An open letter to Foxtel and their suppliers

I was waiting for Date Night and Kick Ass to come back to your "On Demand" service so it could watch "what I want, when I want" since they were removed since the launch last October.

In January when I asked about the movies, you said:

I appreciate the time you have taken to contact us regarding New Release Movies On Demand. These movies are constantly rotating and changing to give FOXTEL subscribers, the continued option of watching what they want, when they want. The movies will be back on FOXTEL shortly, and they will be advertised to our subscribers when they are scheduled next.  

Last weekend, I gave up waiting, and borrowed the DVDs from a friend.

I would have preferred to stream them through Foxtel if they had been available, because borrowing (and returning) DVDs takes more effort than simply clicking through a few menus from the couch, but it was an effective way of watching "what I want, when I want".

I thought you might like to pass this on to your upstream suppliers and let them know that, because they have neglected to update their knowledge of marketing since the last century, they missed out on revenue they would have received had I been able to watch them "On Demand".

Emacs renumber tut tests

M-x replace-regexp
test<\([0-9]+\)>()
test<\,(1+ \#)>()

IronPython and ntemacs

• Install python-mode.el
• (setq py-jython-command "c:/Program Files/IronPython 2.6 for .NET 4.0/ipy.exe")
• Open a .py file. C-c C-t will toggle "jython", C-c ! will start a shell... (thanks shapr!)

Boxee Kinect remote control - don't panic

There's a Kinect-based remote control for the Boxee media centre. Douglas Adams predicted this over 30 years ago in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive -- you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.