Tivo = Tupperware

You can evangelize Tivo by throwing a Tivo House Party. Unfortunately, most of the people I know now have TiVos and they got them before the referral system started... Maybe this Tivo House party role can become a career, much like being a candle party person or an eBay seller...

Platinum Weddings & AOL searches

WE strikes again with another fascinating sounding wedding show: Platinum Weddings. I think it's basically My Super Sweett 16, but with weddings. Damn you Comcast for not carrying this channel. I want it, but I think I'm still too ashamed to write my cable company and ask them to carry it.

This may be a bit old, but this analysis of the logs of AOL searchers is pretty funny. Thankfully TiVo aggregates their data so you can't pull out the behavior of an individual TiVo, but if they did, I might be super dork/schamltzy Tivo user 6,482 or something like that.

MI-5: Season 4

A&E will be broadcasting the fourth season of MI-5, starting September 15th.

Office Romance

Ryan the temp and Kelly (his crazy clingy girlfriend) are going out in real life. That's cute and kind of funny. (a number of items down; beware spoilers for other shows)

Interview with Kristen Bell

Apparently, Kristen Bell can drive really well backwards, but not forwards.

The CW's Mall Domination Tour

The stars of CW shows will have to go on a mall tour to promote the CW. Heh. And it's called Mall Domination. That's funny. I should go check out the madness.

XBox + Battlestar = True Love

The Battlestar series recap will be appearing on the XBox Live section of XBoxes. This does seem like marketing synergy. (via tvtattle)

No Aguliera reality shows in our near future

Christina Aguilera says that she doesn't want to do a reality show, which is probably something of a relief to most of us, since she seems nice-ish, but also a bit drrrrty. I mean, does she wear the 40s style makeup at home? That would be scary. So I'm sure I don't want to see what her home life is like (though I'm sure it's very sweet), but I'd still be compelled to watch. So thank you Christina, for saving me from myself. (via tvtattle)

Fox TV shows and Movies can be purchased at MySpace

Fox will start to sell movies and tv shows through MySpace as well as other Fox websites (via tvtattle) Hmm, maybe if this is actually a good implementation, I might start being interested in MySpace.

Dancing with the Stars and Dr. Who

The contestants for the next season of Dancing with the Stars have been announced

The second season of Dr. Who will show on the SciFi channel starting Sept 29th

Review: KIdnapped and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

My copy of the preview DVD with Kidnapped arrived last week and I finally got around to watching it. I was also quite happy to find out that Studio 60 on Sunset Strip was also on the disc so I didn't have to get the discs separately and waste two Netflix on it. Two in one! Everyone loves a good deal. I watched Studio 60 to have some comedy first, and it was pretty good. There have been a number of reviews that talked about Studio 60 being overrated, but overrated or not, it's still an Aaron Sorkin show. So, if you like Aaron Sorkin shows, which I have to admit I do, you'll enjoy this one. It was like a hit parade of people from other Aaron Sorkin shows, including Felicity Huffman, Danny Kincaid from West Wing, and of course, Bradley Whitford. It also had the ballet teacher from Center Stage. There are some sweeping shots that seem Jerry Bruckheimer-ish and a bit self-important (they worked better on West Wing), but the writing is good, and Amanda Peet is surprisingly likable. So, I'm actually really excited about the season. I give it a season pass!

Onward to Kidnapped, which was thoroughly enh. The characters and plot weren't all that compelling, and the show seemed to be trying very hard to make Jeremy Sisto seem very badass, with his resonant deep voice and unshaven scruff. I almost wonder if they redub his lines with the same thingie the Wizard of Oz used. The tomcat and I both agreed that it was pretty mediocre, so sadly, I think the preview disc convinced me that I'm going to skip the show altogether.

My Nike+iPod review

Many of you know by now that I received a huge combination present for my birthday from a set of people too numerous to name (well, I could name them all, but it'd take too much effort to come up with amusing blog names). Said gift consisted of an iPod Nano, a Nike iPod Nano armband, the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, and a gift certificate for some shoes (which I used to purchase a pair of Nike+ shoes). Basically all of my ranting about the gadgetness of this rubbed off and people got sick of it and just got me everything. Furthermore, my sister threw in a Puma jacket for good measure. Now I'm really out of excuses.

