Remember I told you about EyeTV yesterday? Well, I e-mailed the company asking if/when they were going to release an international version. They replied today saying, “We are working on bringing EyeTV to countries with the PAL broadcast television format. Watch http://www.elgato.com for announcements in this area later this year.” Of course, that doesn’t address the issue of whether they’ll make program guides available for every country (especially as they don’t charge any subscriptions and thus make no money off them). I hope they do, though, as otherwise it’s pretty useless.

Okay, folks, you’ve got one more day to throw out suggestions for our first book. It’s odd; we’ve had a lot of contemporary fiction listed, but not much older stuff. Huh. Anyway, check out what’s there and see if anything strikes your fancy. You can even read introductory chapters for most of them via their Amazon links. In a day or so I’ll put up a poll and we’ll have all weekend to pick one. Sound good?

I feel pretty bad looking at all the unsuccessful searches that led people to my site. All those disappointed people! I mean, I don’t know if Anna Kournikova is ovulating. Nor do I know a website hack for Weight Watchers. But I can answer one question: Where’s Russell Crowe’s farm located? It’s in Lowana, near Coffs Harbour in New South Wales. See? I’m all about helping you folks out whenever possible.

This completely blew my mind. Okay, pretend you’ve turned to the financial section of the newspaper and you’re looking at all the stock prices. Now imagine that we took the first digit of each number and fed them into a computer and counted how many times each digit (1-9) appeared. You’d expect there to be a pretty random yet equal distribution, right? Wrong. The digit “1” will appear 30% of the time, and each of the subsequent digits in decreasing percentages. “9” only occurs 5% of the time. This works for stock prices, baseball statistics, and just about any other random collection of data you can dig up. Isn’t that nuts? Apparently it also works on accounting books, which is how the IRS can tell if you’ve been fudging the numbers. Craziness. How do I know this? The Snook randomly brought it up in dinner conversation the other night and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. Here’s a page of more information about the phenomenon. Now see if you can sleep at night.

Cecil answers the age-old question: “Where does belly button lint come from?” Of course, this still doesn’t solve the mystery of how the Snook’s navel generates more lint than any other human being in history. (We’re talkin’ alien lint babies here, folks.)

I just found out that at least one person has received a copy of the Klez virus with my address in the “From:” field. Rest assured, I’m not infected. (I have a Mac, remember?) This particular virus just has the ability to fake its “From:” address based on the infected computer’s address book and web cache. This probably means that whoever has it is someone that’s visited my site or sent me an e-mail in the past. If you think it might be you, there are tools to disinfect yourself here. And if any of you others get mail from my address that you weren’t expecting, don’t open it. I’m a horrible pen pal and I hardly ever e-mail anyway. 🙂

More Mac news: EyeTV has been released! It’s basically Tivo for your Mac. It does everything Tivo does, PLUS it allows you to burn shows directly onto VCD (as long as you have Toast). Unfortunately they don’t offer international support right now. I’ve written to the company begging them to add it. Seriously, this is the software I’ve been waiting for.

Thanks to iPhoto, I’m finally organizing and clearing out some of these pictures that have been sitting on my camera for months. Here at long last are some pics of the Snook and I during our brief stopover in Los Angeles last November. This one here with the “HOLLYWOOD” sign in the background is my favorite. Don’t we look cool? Actually, we’re just jet lagged. 🙂

I had a nice long chat this morning with my friend Hoey, who’s thinking about switching to a Mac. As you might expect, I gave him my usual gushing recommendation. I’ve got yet another reason for him now though: iPhoto. I was finally able to use this nifty bit of software (which is free!) today. See, my digital camera is slightly older and doesn’t work well with OS X. To import my pictures, I used to have to connect the camera, boot into OS9, and use the horrible clunky software that came with it to grab them one-at-a-time. It sucked and it discouraged me from using the camera as much as I might. A few months ago I decided what I needed was a Compact Flash Card reader (i.e. a little thingy that you stick the camera’s flash card into and it pops up on your desktop like a regular drive). The only problem was getting a compatible one in Australia without paying an ungodly amount for it. I mean, these things are fifteen bucks in an American shop, yet somehow cost $115 here. Ridiculous. The Snook somehow managed to find a shop that had some for $70, which was slightly more reasonable, so today I shlepped the laptop across town so we could try them out in the store. And guess what? We found one that works! * So now I just plug the thing in and I can transfer over all my photos with one click. I can edit them and organize them into albums, and even arrange them into a book and have it printed! I am loving this.

* Since it’s not documented anywhere that I can see, I’m posting this in the hopes other OS X users might find it. The CR-V7-UC CompactFlash Card Reader works great with Mac OS X. No drivers or software are needed. You just plug the thing in and it works! Plus it’s a lot cheaper than the “name brand” ones Apple have listed at their site. Just a tip!

The Snook and I saw two very different and interesting movies this weekend. The first was Princess Mononoke, which we’ve had on DVD for ages but somehow never got around to viewing. We watched the dubbed version, thinking it might be easier to get into the story. Big mistake. Instead I spent half the film going, “That’s Billy Bob Thornton! … That’s Claire Danes! … That’s Jada Pinkett Smith!” Didn’t really help with the suspension of disbelief, you know? I understand that Miramax wanted big names in order to entice folks who don’t normally watch anime to pick this one up, but I feel like it might have served the story better to use voices we didn’t automatically recognize. Next time we watch it, we’ll use the subtitles. Anyway, aside from the voices I thought it was great. I’m not much of an anime fan, but you don’t have to be with this film. It really works on the level of an epic live-action picture. The characters are still stylized, but the backgrounds and scenery are on a level with anything Disney’s ever done. The plot was much more intricate than I’d expected and I was never quite sure who to cheer for (that’s part of the reason it’s so good). Check out Ebert’s review for a professional opinion. If you’re in the video store and you feel like something different, I recommend you pick this one up.

The other film we saw was Dirty Deeds, a new Australian film that’s just opened. The Snook’s a big Bryan Brown fan, so I dutifully went along even though I hate gangster pictures. To my amazement I found myself really enjoying it! The actors are all amazing, especially Brown, Toni Collette, and John Goodman. In fact, Goodman’s character was the most interesting of all to me. The Chicago mafia has sent him and his partner to Sydney to get in on the lucrative poker machine gambling business. The partner is a volatile psychopath, but Goodman is a good-hearted guy who wishes he’d gotten out of the profession years ago. Brown plays the kingpin of the Sydney “pokies” racket, who’s trying desperately to protect his little empire from these larger American forces. He’s also introducing his nephew to the business, a young guy that’s just returned from Vietnam. I really enjoyed seeing the way director David Caesar drew parallels between the two sets of men: the older, experienced Brown and Goodman and their younger, immature protegés. The cinematography is also excellent, with lots of flashy camera angles and movement. Like I said, I went in expecting to tolerate it, and instead I really liked it. Highly recommended (if it ever makes it to the States). Oh, a word of warning though: these are THICK Australian (“‘Strine”) accents. Even I had difficulty with some of them at the beginning. It’s not quite Trainspotting, but you do have to pay attention.