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Looking at this image from NYTimes this morning, it hit me that I already know and use the secret best-ever diet. This one is a sure-hit for 21 century and beyond.

Here’s how it works – put yourself on scheduled meals, and of course try to keep them balanced. I don’t think you have to go to extremes, like that study, but do add veggies and salad to most of your meals. This is not the secret part, the secret is rather simple:

Every time you want to snack on something (surely unhealthy) or eat outside your schedule, simply go play Computer/Xbox or some other Game instead. I find that most good games are engaging enough, to keep your mind off food! If it doesn’t work for you, keep searching for that personal Favorite game, which is sure to take your mind off that nasty snacking habit.

For our family, World of Warcraft is the best diet! Just make sure the Gaming PC is not in the kitchen, and you will find that you can’t leave 4 real people, who depend on you, getting killed by horrible monsters just because you decided that you Must have a snack Right Now!

Ah, also, for Hours of clean family fun, check out Kingdom of Keflings. It takes the classic formula of building and does it right, albeit it’s a little short for us, but I am sure expansions and ‘Second Edition’ are on the way.

And yes, your Brain burns calories also, so be sure to pick game where you use it, which is most all of them

We just received the new XBox 360 Experience, and I decided to blog about it right away (I know, totally untypical!). I expected much from this major upgrade, and I have to say so far I am impressed!

Starting with the install itself, which was quick and smooth, and onto the little touches, like the super impressive Welcome Video that it starts with. Instead of boring guy presenting “New Features”, it’s just an artistic High Definition journey for the senses.

Choosing and customizing the Avatar was just as amazing. The interface is super natural and Beautifully done in pure HD! Customization options abound, especially in hair and face options. I found it to be loads of fun, no matter what they say!

Interface overall is very impressive, while staying fast and responsive also. Haven’t used it enough to figure out how functional it is, but I don’t think there ever were any issues with function here. In my opinion, the interface should first of all Impress, and it definitely does that now. Way to go, Microsoft!!! Clearly there is a solid team behind Xbox and Zune, now if only they get some of these guys to work on Windows 8 (sadly, Windows 7 seems to have mostly closed set of features now. More on that in separate post, promise!).

UPDATE: I meant to Thank Major Nelson for making it available for us, loyal Xbox fans, few days before general public availability.

With more and more TV shows being available via Netflix “Watch It Now” feature, including the grand hit Heros, which we still plan to catch up on (never started), momentum is building for easy on-demand streaming of shows/movies, to your Living Room TV.

With that in mind, I finally set a plan in motion to upgrade my media center PC, which is connected to the our big-screen. It was deemed not powerful enough (Athlon XP 1800+ or something, not even X2…) to process full screen H.264 media, which most media is nowadays.

One of key usage scenarios was obviously to wath NetFlix on-demand via this media PC.

So, as soon as I purchase everything, and not even before I finish setting things up, NetFlix goes commando with the following news:

• NetFlix in HD on XBox 360 – Yes, I heard it was coming, but only for Gold members, and never heard anything about HD, until today…
• NetFlix on Tivo Series 3 and HD models – This is great news for us, don’t get me wrong..

Well, I did try full screen Hulu, and it really looks nice, but mostly for their very limited library of 720p content. Installed Vuze on it also, and putting up TVTonic next.

Speaking of the upgrade, I ended up snatching a great deal, instead of upgrading my motherboard/cpu/memory, etc, as I was planning. It would have cost around $350, since I needed extra Vista Permium license for this setup, and that alone is $100. So I was happy when SlickDeals put up a coupon on refurbished Dell Outlet deals last week. Snatched up Dell Inspirion 530 with Core 2 Quad and 4GB of RAM for around that much, and added my own ATSC (HD) Capture Card with nVidia 8400 GS for full screen HD monster. It easily runs at 1080p now, including all media I tried to play full screen thus far. Plus, box itself is Beautiful, in white and slick metal front panel, plus runs practically silent. I am a happy camper!

