If you're into social gambling, you might be interested in Dumb Little Man's tips for enjoying a trip to Vegas while still sticking to your budget.
He recommends that you resist the temptation to trade your full bankroll for chips at the start of the night, recommending that you start by converting just half of it into chips.

"The reason for this is two-fold: mentally, it'll be easier for you to walk away with cash versus chips, and secondly, once you have all chips, it's difficult to get your money back; dealers will not cash you out. To get cash back, you are forced to find the cage which entails walking by eighty other game tables, cheering crowds, waiting in line, etc. That's a lot of temptation you can avoid simply by retaining some cash."

If you win, he suggests planning to walk away at the end of the night with some of your winnings in your pocket. To achieve this, put aside half of your winnings rather than betting (and possibly losing) the whole lot.
He also recommends that you focus on games which give you more bang for your buck - for example - a single thrower at the Craps table can last up to 15 minutes, while a Blackjack hand can be over in just 2 minutes.

And finally some practical advice - stick to one drink an hour. Or, if you want to drink more, move to the bar for a while and put your gambling on hold. As he says, the drinks are often comped for a reason!

Got any tips for how to enjoy gambling in moderation? Share in comments please.

How to lose less on your Vegas vacation [Dumb Little Man]

Yesterday we pointed you to Gizmodo US's take on how to handle the death of HD-DVD (their tip: sell off your player on eBay before the rest of the world realises it's a dead format). But Nick over at Giz AU has come up with a pretty good alternative - he says there's around 1,000 movies out there on HD-DVD, and you'll be able to scoop them up pretty cheaply, so why not hang onto your player and get your money's worth. Makes sense to me.
He's also got some tips on how to best get into Blu-ray (PS3!) - remembering that you need an HD TV and surround sound to get the most out of it.

So Blu-ray won the format war - now what? [Gizmodo AU]

Well it wasn't a very exciting fight for those of us who were sticking with DVD to see what happened, but the media is now trumpeting that Blu-ray has won the format war, with the news that Toshiba is quitting production of HD-DVD players and recorders.
That won't mean much if you'd stuck with DVD to see how the battle went down, but if you're an early adopter, Gizmodo has kindly put together a guide to what to do next. Their top (cynical!) tip is to offload your HD-DVD gear pronto, before the rest of the world figures out that it's a dud. Nice.

A Consumer's Cheat Sheet to HD-DVD's Death and Blu-ray's Victory [Gizmodo]

This time of year gives people great excuses to do silly things—spend far too much time shopping, go crazy decorating in red, and make and drink ancient cocktails. If you relish tackling that last tradition, Wired has a great guide to making all the classic concoctions, like eggnog, mulled wine, and Tom and Jerries, with variations and preparation tricks for each. As a bonus, you'll learn the drinks' origins and have at least one holiday party conversation starter locked down. For more drink recipes, check out the drink databases ExtraTasty and Webtender. Photo by decor8.

Before there was iTunes, there was Winamp. A lot of people still prefer to use this freeware music player (and a lot of people still have opinions on when Winamp jumped the shark into bloatville, but don't let's get started on that).
Wired's just written up a detailed review of Winamp's 10th anniversary edition, AOL Winamp 5.5, which boasts a revamped interface, iPod syncing, remote music access and other advanced features:

"Best of all, Winamp makes it far easier than iTunes or Windows Media Player to discover new music online and incorporate it into your library without having to download MP3s through a browser and import them into your media player manually."

After I stop feeling really, really old, I think I'll download it and give it another whirl.

Winamp Packs on Features for 10th-Anniversary Edition [Wired]