KJToo

One of my many responsibilities as a parent is ensuring that the television programs my young apprentice watches are educational, wholesome, enriching and appropriate for his age (currently 20 months). As a public service, I present the first in a series of informative reviews of television programs geared toward preschoolers.

The Wonder Pets is one of Kyle’s favorite programs, and it’s not hard to see why: there’s plenty of music, oodles of cute animals and more music. Parents (and corporate managers) will undoubtedly appreciate the core message the show consistently delivers: that cooperation and teamwork are essential in any problem-solving effort. On the surface, it seems like the perfect show for young children. A closer examination, however, reveals that The Wonder Pets is one unfortunate example after another of parental negligence.

Each episode begins with Linny (a guinea pig), Tuck (a turtle) and Ming-Ming (a duckling) relaxing in their schoolhouse home after all the children have left for the day. Their leisure time is interrupted by the phone (“the phone is ringing!”), a can-and-string contraption that alerts the trio to a baby animal in peril. Donning capes and hats and assembling the flyboat (a vehicle constructed from a Frisbee, some markers and various other bits), The Wonder Pets race to rescue the youngling from some horrible situation using (“what’s gonna work?”) teamwork and music.

Once the chick, kit, fawn, foal, cub, joey or calf has been rescued, the irresponsible parents arrive on the scene, probably returning from the local watering hole, brothel or cock-fighting ring. Oh, sure, there’s the requisite gushing over how brave and amazing The Wonder Pets are, but rarely is there an explanation from the reprehenible parents as to why the children were left unattended in the first place. The best thing Linny, Tuck and Ming-Ming (too) could do to help the baby animals in trouble is contact the local Department of Children’s Services.

Coming soon: an intrepid explorer, a singing moose and a whiny turtle.

Posted September 29, 2007 Comments(6)

I’ve heard rumors that a bonus episode of Volcanicast has found its way onto these very Internets. The episode is comprised entirely of tangents, rare conversational digressions that we explored while discussing the most popular Google search terms of the past week.

During post-production, our stalwart editor opted to omit these nuggets of off-topic banter in order to trim the show from its original recorded length of nearly three hours to just over two. Recognizing that relegating these tasty tidbits to the trash would constitute a terrible travesty—and perhaps just a little gun-shy about deleting audio after an unfortunate keystroke led to the recent destruction of an entire episode—said editor has assembled a bonus “Tangentcast” and released it for your listening pleasure.

If you’re subscribed to the Volcanicast, your podcatcher has almost certainly ensnared this bonus episode and is patiently holding it for you. If you are not subscribed, you should add the feed to your favorite podcatcher and try not to salivate with anticipation during the download.

If you are the type who shuns catchers of pod, you can either visit the Volcanicast site and listen with the embedded player or download the episode directly. The point is that we want to make listening to the show easy and enjoyable for everyone; we care that much.

Posted September 28, 2007 Comments(0)

One of the most memorable quotes from Tim Burton’s Batman is Jack Nicholson as the Joker declaring “This town needs an enema!” Though the Clown Prince of Crime certainly had sinister designs on Gotham, he had a point: the city was a mess and needed a thorough cleansing. His choice of words may not have appealed to those of a delicate and genteel nature (who would likely have preferred “facelift” or “makeover” to the vulgar colonic), but the idea has always resonated with me and it springs to mind anytime I see something that is clearly in need of change.

I’ve often felt that the phrase applies to this very website, both in terms of content and design.

Content-wise, I’d like updates to be more consistent, preferably at least one new post every weekday and perhaps a single post over the weekend. Of course, there’s more to blogging than just establishing a posting schedule, because no one is going to care that I’m posting regularly if I’m not posting anything interesting; which begs the question: what do the people who read this blog find interesting?

As an example of something potentially uninteresting, I offer up this very post. I like to keep the meta-blogging (or “blogging about blogging”) to a minimum here and leave it to folks like Lorelle VanFossen, who meta-blog far better than I ever could (or would want to). My meta-blog posts tend to center around whatever issues I’m currently experiencing with WordPress and such; I don’t do advice. When I do dip my toe into meta-blogging, I do so with the understanding that—unless you’re a WordPress user (or a huge dork)—the excursion isn’t going to be terribly interesting, but I also do it knowing that the process of writing helps keep the gears turning in my head and there are a few people reading who do blog with (or without) WordPress and muck around with CSS and web design, and they’re likely to provide some very insightful feedback.

