Happiest of New Years to everyone who joined me here since the sites relaunch last Spring, and remember - it may not be perfect, we may have a lot of work to do yet, but every once in a while it’s good to sit back and take a moment to give thanks that we’re lucky enough to be living IN THE FUTURE!

(Century 21 Calling, and other marvels of futurisim can be found at the always-awesome Prelinger Archives)

This sucks. I had pre-written a great pair of thematic “out with the old, in with the new” posts to celebrate the new year, one of which has now pretty much invalidated itself over the time I was out of town for the holidays, as it turns out the patient being eulogized isn’t actually deceased. Regardless, let’s ring out / ring in the new year by mourning/celebrating the departure/return of everyone’s favourite big-smoke-centric-blog the Torontoist!

–
I was legitimately saddened to hear that Torontoist is to close December 31st.

I would never say it was my favorite on-line haunt, but it had started to generate it’s own unique place in the media landscape of the city. I can’t imagine another avenue equally befitting the strangely enthralling 69 Days on the TTC project, or snap reactions on waterfront architecture, or the only must-read television column anywhere in the city.

I found the publicbroadcasting.ca response a little pat. Or rather slightly awkward in that it can be read that Torontoist’s downfall can either be traced to:

• The Gothamist network of blogs being US based
• It is impossible to be a financially self-sustaining media outlet in this country

(For the record, I’m not sure either was actually Justin’s intent… just that you could read his reasoning that way). I actually would argue Justin’s point:

If Canadians want their own culture, their own media and their own stories told it must be created, maintained and supported in Canada.

because Torontoist’s problem, if any, was that it was created, maintained, and supported in Canada. If the shutdown can be traced to anything, it’s that for a marginal property (I suspect at best) in an economic downturn Gothamist wasn’t willing to put in the legwork to find another Canadian willing to create, maintain, and support it the way Dave Topping did, and Dave (probably rightly) read the writing on the wall that the generic global advertising that Gothamist traffics in, is going to be a dicey market and probably not going to suddenly start bringing in gigantic money commensurate with the time and effort he has dedicated to the ‘ist.

(I then, ramble on… at length)

But just when things seem their bleakest, like some kind of cheezy Christmas special, George Bailey decides that his life is worthwhile after all and triumphantly returns to the party.

All is certainly not business-as-usual. It sounds from Dave’s return post that the outcry of support means he’s willing to give it the ole’ college try for six months and (again reading between his lines) see if there’s some way of making the Torontoist a self-sustaining property that could perhaps buy itself out from it’s parent network. This would pretty much validate the lengthier, not copied above, portion of my eulogy which was for localized new-media properties to work, you really need to be financing and advertising locally, becoming a community hub - the same way any local paper, television, or radio station does.

I wish Dave and his staff the best of luck over their six month “push” - and bear them absolutely no ill will that they’ve messed up my previous diatribe. Well, probably some ill will - but it’s misplaced, and I’ll still visit their site anyway.

Dear Fox,
Eat All the Dicks
- Daniel O’Brien

Like lots of other bloggers, I was shocked to come out of my post-Christmas turkey induced coma to the news, broken by Michael Sieply in the New York Times, that Twentieth Century Fox has succeeded in at least some of their lawsuit against Warner Brothers relating to “Watchmen” - a ruling which now puts the proposed March 7th release of the film in jeopardy.

Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do.
- Bob Dylan

Like lots of comic fans, my initial reaction was annoyance – I’m a tremendous fan of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons original work, and have been looking forward to the film with equal parts anticipation and dread. My bio notes that I’ve been hired three times to write about comic books for very disparate magazines (all three of which stopped publishing before my first columns ever saw print). It’s a testament to the depth and breadth of “Watchmen” that I was able to reference it in all three of my initial columns despite the very different audiences and focus of each. It’s one of my “hook” books to introduce adult readers to comics when they ask me to “recommend something” (although I do occasionally suggest that on first reading one can skip the supplementary text-pieces, and “tales from the black freighter” sub-plot - both of which have caused friends of mine to “stall” and not finish the book).

My frustration quickly turned from Fox to the larger press given that since Justice Feess dropped his December 24th surprise order no one was actually reporting on what the case was about, except in vague banalities like “contract dispute”. For copyright and computer law I’ve been a little bit spoiled by resources like Groklaw – wherein within moments of legal documents being available they have been widely made available and dissected into plain English by eagle-eyed legal beagles. Eaglebegles. Leaglebles.

I can’t offer that, but since no one else seemed to be looking into this, I spent yesterday morning digging through the Byzantine labyrinth of PACER (the US courts electric document filing system) to bring (hopefully) a little meat to this discussion.

