TV at Geek Skillz

TV at Geek Skillz http://www.geekskillz.com/tags/8 Articles tagged with TV at Geek Skillz. Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:24:00 EST Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:24:00 EST en-us [Review] JPod, TV Series Premiere http://www.geekskillz.com/articles/review-jpod-tv-series-premiere Books, Reviews, TV

I’ve been a Douglas Coupland fan since my brother loaned me his copy of Shampoo Planet many years ago. Since then I’ve discovered Microserfs, easily in my top 10 favorite books of all time, and now JPod, which I’m currently reading. When I found out that JPod has been turned into a TV series, I was thrilled! Microserfs and JPod are books about my mysterious caste of professionals: software developers, a.k.a. programmers. No one knows what we really do, and no one understands how we spend our days. Maybe JPod can enlighten and inform. I just finished watching the series premiere on CBC, so I’ll give my thoughts on it.

The first thing I noticed (with a gasp!) is that the theme song is one of my favorite Bonobo songs, and the episode featured a second Bonobo tune. The show automatically gets 3 stars! It’s like Douglas Coupland stole my vinyl collection!

Next, I noticed that the JPod cubicles are ridiculously hip and cool, in an office setting I would kill for. It seems like the show creators have obviously never spent any time in a real programmer’s work area, a world of beige, dust, and white noise. If only work was as fun as JPod makes it look! However, I must admit that HR sometimes puts people anywhere they can fit a desk or cubicle, like telephone rooms and the wasted space around structural pillars. True story. So, the JPod is not an entirely impossible setting.

The acting overall was good, with some great laugh out loud moments. Cowboy gave me some good laughs, especially when he tried to deny frequenting a website about hugging. Alan Thicke is a bit awkward as the father. I hope he can ease up on the fromage in future episodes. David W. Kopp was great as Ethan, suitably average but with geek flair orbiting him at all times. He plays the straight man in contrast to the abundance of comic relief, being the island of sanity in an otherwise absurd show.

The pop art interludes are a nice touch, being visual (and in my opinion better) versions of the ones in the book. After Kaitlin reveals that she’s from Florida, an interlude appears showing a Florida orange with snow falling on it, alluding to how frosty Kaitlin is to the other reluctant members of JPod. Cute.

The episode flew by at a fast pace, like most of Coupland’s books, and the closing scene left me wanting more. Finally, I’ve got something to watch on Tuesday nights! I recommend JPod to all geeks and programmers, and their family and friends who want a glimpse of what we do. It’s good enough to pull me away from my laptop for an hour, and that’s saying a lot!

(Confession: I had my laptop on my lap throughout the entire episode. I have no editor, so I'm not changing that last line.)

Now, time to play some Bonobo records.]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2008 22:24:00 EST http://www.geekskillz.com/articles/review-jpod-tv-series-premiere Goodbye Traveler http://www.geekskillz.com/articles/goodbye-traveler TV

I've been watching one of ABC's newest shows, Traveler, through TVShows. I've been enjoying it a lot. It's a decent replacement for Lost, which won't be back until early 2008.

So I thought to check Traveler's ratings to see if this show would last a full season, only to find that the show would end after only 8 episodes. Crap! I shouldn't have bothered watching this show until a full season was done. Too many shows get canceled quickly before they ever get any traction. Firefly, Jericho, and other shows I've already forgotten. But if people avoid watching new shows for fear of cancellation, then how does a TV series get started at all? I guess they need to be in a time slot before or after Lost, 24, or American Idol.

David DiGillio, creator of Traveler, blogged about the end of the show. Here's what he said:

Here's the point in the blog where you might expect me to lay into a diatribe about how the network has just screwed us and how the studio let it happen. Nope. Not the case. Because that crazy two weeks in the show's life becomes one of the most amazing experiences of my young professional career. And I am writing this entry as a testament to the work that was done by everyone on this show so that we could complete Traveler's first season in eight episodes instead of 13.

So, at least we will get an end to the series. The ending may feel abrupt and unsatisfying, but at least it should be a proper finale of some kind.