Content is far more important than design and aesthetics, but over the past few days I’ve been very focused on the look and feel of this site. I upgraded to WordPress 2.3, which had some unintended consequences, specifically in the areas of commenting and post tags, but I think I’ve taken care of those. Digging through the site, however, made me realize that I’d like to spruce things up a bit (the Library page is in dire need of an overhaul, for instance, and the Now Reading section in the right-hand sidebar could be cleand up), take care of some browser-dependent design quirks, organize things a bit better and maybe cut some of the extraneous bits.

I spent an absolutely stupid amount of time last night going through old blog entries (I’m about a third of the way done) and making sure that the markup for images and footnotes was consistent (and adding images to some movie review posts that didn’t have them); the idea is to create a consistent look across the entire site, but also to make switching to a new theme easier, should I ever decide to stop using Brian Gardner’s Blue Zinfandel.

Unfortunately, despite a lot of CSS tweaking and web searches, I was unable resolve a browser-specific rendering problem: Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7 both have issues with floating images. The IE screen shot below illustrates the problem: the text immediately beneath the Transformers movie poster image (which is “floating” on the left of the center column) should be to the right of the image and wrap around as it flows beyond it. Firefox renders it properly but neither version of Internet Explorer does.

The problem is very likely something to do with floating images within floating sections or visible overflow or something, but I haven’t been able to nail it down yet and it’s pretty annoying; especially since I’m almost positive that it was working properly in the past.

Finally, there’s the new “Currently Playing” and “Recently Watched” sections on the left-hand sidebar. The former was blatantly stolen from Greg Howley (though Rob Miller deserves some credit, too, as his Now Reading plug-in set me on the “media I’m consuming” path in the first place) and the latter was an obvious extension of the idea. Neither of them are plug-ins (though that could change), and they originally featured just cover images and titles. However, converting them to Amazon links has removed some of the hassle of maintaining them: I don’t have to hand-write the HTML or host the images myself. I’ve been embedding my Amazon Associates ID in DVD, book and video game links for over a year now, but this is the first time I’ve used the Buy Now button, something I’ve been avoiding because I don’t want the site to feel like an ad (don’t worry, I don’t plan to start using Google AdSense anytime in the foreseeable future).

So there you have it: I’m feeling a little restless about the current state of KJToo.com and I want to shake things up a bit. I welcome your suggestions and feedback and appreciate your patience if I somehow manage to break the site while I’m fiddling.

Posted September 27, 2007 Comments(5)

Volcanicast is the show where hosts Wesley, Bob and yours truly discuss the most popular Google search terms of the past week. The Internets were very curious about a lot of stuff over the past week, resulting in our longest show to date.

This week: the environment, the economy, lawyers who shouldn’t sue us, elaborate suicide methods (successful and otherwise), bad Irish accents, and the quiet time between intimate moments.

Volcanicast is intended for mature audiences, but we listen to it anyway.

• Visit the Volcanicast website.
• Download the show for the week ending 22 September 2007.
• Subscribe to the feed.

Posted September 26, 2007 Comments(0)

While writing yesterday’s post about scheduling conflicts between SciFi’s Eureka, FOX’s House and NBC’s Journeyman I overlooked one minor (yet arguably important) detail: there is no such conflict. House and Eureka are both on Tuesday night, but Journeyman is (as I discovered yesterday) on Monday night.

The CW’s Reaper, on the other hand, is on Tuesday night and its schedule does conflict with the other, previously mentioned Tuesday primetime shows.

L-R: Bret Harrison, Ray Wise and Tyler Labine

On the bright side, several savvy readers have already suggested a solution to my scheduling woes; a solution that does not involve replacing my dual-LNB DirecTV dish and adding another DirecTivo receiver (and television) to the International House of Johnson.

See, if there’s one thing The SciFi Channel is good at (apart from cranking out schlocky monster-of-the-week movies and calling them science fiction), it’s replaying everything on their schedule over and over again. This has allowed me to catch the occasional missed Saturday night movie later in the week—even if the argument could be made that I’m usually better off missing those movies—and will also allow me to record Reaper at 9:00 and Eureka three hours later.

Unfortunately, a quick glance at the upcoming SciFi listings reveals that the replay time for Eureka isn’t consistent week to week: tonight it’s on at midnight and next week it replays at 12:30; and TiVo, for all its magical powers, apparently lacks a single-click “record the later showing” function. We are, it seems, doomed to learn that our heroes are flawed.

As for Journeyman, I watched the premiere in the wee hours of this morning while sitting with my young insomniac. They managed to get a good hook into me, and if NBC cancels the show before we learn why (and how) Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, Rome) is traveling through time, I’m going to write at least one very indignant blog post about it. That’s right, NBC; consider yourself warned. You don’t want the kind of heat that I bring to the party.

Posted September 25, 2007 Comments(9)