Boffins Creates Zombie Dog

Via TorrentSpy.com…

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.

The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.

But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.

Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.

However rather than sending people to sleep for years, then bringing them back to life to benefit from medical advances, the boffins would be happy to keep people in this state for just a few hours,

But even this should be enough to save lives such as battlefield casualties and victims of stabbings or gunshot wounds, who have suffered huge blood loss.

During the procedure blood is replaced with saline solution at a few degrees above zero. The dogs' body temperature drops to only 7C, compared with the usual 37C, inducing a state of hypothermia before death.

Although the animals are clinically dead, their tissues and organs are perfectly preserved.

Damaged blood vessels and tissues can then be repaired via surgery. The dogs are brought back to life by returning the blood to their bodies,giving them 100 per cent oxygen and applying electric shocks to restart their hearts.

Tests show they are perfectly normal, with no brain damage.

"The results are stunning. I think in 10 years we will be able to prevent death in a certain segment of those using this technology," said one US battlefield doctor.

Insanity.  Would you freeze yourself for a period of time if the technology becomes available?  I’m so there.  Throw $10 in McDonald’s stock, freeze myself for 150 years, come out the day’s equivalent of a millionaire.

/rizzn

War of the Worlds: Best Movie Evar

Just a quick note to say that War of the Worlds – clearly the best movie evar.

The first movie in the sci-fi horror genre, or the horror genre for that matter, to ever leave me with a feeling that extended five minutes after I left the theatre (other than revulsion that the film was ever made).

Great flick. If you see no other movie this year, watch this one.  There were literally an entire row of people in the theatre on the edge of their seats – no joke.

/rizzn

BlipMedia News: Profiles, Profitability and another P-Word.

Lots of big BlipMedia BlipMedia news today. I’ll be brief.

I all but finished the profiles section of BlipMedia.  I need user input on this one.. I put everything I could think of with relevency on the front page, but I think it’s missing a couple things.  I have a few changes I want to make to the front page before I call it finished. I want to add blog posts to the list of updated media on the left, but right now the RSS retrieval system is so fubared that I don’t think I want to throw it up there just yet (read: James! get off your butt and finish my RSS piece like you said you would a month ago!). I also need to finish the directories.  Two things need to happen before I get the directories done – one is I need to build the alphabetical lists.  I have a code snippet somewhere that I need to paste into that page.  The other thing is I need to debug the code on the category system and figure out why it’s not parsing the subcategories properly.  Once that’s done, we’ll have quite a nice little search engine and podcast directory.

This next section is just me bragging, so if you’re a hater, you might as well just go away now.  Like I said in a previous article this week on the site, I’ve been doing a fair amount of market research on the “podcast industry.” As it turns out, I’m the largest podcasting host in the biz.  I’m seven times larger than my nearest competitor.  Try that one on for size!

Also, it has been confirmed as of today, BlipMedia will be turning a profit in it’s first quarter!  Google, eat your heart out! If sales trends continue along these lines, we’ll be a million dollar company our first year in business.

Not bad for a college dropout, eh?

/rizzn

Tom Cruise Kills Oprah, and I Kill Sauron

I just finished the Solo Campaign on Lord Of The Rings: Battle for Middle Earth.  I kicked Sauron’s ass all up and down Mordor. I have two things to say having just spent a good 24 hours sweeping through the game.  One: the gameplay kicks much butt, and is a hoot to play.  Two: the ending graphic is dissappointing as heck.

LotR:BfME is a WoW style strategy game.  The graphics are incredible, and it has one major thing that WoW doesn’t have: LotR.  The battles are always so epic, and of course its immersed in such a rich storyline, it makes it that much more fun to play. My favorite thing to do is take my immense cavalry of Rohan and run them across a brook or stream – watching the water spray under their hooves is just magic.

This is the first strategy game with this level of good graphics, so you’ll hafta excuse my oohing and ahhing for a bit.

Unfortunately, they completely skimped out on the ending.  The only battle that took me more than a couple tries to win was the battle of Black Gate (the final battle).  They literally throw everything behind the black gates of Mordor at you and you’re constantly playing catch up if you misstep just once. On the downside, after all the Oliphants, Mountain Trolls, Hadarim, Orikai and Dragon Thingies (the name escapes me now) are dead, all you get is a 13 second animation of Frodo tossing the ring in.  No dialog, no yay, good for you, you did it.  Just your stats and a Campaign Won screen.  Bad fruit.

If anti-climatic endings don’t bother you, and you have a monster graphics card, give ol’ LotR:BfME a try.

