Scotty’s Neighborhood

Action Concept, the crowd that makes Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, has an English trailer for the show on its site. I am surprised no English channel has ever picked up the long-running series. Sure, it’s devoid of real plot and there are inconsistencies the size of Düsseldorf itself, but my gosh, is it fun.
   The budget has been cut since its heyday and the ratings are down, but from what I have read in the German press, it still outperforms everything else in its time slot.
   One problem is that the trailer is ancient. The German accent on the American English (why do announcers in Germany all sound the same—is this the same guy as on DW-TV?) might make it too foreign for some English-speaking countries, but who cares?

   As fans can see, Semir’s partners end with Tom Kranich (played by Réné Steinke). Since then, Chris Ritter (Gedeon Burkhard) has joined and been killed off in the course of duty, and Ben Jäger (Tom Beck) has been fielding the sidekick position since. The intro is pre-Chris, though this is still the only one I can recite with my extremely limited German.
   This is the sort of show that might start off at a bad time slot on an English channel and steadily work its way to prime-time. Even if it was dubbed, I am sure it would get plenty of fans.

PS.: I have tried Vox at another office, and I have used it with another ISP. The compose screen either fails to come up or takes several hours. Something is afoot.

Ever wandered into a music or video store here and there are sections marked ‘A–Z’, ‘New Zealand’ and ‘Foreign’?
   The biggest section is the first one, and often we have the smallest section.
   Think about it though: shouldn’t everything not in ‘New Zealand’ be under ‘Foreign’?
   The other one I get a kick out of is ‘World’, which Borders uses. Shouldn’t everything be under ‘World’? I mean, if you have this category, there is no need to have any others.

Who knew that there would be an Already Ghosts group right here in Wellington?!

I managed to get NZ$20 credit thanks to the Real Groovy loyalty card, meaning that I paid a grand total of NZ$10 for these two purchases today:

   I already had the first Casino Royale set, but it lacks a director’s commentary and many of the features one would expect for the NZ$35 I originally paid. I refused to buy the collector’s edition originally because I felt Sony would be getting my money twice. But for NZ$5, why not? Well worth it for all the extra stuff, deleted scenes and fascinating documentaries about the connections Ian Fleming had with the Bahamas (which many Bondphiles would not even know).
   There is even a documentary about the 50-year journey of the novel to this version of the movie, and clips from the first James Bond (with Barry Nelson) and the first time Casino Royale hit the big screen (in 1967, with David Niven—and we do get clips of Barbara Bouchet, Jacqueline Bisset, etc., too).
   Given how basic the Quantum of Solace DVD set is, my bet is that Sony will do this again.
   Secondly, this CD was on special anyway (NZ$5), and it has a few John Barry tracks, plus one Chet Baker one. It’s not the special album that Barry and Baker put together for this film, but considering that was never released in New Zealand, it’s the next best thing. A bit “1990s” in some respects (the Moby track in particular), but it has been ages since I treated myself to some music.

I had a moan about this yesterday on Twitter and Facebook, but seeing another ad for Leverage on the NZ City site brings it all back. Prime is promoting this TNT show a lot, but just as with TV One and Jekyll, they miss the fact that lead actress Gina Bellman is a Kiwi. Come on, folks, how about a bit of national pride? Our Gina is doing well!

How old do you think children should be before they join social networks like Facebook and MySpace?

If they have parental supervision and have a good record of heeding a parent’s warnings, I think one can be flexible on the age. Otherwise, at least 13.
   Are there not some networks just for kids?

It’s nearly eight months since I started the Cars’ group here on Vox. We are now seven members shy of 100, the group is vibrant and spam-free, and I want to thank all members for making it a great place to be.
   We have had spammers come in, but I have been quite active in deleting the obvious ones before they caused any trouble. One or two have got through, and were deleted after they sneaked in one spam post.
   To see how badly things could have got, I visited the old Cars Rock! group today. It still looks like no one is managing it, despite my suggesting to the group creators that I would be happy to help. There are a few legit posts there, but since mid-2009, spammers pretty much control the place, right down to multiple Russian porn posts.
   No problems with that here. We have great posts from all over the world—Japan, the US, Australia and New Zealand most often—and it’s exactly what I hoped the group would become. Thank you.

We watched this (thanks again to Tanya) at the office a few days ago:

   Hyundai, which made one of the cars that got squashed by the 62-year-old woman in the BMW X5 (she has since been arrested), saw a publicity opportunity, and presented the owner with a brand-new i30 Wagon (Elantra Touring in Canada). I know, it’s an opportunity made for bloggers to blog about worldwide, but you know, I really don’t mind being a sucker on this and post this video knowing its purpose. It is a happy ending, as the company says, but it’s also a great brand equity-builder on a global level. It shows that Hyundai is responsive to web culture, and has given its concessionaires and subsidiaries the clout to pull these things off for the good of its customers. It ties in to a promise at the start of the recession that the company would help with customers’ car payments if they lost their jobs.
   One big mistake is that the Toyota Avanza (the car behind the lucky recipient) is in shot for a lot longer than the Hyundai that the owner, Todd Jamison, was presented with.

Vox was dead again for the last couple of days. Daisy has been very good and has replied to my messages, though it’s a bit annoying that no one else at Six Apart has. It still seems this problem is unique to me, but it can’t be if I can’t compose messages on Vox on any one of three different computers. (I’ll be trying from another office shortly, too, and we are both on the same ISP.)
   Complaining about Vox interrupts the flow of these posts a bit, especially when I just wanted to share these Wellington images with you. Christchurch seemed to have better weather when I visited.

Looks like Vox has fixed its problem.
   Here are some shots of Christchurch, at ground level, that I wanted to share. It’s quite a charming city to walk during the day, and these were taken one lunch-break.