Found this on digg and just had to share.

Ok I’m over Kate Wax.

Managed to get home early for once today, and watched American Idol. I think last year’s contestants were better, although Blake did a pretty cool beatboxing + Bon Jovi cover for something on a show about the death of music. Then again, once Justin Timberlake becomes known for bringing beatboxing to the mainstream, you know music never had a chance.

Also watched an episode from the new season of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, and it was fu#*ing wonderful except for local censorship of every other thing he said. I really loved that show back in the days of the first season. I do find it a problem though when he does his best to demolish the head chef (usually deserved) in front of the help, and then complains later that he isn’t displaying enough confidence. Oh well. He’s earned the right to be a royal asshole, in the kitchen at least.

***

I’ve had it with my Nokia E65. What a piece of shit the Symbian 60 OS is. A complete joke when it comes to usability. I pity everyone out there with a Nokia N series phone. Don’t fall for the advertising. I fall for it all the time, and I’m responsible for some of that shit! But just say no. Don’t believe it.

Years ago, when Nokia came out with their first cameraphone, you know the one, it was purple – they had a great ad for it. Lovely music by Zap Mama (Take Me Coco), and really well-shot visuals. A woman with flowing fabric, in the desert. That ad made me believe I would go to sleep one night and wake up as David LaChapelle. But if you saw the photos off that camera you’d know it was a lie. We were luckier back then. The lies were far enough away from the truth that we actually had a chance.

These days, with YouTube turning people into celebrities, yeah why not? Why shouldn’t a crappy video shot on a Nokia N93i be the turning point in your life? Because the phone sucks ass, that’s why, and you’ll snap it across your thigh in frustration before you even get home to transfer your shitty-ass video onto a real computer. What’s that? Yes, I said a real computer! Your N series phone is not a “multimedia computer”! It’s not “what computers have become”! Don’t falllllll for itttttt!

I’m trading mine in tomorrow for a good old Sony-Ericsson K800i. I took a lot more photos when I had my K750i. The 2mp camera on it was decent, and dependable. I’ve barely taken a goddamned photo in the last 2 months with this Nokia because it just makes my friends look like green shit golems. It’s a fucking embarrassment. No Japanese schoolgirl would be caught dead using one, and as you should know, they are the benchmark against which my life is lived.

Looks like a big month ahead, with new albums from Bjork (love the cover!) and Tori Amos (hate the cover!). I’ve also picked up the new album ‘Contact’ from Thirteen Senses, whose debut album ‘The Invitation’ was pretty damn good and underappreciated. So far I think it’s great.

Rufus Wainwright also has a new album out in May, as do the Manic Street Preachers. If you like that sort of thing. I can’t stop thinking about these album covers. They don’t make them like they used to. Rufus’ looks like there’s some bad photoshopping going on there, although I’m not certain. And the Manics’ 2 fat women after a hen night, well. That’s just a common sight in England, isn’t it.

But really the whole point of this post was to mention and recommend Kate Wax. There are 2 albums in the Dark Heat Collection series, and both are available on eMusic.com. CDs are kinda rare, but if you can find any in your local HMV, be sure to try them out. She does a swirly, atmospheric sort of vocal mumblelectronica.

Half-British/Japanese talent idol Becky (Rebecca Eri Ray Vaughan) is too damned cute around animals (this includes Leah Dizon).

Here’s a clip from an episode of Shimura Zoo where she lived with some firefoxes. I’m still looking for the full episode.

Also, check out the episode with 3 koalas. They jump around a lot and are unbearably cute!

Becky and Koalas at JapanSugoi.com

Edit:
Becky and a giant beaver

Hi there, just wanted to let y’all know that Joost is the future of TV. It is how you will consume programming in the days to come. It is where you will get your kicks. It is what you will fall asleep to, eat dinner over, discuss with friends, and wonder how you ever survived without.

From the makers of Kazaa and Skype (who must have a serious jonesing for making things free), Joost is full-screen, interactive streaming tv over P2P that doesn’t suck. I’ve seen these services come and go, and Joost succeeds where they’ve failed. If you think it’s like Democracy Player, you’re wrong. That one’s slow, bittorrent-based, and not very TV-like in all honesty. It’s not RealPlayer Gold either, but that’s not even worth mentioning.

Joost feels like TV and plays like TV. You don’t even notice it buffering, maybe because it serves up commercials periodically. And it looks as good as real TV, even across my 24″ LCD. It uses an H.264 codec, which is the best choice they could have made. I cannot overstate how impressive it was to see, the first time I turned it on.

Interactive community features include the ability to rate programs, chat with other people viewing the same program, and IM friends on the network.

There are tons of “channels”, really playlists, but some like National Geographic’s are restricted to U.S. viewers only. Based on the pedigree of the clients they’ve signed now for the beta phase (NatGeo, MTV, Guinness World of Records, World Poker Tour), I think the final product is going to put a lot of subscription IPTV operators out of business (I can think of a few, locally).

Edit: Just saw this on the blog. No doubt for U.S. users only, but encouraging news:

CBS has signed a deal with Joost to make top current and classic programming available for free, to our viewers. That means that you will soon have on-demand access to programs like CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, CBS Evening News, CBS Sportsline, Survivor and much more.

Joost is currently in beta and one of the most sought-after invite programs since Gmail. The client runs on PC/Windows and Intel-based Mac OSX. PowerPC support is on the cards, but from my experience, it looks like a power-hungry app, so I don’t think anything less than a G5 is going to cut it. If someone gets around to whacking this on an AppleTV, I think the war would be over.

With reference to 24-inch iMac, at last, it took half a year, but the shininess of huge new Macs don’t fade until their screens do. My iBook, 3 years old now, has a screen so dim it’s like a DS Phat’s or worse. In contrast (hur hur), this new desktop has been running on the lowest brightness setting since last night, and still it’s brighter than a DS Lite on maximum brightness.