Hey, run over to Last.FM and check out my page. They just gave the whole Last.FM site a makeover and everything looks pretty cool now. You can tell what bands I like at a glance. Accounts there are free and it is a pretty fun site. Great for people who like music and are curious about they like themselves - or who else likes what they do.

I got a great printer today at an amazing price - under $150, at Best Buy. It was already a good buy, but at the sale that ends today, they dropped the price by another $30. The printer I bought was the Epson CX7800. I will be using it with my Mac. In addition to being able to print computer printouts, it can also print photos. Not only that. It can scan books, photos, papers, and even film negatives. That is not all. It also has a film card reader (Compact Flash, xD, SD, and SM). There is a 1.5 inch very sharp LCD display that you can preview your photos in before you print them, if you do not have the printer hooked up to your computer. On top of that, literally (heh, heh) it has a scanner with a removable cover. Not a bad gadget for about a hundred and forty bucks. And, of course, it is designed to work with the Macintosh. Apple has really courted the printer industry, and printer software programmers. It shows. Apple has great support for printers now. And since Apple has support for PDF built right into their OS, the Apple is one terrific computer for working with text and graphics. Whether you are a user or a programmer - you benefit. In terms of speed, ease-of-use, and the number of places where powerful image processing/conversion features are just simply "there" for you to use if you want - Apple has hit a home run with the current version of its OS. This printer will be doing a lot of cool stuff for me. The Mac is just the right system for it to be doing it with. By the way, has anyone seen those hilarious Macintosh ads Apple has been running the past few months?

My mother and step dad bought themselves an Apple iMac with a 20-inch screen this week. I think they are going to be really happy with it.

Wow, the home page here on TV.com really looks nice with the makeover they gave it this summer. I wish they would support QuickTime for play TV show clips though. The Windows Media player proprietary video is jerky and it does not play on all computers. QuickTime playback is smooth and it is supported on all Macs and PCs. Seems like a no-brainer. So, Shannen Dougherty is coming on The View to cohost for a couple days. Sounds interesting. She seems very centered, though a little snippy at times. Personally, I was really sad to see her go when she left Charmed. The girl that replaced her was very good too, though - I have to admit. That did soften the blow. TV will sure be strange without Aaron Spelling around. I hope Hollywood continues to produce great TV. I heard his widow has already put his 90-something room mansion up for sale. I guess it must be hard to live in a place where you have 90 things that remind you of the person you loved. I woke up at 5 today, an hour before the alarm went off. Couldn't sleep anymore. I designed a new program yesterday while I was having dinner at a Texas chili place near my house. Actually, it is a series of interlocking programs. Could not do what I wanted to do easily in just one language. Hopefully, I will get it typed in today. Actually, that is what I am about to start doing now - while I enjoy my breakfast.

Denise Richards, ex-wife of Hollywood's "bad boy" actor Charlie Sheen, is going to be doing some some stripping in Vegas (down to lingerie). I just read the story in the news. Anyway, she will be joining the act in the Pussycat Dolls Lounge in Vegas, briefly. The other news that caught my eye was a report that the pilot episode of "Blade: the series" brought in 2.5 million viewers to the "Spike TV" cable station to see it. I do not think that counts all the people who downloaded for free from iTunes. Those figures will probably come out next week and I expect they will be huge. By the way, if you have not get it yet - grab it right away. Chances are Apple will be changing the price from FREE to $1.99 in the next couple of days. Since this episode is 90 minutes long, getting it for free is really sweet. Also, it just now hit me - Apple gave away a 90 minute long TV show on iTunes. Hey, that pretty much erases any doubt as to whether they have the storage on their website to hold that and the technical oomph in their iPod to play it back. It played back pretty smoothly on my Mac. When I full sized it on my 20 inch screen, I did notice some slight fuzziness whenever there was any text - like from signage - in the scene. Other than that half a second when there was a sign on the screen - the playback was very nice. I watched most of it in full screen mode.

