Listen to Triple J's Hitlist

I've added a little Triple J hitlist radio widget/gadget in my sidebar. It is a Finetune play list that behaves like a radio. It's the songs that were available on Finetune's database today from the rotation list on Triple J's website. Enjoy! And credit to Triple J for being such a fine radio station.

Well Designed MySpace and other Oxymorons

What does it take to make a nice looking


These days just enter "Design MySpace for Me" into Google and you will come up with a myriad of sites offering the sweetest designs but for the ill educated Web User they will most likely have a "Free Kick Ass Mutha-Truckin MySpace Layouts" Banner on the top right of their page linking to the very reason their MySpace sucks.

There are a few tools around to make your MySpace look sweet enough to bite without having to many of those crappy and annoying "Which past Big Brother contestant's toenails are most like yours?" Gadget which you wouldn't have on there unless you were like a person that you adore or think other people do.

So here is my MySpace Designer School

Images

It's called Photobucket and you probably would have contributed to their server load at some point if you use MySpace or frequent blogs. If you wanna put your own images up there you have to register. Once registered you will be assigned a photo album to put all your images into once uploaded. The editing of size and other properties is limited once you upload your image so best do that beforehand.

Uploading is very straight forward. You just browse and locate the image, preferably JPG or GIF but they do allow for a few other formats depending on your needs.

Once your picture is in you photo album you are going to want to click the yellow box next HTML Tag. This will copy the code ready for you to place it where it is needed.



From here it's just a matter of choosing which section you want to place the image. One of the below sections is a good place to start:

About Me | Who I'd Like To Meet | Interests | Music | Movies | Books | Heroes

The html code which will look something like this:



It's just a matter of changing the URL in the brackets after href and the =

If you want no link on your image delete the code above.

Photos in a bucket.


Videos

It's pretty straightforward with Veoh. Register an account and you are on your way. Videos are on the site as soon as you upload them and they look sweet without all that crappy branding that YouTube does. Just embed your video onto MySpace and change the dimensions to suit which part of your page you are on.

Use the Calculator on your computer to do this.

A better uploading experience than YouTube


Music

If you want to entertain your visitors with a radio station of your own making than Finetune is just for you. Just look in the top right of this page to see it in action. The Finetune playlist was made by selecting songs from a generous song catalogue and they play back for you and the world to hear.

You need to select a minimum of 45 songs for each playlist you create and from there the song selection's the limit. I created a few different lists.

I created a personalised playlist to listen to on my desktop with the new Finetune Desktop Beta as well as in my MySpace music section. You can also listen to it on the Wii if you have one. They have a part of their site dedicated to it. You could probably use it on the Playstation 3 come to think of it.

I also created a Film Scores playlist comprising my favourite film scores which is nice to set the mood when you are having dinner or something.

And than I created a playlist based on my favourite radio station's most played songs on rotation hitlist of the moment.

You gotta be creative and good things will happen.

Tune into yourself today

I hope you were schooled in the finer arts of using other people's ideas and knowledge to make a killer looking MySpace page to show off to all of your friends.

Till next time.

Finetune: The Mixtape Evolved

OK, to get this out I wanted to post it on Digg. But someone already beaten me to the punch with a less than desirable headline. "The Best of SXSW 2007 Playlist".

So this is what was to explain Finetune, one of the greatest new inventions on the internet for social networking and making your Wii into a damn fine bedside, partyside and b-side music player for a while. Plus it is just damn cool and so well designed.

So this is a custom playlist made my some guy that I picked that was on the front page in the playlists section.

Ipod's Shuffle Feature for Free Online
It's pretty much Apple iPod's shuffle feature except you don't have to buy the songs. Probably not much of a change for most of you but nonetheless a little guilty. Shuffle on your compy and Wii and I'm pretty sure a portable device somehow. Anything's possible these days with sites like Lifehacker and the sort.

