I am expecting a black (1st gen) iPod Nano 4 GB by week’s end. With it two cases and an FM transmitter too. I am cleaning up my 3.3 GBs of ‘freeware’ indie music in my drive (will fix their mp3 tags and remove the ones I don’t really like) and then I will use the Nano as my “indie” mp3 player and keep my iPod Mini as my “commercial” one. Makes more sense to use them the other way around (my Mini’s battery life is a disaster these days), but that’s too much work…

I stopped playing serious video games a few years ago. I occasionally play tetris or jawbreaker or pacman, but nothing like the kinds of games I used to play in the ’90s. A few nights ago I decided to play the ‘Final Fantasy XII’ demo on our SONY PS2. After about 15 minutes of gaming, I started feeling dizzy and wanted to throw up. This is normal for me, I could never stand 3D environments and free camera motion (as more and more games were released in 3D-only in the late ’90s, the more I moved away from gaming).

Apparently video game sickness happens mostly to left-handed people, like I am (I write with my right hand because my ultra-stupid teacher forced me to in 1979, but I do everything else with my left hand). Some additional info here and here.

Anyways, I am seriously thinking of starting playing some 2D adventure games from the ’90s again. The classic “Beneath a Steel Sky” is now a free download and you can run it via the ScummVM under any OS.

When I first moved to USA in 2001 (from UK) after getting married, I was barely watching TV. Maybe about 2 hours per week (usually “ST:Enterprise” and maybe “The Simpsons”). But as the years went by and the US law didn’t allow me to work, TV became a way to escape the boredom. These days, I watch the following shows (evenings only, I never watch TV during the day):

Monday:
Prison Break
Heroes (first half of the year only)
24 (second half of the year only)
Medium (occassionally)

Tuesday:
House
Eureka (occassionally)

Wednesday:
ANTM
Jericho
Lost

Thursday:
Ugly Betty

Friday:
Battlestar Galactica
Atlantis (occassionally)

Sunday:
The 4400 (during summer only)

In addition to that, I always check what’s on History Channel, Discovery Channel, Science Channel, Discovery Times and National Geographic Channel every night. Finally, the TV is usually ON during Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien on weekdays, but I don’t really “watch”, it’s just ON in the background as I am usually busy with my laptop at the time.

Overall, that’s about 15-20 hours of TV time per week during season-time and about 5 hours per week during Summer. I don’t plan to watch more than that, but I don’t plan to reduce it either. These are good shows and I see no reason why to not watch some TV in the evening while I have nothing better to do. JBQ comes back from work so tired every night that “going out”, or “playing a board game” is usually out of the question. So after I am lovingly cooking some dinner, TV it is.

This is simply too depressing:

“President Bush this morning proudly signed into law a bill that critics consider one of the most un-American in the nation’s long history. The new law vaguely bans torture — but makes the administration the arbiter of what is torture and what isn’t. It allows the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant. It suspends the Great Writ of habeas corpus for detainees. It allows coerced testimony at trial. It immunizes retroactively interrogators who may have engaged in torture.”

“The head of the U.N. nuclear agency warned Monday that as many as 30 countries could soon have technology that would let them produce atomic weapons “in a very short time,” joining the nine states known or suspected to have such arms.”

This is something that has bothered me for years. Today is Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, in a few years it could even be… Nigeria. You can’t stop all these countries from moving forward technologically and you might not be able to stop them in the event they are lead by a crazy dictator who wants to take over the world. This is why UN must have more power, so countries feel more comfortable in the world political and financial scene. If it’s only USA, UK, France and Russia with all the arms that take all the decisions with UN having a mostly decorative role, then they get defensive. You can’t always avoid the worst, but you might be able to soothe it — or delay it.

Oh, well, you can’t agree on everything with people you like. Jay Leno said tonight that he doesn’t agree with public breast feeding. Personally, I am all for it. It’s a very natural, beautiful and caring thing to do. I see nothing indicent or sexual about it and whoever does so, it’s their problem. I haven’t seen public breast feeding happen in years, in fact, the last time I’ve seen it was in the early ’80s in Greece. I don’t know if part of Leno’s problem is the fact that he doesn’t have any children (after mutual agreement with his wife).

Off topic, but later on Leno’s show there was the amazing Hugh Jackman who spoke about his new movie where he co-stars with the also amazing Ewan McGregor. Needless to say that I couldn’t help myself thinking of Wolverine and Obiwan Kenobi being at the same universe.