On another note, I’m not the only one doing a fair amount of killing these days.  Apparently Tom Cruise killed Oprah.  Check it out!

http://tcruiseko.ytmnd.com/

This will no doubt become a big meme here very soon, so make sure and tell everyone that you found it here first, so that everyone will think I’m hip and all that.

/rizzn

Musical Cattle Call

Just a reminder – Remember, I’m headed out to Paris’s club opening July 4, supposedly.  Going to have a handful of CDs to give out, and there’s a few open slots left on the CDs for your music (assuming you make music).

Send your submissions to mark@blipmedia.org.

I had an email catastrophe last week, so if you wrote me about anything and I didn’t respond, that means I didn’t get it.  Please write me back/again so I make sure I didn’t lose your enquiry.

Speaking of which, not a day goes by that I don’t get an email something along these lines:

From: Random Rizzn.com Reader
To: Mark Hopkins
Subject: GET ME TIcKATZZ PLZ!!

Dude!  I’m your biggest fan/oldest friend/your mom.  You’ve got to get me a pass to get into the Paris Hilton party.

Dude I SOO want to bone her/kick her ass becuz she’z prettiar than me/have sex with her/have her give me money.

Hook me up?

Sighned,

Your friend, a random rizzn.com reader.

So let me just say here for everyone’s sake – yes, I love each and every one of you, but I cannot take you all physically.  AS a result, I’ll hafta just take pictures, video, and audio of the event and post it here.  Sorry.

/rizzn

Podcasting and my market research.

It’s interesting.  I’ve been doing some heavy research into different e-marketing techniques over the last week or so.  It’s more or less paid off for me.  I’ve doubled the site traffic to rizzn.com, and doubled daily signups to BlipMedia.

In so doing, I’ve seen that a seedy underbelly has been developing in the Podcasting world. Most of you were probably unaware there was a belly to podcasting at all, much less a seedy one.

Interestingly enough, I noticed it on Google of all places.  You can find them yourselves!  Google up “podcasting” real quick.

You’ll find a link there to Conference Calls Unlimited, CreateYourPodcast.com, and Maven.net. These are the shady guys I’m talking about.  Two of them are ebook salesmen, and the third is a conference call provider masquerading as a podcast host.  To have a podcast with three people on the line, the price appears to be $40/ hour.  Excuse me?

Maven.net purports to tell you how to make money podcasting, or “Monetize Time Shifted Radio.”  I can’t think of one single person who would pay any amount of money to hear audio content on the web that they can get from literally 50,000 other sources.

CreateYourPodcast.com is pretty much along the same lines – except it promises profit within four hours or something…  The bottom line is that by yourself, there is no legitimate and reliable way to make money with a single podcast.

On the other hand, podcast networks, which seem to be the latest bleeding edge trend, are definately breeding grounds for corporate sponsorship.  I think it was last week or maybe two weeks ago on one of the podcast mailing lists I subscribe to, there was an “Old Timey Radio Network” that formed.  Something along those lines is definately sponsorable.

Think about it: If you are a single by yourself podcaster, unless you’ve got a long term track record of reliably producing quality content, how do you expect to gain the noteriety required to recieve corporate sponsorship?

Conversely, in a podcast network, like BlipMedia or this new Old Timey Thingy that formed, there is an organisation, reporting structure, and just overall redundancy in the group dynamic that instills confidence in the advertising buyer.

Most of you know my stance on advertising and podcasting… and if you don’t, I’m against it.  It is a very tempting proposition given that the whole advertising/broadcaster paradigm is something everyone knows well, and hence all the money appears to be in that dynamic.  On the other hand, I believe that by my subsidization of free media with Blip, we’ll be able to create a community of free media and entertainers that will create a sufficient talent pool that you’ll actually be able to sell your broadcasts in much the same way the celebrity photographers shop their content around.

Let me explain (in grossly over-simplified terms).  The celebrity photography business is something I’m familiar with due to my friendship with Ricky McGill, another founding member of BlipMedia.  In his spare time he does celebrity photography for special events.  Every so often, he’ll recieve a phone call from either a local area publicist or one of the agencies he’s contracted with.  They’ll give him a tip that hey, Paris Hilton’s going to be showing up at P. Diddy’s party on such and such date.  Here’s a press pass, you’ve got red carpet access.

Since he’s with an agency, Ricky, after shooting and uploading his photos to the agency, recieves a chunk of change every time a magazine buys a photo from him.  The agency takes a piece for being the middle-man, and all’s well.  There’s no corporate sponsorship, there’s no Budweiser logo in the picture, simply the photograph, the photographer, the middle-man, and the buyer. This is the future of podcasting.

