Bylsma saying, "Gotta keep our cool, play the right way, and get to our game." Get used to the Penguins dominating the first period only to end up tied 1-1 at intermission. And if Marc-Andre Fleury is less than consistently great, Jordan Staal can't get off a shot on a breakaway, and nobody can pick a corner on Sergei Bobrovsky, get used to disappointment.
And Nausea. Followed by Dry Heaves.
Now let's look at the positives. With no Sid and no Geno, the Pens don't have the luxury of thinking ahead to whether they will have home ice advantage in the second round or beyond. The Pens chances of winning in Round 1 are right around 50-50, even if Sid returns. That's just the way it is when you can't score more than 2 goals. Given that, the only thing that we as fans should be looking at is the Pens' first-round matchup. The ideal scenario would have been to get the #1 seed and host Buffalo or Carolina. Unlikely after last night. But, with the Caps also in the mix for the top spot in the conference, it's entirely possible that a win last night would have ultimately secured the #2 overall seed and a date with the Rangers or Montreal in Round 1. We're not in favor of hosting either a hot Rangers team or Mike Cammalleri's smile. Give us Dwayne Roloson.
Wow.
- The other day, Artistry pondered whether the Pens could advance far without a consistent offensive threat at center. Whether the Pens have even inconsistent threats in Letestu and Staal is still up in the air. But what isn't up in the air is that if those two play the way they did last night, the Pens aren't going anywhere. Letestu gets a partial pass given that he was in his first game back from injury. Staal, for as great as he is and as much as we like him as a player, may be one of the least creative centers in the league when leading a 3-on-2. He's like Reality Staal.
- Down 3-2, the Penguins still had every chance to take back control of the game early in the third period. The Flyers gave up several golden chances in the first five minutes. Kris Letang had a wide open look cruising down the left side, but Bobrovsky had the angle. Then Peter Laviolette called a time out. As repulsive as we find Scott Hartnell, it's actually more upsetting that Philly finally has a good coach.
- Imagine how good the Flyers would be if Jeff Carter was still playing.
- The Flyers did a great job drawing penalties last night. Of course, if Sid had done it, it would have been "diving." When someone else does it, it is a "veteran play." GTOG isn't wearing Black and Gold glasses - we understand that Sid draws penalties and that Matt Cooke commits felonies on the ice. We just like to seize opportunities to illustrate to everyone else in the league that you do it, too. See our Twitter commentary on the Todd Bertuzzi situation.
- Where were the Penguins when Detroit was looking to dump Ville Leino?
- The evidence shows that even these superstar-depleted Penguins are a good team. You can see, though, how frustrating it must have been for fans of a team like Ottawa to watch Alexei Kovalev every night. For every snipe job like the bullet he fired past Bobrovsky in the first period, for every dazzling no-look pass like the one he feathered to Ben Lovejoy on Sunday, there are about three plays where he holds the puck a beat too long and turns it over. His blind drop pass - together with poor spacing by a backpedaling Kris Letang - led directly to Claude Giroux's winning goal. This is an unofficial statistic, but in 2001, over the course of his 1658 minutes played, nobody took the puck off of Alexei Kovalev. Alex: that was 10 years ago.
- James Neal was largely invisible last night. Anytime, Jim.
- Not many people know this, but when Pascal Dupuis comes home at night, immediately after tucking in his kids and softly kissing his wife goodnight, he tip-toes down into the basement, picks up a hockey stick, takes aim at the general vicinity of the wall, and uncorks a blistering slapshot. Just to get one more in before he goes to bed.
- Tyler Kennedy is like Tyler Kennedy on that drug from "Limitless."
Laced with NZT
Forget this one. The important game is Thursday in Tampa.
Tanks and armoured fighting vehicles of WW2: The World's greatest military vehicles 1939-45 by Jim Winchester
This is a small pocket sized hardback book that that covers most tanks and armoured fighting vehicles of the US, Germany, UK, France and Soviet Union. There are also a few Italian and Japanese tanks thrown into the book. The idea of this book is to be a quick reference book/encyclopedia. You don't get extensive amounts of combat history or anything like that like in a Wikipedia article.
Each entry about a specific tank or tank model (as many tanks were developed over long periods of time and upgraded along the way) is made up of 2 parts.
