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By Mark D, January 12, 2013 1:57 pm

Now while there’s a lot of people who bitch about everytime they change something at Youtube, I’d like to say that the recent changes are part of a bigger overall problem. Not long after youtube started, everyone else jumped on the bandwagon, including google with their google video. In the end though, google bought out youtube and eventually closed down their video service.

But it seems like instead of letting the customization which youtube allowed to continue, google has slowly but surely been removing such options. Now though, youtube all looks relatively the same (even worse, most youtube producers do their videos in an identical manner) no matter what page your on. The bigger problem though is the newest site design, which basically makes youtube look like google video did.

It’s bigger though then just google making youtube look like a google site. The whole internet has a tendency to look the same currently. Go to any video game site, sports blogging site, etc… and they seem to have all the personality removed and the same design in. Just the other day I was checking out wrestlecrap.com and they’ve switched their site design. Sure they needed an update, but the old style had heart and personality. Now it’s just cold.

The reason that most of these sites seem to use the same design? Usually because someone comes up with a design that gets the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and gets the best results from google searches. Since traffic from google is so important, everyone wants to capture it. So not only is google turning seemingly everything it touches into google clones, but then it forces websites to change to stay alive.

Back in the day, you had a website because you were passionate about something and you wanted to share that with everyone else. That’s how it always starts. But as soon as people start making money, everything changes. It’s no longer about the passion or wanting to share with the world. A website that has personality should get more hits then the same design over and over, but it doesn’t work that way. So you can go to any website builder, pay such and such amount and get the same design.

Money in the end robs the passion out of everything. It’s the unfiltered passion for things that is half the fun of the internet. But when you find yourself forcing that passion, or even worse just doing something for the money it’s never going to work.

Hopefully in the next few years we’ll see a change. We’ll look back at this time at the internet and SEO and moneyfying everything and be like “Jez, that wasn’t any fun”. But the reality is that as the internet becomes a way to make more money, more big corporations are going to be investing in it and their sites. Those sites will have name recognition and get traffic just from that, but there won’t be anything interesting about them. They’ll be soulless husks who exist simply because traffic makes money.

The internet is slowly ending its time as the Wild West of the Computer Era. There is unfortunately no turning back because there is no way to turn off the money. These heartless sites that are all clones of each other are most likely going to slowly beat down everything else in their way. We are witness to the slow but sure strangulation of the internet. And by we I mean the 3 people that will actually read this post.

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By Mark D, December 20, 2012 6:47 pm

And I’m sure I’m not alone. The Tebow maniacs quickly descended upon Jets fans once the trade was made, leaving the carcass of the Bronco’s alone. It shouldn’t be too surprising that a team like the Bronco’s is dominating the league right now after upgrading from Tebow to a psychically limited Peyton Manning. Last season as they won 7 of 9 games from October 20th on, they needed 3 OTs and only won one game by more then 1 TD (against the hapless Raiders). With a real QB, they have been pretty dominant for the season.

First off, there’s the hype machine. I’ve seen QBs win a ton of games and then just disappear when it came to the pros, Danny Wuerffel, Eric Couch, Colt McCoy, the list goes on. Sure some of them get a chance in the NFL, but most of them just disappear after a few seasons. I saw the great Charlie Ward decide on basketball instead of football, despite being one of the best QB’s I’ve ever seen, all because he was too short. There were people arguing that Ward might not even be drafted if he went into the NFL draft.

So what’s the difference? Well Tebow reeks of the great white hope. An outspoken christian playing for a southern team. Also don’t forget that following Tebow’s winning of the Heisman as a Sophmore (first ever) ESPN agreed to a new TV contract with the SEC. So it’s in ESPN’s best interest to hype up SEC schools as much as possible for their ratings. Other then Tom Brady, I’ve never seen someone so overhyped by the talking heads at ESPN. All for the almighty dollar and the ratings.

When Tebow doesn’t play, all you hear are excuses, excuses and more excuses. In Denver the only reason Tebow got a chance over the 2nd string Brady Quinn was because Elway was sick of his obnoxious fans. John Fox got things to work just right for them to back into the playoffs and beat a reeling Steelers team. Even after spending a first round pick on him, Tebow was never the future for the team, and nothing made it more obvious then how hard the Broncos went after Manning.

Now he’s in New York, and was really nothing more then a publicity stunt. Yet Tebow still thinks he deserves to play, because you know, he’s Tebow. Here’s a shocker for you Tebow, I’ve seen far better QBs, you know ones that could actually read an NFL Defense, never get a chance to play. Just ask Jeff Blake how that worked out for him? It also isn’t surprising your being skipped over, given your poor performances in practice.

