Category: Miscellaneous

Nothing

  • September 13, 2009

This weekend is (was?) the date of my 20th year high school reunion. Obviously I am not there, although at least 2 of my old friends will be, and I am hoping they will provide me with photographs so I can verify I am more handsome than any of the other dudes I went to school with 🙂

Um… not much else to say! One of my youtube videos passed 10,000 views this past week though. As the owner of the video I can check the stats, and almost 90% of the views of this particular video originate in Japan, mostly due to it being linked from (presumably) UFO Catcher websites!

I ate McDonalds today for the first time in years (American McDonalds, that is). While it was enjoyable as I was eating it, immediately after I was racked with self-loathing. In other words – it’ll be aeons before I eat USA McDonalds again.

Expect a more interesting post soon…

  • Posted in Family
  • Robert

Warcraft No More

  • August 19, 2009

Today my World Of Warcraft account expires.

I quit for many reasons, primary amongst them that I played too much and the game is a distraction I don’t need going in to what promises to be my busiest teaching semester yet (I am teaching two different courses). Plus, I have to somehow write a PhD thesis during this semester as well.

Secondly, I’ve been playing for 4.5 years. The game is still good; is still fun – in fact WoW is perhaps better now than ever. But over the last couple of months and particularly weeks it was beginning to feel more an obligation than entertainment. Having played hundreds (thousands more likely) of games to completion it’s typically obvious when it is time to put a game down and start another. Warcraft has no end, and will continue to evolve until the servers shut down in 201x. So one has to make their own end to the game, and it’s possible that now I have done just that.

momo.jpg

Of course an expansion will be announced mere days from now, which promises to reveal a wealth of new content to get excited about. My hope is to resist the allure. Time will tell.

  • Posted in Games
  • Robert

The Max Headroom Mystery

  • August 17, 2009

(This one’s for AW)

Uncommonly, the broadcast signals of television or radio stations have been hijacked by people. When this happens, the hijackers are able to replace the signal (the picture and sound) with one of their own. It hasn’t happened frequently, especially in developed countries, and is a crime in most western nations. When it does happen, the substitute signal is usually some sort of protest (for instance a Christian group hijacker Playboy TV in 1987 and replaced the picture with a protest statement).

One of the most unusual cases of broadcast hijacking occured in Chicago America on November 22, 1987. During a three hour window, a hijacker was able to hijack the signal of two separate televison stations and broadcast his own signal. The first incident was early in the evening during a newscast, when the normal signal of WGN-TV was replaced by video of a man wearing a Max Headroom mask swaying in front of a moving sheet of corrugated iron (used to resemble the standard Max Headroom background). It lasted about 30 seconds and there was no sound.

Later that evening, at around 11:15pm, a screening of Doctor Who (specifically The Horror Of Fang Rock) on PBS was replaced by a similar picture, this time with audio. What follows was one of the most bizarre uses of signal hijacking ever recorded.

Rather than describe it, why not watch it in it’s entirety:

What followed were numerous (criminal) investigations, court filings and a plea for community assistance that never amounted to anything.

The perpetrator(s) were never caught or exposed, and to this day remain unknown.