First part is a drawing of the tank from the front, side and top perspective - listed on these pages you will also find descriptions of armor thickness, armament, special equipment such as smoke launchers and other small details that are quite interesting or that made that particular tank unique in a good or a bad way.
Second part is a brief history of manufacturing and military operations. A nice short summary of whether the tank was effective/well designed for its time or a complete dud - and explains why. I find the sections about heavy well armored but poorly armed French tanks and very light Italian tanks being outmatched by British and Soviet one's to be one of the more interesting parts of this book. As you flip through the various tank designs you get an idea why those tanks were used at all.
The book covers many but not all tanks and armored vehicles from the listed countries. They cover most of the "well known" Tigers/Shermans etc or infamous tanks such as the T35b. It includes a few less famous tanks as well - but I think the aim of the book is to show you the important tanks that drove tank design onward during the interwar and ww2 years for each nation described.
Is it worth getting? I think so, especially if you are new to WW2 or only have sketchy knowledge about tanks and armored vehicles from this period. "Veteran" miniature wargame players and people with more knowledge about WW2 history might know pretty much every tank in the book though, but it might still be fun to have around. The book being so small you can easily bring it to your games so you don't have to explain for half an hour why "that tank nr 1" on the board is better than "that tank nr 2".
I would rate it 4/5
Bought this book many years ago, but did a Google search yesterday and found it both on obscure internet book stores as well as on Amazon. Depending on where you look the price varies. But it's not that expensive.
Google news is such a wonderful thing. How else would we know that a guy from Salem, Oregon was whacked on The Price Is Right?
Yep, Plinko just isn't enough to entertain the masses any more. Now we need game show homicides. It's right in the headline: Salem man gets shot on 'Price Is Right'.
Okay, I'll stop the lame humor. Of course, the story actually recounts how a Salem contestant got his shot at winning fame and fortune on Drew's little shopping show. He apparently didn't do so well, though the famous contestant waiver prevents him from going into details: "I could have done better. I wish I had listened to the crowd and my wife."
Meanwhile, a note from runnerworld.com in the news cache informs us that Jeopardy celebrates its 47th birthday today. Wikipedia agrees that Art Fleming first gave answers and asked for questions on March 30, 1964.
The story then tries some occasionally funny Jeopardy-style clues about jogging. I sort of liked Porn To Run.
In past blogs I have talked about atmospheric rivers---plumes of moisture approaching our region that generally start in the tropic and subtropics. These moisture rivers are generally associated with warm air (since warm air can contain more water vapor than cold air) and they can dump huge amounts of precipitation when they interact with the substantial terrain of our region.
You know the most famous of these atmospheric rivers well...the Pineapple Express, which begins somewhere near Hawaii.
Not all atmospheric rivers approach us from the southwest, and our region is about to be influenced by one from a more westerly direction. The direction of the flow is very important. A nice video produced by NOAA is found below:
Here is an image showing you the total water vapor in a column predicted for 8 PM on Wednesday. A nice plume of moisture heading to us from the west-southwest. Not the equivalent of the real primo atmospheric rivers....but good enough to supply plenty of moisture.
As we will see the direction of the flow will be important.
In many a blog I have talked about local rainshadows and their brethren, the windward precipitation enhancement. Flow approaching a barrier (particularly moist flow) will produce copious precipitation, while descending air dries rapidly. Normally, our major precipitation events and primo atmospheric rivers are associated with southwesterly or south-southwesterly flow and the rainshadow is over Sequim and Port Townsend, home to many retirees and golfers. But these folks don't always get the shadow...when coastal winds turn more westerly the rainshadow shifts southward over Puget Sound and the lavender farms NE of the Olympics get wet.
That is what will happen tomorrow. Here is the 24h rainfall predicted for the period ending 5 AM on Thursday. The rainshadow will move southward and north Puget Sound will be virtually rain free, while the Cascades and the Olympics get pounded with as much as 5-10 inches of rain. Rivers will rise rapidly and some flooding is possible (see the NWS web site for flood watches and warnings). There is also a substantial avalanche threat with all the snow we have had lately gets hit by heavy rain and warm temperatures. Sequim looks soggy too!
Here is the 72-h rainfall ending 5 AM on Friday. The north Cascades will really get drenched with almost the whole area predicted to get 5-10 inches. Add to this all the snow that will melt implies very serious flooding potential.
