Cogs can think.

The worst television show in the history of ever. This show has actually managed to fake depth.

And you know what? All those people who get off on the word “indie”, all those people who buy MacBooks just because they think that makes them different, all those people who pretend not to care about stuff, you know, but who are even too empty and pointless to even do the right thing and become an emo - or worse yet, a gothic - so that we’d at least have a legitimate reason to kill them. Those people? Those are the people that like Californication.

I’d rather watch Hypnotoad on Blu-Ray with 7.1 surround sound on a 200cm plasma display for 10 days on end than watch just 5 minutes of Californication. I’ve never seen such shallow, pointless, story-less, humourless, direction-less piece of unimaginative drivel.

It’s that awful.

So like, I went skiing yesterday with Renate and Bart (her boyfriend). It was awesome, but obviously, I was pretty tired when I got home at around 18:45. Seeing I had to get up at 6:30 the next morning for university, I decided to go to bed early, at 22:00.

Which is rare. Normally I’m not in bed before 00:00.

The result is that I woke up at 3:45 this morning, fully awake, fully capable, ready to start my day. I had absolutely no idea what to do. I mean, it’s like, night.

Is it, then, worrying that my first idea was to clean?

I just want to say that I’m positively blown away by what I saw concerning Windows 7 in the keynote at the PDC. There is some seriously decent thinking being put into that product.

The interface enhancements reduce the amount of clicks drastically.

They finally implemented something as useful as Expose.

They cleaned up a lot of the UI.

Home Group is something I’ve been hoping for for a long time: all my computers and peripherals automatically interconnected (I’m going to cry the first time I won’t have to bother with sharing and installing a printer over the network).

The system tray is effectively gone.

You get full control over what messages the OS and its applications give you.

Windows key+p for instant and automatic switching between the various types of projector uses (I WANT TO HUG WHOEVER THOUGHT OF THIS ONE).

Device Stage for instant access to all my devices, even across the network.

Customisable shutdown button.

Ribbons in Paint and Wordpad.

And this is just a selection of the selection Steven and the ever lovely Julie showed us today. This is the first time in like ever that I’m truly excited about anything coming out of Redmond - and it will all work just fine on my Aspire One and desktop box, because Vista runs fine too. All the hard stuff - the groundwork, the base, the frameworks - are already there, and my computers can handle them easily. Windows 7 doesn’t contain any new and fancy tricks that needs newer hardware.

Apple is going to have a little bit of a pickle on this one if all they can come up with is a slimmed-down Leopard that only runs on 64bit Intel boxes.

Oh, and just for the record: JULIE IS TEH AWESOME. She drew a heart on the postcard. You’ll never see Bill or His Steveness draw a heart. +4738387534 for drawing hearts.

Armageddon’s on TV right now. I’ve seen it a couple of hundred times already, and every time, I’m just amazed by how god damn good this film is. It has everything. Action, suspense, special effects, decent humour, and probably one of the most heartbreaking acting moments ever recorded on camera (I can’t listen to that Aerosmith song without a few chills traveling down my spine).

Armageddon does everything right. Even though the film makes no sense whatsoever, you just don’t give a rat’s ass when you’re watching it, because you’re totally into it all. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s what a good film is supposed to do: make the unbelievable believable. What’s harder to transfer to the silver screen: real events, things that could happen in reality - or something totally bizarre? The professional critics didn’t like it, but luckily, the audience didn’t give a rat’s ass, and went en masse to the film because they realised what it was: entertainment. A film doesn’t need dying AIDS patients or men making out in order to be good.

This film should’ve swept the Oscars, and the fact that it didn’t just shows what kind of an abysmal farce the Academy Awards are.

So, Focus Shift - the comic loved and hated by OSNews readers - is going to return. Rejoice.

However, it’s going to be completely different from what you’re used to. It’s no longer about wanting to make people chuckle or laugh using cheap jokes in a tech-related context. I want something a little more… Experimental. Something closer to who I am. Something more fitting for a personal weblog.

