The other night, not being able to fall asleep, I turn on the TV in search of a late night baseball game.  It was late so I knew my chances of finding a baseball game were pretty slim.  That’s when I stumbled on the US Paintball Championships on ESPN2.  Yes, that’s right paintball!  Never in a million years would I have tuned into a sport where people run around trying to shoot other people with little balls filled with paint.  It’s not so much the sport itself, it’s just that the way they  "twiddle" their fingers to fire the gun faster that makes it look pretty stupid.

As a kid, I was a big fan of playing war.  We had "the gully" right behind my house which was a wooded area great for wartime simulation.  We would setup forts, booby traps, and have the time of our lives pretending to kill each other all day long.  You would figure that paintball would be right up my ally.  Yeah… not so much.

One day while over a close friend’s house, we were playing some war games in his backyard.  We were dressed up in full camouflage and running around with our toy guns killing every imaginary "bad guy" we could find.  All of a sudden my friend shrieks in pain and drops to the ground.  I look and there is an orange spot on his back.  He yells for me to get down.  I have no idea what is going on and all of a sudden I’m a little scared.  He yells, "It’s my dad, he’s in the window, get down!!".  I look up at the second story window where my friend’s dad is poised with his paintball gun tracking my every movement.  I’m only 10 and have never even seen a paintball gun before but from the sound that my friend made on the way down I figure out pretty quick that it’s gonna hurt.  So, screaming like a little girl, I started running around the back yard jumping and flailing about like a krazy person.  He misses his first two shots, I imagine because of how hard he was laughing at how I was acting.  The third shot is right on and hits me in the upper thigh.  I fall to the ground in pain thinking, "Real war sucks!"  What I should have been thinking is, "What kind of dad shoots his kid and his kid’s friend with a freakin’ paintball gun.  I’m gonna sue this bastard for everything he is worth."  Needless to say my taste for paintball ended at an early age.

While paintball surely isn’t my thing, I did find watching it slightly addicting.  Funny thing is that you can find the current standings and schedule on the official National Professional Paintball League, but there is no information on ESPN whatsoever.  I guess they are too busy keeping up with "real" sports like poker.

My man over at dialidol has gotten himself a lawyer.

As you can see, DialIdol is back online. There was no legal case to begin with but I had to make sure with professional legal advice. I suppose FremantleMedia might chose to push the issue further but I hope not. I have changed the DialIdol logo and made a few other cosmetic changes but other than that DialIdol is still the same old web site.

I’m glad that he stuck to it and got his site back up.  If you are a fan of American Idol, go grab the dialer and lets see just how much we can manipulate the results.  Even if you aren’t a fan you still might want to "stick it to the man". So download the software and set it to vote for my favorite to win, Taylor Hicks.

First post on dialidol | My post on the dialidol shutdown.

Looks like dailidol was shutdown sometime last week.  The guy who designed the software that logs the frequency of busy signals while voting on American Idol to predict the outcome has taken his site down because of a cease and desist letter issued from Fox. 

Goliath (as they will be known for the purposes of this bulletin) sent this "David" a cease and desist letter yesterday claiming that DialIdol infringes on copyrights they own. I am not sure how they think I infringe and many of the allegations they made in the letter are false but in order to protect myself I am taking DialIdol down while I consult with the appropriate resources.

Goliath is very upset with the entire premise of this web site, particularly the way DialIdol "measures the busy signal" to predict the results. Given this I find it highly unlikely that I can change a few logos/colors/names to satisfy their concerns.

I don’t think he did anything wrong.  Maybe Fox should take their head out of their asses and figure out how to fix the flaw that was so easily discovered by the creator of dialidol instead of flexing their muscles with legal bullshit.

Read my original post about dialidol here.

I think you could have given a little more.  Verizon and Tivo make a deal:

The new service, dubbed TiVo Mobile, will debut this summer and allow Get It Now customers to schedule recordings on their TiVo digital video recorders (DVRs) from their wireless phone. The familiar TiVo interface will be available on the mobile phone to enable users to set up recordings remotely.

With all the bad press that Tivo has been receiving over the last year, ie. "struggling to keep from becoming the next Betamax" , losing the DirecTV deal, and harsh competition from cable companies’ DVRs, you would think that Tivo would come out with something a little more "cutting edge".  You can already remotely schedule recordings, whether it’s through the interface at Tivo , Yahoo! TV ,  or through hacks available on the Internet.  I just can’t see how this new "mobile scheduling" will be very efficient and/or practical.