So if you want to stay dry tomorrow...head to southern Snohomish County or the northern Kitsap....or drive over to Vantage on the Columbia River....
Basketball and daylight savings time didn't help the syndication bunch in the week ending March 20. Broadcasting & Cable says flat or down for the syndie gamers...
Wheel of Fortune 7.2 - down a tick but it's hardly suffering Jeopardy 5.5 - down five ticks, anybody seen that computer? Millionaire 2.3 - flat Family Feud 1.7 - flat 5th Grader 0.9 - flat and gone Lyrics 0.7 - flatter and goner
GSN's upcoming game-talk-relationship-whatever show host Wendy Williams ain't setting the ratings world afire with her current gig. Her talker lost a tick to an unprepossessing 0.9. As usual, TV by the Numbers is not rushing their top 25 syndie list. Instead, they're running their 4,309,231st item on whether Chuck will survive. Wish I cared enough to watch a minute of the show.
TV by the Numbers finally produced the viewership averages: Wheel of Fortune 11.5 million (weekend repeat 4.2 million), Jeopardy 8.4 million, Millionaire 3.2 million. As always, the twin towers remain the most-watched game shows in this country.
GSN scored a 362K viewer average in prime time for the first quarter. The network didn't make TVNewser's top 40 in total day. The prime time number is okay but I've occasionally seen GSN top 400K for a week or two. (The TVNewser link tends to crash my browser for some odd cybernetic reason. Did Watson have this problem?)
Giullina shared this photo of Renato Ramonda teaching Utara at PLAY! Modena. So much of this piques my interest. One, are those paper prototypes? Two, is that a printed rules sheet? Three, they're playing Utara overseas?? Awesome, awesome. Renato shares more on his tumblr:
"People gathered around and demanded to play too: we quickly played a good number of games and tried all the variant Sun/Moon options. I can definitely say that the game is fun, extremely simple to teach and learn, has a nice tactile element and when playing with the “advanced” rules I think a nice element of lightweight strategy: will I take this two dice or will I take only one but negate a Day or Tide to my opponent?"
Renato and friends also tinkered with a new variant that allows you to change the compass. You can see more on that in his post.
See, in my mind, the modern conception of Miss Marple would be someone like Helen Mirren or Dame Judy Dench.
I know they want to work with an established property, but I think they should just do the show they want to do and keep Miss Marple out of it, or at worst, make it so that the original Miss Marple is Garner's slightly distant relative, like the sister of her grandfather, so she can have the name, but she is a completely different person.
We're still not watching "Dancing With the Stars," and we never will. We'll be too busy watching "Real Housewives of New York." But we can't ignore what Hines Ward is doing out there on the floor right now. Listen to the reviews:
Ward reportedly revealed that his dance moves are more challenging than laying out Ed Reed, noting, "My shoulders are very weak, so to be in that posture for over a minute is very difficult."
Baltimore Ravens Placed Bounty on His Spectacular Rump
Finally added the "Search" function - God knows I will use that alot myself, still wish blogger had a better browsing function than the labels. This function is at the top right corner.
Also added thea feature of following the blog by email - not really sure how that works though. I guess you sign up and receive an email every time something new is posted on the blog? The follow function is located beneath "Share it" and above "popular posts".
As we discussed at length in this podcast, the key to viral success on the internet, as proven by Rebecca Black's "Friday" song, is not quality - it's sequencing. People need to know what they are seeing, be told exactly what they are seeing, be reminded what they saw before, and then be told what they are seeing next. And then be told again.
So this morning, our friends over at the PG stepped up their game. At 12:00am today, Ron Cook posted a column titled, "Hart Should go to MVP Fleury." Not to be outdone, Bob Smizik whipped something together and at 12:30AM posted a blog titled, "Fleury Deserves MVP Consideration." Maybe they had Smizik post something to answer all the one-word rhetorical questions in Cook's column? [I know, it's a rhetorical question].
Stay tuned later this afternoon for Artistry's post on the fact that Ron Cook and Bob Smizik wrote the exact same thing this morning.
Meanwhile, to get you ready for tonight, here is one of the greatest moments in Pens-Flyers history. This video still makes me fist pump.
There may be no substitute for MTV with today's addlepated and over-hormoned teen critters. Oh, there I go old-fogeying again. In fact, I'm so fogeyed-out that I can remember when MTV played music videos. This occurred in the late Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas blogged about it.
