Author: Aaron Weber

Netflix streaming: Want Half a DVD?

My new DVD player has an ethernet jack and supports streaming directly from Netflix. This is, frankly, awesome. The library is incomplete, but broad enough that I’ll never get through all of it.

What’s weird is the way it seems to be handling TV shows: Sometimes, you can only stream part of a disc, and then have to order it by mail to watch the rest of it.

For example, 12 of the 14 episodes in “Dead Like Me” Season 1 are available. That’s three and a half discs. To watch the last two episodes, you have to order Disc 4 by mail… a disc which contains two episodes you’ve probably already seen before it arrives.

Season 2 is even stranger: Not only are about half the episodes only available by mail, but they are distributed unevenly through the season. For example, episodes 2, 3, and 4 are streamable, but episode 1 is not.

Can anyone explain why Netflix would bother making only portions of a disc available for download?

I’d Rather Have Text

Did you watch it on TV? Did you stream the video live to your office PC? Did you beg, borrow, or steal, to get to DC and see it in person?

I didn’t.

I read the speech, and I was inspired. But I didn’t then feel the need to go home and watch the replays endlessly spooled out in hi-def.

There’s not much that the video adds for me. I particularly don’t need to see the announcements of each person on the speaker’s podium. I don’t need to see the outgoing president shaking hands. I don’t need to see the fatuous Pastor Warren invocation of generic Christian pieties cribbed from forebears.

I saw photos of Michelle’s dress, and that was nice, but I don’t need to see every step she takes in it. I feel the same way about other gratuitous video usage — “Dear Prudence” on Slate.com is not improved by having Prudence read the column aloud to a camera.

Yes, I’m excited about the new government sausage. No, I do not need to see every step of its manufacture. At least, not video.

Incredibly Elaborate Viral Ad: Pomegranate Phone

Paging Rob Walker: I think I’ve found one of the most obscure, elaborate viral ads ever.

It’s the slickly-produced website advertising something called the Pomegranate Phone, an impossibly sophisticated, impossibly small, do-it-all mobile device. Each of the various features of the device come with a dramatic video illustration of how they’re used – phone GPS, web browser, automatic voice translator, coffeemaker, shaver, harmonica…

Of course it’s not real. The site is actually an ad for tourism in Nova Scotia, which is said to include everything you might want in a vacation destination, just like the fictional phone.

How much is that condo in the window?

Down the street from me is a rather beautiful set of condominia, one of which has just popped up on the market: 7 Park Ave #1. Asking price: $1.1 million.

It’s a very nicely done and very spacious unit, but it also seems like a lot of money for the neighborhood, and in particular a lot of money for something with aluminum siding and no yard. Plus, the Zestimate is only $620k. Even given that the Zestimate can be wildly inaccurate, I became curious: What was the previous sales price?

Zillow usually has the sales history, but didn’t in this case, so I looked it up on Mass Land Records. It turns out it was sold in 2002 by Lalo Development LLC to Gorka Brabo for $1.00. Yes, one dollar. Sounds like that’s a token transfer from a business to the person who owns the business. (Based on this page from city-data.com I’m guessing the Brabo family owns Lalo Development).

There’s nothing wrong with buying something for a dollar, especially if it’s just a title transfer from a company you own to your personal property. But it sure makes it harder to figure out what the original cost was, and that makes it hard for me to guess whether $1.1M is in line with the money put into the place.

Another weird detail: Brabo is also listed as the sales agent for the unit. Does that mean he’ll take a realtor’s commission as well? That would be pretty brilliant.

Anyway, Zillow guesses the property is worth just over half the asking price. Anyone care to hazard guesses about the eventual sale price, the amount of time it will spend on the market, and what you’d be willing to pay for a Davis Square loft-style condo?

I almost felt sorry for Kevin Cullen

I got a shout-out from Universal Hub for my recent Kevin Cullen takedown, and felt a little bad about it. Maybe I should have written a critique rather than a series of insults.

But then today, he’s got a new piece titled “Circus Comes to City Hall” that’s not just sloppy but nearly incomprehensible. Besides accusing Chuck Turner of being a Communist because he’s got a funny beard, I’m just not sure what Cullen’s trying to say. At various points he seems to be arguing that it’s disgusting to see people accused of crimes trying to defend themselves and that the lawyers who defend them are morally deficient. But he might also just be trying to revive the word “pinko.”

We all know that newspapers are in trouble for a variety of reasons, but tripe like Cullen’s recent output certainly isn’t going to be what saves them.