You can already see the lines forming.  Podcast networks are forming, like ours, libsyn, and if Adam ever gets his butt in gear, podshow.net.  Broadcasters (like Clearchannel and Infinity) will know where to look for new shows to run on their networks.  At first they will make offers privately, but then the clearinghouses will wise up and set themselves up to be the brokers for the deals. That’s the circle of commerce, Simba!

What’s the best thing for the average podcaster out there?  Well, my (biased) advice is to either form a network of podcasters with people who have either similar content matter, or complementary content matter as you OR join a larger hosting service like Blip or even LibSyn.

No article by me about podcasting would be complete without this link:

http://blipmedia.org/su/rp – SIGN UP FOR BLIP’s FREE PODCAST HOSTING NOW.

I welcome your comments on the topic. That’s it, I’m out.  Deuce!

/rizzn

Who the heck is Stan?

Am I the only person who thought this dude was saying “That’s Allstate, Stan.”

For as long as this series of commercials have been on the air, I always ask myself who the heck Stan is. The mystery became too much for me to bear this evening, as I actually lay awake staring at the ceiling wondering this.  Yes, with all that’s going on in my life, this is the only thing that was on my mind this evening.

As it turns out, Dennis Haysbert (best known for his work in "24" and, well, this commercial) is saying “That’s Allstate’s Stand,” not “That’s Allstate, Stan.”

Another mystery solved.

Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep now.

/rizzn

More Miyazaki Schwag

Here’s the poster they gave me at the end of the Miyazaki early release party.  It’s actually a standard quarter poster size, in a black folder with silver embossed titling on the cover.  Very swank.

Howl's Moving Castle

I’ve got a couple scans from the schwag they gave us at the Howl’s Moving Castle early release party.  The other one is a poster I scanned on our really expensive scanner, so it’s going to take a while to crop and resize on this jicky-ass computer I have.

On the other hand, the postcard scanned nicely.  They copy from the back of the postcard reads as follows:

A Hayao Miyazaki Film
Howl’s Moving Castle

One of the most original, influential and visionary filmmakers in animation, Hayao Miyazaki’s work has often been compared to that of Walt Disney.  He has earned the reputation of being a modern master of Japanese cinema.  In 2003, Miyazaki’s previous masterpiece, Spirited Away, won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and continues to rank as the all-time, top-grossing film in Japanese box office history.  His latest feature, Howl’s Moving Castle, based on a novel by Diana Wynne Jones, comes to domestic audiences in a newly dubbed English language version directed by Pixar Animation Studios’ Pete Docter (director of Monsters, Inc.) and Disney’s Rick Dempsey.

In Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki explores such themes as the power of love and the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity.  In this epic tale, Miyazaki has created some of his most unique and memorable characters to date that include powerful wizards, a wicked witch, a wisecracking demon, and a young girl who is transformed into a 90–year-old woman by a mysterious curse.  Together they embark on a magical adventure aboard an enchanted castle that will completely tranform their lives.

Holy craptopia.

Made a big Blip sale today.  This one dude wants 22 phones for his home.  22 Centrex phones!  Mondo good times.

Finally I’m done with the synchronisation script.  I’m actually pretty proud of that too.  There was only one minor flaw in it, and it was rectified this morning.  Synchronisation scripts aren’t easy, especially when they’re for complex databases and being written from scratch by hand.

In other news, I think I’m going to be able to get back to Blip work this week.  I’ve got a major upgrade coming this week (hopefully).

I’m also working on putting out a new CD that will be ready in time for my appearance at the Paris Hilton club launch next week.  If you make music and want to be on a compilation CD I’m putting together to hand out while I’m there contact me and I’ll see if I can’t get you on.  I’ve got room for about five or six more songs.

Questionable Content: Sexay Tsunami

Howdy folks,

I just woke up like fifteen minutes ago. What you say? Yes, fifteen minutes ago. I was up to four or five something at the office writing a synchronisation script for this. And also fielding questions about automation in a chat room. I'm a busy beaver.

At any rate, I woke up this morning and read Jeph's comic this morning. While he may say that popping boners over cartoon chicks is weird, it still happens. Faye from QC just joined Faye Valentine from Cowboy Beebop in that department.

More information than required, I know. Just check out Jeph's comic. I've been a fan for a while since Kelly turned me on to it.

/rizzn

Out of Pocket

I’m going to be fairly out of pocket this evening.  I’ve got to write synchronisation scripts until 9:00 pm, and then I’ve got a conference call.  Apologies to all who needed me this evening.

/rizzn

AACS info: Jason Friedman is a Jerk.

As many of you know, I work for a company named AACS.  We recently re-organised as a company to get out of some liability issues created by a former CEO of the company, and consequently, we had to come up with different words to go with the acronym.

