High-resolution DVD

I've been reading about the Blu-Ray and HD DVD discs that will start coming out this year, and the high-definition films that will be appearing on them, at a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels. You can get computer screens now that will accommodate that resolution, but they're expensive. I suppose prices will come down as more and more film fans feel the need to buy them. I rarely watch films, but I'll be glad to take advantage of the cheaper large screens and the higher storage capacity of the new discs.

The punishment from heaven

BBC news:

“London's mayor has been suspended from office on full pay for four weeks for comparing a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard.”

A four-week paid holiday as a punishment? Oh, punish me, please...

Perfect colour on screen

Today I acquired an Eye-One Display 2 from GretagMacbeth: a little gadget that looks like a computer mouse but is in fact a kind of light meter, which I can use to generate an ICC colour profile of my computer's monitor. This enables other programs to adjust their colour output for the deficiencies of the monitor, thus displaying colours fairly accurately. If you edit colour images at all, it's useful to know that you're editing the real colours in the file, and not whatever distorted version your monitor happens to show.

Mozilla Thunderbird

I've installed Mozilla Thunderbird as my e-mail program, in place of Eudora. Thunderbird imported my Eudora settings and messages automatically, and it seems to work. The main problem I find with it is that there's no proper help file, just a few tips here and there on the Web. So, if I want to find out how to do something, there's no single place where I can go and look.

Too easily offended

There's an amazing fuss going on about a few quite mild cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper. If a newspaper in a small Muslim country had published similar cartoons about Jesus Christ, they would simply have been ignored. The fact that some Muslims apparently lack the maturity to ignore such things is to their own discredit.

easyCruise

I read that Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the easyJet guy, has now set up easyCruise, offering low-priced cruises in the Mediterranean in summer and in the Caribbean in winter. Quite a nice idea, except that it seems to be set up for young singles raving it up in discos ashore every night—and this wasn't my lifestyle even when I was young and single. On the other hand, the formal dinners and professional entertainers on conventional cruises aren't really designed for me either.