piece of shep

Over the past year or so I’ve had issues where iTunes would launch (and even play) by itself. I could never figure out exactly what was causing it nor could I find any type of solution. I did find that whenever I would touch the receiver for my wireless Logitech mouse iTunes would launch. That made me believe that the issue was with the Logitech mouse interfering with the Mac. That especially seemed like the case when I removed the Logitech and replaced it with the Magic Mouse and didn’t experience the issue again… until recently.

iTunes started launching by itself all over again over the past couple weeks. Knowing that it had something to do with the USB ports I found a quick fix to the issue. If I would shut down the Mac and unplug all the USB devices and plug them into different ports everything would work fine. Then today I saw this article. It seems that there is an update coming out that might fix the issue. The article talks about one known issue involving USB devices not operating properly after waking from sleep on machines with VMware’s virtualization products installed. This might be the very fix I will need. I have VMware Fusion installed to run Windows. I know the problem happened on Halloween last year (which was creepy, especially since the song playing when I got home that night was a song about vampires) and I didn’t buy VM Ware until November 11th so it still might not be the cause, but I do remember downloading a trial of VM Ware beforehand so that still might be the root cause. Let’s hope it is and it gets fixed.

You all know that I love TV. In fact, I love it so much I created a new site dedicated to all things TV. I present to you Let’s Talk About TV. There are still things I am tweaking, but I decided to make it public yesterday. Many of the posts were imported from here but expect a lot more frequent posting. I have a few good ideas on what I want to do with the site, I just hope I can pull it off. I’m hoping if I’m able to do a few of them out of the gates I will have a bit of momentum and the rest will come a bit easier (being vague on purpose).

So, why am I starting this site? Well, as I said, I love TV. I’m tired of posting about TV here and there always seems to be a lot more about TV that I want to post. Also, I need to take my mind of politics. You might know I run Grand Old Parody and I need to have something else to occupy my time. Politics is too stressful. I need something fun!

Anyway, go visit the site, look around, and if you’d like, subscribe. I hope you enjoy it!

No big surprise that Proposition C passed yesterday. Missouri is a red state and the election yesterday was, for the most part, a Republican primary. There were very few close Democratic primary races (or challengers for that matter). The vast majority of people who showed up at the polls were Republican. No doubt putting the measure on the ballot during a time when Democratic turnout was expected to be low was the plan all along. Also, when reading the wording of the proposition, it was clearly partisan. Not sure why this wasn’t challenged like it was in Florida. It was clearly one-sided, but that won’t even matter. When a state law comes into conflict with a federal law, the federal wins.

“The Constitution clearly states that a federal law trumps a state law when they come into direct conflict,” said Richard Reuben, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia. “The core of Proposition C, which is the opt-out provision, appears to be in direct conflict with the new federal statute.” Source

I seem to remember America fighting some kind of big war about federal laws and state laws and some rednecks got their panties in a bunch and decided they wanted to keep their free labor or something…

In other news, Cynthia “Let them eat McDonalds” Davis lost her primary. The O’Fallon nutjob was up against incumbent Scott Rupp. In case you don’t remember who Davis is, she’s the worst person in the world, twice, and the genius who said that the free lunch program should be abolished and if kids are hungry they should get a job at McDonalds because, you know, they let you eat for free on your break. I guess she couldn’t wrangle all that publicity in for a win.

All in all, it was an election where everything pretty much turned out exactly as people thought it would. I can’t wait to see Prop C struck down.

After reading Owen’s post about Twitter Influence there was a brief discussion in the Habari IRC channel about who people follow and why. One part of the conversation was about celebrities. One person in the convo didn’t follow any celebrities. Owen follows just one. I, however, follow 50+. That got me thinking about why I follow these people and how I’m actually using Twitter.

First off, I want to point out that I am not a TMZ, Perez Hilton, US Weekly, People celebrity stalker. In fact, if you look at the celebrities I follow you would find a bunch of names that rarely, if ever, appear in that type of celebrity drivel. The celebrities I follow are people from TV show, music, and movies that I really enjoy. Their updates are usually really good and provide me with entertainment. Denis Leary always has great one-liners. Rob Lowe embraces his fans and frequently talks about his role on The West Wing. Nathan Fillion and Colin Ferguson are just regular guys that tweet just like anyone else. Roger Ebert provides thoughtful political and film essays. Louis CK posts clips from his very funny show and tour dates for his stand up.

The thing is, I get quality tweets from most of these people. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t follow them. Sure there might be a few on there that don’t update, but for the most part they all do and I enjoy most of their tweets. It’s gotten to a point where I enjoy their tweets more than most of the other non St. Louis people I follow. Twitter has evolved from a place where I can see what other people are currently doing to a place where I can get info on my favorite TV shows, movies, musicians, and actors. I still enjoy seeing what my fellow St. Louisans are doing, but that’s about it. I used to enjoy reading what other people were up to or things they found interesting, but that has definitely changed, and I can probably pinpoint two reasons why that has changed.

