On last report, there were several gazillion websites out there in the world. And, so goes conventional wisdom, most of us only look at less than a dozen of them on a daily basis.

I can confirm this from my own browsing habits. Pictured here is my Internet Explorer drop-down menu showing the websites I drop in on several times a day. If you kick in CNN and Canoe, and leave out sites I actually create, you’ve got 95% of my browsing life right there.

My television watching follows a similar pattern: about 40% NBC, 20% on ABC, 20% on TLC, 10% on CBC and the balance sprinkled over the dial.

I read the New Yorker every week, Yankee and Toronto Life every month and occasionally read WIRED and Mother Jones.

I pick up the Guardian once or twice a week (I read it online every day), the National Post about twice a month, and the Globe and Mail about once every two months.

I split my radio listening in the car between CBC and Magic 93, the later only because there’s nothing else I can pick up clearly. At home I never listen to “real” radio — it’s Grassy Hill 90% of the time, KPIG on Sunday afternoons, and various others the rest of the time.

In other words, in this crazy world of seemingly infinite choice, I have my tiny little unchanging sliver. And, I assume most people do too. What’s yours?

I hereby offer to spend an $500 extra on Christmas gifts this holiday season, at downtown Charlottetown merchants, if the people behind the Maritime Electric Victorian Winter Festival do away with the abominable and inane Christmas lights that have littered the downtown for the past two years.

If I can find, say, 50 allies, that’s an additional $25,000 more in the pockets of downtown businesses. Which, I would hazard a guess, is significantly more than the light orgy results in. Takers?

Technical bulletin: I can confirm that mounting Samba shares under Mac OS X works once you install the 10.1.1 update. It didn’t work — at least very much — under 10.1, and I had to resort to using Sharity (which worked fine). What this means in the real world (or the less pretend world) is that I can open files on the Linux server in the basement using my iBook. Which is both cool and useful. I now return you to your regularly scheduled website.

CBC unveiled its edgy new current affairs program Disclosure this evening, hosted by Wendy Mesley and Diana Swain. The program shares a lot with ABC’s 20/20: Downtown — it’s a lighter, funkier kinda news, targeted younger than usual. Think of it as “fifth estate” meets “21 Jump Street.”

That said, I watched and enjoyed most of the program this evening.

I’m a fan of both Swain and Mesley: I think they’re excellent hosts, and good journalists. I sang a private song when Swain beat out Peter Mansbridge for the new Gemini last year.

As to the segements that went into tonight’s debut episode, well…

There were regretable (or just plain stupid) segments, like Premiers Travel Challenge where real CBC sports commentators called the play-by-play on a mock hurdles race as part of an essentially content-free “exposé” about travel costs in various by Canadian Premiers. This segment — more appropriate for This Hour Has 22 Minutes if anyone is forced to watch it — went on way, way to long and took what might have been some interesting content and over-packaged it in a fluffy coating.

Similarly, the Disclosure Mission Statement piece, wherein we get a fluufy rendition of what the show’s all about, was over-produced to the point of obscurity. The style of this piece borrowed a lot from Undercurrents, Wendy Mesley’s old show. Let’s hope they leave that style mostly behind.

But Mesley’s interview with Prince Mostapha was well done: she’s a good interviewer, and she established a bizarre sort of rapport with the man. And Diana Swain’s The Beast of Bolzano piece was interesting too, although she could lose a little bit of the Mike Wallacesque moral indignation.

Graphically the show was slick and well-produced. Despite the 20/20 style knock-off of the “hosts standing in weird lighting on the roof,” I like this technique for the introductions.

The Disclosure website certainly seems comprhensive, with background web content for each piece, and RealVideo of each as well. It suffers from the usual crazy “we have to wrap our own cool, unique home page inside the regular CBC look and feel” problem that so plagues many CBC sites; the result is five (yes five) navigational areas: regular CBC bar at the top, regular CBC sidebar, Disclosure bar at the top, Disclosure sidebar, Disclosure links at page bottom. This is confusing, but it’s not really fair to blame the Disclosers for this problem.

I’ll be watching next Tuesday.

Hint for the day: if, after soaping up your hands when washing them, you rinse for an additional 15 seconds longer than normal, you will get a better hand washing with less soapy residue and will generally feel better about the entire experience.