Thursday, March 27, 2014

Graph TV and some shows

on facebook and old friend from back at SupportSoft posted a link to Graph TV. it was fun to play with it and type in some shows. I'll mention a couple here


Californication is pretty accurate. First season good, second season ok, then steadily downhill. After the Mia storyline played out the show was just silly. I can't believe I watched it through season 4, or was it S5 when I finally gave up? may have been S5, S4 was horrible until about the final three episodes when they recaptured some awesomeness and suckered me into another season.


Friends is not very accurate. nobody will seriously say the final two seasons were 85-90% as good as the first two. the last two seasons were unwatchable. The Chandler-Monica storyline was terrible on every level. I didn't even watch the finale, what was the point? There must be some sample bias in the Friends episode ratings. By the end only the hardcore fans were left and still voting 8 and  9, while many like me just voted with their feet and stopped watching.

Still the early Friends did have some moments. I liked how actions tended to have far reaching and unexpected consequences. Chandler unprofessionally falls asleep at a meeting at work and is dispatched to Tulsa Oklahoma.  Ross enjoys a short fling while on a break from Rachel and is never able to live it down. the fallout lasts years and ends up defining the remainder of the show.  Ross acts like a big shot at a pricey restaurant topping up Goodfellas tip and ends up having to pick up the entire cheque.  Monica and Phoebe get their catering business going and then Monica lands her dream chef job at a restaurant and abruptly throws the catering and Phoebe under the bus.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

new home page - Protopage

so my Yahoo home page that I'd been with for many years just abruptly vanished this week. thanks Yahoo!

I don't know why Yahoo would shut down the home pages. they hadn't added any features in years except more and larger ads. so they can't be spending much time or money on it. I've seen many thousands of ads off my Yahoo home page and even clicked on a few here and there over the years.

oh well so I have to move on. after a bit of searching for a new home for my bookmarks and rss feeds I found some good reviews for Protopage. I'm now set up with Protopage as my new browser home page. It was very easy and even a little bit fun to work with. Like I said I don't have a lot of content, just links to the sites I visit most days like Dilbert, and some RSS feeds for news and such. I now get a lot of news, especially local news, from Twitter.

For the news feeds I wanted to cut off Yahoo so they don't get any ad impressions off me. I went with CTV news feeds to start out to give them a try. my feeds are top stories, Canada, world, and Atlantic Canada.

so +1 to Protopage I recommend.