Send Your Friend's Playlists Without Sending Them The Songs
But you can make a playlist for yourself. Minimum 45 songs than it plays on random. Put it on your Social Network page of choice (It lets you embed wherever it's possible, including this post hopefully) and Hey Presto! You can share your tastes with people you know as well as the whole world.


Wi/i Like/s Listening to Fine Tunes
Another great use is for your Wii. It looks great on your TV and it sounds great if you have a good stereo system. You are probably saying that is what my iPod or mp3 player of choice hooked up to a Hi-Fi system is for. But if you have your Wii connected to the net or probably any device that can connect to the net with sound you can listen to playlists made my friends, family and people from all over the world.

So give it a go and tell your friends. I don't know the benefit of telling people because it will probably just make it slower but it's just such a nifty and handy thing. Better than Pandora and less restrictive than Last.fm as I remember them.

So have fun. The site again is www.finetune.com

If God Doesn't Watch Over Us Who Does?

My 2 Cents: How to Get Free Petrol

This method of getting free petrol is as far as I know legal but I'm sure very annoying for the service station attendants. So that's my 2 cents anyway. Be sure to share and we can (very) slowly put a dent however small into the oil industry's bottom line.

How Do You Compare on Speed Test?

The folks over at SpeedTest have really outdone themselves with their great new. Do yourself a faour and check out how fast the speed of your internet is compared to your fellow countryman as well as the rest of the world. It's great fun to toy around with the new design and vast array of features. See if your line speed matches what you paid for.

I've Got That Digging Feeling

After joining the social bookmark site Digg in September 2006 it suddenly became a lot easier to find cool stuff on the web. Sure you can use Google and search for your chosen topic and you'll be on your way, than YouTube came and finding music videos and in some cases TV shows and Movies were split up into ten parts. This made life inconvenient if you set up a couch in your computer room and got comfortable watching the latest episode of than suddenly you'd have to get off your buttocks and click Part 2 and repeat process 3 through 10. (Now there's QuickList so it doesn't apply as much.)

OK, whoa! Went a bit off topic there. What I'm trying to say is Digg in it's latest rendition has made life a whole lot easier when wanting to catch up with current events, whacky news, humorous videos, the latest celebrity caught on tape doing somthing they will later regret and now podcasts of which Diggnation is unsurprisingly the most popular amongst Digg members.

I've been using it fairly frequently for about a month now and there are some topics that seem to come up more often than others. Apple Inc, Atheism as well as people being PWNED (see Wikipedia, although if you are reading this I'd say you are familiar) are common topics. Which suits me fine because I enjoy Apple's products and would probably change to Mac if I could afford it. But I like the odd play around and until PC games are playable on Mac I will likely not be changing. And atheism is great to hear about, especially Dawkins who pretty much PWNS (see above) the people he debates.

So I decided i would try my hand at scouting the internet for something that might go popular and make the front page of Digg. My first attempt about a month ago didn't go so well. It was a satire of Michael Moore's corporate headquarter confrontation tactics and it's currentlt sitting on 2 diggs which includes my initial Digg submission point. I was quite discouraged.

Than it came to me that you need something either really interesting, something that hasn't been done or something universal. So I scoured YouTube for the comedians of my homeland: John Safran, The Chaser Boys and Shaun Micallef. I found some material from the first two but it had already been submitted to Digg and become quite popular. Well I finally found a clip that might be of interest and hadn't already been submitted before. It was an old Micallef sketch from his great television series.

So here is the result. My submitted Digg article. As of submission it had 175 diggs. Click below to see how many it has now. It feels pretty good to make the front page.

The Unspoken Rules of Holding the Door for someone

And here's the video direct that got me on the front page.

1.5Mb to 8Mb - Australian ADSL Increase

Great news for those that live in parts of Australia enabled with Broadband but unable to get ADSL2+. We will see a speed increase from 1.5Mb to 8Mb. Can't wait for it to happen is all I can say.

