Making Spirits Bright…

It’s getting close to Christmas.

For me that means getting out the old Christmas favorites (TV Shows, Movies and Audio Dramas) and remembering Christmas Past. Today I watched an episode of Ally McBeal from Season 2 called “Making Spirits Bright” and was again impressed by enduring legacy of this amazing TV Show from David E. Kelly. As I watched the episode unfold I was reminded of a local newscaster who, sadly, is no longer with us. Bob McAdorey.

Bob McAdorey was a gifted newscaster who is best remembered for his spot on reviews of new TV shows and movies. Unlike other entertainment broadcasters, who are either clueless or just to highbrow for most people, Bob’s reviews could be trusted as fair and accurate. I had no interest in watching a show about a bartender, until Bob said it had potential, was well written and had interesting characters, so I gave Cheers a chance – and watched it for many years.

Likewise, I had no interest in watching a Sci-Fi film about a cyborg policemen until Bob pointed out what was unique and interesting about Peter Weller’s portrayal of the character and the dynamic between Peter and Nancy Allen’s characters. To my pleasant surprise, “RoboCop” remains one of my favorite movies to this day – if you haven’t seen the original, you should.

 

Ally McBeal and The Practice were two other shows that Bob McAdorey persuaded me to try and to this day, I’ll go out of my way to watch any David E. Kelly production. Like Bob McAdorey, David E. Kelly has never disappointed me with his TV Series.

 

I miss Bob’s snappy prose and gentle comedic style of reporting the Entertainment News. It’s a style that is almost impossible to replace in it’s sincerity and honesty.

 

Bob is now with Bill Brama and all the other Global Newscasters we have lost over the years. I miss them all, but I think I miss Bob McAdorey and Bill Brama the most. They seemed to be the heart and soul of the Global TV Network. Just like Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Wise men and the bright star are the heart and soul of Christmas.

 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

 

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Goodbye Mr. Spock…

When I was young, my Father and I used to watch Star Trek together and he would always tell me that one day I would be like Mr. Spock and program computers and that I would even own my own computer one day.

I bought my first computer and wrote my first computer program so my Dad could live his dream, now I’m living my dream as an IT Professional with 30 years experience, I love going to work every day, all thanks to Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) and my Dad.

I will miss Leonard Nimoy, but I will always have the memories of Star Trek, Missions Impossible, the Star Trek Audio Books he did with the other cast members, the Full-Cast Audio Dramas he recorded with various actors when he tried to revive Radio Theatre in the ’90s, Fringe, and most recently, the Star Trek Reboot movies.

He lived long and prospered, and now has gone where we all must follow… one day. Goodbye Mr. Spock – I’ll see you on the other side.

Bill.

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Blast From The Past – 2004 Prediction – “Direct To DVD TV SHows” . . .

Back in 2004, I blogged on Live Journal for a while. Below is one of my posts (Link)

We are soon going to see direct-to-DVD TV series.

The reason I am predicting this has more to do with the “abuse” of the viewer by the broadcast stations and the disregard of the viewer by the networks.

The stations abuse the viewer with their never ending pop-up ads, ticker-tapes, untimely commercials and voice-overs. Now don’t misunderstand, I don’t mind the product commercials, its the “promotional” voice-overs, commercials and pop-ups I am talking about. These ugly and annoying animations that appear with messages like “Hogan’s Heroes, coming up next”, then “Don’t miss The Apprentice, coming up right after Hogans Heroes, right after this show”, and of course, “Stay tuned for the news at 11:00pm” (come on guys, its only 7:30!)

TV stations are constantly doing what they can to reduce your enjoyment of TV shows they bring you. And its going to backfire on them sooner than later.

Networks are constantly moving good shows from one day to another, from one time to another, just when you start “getting into” a show, they pre-empt it, move it, start showing re-runs, or just take it off the air for a few months. Then they complain that no one is watching it and take it off the air.

