The TV show that I’ve come to adore so recently, that has — in fact — been the only TV show I’ve watched recently, is being cancelled by CBC. Why? I can’t imagine. jPod is a phenomenally amazing and hilarious show. It’s deep and it’s funny, and I even like it better than the book that it’s based on. It is the only thing I watch on TV, other than the occasional Mythbusters and Family Guy re-runs. It seems to me that this is the first time CBC has successfully penetrated the 20-25 year old demographic, as before this show I never watched CBC. Not even for Hockey. (Watching the previews for shows during jPod commercial breaks reminded me why … Little Mosque on the Prairie? No thanks.)

But jPod was amazing!

I was amazed when Raugi Yu (Kam Fong) posted a comment on my jPod post, and whether it’s legit or not is irrelevant, I think we should all fight to help save this wonderful TV show:

Hi all, Raugi Yu here. I play Kam Fong on jPod. Okay, so you may have heard that jPod has not been picked up for a second season by CBC. I got the call a couple of days ago about it.

At first I was upset and disappointed and immediately thought of the great times and experiences I had shooting jPod and how much I would take from that…There was one problem though…I kept wondering why. Why not have a season 2? I started to hear what others were saying. I heard anger, resentment and frustration. So many of you my friends along with thousands, yes thousands, of strangers have expressed outrage over the cancellation of jPod.

I got angry too.

One may think that, “Sure, I’d be angry too if I lost a steady gig like that”. Well that’s not what I’m angry about. Gigs come and go. It is no huge hardship for me to go back to auditioning and booking and living my life as an actor. It is my passion. No. It angers me that the CBC our nation’s television station (yes I know among other things) chooses to cancel a show that is so cutting edge, fun, smart and CANADIAN. So many viewers have gleaned joy from watching jPod week after week. We look forward to it; I dare say we yearn for it.

I’d like to go down swinging. Many of you, who know me well, know that I am quite a loner and I don’t ask for help often even when I need it. I guess I‘m asking now.

I’m a pretty chilled out go with the flow kind of guy, but I recognize that there are times in my life when I’ve got to fight. In surveying the land I recognize that I need a lot of help.

If you feel you can, please call CBC at: 1-866-306-4636, choose option 1 for English programming and choose option 1 again for the “Attendant” then ask for “Audience Services”. Audience Services will answer and at that point tell them how you feel about jPod being cancelled and how you would like to see a season 2.

OR E-mail them at http://www.cbc.ca/contact/

I alone can reach out to all of you and if all of you can reach even 2 people and we get that people ball rolling…we could possibly be jamming up some phone lines at CBC. Am I being naïve and hopeful? I hope so; it feels better than lying down and taking it.

Thanks everyone! I really appreciate all of you for watching the show and for all the great things you’ve all been saying about it.

Longevity and persistence is the key. Phone or e-mail, if you can do it everyday.

I send my love to you all and just to be clear, that love stays whether you phone, e-mail, write or not.

Thank you all! Raugi Yu A.K.A Kam Fong

You can be sure I’ll be calling CBC tomorrow

jPod or Microserfs?

I enjoyed jPod a lot, since it felt to me like an updated Microserfs, but I didn’t like it nearly as much as I loved Microserfs. Both are written by Douglas Coupland, but Microserfs is easily one of my all time favourite books. I first read it (according to my blog) in January 2004, and I’ve re-read at least 4 times since then. Each time I read Microserfs I get so much more out of it. The book is chock full of references to nerd culture and geekdom, yet all tied together in such a meaningful way. When I read Microserfs, I felt like it was a book that understood me.

jPod was a similar style of novel to Microserfs, but it never resonated with me as strongly. I always felt that jPod was simply too over-the-top and exaggerated for me to relate to the characters. jPod is also full of nerd references, but I think it’s to a fault. At one point it feels like the references are simply there for the sake of paying lip service to something that the readership will recognize, chuckle silently to themselves and shrug. Basically, jPod felt to me kind of how xkcd feels to Nick.

jPod on TV is so much better!

The funny thing is that I’m completely taken by the TV show. I love it! I’ll watch an episode over breakfast with my morning coffee and be in an enlightened mood for the rest of the day. I think part of the reason is that the wackiness and over-the-top-ness work so much better in live action than in prose. The same things that turned me off from the novel make for a lively and entertaining television-viewing experience. It’s as if jPod were meant to be televised. The novel lends itself easily to the kinds of amusing, unlikely scenarios that make sitcoms work, but at the same time it’s infused with the social commentary and searching for meaning that Coupland’s characters do so well.

This is the first TV show that I’ve followed in ages. I’ll keep watching. :)

Her speech is ripped straight out of Neuromancer. Awesome.

Kathy Sierra, highlight of my morning syndicated feeds, invites her readers to rise up to the challenge.

So, is there anyone here who isn’t already diligent with their Tivo, who is willing to disable the TV tuner (unplug cable/antennas, etc.) for a week and watch DVDs or shows on the computer? (Under the assumption that for most, viewing habits change dramatically when you shift from having television available 24-7 vs. watching specific shows–as mindful choices–on a computer.)

I think the point is to quit being a slave to the television: turning it on for the sake of having it on, as oppose for the explicit purpose of watching a specific show. There’s a key difference in watching something because you’ve conciously made a decision to do so. So I’m going to give this a shot. As long as I have Diggnation, I think I’ll be fine.

Officially, TV Turn-Off Week started yesterday, so I’m going to make up for the day missed by going up to and including next Monday.

So here’s what I’ve got for clutter atm:

• Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by Stevens & Rago, because I have a programming assignment due on Tuesday (even though it’s finished, I still have some cleaning and tweaking to do on the code).
• Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell, more of a Unix reference than anything else – I haven’t looked at it in a while though but it’s still on my desk!
• Dead Like Me – both seasons on DVD. Hooray for boxing day!
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture and UML Distilled, because of all those SOEN courses this semester.
• The Mythical Man-Month, the “definitive” collection of essays on Software Engineering – which I haven’t even got around to opening yet.
• Battle Royale, the novel I’m currently reading. I had to put it on hiatus for a while but picked it up again. It’s amazing how a book that’s essentially about a class of 9th graders who are sent to a remote island to kill each other can be so … deep. This book is incredible.
• Hackers. I don’t care what anyone else says, this movie is a helluva lot of fun, and I was watching it yesterday in the background while coding.
• Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails. The book on Rails.
• C++ Primer Plus. I brought it to Eng Games with me and still haven’t put it away anywhere. It’s a great reference … but I don’t use it all that often.
• The C Programming Language. This actually belongs to Josh, but this is the original C Programming book by Kernighan and Ritchie. Not even the updated version that follows ANSI C. This is the 1978 functions-look-funny edition. Still, the best reference/book on C ever.
• The Prodigy: Their Law (The Singles 1995-2005). A best-of, and some of the best coding music. Ever.
• NTC’s New Japanese-English Character Dictionary. The biggest dictionary I’ve ever seen. This was a birthday present from a lot of people. I don’t use it as often as I should, though. In fact, I often sit and wonder “Hey, I wonder what japanese word means?” and completely forget the fact that there’s a dictionary right beside me.

Wow, this post made me feel a whole lot nerdier than I would normally admit to being. I’m afraid the less geeky books are all off on a bookshelf somewhere, and not within visual range. I should bring some of those books over to my desk so that next time someone asks me what’s on it, I’ll have more interesting things to say.

Oh!! This book is on my guitar amp, which I can’t see from where I’m sitting right now, but I stare at constantly while rocking out: Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I read it a long time ago and I loved it (though not as much as Slaughterhouse-Five).