The future isn’t an iPhone, it’s a big-ass table

What do you get when some smartasses slap new narration on Microsoft’s breathless video for their new Surface technology? Something like this:

http://view.break.com/317742 – Watch more free videos

Supernova imminent

Eta Carinae is getting set to blow.And allegedly, it’ll be bright enough to see during the day.

The bad news? The constellation it’s in, Carina the Keel, is only visible in the southern hemisphere.

Clearly, it’s time to move.

Storm Large’s new album now on iTunes

Storm Large’s new album (or EP, depending on how you define those), Ladylike, Side One, is now available via iTunes.

Five ways to improve Pirate Master

So, Pirate Master is sailing gamely along, and while they’ve clearly learned from Survivor, they’re making new mistakes that are sucking the life out of what should be a fast-paced, high-spirited show.

Here’s how I’d fix it:

1) Put them on two ships. Having two competing crews on one ship is just awkward. It feels odd, it’s just too random and it eliminates several of the fun aspects of the pirate genre. We never get a great shot of two ships sailing to a destination, one chasing the other.

2) It’s too hard to mutiny. I’m not sure what it’s going to take to have the crew mutiny, if Joe Don’s “I’ll take all the money, thanks” behavior didn’t do it. There’s no reason to require the entire crew to mutiny for it to work. Just have a majority vote for it. Oh, and take away an auto-mutiny if the crew loses a challenge. It’s cheap and taking that away would actually build resentment toward a captain and cause an actual mutiny to happen, which is a lot more interesting than it being a no-drama automatic occurrence.

3) Enough with the scavenger hunts. Yes, treasure maps are a staple of the genre. But they’re not the only staple of the genre. Let’s see a challenge that involves firing cannons or featuring swordfighting or shooting pistols. This is a fairly lily-livered set of pirates we’ve got here.

4) Give us Rupert as a host. The host on Pirate Master is some anonymous no-personality dweeb. Rupert helped inspire this show and he’s got the larger than life personality required for the hosting gig.

5) Camp it up. The Chest of Zanzibar and Captain Steel stuff is just terrible, partially because, as lame and fakey as it is, it’s treated so seriously. Let’s have a talking parrot and clues shoved in skulls and giant Xs marked on the ground. Go big or we’re going to sleep.

On the local media’s job covering the Virginia Tech shootings

The American Journalism Review has an excellent piece on how local media covered the Virginia Tech shootings.

I know that I was amazed at how good a job the Collegiate Times in particular did during that time — in my day, they were more of a social club than a serious news outlet, and published half as many editions a week — even outshining the predictably solid Roanoke Times during the tragedy and its aftermath.

(AJR is a great bi-monthly read, better even than the IRE magazine.)