Samuel McChord Crothers. “The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them.” [Quotes of the Day]

I heard about this on NPR’s On The Media a few weeks ago and thought it sounded pretty cool. I actually forgot about it until tonight when we were talking about DVD commentaries online. DVD Tracks is a site where people post their own commentaries for DVDs.

DVD Tracks was inspired by Roger Ebert’s column You, Too, Can Be a DVD Movie Critic in Yahoo! Internet Life in February of 2002. In that column, Ebert says that he would like to hear what people who aren’t being paid by the movie-makers think about movies. He recommends taking the “alternate audio tracks” on DVDs one step further.

That’s where DVD Tracks began. DVD Tracks is a gathering point for alternate movie tracks from anybody.

The idea is that you start up the movie, and start up the comment track at the same time (they’re mp3s). Then you can hear what someone else thought about the movie you are watching. It’s a kind of neat idea, almost like blogging a movie. I just don’t think I could do a commentary for a whole movie. I would probably get bored halfway through or annoyed with my inane comments.

I just got done watching the OVA of Happy Lesson. It is basicly a harem show twisted about some. Instead of a guy surrounded by women who want to be his girlfriend, he’s surrounded by women who want to be his mom. Oh, and they are also all teachers at his school. All i can say is, five moms are MORE than enough. Overall I’d say the show was soso, with some really funny moments. My favorite mom was the science teacher, who is pretty insane and fairly Rei-like. I’m planning on checking out a bit of the TV series too, just to see how it compares. One thing I did like about the show though, was that it was a harem show that kind of turned the harem concept upside down. Where in most cases it would be every guy’s fantasy, this was more like a nightmare.

Oh, and the opening theme is pretty good too.

Vice City is just too much fun. First, there’s the radio. When you are in the car you can listen to a number of different stations. The cool part is they are playing actually songs from the 80s. So there’s the pop station, the new wave station, the rap station, the talk radio station, it’s great. Then there’s just the random violence of it. I’m one off those people who is always yelling at everyone else on the road when I’m driving. And this game lets me just take out my agressive road rage. I love when I see someone on a Honda Scooter because I just give into my urge to RUN THEM DOWN.

There are also parts of the game that are just so absurd and funny. Like at one point I got beat up by a gang of chefs. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t work the controls right. Then there was the time I had to chase down the and kill him off with a chainsaw. The fun never stops!

So MS is going to start fighting spam with Outlook 11, but for some reason this seems much less effective than Apple’s solution.

New Outlook to give spammers the boot

Outlook 11 will, by default, no longer grab data such as images from outside servers when previewing e-mail formatted like Web pages. The ability to send and receive e-mail formatted in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) was at one time touted as a feature in Microsoft’s e-mail programs. [CNET News.com]

Um, that’s it? That’s their solution to blocking spam? Don’t load things like images. I can understand that it might stop spammers from using ‘web beacons’. But spammers are going to keep spamming even without them. At least Apple is providing a way to identify spam and filter it off so that you don’t even have to worry about seeing it. And if you don’t look at it, you won’t ever load those beacons.

Ronnie Shakes. “I like life. It’s something to do.” [Quotes of the Day]

It’s November 1st, which means two things. One, it’s the day to say “Rabbit Rabbit” (I remembered this morning, did you?). And secondly, it is the day before my birthday. I’m actually kind of dreading this one because I don’t have much in the way of plans. The whole jobless thing is getting to me a little bit I think.

On the plus side, for those of you in Boston who don’t sleep. On Saturday night, after the midnight hour you’ll be able to hear me on WZBC. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to spin yet. I think I may just bring a whole heck of a lot of records and do the whole eclectic thing. I’ve been toying with the idea of pulling out some of my old trance stuff that I haven’t played in ages. We’ll see.

So I got a copy of Grand Theft Auto:Vice City today in a nice little game trade. Now, I never played GTA3. I watched Lukas play it for a while one day, but never really got a feel for the play of it. It’s taken a few hours, but I am starting to get a little bit of a feel and it’s pretty fun. There are definitely things about it that I’d change a little if I was making the game. My one complaint is that for someone who hasn’t played the game at all there is nothing to give you any kind of insight into how some things work. I can understand that they want you to learn how to do things by playing, but there are some things it doesn’t make much sense to learn in gameplay. For instance, that you can’t save when you are in the middle of a mission. I honestly spent a good 40 minutes wandering around trying to figure out why I couldn’t save and only really found out when Lukas told me. I guess I see a slight difference between no information and just enough to get you curious and exploring. Beyond that one gripe though, I’m having a blast. I actually had to go out to the store earlier and kept thinking “Hey, if this was GTA I could just drive up on the sidewalk and around all this traffic.” Luckily I didn’t follow through on that thought.