I just requested passes to this movie for Monday:

—–

And I got a gold badge (film and interactive) to this:

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I bought these:

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I plan to watch the following this weekend:
* The Milk of Sorrow
* A Prophet
* The Secret in Their Eyes
* The White Ribbon
* A Serious Man
* An Education
* The Secret of Kells
* The Princess and the Frog

—–

fin.

I recently did a purge on my following/followers list on my alt Twitter account. There was a lot of noise in my stream that I kind of hated so I went ahead and cleaned house. I use Twitter, and that account especially, for discussion. I like to engage my followers and actually read what they post. If I am getting 20 useless tweets to every 5 good ones, I am not able to effectively use the service.

Here were five easy drop categories:

Overly religious or political
I’m all for opinions and beliefs but I really don’t want your hate for Obama or Glenn Beck or whoever to clog up my Twitter feed. It’s annoying.

The prolific posters
Twitter isn’t AIM. If you are just spouting your stream of conscious, you get an unfollowed pretty quickly. I had one guy post about 20 times in one minute and then followed it up with “I’m so glad Twitter is here to listen.” UNFOLLOWED!

Lazy spammers
If the majority of your posts come from either TwitterFeed or the API, I’ll unfollow you. If you spam me using the web, I’m less likely to unfollow you. At least you are making an effort. But please…stop spamming me.

Racist posters
Not in my stream.

Shelly Ryan
WHO ARE YOU?

I have been conducting a little Twitter experiment for a little over a week now. Basically, I started a new account and kept it anonymous. The point of the account is to make fun of life in corporate America and to poke fun at the people I work with without my name attached.

With my personal account, I added people who I knew or who I was just interested in. With this new account, I have added fairly indiscriminately. I have used the search feature to look for people that are talking about work or office life. I usually only add about 10 people at a time and usually about 40% follow me back.

Now here is the interesting thing…people are eager to converse. They enjoy commiserating about their own experiences in corporate America and have no problem reaching out to a stranger. The other interesting thing is nearly everyone has tried to get me to say where I work. Of course, I am strict about the anonymity and the only detail I’ve given is that I work in Texas.

I haven’t amassed that many followers yet but I have tried to avoid looking like a spammer and therefore, haven’t added tons of people. I have found that in my anonymity and under the guise of an experiment, I am much more bold. I have been much more willing to join the conversation and make connections. I can also say things I might not normally say.

It’s kind of funny…I have been using Twitter for quite awhile but I really a only starting to see it’s potential. Because I was using my other account to connect primarily to people I know irl, I wasn’t seeing the true potential for connecting with interesting, like-minded strangers.

Currently, it kind of feels like a game. How many followers can I get? How many people can I engage? It’s pretty fun.

Facebook is annoying me lately. I never go to the site but my mom joined the other day so I logged on to tell her how to do something. I had like 50 various requests. About half the friend requests were from people I don’t want to add. The other various requests were for planting flowers or some crap. I just wanted an easy way to keep track with my friends. Why is Facebook so ridiculous now?

I use Twitter nearly exclusively now but that’s getting kind of annoying lately too. Who are all these people adding me? And what’s with the obvious blind adding to get the follower count up. I rarely choose to follow people. I pretty much only add people I know in real life or news type feeds. I don’t care how many followers I have so I’m never going to blindly add anyone.

Have you ever clicked on the trending topics and noticed how many blatantly idiotic people are on that site. Also, the spammers are outrageous.

I will keep using Twitter because it’s the easiest way to feel like I’m keeping up with my friends. But I really think I might ditch Facebook again (for the second time). I’ll never use MySpace.

Am I getting old?

In other news, Emmy noms out tomorrow. Here’s my snub predictions. I really hope I’m wrong about these. EJO, Mary McDonnell, Elizabeth Mitchell, Portia de Rossi, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Josh Holloway, Cat Deeley, Connie Brtton, Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Amanda Seyfried, Jeremy Davies, Ryan Kwanten, Rutina Wesley, Andrea Anders, Tracy Morgan, Battlestar, and Pushing Daisies.

