Zeigen

1. Network airs a show. “New! Catch it!”
2. Some viewers watch, but not a lot.
3. Network doesn’t really give the show a chance to build an audience, and cancels the show.
4. Viewers complain a bit, but show remains canceled. “But you never resolved the story!”
5. Network airs a new show.
6. Remembering the network is prone to canceling shows, viewers don’t watch (perhaps saving them up on their DVRs unwatched). “Why should I watch this? The network’s just going to cancel it before they reveal anything.”
7. Repeat ad infinitum at step 3.

New shows these days have very little chance. (I’d follow up with some actual data, but no time.) My sense is that networks are far more prone now to cancel a show if the early ratings aren’t ginormous — but I think that has some unanticipated consequences.

My father always used to point out that a good show is not really much more expensive than a bad show. Quality remains elusive for most new shows, and good ratings even more elusive.

For this season: I liked “Journeyman,” and have been following “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” but I don’t think anyone can argue there’s a hit this year on the order of “Lost” or “Desperate Housewives” or “Heroes.”

Warning: My geekiest blog post ever to follow. Involves arithmetic and computers.

A common industry metric for transfer rates (i.e., how quickly something downloads) is Mbps, which is defined as Megabits per second.

This measurement is confusing and outdated for several reasons.

1. Most people don’t understand what a “megabit” is. It’s very easy to confuse with a megabyte. (There are eight bits to a byte, so you can easily go from one to the other if you like dividing or multiplying by eight.)
2. When talking about megabytes per second, people use either “mbps” (with a lower-case m) or “MBps” (with an upper-case M and B). If you’re not paying attention, you can easily confuse “mbps” or “MBps” with “Mbps.”
3. There’s further confusion about whether the “mega” part means 1,000 or 1,024. Most people’s intuition is wrong.
4. Unless you’re used to these numbers, it’s difficult to understand them in practical, real-world terms. Suppose you have DSL and you’re downloading a movie. How long is it going to take? You’ll need to know the size of the movie in megabits, and you’ll need to know the speed of your DSL connection in Mbps. Then grab the calculator to get a number of seconds, then do more arithmetic to translate that into minutes.

It’s time for a change. Before I get to that, though, first some boring personal history.

The first modem I ever used was in 1980, on an Apple II+, and it was 300 baud. That meant (more or less) that it could handle 300 bits per second — about a sentence of text each second. In college, 10 years later, I used a 3200 baud modem (”Modem 28.8″) which could handle 28,800 bits per second — almost 100 times faster, about a page of text a second.

As modems got faster, instead of bits per second, we started talking about kilobits per second (”kbps”), and the confusion began. In the real world, “kilo” means 1,000 (e.g., a kilometer is 1,000 meters). Usually in computers, a kilo means 1,024 — a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes, for example. Except for kbps, where the k now means 1,000 again. (I think marketing people are to blame.) So, that 300 baud modem was 0.3 kbps, and the 3200 baud modem was 28.8 kbps.

Now eighteen years later, I have a cable modem at home. It can usually handle around 40,000 kbps — more than 1,300 times faster than that modem from college — a big fat novel of text every second. Since things have got faster again, instead of talking about kbps, we divide by 1,000 (not 1,024) and that’s where Mbps came from. Instead of saying my cable modem is 40,000 kbps, we say it’s 40 Mbps.

If you have broadband at home, you have somewhere between 8 Mbps (low end DSL) and 622 Mbps (high end fiber optic service).

But Mbps is such a silly way to measure things. As I explained above, it’s quite difficult to take a number like 40 Mbps and know how that translates into how long it takes to download a movie. If you know the movie is 2.5 gigabytes, you first have to translate that into Megabits. Multiply 2.5 by 1,024 to get megabytes, then by 1,024 again to get kilobytes, then by 1,024 again to get bytes, then multiply by 8 to get bits. Your movie is 21,474,836,480 bits. Now divide by 1,000 to get kilobits and divide by 1,000 again to get Megabits. Now you know your movie is 21,474.8 Megabits. Now divide by 40 to learn how many seconds it’ll take to download on your connection. 536. Divide by 60 to learn how many minutes: About 9. Your movie’s done downloading in the time it took you to do the arithmetic.

A much more practical measurement for consumers is Gigabytes per minute. Most people know that a gigabyte is 1,024 megabytes, and that an online movie is about 2 gigs or so. If we started rating speed in terms of gigs per minute (and tell the marketing people who want to use round numbers to go jump in a lake), that should hold us for the next few years.

I do expect to update this post about 5 years from now to advocate for terabytes per minute instead…

If you agree, start using gpm as a measurement in your organization and push for a transition.

(As a rule of thumb, every 100 Mbps is about 0.7 gpm. My 40 Mbps cable model can handle a gig about every three-and-a-half minutes.)

