Jason Clarke

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

The most important and awesome site in the history of the internet.

(Via Kottke)

UPDATE: More!

Hey, prepare for a bleg: I’m looking for an SQL pro to give me a hand with a bit of a tricky sql statement. An Amazon.com gift certificate for $10 (I know, big bucks!) goes to whoever can successfully help me with this issue.

Here’s the deal: I’ve got 3 tables in my database- users, directors, and movies. When my user logs in, I want to display their favorite movies, organized by director. An example of what a user would see when they log in:

Steven Speilberg

* AI
* Minority Report
* ET

Woody Allen

* Annie Hall
* Crimes and Misdemeanors
* Bullets Over Broadway

Now, the problem I’m having is that my attempts to pull both the directors, as well as their films, out of the database, are failing miserably. Instead of pulling one instance of each director along with a list of their movies beneath their name, right now I’m getting:

* One instance of the director’s name displayed for every movie in the movies table

Worse, I also get:

* A complete list of all movies from the movies table displayed under each director’s name (whether or not the movie is by that particular director).

So what I’m asking for (and what’ll score you that sweet Amazon gift card) is this:

* ONE QUERY to pull in the list of directors for a particular user, only outputting one instance of each director.

And:

* ONE QUERY to pull in the particular director’s movies (again, these have to be sorted to make movie.users_userID = current logged in user, because users can have different lists of “favorite movies by fav directors”).

If you can give me a hand writing a quick (but somewhat tricky) sql statement, I’ll be forever grateful. I’ll demonstrate my gratefulness with an Amazon gift card. Send your assistance to jgc-at-jasonclarke.org. Thanks in advance!

UPDATE: Contest over.

New web-based video service enabler Brightcove, founded by one of my favorite web pioneers, Jeremy Allaire, is making a drastic mistake as it launches: for me atleast, its site’s main navigation is completely broken in my version of Firefox.

Not to mention, the entire site is one big flash file. Yikes, but as much as Brightcove’s model may be “web 2.0″, their website certainly is not.

Just as I was editing my long post on “2005: the year of the buyout!”, I learned that Weblogs, Inc. has been bought by AOL.

Holy crap!!

Looking for a pretty easy and usable web project?

How about using the TiVo website (where owners can view and schedule TiVo recordings online) and combining it with some kind of easily hackable online TV listings site (neither Yahoo!’s nor TVGuide.com’s had any kind of feed/API that I could find).

The result would be a simple site that allowed you to browse (or search, of course) upcoming TV listings. When you found one that a friend would like, the site would allow you to pop in their email address, which would then send your friend a link to the show, along with a link to the relevant listing on TiVo’s subscriber site. Your friend could then single-click to confirm, then schedule the recording on their TiVo.

To extend it a bit, also generate an RSS feed of a particular user’s suggestions, so that their aggregate suggestions to friends created a veritable “recommended” list of shows.

You could call the site “GuidemyTiVo.com” or something similar and include a TiVo-centric blog with it.

If you create it, let me know…I’d use it!

PS: HEY, TIVO! Developers are appreciating your HDK, but where’s the API?!?!

Okay, so some folks are suggesting that summer box office was down because the movies were bad. Bereft of proof until recently, they’re now claiming vindication because box office receipts are now up, in a time when “better” movies are traditionally released (the fall).

So…how to find out what’s really happening? There’s no absolute way to know without either polling every single American or perhaps qualifiying intangible factors such as theater quality, pricing, and etc. (again that may involve signifigantly complicated polling.)

But what about this if you’re looking for a way to see if movie quality really matters: Go to Rotten Tomatoes (or Metacritic) and tally up, then average the reviews of all movies released from May-August 2005. Then do the same for the same time period in 2004 (and perhaps even 2003). Then, compare the resulting years’ aggregate reviews with their box office numbers, and then you might have some fact to go with your conjecture.

My hypothesis? That movie quality and box office receipts are NOT corrollary. But hey, I could be wrong.