Sephy’s Platzish

This is one of those things that I think I’m just a tad hypersensitive to, but it can really irk me when someone uses the totally wrong punctuation for something. For example, take this sign, spotted in a grocery store last year -

Oh boy, where do I start? First, the whole thing about capitalizing every first letter - not necessary! You’re not writing a headline in a newspaper (heck, most of the time not every word is capitalized there). Ok, so what next? See that comma? It should not be there (unless you put another comma before “Mentioned” setting off that section of the sentence). Then we come to “This Weeks Ad”, shoulda been week’s. And the last thing, you don’t put a space between the end of a word an the punctuation!

You would think that writing a sign in a grocery store would be something a person with a first-grade English understanding would be able to do, but, well, I guess not…here’s how the sign should look (at least to me) -

Attention customers: The California Pizza Kitchen pizzas mentioned in this week’s ad will not be included in the sale because they are already sold for a lower retail price of $4.99. Thank you.

The next subject is one I’ve already alluded to in the past - this beauty -

The only way they could have approved on this sign’s error record is if they would have called them tail’s…seriously, that weekend in that particular store, they had all kinds of quotation marks on everything, but this definitely takes the cake with the dashes on the two lines as well.

This bizarre use of punctuation, and especially the old quote key to the right of the home row (at least on most English-language keyboards), brings me to some convenient reminders, because I’ve seen this particular word misused so many times that it has begun to grow on me.

It’s its, and its companion it’s.

I’m not sure why this is one of the most confused usages of a word, but for some reason it is. It’s is a contraction of the words it is, and should be used when appropriate to change the two words into the contraction. On the other hand, its signifies possession. For example, my computer has its own intricacies, it’s got this ability to be a pain in the arse at times.

The same goes for when you’re pluralizing acronyms and other complex words. It’s my general guide to not use an apostrophe when talking about DVDs and CDs, but if I’m talking about a CD’s properties, then, as witnessed, I use the apostrophe.

If there’s anything that can be taken away from this rant of mine, I think that it’s a sign that I’m definitely ready for a change in seasons!

Only 3 more weeks of winter to go (officially, but of course, today marks the start of meteorological spring, so there is some hope for us yet!)!

It might seem like a long time since it’s been this way, but today we actually had the first decent day for thawing the ice that has accumulated on the driveway (which is up around an inch or so - around 3cm). I took some time during the day to take the ice chipper out and clear a bit of the ice.

By no means did I get all of the ice cleared away, but I did manage to clear out a space that fills around a square foot or more. Needless to say, there’s another, oh, 150 feet by 8 feet to clear out - a herculean effort at the least, a miracle at the most if it is all cleared away before baseball season starts in just over a month.

Either way, it’s expected to actually get above freezing tomorrow - which means a lot more thawing than we had today (it was only a few degrees below freezing, but thanks to the sun’s natural heat, the thawing happened).

Naturally though, this winter wouldn’t be complete without the threat of yet another storm - this time on Monday, possibly into Tuesday. Just so long as I can get out by 12:00 on Tuesday so that I can head out for my appointment with the job service I contacted today, I’ll be fine.

One of my favorite shows on Discovery (and one of the few shows that I’d be willing to get digital cable for if it only aired on the Science channel) is How it’s Made. Over the years, I’ve gotten used to hearing the voice of Brooks Moore giving the details of how the Québécois make the things we use in everyday life.

With a new season, though, comes a new voice - one that is very annoying. He’s got that “Listen to me, I’m an American” type of voice that tends to overhype everything and anything - in other words, he could work for ESPN’s SportsCenter and work out just fine. Apparently, he’s Zac Fine (according to Wikipedia), and he isn’t popular with the fans of the show.

All I can say is that hopefully, the Discovery Channel’s head honchos will come to their senses and bring back Brooks Moore and his more dulcet tones - along with, possibly, the more standard music. However, in any case - keep up the letterboxing. Unlike just about everyone else out there, I love it when shows are letterboxed - that means if we had proper systems to distribute programs, they’d be in widescreen.