I actually like the idea of seasons consisting of 8 episodes, or some other small number. It forces the plot to be concise and focused. Why not air short-season series like Traveler in the summer? Or in the fall, when shows like Lost and American Idol don't air?

Traveler could continue to have mini-seasons like this one. It is billed as an action-adventure show, so short seasons would be a perfect fit. It's hard to stretch a show to 24 episodes when it's supposed to be action-packed and fast-paced in every episode. The DVD sets for such small seasons would be priced much cheaper, since it could fit on two discs instead of six or seven. Easy money!

DiGillio's blog mentions some fans trying to save the show Jericho-style, but I'm not holding my breath. Still, it shows that the blogosphere has gained some influence over other forms of media. So here I am trying to do my tiny part.

Anyway, I guess that means there are only two more episodes of Traveler before it's time to find another new show due for cancellation.]]> Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:24:00 EST http://www.geekskillz.com/articles/goodbye-traveler Geeks Watch TV Better http://www.geekskillz.com/articles/geeks-watch-tv-better Software, TV

Who can be bothered to watch TV shows at their scheduled times anymore? A show better be frickin’ amazing for it to make me sit in front of the TV at a certain day and time, and for me to suffer through 18 minutes of irritating commercials that interrupt the fun. Only Lost has been addictive enough for me to routinely park my butt on the couch every Wednesday night at eight o’clock.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t other shows that I want to watch. I just prefer other kinds of entertainment that I can turn on and off when I want them. I grew up playing video games, which you can jump into when you feel like it, and turn off when you’ve had enough. Books also wait patiently for audiences to enjoy them. Television’s format is just inconvenient and annoying for those of us that have become accustomed to “on demand” mediums of entertainment.

I recently found a program called TVShows for the Mac that lets me watch shows when I’m ready to watch them. Yes, I know that you can download shows from BitTorrent sites, but that means that for every episode I want to watch, I need to search for the correct video file and download it myself every week, or every day for daily shows. Forget it. Sounds like something that can be automated... which is what TVShows does.

TVShows lets you subscribe to the shows that you want to watch. It will automatically find the torrents for those programs and use your default BitTorrent client to download them in the background. Without any effort on your part, your shows will arrive on your computer. As a bonus, the shows are commercial free! So far, I have been very happy with the video quality of the shows I've been downloading. Since everyone who has subscribed to a show will start downloading at roughly the same time, the speed of the torrent download can be extremely fast. But if you insist on watching shows the same day that they air, you might be disappointed. For less popular shows, it can take a day before the download completes. Still, once you break free of the TV schedule, you may not care about watching shows a day or two later than you used to.

Just let the shows get downloaded to your computer, and when you’ve had your fill of video games, if that should ever happen, you can see how many shows you’ve got waiting for you. It’s nice to have a week’s worth of Colbert Report waiting for me on the weekend. I’m often not interested in his guests, so I can skip the interviews, reducing the length of each episode to around 15 minutes. That’s a lot of time saved that can be better spent on games, books, blogging, and even going outside! (Probably in that order.)

I have been watching On The Lot this way, and can’t imagine watching it the old-fashioned way. Like other reality shows, the show tries to cause suspense by pausing and filling time with biographies of the contestants and other stuff I can’t bear watching. I can watch an episode of On The Lot in about 25 minutes now. No longer do I have to suffer mean-spirited tricks like when the host says, “The person who is going home this week is... coming up right after this!” When commercials are intentionally inserted into the middle of a sentence, I don’t feel bad downloading commercial-free versions of the show.

If you’ve got a TiVo or other PVR, then you already know how nice it is to watch TV this way. But with TVShow, you don’t need a cable TV subscription, and you're not limited by geography. Want to watch a British show that hasn't made it to your country yet ? Subscribe to it in TVShows! Once you’ve got a way to deliver those downloaded shows to your TV, then you’ve got it made. Television networks had better start adapting fast before this trend takes off. Crying foul and calling people thieves won’t be good enough.]]> Fri, 22 Jun 2007 09:01:00 EST http://www.geekskillz.com/articles/geeks-watch-tv-better