My grandfather Roger Barr passed away early this morning at the age of 98. He was my mom’s father, and was my last surviving grandparent. He was being cared for by my uncle Steve (his son) and aunt Denice — both medical professionals — and was still sharp and good-humored in his final days. Yesterday Steph Grossman and I got word that he had become unresponsive, and we were able to speak to him one last time via phone. Hopefully he was aware of us at some level, even if he couldn’t answer. Roger served in the Pacific during World War II, translating Japanese communications. He got engaged to my grandmother, Ruth, shortly before leaving for the war, and they were married for over 70 years, until her death in 2014. They lived almost that entire time in Sacramento, California, where Roger ran a small optometry shop and Ruth worked as his office manager. They were heavily involved with their local Unitarian church, and were regulars at a local Scottish dance group. Both of them were big readers. Ruth ran a book club for decades, and one of Roger’s proudest possessions was a leather-bound set of the complete works of Shakespeare that he spent several months saving up for as a young man. He was particularly interested in religion, and was always talking about the latest Biblical scholarship. I remember him once mentioning offhandedly that he had read the Book of Mormon several times for fun. He was also an avid hiker and fitness fanatic. Most mornings he would walk down the block to the local school and run five miles around the soccer field. He would spend weeks at a stretch backpacking in national parks, and even into his 90s he was still regularly climbing to the top of a nearby hill, carrying a backpack full of bricks (because doing it without the bricks was too easy). He was probably the most cheerful, happy-go-lucky person I’ve ever met, and his unbridled optimism almost led to disaster on any number of occasions. (His backpacking stories were full of occasions when he got caught in a blizzard, buried in an avalanche, almost fell off a cliff, faced off with a wildcat, killed a rattlesnake with his walking stick, etc.) Ruth accompanied him on many of these trips, and after he retired they circled the United States in an RV several times. As recently as last year Roger was still getting regular exercise, riding a recumbent tricycle around the parking lot of his assisted living facility. I’m sad that he’s gone, but he certainly lived a life that’s about as long, healthy, happy, and rich in experience as it’s possible to have. He is survived by his four children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandson.

So I had an unpleasant encounter at the movies this weekend. At a Saturday night screening of Noah the guy in the row ahead of me and a couple seats over was using his smart phone through the first ten minutes of the movie. The glare from it was as bright as the film itself and incredibly distracting. Finally I leaned over and hissed, “Could you turn off your phone please?” He didn’t hear me. I tapped the back corner of his seat and repeated myself. (It would probably be fair to say that I tapped his seat harder than I intended, and my “tap” could reasonably be described as a “swat.”) He turned his phone off, then a moment later glared at me and growled in a dim-witted bully voice, “Don’t hit me again, do you understand?” He definitely sounded ready to fight. I said, “Yes,” and he turned back to the screen. He spent the rest of the movie talking and gesturing emphatically at the screen, seemingly exasperated and confused by the movie. I spent the rest of the movie tense and distracted, wondering if any further conflict would ensue. (At times like these you can’t help but think of Chad Oulson.) Fortunately it didn’t, but the movie was ruined for me, as was my mood for many hours afterward.

Today I spent several hours googling phrases like “glowing phone movie” to see what other people think about this sort of thing. Plenty of people are as aggravated about it as I am. Every movie screening at every theater I’ve ever seen has warned the audience not to talk or text during the movie. This particular screening featured not one but two animated shorts devoted to asking people to turn off their phones. One of these shorts features the theater’s mascot as a superhero blasting giant phones out of the sky. Obviously people watch these messages hundreds of times, so they’re hardly unaware that they’re being rude and annoying everyone around them, but they do it anyway, I guess because they’re just selfish, obnoxious dicks. The question is, is there anything you can do about it?

You can try to politely ask people to stop, but in my experience this is only intermittently successful, and risks an ugly confrontation, especially if as in my case your irritation overwhelms your attempts to be civil. I’ve seen various other strategies aired online. You can move away from the annoying person. (Though this can be a real pain and may not be practical in a crowded theater like the one I was at on Saturday.) You can complain to the theater staff. (Though this means missing a good chunk of the movie, and seems unlikely to have much effect.) You can walk out of the movie and ask for a refund. (Even if you get the refund you’ve wasted a lot of time and energy going to the theater.) I’ve seen other more severe strategies proposed, such as “pretending” to spill a drink on the offending filmgoer or taking their phone from them by force, but none of these seem particularly attractive options.

It would be nice if theaters would do something about the problem. The Alamo Draft House in Austin has a zero-tolerance policy toward talking or texting during the movie that sounds pretty good. (They even use the fact that dipshits complain about this policy as a selling point.) I don’t know if there’s anything like that in New York, but if there is I’d love to know about it. The Oatmeal has a funny take on theater design which actually contains some pretty good ideas, such as theaters giving you the option of plugging in noise-canceling headphones like you can on an airplane.

Other options include going to movies only during times and dates that you expect the theater to be mostly empty, or just not going to the movies at all. (I actually mostly stayed away from theaters for several years because I’d had so many evenings ruined by obnoxious audiences.)