So, Focus Shift will be more a sort of crudely drawn graphical form of blogging. While the occasional OSNews-style comic might still pop up, the new Focus Shift comic will focus on my personal life, things I experience every day. However, the focus is not making people laugh - it’s more a form of expressing certain things in an extremely vague manner, letting the readers fill in the blanks in whatever way they deem fit.

This is going to be highly experimental, and it’s very likely this won’t amuse a very large audience. That’s fine with me. I’m not doing my blog for other people, so why should its comic be about other people?

Stay tuned.

Focus Shift will return. Right here, on Cogs Can Think.

Quite the clever spam message I just received. I wonder how many would fall for this one.

—
Dear Email User,
This message was sent automatically by a program on Email which periodically checks the size of inboxes, where new messages are received. The program is run weekly to ensure no one’s inbox grows too large. If your inbox becomes too large, you will be unable to receive new email. Just before this message was sent, you had 18 Megabytes (MB) or more of messages stored in your inbox on your Email. To help us re-set your SPACE on our database prior to maintain your INBOX, you must reply to this e-mail and enter your

Email User name: { }
Email Password: { }

You will continue to receive this warning message periodically if your inbox size continues to be between 18 and 20 MB. If your inbox size grows to 20 MB, then a program on Bates Email will move your oldest email to a folder in your home directory to ensure that you will continue to be able to receive incoming email. You will be notified by email that this has taken place. If your inbox grows to 25 MB, you will be unable to receive new email as it will be returned to the sender. After you read a message, it is best to REPLY and SAVE a copy.

Thank you for your cooperation.
Webmail Help Desk

It came from mail@helpdesk.com, and the reply-to is set to help-desk-service@live.com.

Oh, and of course I hope the senders die and rot in hell and all that stuff. I just admire the cleverness.

So, you’re never ever allowed to have sex ever again - not even a solo tour. However, you are presented with a choice.

Either you select two of the most beautiful women you know, and you’re allowed to watch as they, uhm, do the lesbo - except, you’re not allowed to join, and not allowed to touch yourself until the show’s over, and the two women have gone. Then you’re allowed to, uhm, get it out of your system, but only once.

Or you get to have plain ol’ sex with one of them (out of crappy euphemisms, sorry).

I thought of this dilemma yesterday while watching Coupling (which has an unhealthy obsession with lesbians, like I - and most men - do), and I’m not entirely sure what worries me more - the fact that I came up with this stuff, or the fact that I can’t seem to decide which of the two options I’d choose.

Interestingly, this dilemma doesn’t really work for women. I think.

May I introduce the latest addition to my computer family?

After waiting for months and months for a decent offer, I’ve bought a PowerMac with Dual G4 450Mhz processors, 1MB L2 cache each, 1GB of memory, 80GB HDD, and a dual layer DVD burner (oh, and a ZIP drive - automatically I dug up my old ZIP disks, who knows, when the world ends, and the US government flips the kill switch on all USB drives, MY 8 ZIP DRIVES WILL STILL WORK). It has a rather crummy Ati Rage 128 Pro whatever 16MB video card, so you can guess what’s next on my wish list.

The PowerMac G4 is from the days when Apple design was playful and a little bit crazy - contrary to the boring and clinical computers they put out today. Apple machines today are pretty, but also rather void of any emotion. The PowerMac G4, with the Cube and the iMac G4, represent the last truly astonishing hardware from Apple.

Let’s hope they can break their cycle of boringness coming Tuesday. I’m not keeping my hopes up, though.

During lunch with my parents at Het Trefpunt in Schoorl.

Dad: Yeah, I need to go to Berlin again, it’s been a while. I’m sure there’s a sub-100EUR ticket somewhere.

Mom: You could go by train.

Dad: Yeah… Maybe I’ll do that. Take the train, and go to Berlin by myself…

Me: Going to Berlin alone? That’s kind of sad, isn’t it?

Silence.

Me: Oh, wait.