I found a nifty trick while browsing /tmp this evening. By default, Linux saves a copy of every video you view on YouTube. I’ve not tested this with other video sharing sites, so I’m not sure if it works with them. Find a video you want on YouTube, wait for it to completely download, and then in your terminal, browse to /tmp. You should see a file called Flashxxxxx where xxxxx is a random string of characters. You can move this file anywhere you want and play it back in VLC. Unfortunately, it’s not an SWF, but it is an FLV; you can convert it to SWF should you choose to do so.

Xorg 1.7 fixes video lagging and choppiness. Saweeeet. Also, happy birthday to me.