Desperate Housewives season three finale

Whoa... I was beginning to get bored with Desperate Housewives but tonight's C4 broadcast of season three finale was, quite frankly, awesome. What a great set-up for the season four. Here are some thoughts concerning the season as a whole:

Personally I have always thought Susan Myers was the weakest character, and this season didn't prove me wrong. She did take her first step to finally gain control of her life by finally deciding for herself her wedding date, but she needs to prove herself more and stop being a Rachel. Gabrielle's a close second, and I hope, with that shrewd 'it's all about me' personality, perhaps she is finally getting what she deserved. I am indifferent to Lynette and couldn't care less on what will happen to her the next season.



I was glad to see Marcia Cross's returning as Bree for the finale, even if it was only for a couple of minutes of screen time. Her return was pretty much essential as the plot that was revealed in tonight's episode sets up what could be the first half of season four's storyline. Because I was online while watching the episode on the telly, there were plenty of 'WTF' on my Skype messages with Jenni, and 90% of it concerns Bree's scenes. As for Edie... well take a look at the picture above. Nothing moved, not even her feet. She's done. Move on folks.

I would like to congratulate David Grossman for directing this episode and to Marc Cherry, the series creator. Can't wait for season four.

Madeleine McCann's hotel defies physics

The original post I wrote here was pretty nasty, so I decided to tone it down a little bit... Regardless this should still amuse you:

4 May 07

TheGuardian

Portuguese police were today searching for Madeline McCann who disappeared from the family's rented apartment while her parents Gerry and Katie dined at a tapas restaurant 200 yards away.

11 May 07

The Daily Telegraph

The couple claimed they were checking on the apartment every half hour as they dined at a tapas restaurant with friends, only 100 yards away.

29 May 07

This is London (Daily Mail)

Madeleine took the soft toy to bed with her every night and it was with her when her parents tucked her up in bed alongside her brother and sister on May 3 before going out for dinner 40 yards away.

Incredible. By the end of this sorry saga I am sure even the McCanns would believe that they never actually left their children alone and they dined in the very apartment itself.

KER-CHING!



The good news is that the latest in reality thrash television known as Big Brother 2007 is starting tonight, which would at least give me another subject to rant about. It would also mean that the media would give another group of attention seekers misfits some much needed coverage. But don't count on this being the last Team McCann related rant I would subject you guys with, especially if something stupid, like the ironic meeting with a Catholic pontif, happens again.

In other news, five Britons were kidnapped blah blah blah...

Hawkins new device prediction (update: Palm introduces the Foleo, a sub-notebook with proprietary Linux OS)

Tomorrow Jeff Hawkins will be revealing a new product for Palm, Inc. Despite him claiming that the product would not be a handheld or smartphone, plenty of people has been making predictions that it would. Knowing Palm's past business practice I highly doubt that the device would be revolutionary, but just to be safe I am going to predict something big.

Remember a few years ago when IBM research announced a mobile PC concept called the MetaPad (then later called the Mobile Computer Core, then later by IBM Japan as the PC Core System)? If not you can read about it here. While the concept never really took off (concepts has been shown by other companies, but I doubt it ever made it into the consumer market, at least not outside Japan), I do hope someone (be it IBM or another PC vendor) would attempt to market something similar. If it is Palm with their new Linux-based OS then that would be awesome, but like I said earlier, I highly doubt they have the ability to do so.

But one of the reasons I am bringing this up was because of Hawkin's assertion that it will be something to do with mobile computing with plenty of storage. UMPCs, PDAs, smartphones, dumphones and mobile internet tablets can all do that, but if Hawkins were to announce a new product that would fit into any of those categories that I just mentioned then I would be very disappointed. Well we will see about it tomorrow.

Update (30/05/07):

Ugh, this is the exciting new product?



A proprietary sub-notebook running on a proprietary version of Linux? The cost is even more ridiculous. US$599 (probably £499 here). If this were to cost say... US$299-399 (depending on specs), then I can think of a reason why people would want one (eg. a permanent and cheap internet only notebook for the living room), but right now most can already sync their Treos/Blackberries/smartphones etc. to a proper Wintel ultra-portable. This would be a pretty exciting product if it was released in 2001, when I still had a desire for a consumer Psion 7 series or a HPC. Corporate ITs may consider the product but I doubt there is a significant consumer market for it.

