I just started noticing this week that my head is actually gone. That's right. Every time I look at a posting I have made in someone's blog comments or whatever, my TV.com avatar image is actually gone. That's right, gone. Is this the basis for a new series or is there a glitch in TV.com. Or worse still, has it always been this way and I just never noticed? I do have an icon. It's that guy from the TV series about the special investigative unit (Special Unit 2 or something like that) which investigated supernatural phenomena. The icon shows up at the top of my profile page but nowhere else, now.

I submitted my first episode quotes ever this evening. I hope they get accepted. It was kind of fun. Thank goodness I have a TiVo. I had to go back and forth several times for each one, just to get every word right. Hopefully, it was worth it. I hope they accept them. I am pretty close to Level 5 now. When my quotes go through, I think I will reach it. I want to be Level 5 before next week. Just a personal goal of mine.

Anybody know if there are any codes like [show]Series Name[/show] or [person}Actor Name[/person] or [user]User Name[/user]. Because I am pretty sure that there ought to be. Hardcoding links to user, actor, and show names directly via URLs is pretty brittle - I know that. One thing changes, like the host name or the top-level "directory" name in the URI, and the whole site would break, if people did that. Still, I am starting to get really strong urges to cite the names of shows and have the name be a hyperlink to that show's page on here. Ditto to link to other users, when I am thanking/congratulating them in my weblog here. Can anybody please, please help me find the technical documentation for content writers on this site? I have found generic bbcode documentation off-site. But what I have noticed on other sites which use the bbcodes, the web developers for the site add their own codes for things that are topical to the site. The Last.fm music social website is a great example of this. They have bbcodes: album, track, and artist - or something like that. They also have place, and tag - to link to certain places (countries, really) and certain tags. Anyway, it's so handy. It is really indispensable. I wish something like it were here. Here are the last.fm bbcodes so you can see for yourself. They include the "standard" bbcodes, with the extra ones I mentioned.

This show sounds like it has a hilarious premise. It is called Puppets Who Kill. I cannot help but imagine that perhaps it has some slightly pointed social satire commentary buried under the vernier of an absurdly hilarious comedy. But forget about that. I also found that Netflix.com carries it, so I just added it to my rental queue. Now, I am in a hurry to watch/return the DVDs I currently have checked out from Netflix so I can see Puppets Who Kill next week. I guess this show will help me prepare for surviving on the mean streets of Canada, should I ever go up there for a vacation. It's a Canadian show. The more I think about it, the more brilliant the creation of this show sounds. I would love to meet the producer/writer someday.

On a whim, I checked my TV.com profile page for validity using the free W3 Markup Validator service. It is not valid. Not that it is anything unusual to be invalid. But it does pose problems when accessing the site. The more novel the software, the more trouble it will have with the site. The whole point of the web switching from HTML document format to XHTML document format was to ensure that syntax rules could be defined, obeyed, and tested. It would be nice if someone from TV.com, or their PHP portal framework supplier, took a look at this. From what I can tell, the problem is in the generated XHTML markup. So, it probably only needs to be fixed in one place in the programming and then everything will fall in line.

Looks like I will reach Level 5 around this weekend sometime. Will I be able to do anything special then? I mean, not see through walls and fly around - but that would be cool too.

There is a document format that is used to summarize the content of a site. Most typically, it is used as a news feed or to track recent entries in a blog. I have not figured out how to get RSS feeds from my blog here yet. So far it does not seem to be possible. However, there is a handy RSS feed for People magazine. They publish their latest headlines via it. They also are extra nice in providing a listing of websites and desktop programs you can use to monitor their feed with. Of course, these tools work with other feeds as well. Here is the page with the instructions on how to get started with People magazine news feed(s). Make sure you read their terms of use. Obviously, they don't want you to go off and republish or copy this material. They just provide it as a courtesy so you can get notified of important goings-on in the world of entertainment and celebrities. And of course, you will realize how useful the People magazine and its web site are to you!

Wow, this week must have been a killer episode of 24. They also managed to fit If C. Thomas Howell into this week's show as well. That guy is a great actor. He has been in some really cool movies over the years. I really liked some of the sci-fi movies he has starred in. I am glad he is still around, still acting. I think I am going to make sure that I set my TiVo to hold onto this episode if I do not have time to watch it this evening.

Earlier this week, for everyone else. Later this week, for me - since I got it on TiVo. Apparently, her character sort of suffered from the Wesley Crusher effect. It came up in an interview I just read. Not by that name but by the general syndrome. Unbelievable stuff happens to her and she saves the day. I had not realized that was a problem. I mean, what do you watch a TV show for anyway? So ordinary people can do ordinary things for an hour while you eat your dinner or get ready for bed? She seems like a good actress. At least nobody was complaining about that.

I just read in George Furgus's blog here that Darren McGavin passed away in February 2006. He was a great actor. He made the original "Night Stalker" series back in the 1970s so realistic. The monsters from that show were fantastic but his acting made the suspension of disbelief really work. The fear would really take hold once a week when I watched that show. It was really thrilling. So sad to hear he is gone. I was really sad when the series ended. Now, sad again to hear he is gone as well.