Ralph Whitbeck - Blog - Entertainment

Why did Sci Fi choose the name SyFy?

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:29:49 GMT

If you know me then you know that I am huge fan of the Sci Fi Channel, mainly for Battlestar Galactica. But three months ago they announced a rebranding and earlier this week they executed the name change.

Yesteday, I wrote about why they choose to rebrand on BrandLogic Dialogue:

CNN.com quotes Dave Howe, the president of Syfy, on the reasons why the channel needed the rebranding:

“We needed a unique and distinct brand name that we can own for the future, that works in the multiplatform, on-demand world,” he said, adding that “Sci Fi” isn’t a brand name, it’s “a genre name.”

“Syfy,” he said, “gives us a unique brand name.

“The last thing we want to do is alienate our core audience,” he added. With the new name, shows such as “Galactica” can be exposed to a wider audience, one not scared away by all that “Sci Fi” connotes (”space and aliens and the future,” in Howe’s words).

Howe continues on how the name was chosen:

“This was a two-year exercise,” he said. The new name, he says, needed to be usable all over the world in Internet URLs, brand extensions and merchandising, and “the only way to do that is to create an empty name.

“We explored them all,” he said. “We wanted a word that was uniquely ours,” while not straying too far from the sound of “Sci Fi.”

The post has spurred a good discussion on people's opinions of the name change even spurring a separate blog article from the Technology Viewer blog. What are your thoughts on the name change?

Caprica: DVD Review

Ralph Whitbeck — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:22:46 GMT

Caprica is the latest from Ronald D. Moore and is set in a Battlestar Galactica world 58 years before the fall (or when the miniseries starts). Caprica is a planned series that is to come to SyFy (aka SciFi) later this year. This DVD release is a preview release and I think it's very smart on the part of the producers. Give the fans something to hold onto and look forward to while the series finale is fresh in everyone's head. Additionally, they can gauge fan reaction and make adjustments before it airs.

Before I talk further about Caprica, let me take a step back and talk about the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. I think many of the scenes that are found in the last three hours of the finale is to help us transition into the world of Caprica. We saw Baltar and Six, Rosalyn, Bill, Helen and Saul living their life in Caprica. We see the dark side of Caprica with Bill, Helen and Saul at a unisex strip club, this is really the first time in the series that we see that Caprica isn't unlike our own society.

The final scenes are filled with images showing us how we maybe falling into the same pattern of advancing technology farther then it's meant to go. Very moving scenes that was meant for us to reflect on technology and how it will affect us in the future, arguably a sign of good science fiction.

In Caprica, we are given the view of Caprica 58 years before the Cylons surprise attack on the colonies that ultimately sent a rag-tag fleet across space in a desperate attempt to survive. We are taken back to the beginning of the end as it were. These are the events that eventually doomed the human race. Caprica isn't so much different then the world we live in today except for their technology which is obviously years ahead of where we are. But their society exhibit the same problems we are familiar with, corruption, greed, control for power and teenagers looking for their independence.

When the show starts we are instantly shown a world that is full of sin. Rampant sex orgies (w/ nudity), people shooting each other, a ceremony that involves a sacrifice of a virgin woman. But what we are seeing isn't Caprica but a virtual world that teenagers have created to escape reality and indulge in fantasies that are so far from reality. In essence we are seeing what a social networking site might look like in the future (a realistic Second-life) and see how it might devolve into a free-for-all of indulgence.

With in this world is were Zoe Graystone is working on making a avatar of herself that captures her thoughts, memories, personality and what she was feeling in the outside world. But Zoe's work is cut short when she is killed when a suicide bomber blows up the monorail she was on.

In the grieving process Zoe's father, Daniel Graystone, a computer scientist who is working on the AI programming for robotic soldiers, meets another man who lost both his wife and his daughter to the bombing, Joe Adama, father of Bill and grandfather of Lee Adama. The two work with each other driven by their passion of the the possibilities of being able to create their daughters again in real life.

