* A nice idea for a bigger screen for camcorders is to use a Nokia N800 or preferably, a Nokia N810. With the well-understood USB-master hack you can connect a USB TV card to it, and then connect your camcorder’s composite-out cable to that TV-card. Then, you can utilize either the already ported MPlayer application, or you can port XawTV or equivalent such TV-oriented X11/GTK+ application. The only stinky point is to find which supported USB TV card model to buy and to then sit down and port its already existing x86 Linux driver to the ARM platform.

* I updated to AVG Free Edition 8.0 anti-virus the other day, and it made my Trillian super slow. When I click to a contact to open a chat window, it takes up to 10 seconds to open. I had to exclude Trillian from the AVG resident shield to get back the speed I had before. The previous version of AVG didn’t have this problem and it really bothers me when software becomes slower and buggier as time goes.

* Sharon Stone said that the Chinese earthquake was “karma” for the Chinese treating the Tibetans bad. I guess no one told her that many of the people in that area were Tibetans. For a woman with Mensa IQ over 140, I sure did expect more.

* This one is for the laughs. I remember the wars we had in the Gnome community about 4-5 years ago about the “spatial” Nautilus. The Red Hat masterminds behind the spatial crap were keeping their stronghold and they were not easy to back down. They didn’t want to listen to the community. And now, after Red Hat is nowhere to be found in serious Gnome development, not only the spatial stuff are turned off by default, but we have tab navigation and actual full MDI tabs. How times are changing, huh?

* I watched “The Andromeda Strain” on A&E last night. It was a very good sci-fi mini-series, originally written by book author Michael Crichton.

* I don’t know what the hell is wrong with youtube for 3-4 weeks now. 2/3s of the videos I watch don’t load fast enough, so I get start/stop on these videos all the time, making them unwatchable. No other video service has this problem. Might be a Comcast throttling problem again specifically for youtube, or youtube running out of bandwidth?

CNN asks about “Sex and the City“: “can a pure chick flick become a hit?” and it later answers its own question with “yes, if it draws a diverse enough swath of female moviegoers”.

I won’t be going. In fact, I find anyone who goes to watch such shows brain damaged. Yeah, go ahead, hate me all you want. I just don’t find pleasure going to see four middle-aged women slutting around while looking miserable underneath that glossy exterior and expensive shoes.

What’s the point of that movie? I’ve been alone for years while in UK, without having a shoulder to cry on. There was nothing glorious about that life. It sucked. I’d go out with some so-called friends on weekends, would also buy expensive shoes and sexy clothes, but it all accounted for nothing despite my efforts. At the end I found true love through IRC. JBQ first told me that he loved me without having seeing me yet. 8 years later, we are still together, loving each other every day (except Mondays ).

So why would I want to go watch these poor souls trying to find true love with all the wrong means? Not that IRC is the way to go, but slutting around is not the way to go either. It’s for the same reason I don’t go watch horror, war and prison movies: why would I want to go and depress myself voluntarily? This makes no sense to me.

Update: Two pictures from that era, 10 years ago. It has the word “desperate” written all over these pictures. That was/is so not me.

I recognize the name and face of Robert Downey Jr. as an actor for almost 20 years now. I always hated the guy, since Day 1. In fact, he is one of these few people that I always felt that I have zero things in common, and if we were ever to meet up in real life we wouldn’t be able to talk about anything more than the weather. He is not only not my type, he’s worse than that: he seems to be the type of a person I can’t stand not even for some basic conversation. I always found him yucky.

A few years later, the news of his drug addiction and alcoholism was all over the media, making me dislike the guy even more. I did try to watch his movies and not be a hater, but I was always getting that shivering each time he had some screen time. Therefore, I was not that happy (along with many other Marvel enthusiasts actually) to hear that he got the role of the “Iron Man” a few years back.

Fast forward to last Sunday, when JBQ and I went to actually watch “Iron Man” in that new 2k digital projection cinema in San Bruno (off topic note: quality is not as good as our plasma TV). The movie was so good, and his performance so close to the comic, that I fell for him. I couldn’t believe it myself either that after the end of the movie I actually felt attracted to this jerk, Robert Downey Jr. I don’t know if it was his engineering talent as shown in the movie, or the sexy hot Iron Man suit, but I surely felt attracted to his likeness. First time ever to feel like that for either himself or his character.

That’s how good that movie was. Even JBQ, who doesn’t like most Marvel movies, he loved this one. So go see it.

In the same fashion that I SouthPark’ed yet another favorite band of mine, here are the HIJK. Click for a larger view.

