first of course, the new foo fighters single was released this week… it’s called The Pretender, and biased as i am, i can only say: it’s a great song! take a listen at mog.com

secondly, i am pretty stoked about webbalert.com, a daily (well, monday-thursday) podcast featuring Morgan Webb that sums up important tech stories in < 5mins. i think the way she integrates ads into the podcast is great, pretty non-intrusive for the most part and fitting in a natural break in her delivery. it took a while for me to warm up to her after being added to x-play, but she does know her stuff, and i think she’s pretty hot to boot. (note: she was the gaming goddess in FHM, before they became defunct)

all for now, will be adding more posts soon.

…

yes, i intentially put 2 equal signs in the title… it’s a programming thing.

so i’ve watched quite a bit of discovery channel lately, and man there are some good shows on there… iris found a show called man vs wild, which is a show about a former british special armed forces guy showing the viewer how to survive in various dangerous environments… some of the things he does are probably too physical for a lot of us, but he has a lot of useful information that one should probably carry around just in case. the thing that kills me about the show is the presence of his camera crew… i mean, just think about it… there’s no way those camera guys are out there struggling as hard as Bear (the host), and it must kill him when he’s struggling out in the jungle or something, and his crew is just a few feet away chillin’ in a nice tent… i mean, i’m not sure if it really is that way, but it would seem like that to me… great show nonetheless, and is shown off-season from most networks, so it won’t eat all the space in the DVR…

another show i’ve taken a liking to is deadliest catch… man, life out in the bering sea is crazy!! i didn’t realize there was so much to crab fishing, and it’s a very gritty look at the entire job… i think a lot of it has to do with the real humanity of the ships’ captains… there is a real human element, and it shows in those captains’ faces.

come to think of it, i suppose those have become replacements for me for monster garage and american chopper… i know american chopper moved to another channel, but i don’t think it’s as good now that they have a fancy shop and paul jr. is better at time managing the bike builds… not to mention that they have a full warehouse full of people to work on bikes… i guess it just seems that they show less bike building than before, and more of the extra fluff…

i’ve always been interested in those kinda nerdy shows, thanks in part to my dad who made me watch a bunch of PBS shows like Nova and National Geographic…

any other good shows to watch??

-m

the sucky thing is that ABC doesn’t show as much of it anymore… i think it’s cuz they took over the NBA stuff from NBC, so their weekends started to fill…

some people would find watching cars go in a quasi-circle for miles quite boring… i do sometimes too (NASCAR?? not for me), but what really draws me to IRL/CART is the entire mixture of physics, technology, and strategy… i love hearing the drivers, commentators, and pit crews talk about downforces, throttle, fuel efficiencies, pit strategies, etc… it’s just a good mix of really nerdy stuff!!

i particularly love watching the Indy 500 cuz it’s such a hallowed race, that all the racers go all out… it’s like the race that means all or nothing to a season, when it really is just another race. but the pomp and history does make it exciting!!

i would say this year’s Indy 500 was good, but maybe not as great as it could’ve been if rain hadn’t been involved… and it certainly didn’t have a finish like last year’s… the first half of the race saw lots of action, but the amount of yellow flags really slowed the race down… i think there was a crash on every other re-start… then, it started to rain! that was another bummer cuz it held the race up for almost 3 hours, tho i do appreciate that the folks over there were able to dry the track and get them going again…

it’s just too bad that another bout of rain ultimately caused the race to end early as well =(

i was personally rooting for danica patrick and i thought she legitimately had a chance to win… she was in 3rd after the first rain delay, which was a good sign, and i think had there been no rain, she could have been up there to give herself a chance to win… and of course, i was rooting for michael andretti… man that guy is due!! his kid, marco, is pretty exciting too, but michael needs to get one before him… i mean, marco is only 20!

prior to the first red flag, tony kanaan (tk) was racing sooo well… too bad someone hit him a few laps into the restart, and he had to drop all the way back and work his way back up… checkered flag when to dario franchitti, who also raced exceptionally well and i liked his strategy of working his way up from the middle of the pack…

i still feel a bit cheated tho as there was still about a quarter of the race to go, and i think there would have been some nice action in the later laps (barring any yellows of course!)… hopefully next year’s Indy 500 won’t be plagued by rain, and we can have a full race with few yellows =)

-m

i was a little surprised to see Reggie Bush not perform to par tonite, and that lateral attempt was maybe a bit of nerves just getting at him… to see him falter really got Texas going… and Vince Young! that guy rolled over the USC defense all nite, i’m excited to see him, Leinart, and Bush in the NFL.

i must say tho’, Vince Young’s pitch should’ve been ruled a dead play!! where was the review on that?? that touchdown was USC’s loss right there!

oh well, it was a good season of college football… i look forward to watching it all again next year. congrats to the Longhorns on their championship… awesome game tonite.

-m

the link above gives a brief description of what has happened to one of my favorite channels over the years… i’d like to think of myself as an original, faithful watcher… for those who don’t know, G4 started as ZDTV, a technology-oriented channel run by the news company Ziff-Davis (who also happens to publish PCMag)… it then became TechTV, which was just a joy to watch… a few years ago TechTV merged with G4, a channel that was devoted entirely to video games… i was skeptical about this move, as i watched TechTV specifically for the “techie” type shows: FreshGear, Extended Play, Call for Help, The Screen Savers, even Spy School and Wired for Sex. the G4 merger made it more game-oriented, which caused most of those shows to die (and Extended Play becoming X-Play, which i didn’t particularly like as much as the former… but, it introduced me to Morgan Webb, who is now on my top 5 hottest women)

now it looks like G4 is looking to get rid of the last of the faithful (myself included) by making it more like SpikeTV… they even have episodes of the Man Show on G4 now… that is fucking retarded. if i wanted to watch the Man Show, i’ll watch SpikeTV, dammit i came to ZD-Tech-G4TV to stimulate my technical side… now the channel is full of crap shows like reruns of FastLane and some other show about import cars…

i think over the last few months the only shows i really watched was Icons, Filter, and X-Play… i don’t really see Icons anymore, and Filter just got cancelled, leaving me with 1 show left… on top of that, they used to show X-Play at 8 PM and 11 PM pacific, so i could catch it right after the 10 o’clock news… now, there’s only the 8 PM showing… i heard Call for Help was brought back, possibly to salvage what it could (and they even brought back Leo Lepore!), but i really think this channel is going to tank…

i am glad to see the TechTV hosts now doing some great stuff tho’… Kevin Rose has digg and theBroken, Sumi Das is on CNN now, and Leo Lepore has TWiT… i wonder whatever happened to Chris Parillo??

in any case, i’m probably not reaching many people with this post, but i just had to say it for the sake of saying it… i hope someone wises up and resurrects TechTV, or even brings back ZDTV (hint, hint Ziff-Davis!), and brings those great shows back.

it’s too bad they cancelled Filter tho’, on top of the interesting countdowns, Diane Mizota was pretty hot as well.

such is life i suppose. i really hope someone steps up and retakes or creates a channel for people like me (once again!)

-m