Ryan j Budke

Ok, so it’s not for a few months (June to be exact, but I’m really excited that my mom and dad are firming up their plans to come and visit this summer and I’m pumped up. Last year I went a reeeaaaaalllly long time without seeing my family or friends from back home, which was strange, so it’s good to know an exact date that I’ll be able to see them.

I went to Disneyland today to celebrate my 28th birthday and I had an absolute blast. Lon and I had a lot of fun creating a whole fake tweetup (yes that’s exactly as nerdy as it sounds) and when I got home and read today’s Savage Chicken comic, it was just a bonus.

YouTube – Word of iPod: A Tale of Love.

Very creative. Although, that seems like a redundant waste of iPods.

Don LaFontaine, “King of Voiceovers”, Dies at 68. If you’ve seen a movie trailer in the past 2+ decades, chances are you’ve heard Don LaFontaine’s iconic voice. He’s mostly known for doing the “In a world…” style of movie trailers, famously recording the voiceovers for Terminator 2 and The Godfather, but has lent his voice to everything from videogames, comedy sketches and cartoons.

He’s also been parodied by a number of comedians and in a number of skits, but probably most famously by Pablo Francisco. I had the pleasure of meeting both Don and Pablo last year, during the first time they had ever met face to face to boot, and you couldn’t ask for two nicer guys.

Don wrote me a really nice email a few days later, and it was really humbling to be in direct contact with a Hollywood legend. You’ll be missed Don.

In a world… without Don LaFontaine… everything seems a little less… dramatic.

A Couple of My Rules for Startups – Blog Maverick.

One of my favorite parts:

6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine.

I just got done watching a documentary about the drug (specifically cocaine) traffic in Miami in the late 70’s/early 80’s called Cocaine Cowboys. It’s absolutely mind-boggling the impact that the drug had on the city. There was so much cash involved that banks in MIami went from dealing with on average $12 million annually with the federal reserve, to $600 million cash. A 5000% increase!! Whole sections of the town’s business survived on not only the money itself, but the type of clients that the money brought in, so when the trade went bust, so did the town.

The face of Miami was literally changed by cocaine. They suspect that an insane 85% of urban development was in some way shape or form funded by drug money during the city’s rapid 1980’s growth.

It’s a hard line to draw, the one where someone is spamming your site with submissions, or just honest to goodness trying to get their voice out there. Although we do allow anyone to post a link to anywhere (within reason) else on the web, we are a "social" site, and I think that’s where it’s easiest to tell between those who are just in it for themselves, and those that are trying to give as much as they receive.

Eliot sums up our stance on mass submissions in this article from WAXY.ORG

So Digg is apparently having just a few issues at the moment in how its top users have felt they’ve been treated. A topic that I think deserves a long hard look. We’ve had similar situations at Propeller (formerly Netscape), and they’re never easy, but we always came out a much stronger and richer site because of it. Personally, I don’t like Digg’s behind the scenes methods, I think that leads to a very us against them mentality. It’s also naive to think that any completely open and social site could survive without an editorial layer. There’s always going to be spam, there’s always going to be questionable content, and there’s always going to be a need to combat those things. The major difference is that at Propeller, we put those parts of the site on display. That way you not only have a more direct means of reporting problems, and thus helping the site to grow, but also someone that can be held accountable when it’s not living up to your standards.

I’d like to invite anyone from Digg that’s feeling “disenfranchised” to come and spend some time at Propeller for a few days. Not only that, but if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get a hold of me directly either via email (Ryan@propeller.com) or IM (Ryan45209). I’m not trying to “steal” users from Digg in doing this (some of our paid employees are among Digg’s top users, and I read the site everyday), I just want the guys and gals who feel like they’ve been put out by Digg to know that there are other venues who may appreciate them more.

Again, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Heath Ledger passed away some time either today or last night. There are still a lot of details coming in, so there’s all kind of discrepancies (anyone from his pharmacist, Mary Kate or Scientology could have led to his death at this point). I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was one of my “favorite actors”, but he was certainly someone I always liked to perform. He was phenomenal in Brokeback Mountain, Lords of Dogtown is worth skipping through for his parts only, and I’ve always had a soft spot for 10 Things I Hate About You (mostly because it led to a hilarious conversation between some of my best friends and an ex of mine with the punchline being “You’d make a horrible lesbian”).

Heath Ledger is also playing the part of the Joker in this summer’s Batman Begins sequel, and he’s been getting tons and tons of early buzz about this role. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before… The best Joker ever… etc. It’s going to be extremely disappointing to have to watch that in retrospect. My thoughts and prayers go out to Heath’s family and friends.

Not only did JJ Abrams (and crew) create one of my favorite recent movies, and one of my favorite tv shows in Lost, but he also seems to be a generally all around cool guy. Eliot sent me this video of him giving a talk at the TED Conference, and it shows that he’s got a wicked sense of humor and a love for all things magic. For those that didn’t know, he’s also remaking Star Trek which will debut in December, and in doing so gets to almost fulfill one of Randy Pausch’s lifelong wishes.

If you’re asking who Randy Pausch is, I could tell you (a Computer Science Professor at Carnegie Mellon with terminal cancer), but it wouldn’t hold a candle to the man himself. When you can, please watch this video, it’s long, but after it’s over, you’ll realize that it wasn’t really that long.

JJ Abrams saw this video as well, and wrote this to Mr. Pausch:
Hi there — I’m JJ Abrams, director of the new Star Trek movie.

Best,
JJ

Very cool JJ, very very cool.

To read some more details about it, you can check out Mr. Pausch’s blog at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html.