I have tried everything under the sun to create entertainment for myself...or at least shift my lifestyle in a way to fulfill my entertainment needs for the few hours a night I have to consume entertainment.  I have a Roku for streaming TV and movies to my television from Netflix, a Wii when I need to rock some tennis or ski my fat backside down a mountain missing 7 flags (ug, I know), I have a Tivo for time shifting content of my choosing from network and cable broadcasts, I have a 5 disk DVD changer, I have the highest level cable with HD + "On Demand", I have an iTouch full of video podcasts and audio podcasts...  Basically at any given moment between 6pm and 10pm I should be in complete control of how I spend my evenings...at the mercy of NONE....even the big whig "we know better than you what you want to watch" network broadcasts.

But even with all of this technology at my fingertips, I still have been finding myself struggling in the evenings to entertain my brain in either a fun way or a meaningful way.  I'd say 1/4 the time, I am generally enthusiastic about what I find on TV.  I have certain television programs I dig. The Big Bang Theory, Dirty Jobs, Survivor (I know...get off my ass), Big Brother (I know...get off my ass), The Amazing Race, Mythbusters, The Office, and a handful of others.  But the other 3/4 of the time from 6-10pm I am searching out things...looking for something that doesn't suck...or at least doesn't suck enough for me to turn the channel.

Tonight, thanks to a posting on Facebook, someone pointed me in the direction of http://live.twit.tv.  I thought "why not, it's either freaking American Idol, which I hate, or some crap on cable about UFOs or Monsters...."  So over I switched to watch Leo Laporte, a guy I listen to weekly on This Week in Tech.  Well I hve just spent the last 3.5 hours watching Leo Laporte and his various guests create shows, discuss technology, discuss the podosphere, and basically entertain my nerd brain this entire time.  I actually have had my 50" LCD Sony Wega TV turned off for hours because I've been watching this stream on my Macbook (holy crap, 24% battery left..I better charge).

So is this the future of my nerd entertainment?  Have I just evolved from a nerd that watches Cranky Geeks on my iPod from the toilet, listens to TWIT at work, and generally hits G4 TV every now and then for nerd news delivered by random hot chick into a dude that has spent way too much money on technology to satisfy my nerd entertainment cravings only to spend every waking moment watching video streams of nerd news on the internet instead of watching the cable I pay $130 a month for?  

 Leo Lapore, Twit, the entire Twit.tv network are far more entertaining to this geek than crappy broadcast television.  The few things I actually dig I will probably continue to Tivo and catch when time permits...but my days of watching "Extra Extra" just because it is on at 6:30 and it's either that or Wheel of Fortune, which I can't watch because our stupid dog barks at the door every time a correct letter "ding" dings (the dog thinks it's the freaking doorbell). are completely over.  I think I have truly set my mind at ease with not having to watch my TV and my cable just because it's a big TV and I am paying out the ass for cable programming.

If it sucks, it sucks...and I won't watch.  I will find my own content....I will watch it when I want and how I want....I will not be forced into the mind numbing boredom of crap, crap, crap any more....I, my friends, will watch nerd shows on the internet.  Thank you very much Leo Laporte! 

I recently decided I'd try out the Google Analytics service to see if it was any better than StatCounter.com, who I have used for years.  Much to my delight, the details were about the same.  What did throw me, though, was the key word searches that landed people here on Nerdnology.com.

The #1 item people have come here for was the short review I wrote of the iPhone game "Field Runners" and it seems that "field runners strategy" was the key to people arriving at this .com.  So apparently there is a large market for strategies on iPhone games...at least that iPhone game.  I think due to the fact that I, too, enjoy iPhone games and there is obviously a market for discussion of said games, I might try to do some more iPhone game review blogging in the future.

The second thing that has really driven traffic to this site lately has been the post I did regarding how to tell programmably how many leap years are between two dates. I don't find this overly surprising, as when I was googling suggested solutions prior to writing my own code, I didn't see very much.  It's nice knowing that spending the time to write code to solve my problem and sharing it with the world might be helping out some other programmers out there.

The biggest single day hit came when I posted about how my 4-year-old daughter was going to switch to Linux on her PC, the "orange one" as she refers to Ubuntu.  This hit didn't come from Google search terms, though.  It came from a posting I did over at www.digg.com, located here, and netted nearly 500 hits in a matter of a few days.  It also gained me the most Diggs for any of the 23 posts I've done over there with a whopping grand total of 59!  haha.  So there is also a blogging market for cute stories about 4-year-old girls preferring one OS to another.

Another interesting tidbit of information relating to traffic and this site is that the video podcast I worked on for a while and eventually published to YouTube, episode 1 of Nerdnology was about the Roku Netflix player, only netted about 550 views on YouTube.  Amazingly, though, my 9 minute long no audio, only songs playing in the background, unibody MacBook unboxing has had over 11,000 views on YouTube!

So taking these things into consideration, it appears that there is for sure a market for things written about the iPhone, iPhone games, cute stories of kids and computers, and people love to look at Macs.   And it seems that these are all things I enjoy too.  Knowing this, I may attempt to refocus this blog into something a little more friendly to people interested in such things and less on my quest for a Wii.  It would sure be nice to get traffic here on a variety of topics, though.  Perhaps I just need to adjust the way I ping the internet so Google will grab my posts in a more meaningful way.

That's all for now, just sharing... 

I unbox, display, discuss and connect my new Roku Netflix video streaming player!

YouTube link:  YouTube video!

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