All around me are familiar faces,
Worn out places,
Worn out faces,
Bright and early for the daily races,
Going nowhere,
Going nowhere,
Their tears are filling up their glasses,
No expression,
No expression,
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow,
No tomorrow,
No tomorrow,
And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad,
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had,
I find it hard to tell you,
I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles,
It’s a very very,
Mad world,
Mad world,
Children waiting for the day they feel good,
Happy birthday,
Happy birthday,
And I feel the way that every child should,
Sit and listen,
Sit and listen,
Went to school and I was very nervous,
No one knew me,
No one knew me,
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson,
Look right through me,
Look right through me,
And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad,
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had,
I find it hard to tell you,
I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles,
It’s a very very,
Mad world,
Mad world,
Enlarging your world,
Mad world

–
I originally found this haunting song when I saw Donnie Darko, a movie that is best left unexplained - I must recommend it be watched when you are quite sure that you want to screw up your head for a day, or two, or more.

When I first saw the movie, I didn’t quite catch on to the song, although I do remember looking for it.

Then, in a recent gameplay trailer for Gears of War, the XBox 360 game, I heard it again and did some research and voila!

It’s a sad song, very thought provoking. Makes quite a few people wanna drip a tear or two.

Originally by Tears for Fears, this rendition by Gary Jules for the movie is much slower and disturbing. Watch the video, tell me what you think.

JP, over at Confused of Calcutta puts down a few thoughts about blogging, teaching and learning that are well worth the read, as is usual with him.

Most of the times that I do blog (although I admit that it’s become quite a rare occasion these days), I do it pretty much with the one simple reason, the one that I suppose the whole meaning of web log takes up on. I mean, it’s usually late, I’m pretty much slipping out of my computer desk’s chair (the good ole’ faithful recliner that’s been in commission since longer than I can remember) in sleep when I usually put down my ranty, long, admittedly difficult to read pieces simply because I have to get it out of me.

Sometimes the thoughts just need to get out, you know?

At other times, it’s because you’ve got something to say to the people who come looking for you on the web. Something along the lines of “I thought of that too!” Or perhaps you want to post that mystical, all-important question along the lines of “What’s the meaning of it all?” but need to do it in your own way, perhaps in a way that puts down your own twist to the whole sordid mess we euphemistically call Life.

Sometimes, in moments of rare insight and perhaps some amount of clarity, when you can sufficiently organize a bunch of thoughts that somehow relate together in the weird, jumbled up micro-world which revolves around seemingly the same sets of questions and answers, that we call a mind, bloggers like me have the unique (if slightly disturbing) opportunity to put it all down, quotes, questions and exclamations notwithstanding, into the open journal they maintain that they call a blog.

Put it down to be read by their often unwary, unassuming visitors. Where it might ignite a spark, a ray of hope or even a furious debate.

Or even cause the said unwary reader to learn a few things, if not by actual tacit cajoling, then by slapping them around with the prodigal (and oft proverbial - at least of the chatrooms that I used to lurk in) trout.

And if the reader takes the moment to contribute in the discussion that the blog has become then so much the better, because like JP says, the teacher likes to learn too.

And take it from me, and I’ve said this earlier, the true blogger is in it not for the money (payperpost and others would seem to disagree), not for the fame (A-List … Bloggers ?!?), not for the audience, not for even the notoriety (read: fame) itself, but purely because they need to get their stuff out of their minds.

At the risk of repeatedly sounding one-offish, (selfish even?) I say again, I’m doing this, for me.

TechCrunch’s new contributing author after Marshall Kirkpatrick’s exit, Natali Del Conte says: “When customers buy “Superman Returns” at Wal-Mart, they can choose to pay $1.97 more to play it on portable devices, $2.97 more to play it on PCs or laptops, or $3.97 more to play it on either portable devices or PCs/laptops.”

While this offer may interest the casual customers of WallMart (who seem to account for 40 percent of all DVD sales in the United States according to the CNN release), I do wonder if it addresses the actual target shopper for the online digital movie download.

Thord Hedengren at BlogHerald was irked enough to post about what he feels would be ideal in the online shopping scenario for DVD movies, instead of them joining the PlaysForSure brigade.

Thord says: “Wal-Mart folks, how about this: Sell the DVD, offer an additional downloads package with every bloody format known to man for $2 extra, and don’t be asshats about the licensing. Let me play my movie where I want, with easily accessible downloads if I want it for my new media player, and you’ll have one happy and returning customer. It’s boring to re-encode movies in new formats, better if I can throw you some change and save the time.”

I think some of these ideas are quite profound. It’s time that digital movie download vendors wake up, smell the coffee and realize that their first target audience really is…

…the Geek.

The Geek with little or no time, or even the patience to find the right DVD cloning/copying clone and use it.

I posit that the geeks among us would be quite willing to let go of miniscule amounts of cash to forego the pain associated with acquiring that movie that they want to collect, archive it and keep transcoding it repeatedly to watch it on their owned devices. These devices usually require video to be in a specific format that is native to them to be able to play it.

YouTube has emphatically proven that transcoding video on-the-server is a better idea than leaving it up to the end-consumer. Let’s take this theme forward and try to reach the devices, directly instead of the current Web2.0 wave of only converting it to the (now universally playable) Flash video format (FLV). Like Thord ideates, offering a point blank whatever-format-you-want-it-in option seems much more ideal than the gradiented repeated value-increase model that WallMart is currently pitching.

At least to a geek like me.

I own and regularly drain the battery of my PSP by normal usage. I do play games on it (Racing away in Burnout Legends is my idea of a healthy break) but primarily I use it for, listening to podcasts, reading RSS through my specially formatted RSS aggregator, and yes watching video. I’d love to see some online support for this device’s video capabilities which IMnsHO leaves the other players in the dust with it’s hardware capabilities.