I think this is about to change – big-time. And when it does, it will revolutionize the entertainment industry.

Have you noticed how inexpensive it is to buy a complete set of DVDs for “24”, “Buffy”, “Friends”, “Charmed”? It is very affordable. Not much more than 2 music CDs, or 2 movies (do you get the feeling CDs are way over priced?)

Let’s add to this that there is a movement among Star Trek fans to raise the production budget for the next season completely from fan donations. Sound crazy? Rumor has it they have $10,000,000 in pledges and donations already.

So what do I think will happen?

I think what will happen in the very near future is that not-for-profit fan groups will be formed. These “trusts” will raise money from the fan base to produce a season of a show. If the fan base wants another season made, they will send in their cheques and another season will be made.

For example, let’s say all the Star Trek fans got together, and put up $100 USD. Assuming there is 1,000,000 fans who do this, there will be $100,000,000 for production and distribution. The fans who put up the money will be able to download each episode (in Windows Media DRM protected format, or something similar) when they become available to watch on their computers, and when the entire season is completed, they will receive a complete DVD set by courier or mail for the cost of shipping – or perhaps shipping is included in the $100 donation.

No TV station or cable company is required to deliver this show to the fans. It can also be sold in stores, or it can be sold to TV or Cable stations, but the fans will already have it in a commercial free format.

I think this will be how shows get made in the future. I think each fan organization will have their own criteria for funding and distribution. For example, as a contributor, you are guaranteed to receive a set of DVDs 12 months after production has wrapped on the current season (to make sure there is a market and reduce contributions for the next season)

As for pilots, the production company must make the pilot at there own expense and allow all the members to vote on which pilots they want to contribute to. One fan organization could be responsible for producing 4 shows for their contribution, depending on how much is required to produce a season of shows.

I think this will work. I believe it will improve the quality of video entertainment.

Fans tend to be very loyal to the shows they like.

What do you think?

God bless.

Bill

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Followup:

Last year, (2014) fans contributed enough money on Kickstarter.com to produce the “Veronica Mars” movie. Since 2005, an audio production company, Big Finish, has been producing full cast audio dramas for canceled TV shows such as Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Highlander, The Avengers (BBC), Blake’s 7, Dark Shadows, Doctor Who and various Doctor Who spin offs –  all financed by fan contributions.

The revolution has begun

Bill.

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Global Warming: How To Prove It Once And For All…

Seems like a relatively easy way to analyze the data and draw a basic conclusion. If climate change is “Global” then it should be easily reflected in the temperature readings anywhere on the planet. If it is not “Global” then perhaps it is “Local” to certain industrialized areas. Either way, its time to analyze the raw data and not the product of computer models.

Just a thought. Show me the real evidence, not the computer model fabricated evidence.

Cheers.

The Bill Shaw Blog

For those of you who do not know me, I used to teach Six Sigma in the Automotive Industry before I became a Computer Consultant. I became more and more involved writing computer programs for Six Sigma because at the time, there were no programs that were affordable, and the PC had just been invented by the two Steves and that other Bill from that “M” company. I might even be very wealthy today, if I had written my soft ware for an IBM or Mac instead of a Sinclair computer. OK, I’m not perfect, but I do have a good grasp of statistics and statistical analysis.

Basic S.P.C. (Statistical Process Control) 101 – you need 120 data points to accurately establish a process population. In Six Sigma, that would be 120 samples taken over several days production – usually every 2 or 4 hours apart. This is done to…

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6 Reasons Electric Cars Are Not Ready For Prime Time…Yet

I recently read an article called “Electrifying cars: How three industries will evolve”, written by McKinsey & Company on their blog (http://bit.ly/ZHyje). Every argument they make I have heard before over the last 40 years. Because of this, I think the bears have it over the bulls in this debate.

When we compare Canada to other countries attempting to use this technology, we often forget that compared to Canada, the vast majority of the countries in the world are very very tiny in land mass. The average Canadian thinks nothing of traveling one or two hours down the highway to go shopping or visit a relative. In most of the countries we are compared to, a drive like that would take you to another country. 

I’m not totally against electric cars, I am willing to admit they may be practical one day, but that day is not today. So here are the 6 reasons why electric cars are not ready for prime time… yet.

1) The current electricity grid can barely cope with cooking and air conditioning on a warm day. How will it cope with 350 million cars being plugged in for re-charging at night, assuming you can get an electric car to last an entire day for heavy car users like me

2) We can’t make a standard laptop battery that last for 10 hours (8 hours at work and a two hour round-trip commute. If we can’t do this little thing, how can we do a “big thing” like a standardized car battery?

3) The key to this article is “price of gas cooperating” – what this means is the price of gas going high enough that my 55 mpg (5.7 l/100km) internal combustion engine car cost too much to drive. I’m betting that by then my car will get 65 or 75 mpg. Its all in the gearing.

4) The assumption is that the cost of electricity will be cheap in relation to gasoline. That will not be the case. Right now with today’s electricity prices and today’s technology it would cost me more to charge up an electric vehicle and do the amount of driving I do that it would to drive my internal combustion engine. Even a hybrid costs more because you loose the advantage of the battery boost at highway speeds.

5) Then there is the maintenance and repair issues and the “quick top up charge” issues – where is the equivalent of the highway gas station for the electric car?

6) As far as “pollution” is concerned, you are just passing it off to the power plants and because of the electric car, we will need a lot more of them pumping more and more pollution into the atmosphere – possibly more pollution than the cars are now causing because the cars are shut off at night and the generators must run 24/7 – so its polluting even when you are not charging your car.

Note: GM sold a 100% electric car back in 1979. They used a Chevy Chevette chassis and replaced the motor and some of the cargo space with a bank of batteries. If you wanted to do a lot of highway driving, they would sell you a trailer unit that you could tow during highway drives which contained the original 4 cylinder motor and gas tank. This could then be used to keep your batteries topped up while driving down the highway. Things haven’t changed much. Now we put the engine in the car with the batteries and call it a hybrid.

Cheers.

Bill

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Technorati Tags: Electric Cars,Power Grid,Laptop,Batteries,Gasoline,Electricity,GM,Chevette,Chevy,Hybrid

9 Simple Ways to Get Noticed by Search Engines

How do I get my web site/blog noticed by Google or Yahoo? I get asked this question a lot. The truth is, there is no quick fix. Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing process of creating, tweaking and modifying web content. It’s a process that never ends. But if your are just starting out and you have little or no budget, then the following simple nine steps can help you to organically rise in the rankings over a relatively short time.

The nine steps are:

1. Get a Twitter.com account. Search engines love twitter because the content is constantly being updated. Each tweet is classified as a separate web page by search engines and is indexed.
2. Write your 160 character resume and place it in your profile. To be taken seriously, you will also need to post a professional image on your twitter profile. People on twitter generally ignore twitter accounts that use the default icon.
3. Link your twitter account to your blog or your web site on your twitter.com profile. This will allow people who want to get to know you better to find your blog with one click instead of having to search for  you on Google, Bing or Yahoo.
4. “Tweet” at least four times a day about something relevant to your profession, skill set or business. This content must be short (120 characters maximum, this allows for “re-tweets”), to the point and above all else, useful or interesting to your target audience. If its not useful or interesting they will not follow you.
5. Blog at least 2 times a week about something relevant and/or interesting to your profession or business sector. In the blog you can be more detailed and showcase your expertise.
6. Do a few "Follow Fridays" – this takes planning as there is no built-in tool at Twitter to help you do this. Follow Fridays is a tradition among Twitter users where they use one or more tweets to showcase the people they are following using the #followfriday tag (see http://mashable.com/followfri/ blog for further information)
7. Use a service like "Tweet Later" to schedule your tweets and to auto-follow people who follow you and auto-un-follow people who un-follow you. A service like this can save you a lot of time by scheduling your tweets for the day or the week.
8. Remember that search engines don’t like duplicate content and its considered spam at twitter – so if you have more than one blog or twitter account, keep the content different.
9. pick who you follow carefully (you can’t control who follows you) – your twitter account is your public image. Its fun to follow wacky friends, comedians and pop stars, but it doesn’t look professional, so follow them on your personal twitter account, not your professional account. 