Previously, our name had been A Affordable Credit Services. This had always bothered me. First of all, the name was created by Jason Friedman so that he’d have first listing in the yellow pages (as if there was this great namespace landgrab going on in the yellow pages under ‘credit repair’ in the first place).  Secondly, it is completely incorrect, grammatically. 

I can understand An Affordable Credit Service. I can understand The Affordable Credit Services.  I could even understand simply Affordable Credit Service(s).  But the name’s grammar wasn’t the only thing that bothered me.  I feel the name is rather tacky.  Any time you have to mention your price in the name (Costco, Everything’s a $, Cheaptickets), to me it creates a tacky brand.

Fortunately, there was a decent product behind the name, and for that reason, I stuck around.

Over the next two years or so that I worked there, Jason Friedman (CEO), became the bane of my existence. As it turns out, he has stolen in excess of $30,000 from the company.  I know, because I recently finished an extensive audit of the company.  In addition to the $30,000 he personally pocketed over what his agreed upon salary was supposed to be, he mismanaged funds in excess of another $15,000 or so (in poor purchase decisions).  To top it all off, his inaction and idiotic management of company assets opened up the company to over $15,000 – $20,000 of additional liability in the form of lawsuits, tax evasion suits, and former employee payment disputes.

On a personal note, he is responsible for one of my friends nearly becoming forclosed upon, and another friend losing his home and going to prison.  Needless to say, there is no love lost between Jason Friedman and I.

Despite all this, I’ve kept my mouth shut on my blog because I simply didn’t want to think about the disgusting pig of a man, Jason Friedman.  Unfortunately, he won’t let it die, and continues to this very day trying to steal clients of the new company AACS (which now stands for American Association for Consumer Services – grammatically correct and not tacky, mind you).

Think I’m being a bit harsh?  In addition to stealing from the company, the fat pig also propositioned me to watch him, his wife, and a mutual (male) friend have sex.  He also owes me $2800 in back pay and unpaid Soc. Sec. taxes.  The day I joined the company, he was the only company principal sleeping off an all-Monday-night booze and stripper bender on the company couch.

I could go on and on about how he defrauded customers by cashing checks in his wife’s name instead of putting them in the company coffers.  I can talk for days about how he’s a jerk for dropping the ball and then passing the buck. But I won’t.  I’ll save that for another time.

If you want to send him your hate mail, Jason@Friedmanassociates.org will do nicely.

You can also send Snail Mail to Jason here:
7350 NW 38 Pl
Coral Springs Fl, 33065

(He doesn’t own the house at this address, by the way.  He’s only squatting).

If you’d prefer to call him a jerk in your own voice, call this number: (954) 461-5241.

I’m only a provider of information.  I take no responsibility for your actions.

/rizzn

D*Land entries updated

Today was a really rainy day, and I didn’t really feel all that creative or analytical, so I updated Feb-May 2001 of my D*land entries.

Also, please buy my CD and a TShirt.  Look for it on the far left column below the archive. More rizzn Merchandise on the way.

Enjoy.

/rizzn

Music on the Turntables Currently: mogwai - Hunted by a Freak
On the Boob Tube Currently: Teen Titans

AOL hit with VoIP patent infringement suit

Klausner Technologies has slapped America Online with a $200 million patent infringement lawsuit on a voice platform technology. The suit alleges that features that enable AOL subscribers to receive visual notification of new voice messages and selectively retrieve messages from their displays violates a single Klausner patent. Klausner, founded by inventor Judah Klausner, owns and licenses over 20 patents covering voice messages over the Internet, cellular systems and other communication networks.

"Because of the fast-paced docket in the Eastern District of Virginia, we expect a quick resolution of the matter and the prompt issuance of an injunction that will stop AOL from using this patented technology," Greg Dovel, an attorney representing Klausner Technologies, said in a statement.

For more on the VoIP patent infringement suit facing AOL read this Washington Business Journal article

Howl's Moving Castle

I had a unique opportunity last week to watch Howl's Moving Castle. I was told I was attending the North American Premier of the show. It turned out to be a slight exaggeration. As it turns out it was an early release party. I didn't find this information out until after I got there. That's why I did extensive research on this film before I attended.

By extensive research, I mean I looked it up on IMDB.

I paged through the actors listed on there, and of course, the big names stand out: Billy Crystal, Christian Bale. From there, the names get a little more arcane. Jena Malone, someone I knew of from one of my very favorite films, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, played a somewhat infrequently appearing character named Lettie.

