Smithers found a fantastic clip of the mealy-mouthed short guy from Top Gear spending a day working up from the ranks of Formula Renault's impressive array of championship cars all the way to F1. He hangs out with the Renault team and they put him in a series of progressively faster cars until ultimately he does two laps in an F1 (circa early 2k). All the assists are clearly running at at 100%, and he still manages to let it get away from him a couple of times. I never see him hit 4gear, but he's screaming like a little girl down all the straights nonetheless.

This is THE clip to show non-F1 people why F1 is such an amazing sport. It so clearly demonstrates just how amazingly advanced those machines are, while highlighting the superhuman effort it takes to squeeze the most out of the machinery. Simply brilliant.

jdh358 posted a nearly 4 minute long video explaining how to get the cut and paste code from youtube to work for you. I had enough difficulty getting this job done that I had to consult the oracle. So I'll save you four minutes of your life listening to a poorly miked presentation and cut right to the chase:

1. Find a video that you want to post on your blog at youtube
2. Select the generated <object> tag
3. Login to wordpress and select "Profile"
4. Deselect the Visual Editor option, select "Update Profile"
5. Goto the Write page
6. Write and publish your post as normal, pasting the <object> tag as appropriate
7. Enjoy the oohs and aaaahs of millions of adoring fans

It's very important that the WYSIWYG editor never sees the <object> tag. It doesn't parse it properly, so the brackets that are supposed to denote a tag get translated into it's numeric entity. This means that your lovingly crafted tag is treated as literal text by WordPress.

Not necessarily the bands I would choose, and it would be nice to actual video... but it's a great little romp through some great metal songs. Though personally, I believe the acoustic piano is anathema to metal. The piano is an instrument of delicateness. Yes, that can be strong and pretty. I just don't want it in the metal in put in my ears.

I can't say I don't think any of these bands doesn't deserve a shot at the top ten:

• Nightwish
• Rhapsody
• Gamma Ray
• Kamelot
• Edguy
• Avantasia
• Celesty
• Heavenly
• Sonata Arctica
• Hammerfall
• Zonata
• Fairyland
• Firewind
• Altaria
• Blind Guardian
• Helloween

I'm a youtube junkie. I spend hours watching all the music videos I never see* anywhere else, as well as the videos I grew up on. But the site really pisses me off. Maybe it's because I use Firefox, maybe it's the NoScript plugin, maybe it's my firewall, maybe it's the way I've set up my network despite my provider's inane bullshit** but after watching a few videos my browser doesn't see the HTTP headers. I click on a link, and I get a page of raw HTML. No video. No workaround. Has anyone else had this problem? Plz let me know if you've found out the cause and/or solution. It's really starting to piss me off!

jAnother youtube annoyance:

I setup automagic posting. But I can only set the title and add a comment. It would be nice if I could add tags and categories. Must need research if this is an RPC limitation, or if youtube is just being braindead.

*MTV is so NOT in the "FAVORITES" menu on my DVR. VH1 is, but they don't play videos hardly ever. I like their 80's and metal shows, but they just play the same handful over and over. To find good videos that the rest of the world likes, you have to go online.

**No names, but my provider sounds like "bombast" and you've heard of them. They've been in the news lately for the way they handle filesharing protocols.