If you remember from the third season finale of Battlestar Galactica during Baltars trial we learned a little bit about Joe Adama. We learned that he was a lawyer. We now see Joe being that lawyer but we learn that he is corrupt as he is heavily influenced by the Tauron Mob. It's this connection to the mob that makes it possible for Daniel to take what Zoe programmed in the virtual world and transplant it into the AI program that he is working with. It's such an ironic twist from the all mighty full of honor Bill Adama and can't be corrupt Lee Adama that we learned to trust and love in Battlestar Galactica. Ironic, that the Adama family is the cause of the fall and cause of the new beginning.

I'll be honest, my expectations about the series wasn't very high. I had thought that this can't be as good as Battlestar. But I was pleasantly surprised. There is enough tie into the Battlestar world that this is really fascinating and it's answers questions of the backstory of the Cylons creation and evolution. Seeing unfinished prototypes of the old style cylon models was great. We are even given a "By your command" line to make the true fan jump up and down in their seat.

I found myself trying to figure out the middle as I watched and more and more was revealed. Unfortunately, the story of the final five cylons from Battlestar Galactica can't be plotted together without some help from the show to piece that together.

After seeing this I am left wanting more. This will definitely be a series that will be on my DVR and I'll be first in line to get the DVD Season when released. You'll definitely need to be familiar with the Battlestar series before seeing this as there are alot of events that tie together. If you are coming into this cold I think it can stand on it's own but you won't enjoy it as much. Ron Moore is a genius when it comes to science fiction, he has a great knack for relating the sci fi world to reality. He did it masterfully in Battlestar and he does it here is Caprica.

Some of the DVD extras explain the shooting style of the show. It's shot completely different then Battlestar was shot. Battlestar was shot with shoulder cameras to give that in your face chaotic feel that you were right there with them. Caprica is shot on rolling carts and has the feel that everything is peaceful and calm because we are seeing Caprica during a peaceful time.

If you are a fan of Battlestar Galactica then I highly recommend that you see Caprica. If you haven't seen Battlestar Galactica or haven't yet finished the series yet (what are you waiting for?) Caprica is a prequel and won't ruin the ending of Battlestar for you, but I would at least have watched the miniseries before starting on Caprica.

Book Review: "Smart & Gets Things Done" by Joel Spolsky

Ralph Whitbeck — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:03:37 GMT

I went into Borders the other night to look at books that I wanted to buy. I wasn't actually going to buy them but just wanted to see what books looked good and would pick them up on Amazon. Cause let's face it Borders charges full price for it's books Amazon doesn't.

Anyways, I ran across a book by Joel Spolsky called "Smart & Get Things Done". Now I know of Joel from the Stackoverflow podcast he is doing with Jeff Atwood. He is the founder of Fog Creek Software that makes the project management software FogBugz. Before that he worked for Microsoft and Juno Online Services. He was even a paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces (an interesting fact that I learned from the book).

The book is pretty small and short. It's 182 pages and I was able to read it cover-to-cover in a few hours in one sitting. This book is aimed at those who hire technical talent to their organization (aka Programmers). This affects me as I have recently been tasked with hiring co-ops for 6 month positions at BrandLogic. I have hired three people so far but I feel that I could learn quite a bit in the interview and selection process. I actually purchased the book from Borders that day because it was less the $20 ($16.99 at Borders, $11.55 at Amazon) and because I found it to be an easy read and it would be a great help to me going forward. I think this book would also be great to programmers who are about to head into the job market. This is a great insight into what hiring managers are looking for.

Joel goes through the whole gamut in hiring a developer. He starts out by outlining how one measures a great developer, defines where to find great developers, to what makes a developer happy. He then goes through the selection process with how to sort through the resumes to weeding out candidates with a phone interview. He gets into the details of the interview once you have a candidate that has passed through the selection process before it. Finally, Joel takes through the hiring process and talks briefly on how to fix suboptimal teams.