If you don’t follow free-to-air TV in Australia (which, if you’re not from there, makes complete sense - I don’t follow the ins and outs of it, but since it has been all over the news, I’ve had some interest in it), you aren’t aware of the storm that is Underbelly. Meg wrote about 9’s changing of the show’s site to basically remove any mention of details of the show.

Why did they change the site?

A judge told them they had to block broadcast of the program into the whole of Victoria because it, apparently, it would influence potential jurors in a trial. Over here, we’d handle that by asking the pool if they had heard of the program and whether or not they had seen it on TV. Why this couldn’t be done in Australia is beyond me - it seems to be something very logical to do, instead of forcing a TV station to nix what turned out to be a very well-watched program, even outside of Victoria.

However, the ridiculousness of the situation doesn’t stop there - shortly after the show aired (as happens with almost every show aired in the US and probably in a lot of other countries as well), someone (or more likely, a group of people) uploaded the show to certain websites - which exact ones they were, I don’t know, but the main sites that I know of did not allow users to post information about the show. As RT from Untwisted Vortex pointed out in his articles - Downloaded Pirated Anything is not Illegal, and Followup to the Previous Article - the followup’s included so that the whole story is there - the only thing that can happen is a civil suit as that is all copyright infringement is (which is what happens when you redistribute a TV show, for instance, on the internet.

Now, of course, it’s in 9’s interest to keep the show out of the hands of Victorians (not so much because of the ban, but because of the lost advertising revenue, I’m guessing), but if you read one story on their own website, they claim that there is an organization who are wanting to bring legal charges against people uploading the show.

Because of one line in that story, some sites that I know of have actually quietly gone away for the time being - when the ruling was handed down, the decision was made that it would be somewhat hands-off, but the vagueness of that one line made the world all blurred, and generally made things not so good.

The attention that this show has garnered has caused the judge to revise the decision, after reports of one hotel showing the program off of a legal satellite stream, to block any exhibition of the program from or into Victoria. Even before the tightening of the decision, one national network, Nine Imparja, which broadcasts to a wide swath of the country, including the Northern Territory, South Australia, regional Queensland and most of the rest of the country via satellite, chose to not air the program, giving viewers the following advisory -

Meanwhile, viewers in Melbourne were graced with the presence of former 9 head, host of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?, president of the Collingwood Football Club, Eddie McGuire, with this announcement, which included the note that the program would be replaced by the Shawshank Redemption.

By the way, these, along with videos of news reports on the ban are the only videos you’ll find on YouTube about the show - they’re policing uploads of the show pretty closely apparently.

One last thing - to the judge in this case, and to the Department of Public Prosecutions - forcing a TV station to block broadcast of a program for such a weak reason as possibly influencing potential jurors is something you shouldn’t be encouraging. Especially if you believe in a free press. It’s not to say that we’re just as good; in fact, sometimes the TV stations here are too weak - they’ve been known to drop programs even before they air on the premise that they might get complaints about it.

Whatever happened to common sense?

Or: 3 stories, 1 post

Bernie to USA, Aust, NZ: I don’t care about you

That’s essentially what he’s saying in his pronouncement that the future of the Australian GP is in doubt unless they go to a night race. Considering that they have already dropped the US round of the championship, it should be no surprise that they don’t want to stick around Australia unless they have to (or unless Premier Brumbie ponies up a ton more of the Victorian taxpayers’ money to put lights up in Albert Park).

What’s the reason for the complaint about the time of the race?

TV rights. Sure, Europe is the biggest audience for F1, but that doesn’t mean that there are dedicated F1 fans in the Western hemisphere; Brazil and Canada still have rounds of the championship - and as far as I know, they’re as well-attended as rounds in Europe (in fact, they probably have better attendance than European rounds). Those races are safe in Bernie Ecclestone’s eyes because they (along with the old USGP) air in Europe at around 6PM - smack dab in the middle of peak viewing time.  All the European rounds (along with Turkey and Bahrain) start somewhere between noon and 3pm on the continent.

What time is the Australian GP on in Europe? Generally around 4-5am, or late evening in the US.

