Pioneer One debuts today

Pioneer One, an original dramatic series, debuts today.

Why should you care?  Well, unlike most TV series that are paid for by big corporate TV giants, and stay or go based on the ad revenue they generate, Pioneer One isn’t airing on “TV”.  Instead, the show’s creators Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith are releasing the show through bittorrent and limewire.

“The show’s pilot was shot for just $6000, raised through the micro-funding platform Kickstarter. “This production was possible due in no small part to the willingness of talented, professional people working for free,” explains Bernhard. “From actors to composers, they did this because they believed in the project and wanted to see it happen.The production was a journey in and of itself.”

http://vodo.net/pioneerone

Episode 1 is available in HD 720p and Xvid (click the links to download the respective torrents), with 6 more episodes planned for this season.

They’re accepting donations at the site, and while I haven’t had a chance to view it yet, I’m excited about the prospect of bittorrent for drama-series distribution becoming mainstream, or at least “accepted”.  I’m completely tired of the usual reality-show standard bullshit piped down the airwaves from the usual heavy hitters.

If you like this series, please consider donating.  How many of you LOVED Firefly and wished you could have donated a few bucks to see a second or third season?

Everyone needs a 10′ tall truck in Florida

Recently on vacation in Florida, I noticed a strange phenomenon.  Every 4th or 5th truck sports a 4-10″ lift and 35+ inch tires.  What gives?

In a state with nothing but flat land and paved roads going everywhere, the lifts and oversize tires would seem to yield nothing more than reduced fuel economy, poorer handling, and a big ole’ dent in the wallet.  Maybe it’s the crazy snowfall in the winter. . wait no that can’t be it.

I drive a truck myself, and while I’ll admit the “lifted” look is nice on a lot of trucks, in a state like Florida, I think I’d find a different way to express myself.

iPhone 4 order madness!

I may or may not be receiving an iPhone 4 on the 24th.  I honestly have no idea, and I’m in the same boat with about 3/4 of a million other people.

Here’s how things went down:

June 14th, 10:00pm – Considered staying up till midnight to put in the pre-order, but couldn’t find any confirmation it would even be available that early, and I was on vacation in Florida, so I figured the hell with it, I’d get up early and try the pre-order as soon as possible.

June 15th, 7:30am – Woke up and started my pre-order on AT&T’s website.  Site was responding a little “slow” but seemed to be working “OK”.

June 15th, 7:45am – Got to the final checkout page, had my credit card info in, etc. and hit “Checkout”

June 15th, 7:55am – AFTER A PAINFUL TEN MINUTES, the checkout page fails with a proxy timeout error and a long numerical string.  I check my bank account, and there’s a $1.00 auth from AT&T, so I figured it probably went through and just never spit back a confirmation.  We were on vacation and I had other stuff to do, so I quit worrying about it and went about breakfast and planning the day.

June 15th, 10:00am – After reading reports of widespread complete failures in the ordering process at both AT&T and Apple, I figured I better give customer service a call and see if they have my order.

June 15th, 10:15am – After waiting on hold for 15 minutes, I finally get on with a rep who tells me there’s no order on my account, and the system is completely overwhelmed with orders.  I request she process an order for me, but she states she doesn’t even have the ability to do so.  When I ask what I should do, she states I should “just keep trying”, and suggests I give Apple’s site a try as well.

June 15th, 10:30am – Upon trying to order again at AT&T’s site, it won’t even let me proceed past the upgrade screen.  Immediately kicks back an error page and tells me for non-iPhone upgrades I can contact customer service.   I later learned AT&T had actually started blocking upgrades while they tried to make sense of what was going on, but their reps never stopped telling people to “keep trying”.  Assholes.

June 15th, 10:45am – I try ordering at Apple’s site.  The site is slow as molasses, and fails repeatedly never reaching all the way through to the part where I can actually order.

June 15th, 11:30am – I throw my hands up in the air and give up, frustrated I’d sunk that much time in trying to give a co. money for something that doesn’t even exist yet.  It’s one thing to fight for a credit or a correction in service.  It’s another to have to FIGHT to give a company money.  How dare I.

June 15th, 2:00pm – My wife, bless her soul, decides to give it a try and repeatedly attempts ordering through AT&T website, Apple’s website, and the iPhone Apple Store App after reading reports of occasional “successes” reported on twitter, etc.   I head out to pickup lunch wanting nothing to do with it at this point.