I was just reading that the upcoming two new big TV series for the Fall, Fringe and Dollhouse, will feature fewer commercials, in order to hook audiences.

This just reminded me a few weeks ago when I was browsing Hulu, NBC’s online video site. It interested me, as an hobbyist filmmaker, to see how much the runtime of TV shows eroded over the years. This is what I found, on average:

1960s: 52 minutes of runtime for an 1 hour show.
1970s: 50 minutes.
1980s: 48 minutes.
1990s: 46 minutes.
2000s: 44 minutes.

“Lost” is 43 minutes, sometimes even a bit less than that.

I have offered a number of small theories about certain aspects and sub-plots of “Lost” over the years, theories that were usually completely off base (and that’s the beauty of Lost: it’s completely unpredictable). However, I never offered a “global” theory about the show, e.g. what is the island, or what is the smoke monster. So here is my crazy theory contribution for this crazy show. Of course, my theory is highly influenced/biased by my artificial intelligence work in the past and my computing experience.

So, deep under the island, there is one big ass computer. The “intelligence” of the island, is just artificial intelligence driven by that computer. The computer is able to harness the special properties of the island and affect matter. Hence, the existence of the smoke monster and its various manifestations (which is nothing but the physical representation of the computer in the island through some pseudo-science physics), and the ability to affect the health of people depending on its wishes. The computer can manifest outside of the island too, but its powers are limited far away from it. As for where the island is, it can be somewhere in the Pacific, or in another dimension all together — this will be for the writers to decide.

The four-toe statue is a testament of an older civilization (”original inhabitants”) that ruled the island. Be it alien, or Egyptian or even Atlantian (whatever the writers find to be the least ridiculous option), they were the builders of the computer. Dharma simply came much later and tried to take over all this power for its own needs. Until the original inhabitants, keepers of the computer, revolted against them, with the help of Ben.

There are only two final outcomes you can have for the show if this theory is correct. Either the island blows up so no one can take advantage of it anymore (most likely outcome, as the Losties are sinners and represent fate and random chaos), or a few select Losties stay in it forever to be the new keepers and the island is never found again (unlikely).

UPDATE: My theory posted over at DarkUFO’s “Lost” fan site. You can discuss it there.

* Americans are among the peoples who would kiss in mouth for casual greeting kissing. E.g. a mother kissing her son coming back from school. It puts me off seriously. Cheek kissing is barely acceptable in my opinion, but mouth kissing among family members yucks me. I know that this is just a getting-used to thing, just a peculiarity of a different culture like the ones you find on any culture, but it still yucks me (sorry my American friends, I just can’t stand potential herpes-spread).

* My brother saw the video I shot for the HIJK the other day and he couldn’t believe it. He kept saying “how did you do that?”. I guess I am not the average Greek middle-aged wife with 3 kids and no interests. He could also not believe that the band doesn’t have a contract. He kept saying “but the song is good, like the ones we listen to the radio, how is it possible to not have a contract?”. You see, in Greece, if you are 1/10 as good as any random indie US band, you get a contract. Music is that bad there (sorry my Greek friends, I just can’t stand Greek music).

* One of my favorite rock tracks of all time, Ranting of Eva’s “Bright Side”, is now available for a free download. You will need a myspace account to get it. Trust me, that nostalgic tune is the shit.

* Got a new mp3 player for an upcoming review, a Sandisk e280R 8GB. Looks good so far.

* Birthday tomorrow. I will be 35. I feel old. Think that we go to the same sushi restaurant for lunch every Saturday. This is the epitome of being old: repetition and habits. Love it though. I think I need to start playing Bingo.

A small video I shot with the Kodak HD digicam while JBQ had climbed up to shoot the drummer from above (no way I could climb up there myself). You can clearly hear the song playing back really fast at 125%.

Here it is, my first music video clip. This is the best I could do with the amount of footage I had in my disposal (I shot only 2/3s of a tape as we were there for less than two hours). Comment, view in HD, or download the high quality HD version of the video here. Read all about it, including which tools I used, on my detailing article at OSNews.

A big thanks to the band, and a special thanks to my JBQ for helping us all out.

The HV20/30 is one of the best pieces of personal property one can own. It just does the job so well for the little money it costs that it makes no sense to not own one. Sure it’s still tape, but it’s as close to prosumer quality than you can get today for the price.

Latest example is the excellent work of Blake Monahan for the band “House of Fire“. He shot with the HV20 the music video clip for their (very nice) song “Walking along the sun“.