Video Sites

I signed up with Netflix back in December when I bought a Logitech Review. It runs $10 a month and provides shows over the internet as well as one DVD at a time through the mail. Sometime later I heard that Amazon Prime was also offering videos over the internet. We had already signed up for the Prime service, so that was like a free bonus. Maybe we don't need Netflix anymore.

The we discovered The Closer, and we have been watching several episodes a week. It has been on the air for several years, so there are a bunch of episodes out there. For a while we were getting enough from Verizon's TV service to keep us entertained, but then basketball season for the Trailblazers ended, and we needed more! It turns out that neither Netflix nor Amazon offer old episodes of The Closer over the net. We could get old episodes on DVD from Netflix, but that would require planning ahead, so I went poking around on the net to see what I could find.

I found something called Sidereel, that apparently keeps track of shows and provides links to where you can find the shows. Old episodes of The Closer are available from iTunes and from Amazon, for a price. Individually they aren't much, a couple of bucks maybe, but if you are consuming 20 or 30 videos a month, that can add up. So let's see what other links there are. Oh, look, there's a whole bunch of free links. Most of them connect to to something called Megavideo. I've tried some of the other free links as well, and they also seem to lead to Megavideo. This is kind of weird. I have heard of iTunes and Amazon, but I have never heard of Megavideo outside of my computer screen. Whatever. In any case, we can watch old episodes of The Closer off of the Megavideo web site. Well, we can watch one episode at a time. Try to watch two in a row and you run into a time limit and the video stops.

So now I'm thinking of signing up with Megavideo. The price is only ten dollars, oh wait, that isn't a dollar sign, what is it? Is that a Euro sign? It is and ten Euros translates to around fifteen dollars. Where is this company based? Hmm, doesn't seem to be based anywhere. It only exists in cyber-space. So why would they choose the Euro over the dollar? Probably because they are infidels. In any case, with the proliferation of server farms, you would not actually need to have your own hardware, no matter how much storage you need. You would need some office space for programmers, accountants and marketeers, and that's about it. You could be located anywhere.

So now all I need is a new box to connect my TV to the internet, and I should be able to get shut of Frontier's overpriced TV package. I could probably cancel Netflix as well, but my kids seem to be using it, so maybe I'll let that one continue.

There is the problem of legality. Since Megavideo is nominally a video sharing site, the holders of The Closer's copyright could ask that the videos be taken down, so I would have signed up for nothing. There is another weird thing, and that is for every episode of The Closer, Sidereel lists a dozen or so different links to different videos on Megavideo. How does Sidereel know where all those videos are? Megavideo doesn't seem to keep track. They have a search function, but it is very rudimentary. Do we have a bunch of pirates out there uploading TV shows and movies to Megavideo, and then posting the links on Sidereel? Seems like a lot of work for not much payback. Could Sidereel have a search engine can automatically determine the name of a video posted on the net? If they had such a capability, I would think the copyright holders (or their agents) would likewise be running such a search. Or are the episodes we are watching so old that the copyright holders don't care? Something is not quite right here, and I don't know what it is.

P.S. While I was poking around I came across a web site that had been seized by Homeland Security. How weird is that?

Update April 2016 replace missing picture. Added link to Amazon.

Sir Spam-A-Lot

A spammer left a comment on one my older posts, a post about cable ties for Pete's sake, so naturally I had to find out what he is selling. Surprise, surprise, he's selling, wait for it, cable ties! But there was something odd about their website, so I wrote them a note:

Your spammer Garry left a comment on my blog, which led me to your very professional looking website. But I'm looking at the prices and for every item there are two prices listed, one with GST and one without. So now I'm wondering just what the heck is GST? I'm thinking maybe it's Georgia sales tax, so I click on the contact link and I find you are in AUSTRALIA. Nowhere on your web page does it say anything about being in AUSTRALIA. Oh, wait a minute, the URL has a little tiny .au tacked on the end. You might want to make that bit a little more prominent, especially since you are offering free shipping to all states. I mean, really? Free shipping to ALL states? Even those half a world away?

This problem is not confined to wackos from Australia, it's a problem common to many websites, especially US TV stations. They seem to think they are the only fish in the sea. I mean who in their right mind isn't familiar with KPRQ?

The Official Graham Hancock Website

When my computer got sick back in January and I installed a new hard drive, I didn't bother to copy over any of my files from my old hard disk. For one, I didn't want to infect my new hard drive with nasty stuff, and two, I wondered how much of that stuff I would really need. Turns out there wasn't much, but there was one website that I missed, and I couldn't remember the name. I imagine it's buried somewhere in one of the Firefox files. I rooted around some, but couldn't find it. I was sure I had linked to it in my blog at some point, but when? And on what subject? Anyway, it bugged me enough that I finally pulled out my old text editor (AEDIT) and composed a macro to extract all the links from an html file, sort the links, delete the duplicates, and presto (chango?) there it is: The Official Graham Hancock Website. Science news with a smattering of the Twilight Zone thrown in.