It would seem to me that if we have to deal with getting up at 6.30am all summer long, and have to stay up all night for the other races (aside from Australia, Canada and Brazil), they should be stuck with some of these “inconveniently timed” races. It’s only fair for a truly worldwide sport.

If this isn’t a scam, I’ll run around naked

One of the more annoying commercials on the radio lately is one that features a guy acting as a show host going into a commercial break. He is talking about this “amazing” product that makes you earn money on the Internet using sites like eBay. Now, it wouldn’t be too bad except for the fact that he goes on to say that you will be selling products that you don’t have to see, ship, or even pay for.

Uh, excuse me? Selling stuff you don’t pay for? There’s a term for that in my region - selling stolen goods, anybody?

The system is called Internet Speedway, and has been out there for quite a long time. And, if you’re curious why I’d be willing to run around naked if this isn’t a scam, check out this thread on scam.com. Need I say more?

However, it’s not so much what they’re pitching that makes the ad annoying, it’s how they pitch it. This voice-over artist reads his script, and when he gets to the part where he has to read off the number, he says “uh, it’s here, it’s 1-whatever”. Now, that fits into the idea of this being a supposedly “live” read, but when he goes to reread the number, he says “um” again. It’s that second “um” that really makes the ad annoying to me.

Oh well, that’s why they have a dial on the radio, eh?

Superbowl XLII - it’s all about the ads

Provided I actually care to watch (which I probably will since there isn’t that much on TV other than marathons) the show, all I am really interested in seeing are the ads, which I haven’t heard a lot of hype about, but they’re available out there to watch already.  You would think that these companies would get bothered about their $2.7-million commercials being leaked onto the internet, but they’ll land here anyways, so I guess they don’t care all that much.

As far as the game itself, this is one of those games where you want both teams to lose. I want the Giants to lose because of beating the Packers. I want the Patriots to lose to stop the perfect season. That being said, I think that the Patriots will win the game because they just have been that dominant force all season long.

As far as a score, I’d tip 34-21 to los Pats, as they were called on Spanish language TV (one guy on there said that he was expecting the upset of the century going the Giants way; nobody else was convinced of his prediction).

I never watch tennis, except for two weeks during January, when over the last couple of years, I’ve watched bits and pieces of the Australian Open, including some of the marathon matches that occurred last weekend, when the play lasted all the way until well past 11AM my time - 4AM in Melbourne. They stayed live through that whole time, some 16 hours.

I wouldn’t want to have to pay their satellite bills for that day, I have to say!

However, there was one thing that I noticed in the coverage that went on in the middle of the night here - the commentators knew when to talk and when not to talk. For some reason, TV commentary of sport here, and overseas - I’ve seen plenty of it to know something about that - has commentators who must like the sound of their own voice. It’s not like radio where you have to describe everything. The commentators - Cliff Drysdale and Darren Cahill - let the pictures and the sound on the court do the talking. In fact, there were times when they’d go three or four minutes without commentary!

If you look over the history of TV commentators, you’ll see that the early ones had this knack - folks like Pat Summerall, Ray Scott, and also Harry Caray. It seems, though, that as the commentators had more toys to play with - telestrators, bizarre tools like the glowing hockey puck and Draft Track, and other bits and bobs - they started to feel this need to explain just about everything to the viewer - even the stuff we’d seen time and time again.

Of course, it’s not only the chatty character of commentators that can be annoying, I’ve noticed that during the college football season, if you watched a game on ESPN and then watched a game on CBS, you’d have two completely different experiences. I always could hear the bands in the background on CBS, but on ESPN, they would have their outside mics set so low that you could barely hear them. Part of a college game is the atmosphere, of which the band is a part of it and adds that extra bit of excitement to the game that you otherwise wouldn’t have during a pro game.

I’m not saying that the commentators should be eliminated from the broadcast altogether, but it would be nice if they would let the pictures do the talking more than they currently do. Considering that on my TV right now is that darn shopping channel selling knives, I wonder if the sport commentators have something to sell, aside from the sport itself?