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We watched the first disc of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles last night. The series has been reedited from one-hour episodes into two-hour movies*, and while later episodes may work better, the series opener really suffers from it.

Sure, the original airing combined two episodes with an eight-year story gap in them, but the story of 9-year-old Henry Jones, Jr. visiting an archeological dig in Egypt and the story of 16-year-old Indiana Jones getting caught up with Pancho Villa in Mexico are linked thematically. More importantly, the Egypt segment sets up a mystery (a murder and stolen artifact) that is only half-resolved in that segment. The rest is resolved in the Mexico segment.

For the DVDs, George Lucas wanted to tell everything in chronological order, so the Pancho Villa segment has been moved later in the collection (I’m not sure what it’s been paired with), and the opening “movie” instead jumps directly from Egypt to Morocco, telling a completely different story linked only by taking place on the same continent. It doesn’t help that it was filmed several years later, making it look like 9-year-old Indy has gone through one heck of a growth spurt between stops on his father’s lecture tour.

The segments work reasonably well on their own — well, except for the fact that the Egypt story isn’t actually resolved — but the overall presentation is weaker.

* OK, more like 45-minute episodes and 1 1/2-hour movies, but you know the score.

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So, Google has announced the Nexus One phone. Let’s see how it stacks up against what I want in my next phone:

  • Mainstream Android (i.e., not overcustomized like Motoblur)? Check.
  • Faster than what I’ve got (a G1)? Check.
  • More memory & storage? Check.
  • Better camera? Check.
  • Longer battery life? Check.
  • Less clunky? Check.
  • Available on my current provider? Check.

Sounds great!

Only one problem: there’s no keyboard. Android’s on-screen keyboard is decent enough, but I’m not quite ready to give up that physical keyboard just yet. (OTOH, I don’t want the Droid. I played with the keyboard a little at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago, and really didn’t like it.)

I’ll have to practice with the virtual keyboard on the G1 some more. If I can get used to it, this might be worth the upgrade.

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It turns out that in the digital age, the average American reads three times as many words today as thirty years ago.

Medal of Honor recipient Ed Freeman has been co-opted by a political disinformation campaign. Remember: any time you receive a political email that asks you to forward it to everyone you know, check the facts first!

(Both via This Is True)

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I put the Pushing Daisies soundtrack CD in my computer and it rebooted. Fortunately it took less than a minute….

Of course I tried it again to see if it was a fluke. Same thing. Then I decided to try with another CD. Apparently any audio CD crashes it. Shows how often I use CDs these days.

At least the DVD-RW drive works. IIRC it doesn’t have CD-audio hooked up, but the player seems perfectly happy to just read it digitally.

I guess I’ll have to set aside some time on Sunday to figure out what’s causing the problem. It’s a bit late tonight, and tomorrow’s going to be busy!