BIC's Bickerings

China's Ghost City "Pyramids"

2011-04-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

What Me Worry?

2011-02-23T13:02:00.001-08:00

I found the Alfred E. Neuman Holy Grail ---

The first picture of Mad's maddest mascot!

This is a cropped photo of Ritter's Dental Parlor at Northwest Corner of Flatbush Avenue & Schermerhorn Street Downtown Brooklyn Circa 1905.

It comes from Brian Merlis & Lee A. Rosenweig's Photo Compendium

"Brooklyn Heights & Downtown Volume I 1860 to 1922"

The book was published in 2001

Buy the book if you want to see entire image!

EDIT: After poking around it seems i'm not the only one to find this

Dentist Handout

Was Alfred E. Neuman from Brooklyn?

"It Didn't Hurt a Bit" Kid: Mysteries of Melvin

What's the Internet anyway?

2011-02-04T17:32:00.000-08:00

Egypt Protests

2011-01-29T10:34:00.001-08:00

Seinfeld: "Jerry the Great" re-cut trailer

2011-01-24T17:40:00.001-08:00

TROM Documentary

2011-01-16T17:03:00.000-08:00

While we all await ZEITGEIST: MOVING FORWARD to be released online,

http://tromsite.com/

Douglas Rushkoff goes nuts

2011-01-16T16:51:00.000-08:00

Seinfeld Puffy Shirt Transfer: Museum of American History

2010-03-19T19:06:00.000-07:00

Nerdcore Rising

2009-09-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

Nerdcore Rising the Documentary is out on Netflix.

Does MC Frontalot still live in Prospect Heights?

You use a Modem, Is this True?

2009-04-22T19:22:00.000-07:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5179322278194364152#5m20s

Did the Y2K failure come to Zune 30 devices 9 years later?

2008-12-31T14:46:00.000-08:00

Did the Y2K failure come to Zune 30 devices 9 years later?

LOL!

At The End Of The Day

2008-12-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

Let's take a look at "At The End of The Day" in this news shall we???

At the end of the day, you have to stop singing about cafeterias when you're not sitting at the loser table anymore.

"The bottom line is at the end of the day we got what we wanted and the voters got what they wanted"

"At the end of the day we’re producing a product that is helpful to humankind. We’re not making toasters"

But at the end of the day, you do what you have to do.

So he said, at the end of the day, if you can’t think of anything, give law a try.

At the end of the day, we realize we are more alike than we are different.

At the end of the day, according to Gartenberg, Apple has more than just Steve Jobs.

At the end of the day, I'm still for the death penalty.

Yes, and at the end of the day it’s still an alien invasion movie with environmental messages

At the end of the day, a win is a win, regardless of how you get it

At The End of the Day, We Are Who We Are

At the end of the day, you're standing in front of an empty house with a great big gun

I think at the end of the day, this will be more of a loss to Orange than to Apple...

Fish Market Men

2008-06-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Shout Out to Tom Green

2008-06-05T19:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, Tim and Eric are awesome. Thanks for your reply dude!

The Death of Cable TV Continued

2008-05-31T13:50:00.000-07:00

I just found out that a day after my post "The Death of Cable TV: What’s Next for Hulu? "

That Fancast will be making he Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report available for free over the web:

Fancast.com To Stream Additional Programming From MTV Networks and BET Networks, Including Comedy Central’s “South Park,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” & “The Colbert Report”

See New York Times Blog
The Real Fight over Fake News

Egg The Arts Show

2008-05-26T17:56:00.000-07:00

Egg The Arts Show....Absolutely was one of the best shows on TV ever.

Michael's Ants

2008-05-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

2008-05-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

The Death of Cable TV: What’s Next for Hulu?

2008-05-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

The Death of Cable TV: What’s Next for Hulu?

Back in March, South Park Studios announced that all the episodes of South Park would be made available for free. A month later I bought a 32” Vizio LCD HDTV Set with an RGB (a.k.a VGA) input (Refurbished for less than $500) that would allow me to watch web video “TV style.” Just recently, Apple announced that HBO’s shows would be available piecemeal over at iTunes (what? No Curb just yet?).

These events collectively spoke to me…and they said cancel your Cable TV subscription.