Website of the Day

"Best videos on the Web. Suitable for all ages."

Via Lehman Hill

Personal Blacklist

I want a personal blacklist for websites that I find to be a waste of time. I follow lots of links on the web. Some of them are interesting, some are not, and some are just garbage. Sometimes they have a nice glossy cover, or even what appears to be the start of an interesting story, but somewhere along the line they take a left turn into crazy land. Yeah, have a good time there buddy, but remind me not to stop by anymore.

Spider for the Day

I found this one by the garage door, lying on his back, waving his legs in the air. I think he fell off the garage door when I opened it. I set him right side up. He wasn't moving too fast, probably because it was a little cool out today.

Okay, now here's something I don't understand. This image is 400 × 363 pixels. It is a scaled down version of the original. If you click on it, you get a bigger version. It is so big that it won't fit on the screen. It is like twice as wide and twice as tall as the screen. My screen is 1280 x 1024. But the original picture is only 920 × 834 pixels. So somebody is blowing up the picture beyond it's original resolution. Now it that Firefox, or Blogger? Something ain't right.

Update March 2016 replaced picture with larger version. Problems with resizing continue to pop up, just not right here, right now.

Library Thing

I don't know about Library Thing. Every time I try to use it to add a book it seems I have to turn around three times to get it to work. First time I search it finds the book, but when I try to add it, it tells me I'm not logged in. So I log in. Now I have to re-enter the search. Now it can't find it because it's looking in my library. I know it's not in my library you nit-wit, I want to add it! Poke around until I finally find the search-the-world page. Enter the ISBN number a third time. Now it wants me to select an information source. I already did this once, my selections are listed right there at the top. Why are you asking me again?

This is a free service, but only for a limited number of books. The way things are going, I am not going to be subscribing.

Wikimapia Login

While I was looking for information on Mont Belvieu, Texas, yesterday, I tried Wikimapia to see if they had any more information. Some places in the world have been Wikimapia-ed to death. But they had nothing on Mont Belvieu. They can't even place it on the map, not even when you get to the general area. Maybe there aren't any Wikimapia fans in SE Texas. I think this is pretty sad, I mean this whole area is devoid of any information, so I attempt to make contact to complain. To do that you have to register, which I dutifully do, but I am still unable to make contact. There is no place to post a message. There is a link to "Post a reply", but nothing happens. Maybe if I try it on Linux....Nope, doesn't work there either.

I know I am probably just not holding my mouth right, but gee-wilikers pops, this is the pits.

Substance & Pinch

Choffy

Substance & Pinch sponsored a Show & Tell event last week at Substance World Headquarters. When I got to the door, there was a fellow bringing in a coffee maker and fixings, and I thought cool, there's going to be coffee. They had already promised beer, but beer doesn't hold much attraction for me these days.

It's basically happy hour and I talk to several people about various kinds of programming and the tools (i.e. more computer programs) used to write even more programs. Mostly they are talking about writing code for various web sites, which seems to be a booming business, at least in this room.

I've been checking on the coffee as I am getting thirsty, and it's kind of slow coming, but eventually it's ready so I pour myself a cup, and boy do I get a surprise. It was made in a coffee maker. Whatever it is came in bags like coffee comes in. It looks black like coffee, but it is not coffee. It's chocolate! Delicious! Jason told us all about it. It's his baby, it's new, and he calls it Choffy.

There were five other presentations:

• a little tool a programmer developed for applying sequential numbers to images, like 00 to 99 on the image of a football jersey.
• a multi-man-year project developing an elaborate web site to show the current state of salmon populations.
• an iPhone application that would allow you to mail postcards of images you took with the camera in your iPhone.
• a framework for developing web sites that laid down some fundamentals so that it would be easy to customize for different cultures and/or languages. (I hope I'm not getting this mixed up with some other presentation I saw.)
• a web site a couple of guys set up as a lark to promote and sell bacon. It only took them a few weeks, and they have stumbled into a whole world of net deprived custom bacon makers.

I had more fun here than I've had in a long time. Did the pretty girls have anything to do with it? Nah, that couldn't be the case.

Update January 2017 replaced missing picture, removed dead link.

Pen In Motion

I seem to have stumbled into lawyer land this afternoon. This website features a quill pen writing out the title of the page, complete with sound effects. Reminds me of a CIA page that did something similar.