The Electronics industry has selected Blue-Ray DVD players as Christmas Present of the Year, yet 60% of Norwegian women don’t know what what Blue-Ray is. Honestly, I didn’t, either, not precisely, until I read this article, but only because I’ve totally stopped paying attention to any news about physical storage media (well, except for Micro SDHC cards and hard drives). I didn’t pay any attention to the whole business of analogue TV signals no longer being sent, either. Those kinds of issues are no longer relevant to the way we consume media.

We still have a DVD player and the cable that comes with our rent, but neither are connected to the TV, and they haven’t been for a couple of years. Everything we watch now, we watch from our computers, either directly on the screen or connected to the TV, and our screens are big enough that we don’t usually even bother to connect a computer to the TV anymore. We haven’t had a CD player connected to a stereo system for a long time, either. If we can’t get our music, games, movies, or TV programs online (always legally where possible), we don’t bother to get it anymore.

Even five years ago, which is about when we got the DVD player, I would never have imagined that we’d be moving in this direction. Johannes and I are not quite early adopters, either, so I know we’re not the only ones who consume media in this way. We are, however, smack in the middle of the target demographic for media and electronics. Media producers really need to get their business sorted out to account for these changing patterns.

An interesting article in Aftenposten today: in light of the advertising industry’s powerful ability to influence body image, The Socialist Left Party of Norway wants to investigate whether it’s possible to alter advertisement laws to disallow advertisements pressuring people to conform to unrealistic beauty standards, and generally prohibit advertisement of cosmetic surgery and weight loss aids. They reason that while politicians shouldn’t be able to control the content of TV programs, they do have the ability to legislate the contents of advertisements. The article cites statistics that among 15-year-olds in Norway, 51% of girls and 20% of boys are dissatisfied with their bodies; 80% of the girls surveyed diet, and 10-20% have eating disorders.

As a side note, the difference in weight statistics between Norway and the US is interesting: The WHO reports that 43.4% of women and 54.8% of men in Norway are “overweight” (BMI 25 or higher), with 9.3% of women and 11.3% of men falling into the “obese” category (BMI 30 or higher), whereas in the US, 72.6% of women and 75.6% of men are “overweight” and 41.8% of women and 36.5% of men are “obese”. No wonder I feel like such a freak here!

I want one! Johannes won’t object.

I installed the Accelero S1 Rev. 2 with the turbo module on my 4870 today and am astounded at the difference in temperature. With the stock cooler I was idling around 70° and getting as hot as 99° at load (yeow!). This cooler has nearly halved my temps. I’m now idling at 41°, and haven’t hit more than 54° at load.

I also installed two Spinpoint F1 1TB disks, one for backup and one for files. I’ve never suffered data loss, but I’ve been increasingly concerned that my luck is too good to last. It was time to get a new disk, anyway, because my 400GB drive was full. I’m donating it to Elias–we’re working on setting up a nice gaming computer for him this weekend.

Also, I’ve added a new category, “Tech”, since I’ve been posting so much about my little project here. I’ve finally got some pics available:

And a video of the drive: