Recently in Television Category

I came across this video of JJ Abrams giving a talk at TED and I just had to share it. For those that don't know JJ Abrams is the genius behind, Alias, Lost, Mission Impossible III and the recently released Cloverfield. Consistent throughout all his work is that there is always an element of mystery. In his talk, he addresses why this element is so pervasive in his work and where that inspiration came from. It's a great talk.

Gary Vaynerchuk, who recently took over one of my favorite sites Cork'd was on Conan recently and did a very funny bit with Conan on how to build a "proper" palate for wine tasting. Good stuff!

It's been quite a while since we've had cable television in the Ashby household. Most of my TV has come from either rabbit ears, or BitTorrent, so when we sit down to watch the boob tube it's a bit of a challenge. Either the picture is fuzzy and peppered with artifacts, or I have to boot the laptop and find the show I want to watch. If it's not downloaded already, then I get to watch it the next day. :s

Feeling as if Holly had suffered too long from being about to watch CMT and GAC, I finally broke down and ordered it for her. Comcast came out this week to install digital cable and I'm happy to report that it went without a hitch. Wanting to "test the system," I bounced around a few channels and explored the online guide. Since it's digital cable, there's a programming guide that shows you what's coming up. Scanning the channels, I came across my much beloved, and sorely missed station -- channel 72, OLN.

Last night, Holly and I were watching TV and there wasn't much on, so when we came across the 20/20 Special "State Of The Union: A Country Divided", we watched the introduction to the show. As George Stephanopoulos gave an overview of what was to come and showed clips of what we would be seeing, I was startled to see one of my clients being interviewed! Nothing else had our attention, so we stayed tuned to watch more.

The basic premise of the show was that the United States is more divided than ever, polarized if you will, between liberal (blue state) and conservative (red state). So George showed the small town of Montclair, New Jersey to illustrate a blue state community and then Franklin, Tennessee as a red state community. That's where my client came in. H. Leonard Issacs is a reverend for a church in Franklin, among other faith based endeavors, and he leads a mens prayer group in Darryl Waltrip's home.

I'm a HUGE fan of the Palm OS operating system, aka Palm Pilots. Have been since 1997 when I bought a used Pilot 1000. As a rabid fan, I've collected as much Palm stuff as possible. One of the things that I dug up many years ago were some television ads that Palm did. Not being a huge company with a huge marketing budget, television advertising is not something that Palm has done a lot of. Many of their ads never made it to TV, but were used for trade shows and the like.

This morning, I was reading Mike Mace's article "We need a new mobile platform. Sort of." and he made reference to the Palm Ad "A Perfect Day" and the fact that he couldn't find the video online. I decided to do my civic geeky duty and upload the video to YouTube.com. Not wanting to stop there, I decided to upload all the videos I've collected over the years. 8)

The playlist and the embedded player below, have the videos in date order as best as I can tell. There are 6 videos in all -- enjoy.

I've created, managed and published a lot of web sites in my day, but I still get a kick out of seeing someting I've submitted appear on someone else's site.

For example, I'm a big fan of the BBC television series "Hustle" and I was watching the lastest episode last Friday night. One of the characters, Danny Blue (Marc Warren), was pretending to be a journalist for the con that they were working. Throughout the episode he's seen sporting a Moleskine Reporter Pocket edition. In fact, the journal was featured so much that in one scene you can even make out the embossing on the back!

Be sure to tune your televisions to CBS this evening to watch "CSI". My good buddy, John Mese will be appearing as Gordon Wallace in tonight's episode Spellbound. I've seen a few previews for the show and you can clearly, albeit quickly, see John being interrogated. I don't know if this means he's playing the "bad guy" or not, but he's sure to get plenty of face time, which is fantastic.

John's been having a great run over the past year or so. He was on "Law and Order" in the episode Acid, which then lead to a role on "Bones" in The Superhero In The Alley. Before all that, he was on "Medium" in the episode Suspicions And Certainties, which was a brilliant role. It was very dark but VERY funny.

Like most people who have become fans of the Channel 4 UK hit, "The IT Crowd", I heard about the show through Boing Boing and other tech web sites. After watching the first episode, "Yesterday's Jam", I fell in love. In fact, I like the show so much, I bought the company. Err... OK, I didn't buy the company, but I DID become the Editor for the show over at TV.com. :)

I haven't been a big fan of the new FOX television show "Bones", but tonight is a "must see" night to watch, because my good friend John Mese . The episode is entitled "The Superhero In The Alley" and John will be playing the part of Ted McGruder. I don't know how big of a role he'll have in the episode, but I'm hoping it's pretty big.

John told me he landed the role after his performance on "Law & Order in the episode Acid (which you can download on iTunes by the way). Someone saw him and from that he was cast in this episode of "Bones". My hope is that his role will be fairly prominent, since his role on Law & Order, as Jason Corely, was pretty large as the "bad guy."

Anyway, be sure to check out "Bones" tonight to see John's performance. Regardless of the size of his role, I'm sure that it will be memorable. John's really good at making his character's stand out. :)

Since I met my wife over 18 years ago (gawd that makes me sound old), we've always celebrated her birthday by trying to make it special. Since it falls on the 19th of December, just 6 days before Christmas, it makes it a bit of a challenge since it's easy to lump the two events together. So we found that by taking a small trip somewhere, we can help make it more unique. This year we decided to drive to North Carolina and explore High Point and Willimington.

The plan was to leave the night of Thursday the 15th to get a head start on all the driving. High Point is an 8 hour drive, so instead of eating up all of Friday driving, we could break it up over two days and have most of Friday to browse the acres of furniture that High Point is known for. I also had to do my radio show for Computer Outlook that evening, and the day itself was crazy as ever with having to visit several client sites, shop for Holly, etc. Suffice to say that it I had a very busy day planned.