i’m sure you’ve seen the direct tv commercials where they take a famous movie scene and replace it with the actor instead talking about direct tv. anyway, the college humor guys poke some good fun at it:

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on saturday after an early workout, eric and i drove (i drove, stupid rock/paper/scissors) to pasadena to see the end of stage 7 of the amgen tour of california. last year the same race was in shorline village and the year before that in redondo beach. the main attraction this year of course was that lance armstrong now racing for team astana is out of retirement and was racing the event.

the last part of stage 7 was a 5 lap, 10 mile loop around the rosebowl, so we watched from the 500m to the finish mark, and got to see them pass a total of 5 times. that was actually the first time that i had ever seen lance armstrong in person, and even though it was 5 times it was less than 5 seconds each time.

i brought my sony cm1 hd video camera, which the more i use, the more i fall out of love with. it’s actually pretty good for what it’s marketed as, capturing quick, short hd video that looks pretty decent. it really isn’t a replacement for a video camera though. my new main gripe with it is that it seems that instead of taking photo-photo-photo and making it a movie, that the sensor “scans” the picture. When things are moving really fast, the “scan” is different from start to finish. So my R/C helicopter’s blades look like they’re bending in flight, and these cyclists look like they’re bikes are shorter than they are. i’ll probably hang on to it because like i said, it’s great for some things… but i’ll probably end up buying another hd camcorder for higher quality stuff down the line.

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with the battery on my mini-dv camera only lasting about 20 minutes now, and with a baby on the way, i decided to replace my camera with the sony mhs-cm1. I’ve always liked making small little movie clips of us wakeboarding or just goofing around, but the process of uploading the video to my computer from mini-dv is always time consuming and kinda complicated. The video was also pretty low resolution to begin with and by the time it made it to youtube, it never looked very good.

so i got a got a great deal on the newly released CM1. i’m not sure why they market it as a “webbie” camera, because it does 1080p/720p. i mean it is cheap, and i’ve already noticed it’s short comings in the small amount of time i’ve used it, but for the price (retails for $199), i’m still impressed and pleased.

so here are some things i like about it. first of all, it’s small. it’s not much bigger than the point and shoot digital cameras that most people are carrying around. it’s also very fast. as soon as you flip open the screen the camera turns on and is ready to go. it’s all flash media (stupid sony proprietary memory stick) so there’s no tape or dvd to cue up. the form factor and controls feel good, and it feels pretty solid for something so inexpensive. the video quality is good, particularly for the amount of data they’re able to get at that resolution. at 720p and 30fps you get 2 hours of video on a 4gb memory stick.

but this is a $200 HD video camera, so sony had to make compromises somewhere. the main problem is that the focusing is slow. it might have had to do with the fact that most of the video i’ve tried shooting so far has been in doors in low light. when i pan around the room, you can see it focus once you stop. it takes less than a second but i notice it. this isn’t a deal breaker for me, but it’s a bit annoying. i’ll have to play with the settings and try it in other conditions to see what the deal is. taking an annoying cue from apple, the battery is entirely internal, and seems pretty unserviceable, so it means no matter what, i can only get 90mins of recording time in per use (making anything larger than a 4gb memory stick kinda pointless), and eventually the battery will die and this thing will get tossed. i don’t usually keep electronics like this for more than a few years but i always like to imagine that i will.

i made this cool video yesterday that i was going to upload, where i put the camera on the rear deck of my car, looking out my front window and also my speedometer and shifting, and while it was sweet, i realized it showed me exceeding speed limits, so i thought better of uploading it. i’ll find something to shoot and upload soon.

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So I updated my xbox this afternoon with the new firmware and it really is impressive. The animations, sounds and overall feel is very similar to the Nintendo Wii, and while the customizable avatars are a blatant ripoff, they’re still pretty cool.

One of the features that I was most looking forward to is the Netflix integration. I use to have netflix a couple of years ago and when i realized i was barely watching any of the movies, canceled it. But now that you can stream the movies directly off of your xbox through the new interface, i decided to sign up for a free trial again.

The least expensive monthly service package is $8.99, which let’s you rent a single physical dvd at a time and unlimited streaming time (the trial is free for 2 weeks). The first thing that I was happy to confirm is that you can watch HD over component cables (there’s copy protection over the hdmi, and often that means they don’t allow you to use the content over the unsecure component). Unfortunately though, their HD selection sucks. There wasn’t a single movie in there that I wanted to watch, even though the quality of the few i tried out did look pretty good. The SD selection is much better, although still lacking and the quality is about the same as a upscaled dvd, although a bit softer looking. I’m not sure if i’m going to use the service or not, we’ll see how the next 2 weeks go.

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ben posted something similar to this the other day, but this is on a bigger scale. freaky!

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the kiss is pretty brief, but its weird and hot because its her real sister, the dude is their brother. no nudity, but pretty much nws:

[read the foxnews article about the video]

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i ran across this video again today when i was backing up some files. i know i’ve posted it on here before, but it’s classic enough to post again. this is from 2004 at a conveyor belt sushi bar in shinjuku ikebukuro, japan.

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i remember in highschool, i thought i was cool, because i could twirl a pen between four fingers. these crazy nips put me to shame.

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i’m usually out, or more likely asleep by 11:30p on a saturday, but now that i’ve got tivo, i can watch saturday night live on sunday mornings again.

funny shit, and featuring the dreamy adam levine!

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