Summer 2011: Summer of Disappointment??

I just want to let people know of the progress (or more like the lack of progress) this Summer of the year 2011. We all know how bad things are in Washington, DC with the debt crisis between the Democrats and Republicans. And the hometown Mariners baseball club have lost a franchise record 17, yes 17!, consecutive games!!

But there are other disappointing things that should be addressed besides the obvious:

1. YouTube: It has been about 10 days since the last day of the inaccurate view counts of certain videos. The view counts have yet to be added to my view count data graphs. More disturbing is that when I go to my video page, where it shows all of my videos and view counts for each video, at least two of my videos have been and still are stuck at the same number of views even though they appear to be still counted on other pages.

2. United States Postal Service: Once again we are hearing about possible cutbacks to services such as consolidating operations from 2 places into one or closing down Post Offices for small towns. Having just ordered something from the Post Office and finding their tracking service slow and confusing, closing Post Office locations and consolidating some operations will unlikely fix all of their financial problems.

3. Western Digital: I have been waiting for the WDTV to add some very usable services to make it more Internet friendly such as the Roku or even the Sony Media Player. But since no firmware has been released since about Mid-May of this year, it looks like Western Digital has decided to take the Summer off and go on vacation. What a shame! During this Summer, Hulu could be sold and with the sale of Hulu to Apple or possibly someone else, Hulu could be delayed as a service on the WDTV indefinitely since then they will have to work with the new owners to license the same Hulu Plus service that they already announced was coming to the WDTV Live and WDTV Live Plus and WDTV Live Hub machines. Walmart is getting ready to compete with Netflix this Summer with their Vudu service, and appears Western Digital has not made any announcements about whether they intend to get on the WalMart/Vudu bandwagon yet. I have said it before, and I will say it again. Western Digital needs to start supporting the WDTV better or it is going to go the way of the Flip cameras, which are going away.

It seems like Fall can't get here soon enough!!

My Honest Video Review of the Mibro KingChain 2 Inch Galvanized Security Snap is now on YouTube

My Honest Video Review of the Mibro KingChain 2 Inch Galvanized Security Snap Part Number 491151 has been uploaded to YouTube.

This is a review of a security snap or carabiner that I recently purchased to replace a similar carabiner that broke during a recent camping trip on my Case Logic camera bag that I previously reviewed last Fall.

Please rate and let me know what you think about this review and look for the other reviews and videos I have uploaded onto my NATHANROADINWA YouTube channel such as the one for the Case Logic camera bag that is mentioned in this video.

To see the video, --> Click Here!! <--

YouTube view count problem update

This is an update to the last blog entry. YouTube seems to be counting views again for me, but has yet to add in missing views from the days that weren't counted. These will supposedly be added back in over time. I also want to mention that depending which webpage you look at, the view count can be greater or less than the view count of the same video's view count on a different webpage.

Since I am using YouTube as a free service only, it doesn't bother me much that the view count is off on many of my videos along as this is a temporary situation. But for paying users of YouTube, I could understand why they are upset. If you are paying for something you are not getting, you feel cheated.

Hopefully YouTube will work out these view count bugs completely very soon.

YouTube view count problem continues

Well, I have noticed in the last few days that YouTube is not giving me an accurate count of views of my videos for the last several days. Apparently several others are having this same problem.

I went from over 100 views on July 13th to less than 30 views on July 14th. Only 2 or 3 views were reported on July 15th so far.

This is just to let other fellow YouTubers know that you are not alone if you have a low view count for the last few days and hopefully YouTube will fix this very soon.

My YouTube First Anniversary Spot is now on my YouTube Channel

I have just uploaded a nearly 2 minute spot that is an advertisement for my NATHANROADINWA YouTube Channel since it has been one year since I started uploading my videos to YouTube.

In my first year on YouTube, I have had a little over 23,000 views of my videos. Over 10,000 of those 23,000 views came from my top 4 most viewed videos.

I want to thank all of those who have helped make this channel the success it is today. It wouldn't be the same channel without all of you supporting and viewing my videos.

Please note that the video spot is NOT endorsed by the US Government or YouTube. My NATHANROADINWA YouTube Channel is NOT affiliated with either party.

To see the video, please --> CLICK HERE!! <--

My thoughts on 2 disappointing Summer 2011 TV shows: "Expedition Impossible" and "The Voice"

I haven't talked about TV in quite a while, so here is my opinion of 2 Summer shows which made their debuts this Summer.

First I want to talk about Expedition Impossible which recently started this Summer on ABC. This is Mark Burnett's attempt to do an Amazing Race-type show. Mark Burnett is known for several reality shows with Survivor probably being the most successful one to date. So with a resume that includes Survivor, how can you go wrong?

Well unfortunately Expedition Impossible just isn't a very good show. When you watch this show, it is obvious that certain words and phrases are replaced by the ones used in the Amazing Race such as Pitstop, Team Number 3, etc. with terms such as checkpoint, 3rd place, etc. in order to avoid legal problems.

But the show suffers from a much more serious flaw. Unlike Amazing Race, Survivor, The Apprentice, and other competition reality shows, Expedition Impossible has almost zero strategy involved in it after 2 episodes. It is almost 100% physical endurance challenges. Which means teams that are not as physically strong will most likely be at a disadvantage as the show continues. With the Amazing Race you do have Roadblocks where you can strategically pick a player to perform a challenge. Amazing Race also has Detours, which is a choice between 2 tasks, where the players can choose the task they think they will be better at to get ahead of other teams. Expedition Impossible just completely lacks these kind of strategic elements.

This is ironic that the show has no strategy element to it since the word strategy is often used by many Military organizations and since Mark Burnett is a former Military person himself.

Now why do I call The Voice (which also coincidentally happens to have Mark Burnett's name attached to it as a Producer) which has been a successful show on NBC a "disappointment"?

It mainly has to do with the lousy format of the show. First we had the audition rounds where the contestants sang while the coaches were turned around in their chairs. This was apparently to get us to believe that the coaches wouldn't have picked these contestants based on their physical appearances. Well if you look at this year's Top 4 on The Voice, you have contestants such as a bald headed rocker woman with some facial piercings and a guy wearing a hat that looks like it is currently in style. The point is these people aren't much different in appearances than any other singing talent competition show or artists who are already famous and have very unusual looks like a Lady Gaga.

Then you had the boring battle rounds which lasted way too long. Then we had another round where 2 out of 4 contestants were saved with one being saved by America and the other by their coach. Then when the coaches had 2 contestants left they were allowed to try to bias the vote towards the contestant they wanted to represent themselves in the final instead of allowing only America to decide. This does not make any sense to let the coaches have so much voting influence throughout the entire season when the original premise of the show is that the coaches are obviously not smart enough to pick the contestants on just their overall appearance. And if it wasn't bad enough that the coaches had so much decision power on this show about who stayed or who went all the way up until the week before the Finals round, they all had to regularly get up and perform which makes you wonder if these coaches were doing this for their contestants or for themselves to boost their own music careers.

I am hoping for a complete overhaul of this show when it returns next Winter. But since all 4 coaches are already coming back for next season, I would expect that the show will likely keep most of this current format intact. Which is a shame since it is trying to be several different types of things while doing none of them really well.