Today is December 8th, 2007.  It's been exactly 27 years since John Lennon was shot dead in New York.

Yoko has put up a letter to her husband on the ImaginePeace website.  The website is also featuring the video of War is Over! (If You Want It)

John has always been my favorite Beatle.  I recently bought the DVD-Audio version of Love, the Beatles compilation album George Martin produced recently.  It is amazing in surround sound and a testament to just how many incredibly beautiful songs the band created.

 

 

Ever since Hulu was announced I have wondered why NBC and News Corp decided to waste time and money building a combined video destination.  I understand their fear in the fast-changing online media landscape.  They obviously have no love for the reigning video behemoths of YouTube and iTunes.  However, YouTube is hardly a threat to professional quality streaming television and it seems as though iTunes could better be combatted by allying with its competitors such as Amazon's Unbox.

I am apathetically awaiting my Hulu beta membership.  To their credit the video player they demo on their blog does seem awfully slick and is much more elegant than CBS's Innertube player.  However, if I am in the mood to watch Heroes I just can't see myself going to an arbitrarily named video website.  More than likely I'll use my favorite search engine of the moment (currently Ask.com) and type in the word Heroes.

I am not loyal to one television network and thus I have no patience to memorize from which video websites my favorite television shows are available.  Hell, I'm not even loyal to YouTube as a video destiantion--I tend to only watch a video when its linked from Digg, and these days the video is just as likely to come from Break.com or a similar destination.

Ultimately I don't think online video distribution is going to revolutionize broadcast television.  The long tail will definitely somewhat weaken the grip the major media companies have; however, it'll also empower them to find more original shows cheaper and quicker so that they may put the minds and actors behind the shows under contract.

Five years from now I may turn on my tv and have my Series 4 Tivo present me with a compelling array of entertainment to consume.  There will surely by indie viral shows recommended to me by my friends on the ONEsite social networks.  Some nights I may even choose to watch these shows, and view an advertisement or submit a micropayment.  However, if its Thursday night I will undoubtedly instead feel the lure to flip on NBC and watch the latest episode of The Office.

I will watch The Office live (or nearly live) and I will watch it not because I love NBC, but because I trust NBC to reward my loyalty with consistently good programming.  Plus, nothing beats the provervial water cooler conversation sparked by a widely-shared favourite television programs:  "Dwight uses Second Life!  Finally we know someone who uses it!"

Andy, ONEsite's creative director and resident rock star, wrote me saying early reports put Radiohead's new album downloads at 1.2million.  That's 1.2 million downloads in the first week of its release.  This is the album which is shaking up the music industry not for its contents, but for its distribution mechanisms and controversial pricing.

I paid £5.00 for my copy of In Rainbows.  So does that mean Radiohead has made £60m pounds off of its downloads thus far since they are cutting out the middle man?  It's doubtful.  Only they know the real numbers because each fan could choose to pay anywhere from £0.00 to £∞.

So if I could have gotten the album for free, why did I choose to pay for it?  It's not that I'm morally opposed to being a free loader.  Indeed, I admit that I have pirated a song or two in my lifetime (perhaps a few albums as well).  I vividly remember the days when it was quicker to download a song off of Napster than it was to find it on my hard drive.

I definitely didn't pay for the album because I thought Thom Yorke needed a few extra quid to pay for his Starbucks.  However, I may have paid for it because I felt that Radiohead deserves to be paid for producing such excellent music.  Or hell, maybe I paid for the album so it will mean more to me and not be another forgotten series of 1s and 0s gaining cobwebs in the magnetic graveyard of my mp3 collection.

So is In Rainbows worth the money?  Definitely.  Radiohead has been one of my favorite bands since I bought a copy of Pablo Honey in 1993.  I admit that I've somewhat tired of their progressive electronica version of alt-rock.  However, this is only because I miss the clean compelling refrain of the grungier Creep.  I respect that they've been continually reinventing or augmenting their style with every elbum...  and every album has been damn good.  In Rainbows may not be as classic as OK Computer, but it is overall quite good and definitely worth whatever you choose to pay for it.

Last week I had the chance to try something I've never eaten before...  Ethiopian food.  Normally I'm all for ethnic food and willing to try just about anything, but this was a night to remember.  My brother was in town and he has been wanting to try eating at Oklahoma City's Queen of Sheba restaurant.  He heard about the restaurant from a bulletin from a Flaming Lips bandmember.

A month or so ago I had some friends over at my house to play the Wii.  I had just picked up the Wii from Thad and unfortunately had forgotten to grab the sensor bar.  In case you're not hip to the WiiWorld, the sensor bar is used by the Wiimotes to help with triangulation and pointing and all that jazz.  So since we had no sensor bar were wii going to give up?  Hell no, we decided to play by candlelight instead!



The sensor bar actually works by sending out 5 dots of infrared light.  The Wiimotes use these points to determine where the user is in relation to the television and where the Wiimote is pointing.  The Wiimote has an accelerometer internally which is used to detect motion and acceleration in the physical dimensions.  What this means is that you can still play a lot of Wii games without even using the sensor bar.

So do the candles replace the sensor bar entirely?  Ummmm, not quite.  We of course had to turn the lights all the way off, and even then the Wiimote had some issues.  It worked pretty well for navigating the Wii menus and getting into the games and performing initial game setup.  However, I imagine it would not work well for a game which actually depends on a significant amount of "pointing."  Fortunately we only played Wii Sports and all the sports games seem to only require the accelerometer.

All in all it was a blast to play by candlelight.  However, it's a bit dangerous as you can imagine.  Especially when you're drinking white russians at the same time...