Free full length Nature Documentaries

Planet Earth is a natural history documentary series, made by the BBC, transmitted from 5 March 2006. It is described by its makers as "the definitive look at the diversity of our planet", and is narrated by David Attenborough.

Now you can watch them all on Google Video!

Bach - Brandenburg Concertos No.5 - 1st movement: Allegro

This is a pretty good video of Bach's 5th Brandenburg Concerto. Since I'm currently very into the Bach Brandenburgs I had to post something from it here. Check out the Harpsichord solo near the end. Absalutly great stuff.

Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 8, Pathetique 1st movement

You'll actually have to go click on the flash player and go to the YouTube site to see this one.

Maybe one of my favorite pieces of music ever, played amazingly by this 12 year old. I really want you to watch this one all the way through.



Click Here to see it in YouTube

Google Plane!

George Harrison - Any Road

This is great stuff. The video is made up of a diverse collection of images from the late-great George Harrison's life. Including his often forgotten cameo in Monty Python's Life of Brian. It's all to the song Any Road off his last album.

Lego depiction of Phillip Glass' Einstien on the Beach

All I can say is...finally!

Yoshi!

This is a Yoshi video clip. A Yoshi video clip for you!!!

It's a matter of Aspect Ratio

I love the concept behind High Definition (HD) TV. We've been watching TV, as a collective North American people, for quite some time now. Not including the invent of colour, the way we watch has not changed. HD is the change. For the first time, we're about to see a huge improvement of technical quality. You've all seen the hype. You know what it's about. I'm not going to get into the technical details here. (If you really want more info, a google search will teach you all you need to know.) What I'm going to focus on here, is the problematic transition from standard definition's 4:3 aspect ration, and high definition's 16:9 aspect ratio.

One of the biggest changes that everybody notices when they see an HDTV is that it's wider. In case you didn't know wider is better. It provides a larger viewing area and is more natural to the human eye. Once the buyer returns home from purchasing their fancy new TV, they are usually scared to death when they realise that the TV programing only fills up the middle of the screen and leaves black bars on the left and right side of the screen. This is because even though TVs have moved forward to the wider aspect ratio, most TV stations have yet make a move to change their programing.

We do have a certain amounts of programing that is now better and wider. In Canada, at least, this sort of programing is very rare indeed. You could use your TV to stretch the picture to fill the full screen, but this usually leads to people walking in and saying "when did Jon Stewart gain so much weight?" Not a desirable effect at all.

So what can we do? Not much now. Letters and phone calls won't make a difference since the CRTC says all channels have to be in HD by 2009. The problem with that date is that it's already been pushed back 2005. It's an expensive move for TV stations to make.

For anyone who has seen a sport program in HD knows that it is a revelation. The more lines of resolution alone make it so clear and sharp that if you ever have to watch it on a normal TV again it feels like you're watching it through thick fog. Too bad we can't force every program to be in HD today. All we can do is wait.

Wii hardware, and you're good to go

Excellent rundown of Nintendo's Wii hardware. The guy is a bit awkward about it though. Nevertheless, BUY ME ONE!