I felt that the book was direct and outlined the issues with hiring developers and talked about how the great developers are not on the market. Advertising for jobs in traditional job boards (Monster.com, Craigslist, etc.) is only going to bring out the desperate job seekers the great developers are going to seek out the exact job that they want. Getting resumes from the traditional methods is only going to bring in a lot of noise and lot of resumes that just don't fit.

So where do you find great developers? Joel states three ways to finding great developers: 1. Go to the mountain- Go to conferences where great developers will hang out and start conversations. WWDC for Apple Devs, PDC for Microsoft Devs, etc. Go to conferences where early adopters might hang out (Ruby on Rails, etc) and talk to them. 2. Internships - This is the method that BrandLogic employs. Being that 100% of our office is RIT graduates we also feel our duty to help fellow RIT students with achieving their credits to graduate. Anyways Joel's philosophy is that if you can bring in a student one, two years before they graduate and have them working in a summer internship it's like 6 months of an interview at the end of which you can thank them for their work and send them on their way or give them a offer in which you know exactly how they are going to work for you without anymore risk. And Finally the third way is to Build your own Community. Basically if you start a blog or are known to people in the blogosphere and have a community following then when it comes down to needing to fill a position and you post a comment on your blog about that you will seem to get a higher quality selection of resumes to pick from. Of course this is all easier said then done. The how to build a community and being able to attract people is all hit or miss and Joel alludes to that. It's not the easiest thing to do but if you can build a community it's a great resource to draw from.

Joel tries to define a developer in terms of how to make them happy and egger to work and thus more productive or be hired. He stats each developer needs his own private office. This will make them more productive. He goes into the reasons behind all of this. One point is that developers seem to get into a zone when developing and a private office will help them stay in that zone longer. Additionally he goes into the physical office, big monitors, Areon chairs, etc. But the important part and the piece I think we've really tried hard to encompass at BrandLogic is that the personality of developers has to be inline with everyone else. You can't hire jerks and think that people are going to be happy to work with jerks, even though he states Microsoft does just that. Ha!

Sorting out the resumes. Joel lays out his criteria for sorting out the good from the bad. Don't hire someone based on a resume but eliminate people based on their resume. Some criteria to look for Passion (look for evidence for passion to work with computers), Pickiness (look at their resume for glaring errors), English (can they communicate effectively in their resume, if not probably aren't going to communicate effectively in a team), Brains (high GPA or some other high honors [I disagree with this as it relates to our selection process at BrandLogic]), Selectivity (Has the applicant been though another selection process meaning did he make it into a school that only accepts 30% of it's applicants or something similar [again at BrandLogic we favor RIT and usually only advertise at RIT that this isn't an issue for us]), Hard-Core (ability to work in hard-core languages like Assembler etc. is seen as being better then working with Java or PHP [again I don't entirely agree with this statement, we look for someone with web programming experience so hard-core languages don't usually add to the experience desired for our needs]) and finally diversity (ability for new people to bring new ideas and ways of thinking to the table [I whole-heartily agree with this statement]).

After you've sorted through the resumes you need to weed through the resumes with a phone interview. This will save money as you can probably get eliminate many people by just talking to them. One example Joel gives is that after ten minutes he felt he couldn't stand listening to a candidate any longer. He was able to weed that person out and saved money on not having to bring him out. The benefits to a phone interview is that you can listen to what someone is saying without visual prejudices getting in the way.

The Interview. Joel works in NYC so for him he uses the city to entice his potential hires or if they don't work out in the interview at least use that experience to still leave an impression on that person. When they go home and tell their friends how awesome the place was and how awesome the interview was, their friends will apply next summer for that chance for the trip. This all goes back to how to find great developers. By using your interview as a way to get known virally it's another way to draw them in.

