Michael Lee's Train of Thought

Here are the most read entries in 2007. It isn't, necessarily, just this years posts, though many are. You can tell that Heroes has gotten more popular this year.

1. Upcoming Heroes Casting


2. Activating Evolution


3. Eric Roberts on Heroes


4. Eric Roberts Heroes Character is Named


5. End of Shinders


6. Heroes Episode 2


7. Seeing Heroes


8. Hally Berry Gets Respect (and proves that my misspelling her name still gets more hits than if I hadn't!)


9. 10 Favorite Things About My Mac


10. Doctor Who Podcast

Labels: heroes, yearinreview

I've been thinking about how iTunes is now looking at providing movie rentals. And really, you can only "rent" a movie if you've got some sort of DRM that means you don't truly control your device -- because otherwise you can copy the bits to some other location and see it again.

Of course, that's one of the challenges of distributing data electronically. Most movies and television shows you only watch once. Others, you may watch many times. And really -- no matter how much space you have, video takes up a lot of room -- and there are many things I wouldn't worry about keeping if I knew that I could easily get them again later. It's why I like Netflix, even though I've been watching fewer DVDs from them as my life has been busier lately.

So the challenge is -- from a business standpoint, yes, I really want to "rent" video. But as someone who does not like DRM -- I'm well aware that it's really impossible to do that digitally if you want to control your device.

Labels: computers, itunes, media, tv

I'm not enough of game player to have the game, but I'm enough of a fan of Jonathan Coulton that I had to pick up the two versions of Still Alive from the Orange Box Soundtrack.

And since it's available on Amazon's MP3 service, I was able to just get the songs.

Labels: music

I had dinner at Mongos Grill tonight up in Maple Grove -- and I'm exceptionally happy with it. It's a Mongolian BBQ with a great variety of flavors and ingredients -- I went for multiple bowls, and each time it had a very different flavor and style; with some a spicy bbq mix, to a wrap, to a breakfast-style ham, cheese, and egg mix. We went with a rather large group, and they handled us with efficiency.

I'll certainly be back -- and I'd be thrilled if they added a location in the Bloomington-to-Eden Prairie area, as I'm not up in Maple Grove all that often -- but I'll make a trek for it, and I certainly hope they are around for a while.

Labels: food, minnesota

Found at For Tax Reasons as well as half the internets.



The response is just as funny:

Labels: christmas, geek, youtube

The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend have a Christmas Message to share with you.

Merry Christmas.

Labels: christmas, comedy, music, venture

It's sort of buried as part of his annual Christmas blogging, but Paul has some wonderfully interesting thoughts about Facebook on his blog. I think we still need to find out how to best use something like Facebook -- and I think one of the challenges goes to the multiple identities that we all have.

And one of the challenges with a lot of these tools is that we've got multiple identities in real life as well. There's my professional identity -- my career, my work life. There are various social identities for each social circle. And while there may be some social overlap between the two -- you don't really want to burden far away people with local events (I accidentally invited a non-local friend to a local event recently), or work people with various social events of yours.

It's nice to have some places to share this sort of information around -- but there really are some challenges with it all. And so I found Paul's thoughts on Facebook -- and really, social networking as a whole -- to be very interesting.

I haven't mentioned this here yet, but as the blurbs were posted on the MISFITS website it's time to mention that I'm a candidate for the CONvergence events coordinator position, which Tim Wick has held for a decade. My official "statement" is after that link.

I've thought about how the organization transitions its leadership for a number of years -- and it has been an incredible ten year run with the same people in the key positions.

It is an immense responsibility to look at running an event with the nearly 3000 people that CONvergence attracts, and the many people that help run the event and organization -- especially as I try to figure out the right way to "campaign", and how we make the organization and convention continue and improve for another decade and beyond.

Labels: convergence

I'm quite excited by this movie -- of course, as a Lost and Alias fan, I would be. I'd like to see it as soon as possible, and apparently they are doing a little contest, and you might be able to help.

Labels: movies

I was amused to see the Twin Cities own Laurel Krahn show up in a reference on one of my favorite blog's articles about multiple online identities.

I don't know if anyone can support all of the multiple online identities at all times -- we all have ones that we use for a little while and then abandon. I've entered items here off and on, depending on how busy my life is, or as I feel I have something to write about. I might use other systems on occasion -- I don't tend to have a lot of instant messaging clients running, but I have accounts on them.

The article in coding horror makes it sound like it's a bad thing that we have this fractured identity -- but I'm not so sure. Do you want every piece of your online self in one bucket? It may be difficult to support them all, but you don't support them all at once. And the person you were five, ten, or fifteen years ago isn't necessarily the one that you are today, and just as you may move from one social networking platform to another so you can do a clean sweep, can help separate that all out. Most of us have separate identities in "the real world" as well, with different social and professional circles, and so it probably shouldn't be a surprise that we have multiple circles in the online world as well.

Especially if you've been online for a very long time, and we have people that have grown up having some sort of online involvement.

Continuing with the all JoCo, all the time nature of the blog this week, I found a couple of more YouTube videos -- which really show how cool the nature of our interconnected world on the Internet is these days.

Code Monkey, of course, is the anthem for software creators everywhere.

Amongst the cool videos include this Anime Music Video:



And also this version of someone dancing...



But then, in Chicago, she comes up on stage at Jonathan Coulton's Chicago concert:



I love how this brings it all full circle and points out one of my favorite things about the internet -- the myth is that the internet means that we're all more isolated than ever. But really, it does a lot more to connect people than anything else.

Labels: music, youtube

A version of Curl from the Jonathan Coulton concert last week here in Minneapolis.

And since winter has been in full force this week, I've definitely been cursing the cold.



This was definitely one of those concerts where I've become a bigger fan of the artist after the concert...which is always the best kind.

Labels: music

One of the neater things during the Jonathan Coulton concert this week was seeing a Zendrum in action during a performance of Mr Fancy Pants.

It's obviously an instrument outside of my non-musican budget -- but it was one of the cooler pieces of musical technology that I'd seen in a very, very long time.

Labels: music

Opening up for Jonathan Coulton earlier this week was Paul and Storm. They were definitely a natural fit with JoCo, especially as they also provided occasional backup support during JC's main show.

I picked up the rest of their songs -- and they are quite funny.

Labels: music

I went to the Jonathan Coulton concert tonight -- and well, it was definitely a Gathering Of The Tribe. I think I recognized about the quarter of the people there.

Definitely one of the most fun concert experiences that I've had -- and certainly the geekiest, in the absolute best sense of the term.

Labels: music

Sometimes a page just sucks your time away --- and the Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed History is doing that for me.