The first reason is I started following too many people. I follow a lot of people but the people I follow, I follow for a reason. This has disadvantages though. The people I tend to follow update more frequently. Follow a lot of heavy users and statuses begin to fly by one right after another. Even though I find what they have to say interesting, I can only read so many tweets before they are lost forever in a never-ending stream of unreadable text. After a while of not being able to catch up, these updates become noise and provide nothing meaningful. The second thing is what I’m going to refer to as static. These are tweets that interfere with an otherwise good signal and will often contribute to the first issue. These tweets can be anything from a Four Square check in or a re-tweet to get into a contest for an Apple product (which I swear no one ever wins). Then you have paid tweets. That one bugs me the most. With celebrities and other high profile users, it’s easier to get high quality content without a lot of noise. You know if there is an update it’s not going to be a Four Square check in, a RT for a contest, or what song they are currently listening to. It’s going to be something that I find meaningful.

So, have you changed the way you use Twitter over the years? Do you still find it as valuable as before? Do you use it to make personal connections or more broad connections for your interests?

I have added some changed to the blog which you may or may not have noticed. I started adding linked posts to the blog. These are similar to what John Gruber does over at Daring Fireball. Basically, these are links to external articles that I comment briefly on. The reason I’m creating these is that I noticed I post a lot of links on twitter but rarely have enough characters to comment on them how I’d like. I figure my blog is the perfect place to do this but didn’t want just a series of extremely short normal blog posts. That’s when I decided to implement asides.

I found a plugin that will allow you to implement and style your asides without editing WordPress’ loop. It’s a great plugin because the only file I need to edit is my stylesheet so that I can style my asides as I see fit. That still didn’t solve my problem with having the post link to the actual article on my blog or my feeds. Because I didn’t want to hack my theme files, I settled on two plugins that would bring me that functionality. The first is the Linked List plugin. This is technically all I should need but, as I said, I wanted to implement these things without editing any theme files (besides the stylesheet of course). So far, I have styled asides and if you click on a linked post in my feed it will bypass my site and take you directly to the article. I needed one more plugin to link the actual post on my site to the external article. This is where the Page Links To plugin came in handy. I designate the URL the permalink should redirect to and it takes care of the rest.

So when you see posts like the one in the screenshot below, that’s a linked post. You can click on the external link icon at the end and it will take you to the article I’m referencing. If you are reading an external article from a feed reader, just click on the feed title and it will take you there.

Of course, right now I have no way of showing, in a feed, that it is a linked post, but I would think it would be pretty obvious if I’m talking about an article but there is no link within the text. I’ll see if I can find a way to make that more clear from within the feed. If you have any suggestions on how to that, I’m open to them.

Recently Josh Malina posted a little joke on Twitter that has resulted in a variety of hilarious responses. For those who don’t understand the joke, when you click on the link in his tweet it takes you to your own profile. So, no matter who clicks on the link, as long as you’re logged in, you’re taken to your own profile. This joke has been used in a variety of ways in the past, but this one has drawn some funny responses. People who are this dumb shouldn’t be allowed on the internet. They are the ones that will unknowingly send you viruses and beg you with help bolding something in Word Windows. I’ll give you a few of my favorite responses.

By the way, that last guy really took it seriously and decided to write a blog post about it. What a moron. No wonder he’s a Palin supporter.

If you want to follow the continuing parade of dumb people do a Google search for @joshmalina.

It’s no secret I am a fan of TV. I love it. I love (almost) everything about it. I love the acting, directing, stories, and scenery. There has always been one time of year where I (and my DVR) get a break from this addiction: the summer. Unfortunately, thanks to networks such as HBO, USA, SyFy, Showtime, and HBO, this is no longer the case. While the major networks are filling their schedules with reruns, reality shows, and game shows, the cable networks are creating and airing some of the best programming on TV.

For the past several years I’ve had summer time programming to enjoy. From Entourage and Dexter to the Weeds, Monk and True Blood, the summer TV schedule always had something to look forward to a day or two a week. The landscape has changed greatly over the past few years though. USA has been the biggest time consuming culprit of all the networks. Shows like Psych, Burn Notice, and the more recent In Plain Sight, White Collar, and Royal Pains have become mainstays in my viewing habits. Then they decide to create another show, Covert Affairs, as if they didn’t have enough of my attention. HBO isn’t going to let up either, with the Prohibition Era drama Boardwalk Empire starting in September. TNT has also managed to get some of my attention with the better-than-I-thought-it-would-be Memphis Beat. And then there is FX with two of TV’s best shows on television right now. The first being the under-appreciated dramedy Rescue Me and the second being the freshman comedy from funny-man Louis CK entitled Louie. Add AMC’s Mad Men, TBS’s My Boys, and SyFy’s Eureka and Haven to the mix and my summer schedule becomes just as full as my fall viewing schedule.

Summer used to be a welcome break from TV but networks are no longer content with letting the viewing public go outside, not even for a minute. Let’s face it, I live in St. Louis. I never went outside in the summer to begin with. It’s too hot and humid, but at least I was doing other things than watching TV, like catching up on my Netflix movie queue (somewhat kidding) or reading or, when the weather would comply, go outside.