Episode #33: College Coaching Changes and Actors Affecting Interest

Posted on January 9, 2012

First we talk about recent trends with coaching changes in college football. Are they happening too quickly? What’s the optimal length of time to give a coach? What about Bill O’Brien at Penn St., what does that mean for Chris’ favorite school? Then we talk about how actors influence our interest in movies. Also, which specific actors do we prefer. And finally, we bring back Hippo Highlights.

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Guest: Chris (http://twitter.com/cmwilliams51)

Running Time: About 39 minutes

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Hippo Highlights:

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Theme music by FantomenK

Newlyweds Trailer

The trailer for Edward Burns’ new movie Newlyweds looks interesting, but more importantly, it looks a lot like the other movie I have seen that he directed, Sidewalks of New York. I doubt I will see this one in the theater but I am sure I will see it at some point.

(via Grantland)

(Click to view source article)

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A Coach’s Guide to Using Timeouts and Other Key Decisions

The Mathlete of mgoblog:

Nothing is more frustrating for a football fan (especially a math/logic centered one) than to see coaches blow basic strategy elements to the game, many of which are black and white.

The Mathlete covers a bunch of different scenarios regarding timeouts, two-point conversions, overtime and more. Totally worthwhile if you want to see all the scenarios and the game theory surrounding them.

(Click to view source article)

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Siri Wishlist

Dan Moren and Lex Friedman on Siri improvements:

If Siri gets the text of your reminder wrong after you dictate it, you can simply say, “Change that to ‘Buy milk,’” and Siri makes the correction. But if you dictate an email of more than a few sentences, and you see that Siri understood the gist of it, but mangled a few words and phrases, re-reciting the entire message feels tiresome. Sure, you can tap into Siri’s transcriptions and make the necessary edits, but ideally, you’d tell Siri just what to fix: “Change ‘elephant shoe’ to ‘I’ll have that, too.’”

A very comprehensive “wishlist” for Siri. I would love to see most of these, but better transcription correction is the key one to me. I think I would use Siri a lot more if, when it misunderstood me, I didn’t have to recite the entire thing again.

(Click to view source article)

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Pygmy Reviews #9: Movies

Posted on January 3, 2012

If you are new to Pygmy Reviews, they are short quick reviews of several things of the same type. The name comes from the pygmy hippopotamus

Unfaithful (2002)

One Line Description: An affluent stay-at-home mom has an affair before her husband finds out and confronts the man.

Diane Lane plays an incredibly sexy housewife who falls for a foreign stranger and begins a torrid love affair with him. Eventually her husband (Richard Gere) finds out and decides to confront the man. I am guessing you can figure out what happens next, but needless to say the story evolves from there, including the part where his wife finds out that he knows she had an affair. Disturbing movie that is a bit hard to watch, but it definitely keeps you in suspense.

Cocktail (1988)

One Line Description: An aspiring entrepreneur moonlights as a bartender before escaping Manhattan for Jamaica, where he meets his dream girl.

Tom Cruise early in his peak years stars in this one. Although bar tending is the backdrop, this movie seems to be more about a deeper lesson, essentially that money isn’t everything, and being with someone you love is. This movie never went where I thought it would and the shocking ending left me scratching my head. I probably would not watch this one again.

Due Date (2010)

One Line Description: An uptight businessman attempting to make it home for the birth of his child is forced to carpool with the man responsible for getting him kicked off his flight.

Essentially a remake of the classic Plains, Trains and Automobiles without the sappy ending. Robert Downey Jr. plays the uptight businessman and Zach Galifianakas plays the idiot. He is far more over the top than John Candy was, and is essentially playing Alan from The Hangover movies. Not as good as either of those, or it’s spiritual predecessor, but still funny.

The Green Hornet (2011)

One Line Description: After a newspaper magnate dies, his rich son teams up with his dad’s mechanic to fight crime.

Another comic book turned into a movie, this time with Seth Rogen as the lead. I don’t know much about the comic book, but I hope in the original the Green Hornet was someone more believable than Seth Rogen. It wasn’t the worst movie I have seen, but it wasn’t great either. The story moves at an odd pace and seems like it was only designed to be a setup for future movies, but that would be a bad mistake. I wouldn’t waste your time.

Eddie and the Cruisers (1983)

One Line Description: A magazine reporter working on a story about a ’60s band causes the keyboardist to seek out his former bandmates and their lost master tapes from an unreleased album.

A longtime recommendation of my dad, I finally found time to watch it. The story is weird and doesn’t seem to follow the path it seems like it will at the beginning. The flashbacks that show how the band became what they were are unquestionably the best parts, but the bizarre story about the death of the lead singer seemed to be glossed over a bit. Also, the story about the missing master tapes didn’t sit right. I love the premise, but it wasn’t a home run.

Reviews Do Not Need To Include ‘Recommend’

Ben Brooks on not making recommendations:

I take that and the 8.7/10 rating as a recommendation of this device — so I have to ask why not come flat out and say that you recommend people buy this device? Why make it a gray area of interpretation: “I like it, but who knows if you will.”

Brooks’ point is that very few reviews these days seem to actually say whether or not you should buy a device, and instead make a list of pros and cons.

What’s confusing to me about this, is that I always thought that’s how reviews have been written. I don’t even care if most people “recommend” a product or not, because what they might like and what I like are probably different. Also, most of these reviews are done on review units, not on ones purchased by the reviewer, so they already have a different perspective.

I only want to see recommend/don’t recommend when it’s not a “review” site and the user purchased it themselves. Otherwise, I can live without it.

(Click to view source article)

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The iPhone 4S Was No Flop

Taylor Hatmaker of Tecca

While it’s no flop when it comes to sales figures, the iPhone 4S remains one of 2011′s biggest consumer letdowns.

I am sure Apple would disagree. The hype machine that people have created surrounding Apple products is the cause for the perception that this was a “flop.” When Microsoft stops production on the Kin after selling just a few, that’s a flop. When you produce one of the best selling phones of all time, that is not a flop.

(via Daring Fireball)

(Click to view source article)

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What It Looks Like Inside Amazon.com Shipping Center

Absolutely amazing pictures of Amazon.com shipping centers. So much cardboard, so many products, so big.

(via Shawn Blanc)

(Click to view source article)

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Mad Dog McCree For iOS

Point and click shooter Mad Dog McCree was released for iOS. This game is from the mid-90s when there was a trend of making games that included actual video footage that was the user could interact with in some way. This particular game was a “western” game where the user point and clicked on “bad guys” to shoot them. The key was to not shoot innocent bystanders. Despite this game having absolutely no depth, I remember my friend and I spending way too much time playing it.

$4.99 is too rich for my blood though.

(via Joystiq)

(Click to view source article)

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Episode #32: 2012 Predictions

Posted on January 2, 2012

We make our predictions for 2012 across sports, movies, video games, tech and TV.

Guest: Chris (http://twitter.com/cmwilliams51)

Running Time: About 41 minutes

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Theme music by FantomenK