Firstly, and most importantly, here for your reading pleasure is the Honourable Garry Allen Feess December 24, “Order Re: Cross-Motions For Summary Judgement”. This is the (interim) summary judgement in full as filed on PACER.

Have no fear if you have an innate fear of all things legal-ish, judgements generally (and judge Feess here in particular) try to write in accessible “plain english” that absolutely anyone can read. Plus at six pages, it’s succinct.

Most importantly it lays out the case very clearly, and far from being legal bickering on some contractual fine-point (the legal professions bread and butter), I was actually astonished at how strong a case Fox has, and am somewhat confused as to what Warner Brothers was thinking in the first place.

The “two-minute” summary is pretty easy: In 1986 Fox purchased the option to “Watchmen” (presumably from DC Comics) and, in 1990, they exercised that option by paying out $320,000 - making them the only entity able to produce and distribute a “Watchmen” movie.

A year after they bought all the rights to the film, Fox gave them to a film producer named Lawerence Gordon (producer of “Die Hard”, “Hellboy”, and one of my personal favourites - the criminally underrated “Mystery Men”, amongst manty others). To be specific, Fox actually gave the rights to one of several companies controlled by Gordon at the time, with the caveat that if the film was ever produced, Fox would be the distributor.

In 1994 Gordon decided to withdraw from the companies in question – as part of his withdrawal agreement from these companies, he got to take the interest in “Watchmen” with him – and at that time signed an additional agreement with Fox that he could buy out their interest in “Watchmen” if he liked by paying Fox a buy-out fee.

At it’s core, that’s pretty much where the legal summary ends. Mr. Gordon proceeded to produce the film with Warner Brothers (despite the fact that Fox notified them very early on that they felt they had the legal right to distribute the film, and had - you know - Mr. Gordon’s signature on an agreement that pretty much said this was the case). Warner Brothers argument is that due to the terms of the agreement under which Gordon obtained the rights from his company – Fox’s interest ended at that time… which seems a pretty flimsy basis for a defence given the very clear “buy-out agreement” between Gordon and Fox (in fact judge Feess points out in his decision that Warner is effectively arguing that the court would have to “nullify (a) clear understanding reached between extremely sophisticated parties”.

Aside from the details of the case, there’s some interesting context in the order itself. There is a lot of confusion on-line because as late as December 17th Judge Feess was suggesting that this might need to go to trial. In his order he clarifies that, essentially, both Fox and Warner told him that they just wanted him to make a decision on this central copyright infringement issue which they didn’t feel would be clarified by any further legal proceedings (Warner also wanted him to adjudicate on the issue of a cap on the amount of compensatory damages – from which a skeptic might infer that they perhaps weren’t entirely confident in their ability to win this case going in).

Also particularly juicy is justice Feess fairly scathing footnote to page 4, in which he calls out Gordon (and his lawyers) for not testifying personally, asserting a fairly unique variant of lawyer/client privilege. Judge Feess points out that even if he chose to talk to the court now – the judge is not changing his ruling. Nikki Finke has written more about this legal wrist-slap.

So with all that out in the open, where do we go from here? It’s important to note that this actually isn’t the judge’s final ruling. That will likely be a lengthier document some weeks down the line, but justice Fees noted that time was of the essence (given that the film is supposed to come out in a shade over two months from now) and so he would give a “shorter ruling” in advance so it didn’t come as a surprise. Given this order there is no way Warner Brothers can release the film as it stands – they’ll need to resolve the issue with Fox (likely with a reeeeealllly big novelty cheque) before March 7th if they don’t want to delay the release. There are also a number of other contractual issues as part of this lawsuit to which this order doesn’t apply, but I get the impression that this is the major one to stop the release of the film, hence it’s priority in handling. I quite liked Judge Feess’s candour in suggesting in his conclusion that Fox and Warners, instead of preparing for a lengthy trial, could better spend their time just figuring out a solution.

According to the judge’s order there was a conference call between all the parties this morning – so we’ll have to wait and see what fallout (if any) there is from that call.

Update - The excellent FilmEsq Blog has a good summary of the status of the case at the moment they also report on some recent statements by both parties that would suggest a quick settlement is unlikely.

Personally, I’ve done a 180 on the whole issue, going from a vague notion that Fox was “legal gold-digging” to wondering what the heck Warner Brothers and their council were thinking not resolving this sooner. Especially given that there was a clear and easy path to proceed back at the very beginning of this process (paying Fox’s “buy out fee” before even starting production) I’m a little baffled how they’ve ended up in this situation having spent considerable time and effort producing and marketing a film they don’t have the rights to. Maybe there are no “grey zones” and with enough facts everything can be reduced to a moral black and white after all… hey, who does that remind me of?

