An entertaining and bizarre photo blog that is exactly what its title says:
kim jong-il looking at things

via Witness This

The deal covers 45 games. The majority of the games will be on cable, but NBC will broadcast two regular-season games and two playoff games as well as appearances by the U.S. men’s national team.

via latimes.com

I’m not sure if todays announcement by NBC adds credence to the growth of soccer in the States or if it’s just media companies muscling each other for broadcast rights. Either way, it seems to be a win for Major League Soccer.

MLS Commissioner Don Garber told Sports Business Daily:
“I’ve watched with envy what NBC has done for the NHL,” he said. “We hope NBC can do for soccer what they’ve been able to do for hockey.”

A letter from Michael Bay to movie theater projectionists is floating around the internet today. Bay is the second director (see also Tree of Life director Terence Malick) in recent weeks to communicate publicly and directly with theaters in regards to projection practices.

Transcript of the letter:

Hello I’m Micheal Bay, Director of Transformers -

Dear Projectionist,

I’m proud to have you presenting Transformers — Dark of the Moon. We worked very hard to make this the very best 3D live action film.

To help counter the recent trend of audiences being underwhelmed by ‘dark dingy’ looking 3D, we have invented various post production processes never before used in this format to enhance sharpness, improve contrast, and render more vibrant colors.

In it critical your projectors play the brightness levels specified for the best results. We also have created a new “Platinum 6 version” of Transformers, for the ultimate in 3D experience, to be played in auditoriums capable of 6-foot lamberts of light on the screen (available to certified auditoriums only).

We are all in this together. Your theatres invested a lot of money in this equipment and we work very hard to deliver a great experience. Projectionists are of ultimate importance because your expertise defines the audience’s experience.

Let’s make the audience believe again.

All the best,

Michel Bay

The US Men’s National Team suffered a sobering 4-2 defeat to Mexico in the Gold Cup Final on Saturday night. The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA was host to over 90k soccer fans.

The Good

• the first 20 minutes
• freddy adu
• national awareness of soccer

The Bad

• clunky, predicatable playing style
• tim howard
• defensive line

Do we need better players or a new strategy?

Says ESPN’s James Martin:

But the ease at which El Tri was able to get behind the U.S. back line with simple diagonal balls, you’d have thought they’d devised some revolutionary way to play the game. Does the U.S.’s inability to handle these types of basic situations come down to skill, or coaching, or both? These discussions wouldn’t have been front and center if the Americans had won. But they should be now. via ESPN

Right on. There was a point in the first half where we were up by two and yet continued to play like we were down a goal in the 90th minute. On first viewing, it was difficult to associate fault with a particular area of the team. Everyone was making mistakes and no one grabbed the game by the scruff. Where was the maturity in the side? For all this talk about an aging back line (Bocanegra age 32, Cherundulo 32, Gooch 29, Goodson 29) there was little cohesiveness or maturity shown.

Tim Howard’s Gripe

“CONCACAF should be ashamed of itself,” Howard told Yahoo! Sports. “I think it was an [expletive] disgrace that the entire post-match ceremony was held in Spanish. You can bet your [expletive] if we were in Mexico City it wouldn’t all be in English.” – Tim Howard via goal.com

Nobody will disagree with you, Tim. Nor does anyone really care about that at the moment.

Neat web site nskyc.com/ represents the average color temperature of the New York City skyline via a colored tile. Every five minutes, a new photo is snapped and a color calculated. Mousing over the tiles reveals the color in hexadecimal format.

Ive been complaining about this the month Woot starting charging us NYers tax. There is no excuse for not disclosing this in the total cost first order screen. After all Woot, knows our zip code so they should just factor it in. Only on the last order screen does the tax show up. By that time, some people instinctively click the final order button without realizing that the price had changed from the first order screen no tax to the final order screen. DONT FORGET TO USE THE COUPON CODE “TAXSUCKS” TO GET $5 OFF. At least, that means that we NYers get FREE s/h. And to Woots credit, that $5 coupon is given at their loss. They dont profit from the taxes which all goes to NY, but they still have to pay to ship. In other words, residents of Texas, Washington where parent company Amazon is located and New York are a burden to Woot!

via Woot: The Community: Woots: Kingston SSDNow 128GB SATA 2 Solid State Drive.

As of version 1.8, Thesis includes not only the standard set of core web-fonts but also 28 new web-fonts from the Google Font Directory.  With such a large list to choose from, I was pleased to find a great post at themeBIG with outputs of all of the fonts used in the thesis theme.

I love the execution of this simple yet excellent third/fourth/fifth-screen app. As we progress into the multi-device era, the demand for increased usefulness from non-active devices will only increase. Save your visions of fully extensible interconnected consumer screen experience happening anytime soon. This developer took the most sensible path. He made a dead simple app with a single focus. Great job.

“Trickle is a Twitter display for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Simply launch Trickle and let it do its thing. ” via trickleapp

Found via vagabondish

The FIFA World Cup committee announced this week that Russia will be host to 2018 World Cup and Qatar will be host to the 2022 World Cup. With the the vast cultural and economic implications of hosting the world’s largest sporting event came responses both as varied as they were emotionally intense.

England delegates the blame, blames the delegates

England, whose diplomatic trio consisted of Prince William, Prime Minister David Cameron and David Beckham and boatloads of money over the past several years were spurned in the first round of voting by FIFA members. Britain’s FIFA VP Geoff Thomspon was quoted as saying “The votes that were promised clearly didn’t materialise. I never imagined we would go out in the first round.” via SoccernetJust two votes. A slap in the face after what was a sound and well-rounded bid package. C’mon Becks, I thought you had it all under control?

Japan offers live 3D holographic broadcasts, FIFA says nah

According to WSJ, Japan will not be eligible to host the World Cup until 2034. The Japanese had a much more restrained bid package and because they co-hosted the World Cup eight years ago with South Korea it seemed unlikely that they would be selected so soon. The major talking point with Japans bid, however, was a pitch to simulcast 3D holographic full field broadcasts to stadiums around the world. Yes, you heard right. Holograms. As engadget wrote “Did you get that, world? Japan was offering you 3D holographic full field broadcasts, and you just turned a cold shoulder.”

Japan’s world cup 2022 bid video