James Tauber's Blog 2004/12/29
Film Project Update: The Long Journey Home
Sending the DVDs to festivals has, so far, gone smoothly. The same can't be said for the 20 Tom sent back to me (recall the mastering had been done in Australia but the duplication in the US).
Tom went to the UPS shop on Saturday 18th December. Once the package was in the system, they were claiming an arrival estimate of Wednesday 22nd December. This seemed optimistic at the time. I thought 23rd was a possibility. Backworking, that would mean it would have to arrive in Sydney on 22nd and hence leave California by late on 20th.
The package, however, was not even picked up from the UPS shop until 6pm on Monday 20th. This meant it didn't fly out of New Hampshire until 10pm that night. At that point I knew it probably wouldn't make it by Christmas. The arrival estimate, however, was still showing 22nd.
It arrived in Ontario, California at 7.10am on 21st and within a few hours, had been seized by customs (or whatever "PKG DELAY-ADD'L SECURITY CHECK BY GOV'T OR OTHER AGENCY- BEYOND UPS CONTROL" means).
Finally at 3.44am on 23rd December, another hub scan was done. The arrival estimate was still showing as 22nd but at least there was a chance it was going to make it on a flight pretty soon and make it into the country by Christmas at least.
But, alas, no new scans. It didn't make it on a flight on 23rd or the 24th. By 27th there was still no new scan. Then on 28th December, ten days after the package had been sent, there was another hub scan done at Ontario, California. It still hadn't left the US!
Then, a few hours later, another dreaded: "PKG DELAY-ADD'L SECURITY CHECK BY GOV'T OR OTHER AGENCY- BEYOND UPS CONTROL"
I can only guess that the customs officials just really like the film. Hey guys, keep a couple of copies, just send the rest on please!
UPS is still showing the arrival estimate as...you guessed it...22nd December.
by jtauber : Created on Dec. 29, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : Categories alibi_phone_network : (permalink)
More On LinkRanks Ups and Downs
Recently, I observed large jumps in the PubSub LinkRanks for jtauber.com and attributed it to influential sites coming in and out of the 10-day window PubSub uses.
However, in a comment to Trevor Cook's entry on the jumps, the PubSub CEO responded:
The reason for the sudden shift is that we increased the granularity of how we measure linkranks. Specifically, we added individual blogs from the various hosting services for the first time (e.g. livejournal.com/johndoe) - that has suddenly shifted everyone's ranking. Bob Wyman, our CTO, dropped 30,000 places (much to his chagrin). Check out his blog for more details - http://bobwyman.pubsub.com
While it has obviously affected some blogs in the downward direction, I've been sub-50,000 ever since.
by jtauber : Created on Dec. 29, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)
Upgrade Apologies
I've upgraded this site to Leonardo 0.4.0rc3. Apologies to feed readers for the numerous atom entries whose modification dates got changed as a result.
by jtauber : Created on Dec. 29, 2004 : Last modified Feb. 8, 2005 : (permalink)