In other news, I really wanna see Borat, it's like #138 on the IMDb Top 250, The Departed which is also high up in the 250 and just for laughs Jackass 2.

True HD-TV and Blu-Ray

If you are into the whole next generation of television and DVD services than head over to Samsung Australia for a look at the first Blu-Ray player to come to Australia and a mighty good looking Samsung 40" LCD which can output 1080p whatever that means.

I'm barracking for Blu-ray. Who are you hoping wins the DVD race?

iTV, new iPods and movies for iTunes Store

If you are a fan of those nifty little things called iPods as well as the great user interface that is iTunes store head over to Apple for the "It's Showtime" keynote. Included are many cool announcements and watching it is all part of the fun. You need Quicktime to play it as well.

The two big announcements of the keynote were iTV and the addition of movies to the iTunes store. The movies and television being sold are still very exclusive to the USA store but Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Apple will "hopefully be going international in 2007" so that is a glimmer of hope to say the least. iTunes 7 was also released today so head over to the Apple website to get the latest edition of iTunes. A really cool thing in the latest rendition of iTunes is the ability to retrive cover art for any album you have even if you haven't bought it from the store.

I'm pretty excited about all of this. On Thursday Nintendo will most likely be announcing the launch date, price and launch lineup for it's new console Wii so stay tuned as i will have all that info for you here as I find out about it.

The Simpsons Best of Lists

This entry is for all you diehard Simpsons fans out there and i know there is plenty of you out there. Even if you are not into the latest Simpsons efforts the following lists of the best of The Simpsons are a fun read where you can reminisce on the days The Simpsons ruled the world even if you think they still do. So sit back relax and thank the wonderful people over at IGN for some lists and while you are at it check out the 7 minute exclusive clip of the first seven minutes of Season 18's first episode "The Mook, The Chef, The Wife and His Homer" as well as a short on how they get The Simpsons from sketch to the way we view it.

Top 25 Simpsons Peripheral Characters

Top 25 Simpsons Guest Appearances

17 Seasons, 17 Episodes

The First 7 Minutes of Season 18 plus from Sketch to Perfect

So enjoy. Also if you haven't yet heard of Spore check out this 15 minute video that gives you the lowdown on what it's all about. It's the new game from Will Wright creator of The Sims Series. It is a game of evolution and the customization of whatever you want your species to be. Basically it's endless gameplay for the creative minded person. Anyways you can't understand the scale of this game until you see this demo. It's also from IGN.

Spore Demonstration at Game Convention 2006

That's all for now.

Look What I Stumbled Upon

It would be great to say I stumbled upon the great tool that is StumbleUpon but it didn't happen that way. I found it when I was upgrading my Firefox to the latest beta and I thought I'd update my extensions. StumbleUpon is a toolbar, I know another toolbar but it is worth it believe me. You pick what sort of stuff you want to browse and there are heaps of topics and even if you can't find one you can search for anything. Videos, pictures and Wiki's are also all stumblable. It's a great way of discovering new sites in categories you like.

I've already found some great stuff from it. Here are some examples.

AllSP.com - A place with all the South Park episodes to watch online.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit! Links - A page with links to Google videos of Penn & Teller episodes.

So give it a go and report back to me when you are having fun stumbling.

Audioslave - Revelations

Being a dedicated fan of Rage Against the Machine and one eyed supporter of microphone fiend Zach de la Rocha it was going to take a long time for me to accept new vocalist Chris Cornell. Audioslave's first two albums went by and I never bought them from the CD store, while not thinking twice with RATM. Don't get me wrong I still loved such great songs as Like a Stone and Show Me How to Live and there are some others as well but 5 September came around and I was browsing the iTunes Music Store at 1am and noticed Revelations was out. Original Fire, their first single from the album was ok so I thought I'd give the full album a try and I haven't regreted it.

