Netflix Drops Profiles ... A Resounding WTF Follows

Netflix sent an email out to users yesterday declaring that soon enough they would be dropping the profile feature from accounts. This is a feature which allows accounts to divide their DVD queue into multiple profiles.

While it might sound trivial, The Girl and I have made it into an essential part of using the service. We're 5 DVD people and we divide the profiles not up for each other, but rather by category. I'm actually rather amazed Netflix doesn't let you do this in a more structured way - it's more insanely handy than I can describe. If we send a popcorn blockbuster movie back, we get one of those next. If we send a TV show back, we get the next disc in the TV show back. It saves us all the needless time of organizing a single list in a chronological order we can't really determine.

Why Netflix, which has had a decent track history of evolving their user interface, would so willing put a baseball bat to our knees is quite beyond me.

I'm hoping they have a really good trick up their sleeves as this puts the service, which is facing stiff enough competition as it is, into a much less desirable mode for us.

Game Play: Spore Creature Creator

I got a quick sneak peak at the Spore Creature Creator last night, which is apparently now available in trial format for the public. You can see that I made myself busy by creating a disturbing little thing with teeth that I then promptly sent to myself.

It's an interesting little insight into the much hyped game and I will admit it's slightly addictive at first playing with spines and legs as though they were putty. For the most part the generation works without a hitch, although if you try something truly funky in terms of shapes or sizes you'll notice the occasional shearing of the model during animations. Once you've created your beast, your choices are pretty much sharing it with the rest of the world or taking it for a small test run where you can play various animations with it.

When Spore hits, these creatures are to be fully compatible with the game.

My only real caveat is that while this is a fun little toy when it's free, I'm not entirely sure it's worth ten bucks to own. The difference between the trial and retail version is about 75% more creature parts, I guess, but considering that there's not a lot to do with the creatures until Spore hits - I'm just not sure I'd see the point. Maybe if I could send creatures over to a co-workers computer for a good fistfight or something...

The trial is available for PC and Mac, so at the very least it's a decent look into the much anticipated title.

TV Watch: Battlestar Galactica, Sine Qua Non And The Hub

Yeah, I know I'm behind on Galactica. And still am, I haven't caught Revelations from Friday yet. I actually still have about half of my truckload of entertainment that I armed myself with to survive the flight home. I've got Doctor Who, 30 Days, there's even a couple meerkats in there...

Spoilers be here for the two episodes listed above.

That said, the two that I did catch up on were quite awesome. The show is walking this fine line between bizarre hocum pocum and really tight character conflict. Just how well the hocum pocum will work is to be determined, but there's at least a lot of interesting takes on religion. The end of The Hub, where Roslin feels gipped for having saved Balthazar but not gotten her golden ticket home was a wonderful depiction of all the characters involved.

Apparently the scene with Tigh and Adama where Adama mentions how many times he has to repair his model ship might be an in-show reference to breaking the ship during an ad lib take on the set.

I'll wait on any more final five speculation until I can catch up. Don't want to ramble on and on about a guess when for all I know D'Anna has been singing like a bird last week.