NB: If I’ve given anyone a taste for reading interesting funnybook-related legal judgements, I highly recommend NEIL GAIMAN v. TODD MCFARLANE, which has lots of interesting stuff on verbal contracts, the state of the comic industry in the early 90s, and a highly entertaining overview of “Spawn” that I think the judge enjoyed writing.

Way to get into the holiday spirit, Costco hot-dog condiment bar!

Catching up on my hockey blogs over the weekend I found an amusing post over at Hit The Post sharing a couple of funny mock-political ads made by the Chicago Blackhawks - presumably to spur fan voting for the all-star game. The spots were unusually funny for in-house marketing, and contained a couple of good Canada jokes, so I fired the link off to my brother and forgot about it. Behold - viral marketing in action!

Except for the part where he went and discovered that both the videos had been pulled off YouTube by the Blackhawks claiming copyright violation.

Confidential to Chicago Blackhawks crack marketing team: When you make a viral-type video - it is with the express purpose that you hope it will show up on YouTube (or Veoh, or Digg, or any of the myriad of bastard social-networking sites - some of which will re-host your media, and some of which won’t). The entire point of this type of marketing is to encourage your fans to spread your message far and wide - even if it is out of your control. Why it might get to the point where a Calgary Flames fan reads about them on a Flames blog, and e-mails his brother… who just happens to be in the process of filling out his all-star ballot at that exact moment.

Ignoring the fact that the NHL has thrown buckets of money at YouTube specifically to get more representation on the site… what could you possibly be thinking?

It could be your beleif that in lieu of a familiar YouTube link, people will bother trying to hunt down the original clip on the official Chicago Blackhawks website?
If so, I’m sorry to break it to you; No, they won’t. I did, just to see if it was possible and it took me nearly five minutes, followed by a mandatory 30-second advertisement, some brutal pop-up ads, and re-starting my browser because of your ridiculous flash-player’s automatic banner ads. In fact the only reason I stuck with it was the ludicrousness that my Quixotic quest rapidly evolved into.

I’m not subjecting any of my friends or family to that. I’m not e-mailing people that, and I’m certainly not linking to it here…

…

Oh, okay… but only because unlike some teams, you haven’t messed up your iconic jersey. But this is your one warning, capice?

The point is, at a time where the league is not only managing to get marketing hockey right, but take some really innovative chances this just comes across as strictly minor league.

In trying to solve a contest question for the effervescent E Dub today, I came across this YouTube.

While I’m not sure I agree that these are the “top” cartoon themes from the 80s (It was a big decade for Cartoons stretching from “Danger Mouse” through “The Simpsons”) I will say this is a really interesting cross section of early 80s toy-based “high concept” cartoons. Literally pretty much every permutation and combination of “space”, “cars”, “robots” and “dinosaurs” is represented herein. Most importantly the clip contains the requisite amount of “I completely forgot about THAT!” moments, 80s futurism design, and hair-rock.

Plus, Jem is at #2 which is only one spot off… since I think it’s unarguable that Jem had the quintessential 80s cartoon theme song. Period.

Given the large effect US intellectual property policy has on the world at large, it’s always good to keep an eye on there. The Obama administration has announced Xavier Becerra as it’s new Trade Representative. Laura Quilter over at derivative work has an excellent summary, as well as links to profiles and lobbyist funding sources for the democratic representative.

Sadly “supporting Hollywood” is often synonymous with “restricting copyright”, but Laura cites an instance where Becerra seems to take a more progressive approach with respect to patent law… so there may be hope yet.

Lots of good information on someone that will be worth watching in the coming months.

I don’t have a strong position on the current Canadian political fracas, as I don’t have a partisan banner at which to rally. At the moment, I’m equally enthused with all of the major parties… and that’s not a good thing. I will, however, cross-post an edited and updated version of what I wrote in a comment thread over at Nunc Scio, just because it summarizes a couple of odds-and-end random thoughts I haven’t seen get a lot of play elsewhere:

I’ve yet to be convinced by anyone that the obvious course of action for Michelle Jean isn’t to just throw this whole mess back to the electorate, prorogue be damned. Given that she likely never expected to have to make an actual political decision - let alone one of this magnitude (the King-Byng being the only time something even remotely similar has ever happened in the history of the country) I always suspect the most likely course of action (regardless of what the pundits predict as savvy politics) is the one that will cover the most butt. “This is a decision that must be decided by the people, not an individual” is never going to be a vilified argument in the history books (even if it’s wrong, and absolutely no one wants an election). It’ll draw flack in the short term - but contrast that with the risk of letting a (potentially) explosive coalition (including a separatist party), led (albeit temporarily) by a party leader who has essentially resigned due to his perceived lack of compatability with the electorate - rule the country for an indeterminate period of time. “Option B” has the potential of being an all time hi-lite reel political melt-down.

