That’s right folks. Next week is shark week on the Discovery Channel.

That is all…

Interestingly enough, the featured article at Wikipedia today is the Pokemon Bulbasaur. A pokemon character, is a featured article…. Ok then.

In a related story, I was just at Jimmy John’s and was reading The Onion. The paper takes a stab at Wikipedia’s factual accuracy.

Spiffy.

I hate these flash little intros on the bottom right. What I really hate is when it plays sound by default.

So I’m sitting in my basement, I have the volume up because I am watching a DVD in one corner, and I surf to Warner’s Blog (warning: sound.) Now it is a nice blog, I’ll give them that. But then this Warner video starts, it has sound, and it blows my ears out.

And to make matters worse, it plays it TWICE before the cookies shut it off. TWICE.

I was discussing this with the Warner blog team at the College Democrats Convention, and they said “Well, that isn’t what we’ve heard. We have gotten a lot of good feedback.” Sure, looks cool, just don’t have it play sound by default.

But I want to decide if the audio works or not. My speakers, not your speakers, but mine.

Their blogger/regional political director are nice people. Somewhat avoided me during the convention, not sure why (I was nice about everything) but whatever. Their loss.

Update: They are changing this to rollover audio. Thanks Jerome and good luck with the campaign

The Motion Picture Association of America is a group of blackmailing fuckers.

They call up the houses of little kids and grandmothers, claim that you downloaded a movie, and demand $2500 to settle the case before it goes to court. Many times, they fuck up and it is the wrong IP. Who knows how many innocent people have been hit by this stupid trick that pisses off more people more than it worries.

So it was great when Fark linked to a Wired News Article that detailed some information about Shawn Hogan, a multimillionaire who built the company Digital Point, who got one of these letters. And he isn’t going to take it lying down.

Let me be frank, this guy is a hero in my book (he claims he is not) for finally saying “Enough” to these blackmailing fuckers.

You know what I want to see, this going to the appellate level. With the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (think ACLU of Internet/Electronics) and who knows, the ACLU, this may set a nationwide standard of how NOT to handle this shit.

One can only hope that this happens in the next five years. Until then, FUCK YOU MPAA.

Diet Dr. Pepper really does taste like regular Dr. Pepper

Did I mention I am on a diet? And that it is working? Not sure how much weight I have shed, but I have really been slimmed down after cutting out the 800-calorie a day Coke addiction.

Of course, I had some regular coke and grenadine over the weekend (fuck Shirley Temple, I’ll call it Coke and Grenadine if I want to) and I swapped it out with Sprite and Grenadine (fuck Kiddy Cocktails, I’ll call it Sprint and Grenadine if I want to.) But what I noticed I really liked was Sprite and Grenadine with a splash of Sweet-Sour. It was tasty. Not tasty enough to warrant the fact that I paid $5 and only got non-alcoholic drinks while everybody else who was over 21 paid $5 and got unlimited beer and rails between 10 and 1.

I need another fake id. I really do.

I still hate Diet Coke.

I took up a video for Evan Bayh’s All America PAC of Democratic National Committee Chairman Governor Howard Dean using a Canon GL2 professional Mini-DV video camcorder. GREAT camera.

The camera has an audio balancing bar on the camera. I moved it down so that the full range of the speech would be in the video. It turned out really well, and the range is perfect, if you crank your volume up.

This should not have been a problem. The video was edited right after in iMovie, and there is the option to increase the volume. But thanks to the wonderful speakers on the Apple MacBook we had no idea how much to increase the volume by. Well, now we know.

Check out the quiet 17 minute video of Governor Dean (with loud audience reaction) as shot with a crappy tripod by me: