When I flew to Tampa last week, there was a magazine cover that claimed the days of free professional content over the Internet were over.  The cable companies had a way, it claimed, to control the programs available and keep us paying >$100/month for cable.  I didn’t read the article, but I have a guess at how they might do this.  Comcast is currently attempting to buy NBC (if the Justice Department doesn’t have anything to say about that) and NBC has a stake in Hulu.  So, Comcast could limit Hulu to existing cable customers or they could limit the content to make Hulu no longer that important.  Already, changes are afoot that have made Hulu less attractive.  The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are no longer available via Hulu.  Whether or not this is part of the same agenda (getting people to pay for cable) isn’t important.  The less programming available in one place, the less important Hulu is.  But if they succeed I will simply stop watching TV.

My late March Photojojo.  (They select the most interesting photos I took a year ago)

I’m a big Tim Burton fan and I also tend to like his casting of Johnny Depp.  But I’m no fanboy:  I found Tim Burton’s take on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to be worse than the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  The first thing I have to get off my chest and the thought that was pervasive in my mind nearly to the point of preventing my enjoyment of the movie is that this movie should really have been titled Return to Wonderland.  If you’re into movies, you probably already knew this, and so did I.  But I can imagine lots of people who just see a commercial or see the name and think it’ll be a live action version of the old Disney movie.  (It doesn’t help that Disney is behind this version as well)  So, in this version, we have an adult Alice about who runs away from her marriage proposal and into the rabbit hole.

I’ve been listening to podcasts for about two years now.  I got into it because I love listening to some NPR programs, but they are always on when I’m at work or asleep on the weekends.  Eventually, I heard on NPR that they have podcasts of various shows.  I checked it out right away because in Maryland NPR is on 88.1 which is always being interfered with by SiriusXM radio receivers.  At first I only listened to a few podcasts because I didn’t own an iPod and I so I burned the podcasts to a CD-R every few days.  That got expensive, so I got an iPod shuffle.  Since podcasts don’t take up too much space, I started getting into more and more podcasts.  Some I discovered in magazines and others were recommendations from Dan.  So, I thought I would share the podcasts I listen to so that those following this blog could perhaps discover some new podcasts they didn’t know about.  Dan, for example, recently got into This American Life.  (I think after I kept telling him about it - but he may have discovered it independently)  I’m going to put links to the actual podcast URL, so just copy that into your podcather or iTunes.

Once again, I got my photojojo photo time capsule email.  This time, one year ago I was in Miami for my cousin’s wedding.  And here are the photos they chose:

Here’s your March computer desktop background!

Click on this one and then, once it loads, right-click and set as desktop if you have a square monitor:

[caption id=“attachment_3211” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“March 2010 - 1024x768 Desktop Calendar for Squarish Monitors”] [/caption]

Click on this one and then, once it loads, right-click and set as desktop if you have a widescreen monitor:

[caption id=“attachment_3212” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“March 2010 - 1680x1050 Desktop Calendar for Widescreen Monitors”] [/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_3224” align=“aligncenter” width=“480” caption=“Civilization IV: Colonizaton: My First Colony”] [/caption]

Do not be fooled by the Civ IV part of the title to the updated to the classic Colonization.  You do so at your own peril; well, your colony’s peril.  Colonization is primarily a game of economics while Civilization is primarily a game of domination.  In Civ you work the tiles around your city and either get “money”, production, or food.  In Colonization you work the tiles around your city and get cotton, tobacco, ore, sugar cane, and probably some other stuff I’m forgetting.  And, while in Civ you simply use the production to build units and city structures, in Col you take all these raw products and produce finished products: cloth, cigars, tools, guns, rum, and coats.

The beach was covered with snow, but that didn’t seem to bother the seagulls. As I approached, they let me get really close and if I got closer they preferred to run rather than fly.

The Brooklyn Bridge. It was completed in 1883 and it links Brooklyn to Manhattan. It’s also possible to take the Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn, but it’s far less picturesque. I’ve been to the Brooklyn Bridge a few times to take pictures with the first time being when I bought my Fujifilm Finepix S7000. This was the first time I took photos from Brooklyn Bridge Park; every other time had been from on the bridge itself.

What can I say about visiting the Lomography store that hasn’t already been said? It provides a very interesting contrast with B&H Photo Video. B&H is a photographer’s sex dream. There are cameras and lenses of all kinds everywhere (on the second floor, nowadays). A conveyor belt system brings your order to the guy taking your order and then over to where you pay. It is massive (taking up a good chunk of 9th and 34th) and it feels chaotic on a Sunday afternoon. You instantly feel as though you need to win the lotto so you can posses it all. It feels like a microcosm of NY with people trying to get every which way and pushing around.