The film it self had a very high standard to live up to. I watched Spirited Away both in the theatre, and much later on when I purchased the DVD a couple years ago, and the detailed nuances that Hayao Miyazaki achieved noteriety with in that film were really what I was looking for in Howl's Moving Castle. The level of excellence he achieved there would be hard to beat.

Sophie (voiced by Emily Mortimer), an average teenage girl working in a hat shop, finds her life thrown into turmoil when she is literally swept off her feet by a handsome-but-mysterious wizard named Howl (voiced by Christian Bale), and is subsequently turned into a 90-year old woman (voiced by screen legend and two-time Oscar. nominee Jean Simmons) by the vain and conniving Wicked Witch of the Waste (voiced by screen legend and Oscar. nominee Lauren Bacall). Embarking on an incredible odyssey to lift the curse, she finds refuge in Howl's magical moving castle where she becomes acquainted with Markl, Howl's apprentice, and a hot-headed fire demon named Calcifer (voiced by Billy Crystal). Sophie's love and support comes to have a major impact on Howl, who flies in the face of orders from the palace to become a pawn of war and instead risks his life to help bring peace to the kingdom.

Given that Miyazaki’s bar was set so high in Spirited, it is no wonder that coming out of Howl's that I wasn't as floored from this film as I was Miyazaki's first - and I've reflected on why this is. It wasn't the voice acting. Many of you who know me know that I'm generally not a fan of the dubbed anime. I cannot fault the voice acting, however, as a well rounded cast of knowns and unknowns alike took their crack at the film. The nuanced character animation was there, too. The oddly shaped spirits, alternative demonology/spirituality, and mechanical gadgets were all there, too, and all fairly impressive in their own right.

No, after careful reflection, I think I've determined that you simply can't improve on perfection, and Miyazaki's style was so amply displayed in Spirited Away that I must have expected the bar to have been raised past that somehow. None the less, the minutes will fly by as you watch the film. Like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle is definately one of those films you will want to own so you can see all the tiny details you missed the first time around.

But back to my "research:" I've developed a fairly decent memory over the years, so operating under the assumption I was going to be at a premier, and running into some star types, I memorized different parts of some of the actor's and actress's bios. In fact, I called up my good buddy Darrell (the friend I'd call if on Millionaire, and needed a movie question answered), and we brainstormed some original questions that would be both interesting to read about on the site, as well as make a lasting impression on the actor's memories themselves. For your amusement, I will detail a few of them here (keep in mind, they come from the same sick minds that brought you the Mark and Darrell Show):

Blythe Danner: 1) How did you likeworking with Edward Burns in No Looking Back. (Apparently Edward Burns is an exception actor, according to Darrell, and I'm one of the few people in the world who hasn't been impressed by his stuff, therefore it would be good to ask her about this) 2) Since Bon Jovi is a rock star, did he ever looklike he was going to break into song and dance when he was on the set of that movie? [to be accompanied by a hair band yowl!]

Josh Hutcherson 1) Call him a little brat. 2) Do you even know who Tom Hanks is? 3) Do you know what an honor it is to have been able to work with him? 4) Throw him out the window. (Darrell suggested I save this one until last.)

Billy Crystal 1) You worked with Bob Zmuda on some comedy projects early in your career. Do you know if Andy Kaufman is alive? 2) You worked on Spinal Tap. Do you want to hear an idea about a mockumentary Darrell and I want to make about Paint Drying? It's really good. Think A Mighty Wind meets the ill-fated XFL. But with better marketing. In both cases.

Lauren Bacall 1) Call her Betty (her real first name). 2) Ask about John Wayne. (No one's probably done that in about 30 years).

Emily Mortimer 1) Can I have your phone number? (Emily Mortimer is most notably remembered (in my mind) as the really hot woman that Val Kilmer sat next to on the airplane in the beginning of The Saint.)

Hope Levy 1) What's the deal with Knot's Landing? What was that show about? My mom and dad never let me stay up past Dallas to watch it.

And that brings us to Kristen Rutherford. She played a seamstress in the early part of the movie. I was lucky enough to come upon a contact address to get a hold of her and ask her some questions. She emailed me back this afternoon saying she's seen the movie and wants to talk all about it. Unfortunately, due to what I can only assume is both of ours’ hectic schedules, we haven’t been able to complete our “interview” so I will have to add it later this week (hopefully).

The bottom line is, go see Howl’s Moving Castle. It rocks.

Deuce!

/rizzn

Sorry about the silence...

Just wanted to let people know that I'm still alive.  It's been a second since we updated the Blip homepage, but we've all been busy little monkeys in the code department, and it's been holding up our editorial content.

You do have some fun goodies on the way though, you should know.

:)

/rizzn