Arranged Delirium

LOL. Gizmodo actually interviewed the Panera Bread iMac Man (see my post from last month). Apparently, he uses an iLugger...and he has two level 80 characters.

(...and this is one reason why I don’t want people taking my picture - you never know how it might get used!)

From Gizmodo
Step one: bring your iMac to a Panera Bread.
Step two: play WoW on it.
Step three: be old.
Step four: win the unconditional respect of the entire internet, forever.
UPDATE: This appears to be a habit.

Yes, I play World of Warcraft. No, I’m not as bad as this guy. (Make sure to read the steps below the image.)  I’m younger for one thing, and I have more hair. It is funny though - and I thank my colleague CH for sending along the link. I really think the Panera Bread iMac Man needs a laptop though, and I think a fund for such a purpose would be a worthwhile social endeavor.

I’ve abandoned all broadcast television for good. The process began years ago when I became a disciple of TiVo, and realized that there was no reason why I should ever watch anything at any specific time again. I also realized that I could avoid commercials - which I abhor. (I actually enjoy some commercials - just not during programming.)

More recently however, I’ve eschewed all forms of broadcast TV by ending my DirectTV subscription. Essentially at this point, I get all of my television via Netflix and AppleTV. I was inittially quite surprised at the quality of the performance of video streaming over broadband - it’s very good (especially if you have 3 mbps or better). Netflix also has a robust selection of content available via streaming, so all’s good there. With AppleTV you can run anything you get from iTunes. Add in Boxee and you’ve got access to even more content. (Although no Hulu - which is sad. And stupid.)

In the end, I went from paying about $60/month for DirectTV and Netflix to an $18/month Netflix expense. With that kind of savings I could buy a series each month on iTunes, own the content, and still come out ahead. Of course, I could never watch that much TV - so I stand to save a lot of money. The only real loss is live sports programming; but I haven’t given up hope for finding a solution for watching Ohio State football. If I had to do it all over again, I’d probably invest more to buy a Mac Mini and install Plex on it - which would give me added features and content - but it would have cost me more too. Meh.

If you are interested in moving to Internet video and leaving your cable/dish subscription behind, Forbes has published a very readable article on the topic, and I’m more than happy to answer questions if you leave one in the comments section…

I finally got around to re-designing my web site as well as this blog. Several folks have written in asking how I did certain things. It’s virtually all XHTML and CSS,with a lot of CSS doing the hard work of the rounded corners. There isn’t an external style sheet since the inset boxes with the pics are specific to each page - so I’ve included the styles in each file. If you’re running IE6 or earlier, you’re out of luck…but then again, there’s no good reason to be using IE as a browser.

The effect for the examples of student work comes courtesy of a javascript called Lightbox. You’ll find it on numerous sites. You can achieve a similar effect with straight CSS code, but I thought the js was less tedious to implement. I tend to avoid javascript whenever I can, but convenience and lack of time won the day this time through.