It does take time, but the blogging and twittering do pay off (i.e. – they will get you into the top 50 or better for some keyword searches) and that is without SEO. To get better rankings you may need an SEO specialist, which I am not… yet.

 

Cheers.

Bill
www.gwensoft.com

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Technorati Tags: Twitter,SEO,Search Engine,Google,Bing,Yahoo,Tweetlater,Social Media,Follow Friday

Your Data May Not Be Lost…

Last night the unthinkable happened. Nero Burning ROM failed verification on three DVDs in a row. Each DVD was backing up the same set of files. What to do…?

The best answer is always – sleep on it. The files are still readable on the hard disk, so this situation is important, but not urgent.

This morning test number one is done, all files are copies to another drive using the DOS XCOPY command with verification turned on – the copy completed without error, but the copies of the files were not readable. This is strange.

Test number two, copy the files to a FAT32 USB drive. The hope for this test is that the problem is in the extended attributes that the NTFS file system imposes on files. This time the copy is successful and the files are readable.

Test number three, backup the FAT32 copy of the files to DVD and see if they verify. This test succeeds and a verified backup of the files is completed.

Final test: Randomly sample the files which were backed up and verify that they can be read from the DVD drive. This test also completes successfully.

Conclusion: If you are getting verification errors when backing up your data to a DVD, the problem could be the extended attributes that Vista/Windows XP attaches to your files. Copying your files to a FAT32 formatted drive will strip out these extended attributes and allow you to perform your backup successfully.

Cheers.

Bill Shaw

http://www.gwensoft.com

The Auto Industry Story Nobody Is Talking About…

When it comes to the potential bankruptcy of GM or Chrysler of the one thing everybody has missed, probably because it didn’t get much press, is that Hyundai had a huge 25th anniversary sale last year. They had $9,999 entry level cars when GM, Chrysler and Ford had $12,999 – $14,999 entry level cars.

When I was looking for a new vehicle last year, I seriously checked out Chrysler and GM cars as they both had vehicles that my wife and I wanted to purchase. The bottom line is I purchased a Sonata from Hyundai for $17,999. The Hyundai Sonata was priced between $4,000 and $11,000 below the comparable GM and Chrysler offerings in the same vehicle class with similar options. So I did what anybody would do in a situation where all things are equal except price – I bought the lower priced vehicle.

I hear a lot about the lack of quality in North American built vehicles. So let’s address this now. On the quality issue, my previous car, a Chrysler mini-van, gave me less grief, cost me less in repairs than my Toyota sedan. Both cars were purchased within a month of each other. I would buy another Chrysler in a heartbeat if the price was comparable to what Hyundai is currently selling their cars for.

GM, Chrysler and Ford may have lower quality ratings than other car companies, but what is seldom stated and needs to be understood is that the quality ratings are based upon Parts-Per-Million defects (PPM). For example, Toyota may have a PPM of 5, GM may have a PPM of 10, Chrysler may have a PPM of 11. What is seldom discussed is that a few years ago, Toyota may have had a PPM of 25 and at the same time Chrysler and GM may have had a PPM close to 35 or 40. The point is they are continually improving their manufacturing processes.

Back in the 1980’s when the quality difference was "real" Toyota measured their PPM in the thousands and GM, Ford and Chrysler measured defects in parts per hundred. That’s when there was a real quality difference.