I’m sure Tony Shaloub, Two and a Half Men, and some d-bag from Entourage will be nominated. Stupid Emmys.

I thought I’d do a little rundown of my personal, favorite podcasts.  These aren’t all necessarily the most popular or the ones with the finest production values, but they are all entertaining to me.  I tend to like shows hosted by more than one person and with a loose, improvisational feel.  Because of that, fine shows like Leo Lapote’s Tech Guy ended up not keeping my attention.

I’ve also listened to Galactic Watercooler (formerly a BSG show, now a general SciFi show), ScapeCast (Farscape), and The Signal (Firefly) but I found Galactic Watercooler to devote too much time to one subject at a time (no one needed four episodes in a row about Transformers) and the other two lacked the improvisational spirit and banter that I enjoy.

Oh, and I also tried the extremely popular series This American Life, Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, and others.  But, I’m 26, not 86.

Note 1: This list, as a general rule, doesn’t include vidcasts.
Note 2:  The Ricky Gervais Show, my favorite podcast of all time was left of the list since the show is now released as audiobooks.  There is still a Ricky Gervais Show feed on iTunes but aside from one-off podcasts, it is mostly used to promote Ricky’s projects.

The 404 - A fairly casual, generally low brow tech and pop culture show.  I like this one because the guys don’t pretend to know what they are talking about if they don’t know.  They are very casual, sometimes irreverant and they put their guests at ease.  Even when talking about topics like the economy, they manage to be entertaining and informative.
The Adam Carolla Podcast - One of the most popular podcasts.  This is Adam Carolla’s daily show where some famous and funny friend joins him just to chat.  There is very rarely a set direction but the show is always entertaining and is sometimes hilarious.
The Bugle - Two funny British guys being two funny British guys.
Buzz Out Loud - This might be my favorite tech show.  Like The 404, this is a CNet produced show and it is so informative and interesting.  They run down the tech news everyday and even though they have an agenda, there is a round-table, chatty feel to the show.  A must-listen in my opinion.
Comedy DeathRay Radio - Comedians being funny and occasionally playing funny songs with Jack Black.  Guests have included Aziz Ansari, Doug Benson, Aimee Mann, Weird Al, and Kevin Nealon.  Look it up.  It’s good.
Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History - This one is a little hit or miss for me.  I love history so some of the topics really grab me and sometimes the show’s discussions are friggin fascinating.  But Dan Carlin’s measured cadence occasionally grates on my nerves.  Also, without someone to bounce off of, the show occasionally feels like a history lecture.  I do enjoy his unique take on various historical topics.
Diggnation - Kevin Rose and his co-host Alex choose interesting stories from Digg and chat and argue about them.  They go off on tangents very often but the show is still interesting and occasionally informative.
The Directors Cut Radio Program - Just a nice, in-depth, funny show about movies.  It’s a real, syndicated radio show so it has things like call-in listeners and silly contests.  But I enjoy the reviews and discussion.
I Love Movies with Doug Benson - This show is filmed before an audience and always includes guests.  Doug Benson is very funny (obviously) and his guests are usually fairly high quality.  I generally laugh so hard at this show that I can’t listen to it at work.  If you like movies and you like funny people, check this show out.
Indie Spotlight - I don’t listen to every episode of this but basically it’s an iTunes produced podcast that highlights new indie music every week.  Each show chooses a music genre.  I never listen to the hip-hop or electronic shows but I do enjoy the singer-songwriter weeks as well as the rock/alternative weeks.
The Joystiq Podcast - Video games!  Just a solid video game review and discussion podcast.  Funny guys and a nicely produced show.
Keith and the Girl - This is a funny and crude show.  A pair of New Yorkers basically just talk crap about whatever is on their minds.  Very entertaining and nicely improvisational.
The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack - This might be my favorite podcast these days.  These guys are funny and seem to have a blast dissecting Lost.  This show is really helping me fill the long, long wait until season 6.
The Maniacal Rage Podcast - A very random and funny show that doesn’t seem to be about much of anything.  In spite of the title of the show, the guys have a very subtle deadpan delivery.  My kind of humor.
NPR: All Songs Considered - This show is like college radio.  The music is kind of hit or miss but I really enjoy the discussion of whatever aspect of the music industry is the topic of the week.
NPR: Pop Culture Podcast - This show rounds up all the pop culture stories from NPR for each week.
NPR: Science Friday Podcast - I’m a nerd.  And this show is awesome.
The Onion Radio News - Just one minute little treats that arrive in my podcaster throughout the day.  Typical Onion funny stuff.
Overwhelming Positivity -  The creators of Television Without Pity (who have since left the site) put this podcast out very sporadically but it is always funny and is another one I can’t really listen to at work.  Tara’s laughter never fails to crack me up.  And their recent Twilight episode was so funny.
PRI: The Sound of Young America - This one is a little hit or miss for me too.  It’s a basic interview show but I’m generally only interested in about half of the guests.  The interviewer really draws me in though and I find the information he gets from his guests to be incredibly interesting.  The episode with Jane Lynch in particular was great.  I enjoyed hearing about Christopher Guest’s process.
Real Time with Bill Maher - An audio recording of the tv show.  Funny stuff if you like Bill Maher.
Slice of SciFi - General scifi discussion.  The people are some nerds but so am I.  So it works.
SModcast - The crudest of the crude podcasts.  But also one of my favorite.  This is Kevin Smith’s show with his longtime producer Scott Mosier.  Basically they just tell awesome stories and talk to and about their friends for around an hour every week.  If you don’t like Kevin Smith’s movies, you won’t like this show.  But if you do, this is the show for you.  It’s hilarious.
Stuff You Missed in History Class - A great little history show from How Stuff Works.  I like this one because they often give a nice lesson on things I don’t know much about.  In the last one, they went into detail about the Stonewall Riots.  Fascinating.
Stuff You Should Know - This is another How Stuff Works podcast but this one basically just gives info on a variety of topics or myths.  They have done shows on Twinkies, Tesla, Ponzi schemes, and deja vu.  I love this show.

