brian's blog

Weezer + Foo Fighters concert was solid. Some highlights:

• No alcohol service?! What's that about?
• Weezer replaced "Green Day" with "Foo Fighters" in El Scorcho's lyrics; funny
• El Scorcho is an awesome awesome song
• Josh thinks Green Day (who visited Seattle recently) and Weezer must have the same production company, since both shows had a) a song where they invited an audience member up to play acoustic, b) an acoustic solo on a small stage at the back of the arena, and c) a grand finale of colorful confetti showering the crowd (Green Day's confetti had a printed grenade symbol, Weezer had the Weezer "W" logo)
• Foo Fighters had a 15 foot tall wall of giant old speakers behind the stage. Very cool design.
• Dave Grohl jammed in the empty general admission area at the back of the arena at one point, only a few feet from us. A girl in the spotlight beside Grohl was completely freaking out, trembling and flailing, and literally screamed with frustration when her camera phone wouldn't work properly.
• Grohl spoke a few times about his life in Seattle, living up on Aurora, shopping for long johns at Fred Meyer (during the grunge days), etc
• Not too surprisingly, Grohl had a turn at the drums for a song, swapping roles with the Foo drummer. (Weezer's lead, Cuomo, swapped with the drummer for a song, too.)
• At least 10 people from my team in 4 separate parties were at the concert. MSN Music likes Weezer & Foo.

Foo Fighters and Weezer are playing a double header concert tomorrow in Seattle. Josh picked up some tickets at the last minute today, so Josh, Scott, Heather, and I will be there. I think I'm the only one that likes both bands equally and doesn't want to walk out of one half of the concert.

Looks like Waterloo posted a web page with photos & a transcript from Bill Gates' recent visit. They promise a video soon, though I hear it'll be edited for some material they don't want leaking too broadly. (Apparently they were strictly checking people from cameras and recording devices at the door...not to mention weapons, of course.)

Living above a grocery store is super convenient, but now that it's colder out I'm starting to get looks as I shop while wearing sandals, jeans, and a t-shirt. I think I'll wear pajamas one day for kicks.

I'm not sure if this was lost in the noise of the video iPod / Front Row announcements, or if this was released earlier, but Apple's new high definition movie trailers are incredible. The largest resolution is over two thousand pixels across.

The new Harry Potter trailer is particularly awesome awesome awesome.

From the Globe and Mail, Gates strokes Canada's tech talent:

About 360 Waterloo graduates and 1,160 co-op students have been hired by Microsoft, and some years the company has hired more people from Waterloo than any other university in the world, Mr. Gates said.

IFILM's got a bootlegged copy of the Napolean Dynamite / Bill Gates video they showed at the talk.

Looks like Bill Gates is coming to Waterloo tomorrow. 5000 people are fighting for one of 675 tickets. (Some people are not happy.)

In other Waterloo news, the SLC has a great blog. (And apparently the SLC also has a crush on Lindsay Lohan. Nice.)

So Apple announces a Video iPod and $1.99 music video & TV show downloads via iTunes today. The music video piece I'm not surprised about; the labels have been looking to monetize their music videos ever since Universal Music started charging X pennies per play for on-demand streaming. I'm pessimistic that users will actually want to purchase music videos, though, considering:

a) they're freely available online (granted, they're ad-supported), and
b) there are very few music videos that one would want to watch over and over at one's convenience (though I can think of one awesome exception)

But the TV episode downloads are another thing entirely. I've been interested in this for a while; I think there's considerable user interest in downloading a show or a season and then watching it on a PC, on a TV, on a portable device, etc. The idea of downloading an episode of Lost onto your Video iPod and then walking it over to your TV to watch (via the video out connector) is sa-weet.

But at a 320x240 video resolution? C'mon, Apple. I'm sure it makes sense when you watch it on an iPod, but that's just too small to nicely full-screen onto a PC or your TV. I wonder if that was mandated by Apple (to avoid needing to sell -- or transcode -- multiple versions of a single video), or by ABC (to avoid cutting into their lucrative DVD sales).

Busy work day. A big chunk was spent meeting and learning about the RealNetworks settlement + deal. Even though there's an impact on our team, the news was definitely a surprise for most in MSN Music. Though, given that RealNetwork's stock soared 34% today, it's not too shocking that this sort of news needs to be kept under wraps.

In other work related news, I'm no longer the only Waterloo grad in MSN Entertainment. Justin started today, finally giving us some weight against the tyrrany of MIT alums.

From BusinessWeek, The Real Reasons You're Working So Hard:

You and a colleague in another part of the company may dream up a great idea for a new product -- but it takes months to get approvals from your boss, his boss, and their boss. Or the corporate bigwigs order you to join a taskforce that is supposed to promote collaboration and innovation -- but it ends up taking a big chunk of your time. And no matter how many layers of management were supposed to be taken out, there always seem to be more people on the e-mail distribution lists.

There's much more to the article than the above, but the above struck me. It's impossible to eliminate all possible redundancies and inefficiencies in a large company, and employees certainly can't spend huge chunks of their time on projects that don't have support from management. But most of my frustrations at work stem from the types of problems listed above.

The problems are clear, but what's the solution? What's even possible? More individual leeway in making decisions? Disable email access from 11am to 4pm? Allow Google-style "free time?"

Or are these problems just inevitable in a large company? Are they not even problems?

Taking the 545 bus to work yesterday morning was an adventure. Before I even sat down, a truck suddenly cut the bus off, causing the bus driver to slam violently on the brakes. People went flying and fell everywhere -- some must have travelled a good 5-10 feet when there wasn't another seat in front to stop their momentum. I was in the aisle and would have flown as well if I hadn't managed to keep my grip on a pole.

Surprisingly, no one seemed injured, though many people did take "Incident Courtesy Cards" to fill out. We discovered later that the truck actually hit the bus' bike rack, and wrecked one of the attached bike's tires. (Mine was undamaged.)

Okay. I've made it too difficult for myself to post on this blog. I've kept too much of a gap between postings, which makes it much more intimidating for myself to make a post. The longer the silence, the more "important" and significant I feel a new post needs to be to justify a break from the silence.

So, a promise: For the next two years, I vow that every posting will have about as much meaning as a stick of butter. There.