I think the strongest argument *for* the coalition is, ironically a different take on the “wilderness years” debate. [From this article, although MGK had an interesting counterpoint] Like the rightist parties have already done, a coalition could give the fractious leftist parties a chance to realize that governing is a lot more fun than perpetually-being-in-opposition. It might be wishful thinking that this could at least spur them to further consolidate into some type of coherent unified political alternative that could actually better reflect the actual political will of the country, but as it stands three various center-leftist parties are *never* going to beat one unified rightist one (schizophrenic as the rightist one may be).

The opposite side of the coin is the fact that as unified as it is/was under Harper, the conservatives are very much still schizophrenic from the Reform/PC/Alliance days, and have no obvious leadership bench depth. With no chance of governance in the short term we might fast track some of the in-party schism that I think everyone expected to play out eventually.

As someone with absolutely no partisan leanings, even a faint chance of fewer (if somewhat ideologically muddied) parties, or a greater number of smaller, ideologically distinct parties could only benefit the long term political health of this country.

Yes, the timing sucks in the current economic climate, but the contrarian in me would also point out that the economy is going to suck like nobodies business in the short term, and airing some of this dirty laundry now could potentially do less harm than at a time when the economy is in an upturn, no matter how much the bay street old-guard complains. Which they will. Loudly.

In conclusion I am enjoying the fact that Canadian politics has somehow managed to bring the most interesting and compelling short-term high-stakes drama since FLQ or Meech scant weeks before Christmas. In a recession. Days after an status-quo election. A period that by, any measure, should account for the most boring federal politics theoretically possible.

Go figure.

I’ve gotten some weird spam in my day, but sometimes you just have to question the sender’s basic underlying assumptions.

I’m slipping in my dottage.

I also long ago discovered it’s nigh impossible to judge Pixar on their concepts. See “Rattitouli”.

Somali Pirates to Acquire Citigroup

MGK linked to this delightful Report on Business article on how woeful the stock market has been this week. No news flashes there, but I did find some wonderful gallows humour in this quote from Myles Zyblock, chief equity strategist at RBC Dominion Securities in Toronto:

The idea that there are floors underneath the market has rapidly evaporated. There really is only one true floor – and we don’t want to discuss that.

Indeed.

I still don’t have my Caution, Robots wallpaper. Disney. I know, I know, you want me to buy the Blu-Ray that came out this week… and, frankly, the likelyhood of someone giving me a copy over the holiday season is almost guaranteed given my outspoken love, at which point I’ll make my own wallpaper… but I’m not HAPPY about it. If there’s a theme to WALL-E it’s that things are much more valuable when they’re just given to you as you sit on a giant floating chair, right? Right?

But just when Disney/Pixar was off my Christmas card list you both went and, as a gesture of goodwill, made the full script for the film available for download on your Walt Disney Studios “For Your Consideration” Awards Page (click “WALL-E”, then “Download Script”). Okay, it was probably less for reasons of “holiday cheer” and more because you’d like it to be nominated for a best screenplay Avademy Award. But there may indeed be method to your madness.

Reading scripts of movies I admire is always interesting, but it’s truly fascinating how much character and tone Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter imbue into the page, especially as it needs to cover the conventional dialogue free first act of the film. Interestingly, the script would suggest “Wally” departs Earth at about 20 minutes into the film… a point I would have pegged as closer to half-way into the movies runtime, but that may just be due to that section being (IMHO) the most emotionally powerful of the film (not that I didn’t enjoy the acts on the Axiom, they’re just more conventional). Now I have to get that Blu-Ray… dang it all.

Somehow the textual characterization of Wally and Eve (and pretty much all of the robots) is even more charming in script-form, and has made me even more infatuated with a film that I was, clearly, pretty infatuated with to begin with.

There’s value in the consumption of these particular bits, especially for those interested in screencraft - so, presuming you’re going to pass on comments to all the Academy Award voting friends you have (that is why you’re at the “for your consideration site, right?), pull down a copy and check it out for yourselves.

