What Happened to Goodnight Burbank?

After watching a great interview of Hayden Black on Epic-Fu, I hunted down his comedy news show Goodnight Burbank and immediately become hooked on their quirky humor and witty dialogue. Here's a taste:


Little did I know that the show has been on hiatus for about 8 months now. Once again I've gotten addicted to a drug that isn't made anymore.

I call this Firefly syndrome. If you don't get the reference, Firefly was an excellent show that really caught the imagination of its viewers. It was tragically canceled by Fox (or "the Devourer of Joy" as some call it) and now anyone who gets into the show is left with an empty feeling of incompleteness. This is how I feel about Goodnight Burbank.

I'm trying to figure out what happened to the show because it was a really fantastic story and I'm going to be quite sad if nothing more ever happens with it. Black seems to have moved on to a solo production called Abigail's Teen Diary and I fear that may be a bad sign for Goodnight Burbank. ATD is actually pretty funny and has a decent concept, but it's nothing like its predecessor.

If anybody knows anything about the status of Goodnight Burbank, definitely let me know in the comments.

Track Your Software with Wakoopa [Review]

If you're like me, you use a ton of software and you're always trying out new things. Until now, there hasn't been a particularly good way to keep track of all of the freeware you sample. Wakoopa is trying to change all that.

The Wakoopa service is very simple. You download a client that monitors which programs you're using (presumably by monitoring processes or something) and phones home every fifteen minutes. This generally creates a pretty good snapshot of the apps you use and the frequency at which you use them.

The client is lightweight and the website is designed in an interesting way. Though I find the interface a little cluttered ("information overload" comes to mind), I like the way you can sort through programs you use the most. In fact, you can even create a badge to show off programs with primary screen real estate (check out mine on the sidebar).

Wakoopa's site has take all of their user information and collated it so you can find an effective tool for the job you need to do. It also has a social attribute that lets users rate the software they use. The recommendations are a bit watered down because so many users use terrible software because they don't know any better, so the reviews are a good alternative.

If you join up with Wakoopa, post a link to your profile in the comments!

[Also, props to the site for automatically suggesting a nice version of the logo when you right-click it!]

Sideways Ponytail! [Music Video]

I'm not really one for new music.  Most of the rock I listen to is "classic rock" and therefore it's at least 20 years old.  Even so, I saw this music video the other day and I was very taken by it.  I'm not sure why, as it resembles an acid trip that goes out of control, but I think you'll agree that Natalie Portman's Shaved Head (great band name if I ever heard one) can really rock out.

natalie portman's shaved head - sophisticated side ponytail
I specifically like the ending where the whole thing gets overly layered.  Music is pretty cool too...I mean they mention Shamoo!

Off The Beat: Tap Pandora or IKEA Will Visually Fall Like a House of Cards

Woo, long title there...

This week I was fighting GMU's evil network so posts may be a little sparse until I can get everything back together.

• [MakeUseOf] MakeUseOf Your iPhone: Tap Tap Revenge
• [GeeksAreSexy] Pandora Not Long for this World?
  
• [GeeksAreSexy] This Year the Olympics is a House of Cards - Literally
  
• [GeeksAreSexy] IKEA May Be Going Solar
  
• [MakeUseOf] Visualize your Hard Drive Usage with WinDirStat

And there you have it, another week in the life of a blogger. Also a quick note...Jimmy Chows Down should be starting in a week or two, so watch Mason Tech Beat for more updates on that! I think our first stop will be Foster's Grill in Fairfax...

Calling Home: A Micro-blog Story

Over the last few weeks, I've been following a little bit of drama on my Plurk feed. No, it's not an angry feud between users...it's an actual drama being played out by several micro-blog accounts.

Calling Home is a space opera (if I understand that genre correctly) that spans several user names on Plurk and Twitter (so you can use either network). It started out with a single account called "CallingHome" sending out a distress signal. Eventually it was received by another account called "Allen." From there the details of what went wrong and who's involved begin to play themselves out.

Overall, I think its a really neat idea, but it can be a little hard to find the updates among all my other Plurks. At the same time, the challenge is rewarding so maybe it's not so bad. I suggest you check it out and see if you like it.

Update: Oh and another easy way is to follow either the Tumblr page or the RSS of that page.

GMU's New Network System is a Failcopter

The GMU "MUST II" system has been a serious nightmare. Almost every student has had problems logging on at some point or another. The new Juniper host client has been super buggy and no amount of work on the user's end can fix the problem. When they mess something up, the network fails and everyone is suddenly in "the dark."

I'm personally a bit steamed about it because I missed one of my first blogging deadlines for MakeUseOf because of it. Fortunately I have an understanding editor, but thus far I'm not much of a fan of MUST II. That is all for now...Jimmy Chows Down will be starting up as soon as we get some time to film it...woo!

[Image via ValleyWag]

Bush Admin Equates "The Pill" with Abortion

There has always been an anti-contraceptive movement in America, but this little bit of news may surprise you. It seems that the Bush administration has recently asked the HHS (Dept. of Health and Human Services) to define contraceptives as abortion. For those of you why may not be grasping the significance of this, it is at least two-fold:

1. It "legislates" the idea that taking "the pill" is tantamount to abortion after a pregnancy (which is a far, far more serious kind of act).
2. It might even jeopardize reproductive rights were Roe v. Wade to be overturned (thus nullifying the right for a woman to choose abortion as a legal alternative to birth).

The first facet of this case is the most important and pressing. According to RH Reality Check, the HHS recently issued a proposal "to redefine many forms of contraception, the birth control 40% of Americans use, as abortion." This is based on the HHS's decision to toss out accepted medical opinions and instead assume pregnancy happens at "a biologically unknowable moment." As a person who might be called a scientist some day, I can say their reasoning is so muddled and full of polling data that it doesn't really stand up to even a brisk assessment. Check out the full article for a very detailed explanation.

Image courtesy of Violet Blue (I thought it was clever)

Even if the Bush administration's reasoning doesn't make any sense, the implications are quite powerful. Contraceptives are a fundamental right in our modern society. The ability to control one's own reproductive choices and still be able to engage in a full and healthy family life are tied to that pesky "pursuit of happiness" clause. It's also arguable that since this decision is based on public opinion and religion instead of science, those rights are being undermined by the government imposing the beliefs of others on free citizens. There are certainly exceptions to every rule, but I don't want to live in a country where religion trumps biology and humanity.

The second facet I listed is more of my own design, but it seems like a possible future. The right for a woman to have an abortion is largely protected by a single, tenuous Supreme Court ruling about privacy. If enough of the right Justices retired or passed away, so too would the current ruling. While the loss of abortion would be tremendous, imagine if contraceptives were sufficiently tied to that Evangelical windfall. I'm not saying it would happen, but I think I would feel more comfortable if there were a firewall between the two.

I am certainly not an expert of any kind and I might have even gotten some of the HHS's reasoning wrong. Bush's message to the rest of us is clear, though: reproductive rights are un-American.

[Image and Story via Open Source Sex]