I'm not going to go giving it a review for at least a month though because I need to get an appreciation for the music and lyrics. Car stereo play, iPod airtime and the time I'm on the computer listening to it will where I place my judgement. First impressions are wonderful though. So far standouts for me are Revelations, Moth, Until we Fall and Shape of Things to Come. There's also a great live version of Show Me How to Live recorded at the Quartz Festival wherever that is that comes with the iTunes version. But really who can ignore the legendary guitar sounds of Tom Morello. Give it a go if you like alternative rock and want your ears drums to vibrate to a standout sound.

Playing GT4, Looking Forward to GT-HD

Well, the previous post about what's on this week was a bit of a disaster aesthetically. It's just heaps of links and I don't really like looking at it. But because I spent so much time on it I'll leave it up.

Anyways I've been playing heaps of rented Gran Turismo 4 and looking forward to Gran Turismo on the PS3 of which I hope will be cheaper by the time it comes out who knows when. I'll probably eventually get a PS3 when Gran Turismo HD, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 come out. Predictable I know but I like the blockbusters.

That's all today. I've got things to do.

Three Games I Can't Wait For

I've been into playing videogames since I was six and it's just something I haven't grown out of. I still like the occasional gaming experience when something takes my fancy. I like open ended gameplay and detest structure. Some games I like are Rise of Nations, The Sims series, Grand Theft Auto Series and anything by Sid Meier which includes the wonderful Pirates! and Civilization IV.

In this post I will outline three games that I am looking forward to. Two more than the other as I like one of them just because of the guy who is making it as I expect great things.

SPORE Q1 2006

I'm looking forward to this because of the premise of being able to create a species and evolve it over time and through different phases. I saw a demo online of a demonstration at E3 and was blown away. This should provide hours of fun. The latest Spore preview can be seen on IGN.

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV October 16th, 2007

The next game I'm looking forward to has been a favourite of mine since Grand Theft Auto 3. The adventures of Liberty City had me engrossed from start to as far as I could get up to and I'm hoping that GTAIV will bring the same stuff to the table.

SID MEIER'S RAILROADS! October 23, 2006

Looking forward to this both because I enjoy Railroad Simulations and because I think Sid Meier will be able to bring something really special to the table as he has done in games I have played in the past including Pirates! and Civilization IV.

Well there are three games that I really can't wait for. Of course there are some games that I may buy depending on certain circumstances including whether I upgrade my PC and getting a new console etc. Some of those include The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy, Tekken 6, Tony Hawk's Project 8, FIFA 07 and maybe the new Pokemon's whenever they come out.

Stocking Shopper from The Chaser

Just wanted to test my ability to place video on the blog as I am pretty new to this blogging stuff. So far Blogger has provided me with everything I have needed for my blogging and that's great. Enough spruiking. The below video is from The Chaser team, an Australian bunch who were first writers than comedic performers pulling lots of crazy stunts and making humourous clips. Their show airs in Australia and it has developed quite a following on the net as well as their dedicated Australian fanbase. The show can be downloaded in full here and on iTunes. Tell me what you think. For more short clips click here.

TV Shows I'm Looking Forward To

As you can probably guess from the picture I've chosen for the entry the show I'm most looking forward to is Lost's new season. Left is the show's Season 3 promotional picture.

Below is a list of shows I'm looking forward to in there USA TV Fall premiere dates. Weeds and Prison Break have already aired but I thought I'd lump em' on the list so you can get the gist of shows I'm into.

The full list of Fall 2006 Premiere dates can be found at Metacritic. It's a great list.

THE LIST

Weeds 8/14 Showtime
Prison Break 8/21 Fox

Family Guy 9/10 Fox
The Simpsons 9/10 Fox
American Dad 9/10 Fox
Animation comedies are right up my alley along with South Park so naturally I'm a big fan of the above three even if I'm somewhat tiring of The Simpsons. With The Sopranos as guest stars this season I think I'll be watching.

