We’ve been recently getting these DVDs from Netflix (a very reasonable service on its own), and this documentary from the BBC about Planet Earth is ultrareasonable. With a $25million budget and five years going around to every climate in the world, the production team got amazing footage that should not be missed by anyone who calls the Earth home. In fact, going around the tubes yesterday (via boingboing) was this awesome timelapse video of growing slime mold and mushrooms, uncredited but from the Planet Earth episode on Jungles (which I coincidentally watched tonight):

David Attenborough narrates this original BBC version with his British accent, and he’s great to listen to. 11 episodes of 50 minutes apiece, covering both poles, mountains, fresh water, caves, deserts, ice worlds, great plains, jungles, shallow seas, seasonal forests, and the ocean deep. Beautifully done; earth porn at its finest.

Saul :: Aug.29.2008 :: Earth Documentary :: 1 Comment »

A friend asked for a recommendation on a voice recorder. ConsumerSearch notes the Olympus WS-311M as the Best Digital Voice Recorder overall. I considered the DS-30 and DS-40, which have more memory and other niceties like a builtin speaker, but they were substantially more expensive. All the Olympus voice recorders present themselves as simple USB storage to the computer, and the recordings are just WMA files (but not, unfortunately, MP3, which prevents it from receiving a star). The WS-311M has a builtin microphone, and is also a portable music player (also WMV only, however), and can playback for 20 hours on a single AAA battery. Storage space is 512MB, or almost 9 hours of recording at the highest quality.

Saul :: Aug.14.2008 :: Voice Recorder :: 1 Comment »