I love using Yahoo Widgets. Since I tried it out a while back, I have gone through periods of using it and other periods of not using it. I am back to using it now and and I haven’t wanted to look back. Using widgets makes the desktop look cool and flashy, but it is only worthwhile if you get something productive out of it. Personally, I use the weather widget, memory usage widget, WiFi signal widget, the analog clock, and a GMail notifier widget. There are reportedly thousands of widgets available. You can set the transparency of each widget on the desktop. Every open widget runs as a separate system process, so don’t go overboard when you start adding them.

I just found out today that version 4 has been released (4.01 being the latest). I have upgraded and it claims to use less system memory than version 3. Also, there is a new widget dock that previews your open widgets in small form. Whether you care to use the dock is your preference. I am using XP, but Yahoo Widgets is also available for the Mac. Of course, Mac OSX and Windows Vista both have built-in widget support, so I don’t know how useful Yahoo Widgets will be on those systems. Still, Yahoo claims to have the most widgets compared to the competition. A lot of them are ridiculous and have practically no use whatsoever, but the ones that are really useful soon become hard to live without. I’m hooked…again.

Check out this video on how to fold your shirt in two seconds. This is really cool. There is even a whole website dedicated to it. The link to the website is in the video. Watch it here.

I have seen a couple of movies or shows recently that have played on the notion that if one person on the end of a cell phone conversation does not hang up, then they are both still “on the line” and can hear the each other. Say what? Since when has this ever been true? I wish I could name specific examples of what I saw, but I clearly remember seeing this more than once. If I run across this again, I’ll update this post and cite an example.

Maybe this is the modern equivalent of the old movie antic where when somebody hangs up on someone, the other person instantly heard a dial tone. That was never true in real life, and neither is the notion of two people on either end of a conversation on a cell phone having to both hang up to end a call. As soon as the call is terminated from either side, the entire call is ended. Period. This must be some urban legend or something. I don’t get it.

I had not known of the movie The Departed until I heard it won the Oscar for best picture. Martin Scorsese also won the Oscar for best director. So I rented the movie and watched it with Laura a few nights ago. To my surprise, it has an all star cast. I loved the entire cast, and Jack Nicholson is among my favorite actors of all time. All of the acting was top notch. This movie is absolutely fantastic. It is two and a half hours, and is great from start to finish. It is very violent, twisted, and funny at the same time. The plot is very complicated. You may have to see this one twice to catch all of the subtle details. Make sure you pay attention to the beginning so you know what’s going on.

Last night we set our clocks one hour ahead. It is daylight savings time again. This year it is earlier than ever. Normally, this spring forward takes place in April. This year, it has been pushed back a few weeks. Isn’t it about time we just quit this all together? The whole country doesn’t abide by the same time switches, let alone the rest of the world. Let’s just leave our clocks alone. Why not just leave it the way it is now for the entire year? The reasoning behind daylight savings time doesn’t have as much reason to continue in the 21st century.

There is a hilarious video on YouTube called Charlie the Unicorn. You should watch this insane, poorly animated video. I have heard several references to it. I could do without some of the singing and dancing at the end, but the voices are hilarious throughout. It is pretty ridiculous, but after you watch it, you’ll be thinking about it later. Ha!

I have never mentioned the TV show Family Guy in my blog before, but hey, it’s so great it goes without even saying. This show is my favorite TV show of all time. I first saw it a couple of years ago. I’d seen it on but never bothered to get to know it. What changed all that was seeing the episode in the beginning seasons where Death came to the Griffin’s. From then on, I have pretty much watched them all. The things they make references to so relate to me that I feel like the creators were in my head. It pays to know a whole lot of 80s and 90s pop culture. If not, a lot of the jokes will fly right over your head. But there is no doubt in my mind that this is the best show on TV. It is certainly my favorite. The movie is also outstanding!

If you watch Comedy Central, you probably have seen ads for the Sarah Silverman Show. I have been enjoying watching it. I like the characters and Sarah’s over-the-top comments and off-the-wall remarks. Last week, they had an episode that was practically all about Tab. Me and Laura were laughing when they kept referencing this hilarious beverage. It was very funny. If you are into her very “wrong” comments and enjoy this kind of humor, then you’ll like this show.

I watched Borat on DVD a few nights ago, even though the previews for the movie didn’t impress me. At the time, I didn’t find the previews and movie clips very funny. From what I was told, the best of the movie couldn’t be portrayed in a uncensored movie preview. So, my cousin told me to check out You Tube videos of Borat for a more uncensored version of what the movie had in store. To be honest, I didn’t find them very amusing, either. I don’t care much for people being set up in awkward situations, such as they do on the TV show Punked and whatnot. As a result, I had low expectations for this movie, despite the raving of a few friends about how funny it supposedly was.

After watching it, I’ll admit that I did enjoy it. It was quite funny in parts and I found myself laughing out loud several times. I was told after the fact to watch the deleted scenes that are included on the DVD, but I never saw these when I played it the other night. I want to say that it’s the kind of movie that you’ll either love or hate, though I personally wouldn’t go so far as to say I loved it. It is funny in that the things Borat says are often quite awful. Therein lies the humor. But I suppose that isn’t for everybody. I wouldn’t pay to go to a theater to see this movie, but if you rent the DVD, you’ll no doubt end up laughing (or cringing), depending on how you handle Borat’s very politically incorrect remarks.

I was wondering how I could share my iTunes library from my desktop computer to my laptop. I searched for the solution online and was prepared for some hacking and tweaking to get this to work. I quickly realized it was as simple as a single setting in the iTunes preferences. In the Sharing tab, there are two simple options: Look for Shared Library, and Share My Library. Let me tell you, it works…fantastically. If only I’d known it was so easy. As soon as I checked the option to share my library from my desktop, it immediately showed up on my laptop iTunes screen as a new library. Remote playing of songs begin playing in seconds. Hooray!

PS - A new version of iTunes, version 7.1, was released this week.