Over the last year Tivo has unveiled a few new functions:

• Yahoo! Photos
• Yahoo! Weather
• Yahoo! Traffic (limited to specific states)
• Live365 Radio Network
• Fandango (ordering movie tickets and browsing movie listings)
• Podcasts
• Uploading your own videos to watch on Tivo
• Releasing an API for 3rd party software development

All of these are good concepts, but aren’t all that useful.  I think what Tivo should be concentrating on is how to bring all your media to your television.  The people who developed the Xbox Media Center have the right idea.  If those concepts and features were integrated into a Tivo unit there would be no chance of it becoming the next Betamax.  

Looks like people over at DialIdol have come up with a way to predict the winner each week on American Idol.  They have created an application to dial American Idol contestant phone lines to place your vote through the modem on your computer.  The application also keeps track of how many busy signals it receives and sends the data back to DialIdol.  The theory is the more busy signals, the more votes being received by the contestant.  This is done in real time so that if you have more than one favorite you can switch your vote to the one most likely to be voted off.

Their predictions this week:

It would be kool if American Idol turned out the call results every week.  I would love to compare their results with the ones from DialIdol.

Last night was the premier of Survivor Panama, and as with every premier of Survivor I am puzzled. What is probably the most important thing and something you could easily practice always seems to be such a major issue. Making fire is a absolute must when you are on this show. You can’t even drink the water without boiling it first. So why not practice before the show? No one has thought of this before? Wow!! I must be a damn genius.

Lighting fires isn’t rocket science yet here you have four dumbasses (the young guys team) trying to light their fire in a damn bowl. For the other idiots in the world that are reading this, you need proper air circulation to light a fire. Thus trying to light a fire in a bowl doesn’t really make much sense. In any past Survivor show has anyone else tried to light a fire in a bowl? NO! Do you know why? You guessed it, because it’s stupid.

Here is a guide on how to make fires. Amazing it was the first result when I Googled for “how to light a fire”. Notice how there is nothing about putting stuff in a bowl. I love the note at the bottom of the page:

Note: Primitive fire-building methods are exhaustive and require practice to ensure success.

If I knew I was going to be on Survivor, you can bet your ass I would be outside in my back yard lighting shit on fire. I would practice lighting fires in every way and under any circumstances. I mean there is no guarantee that you get that flint on the first day and that it won’t be pouring rain. By the end I would be able to snap my fingers and fire would jump from my finger tips. When Jeff Probst offers up the flint I would say, “Keep your damn flint man, give it to one of the other 15 people here that didn’t have the foresight to learn how to make fire”

With the adoption of Tivo into my wife and I’s everyday life we have succumbed to watching “Kraptastic” television. Ok so what the hell is that you ask? Well have you ever watched the television shows that are being broadcasted on MTV and VH1 these days? Ok, I know what you are thinking… I would never watch krap like that. Well maybe you should try it because if you are a hard core TV fan then Kraptastic television is something you should really give a try.

My wife has been an avid fan of The Real World since its inception. I fought for many years not to watch this godawful show, but in the end the woman… Well you know the rest. So that’s right, I watch The Real World and yes I actually like it. The reason I like this show is that when you take a bunch of idiotic people and put them together it is really amusing watching just how stupid people can act when they are put on television. The ironic thing about this show is the title. How they find the most screwed up people who have no sense about what “the real world” really is amazes me. Then after all the stupid shit these people do on this show for a couple of months, they all get to come back a do a challenge show in which they take the cream of the crop of stupidity and put them in physical and mental challenges. It’s just damn funny.

Ok, so my wife and I watch The Real World, and because of one of Tivo’s greatest functions (downloading similar shows that it thinks you might like) brings us to another great Kraptastic show. Drum role please ,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,Breaking Bonaduce!!! Holy krap!! now this show is just nuts. Danny Bonaduce was Danny Partridge on the Partridge Family. Being a kid actor sure screws one over if he is what they become when they are in thier mid 40s. Ok… so I watched the whole first season in one sitting because Tivo thought I would totally dig this show, which hell yeah I did. Danny Bonaduce is fuckin` nuts!! He has a mental breakdown, goes off the wagon, hits someone or something, crys about his wife, gets totally plastered, slurs, falls down drunk, tells off the camera men, and calls the director every cuss word imaginable every damn show. Yes, that’s right, he does everyone one of those things every damn show. I couldn’t believe it, I watched this show for like 4 hours with my mouth wide open. He’s crazy and this show rocks!!!