June 15th, 3:00pm – After a FULL HOUR of trying, she succeeds!  AT&T’s site comes through with an order confirmation, which she wisely “saves” since we had no printer available to us on vacation.  At this point I’m cautiously happy, but did breathe a sigh of relief.

June 16th, 1:00pm – I receive an email from AT&T stating my order has been canceled, claiming: “Unfortunately, we were either unable to verify the information you provided or you have exceeded the number of lines of service that we allow customers to purchase online. As a result, your order has been canceled.”  I was so angry, I didn’t even do anything right away.  The reality that I wasn’t likely getting a phone until mid to late July set in, and I gulped it down like a 10lb rock with jagged edges.

June 16th, 5:00pm – Again, my wife saves the day by calling AT&T and finds out there were “multiple orders” and they show that while one was canceled, a second one “appears” to be “in process”.

June 16th, 9:40pm – I get a second email from AT&T claiming that my iPhone 4 pre-order has been received and is being processed in the order it was received.  It includes an order #, and I plug it into AT&T’s site under order status, it simply shows “in-process”, but with an order date of the 16th.

Fast forward to today, my order still shows “in process” with an order date of the 16th, and several calls to AT&T have yielded no answer as to when my phone will ship.  Reports from various sources online state orders received before late afternoon on the 15th SHOULD ship for delivery on the 24th, and my order was definetely placed in that range, but nevertheless the date states the 16th.

I guess at this point, I wait until the 23rd and see if the order shows as “shipped”, and if it doesn’t the most I can do is call AT&T and complain.  Never in my life have I gone through such a bullshit ordeal to buy something, let alone on a pre-order.  From what I understand AT&T and Apple have together accepted over 3/4 million pre-orders with the first 600k occuring on the 15th alone!  While this is a record-setting number, the process was still completely unacceptable and has likely left each and every one of the 600k people that did succeed in getting an order through pissed at AT&T for not stepping up to the plate with a queuing system, or a slimmed down process for completing checkout at any time throughout the day.

So tell me, did you get an order through?  If so, what’s your order date, and have you gotten a delivery estimate from AT&T?

UPDATE:

June 19th, 3:30pm – Spoke with another rep from AT&T, and was told that due to the overwhelming response, NO orders are expected to ship for delivery before the 26th (and more likely the 28th).  This was from a single source at AT&T, and I don’t see anyone else reporting it, but she insisted nothing would be shipping for delivery on the 24th.  I guess we’ll see :)

UPDATE:

June 21st, 10:00am – Received a voicemail from AT&T stating my order “should” ship for delivery between the 25th and 28th of June.

Google Pacman whenever you want

That’s right, no need to wait for the next anniversary.  You can actually get to the playable Google Pacman right here anytime:

http://www.google.com/pacman/

Just don’t get addicted.  Apparently we already blew $120 million playing it back on May 21st:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/197062/googles_pacman_tribute_bad_for_business.html

iPhone 4: pure, industrial class for your pocket

I followed the Apple WWDC 2010 loosely via a liveblog since I was at work during the event, but since then I’ve been closely following the reviews and reports on the iPhone 4. I’m impressed, REAL impressed.

Specs avail from apple here:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

but, let me break down what matters most to me:

1) Class. The thing is fucking gorgeous. . . . I’m a huge sucker for industrialesque design where form follows function, and the iPhone 4 does this in a way that just shuts the door on other smart phones out there, including their own 3G and 3GS iPhones. The “original iPhone” with it’s metal back, and game-changing all glass front is a close second to this, and I’m SOOOO glad they’ve gone back to this type of design. The metal sides on the iPhone 4 are actually antennas, and the front and rear are a special engineered glass that’s stronger and more durable than anything found on a smartphone before.

2) 720p 30fps HD video. Damn straight, HD video onboard. Quit shopping for a newer video cam to replace your aging Hi8 or miniDV behemoth you currently haul to “events”, because the iPhone 4 just obsoleted them. It’s not that there aren’t dedicated cameras out there that will do a better job than this one, there are. But, this one will do a better job than what 99% of people already own for a video cam, and it’ll always be at the ready, in your pocket. I won’t even talk about the convenience of quick edits and youtube/email straight from the phone. It’s a given.