It would be nice if there were some sort of private club where you could go to watch movies with other filmgoers who are committed to not talking or texting. Membership would be based on a proven track record of good manners, and could be revoked at the drop of a hat if someone lit up a smart phone during the show.

In Episode 91 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy we discussed our favorite geeky YouTube videos. Here’s my Top 10:

1. Short film “They’re Made Out of Meat”

2. “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” music video

3. Richard Dawkins and Douglas Adams TV Appearance

4. Animated short “Noah’s Ark” by NonStampCollector

5. “Danger Planet” animated short

6. Animated short of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Terrible Old Man”

7. Animated Short “Defective Robot”

8. Animated short “Reach” by Luke Randall

9. Warren Spector interviews Richard Garriott about his game design career

10. Roger Zelazny reads an inside-joke sf story at a convention. (Only video of Zelazny I’ve ever found.)

In Episode 91 of my book podcast we interview Felicia Day and discuss the geekiest YouTube videos.

If you’re in the Pittsburgh area, come out and see me at Barnes & Noble on July 14th & 17th. You’ll also have a chance to meet authors Tamora Pierce, Scott Westerfeld, and Justine Larbalestier.

Episode 89 of my book podcast is up now at Wired.com! In this show we interview Lauren Beukes and talk psycho killers with guest geek Ross Lockhart.

Episode 88 of my book podcast is up now at Wired.com! In this show we interview Annalee Newitz, editor of io9, and discuss rationalism in science fiction with guest geek Julia Galef.

Episode 87 of my book podcast is up now on Wired.com! In this show we interview Alaya Dawn Johnson and discuss Star Trek Into Darkness with guest geeks E.C. Myers and Emily Asher-Perrin.

Episode 86 of my sci-fi podcast is up now at Wired.com! In this show we interview Rick Yancey, author of The 5th Wave, and discuss science fiction podcasting with Mur Lafferty.

Episode 84 of my sci-fi podcast is now up at Wired.com! In this show we talk video games with Austin Grossman (writer on Dishonored) and Ted Kosmatka (writer at Valve).

In Episode 83 of my science fiction podcast we interview self-publishing phenomenon Hugh Howey and discuss the pros and cons of self-publishing with guest geek Tobias Buckell.

So Facebook has a ridiculous new policy that promoted images can’t be comprised of more than 20% text. With that in mind I put together the image below. It’s 840 pixels tall. 20% of 840 is 168. The image consists of three text bars that are 74, 41, and 41 pixels tall, for a total of 156. So even if you count the entire height and width of each text bar as “text,” the image is still clearly less than 20% text. Nevertheless, this image was just rejected for being “more than 20% text.” Very frustrating.

We recently started using Podtrac to track the downloads of my Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. We only have two months of data, covering just a handful of recent episodes, but so far the stats seem to indicate that we’re getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000-8,000 downloads per episode. Naturally that made me curious as to what sort of download numbers other, similar podcasts are getting. I’ve spent a week or two poking around online looking for data, and here’s what I’ve come up with.

The most popular geek-oriented podcast right now is The Nerdist, hosted by Chris Hardwick, which reportedly gets about 200,000 downloads per episode. Hardwick is fairly well-known for having hosted the MTV dating show Singled Out back in the ’90s and has extensive Hollywood contacts, and was able from the start to get all sorts of celebrities on his podcast, which is presumably the main factor in the show’s meteoric rise. He subsequently launched a number of spinoff shows all under the “Nerdist Industries” banner. For example, The Nerdist Writers Panel covers mostly TV writing and The Indoor Kids covers video games. I haven’t seen any numbers for those shows, but based on iTunes reviews I’d estimate they’re maybe somewhere in the 10,000-20,000 range, but that’s just a guess. At any rate, the Nerdist audience is growing rapidly and the spinoff shows probably will too. (Nerdist Industries was recently acquired by Legendary Entertainment for an undisclosed sum.)

Incidentally, the only way to know how many downloads a show is getting is for the show to report its numbers. (And assuming they’re not exaggerating.) For shows that haven’t posted numbers, you can get a rough idea of how popular they are by seeing how many reviews they have on iTunes, though of course it’s entirely possible that some seemingly-popular podcasts may have tons of sock-puppet reviews. This is apparently a big problem on Amazon, though I don’t know how much it happens on iTunes. My sense is not a lot, but who knows? At any rate, if a podcast has released hundreds of episodes and received few or no reviews, it seems a pretty safe bet that it’s not super-popular. You can also look at the iTunes charts and see how different podcasts compare to each other. It’s top secret exactly how iTunes determines podcast rankings, but it seems to involve some combination of how many new subscribers you’ve picked up in the past week + how good your reviews are. So if one podcast is ranked higher than another, it definitely doesn’t mean that it’s more popular overall, which complicates things, but you can still get a rough idea over time about the relative popularity of different podcasts.

