Category: Uncategorized

Last week, I received e-mail two invitations to the same conference.

Why?

Here’s part of the introducton to the first invitation, with the identifying information removed:

As a VIP, the cost of your airfare, hotel accommodations and conference registration will be paid for by (removed).

The [organizers have] identified you as a senior level marketer or agency executive decision maker within your company. You are among a select few to whom we are extending this special VIP opportunity.

The price of freedom (or, rather, a free conference)? My mandatory attendance at breakfasts hosted by the sponsor.

Here’s the introduction to the second invitation:

We apologize if you received an email…earlier today inviting you as our VIP guest to the (removed). That email was intended to be sent to a list of 50 (removed) marketers in the industry, that have already agreed to attend the event. The email below is the email that you were intended to receive. If you would like to be a part of (removed) please read below about the (removed) and how to register. Again we apologize for the confusion and inconvenience that error may have caused you.

I didn’t understand how I made the VIP list in the first place. The answer? I didn’t. I’m hardly offended, but I was amused. It’s not only Santa that needs to check his list twice.

This incident reminds me of the real-estate solicitations I used to see back in the 1980s. Attend a weekend sales pitch, and get a free television (or other medium value gee-gaw) for your trouble, no purchase required. Just pay with your time, your sweet, sweet time. Even then, I had an inkling of the value of time. Now I know much better.

On Thursday, April 6, 2006, CNET achieved a cultural milestone.

42 Down, four letters: “Popular online tech. news source” in the New York Times crossword puzzle.

CNET is more than news, but gift horse, mouth, etc.

The Perfect Mile taught me a lot about an event I thought I knew. The Englishman Roger Bannister was first to break four minutes for the mile, but there was a race (virtually) to do so.

John Landy, an Australian running in Finland, knocked 1.4 seconds (a huge chunk) off Bannister’s time six weeks later. See the whole progression here. The subtitle of the book is “Three Athletes, One goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It.” I’ve mentioned Bannister and Landy. The third athlete was Wes Santee, a Kansas collegian whose run-ins with the governing body of U.S. track-and-field left him suspended or withheld from various races of consequence just as he was reaching his peak, also in 1954. He ran a 4:01 and change, but never cracked the “magic” barrier.

The “perfect” mile of the title might have been the barrier-breaking turns around the track by Bannister on May 6, 1954, but the perfect race came later that summer, when Bannister and Landy faced off in the Empire Games, in Vancouver, British Columbia. This is back when the British were unabashedly an Empire, if fading. Now I believe this event, if held, is called the Commonwealth Games, and it’s not such a high point on the sporting calendar.

Bannister’s kick against Landy’s lead-from-the-front speed provided food for debate and intrigue, and the race played out in that fashion. Who won? Read for yourself. Both men broke four minutes. I knew nothing about this race before the book, but it was just as intriguing as the record-breaking efforts. Spoiler links: CBC archive isn’t working for me, but promises video of the event. NPR’s review has some multimedia, too.

Bannister continued to lead an incredible life, far beyond sport. I’m not sure where to look for someone of his breadth and caliber these days, though perhaps Johann Olav Koss might be said to be cut from the same cloth.

Via Peter Merholz, I watched the opening main titles of the movie Thank You For Smoking. I’m interested in seeing the movie, and it’s still fascinating to me that there are studios and individuals who focus on making titles. The morbid thriller Seven is famous for its titles, among other things. Scroll through this essay and watch for yourself, about halfway down. (Two minutes and nine seconds, as a downloadable Real Media file.)

Back to Thank You For Smoking…watching the titles, which are amusing with their visual references that are almost tangible even to this non-smoker (advertising works), I recognized some names beyond the obvious actors. The executive producers for Thank You For Smoking include Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Max Levchin, and Mark Woolway. I don’t recognize the last name, but the other three hit the jackpot with PayPal via the sale to eBay, so I’m guessing Woolway was part of that team, too.

I know Mark Cuban and his Broadcast.com partner Todd Wagner are deep into movie financing, and other parts of the film infrastructure. Who else has taken their money from the internet and fueled cinema? And who is finding it profitable, not simply an ego trip?

I don’t begrudge these folks their efforts…it’s just strange to have a sense of the cross-pollination at work.

Vin Crosbie comes out from under a recent NDA… I prefer the frieNDA.

On Sunday, I got out for a run on the sand with a couple of hundred other people in the Ocean Beach 5K.

As you can see from the results (click on the 5K by Time tab at the very bottom), I did well among the 76 people who chose this distance. But it wasn’t a fast time (21:05). I’ll blame it on the sand, the inexact measurement, and (ahem) my lack of fitness.

Oh well. I was just glad to see all the fast people keep going at the 5K turnaround… the 6 mile event was more competitive. Running on the beach, even at extreme low tide, doesn’t inspire me…and it’s hard to judge distances visually.

I’ll have to run the two other races in the series and see if I can earn a cash prize. Hah!

I learned about the redesign of NYTimes.com via Anil Dash’s post on SixApart: The New York Times Redesigns, Influenced by Blogs. I don’t visit the site often enough, obviously, though if pressured I would guess that I visit at least weekly. My previous visit to an article page wasthe day before the redesign rolled out.

I will have to poke around some more.

I do appreciate the “Most Popular” page. Much simpler presentation than the CNET News.com “Readers’ Choice” page, and probably a simpler (better?!) name, as it’s crystal clear what you are getting.

The Times Topics pages feel like an answer to Wikipedia. In some areas, like New York Yankees (enjoyed watching them pummel the A’s opening night), this approach should be very effective, and a magnet for “research” links which, however, stay fresh with current information. Certainly, a good place for individual articles published by the Times to link to. I wonder if the content management system needed a lot of work to make the front-end presentation work.

I’ll be curious to learn how their transition to a wide page goes. It’s not without its bumps.

I doubt I’ll find time for more evocative, profound thoughts, but always worth watching.

On Fresh Air earlier today, NPR : ‘Daily Show’ Producer Ben Karlin. Thirty-seven entertaining minutes, streaming only. Hardly a surprise to learn that Karlin was a writer for The Onion early on.

I’ve wanted to see Howl’s Moving Castle for some time. When I did, I’m not sure what I saw.

Original, bizarre, a wonderful mishmash of ideas and cultures, harkening especially to The Difference Engine, where William Gibson and Bruce Sterling looked at computers as they might have existed in Victorian England if Charles Babbage had been successful. (Good book, by the way.) Hayao Miyazaki doesn’t restrain himself to those threads, though.

I couldn’t imagine where the various ideas came from and how it ended up in a Japanese animated movie, with voices from Billy Crystal, Lauren Bacall, Christian Bale, and others for the American release. But it’s all from a book…Diana Wynne Jones wrote the novel.

Whoa.

An 80 from Metacritic for the film, by the way, with several glowing reviews.

I found The Secret Ways (1959) the least appealing of the three Alistair MacLean books I read over vacation. Preachy and hardly believable, despite interesting opening pages. The movie did not a get a flattering review from the New York Times reviewer in 1961, who asked

Is it possible, you wonder, that the shrill, broad melodramatics of this Universal release stem from Alistair MacLean’s original novel?

Hmmm… guess he enjoyed the book more than me.

There is a train sequence which reminded me of Breakheart Pass (written much later) and The Great Train Robbery (also written later), so maybe there is more original here than I thought.

But I’d pass, given the opportunity to make the choice once more. I do have two additional MacLean novels handy, but I’m putting the snacks aside until I need to cleanse the palate once more.