At least the design of the Foleo notebook looks pretty good. It appears to have a proper keyboard and it does come with a trackpoint/nipple mouse, the best mousey technology ever created. But still...

Cheap legal CDs deemed illegal: consumers are the losers

The High court in London today imposed a £41 million fine to CD-Wow for selling legal (as in original, not pirated) albums in the UK. The catch is the CDs are imported from cheaper regions therefore enabling us the consumers to benefit, therefore according to some weird law, makes it 'illegal'.

The CDs are still legal, aren't region-coded (unlike DVDs and video games) but the British Phonographic Industry, being the prat they are, failed to see the point and decided that us, the consumers, are still required to pay upwards of ten quid per CD. The BPI's main assertion in their offence against consumers is that by buying cheap legal and original CDs we are 'hurting' the artists.

The way some of BPI's arguments are laid out seems to indicate that CDs are sold at a lost in Hong Kong which I seriously doubt. Whether the CDs are sold in Asia or the UK, moolah always make their way back to the original artists (although the majority still remains in fat cats coffers in both regions, that I am sure of). It reminds me of the time when I bought a legal non-censored but published in Asia version of Antichrist Superstar from Malaysia for a fantastic £5 in '98. I am pretty sure Marilyn Manson received the same amount of royalty from the sale in Malaysia as if it was if I purchased it in the UK.

If Britain really wants to claim itself to be a champion of free economy then leave us consumers alone to choose where we want to purchase our goods. It isn't fair that even with the current exchange rate we still have to pay through our noses for shit. Free market my arse.

Until then, thanks to you BPI (and SCEE) the day when even legal consumers get fed up and start researching on this torrent thingy is getting closer.

World Community Grid

Rather than donating money to charity chuggers, who pocket 50% of the monies for 'administrative' and tax purposes, do something better for a change by donating surplus computing power to research institute that can, in the long-run, benefit man-kind. And I know for a fact that everything I donated will be put to good use, unlike that of charities.

For the past month I have been donating computing power to the World Community Grid via United Devices client (you can also use the more popular BOINC client). Because the client only takes up idle CPU time (and it rarely put the processor under stress), electricity consumption is minimal. I only turn it on when I am actually using the computer, rather than leaving my PC on 24/7. Right now there are four projects on WCG, two of which my PCs are crunching for: FightAIDS@home and the Fiocruz Genome Comparison Project.


United Devices client calculating a WU for the Genome Comparison project on Windows XP

There are plenty of distributed computing projects around to suit anyone. CERN's LHC@home would probably suit physics geeks and Einstein worshippers more. Sci-fi nerds would most likely prefer to run SETI@home. Then there's the PS3 - Folding@home does demonstrate the crunching capability of STI's Cell processor.

TV Review: Paul Merton in China

Five might not be my usual TV channel spot, but Paul Merton in China is an absolute winner in my books. Having never been to China myself, it was interesting to see china in the eyes of a stranger. To see through the eyes of Paul Merton was even better as this guy is one of my favourite Have I Got News for You panellist. Sure he is no Michael Palin (or god forbid Gavin Stamp), but this guy is hilarious. Who else would pass up a visit to the Great Wall ("just a wall of brick") to have a ride on a home made rickshaw robot?

Beneath all the comedy there were serious issues that were raised by a politically confused China. Officially a "Communist" (it never was) state, China's eager embrace of capitalism proved excessive as is highlighted by the visit to a horrifying French château replica.

The second part of Paul Merton in China is on 9pm bank holiday Monday.

Crumpler beer for bags (bring it over!)

Since 2002, Crumpler, an Aussie company famous for making hip bags for electronical equipments, has organised 'beer for bags' events. This year the events are being held in NYC and Toronto. The process is simple:

Check their site.
Eye the bag you want.
Buy the brand and quantities requested (soya sauce and ramen are also required for certain trade-ins!).
Go to event and trade the beers in for the bag of your choice.
Drink beer with staff.

You end up actually saving money, obtaining a pricey Crumpler and getting wasted in the process.

Examples:

Thirsty Al (L) = 4 cans of Boddingtons
Skivvy (L) = 1 case of Hoegaarden
Moderate Embarassment = 2 cases of Asahi + 1 packet of Ramen

To those organisers at Crumpler: bring this event to London!

via NBR

Wembley today

Apparently there was some kind of big event today at Wembley. Pictures from the number 83 bus!


LOL!




All those early celebrations for nowt!