I’ve got a (hopefully) interesting idea for my first ever “theme week” next week that I’ve been noodling on in spare minutes, but just wanted to take a minute to talk about the CRTC’s Bell decision this morning, why it should have been expected, and why nothing is actually settled yet when it comes to traffic shaping.

Time for a trademark Bradfox.com What’s the Deal?

What’s the Backstory?
The only real national DSL ISP in the country is Bell. If you get your internet over a DSL connection it (almost always) either comes from Bell directly (Sympatico), or through a company that has bought a large block of service from Bell and resells it under their own brand (the same way that, say, calling card companies buy large blocks of long distance at a discount and then resell them).

Back in March Bell began “throttling” it’s service. Claiming that P2P (ie: BitTorrent) traffic was creating an unmanageable load across the network Bell began enforcing artificial network limitations on certain services. Not only did they impose these limits on their own (Sympatico) customers, but also on all the companies that resell through them.

What’s the Argument?
There’s really two affected parties here, the resellers and the end users.
Traffic shaping is a real slippery slope for end users, because you’re allowing you ISP to dictate the performance of (what I’ve argued before ad naseum) should be treated like a utility. While telco’s try to frame most of the current discourse as dealing with “those nasty BitTorrent pirates”, this is no longer the modern reality. This CBC article from yesterday, should be commended for pointing out not only is BitTorrent used to distribute legal material (including the CBC’s own “Canada’s Next Prime Minister” television series) Skype is a P2P service. So are elements of “World of Warcraft”, and video chat, and a slew of other modern internet applications.

Where the “Spockian eyebrow” starts to raise is when you introduce the idea of Bell introducing traffic shaping to “protect it’s network” that degrade the quality of competing services. Is Bell throttling Skype because of legitimate network load concerns, or because Skype is a competitor to Bell’s traditional phone services? Should Bell decide that, say, YouTube is placing an unusual demand on the network can it turn off access to that particular website? Can it move to a system where individual websites can pay premiums for better service to Bell’s customers? These are all the core arguments at the core of Net Neutrality.

The resellers have a slightly different issue. One of the few competitive advantages they have over Sympatico is the ability to manage their own network. A prime example is that many of the small and medium sized ISP’s market themselves on being “power user” friendly and allowing features (unlimited bandwidth, static IP’s…) to appeal to more technically savvy users. If Bell can impose “network wide policies” it limits the amount that the resellers can manage their own networks to create end-user packages all that different from Bell. The resellers argue that the responsibility of managing traffic within their “piece” of the Bell network should be theirs alone.

So What’s the Deal?
The CRTC ruling basically comes out and says that Bell has the right to apply it’s own policies to it’s resellers, provided it gives them adequate notice. Why no one should start rioting in the streets just yet is that the ruling goes out of it’s way to make no statement about the legality of traffic shaping itself. Basically it focuses entirely on the reseller/Bell side of the argument as a simple contract dispute.

Further, and more interestingly, the CRTC is launching a brand new proceeding to address the issue of traffic shaping at all.

CAIP’s application asked us to only consider the specific issue of wholesale traffic shaping within a specific context. The broader issue of Internet traffic management raises a number of questions that affect both end-users and service providers,” added (CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein). “We have decided to hold a separate proceeding to consider both wholesale and retail issues. Its main purpose will be to address the extent to which Internet service providers can manage the traffic on their networks in accordance with the Telecommunications Act.”

This will be the hearing for all the marbles, and the one that end users should watch very closely as it will have a major influence on all internet services in this country for the foreseeable future, moreso than any recent government initative I can think of - even perhaps, the much discussed copyright legislation.

If we can take heart in anything, it’s that the FCC in the US seems to have come down fairly clearly on the side of Net Neutrality in a similar case in the US, ruling that Comcast couldn’t continue traffic shaping in a way almost identical to what Bell is doing. I actually think the FCC approach (where, with cause, ISP’s can throttle individuals who are using large amounts of network resources - but not make blanket policy against services) is preferable. No one would argue that ISP’s need to be able to protect the integrity of their networks, but it removes the spectre of them making decisions based on corporate interest, not end user experience.

[Amusing Sidenote - I wrote this this morning and have been unable to post it for hours because my office's Bell-based internet decided to shut down completely... I guess that's one form of "traffic shaping"]

Looks like martian Winter finally caught up with the Phoenix lander. But hey, discovering water ice on Mars, plus another two months of data beyond one’s mission is nothing to sneeze at. Some rake at slashdot suggested we pour some carbon dioxide on the curb in memoriam.

In other news, Spirit and Opportunity still kicking ass, taking names.

