Live From Brussels:

State of the Union

As is my yearly tradition, I'm staying up late to watch the State of the Union address live. It starts at 3.00 in the morning here in Belgium, in case you were wondering...

January 31, 2006 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 27, 2006

I just watched the first episode of The IT Crowd on-line. From the looks of it, this could turn into a very nice sitcom about the lives of some computer nerds in a corporate basement. I loved the attention to detail in the set design. I noticed some EFF stickers, for example, and a picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Also an RTFM t-shirt.

On the other hand, some of the jokes were quite stale. Fooling a boss into thinking he has voice control on his computer? Feh... A stereotypical geek (glasses, tie, ugly shirt and weird hair) talking technical mumbo jumbo? Feh... The old 'person-trying-to-impress-visitor-by-talking-into-unconnected-phone' gag? Feh...

On the other hand, the digs at Ally McBeal and the Amsterdam hooker stuff was great. So was the stuff about needing bigger glasses, depending on if something was a plan or a scheme. And the 'have you turned it off and back on' routine on the phone was great real-life comedy.

I'll keep watching this to see how it turns out next week.

January 27, 2006 in Television | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 26, 2006

Don't be Evil...

... unless they pay you enough. That's it, Google is now officially evil. Compare these two images:

One is a screenshot of an image search for Tienanmen Square on the American version of Google, the other one is what googlers in China get to see. Notice the difference?