Survivor: Cook Islands 9/14 CBS
One of the two reality shows I like.

The Amazing Race 10 9/17 CBS
The other reality show I like.

My Name is Earl 9/21 NBC
Earl Hickey is my hero.

Heroes 9/25 NBC
New show that I thought I would give a chance.

Smallville 9/28 CW
I'm not so much a fan of the movies as I am the teen version. I think it's cool but I hate it when it goes all freak of the week on me.

Everybody Hates Chris 10/1 CW
I occasionally watched this and probably will again.

Lost 10/4 ABC
My favourite on air show at the moment closely followed by that darned crime family The Sopranos. I just really like this one. Some people get sick of it but I hang on it.

South Park 10/4 Comedy Central
Loved South Park since it's first episode and it's had a special place in my hear ever since. It's going to be ending soon so I'm gonna soak it up while it lasts.

And Futurama on straight to DVD release, The Sopranos on HBO in 2007 as well as Scrubs on NBC when it is released for it's sixth season.

Well that's all from me. Peace.

Footy and a Little News

I'm going to the footy (Australian Rules Football) to see Essendon vs Richmond play. I love the feeling of walking into a stadium of 80,000 people. It's a night match so the massive light towers will be on.

In other news Tom Cruise gets dumped by Paramaount. I read an interview in the paper yesterday with Kevin Smith of Clerks fame and he thinks that if Hugh Grant can get caught with a prostitute and Eddie Murphy a Transvestite prostitute and they are still making movies why the hell is Tom Cruise being persecuted. I don't know why a person's personal life even though Tom Cruise has made it pretty public should interfere with their working life.

While we're on the subject of Kevin Smith, in an Australian interview he promised a horror flick. Cinematical has the story.

To TV and the new series of Survivor will see the tribes split by race. I'm going to post all my picks for the new fall season soon and tell you what I'll be watching and maybe you can tell me what will be on your screens this fall.

Well that's it for me for another day. Peace.

My TV on DVD Collection

Well I got bored so I'm deciding to do a post about my DVD collection and rate them accordingly to perhaps help some people if they are deciding to get something already in my collection.

The Simpsons Seasons 1-5
Well I bought Season 1 as my first DVD box set back in the day when DVD was the new kid on the block and it made me all tingly owning The Simpsons. I continued to collect over the years but have held back as of late. As far as novelty value, you can't beat it but because I've seen them so many times on TV repeats and will continue to do so it's not as good say as my Family Guy box sets. 7/10

Family Guy Seasons 1-3
Something I didn't see much of in Australian prime time because it wasn't really there for that long before being relegated to the damned 11:30pm timeslot. So i missed it the first time around basically. But like many people I was lucky that DVD had been invented and that Family Guy subsequently had been put on DVD for me to watch when I wanted. Damn fine random comedy. 10/10

The Sopranos Seasons 1-5
Well I can only judge the first three seasons because I haven't watched 4 and 5. Like Family Guy I missed most of The Sopranos because of poor timeslot issues. I pretty much watched the first 3 seasons in two weeks and couldn't get enough of it. It's slowed up a bit now because I'm sort of mob bossed out. But I'm sure there will be a flame rekindled at some point and I'll get going again. 10/10

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1
I purchased this because a new box set version was released at a third of the price and while I'd never really seen Star Trek I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I've seen 10 episodes of the set and it is OK but a little boring now and than. You just have to use your imagination. I'm really liking the robot character Data. 7/10

3rd Rock from the Sun Seasons 1-3
I mainly bought this because the local department store was having a dirt cheap DVD sale and I used to dig 3rd Rock a little. Well I'm 2 episodes in 70 to go. At least I've got something to do if I ever get bored. It's OK I gues considering the price of $15 a season. 5.5/10

