June, 26, 2001 archives

humongous entertainment cut 40% of their staff, apparently killing the very cool spy fox, pajama sam, and freddi fish lines. what a shame. it appears that the entire kids software industry (educational and entertainment) has been left to the insipid offerings of knowledge adventure, the learning company, and the mouse house.

here's something appalling -- knowledge adventure, my former employer, didn't even have a product in the top 10 in the home education market for may. at one point, they practically owned that category with the jumpstart line. unfortunately, the peter principle was practically corporate policy there.

some people in north dakota want to change the state's name to just be 'dakota'. "people have such an instant thing about how north dakota is cold and snowy and flat," said former gov. ed schafer. could be because they're mostly right. (the average annual temperature was the second coldest last year, second only to maine by a tenth of a degree, and the elevation ranges from 800 to 3000 feet above mean sea level across the whole state. but it isn't an extraordinarily snowy state -- the average maximum snow depth is only about a foot.)

if the goal is to attract business, i would think coming up with compelling economic data about why north dakota is a better place to do business would be a better thing to spend time on than changing the name of the state.

world wide words is a very cool site that has all sorts of phrase etymologies, like the meaning of monkey's wedding. (and the standard explanation of moot point and how stupid people ruined it.)

the idea of using extractstream to convert tivo-recorded shows into mpeg-2 files that could then be burned on cd-r discs and played in a dvd player is very intriguing. i wonder if it would work.

combine it with broadcast 2000 and it would be fairly straightforward to create commercial-free mini-dvds of things like the simpsons and sports night.

now that i think about it, though, i don't think a cd holds enough data for even a half-hour show compressed with mpeg-2. another reason to get a mac with their dvd burner, i guess.