And that’s why I need a podcast app on my iPhone.

I picked up my iPhone yesterday. Don’t let the lack of exclamation marks on that last sentence fool you, I was grinning like crazy as I left the AT&T store. I’ve been waiting for this thing forever. I bought the 32GB black model, the Apple Care plan, and a cheap case to get me by until my real case comes in.

At Ryan’s suggestion, I pre-ordered the very rugged Ecoshield Slider Case from Agent 18 (www.agent18.com) but it doesn’t ship until the middle of July and I WILL drop this thing before that.

My early impressions of the phone itself is that it is worth every penny. This is my first iPhone and I have been a Blackberry user for the past two years. I understand why Blackberry is more the business standard. They are very very sturdy phones with few bells and whistles. They get the job done efficiently and intuitively.

But, man is the iPhone cool.

I was fairly used to the keyboard from using my iPod Touch so the change from tactile keyboard to touch screen hasn’t been a big issue for me. I find that I am a little slower at texting but I know that will improve as I use it. The OS is quite intuitive and the same icons do the same thing in every native app. I have, so far, found pretty much every part of the OS to be very quick to respond. The only thing I found a little sluggish was the publish to youtube feature. Also, the video camera initialization is a little slow. The cameras themselves are really fantastic and, to my surprise, the iPhone might make me boot my little point and shoot from my purse.