The funny thing is, I’ve seen plenty of players on the Jets work their ass off and work their way up the depth chart. One of the most famous Jets ever, Wayne Chrebet, started training camp 12th on the Jets Depth chart. But when you show up time and time again to practice and fall to show any improvement, why do you deserve a shot to play? Because the Broncos were willing to change their whole offense last year to make up for your faults? That’s not something that’s common in the NFL.

With Tebow seemingly out of the picture, I can’t wait for him to be gone and his clueless dittoheadESPN fans to be gone too. The guy was never as good as ESPN tried to paint him as. He will never be as good as the hype. If you find yourself more a fan of Tebow then watching football, then I’m willing to bet you’ve never watched football before. The Tebow led Broncos were one of the most boring teams for 90% of the game, and then Tebow would scramble in the 4th quarter and do just enough for them to win.

It also doesn’t help that since the Jets were unwilling to play Tebow, ESPN and a lot of other talking heads who just follow suit have been mocking the team. Guess what ESPN, no matter how much you want to pressure the Jets, call them losers, mock them as a circus, you can’t tell them who to play. I’m glad the Jets stuck with Sanchez, if for no other reason then because ESPN has been screaming for him to be benched since game 4.

I hope Tebow disappears after this season. I hope he ends up in the CFL, which given how much ESPN covers the CFL it might as well be Siberia. The great irony would be if Tim Tebow goes to the CFL and ESPN starts showing highlights from CFL games. At that point you have to admit ESPN is insanely desperate to make Tebow into something bigger, and find a way to force people to think it was the coaches and not ESPN that was wrong about Tebow.

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By Mark D, December 9, 2012 9:41 pm

Ahhh, the wonders of Nostalgia. That everything which came before is better then what’s on now. The rants online about how stuff used to be better back in the day. Oh when I was young, Nicktoons was Doug, Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy and it was awesome. Or when I was young Cartoon Network would actually show cartoons, especially some of the classic stuff like Bugs Bunny and not the crap they show now during Adult Swim. Or when I was young the Sci-Fi channel actually showed Sci-Fi stuff, not monster of the week crap.

To that I say Eerie, Indiana. I loved Eerie, Indiana when I was younger, and had largely forgotten it until I was watching something with Jon Astin in it lately. Eerie was about a strange town and it’s newest inhabitant who had moved it. The story was that there was a northern Bermuda triangle, of which Eerie was right in the middle of. It was a show that was sort of for kids, but edgy and smart enough for adults to enjoy. It lasted 2 seasons on prime time, and was eventually picked up by Fox for Saturday mornings.

To get to the point, it was so popular on Saturday mornings, that Fox picked up the show and started making new episodes. Eerie, Indiana The Other Dimension which had none of the heart or the spirit of the original was so bad that I watched two episodes before giving up on it. Up to this point I made it a big deal to catch every repeat of Eerie there was, I could probably recite some episodes. But yea, the other dimension was so bad I just about forgot about the show for years.

It’s not like Eerie, Indiana is alone in this. For years people wondered how great Ren & Stimpy might have been if John K was left in control. Being a huge fan of the series, I wondered too, but enjoyed the episodes I did get. Eventually we got Ren & Stimpy Adult Cartoon Party on Spike by John K, and it was completely unwatchable.

This isn’t a one time thing. When shows get revived on nostalgia, 90% of the time the new episodes suck. They can’t recapture the magic, or the actors have moved on, or whatever reasons, the new ones just suck. But it seems like the bar has been set so low by Hollywood that we are starting to get all these dead shows brought back. Boy Meets World, Arrested Development, Futurama, Family Guy and so on.

So far, despite Family Guy having ratings, bringing back most of these shows have been a mistake. That Family Guy is still on and has somehow helped Seth McFarland to get two spinoff shows on Fox boggles the mind. It just shows once again how low the bar is set, especially on Fox on Sunday night.

Personally I always thought Boy Meets World was dumb anyway. It seemed like it was cobbled together from a bunch of other shows (Smart Neighbor giving advice, Home Improvement, School Scenes, Saved By The Bell, Ben Savage, the poor man’s Savage from Wonder Years) and survived because TGIF didn’t exactly need high ratings. That anything ever got cancelled on TGIF was shocking.

But is there really this much of a public outcry for more Boy Meets World? Topanga looks like a mutant today. Ben Savage just makes me want to punch him in the face. The only saving grace of the show was Mr Feeny, aka William Daniels who I know as Mr Adams from 1776. In the end the fans of the show are just going to be disappointed and angry that the show even got made, while the producers make off with their quick buck.