Just as an aside - where is our civilization’s sense of exploratory wonder, at the awesomeness of our technology? We are driving robots around Mars. There robots have arms, and claws, and ovens, and cameras, and microphones. They are powered by the sun. They are on Mars. Heck we can get copies of photos taken on Mars on our phones with very little effort. Jules Verne would shit the proverbial brick. We are truly living in an age of wonders society! Be more appreciative!

Anyone following the sidebar has likely seen that my last week was consumed with the 30-hour non-stop telethon webcast called “The Couchathon” for Sick Kids Foundation and Child’s Play. It was long, and it was a logistical headache, but it was a *lot* of fun. There’s a smattering of “Best of” videos starting to get posted to couchathon.com, but the one above (from around hour 19) is pretty much what my recollection of the entire event is like.

As a kid who spent some time in children’s hospitals growing up, the Couchathon was certainly very personally gratifying - but it was also the last major “event” on my calendar this year… which feels tremendously freeing… and hopefully means more blogging! I’ve really enjoyed trying to get a little more regular with updates here, but I’ll be the first to admit, things have been a little lean since the Film Festival.

“I shall be released” indeed!

Incidentally if you missed out on the Couchathon, the donation buttons are still active, so why not throw a couple of bucks toward’s a good cause, and start building the totals for *next years* Couchathon?

Hey, I won a free small rootbeer in the McDonald’s Monopoly contest!

What were you thinking I was going to write about?

Levity aside, I’m a big political junkie both Canadian and US (the domestic and foreign policies of the guys and gals down south often having as big… if not a bigger… impact on this country than our own body politic). Around last March I was just starting to pay attention to the US primaries and was kind of falling into a bit of a malaise. I was actually a big McCain fan going way back, and the prospect of a McCain / Clinton race seemed like a nominal win-win as either would be better than the current status quo - although if I was really honest with myself, I wasn’t enthralled with either option. Clinton always struck me as a big subscriber to Bill’s “old school” of heavyweight political influence (which probably was borne out over the campaign), and McCain always struck me as “old” (hey, I’m two for two).

Then one night in March, as I was no doubt plugging away on some project or other, I happened to have the TV on CNN as primary results were coming in and managed to catch the speech by the junior senator from Illinois. It was though provoking. It was insightful. It made me challenge some beliefs, long and tightly held, and find them wanting and cynical. It made me realize that I could hope for an outcome to a US election cycle that was not only “less crummy” but “revolutionary”.

And so, tomorrow, as we take the campaign south and west, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas, that the hopes of the little girl who goes to the crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A., we will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as divided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, we are one nation.

And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can.

So I hit the books. I read bills the senator had sponsored, books he had written before he had even entered politics, and the platforms he was running for and found very little wanting.

Today the United States has the chance for the first time, in a very long time, to elect a president who could be historic. I am not saying he will be. But he could be that rare combination of intellect, charisma, and strategic thought with the good (or bad) fortune to show up at a key time where one could, conceivably, effect great change across the nation.

Much has been written that this particular candidate is nothing more than a personality cult, a shell that can inspire only with words, not with actions. But is that not the ultimate goal of politics? The founding fathers defined a country with words and inspiration. The fifteenth prime-minister of Canada inspired hope amongst a young, disenfranchised, demographic and changed the very language of the country in the process.

I can not offer any promises that “hope” always pays off - or that idealism won’t often be trumped by the cold light of reality. But I will say this: I would much rather see the man win who has the chance to be extraordinary. And I believe that’s what we have the chance to see tonight.

Thousands of miles away from me, someone else was watching the same New Hampshire primary speech, and was equally motivated to look into what this “Barack Obama” was all about. He wrote a song about it. Some have called it worshipfull, some have called it naive, some have called it calculating. I call it inspiring. It gave me hope that American might just try to be extraordinary.

(The preceding message has been approved and paid for by the Gourdy Pumpkin Political Action Committee, and Wordpress for iPhone)

Like all the best ventures in mankind’s short history, there may have been drinking involved in the conception of the Couchathon.

See, as much as I love The Imponderables (purveyors of fine viral comedy styling over at RocketAce), they have really, really, short attention spans.

During one shoot with them someone commented trying to get the four of them to focus on something at the same time was like trying to “herd wind-up cymbal-monkeys”. So we always used to joke the cruelest thing we could ever do to them is stick them in a small room together for more than an hour.

And then the joke turned into a charity telethon concept.

And then the joke became real.

Won’t you join me next Thursday at 11am for the WORST IDEA EVER, as we try to raise ph4t l3w7 for Sick Kids Foundation and Child’s Play?

