The forgotten legacy of DinoFour.

Posted on December 13, 2007

Today I was about my the back loading dock talking to the smokers, when I learned the most fascinating piece of information about my TV station. We were talking about mascot outfits (don’t ask) and our promotions wunderkind, Benjie casually said something like, “You should dress up in the station’s dinosaur costume.” What?! How have I worked here nearly three years and have never heard about our station mascot? “He’s called DinoFour,” someone else added to the conversation. At that point I realized that the only thing cooler than my station having a crappy dinosaur costume locked away somewhere would be if we had a crappy ninja costume locked away somewhere.

Without wasting time, some of the photogs and I strolled into the Creative Service Director’s office and half-begged her to let us see the outfit. She gladly agreed, leading us into a locked room at the back of the station. Strewn about where all sorts of old promotional materials, and that’s where we found DinoFour, resting in what used to be a darkroom sink. Read more

Taking a peek inside my arm.

Posted on December 13, 2007

Today I shot a story about how the local hospital is hoping to raise enough money to buy a “vein viewing machine”. And, I’ll admit that it’s pretty cool. You place your arm under the device, where it uses infrared to scan into your arm and locate the veins, and then projects them back in real-time on the arm. Of course, my first reaction after watching my reporter test the device was to say, “Sweet! Put your face under there!” (She did not).

The device is pretty neat, no doubt about that. And I didn’t even blink when I heard that it costs around $29,000, seeing that health care costs are going through the ceiling. But, thinking about the vein viewing machine now, a few hours later I’ve come to realize…that’s all it does, just views veins. My Subaru cost about the same price, and it obviously does much more (it even has a stereo).

Another case of the crud.

Posted on December 12, 2007

I’ve been kinda sick lately, which has unfortunately has helped my productivity drop-off quite a bit, but it’s good news for my video game characters in Mass Effect, as I’ve been slouching about with a game controller in hand. Last night I had some beers with dinner, followed by some Tylenol PMs, and about 13 hours of sleep. Today I’m feeling like much better, and ready to get back to bloggin’.

Here’s a screen capture of me, showing off my WiFi Detector T-Shirt at the GSATC “GadgetFest” meeting on Wednesday.

My presentation went well, and I pretty much just talked about how dorky it felt to be standing around in front of a hundred people wearing a tight, glowing electronic shirt that sniffs out wireless signals.

Random: If you write a blog post a with Hannah Montana in the subject line, you may get a trillion hits, sending your spam filer will work overtime. My inbox keeps getting daily Wordpress notifications about random links and spam comments from that damn Hannah Montana post. Although, hopefully writing about it won’t make the problem worse.

Give the gift of technology this holiday season.

Posted on December 10, 2007

I doubt the feasability of the new Radio Shack commercial where the kids send a video iPod strapped to to a r/c vehicle over to the old lady next door, serenading her with a video Christmas carol. Maybe I need to pay better attention next time it comes on television, or perhaps rewind it on the Tivo. There’s just so many timing issues involved in getting in pulling that stunt off correctly and those kids don’t seem like they were up to it, unless someone is hiding in the bushes - which would solve a number of logistical issues. Also, I think the commercial should have ended a moment later, with the lady saying a line like, “You sent me a computer machine!” showing her limited understanding of modern gadgets.

[On a side-note: There’s a ton of classic Radio Shack commercials on YouTube, including one from 1980 showing-off a new color computer!]

“I am a human firewall!”

Posted on December 10, 2007

Sometimes I wish I had a desk job. I’d have my own cubicle - all decked-out with random photos and action figures. I’d have desk drawer filled with Splenda packets and Sharpie pens. Also, I’d have access to the web all day while I filed my TPS reports and what not. But in my current job as photog I rarely get to partake in much that cube life has to offer, so maybe that’s why I enjoy taking our corporate online HR training courses so much.

Today’s topic was “Are you a human firewall?” which, by the end, sorta made me glad I don’t sit at a cubicle all day facing the onslaught of malicious computer attacks coming my way on a day-to-day basis. The course gave me newfound knowledge on how to fight online compu-predators and armed me with a new phrase- one that I yelled down the hallway for the remainder of the afternoon: “I AM A HUMAN FIREWALL!”

“Maybe Mr. T is pretty handy with computers!”

Posted on December 6, 2007

I am a huge William Shatner fan, so I was thrilled to find him doing TV commercials for World of Warcraft. Although the best commercial of the bunch goes to Mr. T. It kinda makes me want to sign up for the game again, if only to pay Blizzard a few bucks for making such a rad commercial.

Here’s both the commercials on the WoW website, but you can’t watch them if you’re looking at them from where I work, as the WoW site is blocked by the internet police. That makes me wonder if someone in the company - at another station or somewhere - took their little video game obsession too far (as in: took it to work).

Completely out of juice.

Posted on December 5, 2007

I can’t find the battery charger to my digital camera that permanently lives in my left pocket. It sucks because I’ve had so many funny things to take shots of and blog about - which sorta irks me that I only feel compelled to blog when I have a graphic to go with it. Anyway, until the pwershot is up-and-running again, here’s some random thoughts about television I have to share with y’all.

I spend entirely too much time on Hulu watching Kitchen Nightmares.

My station broke into programming with a breaking news update during the Heroes season finale on Monday. Just before the show went to commercial break, a vial containing a deadly virus was tumbling towards the floor, a mere second from shattering. When we came back to the show (from the breaking news alert) all the heroes were standing around congratulating each other. It sucked to miss part of the show, but hearing about the angry calls and emails from the “Heroes community” the next morning was priceless.

I was looking at the list of all the crappy reality shows taking over the networks (American Gladiators not included) due to the WGA strike and part of me wishes that somehow the CBS studio executives decided to just extend Kid Nation and force those kids to stay in Bonanza City for another few months. It’d end up being a Battle Royale blood sport just in time for February ratings. If that happened my money would be on the creepy, little Jared kid.

The WGA strike makes more sense to me now…

Posted on December 2, 2007

…especially after recently spending hours on the video site Hulu. The site’s a joint venture between NBC and FOX, in which the networks (and their respective sister networks; FX, SciFi, Bravo) have dumped a ton of original high-quality video on there for folks to watch. It’s in private beta right now, but when the site opens up to the public you’ll be able to watch clips and episodes from dozens current shows (and classic ones like Buck Rogers, A-Team, and Battlestar Galactica). Like YouTube, you can email the shows to your friends or embed them on your blogs- even edit it down to show-off your favorite scene, like I did with this week’s episode of 30 Rock.

Hulu is just awesome, and it’s another example of how people are consuming their media, especially on platforms other than the traditional TV. Naturally, there’s a small amount of advertising within the shows on Hulu, but it’s handled rather well. And after watching one program after another, it’s become apparent to me just how much revenue the members of the WGA would be missing out from once the site actually goes public and people can catch up with the entire series of Friday Night Lights without having to turn on the TV or buy a DVD.

Also, I’ve come to realize that the word Hulu most likely means “crack” in some foreign language.

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