The interview needs to be a conversation and needs to have the applicant writing some kind of code. It doesn't matter what language the code is in or if it's right or wrong the purpose is to get the person talking to find out how they think, how are they going to solve a problem. If they make mistakes see if they catch them, ask them "Are you happy with this code?" and see if they catch their mistake. Even if they don't make a mistake it'll be great to see if they are confident to say yes it's perfect when you ask them if they are happy with their code. Don't dwell on the technicalities you should base your decision on whether the person is 1. smart and 2. can get things done.

Joel's company has many developers interview a person and usually has them come back with a HIRE or NO HIRE verdict within 15 minutes of the interview. One person usually can't decide their fate but once a certain number of people come back with NO HIRE the interview is over and they won't be hired.

The rest of the book goes into how to hire someone and how to deal with a team that might be poisoning the rest of the team. I'll leave those chapters to you to read. I think the dealing with a team chapter is just a brief insight into management but Joel gives his recommendation into other books you can pick up to help with project/team management.

I really enjoyed this book. It was easy to read and was clear and to the point. I have many ideas on how I can update and tweak our interview process at BrandLogic for future hires.

Help support this blog by purchasing this book from my Amazon link.

Gary Vaynerchuk @ Tech Cocktail Chicago

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:56:23 GMT

TECH cocktail, a community building startup founded in May 2006 by Frank Gruber and Eric Olson, offers events and community-powered projects open to bloggers, technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs & professionals interested in technology in under served technology communities.

Today, Loyola University hosted a bunch of speakers the one I was most interested in hearing was Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV.

I found a short summary of the talk from Tim Courtney:

Gary Vaynerchuk said definitively on community, “It’s irrelevant whether you’re a traditional business or a new media business, it’s all about the community. The community is the entire thing you should care about 24/7/365. What you need to become is a rat. Real, Authentic, and Transparent. Because you can’t hide anymore, everything you do is documented.” The core of his message is that people, marketers, companies, everyone — needs to be real with their audience or they will be exposed and leave open a vulnerability for smaller players who are authentic to come up and usurp your leadership position. My thoughts: Your character is who you are when no one is watching. Gary observes that the times when “no one is watching” are getting fewer and fewer as people adopt social tools. This doesn’t make character any more important, but your actions are becoming far more public so character flaws and inauthenticity is now more exposed.

But more importantly qik user bryanthatcher streamed it for us. The sound quality is poor but you can still make out most of what he is saying.

(image from twitpic user timcourtney)

Tradition: Superbowl Sushi

Ralph Whitbeck — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:30:27 GMT

SuperBowl, for me, is one of the biggest nights of the year for sushi. For the past 10 years or so I usually buy a tray of sushi for SuperBowl and bring it to whoever is hosting. I usually educate people about sushi and get people who are normally afraid of sushi to try it when it's free for them.

This year though I made my own sushi. I made five different types of rolls. A Crab Salad roll (sometimes called classic California Roll), California Roll, a Italian Roll (Pesto, Spinach, Portabello mushrooms and Salmon [raw]), Philadelphia Roll and my famous SuperBowl Roll (Chicken Wing meat and Blue Cheese).

In total, I made 21 rolls in two and a half hours, that's 168 pieces. Needless to say it turned out awesome.

Notice how I made the Wasabi to look like a football it even had the rice laces. I even bought a wooden tray that had a football field painted on the bottom.

I really had fun with this, even though it was a lot of work. The reaction I got though was well worth the trouble.

Hope you enjoy!

Observations of MacWorld Blogging

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:59:52 GMT

Today was the keynote address at MacWorld 2008. I observed quite a few things this year that didn't happen in years past.

For instance this year seemed like everyone was live blogging the event. From Fake Steve to Valleywag to the normal web information outlets for MacWorld Keynotes: Engadget, MacRumors and Gizmodo.