It’s pretty much your best bet of the day to watch four of Canada’s hottest comedic talents murder each other, live, on the Internet. Plus I’ll be running the broadcast… so… man…

I had lots to talk about tonight. I managed to survive another World Rock Paper Scissors Championship.

Google managed to settle the lawsuit with the Author’s Guild over their book scanning project - paying out a hefty sum, but securing themselves some interesting rights in the process (fodder for a future post, I’m sure, once I figure out what exactly I think about it).

But all that was pushed to the side by the nice cashier at the grocery store this evening, Brefny.

Brefny? Really? No matter how much you love the old country that’s really not a good name for your daughter. Parents - please ask yourselves whether your “perfect, unique” name for your newborn is likely, seventeen years or so in the future, to get a stranger standing in line at her place of work to pity her childhood.

So as a public service announcement: Dear Internet, Please do not name your children Brefny.

Also Lexus, Quatar, Cenneigdigh or, past the mid-90’s, Beyonce. A friend of mine has a great story about giving a presentation at an elementary school a few years back. When the teacher saw a little girl not paying attention she snapped “BEYONCE!”, and at least four little girls in the room swiveled their heads to see if it was them being called. This is sad.

I am also not keen on Bristol, Piper, Track, Willow, and Trig… at least as an adult I know that Brefny has made peace with her name, but for a child I’m guessing there was some touch-and-go-years.

There’s a lot of people who assume that the line in my bio about being an international-class pro Rock Paper Scissors referee is a witty bon mot. But last time I checked, wry web-irony didn’t come with one’s own trading card. My favourite weeked of the year is here as it’s once again time for the 2008 World Championships of Rock Paper Scissors… sorry I guess that’s the Yahoo! 2008 World Championships of Rock Paper Scissors (whew).

I’m not sure I could even begin to go into my shady history with the infamous World Rock Paper Scissors Society, but suffice it to say - there are certain… acts… that in retrospect would have made everyone’s live’s easier had I done them under a nom de guerre.

If you are in the Toronto area you really deserve it to yourself to come out on Saturday for the spectacle, the pageantry, and the chance to walk out of the place $10,000 richer and a bonna fide world champion.

I think Ken Hegan from Rolling Stone said it best when he said:

Imagine Wimbledon, except when Agassi loses - he goes to the bar, gets plastered, and comes back to heckle the guy who beat him

I promise you this - you have never (nor will you ever) see anything else like it in the world, and it is the finest athletic event over which I’ll preside as head referee this year.

See you all on the far side of the festivities!

I love Banksy, you love Banksy, we all love Banksy… so I was very saddened to learn he’s put down his spray-can and gotten out of the art game to open a pet store in New York.

On the other hand, the store he’s opened is the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill - so at least it’s delicious and educational.

Enjoy your new career Banksy.

A commenter over at Mike Sterling’s Something Or Other hipped me to the candy gab of Jerry on the Job, a delightful essay by James Lileks (of Gallery of Regrettable Food fame).

Such wonders you will see therein! Thrill to Lileks short stack of thick thought on this forgotten master of the comic-strip flip-take. PEOPLE WILL BE BLOWN OVER ON ACCOUNT OF THE PERIOD-APPROPRIATE LAFFS!

I promise not to become a tech or gadget blog - but this is one of those rare situations where I want to make sure a solution I’ve found makes it’s way onto the Google-index since I know lots of others are in the same boat. Indulge me.

While I’ve been pretty happy since I “chose” to switch over to an iPhone this summer (I accidentally drop kicked by four-year-old warhorse blackberry 7130 down two flights of stairs) there were two killer applications in my mind which still eluded me:

1. Mobile Podcasts
2. Listening to Internet Radio Directly

1. Podcasts
iTunes has very reasonable podcast functionality built into it, but I was flabbergasted to find out there was no way to directly download podcasts to the iPhone. Daily I find myself in a situation where it would be great to be able to download podcasts over wifi or 3G when it’s not feasable to pull out my laptop, refresh my podcast list, download the podcast, plug in my iPhone and synch everything.

A prime example is that I’m a huge fan of Bob McCowan’s Prime Time Sports podcast while commuting - but the podcast is often not updated until after I’m into my drive home (and sometimes not until hours later). Instead of having to twiddle my thumbs at work wondering if it’s going to show up seconds after I pack up for the night, it would be much nicer if I could pull it down should it show up while I was en-route. Ditto when travelling, at home, when I’ve forgot my charging/synch cable, or otherwise not near my iTunes.

Sadly my solution isn’t going to work for everyone as I managed to snag a coveted license for the Podcaster app before Apple rejected the application for the app store and all heck broke loose. Until that messy situation gets resolved, the only current solution seems to be to jailbreak your iphone, which will let you run either Podcaster or the similar Mobilecast.

I’ll be the first to say these aren’t perfect applications yet (although I have never tried Mobilecast). Podcaster is a little finicky, and (at least the non-jailbroken) Podcaster doesn’t support background operation (a limitation of Apples SDK license, not the iPhone’s capabilities). I also wish it would integrate with the iPod player instead of using it’s own proprietary solution, but I get why it doesn’t. Dispite my minor gripes though, I have significantly more podcasts under Podcaster, than on my iPod proper - so clearly it’s getting the job done for me.

2. Listening to Internet Radio Directly

My other “holy grail” was also sports related. I really dreamed of being able to listen to Calgary Flames radio broadcasts over the iPhone. As an ex-pat Calgarian living in Toronto you really start to get tired of the 24/7 Maple Leafs coverage (my condolances to those many of you in the city who don’t even care about hockey… I don’t know where you can go to avoid it). The Fan 960 in Calgary has always had a great internet radio feed available over their site, so it seemed to me there should be some way to be able to access it over the iPhone. Obviously the lack of flash in iPhone Safari meant that the embedded web player was a non-starter… but there had to be a solution. Applications like Flycast and Tuner had promise (and are great ways of getting big ready-to-go internet radio libraries into your phone), but had limited ability to add your own feeds… especially WMA feeds, like the one the Fan 960 (and many commercial broadcasters use).

Finally, the brilliant Avérous Julien-Pierre came out with a little app called FStream which not only decodes OGG Vorbis, AAC/AAC+, and MP3 radio streams - it can also play WMA using MMS/MMSH AND load files over wifi OR cellular data networks. It’s also entirely free, unless you want to give a donation (and mine will be winging it’s way to France shortly).

So in my case, looking at the embed code of the flash player on the Fan 590 website it was clear the regular address for the radio feed was: http://38.99.208.186/fan960

Now most WMA feeds actually lead to a little text file with the actual feed addresses inside. There are a number of programs to detect actual feed addresses (or any network sniffer will do) but there’s a simpler method I use:

• Create a blank web-page with a simple text link to the address.
• load the web-page in your browser and alt-click the link
• Save as… the link as a file to your desktop
• open the file you just saved in TextEdit, or Notepad. In my case the file looked like this:


[Reference]
Ref1=http://38.99.208.186/fan960?MSWMExt=.asf
Ref2=http://192.168.22.5:80/fan960?MSWMExt=.asf


Replace the http with an mms:// and you can plug either of those address’ right into FStream on your iPhone (mms://38.99.208.186/fan960?MSWMExt=.asf). FStream will then play it like any other radio station (FStream also will autodetect the type of stream, and bitrate - so you don’t need to fill that information in if you don’t know it).

Piece of cake!

Interestingly as I was digging around for links for this, I noticed on the Netshare corporate website that Apple has begun to ban one of their applications from the appstore as well. This really is going to be one of the defining issues for the iPhones. As smartphones get more and more well featured end users are going to expect to be able to use them like computers, especially installing whatever software they want.

Apple will get a little bit of the benefit of the doubt when it comes to issues like protecting their partner cell networks, or the stability of core phone features - but increasingly when it looks like they’re just trying to protect lock-in of their own platforms (both on the app store, and making iTunes mandatory in situations where it’s really not needed) - that broaches the issues that always surface with locked platform and monopolistic practices. Not to mention is just optically poor for a PR-savvy company as Apple, especially when Android is touting the openness of their application store as a major feature.

[ Edit Dec. 2008 - The Nov 2008 iPhone firmware update (ver 2.2) introduced "over-the-air" podcast downloads - albeit with a mind-boggling 10mb cap on downloads over 3G. Having iTunes free podcasts integrated with the proper iPod interface is great, but given that data plans in Canada are some of the most expensive in the world it adds some insult to injury to have an artificial limit on what one can do with data that one has paid through the nose for. And seriously, I don't know of a single podcast with instalments less than 10mb... so -- I stick with Podcaster for the moment ]

Just a little web-comic pimpage - Kris Straub (who writes something like forty seven thousand and eight different webcomics) has started a story-within-a-story plotline over at Starslip Crisis that I’m completely in love with.

The concept is that in the 34th Century “Concrete Universe” is a popular historical police procedural broadcast show which is set in our present day. However because of the time gap - the future has about as good a grasp of modern day life as we would have of, say, the 5th Century (do the math - it all works out). That is to say, not very well at all.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go defrag my daguerreotype.