North American car manufacturers have made an incredible effort to improve the quality and reliability of their products using advanced Quality Assurance methods like Six Sigma and, in my experience with my GM and Chrysler products over the years, it shows . The fact that my mother is still driving a Chrysler Ares "K" car with over 300,000 miles on it speaks for itself. North American built cars are good solid reliable vehicles. And the Americans and Canadians that build them are good solid reliable people.

So when the time comes to buy that new car, if the car you really want is a GM or Chrysler, buy it. They are good vehicles and now the prices are not that different from Hyundai. I am seriously thinking of replacing my aging Toyota with a Chrysler Journey or a Jeep Compass.

Cheers.

Bill.

Technorati Tags: Six Sigma,Auto Industry,Chrysler,GM,Ares,Hyundai,History,Sonata

Can You Tweet an MP3?

An associate recently asked the question ‘”Can you tweet an MP3?”

While Twitter is a text only service, you can embed a URL in the text, so if the MP3 file has its own URLs, (e.g. "http://… ") you could use one of the popular URL shorteners such as " http://www.bit.ly " to provide a link to the MP3 file.

To give each of these MP3s a URL, you can use a Microsoft provided free service called SkyDrive. You can use SkyDrive to store media files, like your MP3s, and make them public. You can copy the URL by right-clicking on the MP3 icon and selecting "Copy shortcut", then go to http://www.bit.ly and past the URL into the "Enter Web Address (URL) Here" field and click the "Shortener" button on the right hand side of the web browser window.

For example: " http://bit.ly/18ghE3 " is a link to one minute section of a promo MP3 form Big Finish. When you click on this link, it will try to play the file which is in a public folder on my Microsoft SkyDrive account. You will need a Windows Live ID to get your own SkyDrive.
So the twitter post might be "Sample 1 minute MP3 – click here -> http://bit.ly/18ghE3 " (84 characters) I tested the URL with FireFox and it played, but you had the choice to download it or play it.

So, the answer is “Yes” you can tweet an MP3 – but its not easy.

Cheers.

Bill.

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Twitter’s Glass Ceiling…

If you are up around the 2,000 follower mark you are going to hit Twitter’s “glass ceiling”. When you hit the 2,000 follower mark, Twitter imposes rules on how many people you can follow in a day. Its known as the 2,000/10% rule and is intended to limit spam-bots and spammers in the twitterverse. It also limits who you can follow. The good news is that it does not limit who can follow you.

It is considered good etiquette to follow back people who follow you – its considered a show of respect. Its also part of what social media is all about. Respecting and communicating with people. So if you end up in a situation where you are following 2,000 people but only 500 people are following you, you may have a problem. When this happens – your best option is to un-follow everybody who is not following you back.

When you follow 2,000 people, you are capped at 200 follows per day, or 10% of the number of people you are following. If you exceed 10% of your follows you will receive an error message and will be prevented from following who you want to follow, unless you un-follow somebody.

How can you tell who is and is not following you back? Well, if they are following you you will have the option to “Direct Message” them beside their picture/name in the “Followers” list. 

In the example on your right, DowntownToronto is following me, so I’ll keep following Shaun, but tcbs is in trouble because Bill Carroll is not following me (to be fair, I just followed The Bill Carroll Show, they haven’t had a chance to follow me back yet.) So after you un-follow the people who are not following you, you will be able to follow people again. In the twitterverse, it is also considered OK to unfollow people who only use the default icon instead of using a picture or customized icon. After un-following the people who are not following you, you will again be able to follow people.

Every week or so, check the people who you are following, drop the people who are not following you and let your following grow naturally. Don’t be upset when people decide not to follow you, or when they stop following you. These rules apply to them too. You may have been un-followed so they can follow somebody they want to, or it may have been an accidental mouse click. And yes, sometimes twitter messes up and drops your followers. It has never happened to me, but I have heard stories from other people that it happened to them. This can especially happen if you are using a third party tool to automate your un-follows.

Well, that’s all for today.

Cheers.

Bill

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