Pigsflew.com

Us.

Television Viewers.

Now in reality, I watch exactly two television shows that have not been cancelled, and two television shows besides. The two that aren’t over yet are Heroes (NBC) and Battlestar: Galactica (Sci-Fi). The two that are were Firefly (FOX) and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (NBC). Given this fact I really don’t consider myself a television viewer.

Therefore, let me explain why I’m mad at you people:

It’s because of Studio 60. Aaron Sorkin’s amazing talent for blindingly crisp dialog aside, this was an amazing show with a fantastic cast, and a solid concept. I could get mad that the show was taken off the air, but it was taken off the air when it just… failed to draw audiences.

Now, Firefly failed to draw audiences, but to be frank, it was never given an honest shot, what with multiple changes in its time slot, last minute reordering of episodes, and frankly poor advertising.

Studio 60 was given more than an honest shot.

Actually, it was given the slot before prime time, right there with Heroes, a dumb but extremely entertaining show I expect to stay on the air for quite a while. Studio 60 had a decent opening audience which faltered immediately, and continued to flounder, even when NBC tried to get people back into the show by having Masi Oka (plays Hiro on Heroes) make a cameo. It sputtered and they pulled it.

The problem was the show was smart. It was based on the premise that the fictional broadcasting company NBS was banking on American audiences not being “too dumb” for good television. The real thing was that NBC itself was banking on the same proposition, and we as audiences let them down. We showed them that we are indeed too dumb for good television.

So there you are, everyone who tuned in at 10 to watch that first season of Heroes but missed the good stuff that was on at 9pm, I’m mad at you tonight.

(oh, I’m extremely glad I own the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip Complete Series.)

When the day came, I went to the spot and waited.

And I seriously pity anyone who didn’t go.

They had jugglers. Live music. The best jungle gym ever. There were playpen balls and random toys. There was a mattress that got signed by Randall and I jumped off the jungle gym onto it. There was a dancing velociraptor. There was a dancing velociraptor.

This was amazing.

I’m doing research this semester on the structure of the internet, specifically by studying bandwidth information between bittorrent users. In order to do this, I’ve been collecting packets this morning using WinDump.exe, a windows port of the unix tcpdump command.

This program effectively spews out information for every packet, in or out, that touches the selected interface. Here’s something I noticed this morning:

The internet ebbs and flows. Like the endpoint computer is a pristine beach on the sea of information, packets rolling in and out in bunches; the local computer responds to everything that comes in, and a quarter of a second passes before the next incoming wave arrives. And while it may be something people have remarked upon before, this is the first time I realized how true it is: I’m watching the waves crash in and out as I write this. If the browser is like scuba gear for safely navigating the water, then TCPDump and WinDump are the beach towel, so I can sit here, sip my powerade, and enjoy the view.

this is nice.