But it seemed the first timers didn't have much luck with keeping their servers up. Fake Steve was using a third party web app to stream the live blogging directly to his blog. Unfortunately the app crashed almost as soon as the keynote started.

Fake Steve then went to the back up plan of using Twitter. Valleywag had also planned on live blogging via Twitter. MacRumorsLive had planned on also posting it's updates to twitter as well as on their website and IRC channel.

Ok so with these big names live blogging on Twitter as well as countless others at the keynote and with millions of people trying to refresh to get the latest from twitter on what was happening....well let's just say Twitter buckled. It went down hard for at least an hour. Even now they are rate limiting the API calls to less then the normal 70 an hour to try to take the pressure off.

With all the live blogging, I found a few who tried to stream video from the Keynote. We watched this stream until someone asked the guy to lower his Camera/phone. The picture was crappy and the sound quality wasn't the greatest but at least you could sort of make out what was going on and related back to the MacRumorsLive notes. We observed at the peak the stream had over 9000 concurrent viewers. The most surprising thing heard in that stream? A baby crying in the audience, seriously who brings a baby to an event like this?

I heard iJustine tried to Stream as well. Seems like she suffered the same fate as above.

But that brings me to my next point live video streaming seemed to be big during CES but it was really noticable today. I caught Scoble recording most of this evening with his Nokia N95. Here he is with Leo Laporte at MacWorld. Here Scoble interviews Qik founder when a Video streaming orgy breaks out by four different people one being iJustine.

So who had the best info this year. Engadget had the best write ups but their server were starting to buckle from people constantly reloading. Their page took forever to come back up. MacRumorsLive had an awesome AJAX solution that didn't require you to do anything photos and updates "magically" appeared on your screen when updates occured. In my opinion MacRumorsLive won the bragging rights.

It's fun to see how the new technology made today a much more interesting event to watch from a far. It was also fun to see how the old technology players struggled as they are the now go to outlets for this event.

Either way with everyone sharing information it makes it easy for everyone to experience the keynote as closely as they do. Thanks to you all for your hard work.

Ze Frank

Ralph Whitbeck — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:38:07 GMT

Not sure if you know who Ze Frank is but he is a pretty big internet celebrity (at least in my eyes) ... recently doing a year of video podcasts called the Show with Ze Frank.

http://www.zefrank.com

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow

Well anyways he was giving a speech at Rochester Institute of Technology tonight and I have been planning on attending since last month.

He's spoken at many TED Talks the one in 2003 is posted on Google Video and he actually gave a similar talk for part of his talk tonight.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1895918195820925057

As I was walking into the building he was walking out to which I introduced myself, shook his hand...really cool.

After the talk I went down and got into a discussion about online communities and how communities take off into the direction of their choosing ... all very interesting.

But I think what struck me the most was how approachable he was and easy to talk to. I am sure he is quite used to it by now but I found that he was very easy to talk to and to ask questions.

Don't be offended now but he plays with himself

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 04:08:25 GMT

This is just pure genius...I laughed the whole way through it.

(RSS Readers: click through to watch video)

EB Game Night

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 00:58:36 GMT

Our gaming clan started a new event last night. We are calling it EB Game Night. Basically it is a way to try to kick start some traffic to our Enemy Territory Server.

Basically the idea is to have the server set up for fun. Last night we had it set up with a christmas theme.

All the axis players were the Grinch and everyone had santa hats on. The grenades were snow balls and the landmines were christmas trees.

Plus I put together a campaign of winter maps. Thank god I tested them on Tuesday or that would of been embarrassing cause at least 4 of the maps I had picked didn't work and one was just outright terrible.

Overall I was quite pleased with the turn out...we had 18 people on at the same time at the peak of the night, not quite full but the most the server has had in a while.

The next EB Game Night will be next Wednesday December 6th at 7pm and it'll go till the server dies ... sometime around 11pm.

Come join us anytime on the server 69.31.15.31:27960.

