047 - Wind Gods and Ringtunes

October is here, and my room is freezing cold. I really think I need to reinsulate the window area, and possibly get a new window. My plan is to go, hire the worst guy possible, then complain to Mike Holmes. In response, he'll come here, ask how on earth someone whose job was to insulate a wall and replace a window used 17 junction boxes in the process. After a few words like "unbelievable", he'll fix it for me, add a shiny new seat and electrical surge protector, and proclaim that he "love his job". Simple, no?

In other news, I've dusted off my Wii. It's sad how I've become accustomed to not having the time to play such fandangled devices. In a rare spurt of energy, I went and beat Lostwinds, a WiiWare game that I bought back in May and stoppe dplaying after all of 41 minutes. It is a great little game, one that I'd love to have seen more of (seeing as I beat it after another 3 hours). Hoping to continue the trend of actually playing the games that I've bought, I moved the Wii back to the living room. It gets more light there.

My DS is far from neglected though. After I get to finishing Kirby, I'll get back to The World Ends With You until the new Castlevania arrives. I hope there's a last minute pre-order bonus with it, though.

Which leads me to movies. The last ones I saw were Bee Movie (cute, but not Pixar by a long shot), A Dog's Breakfast (funny, but not as amazing as I was hoping, despite Rachel Luttrell yummy cameo), and National Treasure : Book of Secrets (much better than the first, surprisingly). I'm working on Hello, Dolly. Walter Matthau is about 30 years younger than what I know him as. It's quite something.

Lastly, I have a new ringtune for my phone, in celebration of Halloween. Listen.

045 - I think I'm Going to Need a Bigger Box

The new TV season has kicked off with a pretty epic set-up for Heroes' third season, as well as a nice start to Big Bang Theory's second. I love when shows don't pick up right where they left off, but that's often hard to do when the vast majority of 'em have cliffhanger season finales. Heroes cheated a bit last year by throwing you a few months after the events of the season 1 finale, and then taking a later episode to answer 'how did they get here?" Those are perfectly exciting. I expect a similar filler this year too, at least on a couple of storylines. Up next: Dexter, Californication, Chuck, Pushing Daisies, Corner Gas, and Little Mosque on the Praries, though I have no idea when that one starts - or where I"m goig to find the time to watch all of those. Despite my crazy-expensive cable package, torrents and my PSP may become my best friends.

In the meantime, I need to prepare a presentation of sorts for work. There's a staff meeting this weekend, and I get to discuss, well... magic. I do have a basic guide form which to work, but I hope I'll have the time to really add my own perspective to it, if at all possible.

One big accomplishment I accomplished earlier this week: I finished ripping all of my music to my computer - that's about 220 cds! I've never had such instant access over my entire library (including songs downloaded form iTunes, Puretracks, and other less legitimate sources). I just have to decide what to do with it all. Twenty-five gigs of music might merit the purchase of an iPod, not because I don't have a fabulous mp3 player already (8 Gig Creative Zen Microphoto), but because I use iTunes anyway, and I need something bigger so that I don't have to pick and choose. Apple did just release a cooler, cheaper 32-Gig iPod Touch - but it's still over $400. Maybe after Christmas...

043 - Digital Nightmare

Sony lies. "Watch videos on your psp" they say. I'm a fairly tech-oriented person, but I really have no idea how to put movies on the bloody playstation portable. I think you need some sort of Sony diploma to do it. It should be as simple as click-and-drag, but it's not. You have to convert whatever movie file you want to one of the twoish video formats the device can read. And then, if you're lucky, it'll fit on the system. No, Sony, I'm not buying more of your high-priced memory.

Let alone trying to take a movie from a DVD and trying to get that on a psp. That requires more software just to take the movie file(s) on the disk and putting it on the computer. And possible intermediate software to take that and convert it to something the psp converter can understand without freezing your system. And that special edition Juno dvd that comes with a digital copy? Brilliant - unless you have a psp.

No matter what, it'll take longer than the 15 minutes you have before you need to leave.

This is why I want an iPod Touch. I'm sure it's much more friendly, even if files need to be converted. Though I'm sure there's an even easier kitchen sink player out there. Actually, probably not. That's just a dream. And if it were real, it would probably be ugly, and suck battery life like no tomorrow. Kinda like the psp.

Why, if there's a standard dvd format and a standard high def format, can't there be a standard video format? Digital protection (DRM) on files is also a terrible idea that just makes it that much harder to deal with. Especially when there's more than one type of protection. *points finger at Apple, Microsoft* Bad people!

Pictures: Tim Hortons chai tea, Chinatown, hair colouration