There is a dirty little secret in TV land. The gateway to cable TV for many was (is?) that reception (including here in Brooklyn New York) of regular rabbit ears TV is a winter wonderland. Snowflakes are everywhere and some channels have no reception at all. That’s where basic cable becomes a necessity and was used as gateway to upsell standard and premium channels.

So I fired up my Vizio, grabbed a simple coax cable to use as a makeshift antenna and auto scanned the dials. Click, snow; Click,…. holy cow, crystal clear HDTV and it’s free. Free HDTV means that if I cancel cable I won’t lose the “power of now.” The power of instant, live Television has been taken for granted but not forgotten in the age of Tivo. I would argue that most of us would feel a loss of power by losing the (cap)ability of the Power of Now TV. We would feel this loss (probably subconsciously) even in DVR in demand society. But free HDTV coming across the board and it’s “sooner than you think.” And now is the time to cancel your cable TV.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, if Hulu also embraces the concept of the power of now it will accelerate viewer exodus from cable TV. Perhaps there is not enough “in the Box” thinking going on here and a little too much “me too” I can be an Interwebs content provider. There are allot of couch potatoes out there who are too lazy to search for TV programming on the web (yes it is a sad state of affairs) and at the other end of the spectrum we have the armchair critic. And this is where we will find what’s next for Hulu and company. Instead of just static content waiting to be found there will be genre channels streaming “live” (including rerurns) with content continually voted on “DIGG style” by viewers like you and me. Just click the stream and get your nonstop now content. Think or don’t think, but it’s there and it’s happening now and it’s empowering. Now some of you might think that it would get awful boring always having the same content running because only our favorite episodes will be streaming. But new content and even plot and story line and news coverage can be voted on. Choose (y)our own adventure. What’s more, don’t we all like to sit down and stare at a roadside accident now and then?

According to Alexa, the 86^th most popular website on the entire internet is not Hulu but Veoh. Veoh doesn’t create it’s own content and some (a lot?) of it’s content *is* linked to Hulu, the 1,086^th most popular website (yes, the 1,086^th, exactly 1,000 behind). There is also content from AOL’s In2TV which includes cult classics such as Max Headroom and Freddy’s Nightmares (which is more similar to The Twilight Zone than Nightmare on Elm Street). Well I suppose Hulu doesn’t really create it’s own but is a collaboration of efforts but really this is semantics. I’m not sure why Veoh doesn’t seem to link to content from Adult Swim which has great shows such as Assy McGee and Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job! Other portals worth namedropping here are sidereel, fancast, and Joost.

I’m not sure if we will ever again see an event (phenomenon?) such as CBS’ the final episode of M*A*S*H on 2/28/1993 which had 50,150,000 households as viewers. We can probably thank our DVRs for that. But can someone tell me, during the final episode of M*A*S*H did TV stations have central, western, eastern time (etc.) i.e. a “staggered” airing…or was everyone watching at the same time?

Barrel Roll!

Diplomatic Immunity

2008-05-17T22:13:00.000-07:00

Another Sketch by Freddy

2008-05-05T12:39:00.000-07:00

Freddy Gets Political

2008-05-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

Freddy my apartment building's doorman drew this picture.
I colorized it.

Thanks Freddy!

Internet Deathwatch: eBay Hostile Bid for Craigslist?

2008-04-22T20:13:00.000-07:00

like it's not hard enough already to find an apartment in New York?

There goes the neighborhood (I mean there goes the Internet)...

EBay claims Craigslist unfairly diluted eBay's stake in it Reading between the lines... eBay to make hostile takeover.

Beginning of the end

Party's over?

Your reputation precedes you: Did it precede eBay?

2008-03-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I am looking for an apartment-mate for the downstairs share in my duplex. I have met some interesting people through the Craigslist ad that I posted (I am tempted to link to it here but won't).

Some folks offered their Myspace (party people) and Facebook (more conservative) profiles in their e-mail exchanges with me. I did some Googling and found an amusing profile for someone who hasn't updated their Friendster profile in quite some time.

But there were also some folks that didn't have any traceability or reputation online and they weren't (or so they claim) tech savvy or web surfer types.

This had me thinking once again about eBay's recent feedback "changes." Why has eBay so radically changed their feedback policy? If Paypal isn't eBay's most valuable asset then i'm sure that their feedback reputation system system is.

I was curious if i could find prior art in the patent database and did find some interesting patents.

Is it possible they might have another MercExchange (Buy It Now Patent) on their hands?

Although *I* couldn't find a patent proving prior art, perhaps there is a patent attorney out there who can (or who has):

Dun & Bradstreet
http://tinyurl.com/32envz

http://tinyurl.com/37hggw

http://tinyurl.com/3dydfe

http://www.openratings.com

Microsoft
http://tinyurl.com/ystwm7

Intel (objective unlike eBay which is subjective)
http://tinyurl.com/2q4h42

Are there any other interesting "reputation" patents out there?????

King of Kong's Mr. Awesome

2008-02-29T17:48:00.000-08:00

Here's some additional footage of Mr. Awesome from the movie King of Kong which is now streaming on demand at Netflix.

I had a silly grin across my face the entire time I watched the movie.

Another movie streaming on demand at Netflix to check out is Confessions of a Superhero.

Click Here (warning spoilers!) to see the Donkey Kong high scores from Twin Galaxies

eBay Strike on Feedback Policy

2008-02-07T18:21:00.000-08:00

Eat Healthy & Make Art

2008-01-28T15:51:00.001-08:00

A fun way to eat healthy is to start a PLU sticker collection... otherwise known as "banana stickers." Buy a banana and then stick the PLUs all over your desk and monitor at work. You will soon become addicted to buying fruit with stickers and in the process, you will form the habit of eating healthy.

But wait, there's more... I just found out about a kindred spirit who wants your stickers!

Guerrilla Office Gardening

2008-01-25T16:23:00.000-08:00

The New York times had a great article recently on the history of the fortune cookie.

Some of you may know that one of my all time favorite office pranks is to tape a fortune cookie fortune to a co-worker's monitor while they aren't looking (in a mismatch type of flare)...

In any case that had me thinking of other office mischief and the possibilities of Guerrilla gardening in the office.

Supplies that you will need:

1) Pinky finger
2) Seed
3) Live office plant
4) Florescent light
5) Purell Instant Hand Sanitizer (WARNING: not for the plant ...for cleaning your hands you fool!)
6) A co-worker that waters their plant once a week

Fat Guy Stuck In Internet.

2008-01-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

So I was digging around the adult swim website and found Ryan McFaul's Fat Guy Stuck In Internet.

Funny.

I have to admit that I have never heard of of Ryan Mcfaul but his work reminds me of Dan Harmon.

Dan Harmon did Computerman with Jack Black and the best TV show (pilot) you never heard of Heat Vision and Jack (see video below).

Dan worked on the Sara Silverman Show (funny) and also Acceptable TV

I gotta say Acceptable TV was off the mark (at least the VH1 version is "meh") and could not live up to it's online counterpart Channel101 (awesome)

NLP - MSFriends

2008-01-20T10:05:00.000-08:00

Joey: I can't believe Ross is going out with Rachel's sister. Ya know, when Chandler made out with my sister, I was mad at him for, like, ten years.
Chandler: That was five years ago.
Joey: I know. You got five more years.
Chandler: Joey...
Joey: You want to make it six?

Better Safe than Sorry

2008-01-18T15:43:00.000-08:00

Before you lock your valuables in a newly purchased safe, make sure that you test out the combination a few times first.

Better safe than sorry.

BIC

Night of the Living Doo - Adult Swim

2008-01-17T20:21:00.000-08:00

Can anyone tell me why Adult Swim pulled "Night of the Living Doo" from their Video Archive?

It is/was a great Scooby Doo spoof with Gary Coleman and David Cross.

It was there a few weeks ago...

Was this because of Hanna-Barbera/Warner Bros??

BIC

Additional Comments

2008-01-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

So it seems that my Microsoft Experience has caused a bit of buzz in the "Blogosphere."

I would like to clear up a few things that I have read:

BIC are the initials of my name (not Bic).

My first name was provided in the articlethat "broke" this story at Consumerist.

The call from 2006 or 2007 was the BSOD (which I believe was in part caused by putting Google Desktop on my PC and/or system tray ... not sure ... purely conjecture on my part).

