Oscar Noms are out

Interesting little tidbits about this year's Oscar nominations...

Glad to see Howl's Moving Castle and Curse of the Were-Rabbit nominated for Best Animated Feature, and very glad to NOT see Chicken Little or any other dreck in that category.

In Best Special Effects, a BIG-TIME dis to Lucas! Revenge of the Sith only gets a makeup nod, nothing for special effects! Whoa.

The Best Documentary Feature is going to be a tough one, with Enron and Murderball up against those insidious penguins.

And for the first time in recent memory, every director of the nominated films for Best Picture was also nominated for Best Director. Usually one director gets dissed for some reason; this year, everyone's in.

Nominations List | 78th Annual Academy Awards | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Oh No! It's DEV2.O!

Thanks to Mark R. for tipping me off about this... this... I don't even know what to call this.


See, kiddies, once upon a time long long ago (like 1979 or so), there was a musical group called DEVO. I remember seeing them on Saturday Night Live and wondering what the heck was going on. Anyhow, I don't think they were ever an enormous success, but they certainly had a few hits, including a cover of The Stones' "Satisfaction," and everyone's favorite, "Whip It." Actually, my favorite was "Come Back Jonee," but I digress.

Anyhow, the band went their separate ways and other projects--Mark Mothersbaugh, for instance, started doing scores for things like "Pee Wee's Playhouse" and "Rugrats." Time passed.

But now, we have DEV2.O. Apparently Gerald Casale (another founding member of DEVO) took part in this. It's a bunch of kids kind of doing DEVO songs. I say "kinda" because (a) it's a bunch of kids, and (b) it's Disney. So you're certainly not going to see a 12-year-old singing about how he/she can't get no satisfaction. But even barring that, they've also gutted at least two other DEVO songs. In "Freedom of Choice," there should be a line about "Freedom _from_ choice, is what you want." Nope, not in the Disney Kidz Bop version. Similarly, in "Beautiful World," all traces of irony have been erased: the line "Not me" is not to be found. Just a bit too nihilistic I guess.

Anyhow, at least they found the same red plastic flowerpots.

Walt Disney Records - Devo 2.0

HD DVD and Blu-ray content to be degraded for analog displays

Here's a rundown of how HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will degrade their HD signals when output to an analog HDTV. This was known all along but some of the details are slightly new... it'll downgrade to 960x540 instead of 480 lines, plus it will reportedly then upsample the downgraded image back up to 1280x720. That last move is just dumb enough to be true, sadly enough.

HD DVD and Blu-ray content to be degraded for analog displays

Sandvox

I listened to the Steve Jobs webcast and was interested in their iWeb addition to their iLife package. The only problem is that their iLife stuff is so closely tied to stupid old .Mac, which costs $100/year, which is a lot for hosting.

So, lo and behold, Karelia Software (of Watson fame) has come out with something called Sandvox. Looks like it's similar enough to iWeb, but not locked so closely to .Mac, and will be extensible. Interesting. Going to go DL the beta now...

Introducing Sandvox | Karelia Software

HD Format War -- so much for the neutral third-party

Way back, about six months ago when it became clear that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray weren't going to come to an agreement to merge their formats, Samsung said, "hey, that's OK, we're making a dual-format player that will play both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray." Sounded good to me. As it turned out, a little too good... now, Sammy sez that licensing agreements prohibit them (or anyone else, I assume) from making a dual-format player. How convenient for consumers. Not.

Samsung sez combo HD DVD/Blu-ray player is a no go? - Engadget

TerraPass

I saw this in a little ad on one of my leftie pinko commie liberal blogs I like to read. Interesting idea. You have their website estimate how much CO2 your car emits per year, then you pay for a "terrapass." Your payment is then used to fund renewable energy of various forms so that it offsets the CO2 your car emits. It's not too expensive and you get a nice sticker to put in your car. Hmm.

TerraPass website

A DISincentive for buying a Xbox 360

After some initial denials by various Microsoft shills, Bill Gates has confirmed that an HD-DVD drive is coming for the Xbox 360 sometime in 2006. But, and these are some big buts, (a) it will be external, (b) it will apparently only be used for movies and not games, (c) no one has an idea on how it will actually connect to the Xbox 360.

Now I'll grant you that this isn't as big a dumb move as it could have been. If the external drive HAD been announced as being used for games, Microsoft would have split the game developers even more than they did when they announced the no-drive Core 360 in addition to the "real" 360. Having said that, wouldn't it have made more sense to put a HD-DVD drive in the thing to begin with? I just shake my head in puzzlement and disdain.

Opposable Thumbs: Bill Gates puts rumors to rest and admits to an external 360 HD-DVD drive in '06

Water Cooled Xbox 360

With all the reports of Xbox 360s overheating, it was bound to happen sometime... an article on how to convert your Xbox 360 to a watercooled system. They got a pretty hefty 50 degree F drop in CPU temperature with the system, but given my skill with a set of tools, I'd be likely to turn things into a soggy and expensive mess. Pretty cool, though.

[H]ard|OCP - Water Cooled Xbox 360