I was pleasantly surprised to log into the iTMS today and find that MTV’s The State Season 1 is now available for download! Not many people recall the early 90’s skit comedy show but I counted myself among its few dedicated fans during the short time that it was on air. Sketches like ‘$240 Worth of Pudding,’ ‘Doug and Dad’ and ‘Louie’ (I wanna dip my balls in it!) still make me chuckle to this day. Many of the original cast members have gone on to do other notable work (Reno 911!, I Love the 90s, Viva Variety) and during college, The State’s bestselling book State by State with the State was a staple of all my road trips.  It’s great to finally get the chance to see the original show again and see where it all began. According to The State’s Official Website, subsequent seasons may be released on iTMS based on the popularity of the original season. I hope this happens as there are some classic skits in later seasons!

I’ve had an Intel Mac for a few months now, and I’ve been wanting to comment on Parallels Desktop for OSX, the software that lets a user emulate windows at nearly full speed while still in their native Mac environment.

I’ve been holding off on passing judgment for a particular feature to be released to the public: namely what the Parallels team calls “Coherence Mode”. Using Parallels Desktop in coherence mode is really quite a technological feat: it gives the user a fully functional PC version of an .exe such as Internet Explorer, running as a windowed application, like any other program in OSX. Parallels recently released a beta of their emulation app with coherence mode enabled, so I jumped at the chance to slap it on my Intel Mac, a little machine I like to call “The Iron Giant“.

I’m really happy to say that coherence mode lives up to the expectation, and perhaps the best part about it is that it really doesn’t feel special at all. Boot up your virtual machine, open IE, and switch into coherence: after that you can drag and resize IE, open multiple windows, even minimize to a version of the Windows start bar that lives inside of OSX. The last hurdle I have to jump will be setting up a second virtual machine and seeing if coherence mode will let me run an IE6 and IE7 window simultaneously. Now THAT would truly be remarkable.

That really is quite fun.

Admitedly one of the things I’m most excited about when it comes to Nintendo’s Wii is the creation of a customized digital doppleganger that I can pit against friends and foes alike in eerily realistic simulations of real world activities.

Fortunately, industrious flash developers have rushed in to fill the void left by a lack of available Wii consoles with a handy online Wii creator! Now we can all have a ridiculously cute simulacrum who we can force to do our bidding in the electronic realm, whether we’re equipped with Nintendo’s oddly named console or not!