Sammy yelling out, time to wake up, gobble food, bundle up, drop off the kids, rush to work
218 unread e-mails
A phone call from a partner — yes, we can provide that data
Meeting reminder: 15 minutes until the post-mortem, snooze or dismiss?
Cell phone rings; it’s the dentist, reminding me of the appointment this afternoon
153 unread e-mails
Finish the report, subtotal, total, right-click, send, file
Review the numbers, look for anomalies, update the graphs
Pager goes off: Something not working right, drop everything, investigate, escalate
Start lunch at my desk, finish at the 1:1
Six or seven more items for the to-do list
IM my brother, IM the producer
46 unread e-mails
At the dentist: Drilling in the upper-right, lower left, cavity, crown
Most relaxed I’ve been all day
Outside, the sunset, rays like golden daggers ripping through the clouds
Fight traffic, beat the clock to pick up the kids
Daddy! I missed you!
Eat dinner, kids to bed
22 unread e-mails
Follow the feeds, read the blogs, write the blog
0 unread e-mails
Full moon shining, no wires at all.

Quick, if you use Microsoft Word, follow these instructions to reduce your paper usage by 5%.

I’ve always hated the default 1.25″ margins Word uses. Who came up with that, anyway? WordPerfect and most other word processors I’ve used over the years always had one inch margins. I like half an inch, but that’s just me I guess.

Hello Kitty World apparently beta-launched today. Here’s how I imagine it.

What’s your name? Haildoggy
What type of animal are you? A doggy, silly!
What color are you? Hot pink

…character creation in process… Done! ^_^

…loading the world… Ready! :)

…automatically sending warm greetings to your friends… Sent! <3 <3 <3

Welcome, Haildoggy! You are in your house. Your house is cute. There is a mailbox here. The mailbox is cute. There is a phone here. The phone is cute. There is a door here. The door is cute! The door is also closed. Your bedroom is here. It's super-cute.

Haildoggy, what would you like to do?

> Go bedroom

You enter your bedroom. The carpet is pink. The bed is pink. The lamp is pink. The walls are pink. Pink! You have a bookshelf. It’s filled with fun books. Books are fun! Haildoggy, what would you like to do now? }@V@{

> Use bed

You’re not tired, silly! And we can’t imagine anything else you’d use the bed for. Oh, a pillow fight? That sounds like fun! Invite over some friends, and let’s play!

You have a new quest: Pillow Fight!

> Call friends

You don’t have any friends. Yet! That’s a little sad, but just smile and it’ll get better.

> Call someone

You open the phone book at random. Here are some people you can call: Hellokitty413 HelloKitty554 HelloKittie432 Badbatsmaroo117 HeloKitty1A HelloKityA HellloKittie1138 Kerope933 HellooooKitty644

Who would you like to call?

> Never mind. Go to Flower World
You leave your house and head to the train station.

HelloKitten212 is here!

H3ll0Kitt3h333 is here!

The train is not here. Using the train costs $1. Remember, get your parents’ permission before paying for items! Do you have their permission? Good. Please enter your credit card.

> Say hi

Why aren’t you entering your credit card?

> Smile at HelloKitten212

HelloKitten212 smiles at you. She says: “Ur cute but y r ur clothes r sooo plain??!”

> Examine HelloKitten212

She has red go-go boats decorated with sparklies and spaceships and moonbeams. Would you like a pair like that?

> YYES YES YES YES!

They cost just $6.95. Remember, we don’t charge you anything for this game, and Sanrio has to pay the rent for its giant factories. So won’t you please consider buying some red go-go boats? Your mom’s credit card is probably in her purse. We’ll wait.

> [credit card number entered]

Hello Kitty herself appears to thank you! Hello Kitty loves you! Did she mention how cute you look?

> This is the best game evah

Either Obama or Clinton will be our Democratic party nominee for President. Given the Bush administration’s unpopularity, chances are good that either an African-American man or a white woman will be our next President.

What, I wonder, will be the next barrier to be broken? Which of these candidates are now possibly electable? (By “electable,” I mean: Able to overcome the biases and prejudices of the electorate on the basis of their character and qualifications.)

• A homosexual
• An atheist
• A disabled person

As far as our country as come, I think it will be many years before any of the above types of people would stand a good chance, no matter how qualified. But I hope I’m wrong. I’m glad I was wrong about 2020 before.

Lately I’ve been plagued by IM spam — random messages from randomadj-randomname-random# with a greeting of “Hi ___,” followed by a URL broken up with spaces.

I use Trillian as my IM client. Can anyone recommend any plugins or settings to block this? I’m up to about a dozen a day. Very annoying.

We are proud to announce that ExerciseTV has launched today on TiVoCast.

ExerciseTV is a free, video-on-demand network dedicated to the hottest workouts, fitness trends, and sports training from top instructors and trainers. With ExerciseTV users can workout on their schedule to hundreds of fat burning workouts like cardio, abs, yoga, dance and more!

ExerciseTV is bringing us four channels of fitness:

• Six Pack Abs: Get amazing abs with ExerciseTV’s 6-Pack Abs workout series.
• Weight Loss: Want to lose weight and keep it off for good? Now you can with ExerciseTV’s Weight Loss workouts.
• Flexibility & Flow: Increase your flexibility and agility with Flexibility & Flow workouts from ExerciseTV.
• Ripped & Toned: Sculpt and define your way to an amazing body with Ripped & Toned workouts.

New programs for all four channels will be published every Tuesday and Thursday. Enjoy getting into shape with our latest content partner!

To get an episode, either visit the TiVoCast page for ExerciseTV on TiVo Central Online, or on your Series2 or Series3 broadband-connected DVR, visit TiVo Central -> Find Programs -> Download TV & Movies and then scroll down to ExerciseTV.

I did my civic duty this morning, and dropped off my absentee ballot at a polling station (and Kimi’s ballot as well).

We’re permanent absentee voters. One advantage of an absentee ballot is that there’s no chance of electronic voter fraud. (Voting is one case where, as I said before, I like the low-tech approach.)

But one thing really confuses me. I like to think I’m a smart guy, but I really can’t comprehend the included voting instructions (or the similar instructions at the Santa Clara County registrar of voters site). They say that the ballot has to be received by 8pm today but nowhere do they say when it has to be mailed by.

If I mailed it today, with a postmark of election day, would it have been counted? What about tomorrow? What if I’d mailed it in January but it was delayed in the mail and didn’t arrive until next week?

The instructions seem to indicate that it has to be received today, which implies mailing it last week. But nowhere do they say when you should mail it to have a reasonable assurance of it arriving on time.

Kimi says that’s because they don’t want to take any responsibility for mail delay and don’t want to go on record with any recommendation. But I think it’s crazy to omit such an important detail. To me you simply must put big bold letters saying, “IF YOU MAIL THIS, DO SO BY FEBRUARY 1 AT THE LATEST.”

So, to be safe, I dropped off the absentee ballot in person, which saves $0.58 per ballot in postage, but felt a little weird because I wasn’t exactly absent from the polling place.

The late Herb Caen, venerable San Francisco columnist and inventor of three dot journalism (do kids today even know who he is?), would often run stories about people whose names happened to be suggestive of their job or situation in life.

Like the guy who called up my Aunt Karen (back when she worked selling fixtures such as fasteners and knobs) to buy 6 gross brass knobs, whose name was Watanabe (pronounced Want-A-Knobbie).

Anyway.

In the paper this morning, story about the two skiers from San Francisco who were rescued two days after being reported missing, and who were found seven miles away from the ski resort, suffering from minor frostbite, using survival techniques they learned from the Discovery channel.

One of them had the last name of “Frost.”

Dun dun dun.

Good thing his name wasn’t “Frozetodeath.”

Finding America, a PodShowTV series that follows Trucker Tom as he travels across America, has been added today.

You can subscribe and ride shotgun by heading to the Finding America TiVoCast page on TiVo Central Online, or by using your DVR and selecting TiVo Central -> Find Programs -> Download TV & Movies -> PodShowTV (scroll down) -> Finding America.

Trucker Tom’s a character. Enjoy!

While John and Yvonne were over for dinner (and to catch up on The Sarah Connor Chronicles with me), Sammy decided he was tired of grown-ups talking, and wanted to read a book. But what was a bit mystifying to me is that he wanted to read to his ball, telling us the ball wanted to know how bread was made.

We had Andy, Jack, Kyrie, Jen, Talia and Taylor over on Saturday to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day (a bit early). Pictures are up at our Shutterfly site.

1. The word “reality” is taken to mean “the most unrealistic and atypical situation you can possibly think of.”
2. Any “Celebrity _____” show must have a Baldwin brother.
3. Editing allows you to turn a saint into a sinner, or a sinner into a saint — but even more, you can turn a vaguely annoying person into a tyrant.
4. Don’t eliminate those annoying people early; you need them for ratings.
5. You can make an unstructured reality TV show, with video diaries — you know, the things that 20 years ago we used to call “documentaries.”
6. You can make a structured reality TV show, with contests and eliminations — you know, the things that 20 years ago we used to call “game shows.”
7. The best way to program against a competitor’s Mark Burnett reality TV show is with your own Mark Burnett reality TV show.
8. During the “letters from home” segment, crank up the maudlin piano or a Green Day ballad.
9. The winner’s reveal show should take 2 or 3 hours, never shorter, no matter how utterly bored the viewers are of these people.
10. When in doubt, pitch a random reality show title.

Yes, I created a reality show title generator. Comment with the ones you like or that don’t work at all. Hours of fun for the whole family.

Candace Bushnell wrote Sex and the City in 1997, and before too long it became the influential HBO series starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Now her 2005 novel Lipstick Jungle is an NBC series.

I was never a super big fan of S&tC (except when Miranda started dating her TiVo, heh), but I’m looking forward to this one — mostly because of Brooke Shields. What can I say? Had a crush on her when I was a kid.

The first episode airs on Thursday, February 7 at 10pm Pacific/Eastern. (You can set up a Season Pass online.)

But why wait until Thursday? You can download the pilot to your broadband-connected TiVo DVR from Amazon Unbox, free of charge. Check it out! Nab it fast — after Monday, it’s the normal $1.99 an episode.