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Today’s post is about The Environment. Our Planet, and what are You doing to help save it? What actions are You taking daily to better the planet for our Children?

Blog Action Day organizers have big time sponsors on-board, all coming together in a common goal to promote message about the importance of saving our planet and the environment.

Our household, for example, has been using Fluorescent Light Bulbs for years, almost exclusively. Although it costs more per bulb, it pays for itself in no time. Of course it saves energy, using as little as 25% of the energy versus regular light-bulb. But then it’s also long lasting, so we usually don’t need to replace light bulbs for years. Win Win! The only issue with them is the trouble of recycling old bulbs properly, since they contain a little bit of mercury. Speaking of Recycling, this is another something our household been doing since forever. Recycling Plastics, Cans, Glass Jars is easier than you may think, and it also helps Our Planet!

Finally, we are always looking for more ways to save energy. Solar panels are still very expensive, unfortunately, which is shame since there is plenty of sun here in Georgia. Buying Energy Efficient Appliances is the other big way to save energy!

All other ideas are welcome, so go ahead, don’t be shy and comment away!

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Little known fact (or maybe it’s famous fact?) about me is that I am a video technophile. I love to capture/convert/archive videos in all their form. Whether it is first time my child walked, or my favorite Music Video, and so forth.

Aren’t you upset with pathetic quality of YouTube? The dismal video size and the awful compression artifacts in there are not driving you insane? In this day and age the technology has come far enough where we should expect more from our Internet video!

Yes, there is a better way! Enter Stage6 from Divx. Just about everyone has heard about this video compression technology by now. There is a whole range of consumer devices today that can play Divx video, and the format continues to gain acceptance. And, Stage6 lets you easily upload and share your own videos, with family and friends, either directly or through their high quality Windows utility that will encode and upload your video to Stage6 for you. In my opinion Stage6 and Divx offer highest streaming quality available on the web today, though competing technologies are coming, in Microsoft’s Silverlight and with H.264 support in future Adobe Flash.

Today’s music video is from Linkin Park, one of my favorite bands. I am not sure why this particular clip hasn’t gained wider popularity here in the USA, but it sure is very popular on charts around the World. Perhaps the implications of reflecting on What You Have Done is something many people feel uncomfortable with. For me, however, watching this music video makes it even more of a time "not wasted".

Remember, the quality of this wide-screen Linkin Park video is so high, I couldn’t even fit it into this blog! Instead, click through to Stage6, install the little player plug-in, and enjoy video in all it’s glory! Make sure to click the little ‘maximize’  button on the lower right of video, to watch full screen. Happy Friday!

UPDATE: Looks like some "entrepreneurs" already using Stage6 to host wealth of high quality no cost movies, cartoons and what not. Of course, just like YouTube, they claim Safe Harbor. Enjoy it while it lasts, folks: Joox.net (Thanks for the tip, Russell)

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While all signs pointing to upcoming demise of TV as we know it, I think we should try to make the most of this transition period.

Today, I compiled a short list of resources to help everyone’s TV addiction, now that Prime Time TV season is back with their best entertainment offerings. What’s more, this year almost all Prime Time shows are presented in glorious HDTV, delivering not only the increased resolution, but an overall improvement in clarity and color accuracy.

Arguably ABC has the best technology right now for legally streaming your shows over the Internet, along with unique offering of (near) HD quality that you can watch full screen on your computer monitor, which is naturally HD quality or higher, usually. You will need to install tiny ActiveX control to enable viewing, but it’s fast and easy. They recommend dual-core CPU for HD, but I found that it works fine on my Athlon 64 4000+ single core also.

The other excellent approach is to watch on DVD! Set yourself up with Netflix subscription, and rent entire Seasons, DVD after DVD, all Commercial Free! Most popular shows are available, including our favorite House M.D. Here is a post from famous Lifehacker blog with more ideas, including links to streaming from NBC and CBS, though, for some reason they omitted CW.

Remember, Personally, I recommend Interactive Entertainment instead of just sitting on a couch and watching TV, or at least balance the two!

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I signed up for Plaxo account today, following a little reminder of their existence. I have been watching their progress for a while, and looks like they are on the right path and have stamina needed to survive rough startup waters. The core functionality that they were always about is maintaining a type of ’self-updating’ Address book on the web. It’s great, because even if your friends change phone numbers (new job, new home, new phone provider, etc.) The idea that if I update my phone number, it will automatically update address book of all my friends. This is something I have been waiting for a while. But I never wanted to work hard to migrate my address book into ‘yet another web site’, but their latest auto-sync with Yahoo! and Google features have finally convinced me.

The sign up and Sync with Yahoo! and Outlook all went without a hitch. There were some duplicates, but I easily cleaned them in Outlook, and it auto re-synced everything soon thereafter. PLUS my Windows Mobile phone contacts are auto-synchronized with Outlook, resulting in a perfect Trifecta. Now, I can go online and update/add/lookup contacts. Use them in my Outlook when sending email, or calling them (or emailing) from my phone. And all with self-updating contact information! Wow, I just noticed that somehow my Skype got updated with all my contacts from Yahoo also, nirvana.

In other news, in case you missed it in my shared links, here’s a little tip on how to get your Windows XP to look like Vista. This is just look and feel, mind you, and none of the fancy features (like SuperFetch). But you can also get the very handy quick-type style Start Menu via little free Launchy utility. With it, just start typing what you are trying to launch or find, and it finds it! Make sure to remember to click Ctrl-Space after starting it, otherwise it stays hidden.

Finally, I leave you today with little video of Windows Vista Ultimate Dreamscape effects, augmented with some good 3rd party views. Notice that this is actual desktop background, on top of which you can run programs and other videos, good ones

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Lately I felt that I have been posting way too much on Technology or plain fun stuff, and not at all enough on Meaning of Life, as the sub-title of my blog implies. I have been contemplating for a while to break this trend, and today, the opportunity just screamed out at me while driving to work.

You see, I was listening to Episode 124 of the ever excellent EscapePod, which is by far my favorite podcast. It presents short science fiction stories each week, and each is profoundly thought provoking, while staying fun and fresh (and often sexy!). I highly recommend you subscribe to this podcast, and to your advantage, there are over 100 earlier episodes that you can try to catch up on! 

I won’t spoil the plot of Episode 124 for you, entitled Save Me Plz, but instead lets switch to the promised topic of this post, which has risen to the news again lately: Our Entire Universe is Simulated.

In fact, there has recently been a mathematically calculated proof that there is probably a high probability we are living in a simulation.

You can read more on this fascination philosophical argument, but I just wanted to move on and say Yes, lets assume that we Are living in simulation.

So what? Should you live your life any differently? Is your behavior less or more important, even if there were conclusive proof that we are living inside someone’s little simulation tube? I think by definition our creators wouldn’t want to interfere (read: communicate) with us, so should we even try to reach them? But maybe we are already in constant communication, Sims style, with the grand creators of our simulation. And these communications reach our subconscious and often tell us what we "want" to do next (though sometimes we don’t listen, naturally). The Book of Kabbalah also reaffirms this, by implying that our life here is a Dream, and our wants are given to us from "the source".

Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t change a thing! Ups and Downs of life are here to be enjoyed, and dare I say, equally enjoyed. Give this little sentence more thought, as you go off and play Sims 2 or World Of Warcraft (former: Girls favorite, latter: Boys favorite, but your results may vary!)

So Make Sure to Enjoy Life, with this Simulated Post that’s in it!

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