Now, if only NetFlix would put out a Vista Media center plug-in, for easy and fast navigation of queues and instant playback, in HD, that would be awesome… But I guess they are too busy developing all those custom interfaces, instead of attacking the obvious, easy target…

Wow, sorry for disappearing on you. So much happened in the past few weeks, that instead of posting all those brilliant (aka: weird) thoughts I am having, I’ll just summarize recent events in my life:

• My Xbox 360 is back! Of course you don’t know that it was gone, but it was indeed a victim of well known Red Rings of Death. But, this is after at least a year of trouble-free use, and they replaced it within a week!!! Seriously, emailed us FREE shipping label for our old XBox. I dropped it at UPS on 9/25, and Oct 1st the replacement arrived! Completely Free and Fast! Mistakes Happen, it is all about how you bounce back and fess up to them that defines long-term success! So, I am a Happy Camper and Kudos Microsoft, big time!!!
• Went through rough patch at work, launching a new web site, enough said…
• We visited Consolidated Gold Mine, which is apparently only about 45 minutes north of here. Family had a good time! We’re definitely going back there in the future.
• Visited Panama City Beach in Florida, over the weekend. Pretty long drive from Atlanta, but nice beaches and weather was pretty good. Overall, fun trip also. And yes, all these trips were way before Gasoline shortage hit Atlanta…
• It’s been another month of iPhone and Zune and Blackberry, for my active daily use. We saw the release of all important iPhone 2.1 update, and Zune 3 software came out. I am working on summarizing my experiences in long post on Zune vs iPhone, promise!
• I have also been hard at work on my “secret project”, well, basically it is yet another website – stay tuned!

But enough about me, as you are likely wondering about the collapse of Wall street giants, and other such minor news happening out there… The world is undergoing changes in ever accelerating pace, and while mass media does dismal job of coverage, do keep in mind that I have a short list of articles that I share daily, for your reading pleasure, from the world wide ocean that is Internet. Don’t Clog The Tubes!!!

I think I tackled this in the past, but here is a brief reminder, yet again. I am against bloging senseless! I really don’t enjoy blogs that post 10+ times each day, that’s just ridiculous! Yes, there may be a lot to blog about, and there is a lot going on in the world all the time. But, putting this many posts ends up only hurting your readers, in my humble opinion. It becomes impossible to read every post, and since there is no way to know which posts may be important to you without reading them all, people just stop trying!

So, philosophy of this blog is to weed out the essence from the noise, and bring you just things of interest. Plus, don’t forget the hourly updating Latest Shared Links section on the right. That’s where I bring you latest deals, news of interest, and other fun things. That section is updated frequently, but don’t worry if you don’t keep up.

Now, onto the promised Weekend Fun. This weekend I bring you the amazing advances in Computer Graphics Technology, using 3D shaders rendering, bump-mapping, and other such hard to pronounce methods that lead to the amazing creation on the right. If you are not a fan of that sort of stuff, please don’t click on any of the links below, you’ve been warned!

Now, if you are still reading, I presume you enjoy this skillful art and technology coming together, like me. So, here are some video clips from the excellent Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 game. It’s just a compilation of mini-games, but Who Cares! when the graphics is this good!!! And you probably would want to visit the game developer site, just make sure to click on the English magazine laying towards the bottom of the screen, that’s how insiders get in.

Still reading this? Ok then! Check out this Promotional Trailer and then Game Opening Movie. Done? Did I mention that this game plays via HDMI on your 42″ or larger HDTV screen!!! So, go on and buy the game, with XBox 360 if you still don’t have it!

PS: I was trying to stay family friendly blog by avoiding words like Sexy, Blonde and Girl, but the traffic spike from the search engines seeking just these words is something I can really use right now

PPS: For some reason there is one new Amazon favorite item (on the right column) which isn’t showing image, but be sure to click through and find out what it is!