My costume from Saturday Night's Halloween Party

Ralph Whitbeck — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:49:49 GMT

I dressed up as my wife and my wife dressed up as me. I thought it was funny as hell although we didn't get one damn vote for best costume.

Click here to see more of me in a dress.

Some cool links from MediaGab

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 00:16:21 GMT

Just wanted to share some cool links from my other site MediaGab.

Bear McCreary - Battlestar Galactica Composer responds to an email inquiry I had sent him about the last five minutes from the latest episode "Precipice"
Where has the metal gone? - new user Gummy vents his frustration about Rochester's radio station The Nerver switching formats.
Lost (10/11/06) - Discussion of the latest episode of Lost.
Tara Reid discusses botched boob job - cause Tara's boobs are at the forefront in entertainment news.
Princeton Watergun Prank - funny stuff.

Real Life Enemy Territory

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:38:06 GMT

Anyone that knows me knows I am big into playing Wolfensteins - Enemy Territory, I even play it competitively in Leagues and Ladders.

But I stumbled across this video tonight on YouTube and was laughing my ass off the whole time...Well done.

(video)

New Rocketboom out

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 23:08:13 GMT

I liked it actually Joanna Colan is a good fit on the show.

Check out this hole in one

Ralph Whitbeck — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 15:53:34 GMT

Britney Spears admits to baby number two

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 10 May 2006 14:14:26 GMT

Guess she let the cat out of the bag on Letterman last night. Get the details here (plus photos)

Superman Returns Trailer

Ralph Whitbeck — Wed, 03 May 2006 05:46:36 GMT

Me on Mediagab:

I was skeptical when I first heard about this but watching the trailer I think they might have nailed it...Christopher Reeves is the Superman I know so it will be hard to see this new guy playing the role.

Kevin Spacey as Luther and the guy playing the Chief I forgot his name seem perfect for the roles.

Here is the trailer. http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/supermanreturns/trailer2/large.html

I actually can't wait for this...Ernie, Travis are we going to this one?

Burger King trying Viral Marketing again

Ralph Whitbeck — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 22:15:27 GMT

I am not entirly sure where these pictures came from but if I had to make an educated guess it seems Burger King is trying something new after the success of it's last viral marketing try with Subserviant Chicken.

Somehow paparazzi pics of the King and Brook Burke have surfaced on the internet. The pictures show the two walking/shopping together then out onto a beach together where the King is applying sunscreen on a topless Burke.

It's pretty funny and simple and it seems to be working for Burger King if this is in fact what they are trying to do.

You can view all the pictures here.

The Entertainment Industry is in Remake Glory

Ralph Whitbeck — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 17:09:41 GMT

There were a couple of movie remakes in the beginning that were cool but now it's gotten ridiculous....they can't make a good one anymore they are just regurgitating the same crap that was already done . And everything is a remake...I went to the movies on Tuesday I don't remember any movie that I want to go see in the future, Miami Vice and Posideon were the only movies I remember and both are remakes.

2006 is blank for me ... I am not looking forward to any movie being released. This year I at least had Star Wars and the years before that was LoTR's.

Movies are starting to suck just like Music does. TV is getting bad too it's the cable channels that take the risks that have the good content. Daily Show and Battlestar Galactica would never be shown on the networks.

Our entertainment industry is driven by the advertising companies now and not by Hollywood.

You want an example of this? Let's look at the Apprentice. First season they were selling lemonade on the streets. In the current season every episode is a hour long commercial for what ever product or service has bought the rights to that weeks show. The Apprentice is now dictated by advertising and not creative influences. And because of that money that is pouring in we'll see many more seasons of the apprentice even after the novelty wears off...just like Survivor. Do you think the top prize of a one year contracts means anything to the winner? No, Trump probably puts them in the basement with Milton to get rid of the cockroach problem.

The entertainment industry is either dead or dying. But no one notices it but the consumers. Time to wake up Hollywood it's time to change or die.