3) 960×640 display. Apple calls it a “retina display” which I’ve never heard of, so their marketing dept. probably invented it. Regardless, that’s a HUGE amount of pixels for such a tiny screen. Reviewers are saying even at a distance from their eye of only a few inches, they can’t make out the pixels in the image. I’m sold, porn will no doubt look amazing :P

4) Front-facing 2nd camera. To be honest, it’s about time the iPhone gets this. Ever since the original iPhone came out in 2007, people have had half-baked ideas about some crazy mirror to use the rear cam for video calls as the iPhone seems otherwise so well fit for this type of use scenario. Now folks can quit pretending to be inventors, and just go buy the new iPhone. Apple didn’t talk about supporting anything other than “FaceTime”, but Jobs did promise to make it an open standard, and with the app store, I’m sure the front cam will have 5000 uses a week after launch date. Chatroullette anyone?

5) Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet. Just kidding, wanted to see if anyone was even still reading :)

Bottom line, it’s available June 15th, and you’ll find me hitting refresh on the order page starting at 11:55pm on the 14th.

Red Hat Summit / JBoss World 2010 – Boston, MA

I’ll be in Boston for JBoss World and the Red Hat Summit from June 23rd to June 25th.

http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/2010/

I’m headed there for work to attend the labs and workshops including everything from hardware to next-gen apps,  security and cloud.  This will be the first time I’ve been to Boston, and the first time I’ve attended a Red Hat Summit :)

I’m open to suggestions for places to eat, and things to see in the evening.

To hell with the cleanup – Let’s buy search terms!

As BP sweats to clean up the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico, it is simultaneously waging a public relations (PR) war, trying to fend a wave of negative attention, by buying search phrases like “oil spill” on Google and Yahoo.

When the phrase “oil spill” is typed on Google or Yahoo, the immediate result guides one to BP’s “Gulf of Mexico response”, its official page dedicated to giving information about its attempt to curtail the spill.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/27378/20100608/oil-spill.htm

It’s not that I don’t think they’re “trying” to cleanup the oil spill.  In fact, I watched them pop that cap on last Thursday live and was rather impressed with what can be done that far down in the depths of our precious oceans by ROV.

Still, seeing this article today gave me a chuckle.  From what I’ve heard they’re doing a solid job denying everyone’s loss claims over 5k and making complete asshats of themselves in the mainstream press, but hey, at least they’re spending tens of thousands on search terms.

Somehow, Google always wins.

Less than 2 hours until Apple WWDC 2010

Beginning  at 10am pacific (1pm eastern), Steve Jobs is expected to take the stage @ WWDC 2010 for the keynote.

He’s expected to announce the new iPhone 4G, given it’s leak via gizmodo and various Vietnamese sources, but what else?  AT&T has recently bumped up eligibility for nearly all of their current iPhone customers (or at least those currently still holding the original iPhone or a 3G) as referenced here:

http://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/07/atandt-moves-up-iphone-upgrade-eligibility-on-eve-of-wwdc-keynote/

and here:

http://gizmodo.com/5557102/att-makes-almost-everyone-eligible-for-a-new-iphone

My guess is that the AT&T move signals Apple will announce an end date to the exclusivity of their relationship with AT&T for the iPhone.  AT&T will have to start treating their Apple-loving customers a little nicer if it wants to keep them.

Coincidentally, the touchscreen on my wife’s 8GB original iPhone died yesterday, and while the phone still boots and works, it’s impossible to interact with.  She’s already eying my 3GS, and I’m eying the possibility of a 4G :P

Thanks for visiting.  Tom and I each maintain our own blogs now to better target our own audiences, but fear not, here’s links!

Rich’s Blog:

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Am I the only one that thought this sinkhole pic was photoshopped?

When I first saw this pic of a sinkhole in Guatemala, I could sware it was photoshopped.  I actually visited 3 different news sites to see if they were all running the same shot, and sure enough they were.

Well, I guess I can give up waiting for news it’s faked since there’s respectable boots on the ground and it turns out it’s completely real, but not a sinkhole at all.

The hole measures 66′ wide, and is an astonishing 100′ deep.

Sam Bonis, a Guatemalan geologist, says it’s actually a piping feature, and is due to the fact that the city doesn’t sit on bedrock at all.  In fact, it’s sitting on volcanic “pumice fill” that’s up to 600′ deep in places.    Due to how this pumice fill reacts to water flow, and the lack of bedrock for such great depths, Sam says this is likely to happen again, and again.

The entire city is in danger of becoming swiss cheese.