Banal Leakage – Ep #031
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Episode 031
– They Say It’s Your Birthday :
- – Sunday was my wife’s birthday. And Wednesday was my birthday; two Leo’s together; it works, but we do have our moments of wanting to be king of the jungle.
- – Rain cooled things off here; I want the temps to get back up to low 90’s again; i don’t mind a little rain every so often, but it pours all at once and that’s just a waste of good water.
- News – Story 1: San Diego Comic-Con sues Salt Lake Comic Con
- News – Story 2: Six Flags Magic Mountain shutting down Colossus roller coaster
- News – Story 3: MTV celebrates 33 years since beginning
- RANT: Compete, Don’t Take Down Other Companies
- SHAMELESS PLUG: Calling Time on the phone
- Ending
- Email Feedback
– For years, San Diego was the only Comic-Con gig going; people flocked to that city in droves and in costume to show their geek side and love of fictional lore; over the years, other cities started having their own Comic Con shows; this year, Salt Lake Comic Con (minus the dash in the name) drove a ad-laced car around the San Diego Convention Center to promote their upcoming show here in Salt Lake on September 4-6th; The San Diego officials got wind of this; sent a cease and desist notice to change the name; Salt Lake dug in their heels; lawsuit filed; personally, I don’t see what the conflict is unless San Diego wants to start taking their brand to every city; they are San Diego Comic-Con (with the dash); so many other Comic Con shows out there; will San Diego sue them as well and force them to change their names?; this pissing match just takes away from the fans and their love of the characters created and celebrated.
– Link to article: San Diego Comic-Con suing Salt Lake Comic Con over name
– August 16th is the last day the coaster will host riders; the coaster opened in 1978 as the tallest and fastest in the world; I rode this ride for the first time in 1983; it was my second visit to the Valencia, CA amusement park; the coaster was featured in the 1983 movie “National Lampoon’s Vacation”; many years later, Six Flags is wanting to reinvent the area where the ride has been for the last 36 years; always sad when a ride like this closes down; many fans still like this ride and it’s one that will last in the memories of thrill ride seekers.
– Link to article: Six Flags to close Colossus roller coaster in August
– the music channel began broadcasting on August 1, 1981 the first video ever played was “Video Killed The Radio Star” by The Buggles; the original VJ’s were: Martha Quinn, J.J. Jackson, Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood and Alan Hunter; most are DJs on SiriusXM; the concept of music videos took off and changed the world of music; putting faces to the voices; Duran Duran was one of the bands to really get into making music videos; so was Michael Jackson; they became more than just playing the song against a video; short films for songs like “Thriller”; I loved MTV and watched it a lot during it’s early days; I had just graduated from high school; had a friend who had cable TV; two boxes – one for HBO and the other for cable channels; changed how TV is viewed; now MTV barely plays anything related to music; most music videos are on VEVO or Yahoo!; one day, that might change again.
– Link to article: Happy Birthday, MTV! 33 years ago today we got our MTV
– a common ideal is to spend oodles of money to take down your competition; it’s oil companies trying to kill solar and wind power; it’s taxi companies trying to take down Uber and Lyft ride service; it’s the car dealers trying to keep companies like Tesla from offering a different and innovative way of selling their electric cars; I’m not against capitalism, but I wish those who lead these companies and organizations would learn what competition is; if you are that weak of a business where you feel threatened by new and innovative companies reinventing your trade, then I feel bad for you; you can’t be the only game in town; businesses like Circuit City found that out when they tried to shut down every one of their competitors; they are now out of business; don’t fight, join; taxi companies should make an app and learn what GPS is and use it to gain new customers; oil companies should be spending their lobbying money getting into the wind and solar business.
– Link to article: Salt Lake slaps rideshare drivers with $6,500 fines
– Growing up in the 70’s, if you wanted an exact notification of what time it was, you would simply pick up the dial phone and call 853-1212 and a recorded message would say: “At the tone, the time will be… 8:12 and 20 seconds…” and then a loud “BEEP”; it repeated this every 10 seconds; at the top of the minute, it would replace the seconds count with “exactly”; I’m not sure what parts of the country had this, but I grew up in Southern Calif and this was in every area code that you could dial the 853 or 767 number; this went away in August 2007; so no longer can you check the time by dialing a phone number; most of us have cell phones that constantly sync the correct time over the wireless network.
Link to article: Time of the Day Calling It Quits
iTunes link: Banal Leakage
1) “Con” is a common expression that’s short for “Convention”… anybody attending “cons” refers to them as “cons” and knows them as “cons.” Dragon Con, Gen Con, Emerald City Comic Con, New York City Comic Con, Wonder Con… they’re everywhere. It’s like trying to get exclusive rights to the work “water.”
2) I have to wonder if what they come up with to replace it will be worth losing Colossus.
3) I think it’s stupid that they even bother to call themselves “Music Television” since I never see music being played there any more. Why not “Multimedia Television” or something?
RANT) The best example I can think of as to why this is harmful… Google Reader. They aggressively killed off all competition so that they were the only feed-reader of any substance… then closed it down, leaving the whole idea of web feeds a mess. Sometimes in having a victor, we all lose.
PLUG) Whenever somebody asks me for the time, I always answer with “At the tone the time will be…” Some things just stick with you, I guess.
The Google Reader is an excellent example of a harmful monopoly (believe it or not, the word monopoly escaped me when I was putting the podcast together).
And cool that you know the calling time as well. Guess it more national than I knew of.
“Rich Uncle Pennybags” sheds a tear…
I still have a bad taste in my mouth about Google Reader shutting down. To the point where I try to use as little of Google products as possible. I’m sure they really care, but hey, I do what I can 😉
To be honest though, their hasty decision to shut Reader down did prompt a teeny renaissance of feed reader development. Which was good. Feedly, Feedbin et al sprang up and are doing well. Reeder, both the desktop and mobile versions, is doing well. So there was some good that came of it at least.
That’s a very good point. All of the other RSS feed readers like Feedly and Feedbin stepped up and offered a nice solution.
We chatted briefly on Twitter about Colossus shutting down. What a shame. I’ve only ever been to Magic Mountain once but spent the entire day there riding everything. Multiple times. Loved Colossus and it’s a real shame it will come to an end.
Yes, a shame they can’t just keep it going. After all, there are many other coasters like it that are much older and still operating.
I remember the time phone line. I never really called it much because, like you said, clocks and watches were de rigeur. But I can still hear the voice in my head.
It was something that will remain as a part of my time curious childhood.