One of my favourite Vancouver bloggers - Darren Barefoot - posts about the recent phenomenon of television networks using a lot of their ad slots to advertise other shows on their network. He links to a study that shows that “Only one in four 12- to 34-year-olds can name all four major broadcast networks: ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.”

I was having a conversation about this recently with a friend. I was complaining that NBC felt the need to remind me at every opportunity during the finale that they were the idiots responsible for canceling my favourite television show, The West Wing. While I suppose ‘any press is good press’ as they say, I have to say that not only do I not care what network produces the shows I watch, I will never make a viewing decision based on the network. They simply don’t matter, except to themselves in a business sense. So I guess what I mean is that they don’t matter to the consumer.

And while I’m sure NBC wanted us to think “thank you NBC for bringing me 7 years of the West Wing”, all I ended up thinking is “Go f^&k yourselves, NBC, for canceling the best show on TV which could easily have run another 7 years.” So maybe I will make a viewing decision based on network, but not in the way they were hoping.

I wrote a feature article review of SnapStream’s Beyond TV 4.0 personal video recorder software for DownloadSquad that went live on the site this morning. Have a look.

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of my bad feelings have disappeared,
There is the rainbow I’ve been praying for
It’s gonna be a bright, it’s gonna be bright, sun-shiny day

Look all around, nothing but blue sky
Look straight ahead, nothing but blue… sky

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way,
Gone is the dark cloud that had me blind,
It’s gonna be a bright, it’s gonna be bright, sun-shiny day

- Johnny Nash, “I Can See Clearly Now”

I suppose it’s not surprising, but in 1934 the United States drafted a plan to invade and take over Canada, according to Damn Interesting. If this plan did exist, and I have no reason to think it didn’t, it’s probably reasonable to assume that a modern equivalent also exists. I mean seriously, would you be surprised?

Something to think about. Or not. What the hell could we do about it anyway?

“Welcome to the United State of Canada”

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

- Tom Petty, “The Waiting”

The tight-wire’s strung and you’re out in the middle
All eyes upon you no net below
Inches to go and you’re almost home free
Feel the wire swinging to and fro
Feel the wire swinging to and fro

Doesn’t it seem most precarious
Doesn’t it seem such a chance to take
Doesn’t it seem most precarious
Why does it feel like it would be a damn shame
Would be forever if it meant a day
How stoically I exclaim
As she turns from me and walks away

- Blues Traveller, “Most Precarious”

How can you not post a picture like this?

Josh, my 2 1/2 year-old, is going to be a rock star some day, I just know it! Can you believe this is the same kid that is sitting on my shoulders in the picture of me on the right?

I hate posts that exist for the sole purpose of apologizing for a lack of posts. They only exist to make the blogger feel better, like scratching a nagging itch. Most readers that use a news aggregator probably haven’t even noticed the slowdown, and are simply mildly annoyed at the basically useless post.

So, here I am apologizing for slowing down! But I also wanted to let you know that I’ve been blogging like a madman on both Download Squad and The Unofficial Microsoft Weblog lately. If you can’t get enough of my glorious writing (gag!) head on over and check those sites. Don’t worry; I’ll still be posting here, I’ve just made a bit of a commitment to try to boost my Weblogs Inc. blog output, so I’m putting posting there first for now.

My friend Allan reminds us that Daylight Savings Time occurs this weekend - the first Sunday of April, at 2:00 AM. With that in mind, here are some tips on how to minimize the effect of the lost hour.

And be careful driving on Monday; insurance industry records show a spike in traffic accidents the Monday after Daylight Savings Time has taken place; this possibly indicates a chronically sleep deprived society, however it could simply mean that we’re more susceptible to shifts on our internal biological clock than we ever imagined.

[Update] Ed Bott points out that the “proper” spelling/pronunciation is Daylight Saving Time (without the ’s’ on Saving). His citation for that assertion leads to a wonderful entry in Wikipedia discussing the practise of DST.

Tags: Daylight Savings Time, Daylight Saving Time, DST, sleep tips

A post titled The Secret Lives of Fonts over at Fadtastic discusses an anecdotal study a student did by averaging the scores he got on papers based on the font they were submitted in. Out of 52 papers (admittedly a relatively small sample group), he found a very strong trend amongst the average scores:

Times New Roman: A-
Trebuchet MS: B-
Georgia: A

In the comments, a college professor writes in to mention that he requires his students to submit papers in a serif font, as he finds sans-serif fonts like Arial (and presumably Trebuchet MS) difficult to read. The author of the original piece also posits that Georgia is similar enough to the very common Times New Roman to be considered “safe”, but different enough to feel fresh.

I can see this having uses in the “real world”, where we want a certain visceral reaction to written communications, from technical specifications to resumes, to - of course - academic papers. Great stuff; I think there’s enough here to really warrant more study.

Tags: fonts, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Georgia

Well, it’s been quite a while (in blog years, get it - like “dog years”? Yuk yuk yuk!) since I’ve posted on any of my blogs - here, TUMW or DownloadSquad. Hopefully though, after this weekend I’ll have turned a corner, and can get back to my daily ranting, raving, and incoherent babbling.

So what was taking up all of this time? I’ve been busily putting together a website for my wife’s new venture, Striking Connections. She’s doing custom cards for birth announcements, invitations, holidays and special events that typically take more than one photo, and use them in a tasteful design. The concept for the business grew out of the positive reactions we received regarding Milo’s birth announcement, and our subsequent Christmas cards.

Of course, like any (ad)venture, this one has not been without hiccups. After spending nearly a month on the original site, I discovered that getting the payment system working was bigger trouble than I’d anticipated. I enlisted my brother-in-law’s help, and unfortunately after almost a full day’s work a week ago today, we became very confident that I’d chosen the wrong software platform to run my wife’s site.

Now, it’s important to understand that today was a sort of soft deadline for us - Fran bought an ad in a quarterly magazine that hits the streets today, so we needed a functional site up by today at the latest. So that left me a week to redo the entire site. I didn’t think I could do it; I ended up taking Friday off of work so I could work on it exclusively. As it stands, I’m quite happy with the progress I made in a week. There are rough edges and lots of polish is missing, but I’m not going to tell you where. Hopefully the first impression is good.

So if you’re looking for birth announcements, 1st birthday invitations or even a Happy Easter card, drop by Striking Connections and have a look through out stuff.

Tags: custom cards, cards, birth announcements, birthday invitations

I typically steer as far clear of this type of email as possible - you know the ones, where you put in your eye colour, your sock colour, and your favourite movie, then forward it around and try to get you friends to do the same? After playing along for at least 20 versions of it, I’ve given up.

But this is a little different. There’s a “Four Things” meme going around the blogosphere, and while I had noticed it, I hadn’t been tagged to do one, so I hadn’t really given it much thought. Then I got tagged by Marc Orchant.

If there’s anyone that I’d have trouble letting down on something like this, it’s Marc. And anyway, it turned out to be fun. Here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had:

• Store clerk
• Bank teller
• Software Implementer
• Project Manager

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Office Space
• The Usual Suspects
• Memento
• The Matrix

Four TV shows I love to watch:

• The West Wing (cancelled at the end of this year… *sigh*)
• How I Met Your Mother
• CSI Miami
• Without a Trace

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

• Mexico - The Mayan Riviera
• California - Disneyland
• Cruise down the Pacific Coast to San Francisco
• Ottawa, Ontario (Capital of Canada)

Four favorite dishes:

• Pepperoni pizza
• Tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet with katsu sauce)
• Salmon sushi
• Cereal

Four Websites I visit daily:

• Lifehacker
• Office Evolution
• Forgetfoo
• Gmail / Bloglines / Yahoo News / etc.

Four places I’d rather be:

• Hangin’ out with my honey
• Playing with my boys
• Playing hockey (any kind, anywhere, preferably on ice)
• Engrossed in a good book

Four bloggers I’m tagging:

• Stephen Taddei
• Brad Meador
• Scott Adams (LOL - good luck!)
• Buzz Bruggeman

Hey Scoble, I’m late to the party, but brrreeeport!

Tags: four things, brrreeeport, meme