Gerry Anderson – ”ITV Has Not Supported Me” wmv
Gerry Anderson interviewed on ‘bbc breakfast’
They just did a retrospective of Thunderbirds — showing All About Thunderbirds again — and kicked off a repeat of the entire series itself.
On BBC.
Not on ITV, which owns the series.
How fucked-up is that?
Max Keiser: Predicting the collapse of Iceland
Aljazeera re-aired Max’s 2007 prediction of a collapse of the Icelandic economy.
While the program aired in August 2007, it was filmed in April 2007.
Watch for the scene in the Blue Lagoon in which Max predicts a global Depression to be caused when all these debts driven by low interest rates burst.
Emphasis added by me.
It wasn’t just debt — it was outright fraud. Isn’t that correct, Bernie Madoff, you bastard?
Things will get dramatically worse between now and Obama’s Inauguration.
You’ll have to find your Doom fixes elsewhere, however. I won’t be blogging after Wednesday.
There are now only four days left to this blog.
I’m in the mood for something triumphant yet melancholic.
This Creaky Boards song fits: The Songs I Didn’t Write.
Amp up your speakers!
I got an absolutely amazing Christmas gift from a reader in South Africa who spotted — and then bought — the DVD boxed set of the very rare TV puppet series Interster.
He digitized and uploaded the first episode for me to see!
And he’s posted the URL for everyone else to get it too.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t approve of this. Creators should be paid for their work.
This is an exception on several counts:
1) It is 99.9% unlikely this will ever be sold outside of South Africa, so no royalty money is being stolen here
2) Currency exchange rates make it prohibitive to buy internationally
3) There is worldwide interest in this series from fans of Gerry Anderson‘s Supermarionation TV series
In additional to the download, the reader has now started an Interster blog where, I’m sure, a great deal more information will be found in coming days.
I hope the interest being shown in this series will prompt the rightsholder to offer the series for sale in the iTunes Store here in America (and elsewhere). I’d buy it! And I’m sure other Anderson — and puppetry — fans will too.
There are some notes about to best view the video as well as over ninety screensnaps with some commentary after the break.
Here’s the Countdown Clock.
And this is FAIL:
Yes, Auntie Beeb, I understand the license fee situation. But still. You offer news for a worldwide audience. Why not let up on the frikkin trailers at least?
Now this looks exciting. Contains a spoiler, though, so maybe you might not want to watch:
I’ll rev up my own International Telegraphic TARDIS on Friday and call it up.
I need to do this again because people weren’t listening the first time — and, frankly, many still had jobs in the dying printed books industry and so were too smug to pay attention.
This is what the book tour of the future — the future being 2009! — will look like:
Click = big
That’s Darren Rowse of ProBlogger doing a special “Christmas party” live streaming videocast via UStream.
What was his big outlay to do it? His existing MacBook Pro! And the connection was via WiFi too!
He was in Australia. There were people all over the world tuning in. One person was from Brazil!
The dying dinosaurs of print have asked: “Well, how can we do an author tour for an eBook? There’s no … um, book for people to bring to a store!”
That’s how. The author doesn’t go to any store. He goes to where the eBook store is — the entire Internet.
People can type questions. See and hear the writer respond. No one has to deal with bad weather or bad schedules. And the videos can be archived for people to see again later.
What about autographs? I did that earlier too.
Instead of sending a writer out on bad plane (or train or bus) trips to bad hotels and the mercy of weather, everyone can stay where they are — the writer at home, the readers at home (or likely stealing bandwidth from work!). It’s all win.
The writer can even, if so inclined, show the missus and child:
(Happy holidays, Mrs Rowse!)
Previously here:
Reference: Internet Video Chat
How Our Future Does Things
I Am Internationally Persecuted!
Live jkk & Chippy!
The impotence of of proofreading
— via Twitter from SteveAverill
I was in YouTube, digging around for something totally unrelated, when I got it into my head to put “Quest for Love” into the Search box.
I had to pick my jaw off the floor and superglue in back in place when the first ten minutes of this lost movie came up as a result!
Watch this.
It was never widely sold on VHS. It’s never been put on DVD (where are you, Criterion?!). It’s very hard to get now as a used VHS tape.
This movie was based on a story called Random Quest by John Wyndham. The original short story is a tale told in conversational flashback fashion and really lacks the charm and faster pace of the movie adaptation (which is by Terrence Feely!).
The script moves along at a very fast pace in the beginning, as you’ll see. The bulk of the film is a wonderful little character study of alternate existence, missed chances, redemption, and lost opportunities. It’s the direct precursor, in film form, of Somewhere in Time.
I’m lucky to have a used VHS of it from eBay many years back (which I still haven’t watched — my Backlog Pile is big!!).
It’s absolutely criminal that so few people know of this movie and that it’s not easily available in pristine condition on DVD.
Enjoy. But I warn you, you’ll want to see the rest of it after this.
At the old blog:
Video: Reporter Throws Shoes At Bush
Apparently most people have forgotten the sacred vow uttered by The Greatest PR Person In All History: Mohammed Saïd al-Sahaf, colloquially referred to by his fans and admirers (like me!) as “Baghdad Bob.”
This guy daily stood before the world’s assembled press and mocked the invasion of Iraq, defied the observations of the entire world, and came up with some stunningly-brilliant lines.
One of them was:
We will welcome them with bullets and shoes.
Well, the shoe bit worked out as poorly as the bullet effort.
But damn, I just love it that some people never forget!
Mohammed Saïd al-Sahaf, pour yourself a drink.
Here’s a compilation (alas, lacking the greatest lines!):
I actually bought the DVD put out about him!
I’m still waiting for this one:
God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis.
What poetry!
Supplemental:
TaxMan45 alerted me via Twitter that the Sony Reader had been featured on the Ellen Degeneres Show.
Smells like product placement, but still, good for Sony. As you’ll see in the video, the entire audience got a free Sony Reader and “101 free downloads” — which I suspect are 100 free classics and Ellen’s book. But still!
Here’s the video:
And here are the relevant screensnaps:
And this is from the website:
Click = big
Proving that Ellen and her audience can manage a USB cable while Oprah can’t. And I’m certain the audience was ecstatic to get a Sony Reader.
Mike Cane 2008 
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