Just like old times...

(Assuming venerable Grandpa demeanour and quavering voice) Remember the early days of DVD? Back in the very late 90's, when you would buy a movie and pray to the deity of your choice that it didn't lock-up your player? When you had to weigh-up the odds of sending your player to a Mod specialist who advertised in the back of "DVD Review" or finding a retailer who offered modded machines which could circumvent the stupidity of region coding?

Despite Blu-Ray having won the HD format battle, it appears that we haven't really advanced that much in the last nine or ten years - Region Locking is still with us and still as dumb as it ever was, and Paramount's first big Autumnal release, Jon Favreau's Marvel hit "Iron Man" is bricking BD players.

The more things change...

(Via AV Forums and Home Cinema Choice)

Quick Hits

In a story which will come of no surprise to anybody, we still pay more in the UK for games consoles - Pocket Lint reports on the US price drop for the 360, and why we won't be seeing a similar drop any time soon...

Tech Crunch  and Tech Radar on Google's new 'Chrome' web browser.  It's okay - I prefer what I'm using at the moment.

Whilst in other news, Hell Freezes Over...

US Republican spouse Cindy McCain - she's just like us, really.

From Back-Down Corner - Adam Savage of 'MythBusters' didn't hear, see or say anything untoward about some broken tech from a highly litigious conglomerate the other week. Oh no, Sir...

And Lifehacker have found me a new website to love...

Being the first in a series of posts about insomnia...

For reasons which are not entirely clear (my caffeine consumption is scrupulously policed during the day, I'm physically tired and wholly ready to lay my head down, so I'm at something of a loss), I find myself awake again at Stupid O' Clock and traversing the Internets in search of distraction.

What better way to do that, gentle reader, than to commence posting on a blog which has been in stasis for many a long month? It sure beats watching cable at this ungodly hour.

The plan is that this blog will feature regular contributions from my better half and yours truly - not so much a division of content bisected crudely down gender lines but a view of how we see the lines in terms of personality and individual interest.

And because we're probably too accursedly lazy to maintain individual journals for your viewing pleasure - never rule out sloth as an odd motivator in anything that we do.

More to follow - perhaps, even, interesting and of worth?