My first test run involved dragging everything across the country to New Jersey, and then doing some short sessions on the treadmill in my effort to avoid the east coast humidity, which I have managed to do for the last 9 years or so. The first thing I discovered is that the sensor that goes in your shoe starts off as being on, and you're supposed to turn it off by using a pen to press a tiny button for 3 sec. Oh, and the instruction book says that you are supposed to turn it off on the plane. Hmm.

Getting it setup was really quite easy, I just dropped the sensor into the shoe, plugged the receiver into the iPod Nano, and told it I wanted to do a 3 mile run. I programmed in my approximate weight for calorie-counting purposes, and then it asked me to walk around a bit to link with the sensor.

I set the treadmill for a medium pace and then started off, and after the first half mile I could tell that the distance calculations on the iPod were a bit off. When you set it for a distance goal, it will give you audible cues every now and then, and in this case the iPod claimed that I had run the first half mile when the treadmill said it was only about 0.45. After finishing the full 3 miles, it was clear that it was off by about 8-10%, which is fairly significant but apparently within the estimated range. There is a decent FAQ which covers most questions gadgeteers will have about this.

Upon returning home, my first action was to head to the track and calibrate the system to my stride. They allow calibration to both a run and a walk speed, and so I did both around a quarter-mile lap. After calibrating, the distance calculations seemed rock solid (at least around the track again, since it's the only place I can run where I really know how far I'm going).

Running with the whole setup is pretty fun since you can push a button at any time to get distance/time/pace, but even better than that is the ability to sync your runs to a site to track your progress. Here is some idea of what the Nike+ site looks like, it's actually a pretty nice UI (though Nyanko may have some things to say about that) with decent functionality.


This is the "My Runs" section, and you can mouseover each session to see the summary for that, then click to get details, like this:


Here you can see your pace through the whole run, with mouseover details at milestones. Note the huge dropoff in pace at the end here, this was my first run and I thought I had ended the workout already and started walking to cooldown. The screen (and I think the voice too) always says "Press Menu to end your workout" when in fact they mean "Press Menu and then scroll to the End Workout option and press the center button to end your workout."

No laughing at my small distance/slow pace runs, at least not yet. When I haven't improved in a few months then you can laugh. I think I've now fulfilled my blog quota for the next 12.4 weeks with this one.

Battlestar recap

It has been too long without a Battlestar post, so here's one: there will be a one hour recap of the Battlestar series so far

One more reason to love Rachel Bilson

How can I not like Rachel Bilson? She loves Target too! She's just like me! We'd be BFF if we met. Heh. Okay. Not really.

MySpace obsession

The tomcat has become completely obsessed with searching MySpace, and finding people he knows, and on the way, serindipitiously finding all sorts of tragedy in the pages people put up. And then he is sending me links to the super crappy pages. Happily the super powerful search is only for members, and since I'm not a member, I can't use the search, which if the tomcat is any indication, has some cracklike addictive aspects.

Dead television pilots are surfacing

Lots of pilots that did not get picked up are surfacing on YouTube. Honestly, it would be interesting to see a full batch of pilots from a network season to try and see if you can figure out why the net picked up what it.

Ranting ringtones

The thought of a Mel Gibson rant ringtone, or actual sound clips from other schizo celebrity moments is a pretty funny. Certainly better than the chicken clucking ringtone.

Who's smirkier?

Logan on Gilmore Girls has been cast as the half brother of Logan on Veronica Mars. It's going to be a snark-off. Oh wait, Logan on GG isn't that snarky. Okay, it will be the biggest spoiled rich boy-off. But that doesn't mean they're not cute and infrequently, but inexplicably likable.

Amy Sherman-Palladino's new pilot

Amy Sherman Palladino is developing a pilot about estranged sisters who reconnect after one agrees to be a surrogate mother for the other's baby. Huh. I'm sure it might be funny, but it's hard to see the super funny immediately...

Miami Vice recap

Television Without Pity never lets us down. How do I know this? Because they have recapped the Miami Vice movie. Ignore the Big Love header, if it's still on top.