Six Feet Under Season 1
Can't get enough of HBO's fine television. Loved Six Feet Under when it was on and even braved the late timeslot. The Series finale was breathtaking. Season 1 ain't as good as the leter seasons but it's the base building blogs for what is to come. I'm probably going to be getting Season 5 when it comes out in Oz. 7.5/10

The Awful Truth Seasons 1 & 2
Well I went through a little Michael Moore phase when I was a teen and read Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country. I also bought his television series. Highlights include throat speaker choir in the tobacco lobby and the gay pride bus lambasting a Fred Phelps Westboro Church picket. 6.5/10

Well that's my collection. Hope it helped some people in deciding to buy or not. The scores are all higher than 5 because I didn't buy stuff that I didn't like. Peace.

Welcome to The Entertainment Fiend

Welcome to my brand spanking new blog about pretty much anything that interests me. For those of you who don't know what interests me allow me to introduce myself. I am Zachary and I'm an Australian with heavy interests in things that entertain. Case in point, I currently get my kicks from TV, Film, DVD's, Games of an electronic nature, Music and Reading material (covering a manner of things including books, newspapers, magazines and stuff that I absorb from the internet). I also hold an interest in current affairs and technology. I love to write so it's not much of a hassle for me to write a blog. I seem to enjoy it. I've had a blog before but it got too personal and I became very self involved. I was letting confidential information out into the wild. This time it's gonna be all about the entertainment, tech and current affairs with my own little touch of the detales of things I like. I'm also gonna have a bank balance and keep track of my spending on the site so I can hopefully improve it. This blog is pretty much going to be very therapeutic as I get stuff off my chest and if anyone feels like reading what comes from my mind to my fingers than that is fine as well. I've also put a donation button on the side of the page if anyone likes my style of writing or the subject matter. I've got what i'm saving for on the sidebar so if you want to help me you can. I just thought I'd address it. Another reason it's there is because I'm quite poor and work in retail and it pays shit all. Can somebody say desperation?

Well let's get down to business. What have I been entertained by? What have you been entertained by lately? Please share it in the comments because I'd love to hear some reccomendations. I bought the first five seasons of The Sopranos on DVD about a month ago for $31.20 each and haven't looked away from the screen since watching the first three seasons in a snap. Highly reccommend this show. I also bought 3rd Rock From The Sun and although I haven't been watching it as much as The Sopranos it's still there for later viewing. I haven't really been playing many games lately because it's the time of year where not much comes out. I'm a strategy, sports and RPG kinda guy and there hasn't been that much out there for me. New stuff that is. I've been playing lots of FIFA 2005 multiplayer with my brothers and friends. Post World Cup fever. Bookwise I've been reading The Warren Buffet Way. I'm half-way through and although it's heavy reading I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. I don't undertsnad some of the jargon but I get the gist of it. Melodically, my ears have been atuned to the following songs on rotation The Killers - When You Were Young, Starky - Hey Bang Bang, Snow Patrol - Hands Open. Great songs. Did I mention I also have an iPod mini (retired model I know but I still dig it.)? I like to listen to music on trips and before I go nigh nighs but podcasts have been what I've had in my ears lately. The main podcasts I listen to are gaming themed so it may not interest all of you but these are the ones: Gamespot presents The Hotspot, IGN Gamescoop!, 1UP Yours and PC Gamer Podcast. Well that's about all entertainment wise for now.

I just wanna share with you a podcast I listen to about current affairs called Hack. If you don't live in Australia you can catch it as a podcast on iTunes. Just search for Hack Triple J because I don't know how to do links yet.

Stay tuned because I have plenty more planned for this blog and lots more to share with everyone. Till next time, peace.

Also, one last thing I was feeling lucky today so I bought a lottery ticket for $10. Usually I don't buy into these but whenever I'm low on cash I just seem to buy into these things as an easy way out. Next time: Will Zachary win the lottery and be able to kick his shitty retail job? Will the $40 odd in his bank account explode into $4,000,000. Not very likely. But we'll see.