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By Mark D, November 28, 2012 7:43 pm

First off, I’m a weird fellow. For some reason I save nearly all the pics and screengrabs I use on here. Today I happened to be looking for a pic, when I stumbled upon a screengrab from an old story about BD Gallof. The great thing about it was that it accidentally contained some tweets which I was too lazy to go digging around for. So let’s get to the article.

Following the announcement (and the leaks of the announcement) that the Islanders were moving to Brooklyn, BD Gallof took to his twitter to toot his own horn that he had called it all along. He tweeted people his old stories (which were only a few months old) and said that he had been calling Brooklyn all along. Let’s say though you happened to have a few screen shots of Gallof’s timeline following the failure of the August 1st Referendum which was the last ditch attempt to keep the team on the Island. What exactly would his timeline say then? Well let’s take a look:

Not sure which one here is better, the “Operate at cap floor and sell in 2015″ or that “The onus is no longer on Wang to keep the team local” (although you can debate whether or not Brooklyn is local, of course I consider it as such).

Nah, the winner in this one is “I think all talk of Queens, Brooklyn, Suffolk all fan manufactured…”. It has since come out that Wang had been talking with Ratner about the move to Brooklyn before the August referendum.

Let’s take a look at the next page of tweets:

The key one on this page of images is the retweet by Ty Anderson. In it Gallof specifically says that Brooklyn is out and that Wang will sell to the highest bidder. Good thing Gallof has those inside sources to give him the real deal.

If Gallof was dealing with any team other then the Islanders, he’d be laughed out. It’s amazing that someone who started with Eklund, another guy who gets it painfully wrong on a regular basis, is able to get away with all this. Gallof is at nearly at the same level as Incarcerated Bob, say the most common sense thing and if that fails, flail. When you can rack up nearly 5,000 tweets in a matter of months, it’s easy to bury when you’ve been wrong.

If your going to claim to have sources inside the organization and news that no one else can get, then occasionally get it right. The tweets I had saved were originally from another post I made in which Gallof claimed Tavares wouldn’t be signed long term due to the Isles losing the referendum. If your going to post your thoughts and opinions on the team, then go ahead and do it. But don’t make up sources, because you should get called on it.

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By Mark D, November 13, 2012 8:58 pm

After being totally routed by Obama, despite spending the last 4 years doing nothing but stopping anything Obama tried to do, you’d think Republicans would try to change course. Millions upon millions of dollars spent by Republicans and they didn’t get their way. 9 of the 10 senate elections in which the Crossroads PAC (Karl Rove’s pac) spent over 10 million dollars the Democrat won. Maybe, just maybe people saw through what the Republicans were up to and decided to punish them.

Now in a sane world, maybe the Repubs would move more to the center, open up their party to minorities and women. Maybe it’s time for a Republican party that doesn’t just kowtow the line of the super wealthy while taking advantage of some of the most ignorant voters in the country. But of course we don’t live in a sane world, so that’s not going to happen.

As you might have noticed, despite losing the Presidential election and losing seats in the Senate, Republicans continue to control the House. Since they had control of the house following the 2010 Census they were able to redraw Congressional districts. Pretty much they shoved as many democrats into as few districts as possible, basically assuring themselves control of the house.

Now why might this matter? Because the new thing that the GOP is looking for is to base electoral votes not on winner take all state wide, but instead on congressional districts. If for example a state has 30 districts and 30 Electoral Votes, each district would be worth 1 electoral vote. Now look at some of the states that Obama won, such as Pennsylvania. Most of the Congressional Seats that were up for grabs went Republican, except for Pittsburgh, Philly and a few burbs. It’s not a wild guess that the rest of the districts went Romney (Obama supposedly won Philly with nearly 4-1 ratio).

This means instead of getting all of the electoral votes for PA, he would have likely gotten votes for 7 of the 19 districts. This is almost worse then actively trying to keep people from voting. It marginalizes people’s votes, especially as some of the districts aren’t exactly proportional in population. It’s bad enough that your vote is a lot more important depending on what state your voting in (I find it funny that neither candidate campaigned in New Jersey) but this is outright marginalizing people’s votes.

Winner take all when it comes to electoral vote in states has been fine for years. There’s no reason to change it now. Instead of looking for ways to marginalize the vote, maybe just maybe it’s time to start changing with the times. When your starting to lose major chunks of the Solid South, it should be a sign. It isn’t the voters to blame for your failures.