One of the things I tend to enjoy, but find that I don't really have enough time for, is watching Channel 9 and similar videos. They don' really get deep into the technical side of things, but they are a good indication of 'things coming', for instance, they first started showing videos and talking about Monad all the way back in 2004. You also see awesome things that probably won't make it to reality any time soon like the Singularity project ,which is one of my favorites.

Today, I find a way to spend less time watching more of these videos. I noticed a post on Mohammed Adenwala's blog (yes, I spend too much time reading the blogs.msdn.com blog roll too, but at least that is only limited by my rate of reading) that you can run Windows Media Player at speeds faster than normal, but slow enough you can keep up with what's going on.

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Incase you don't know how to watch a clip on 'Fast', go up to the FILE menu in Windows Media Player and click PLAY -> PLAY SPEED  -> FAST. You, like me, will save so much time!
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This works still on Vista in WMP 11, and seems, from comments on that site, to have been available since WMP9. The above setting runs the video at 1.4x speed, which is alittle 'funny' sounding at first, but is quickly adjusted to. If 1.4x isn't enough, another comments says (and I verified) to increase the speed further, 'There's also a variable speed selector under Enhancements (View | Enhancements | Play Speed Settings). You'll have trouble making out the audio beyond 2x though'. I agree with his assessment. At least without further training to get used to the speed, anything about 2.0x is pretty painful. 1.4x seems to be pretty spiffy for now.