Among shows that, like mine, cater mainly to fantasy & science fiction readers, the most popular is Escape Pod, which has been podcasting a short story a week more or less continuously since 2005. Escape Pod now focuses primarily on science fiction, and has spun off two other podcasts, Pseudopod (horror) and Podcastle (fantasy). According to Locus magazine, the average downloads per episode for the three shows are 27,000 for Escape Pod, 15,000 for Pseudopod, and 12,000 for Podcastle. The most popular science fiction podcast focused on writing advice is Writing Excuses, which reportedly gets over 10,000 downloads per episode. I also came across figures for The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast (over 4,000) and The Dragon Page (about 3,200).

Another popular podcast focusing largely on fantasy & science fiction books is The Incomparable, which seems to be put together mostly by folks associated with Macworld magazine. Within the past year or so, The Incomparable joined the 5by5 podcast network. 5by5 is run by Dan Benjamin, a prominent tech blogger, and just based on the number of iTunes reviews the shows seem to be extremely popular. 5by5 seems to have made its name with a podcast called The Talk Show hosted by Benjamin and another prominent tech blogger named John Gruber. (Gruber’s blog reportedly has about 400,000 subscribers, and he’s able to charge $7500 a week to be his sponsor.) Gruber and Benjamin were apparently able to get a good chunk of their blog audiences to follow them over to their Talk Show podcast, and then entice a good chunk of that audience to check out some of their other shows. In addition to The Incomparable, they also have fantasy & science fiction oriented shows such as Geek Friday and The Ihnatko Almanac, all of which have hundreds of reviews on iTunes (rivaling Escape Pod) despite the apparent lack of involvement — either as hosts or guests — of anyone well-known within the sf community. (Subsequently Gruber and Benjamin seem to have had a falling out, and Gruber moved The Talk Show over to the Mule Radio Syndicate where it’s now called The Talk Show with John Gruber.) I haven’t seen download numbers for any 5by5 shows, but in an interview Benjamin threw out 40,000 as an example of a show with a high listenership and 3,000 as an example of a show with a low listenership. So just based on the comparative number of iTunes reviews, I’d guess that shows like The Incomparable, Geek Friday, and The Ihnatko Almanac probably fall somewhere in the 10,000-20,000 range.

There are also video podcasts. The Sword and Laser is a long-running fantasy & science fiction book club audio podcast that recently launched a video version as part of Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry YouTube channel. Based on the iTunes charts, the audio version has never been as popular as, say, Escape Pod or Writing Excuses, but is almost always in the Top 20 or so Literature podcasts, which maybe puts it in the 10,000-20,000 range? Some of the videos on Youtube have gotten 100,000 views or more, but I’m not really sure how to compare Youtube views to iTunes downloads. (It seems like on Youtube you probably get tons of random people stumbling across the video but then not watching much of it, whereas I’d imagine a vastly higher percentage of people who download the episode via iTunes are actual fans who are going to listen to the whole thing.) One of the hosts of Sword and Laser, Veronica Belmont, also hosted a recently-cancelled video podcast about video games called Game On, which appeared on Leo Laporte’s TWiT network. The program reportedly cost about $7,000 per episode to produce and was generating about 27,000 downloads per show, falling short of the reported 50,000 per episode necessary to make it financially viable. io9 also recently launched a video podcast on the Revision3 internet TV network, and those videos seem to be generating in the 5,000-50,000 pageview range, but again, how to compare that to podcast downloads? [Note: Revision3 canceled the io9 show on 10/16/12]

Cliff Ravenscraft runs the Generally Speaking Production Network (GSPN), and is probably best known for his Podcast Answer Man show. In interviews he talks about reaching 60,000 listeners with his suite of a dozen or so podcasts. He got his start doing a podcast devoted to the TV show Lost, then branched out from there, and recently had a pretty popular podcast devoted to The Hunger Games. Podcasts devoted to a specific mega-popular media property seem to grow exponentially faster than other types of podcasts. Even within the Literature category, podcasts devoted to a specific, popular author such as Tolkien or Lovecraft seem to have grown in popularity with disproportionate speed. Podcasts devoted to HBO’s Game of Thrones are ridiculously popular right now. If I were starting out in podcasting today, I would definitely consider breaking in by doing a podcast devoted to a particular franchise, particularly if you can establish yourself as the fancast for something like Lost, Battlestar Galactica, or Game of Thrones before it really gets popular.

Earlier today when I visited the iTunes store, all the images were blank and I couldn’t download anything.

It took me a while, but the solution turned out to be going to the iTunes menu and selecting Preferences -> Advanced -> Reset Cache.

My buddy Dustin Thomas has launched a Kickstarter to fund a short film adaptation of my time travel story “The Second Rat.” Here’s a cool illustration that was done for the campaign by Matthew Perry.

Here’s a recommended summer reading list I wrote for Wired.com:

You know what would be cool? An iPad app that used voice recognition to provide a real-time graph of how much each person on a panel was talking. This would give certain people for whom nature apparently didn’t furnish a basic sense of courtesy a clear-cut visual cue of when they should start shutting the hell up. Could also be useful for restaurants, dinner parties, staff meetings, etc.

Here’s my commentary on last night’s episode of Game of Thrones: