Thought Clouds
The Digital Bender

I changed my screen saver to star field on my XP machine, which has a descent size LCD. Try this if you do have one. Turn off the lights, and watch that star field, and you will have the sensation that you are flying through space. It's a nice feeling, and in fact reminds me of one lucid dream I had.

I was just looking at the recently launched NBC direct service, which is a YouTube equivalent of NBC's shows, only really annoying. I say that because every show I tried watching would play a long ad before it begins, and then tell me "this show is not available for your location" or something of the sort. Now I have no problem with content being locale sensitive. It's the right of the content owners to decide on that, but what I do have a problem with is making me sit through the whole of a number ads repeatedly and then telling me I can't watch the content. How I am dealing with it? I watched a few more, just to see the ads, and now Dove, Oreos, and Careerbuilder are on my no-more list. Thank you NBC for annoying the customers of your advertisers. Update: Looks like this blogger had the same experience.

I just discovered these guys. As far as I am concerned, these guys are the funniest thing to watch on the net.

I bought the HD-DVD add-on for the XBOX 360 a while back, and got "King Kong" in the box. I also bought the documentary "Planet Earth", which is nothing short of absolutely amazing. And got "Happy Feet" for my and my family's benefit, especially my daughter who likes to skip around like Mumble. This was about 6 months ago, and I have not been able to buy any more, and here is why. There really isn't anything compelling enough about the movie lineup to pay $12 for a hi-def "experience", which is for most movies only marginally better than DVD. I mean, if you see "Anchor Man" in DVD, then you've seen it in HD-DVD because the extra pixels will probably not add any more enjoyment or appreciation. And fan boys. I am not saying that BlueRay lineup is better. It's just that the whole concept of paying $12 extra on the average for a movie that looks nearly as good on DVD is not a very attractive concept. Come to think of it, onl