theMediaman.com

While bathroom graffiti is usually of some entertainment, it has become rare to find anything of note.  Although my first interest is often sparked by the inexplicable concept that someone went to the bathroom with a pen-in-hand, most of this modern philosophy has been reduced to three words or less.

When was the last time you saw a paragraph (ie. more than one sentence) composed on the toilet stall? For me it’s been a while. It occurs to me that with the proliferation of Web 2.0, everyone in the blogosphere is simultaneously getting their fifteen minutes of fame. Instead of this resulting in the celebrity of a singular “You”, it instead results in the celebrity of the collective “You” as observed by the Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year for 2006.

We have a louder voice, but our thoughts are more anonymous than ever.

The bathroom walls are more barren than they once were. Perhaps people are carrying fewer pens than they did in the 90’s? Instead of searching for the longest restroom comprehensive effort, I find myself instead looking for the ones written in Sharpie instead of ballpoint.

I figure that someone who brings a Sharpie with them to the washroom must have a piece of momentary universal clarity that could be lost before he reaches an Internet connection, allowing it to fade back into the cosmic ether from which it spawned.

Unfortunately, since I usually only frequent pubs and sports bars, that ‘clarity’ is often nothing more than “HABS SUK BAWLS”

Playing with the random entry link, I found this post I made a while ago. I’ve noticed that my last several posts have numbered between two and three billion words each (or so it feels if you’re reading them), and postitioned once every week or two. So I’m going to try to return to making more innane comments on stuff I see around me… more frequently and under 100 words or so.

Damn. I think I’m already closing in on 100… well, here’s my comment then:

Edward Norton is a good actor, but thoroughly unconvincing as a “smart guy“.

Shortly after the breakdown of talks between the Sony camp and the Toshiba camp to release a unified HD disc format, avoiding a costly format war, I registered the domain name, “HDvsBlu.com”.

I intended to make it a central hub analysing the war and how it affects the most important side, the consumers - a group rarely represented in such discussions. However, for one reason or another, I never finished development.

Tomorrow, the domain renewal is up. After a few years of spending a ten-spot renewing it, I’m going to let it expire. The war is over, and Sony is rewarding itself for the win by jacking up the price of players.

I think I’m sticking with DVDs for the time being. Unfortunately, it looks like some material I want might never be released.  A favourite mini-series of mine was the “Biography of the Millennium: 100 People - 1000 Years”. I remember being particularly proud of myself at guessing the number one and two spots as going to Johannes Gutenburg and Isaac Newton respectively.

Regularly, I would check the Internet to see if they had released it on DVD. I remember seeing it on VHS a while ago, and it can still be found on that antiquated format. However, even if the next-gen format may not make it into my home entertainment system anytime soon, I can’t imagine VHS staying much longer.

I contacted A&E to see if they were planning to redistribute it anytime soon. To be frank, I was a bit surprised at the speed of the reponse. About one hour after sending an email, this is what I got.

Unfortunately, this program is no longer available for sale. Most likely due to a rights expiration issue with certain key elements within the program.

Stupid copyright law. Basically what is being said is that, short of going to work for A&E and getting access to their library of episodes, I’m never going to get to see that mini-series again. What a waste.

Thank goodness the 2nd season of “Joey” is coming out next month. Now there’s something the world needs more of. Short-run spinoff series that history will judge as little more than the answer to a trivia question.

I’ve made a couple of modifications to the web site. First, I replaced the header graphic with something that actually is interesting.  I’m fully aware that my logo is really only interesting to me and my imaginary friends, but I didn’t want to stick one static graphic in there.

Instead I have a random image, haphazardly touched up to keep in the visual style of the page. The only problem is, the script that I use accesses the directory where I store my images and gets a file-listing every time the page loads.  Low administration is great (just add a new header graphic and it automatically is put into the queue). However, long load times for every page on my site is not good. I’m going to have to modify the script in order to pull from an updated text file or something.

The other big update comes from the horrifying realization that my pre-2007 entries (run by Blogger) are no longer catalogued in Google, Live Search, Yahoo!, or much of any other search engine!  I used to have the number 4 spot on Google for the most common misspelling of “Buddism”, now none of those pages show up even when directly addressed.

I asked my resident SEO expert (Simone) if I should recode the pages so they look like they’re being regularly updated, but she said that will drag the relevancy of my entire site down.

Instead, I’ve used some WordPress feature that lets you import Blogger. I backed up the current theMediaman.com site, and ran the program.  BOOM. Several hundred posts suddenly part of my WordPress weblog. 

Now I have a new problem… well, it’s more like an old problem I ignored but is now compounded. I haven’t really been using the “tags” feature of WordPress, and opting instead just to focus on “Categories”. Now I have four to five hundred posts that need to be categorized, tagged, and many of them even lack formal post titles. However, all posts are now searchable, which helps when I’m trying to reference one of my earlier postings in a self-congratulatory back-patting upon confirmation of one of my predictions.

Of course, it’s also easier for all of you to find when I’ve been wrong.