The people who created CineCrap have added a counterpart site for bad television shows called TeleCrap. It is a social website. They support Web 2.0 features like tagging, tag clouds, bookmarking, and so forth. Obviously, it does not compete with this site, which I think people use as a roadmap to find the best shows - and share/learn thoughts/facts about them. CineCrap is more like a light house than a map. It basically shines a light on the worst shows ever, and says - "stay the heck away from these!". Of course, you should still rate bad shows here on TV.com too. Every time you rate or review a show you did not like, you help spotlight the shows you do like by making their ratings and reviews stand out as positive. Writing a review about a bad show is not as much fun as rating/reviewing a good show. But, it has to be done. Feedback is feedback and ratings are ratings. Without shadows, it is hard to see where the light is coming from. By the way, I bet you are asking yourself in the back of your mind what is the worst film ever made? That is easy. It is Battlefield Earth, the best film ever made about an L. Ron Hubbard book. That kind of tells you a few things.

I liked the show. It is pretty cool that ABC decided to start bringing it to their broadcast network instead of letting it languish on their cable network. Even cooler that they are going to be selling the episodes on iTunes and are currently giving the first episode of season one away for free. I am surprised that TV networks took so long to adopt alternative technology to the old commercial/cable TV and disc sales channels. However, I am even more surprised that once, they dipped their toe in the water at Apple's iTunes music store - they immediately jumped in with a big armload of their best new and classic TV series. Not over the course of years but just months. Wow! CNN founder Ted Turner changed the world by bringing morning news to television. Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs has made an even bigger impact on the media by modernizing children's cartoons while keeping the tradition of a "moral to the story intact", modernizing the delivery/playback/sale of digital music and shows, and helping popularize these advances to both industry and consumers - helping them both. I think parents with teens should get this show's pilot episode now - while it is still free at iTMS - screen it themselves, and then write down all the topics of real life "risks" kids face - and what they should do about it. Then watch the show with their teenagers, and have a frank discussion afterwards. This episode gives parents a great opportunity to teach some life lessons, and Apple & ABC are giving it away for free, for a limited time, to promote it. It is a lot cheaper than taking your kid to a clinic, paying bail for them, or raising a grandkid at the same time you are raising your kids.

I just spotted the Apple announcement that iTMS is carrying new Spike network and MTV shows. Normally, Blade: the series airs Wednesday nights at 10 on Spike TV. Check the Blade site out - they have nice clips from the show and special effects look awesome. Hurry over there to iTMS in the TV Shows : Spike : Blade the Series section right away! The premiere episode is currently FREE!

I just noticed that there are fires burning out of control in Nevada. Over here on the East Coast, ew have been getting hit by the great big super soaker in the sky for several days in a row. Looks like that is over now. There have been evacuations in several maybe a bunch of states on the mid-Atlantic seaboard. Places in D.C. had to close some this week, part of the D.C. beltway was closed due to a mudslide, roads turned into rivers in a couple Virginia towns and floodwaters mixed with sewage burst into basements. An earthen damn in Maryland might be on the verge of collapse, forcing the evacuation of 2,200 residents from Rockville, Maryland - a suburb of Washington, DC. The weather forecast is for 6 days of sunshine, thank goodness!

The new Kyle XY series sounds like it will be pretty good. I missed its debut on ABC broadcast channel Monday but I am going to try and see it next Monday or whenever it airs again. Anyone seen it before? How did you like it? I lucked out because the series premiere episode is a free download from iTunes right now. So even though I missed it, I still get to see it and it won't cost me anything - this time. The next episode airs Friday night, day after tomorrow, that is. Today iTunes is giving away not one but 2 free songs, so stopping by there was definitely worth the trouble. By the way, this episode of the show has 590 reviews. I am not sure, but I think that is an usually high number of reviews. If so, that is a good sign for the show. Some of the reviews complained about all the adult activities an underage male was performing, so hopefully the character is not too out of control the rest of the season. The reviews I saw that were not panning it on moral grounds were positive about the show. Even one person who was not thrilled with the "antics" still liked the show. The ratings I saw were all 1 and 5 star ratings - none in between. The show is carrying a 4 star rating on iTunes. That right there tells you by far most people liked it.