The "Back to the Future Call" (which I like to think of it) was not a BSOD ... the support person told my parents it was about "internet connectivity" or my "internet connection being down ... something like that ...
to which I replied to my father "that sounds so archaic ... why would I make a call like that?"
I do remember making a call many years ago when I lived with my parents (1997 & 1998) ...
back then I could fathom making such a call.... after speaking with Webspan (my dialup ISP at the time) and Gateway (whom I just gotten my Gateway Destination with Windows 95 from).

Speaking on the phone with my parents, telling them the computer problem sounded archaic and looking at my keyboard made me come to the conclusion that there was a human Y2k error (if you can call it that).

Webspan's tech support was "meh"
Gateway's tech support was awesome back then.

I still have my Windows 95 COA(s) from 1997.
I still have my Gateway Destination with it's 32" CRT monitor (the monitor is still in use after 1 repair).

Microsoft (supposedly) called from this phone number
They asked for *me* and gave a 10 digit case # (ticket # or whatever you call it)

I lived with my folks in 1997 and part of 1998 .... I would only have provided MS with my parents' phone number in either of these two years (what can I say ... we didn't have Skype back then and I may not of even had my own cell # back then).

Google is not evil. Microsoft is not evil.

Microsoft's calling me back is a testimony to their superior technical support.

I can't say that i have ever called Google's technical support nor do i know If they even have technical support.

This is not a hoax

Well... gotta get ready for a date 2-night ....
so over and out.

BIC

MSY2K Follow-up - PROOF?

2008-01-14T15:53:00.000-08:00

So I was able to locate 2 banker boxes with old statements in them in my parent's garage.

I found My January 1998 Visa statement (received February 1998).
I would like to say that Microsoft was listed as one of the charges (because it would make the story that much more funny)... but alas MS was not a charge.

While I was in there, I also tried to locate a Credit Card statement with a charge from "CDNOW" in 1996 ... I bought the Macross Soundtrack CD and that would mark my first purchase of anything online (couldn't find it --- and i'm starting to get off topic here so....)

However, this does not mean that I didn't charge my Discover card... but I cannot locate those statements (i'm no longer a card holder... not that that particularly adds any useful information).
Or maybe MS doesn't accept Discover?

It also doesn't mean that Microsoft for one reason or another didn't offer their service to me with that call at no charge (I couldn't say why they would or wouldn't do this).

This also does not explain why Microsoft would call me at my *parents* home number.

BIC

Microsoft Y2K bug circa 1998?

2008-01-13T18:46:00.000-08:00

So this will make a fabulous second post for my second blog.

On January 8th of this week my parents received a phone call which they dodged because the call was coming through at 11:00 p.m. at night.

The next day they retrieved the voicemail message which was from Microsoft technical support calling *me* back to see if my problem has been resolved.

I told my folks that the caller was obviously phishing for information for some kind of identity theft and that neither they or I should return a call to the toll free number. I hadn't lived with my parents for many years and it didn't make sense for Microsoft to have called me at their home number.

But then after I calmed down, I reversed phone searched the toll free number which appeared to be a legitimate Microsoft Number.

Then I recalled that I had called Microsoft not once, but twice (possibly as many as 3 different times).

I remember in the past year or so when I called Microsoft and the problem was not resolved (BSOD after Microsoft patch) that Microsoft did call me back the next day to see if i made any progress in my little computer crises (which I though was super cool of them... I was really impressed)...
but wait a second .... or wait 315,569,260 seconds ....
Microsoft hadn't done this (call me back that is) the first time I called ... and I called many years ago.... but that must have been when I was living at home with my parents..... which is why they called me at my parents phone number.

Look at the top of your keyboard....

On January 7, 1998
a Tech Support person typed into their database to call me back the next day...
but instead of typing 1/8/98 they typed 1/8/08

Instead of typing the "9" right next to it they typed "0"

Microsoft had called me back 10 years later!

More on this story as it develops...

Mongoose it's Predator, I'm at the dropoff point

2007-12-07T17:10:00.000-08:00

An ode to the old school dirtbikes with chrome pegs, I will be answer my phone at rendezvous point with the following code:

Mongoose it's Predator, I'm at the drop-off point.