JonahWeiland.com

I see this as the beginning of a regular series of posts.

As I drive around Los Angeles, I see countless displays of stupidity. Most are rather mundane, but occasionally you get something good. Like this moron trying to sell his van.

FOUR sale for only $4 with a six digit phone number. And the second 8 is upside down.

Taken with the camera phone in the Burbank Fry’s Electronics parking lot on June 30th, 2004.

FoxNews.com interviewed me regarding Spidey-Mania. Nice reporter I spoke with last week.

CBR’s own Arune Singh also did a phone interview with NPR/PRI’s “The World.” The show will be archived sometime tomorrow and I’ll supply a link. Looking forward to hearing him. It’s gotten a lot of reaction.

Trip has been mostly uneventful so far. Flight from Burbank took off on time and I didn’t get booted off the plane like my trip to Las Vegas. Activision flew us to SFO on United Express, their shuttle service. It’s the first time since I was a little kid in the South Pacific that I flew on a plane this small. 12 rows, one flight attendant. My head hit the roof as I walked down the aisle and I had to hunch over to work the bathroom. I forgot how different small planes are from the bigger ones I’m used to. You feel every change in the engine, much more so than on the bigger jets. It also seems much faster when taking off, although I’m sure that’s some sort of illusion. The guy sitting next to me made with the cross before taking off. Dude, it’s a small plane, not a death trap…I hope. This is also the first time I’ve flown into San Francisco and not been delayed.

Hotel is nice, but the room is tiny. Hell, this room is smaller than the one I had in London. The best part of the room is the balcony. I’m on the 16th floor of this Hilton here and the pool is right outside my room. Nice little sitting area. Too bad they don’t have WiFi or else I’d be using the laptop outside.

Walked around San Francisco a bit. I’m apparently in the middle of a big shopping district. Of course It’s all the same stores we have down in Los Angeles, so none of them interested me.

At 6:30 apparently the festivities begin. One of the nice things about this trip is Activision is having all participants sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement and any news from this event is embargoed until Monday. So, that means no rush back to the room to type things up. I can relax a bit tonight after the event. Thank you Activision and Sony!

Tomorrow is lunch with Larry and James. Then hooking up with Jase and some Giants baseball. LOVE IT!

Here’s a picture I snapped of San Francisco with the phone on the way to the hotel.

I used to be a talk radio junky about 7, 8 years ago. That’s changed. I now listen to very little talk radio. Most of it is very one-sided (both on the right and the left), very little puts forward pragmatic view points, most all of it has an agenda. Boring! The John and Ken Show in Los Angeles I’ll listen to on occasion and NPR’s All Thing’s Considered, when not mired in political debate, I find fascinating for the stories they tell. But even then I don’t make a point to listen.

There is only one show on the radio I make a point to listen to every week. Elvis Mitchell’s “The Treatment” on NPR is the best movie program on the radio. Intelligent discussion with fascinating directors. Today he interviews Alfonso Cuarón, the director of the latest Harry Potter movie. You can listen to the interview off of this page. An interesting look behind the scenes at the film (my favorite quote is when Alfonso calls Professor Lupin “Your favorite gay uncle who does smack!”), plus a discussion of the other directors who’ve influenced and helped him like Steven Sodderbergh (my favorite) and Guillermo del Toro.

As for the movie itself, it’s my favorite of the three so far. It’s slower paced and the screenplay cut out a good many of the unnecessary details found in the book, but finally we have a Potter film that allows you to digest the actions of the characters. In the first two films director Chris Columbus simply hit story point after story point without allowing the audience to really take in the story. With this latest movie you have a film with personality, something lacking in the first two movies. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s certainly a lot of fun.

Go check out that interview, especially if you liked the movie.

Thursday morning I’ll be flying up to San Francisco. It’s been far too long since I’ve visited NoCal. Activision is holding a “Spider-Man 2: The Game” party of some sort and are flying me up. Really looking forward to it. I’ll be staying through Saturday morning. Friday night I’ll go to my first game at SBC Park (formerly Pac Bell Park) with my friend Jase. It’s the Giants vs. the Red Sox, apparently the first time the two teams have met since the Giants left New York City.

I’m REALLY excited about going to SBC Park. When I’m out of town, if there’s a pro sports teams playing when I’m there I always try to take in one game. I maintain that the quickest and best way to get a real sense of the people of a given city is to take in a professional sporting event in that city.

This will also be my fifth trip out of town this year. I used to think, as a young guy, that business travellers have the greatest life. Being flown on the company dime to foreign cities, expense accounts, etc., what a dream! Not! As I’ve gotten older and have had to do more and more travel for business I’ve found I almost dislike it. When you’re on a business trip, sure, you may be in a different city, but hotel rooms all generally look and feel the same - cold and ugly. And you’re not checking out sites or relaxing, you’re actually working. When you’re done working during the day, it’s usually back up to the room to work some more. Where’s the fun in that? It’s not vacation.

I think this trip will be different, though. Hell, I’m going to a video game launch party thrown by Sony. And Sony throws good parties, believe it or not. The Sony parties during E3 in Los Angeles are legendary. The launch party for the PS2 thrown here in Los Angeles years ago was amazing.

So, San Francisco, here I come.

A couple of weeks back I asked about British BitTorrent sites out there in the hopes of landing some copies of the BBC Drama “State of Play.” Unfortunately I’ve come up with nothing. Last year when I went to the UK I carpooled with Mike and Ade from London to Bristol. I asked Ade if hew knew of anything, or when the DVD for the series might be coming out and he sent me this link which notes the series will be coming out on DVD in FEBRUARY! Ugh! So I guess the search will continue until then.

I love my TiVo. I really do. During the television season I watch about 10 - 15 hours of television a week. With TiVo handling the recording, I tend to watch the shows whenever I want and get to avoid commercials. It’s a great damned thing, I say.

A while back I mentioned that Jacob has set up a Digital Video Recorder using a PC called SageTV. I liked it, but wasn’t entirely impressed with the user interface. Kind of clunky, poorly organized, poorly designed. But, the thing recorded programs nicely and improvements were on the way. With the release of SageTV 2, most of the problems I had with it have disappeared. The user interface is far superior to the first version and ease of use has been improved greatly.

Today I read this article about PC DVR technology and it’s growth. Personally, I’d really like to set-up a SageTV box to compliment my TiVo someday soon. The biggest advantage to a Sage machine is the ability to share recorded programs with friends easily. Also, you can put as many hard drives in the machine as you like, creating an almost infinite amount of space to record to.

So, if you’re not a major techy and are considering a DVR, get TiVo. If you’re a techy and like playing with hardware, give SageTV a try.