For those of you curious about such things, here are the first batch of Apps I installed:
AIM - for obvious reasons. The one thing I don’t like about this app is that it doesn’t group your buddy list by groups. Oh well though. It supports push notifications and it’s free. (free)
Remote - Apple’s best little free app. Let’s you control the iTunes library on your computer from your iPhone. (free)
The Weather Channel - Much better and more detailed weather info than the native weather widget. You can see weather maps, watch your local forecast, see the hourly or 10-day outlook, and get all the severe weather alerts. Very cool and very free. (free)
RSS Player (Podcaster) - A very simple podcast grabber. Just search for a keyword or enter the RSS feed name and Podcaster will grab any new podcasts from the feed. You can stream the new podcasts or set them up to download. Very easy. (a steal at $0.99)
iPhlix - This is one thing I always wanted to be able to do with my Blackberry — manage my Netflix queue on the fly. iPhlix lets you manage both your dvd and instant queues using a very very simple drag and drop interface. It also has some neat features like turning the iPhone upside down to jump to the bottom of the queue. You can also manage multiple accounts if you are so inclined. ($2.99)
Tweetie - I used to use Twitteriffic on the iPod and although it was okay, there were a few things I wasn’t crazy about. Before I added a Twitter client to the iPhone, I did some research and most reviewers agreed that for avid Twitter users, Tweetie is a must. It has a very simple interface and does a nice job color-coding @ replies, your own messages, and regular messages in your feed. Pretty much every single thing you can do on the Twitter website, you can do with this app. ($2.99)
Pandora - Very nicely designed app that works just like the Flash player on the Pandora website. This will come in handy when my 20GB of music is just not enough. (free)
Shopping - A simple shopping list app. You can make lists for different stores and choose from a large list of items or create your own. The items are sorted in the list by aisle. I’ve already made a couple of lists for this week’s shopping excursion and I’ve found the app to be every bit as simple as a piece of paper and a pen. ($1.99)
Urbanspoon - This is a hold over from my iPod and it’s the app that is most recognizable from commercials. It’s the app that finds your location and then randomly finds you a place to eat. Being the least decisive people on Earth, this app has come in handy for team lunches at work. (free)
Lose It! - A weight loss program that lets you chart your exercise and what food you eat. You enter in a goal and it gives you a calorie allowance to meet your goal. It will calculate how many calories consumes and how many burned. You can enter in what you eat by brand or type and it will do all the calculating for you. This app is verrrry nice if you are calorie conscious but have trouble keeping track. (free)
Google Earth - I played with this for like an hour last night. It’s the same old Google Earth app but in your pocket. It found where I was down to the correct corner of my building. I also really like the tilt scrolling. (free)
Where - Where is a location information app. It finds out where you are and then you can see the cheapest gas nearby, landmarks, cool stuff to check out, the closest Starbucks, movie theaters nearby, etc. The one drawback is that I find the app to be a little sluggish and the constant info screens are super annoying. (free)
Yelp! - I’ll probably use this way more than Where but I could see how both would be helpful on a trip. This is a more intuitive location information app. It finds out where you are and gives you a list of categories. For instance, when I open the app and push restaurants, the first on the list is Brother’s Pizza, a little pizza joint about a half mile up the road. If I click on Brother’s Pizza, I can read reviews, see pictures, find their phone number, and map the route. You can do this with pretty much any kind of business or service you can imagine. Very cool. (free)
Midomi - Like the pay version of Shazam. I tried Shazam first but ended up going with Midomi because it had more intuitive features, like the ability to enter in a title or artist phonetically. You can also say or sing lyrics or even just hum to find a song. I tested it out by humming Falling Slowly and it identified it and played a preview of the actual song. When I drilled down further, it gave me the option to buy the song, watch videos on youtube, bookmark or share the song, search for the lyrics, and get album or artist info. This is a very cool app for someone like me who loves music but never knows the name of any songs. ($4.99)
Backgrounds - Just a simple background downloader. I doubt I’ll keep this one. I find it to be verrry sluggish. (free)
Games - Big Bang Board Games, Numba, PixelCross, Sudoku, Vay

Below I’ve embedded a video I took of my little cousin. I took in vertically to see how it would do. Sorry it’s so shaky. I was trying to keep Landry in frame but he wanted to see what I was doing. I wish I could have recorded him watching the video after it was done.