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I mentioned before how I like the idea of cars having two horns, a loud abrasive one for "Hey, watch out!" and another for a friendly "Hi!". The issue came up again when I witnessed a car driving through a red light at Spadina and Richmond, a large and busy intersection, honking its horn as it did so. My co-worker thought it was a great idea, and we spent a few minutes of other chimes that would be helpful. For example, if you got in a car crash, you could have The Price is Right losing horn . Or possibly a dramatic chord . If you're stuck behind someone who hasn't noticed the green light, you play the Jeopardy! think music . Oh, and that red-light-runner should've been playing the bugle charge .

I can feel my memory going. Or rather, I feel that I am less able to concentrate, less able to remember. Which is disheartening, as I didn't exactly have a stellar memory to begin with. My sleeping habits and lack of dreams is what I blame it on. It's a real struggle for me to sleep properly. I have been pretty good with my vow to stay relatively dry this year, keeping myself to 1 or 2 drinks per outing. Still, my mind is not what it once was. Just the other day I was listening to a Pimsleur language tape and had to listen to a conversation nearly eight times as I kept zoning out and thinking of other things. Upon further reflection it could be that I've become so used to filtering out Korean that I need to make a special effort to pay attention when it is spoken. Years of turning a deaf ear to my parent's conversations with their friends gave me the training I am now trying to undo. It is rather slow going. I was amused to discover that I sometimes write the Korean &qu

I managed to squeeze some time in to watch "I Am Legend", which I was fully expecting to be terrible. I was entertained but the second half of the film, and particular the ending, was just too Hollywood to swallow happily. I was also turned off by the overuse of CGI, finding it distracting and more than a bit silly. On the good side, the sense of emptiness and the scenes where we do not see the others up close are pretty damn spooky. I probably wouldn't watch this film again, but it doesn't stop me wanting to see Omega Man and Last Man on Earth. Hey, did you hear about that 6-alarm fire on Queen West and Bathurst? That's just down the street from my work! The whole downtown stank of burnt plastic and metal, the same smell one might get if one's computer or power supply overheats. It kind of left a gross taste in my mouth when I walked to lunch. I don't really have much else to say -- I didn't use any of those stores, although I suppose it's a shame

I went to Seneca Niagara casino over the weekend and lost over $600. We left after work Friday, arriving around 11pm. I played a few hours that night, with most of my winnings coming from an AA hand and a super bluff I managed to pull over some poor fellow. Around an hour in I had doubled my $100. Unfortunately, I lost $200 over the next two hours. I decided at that point that I was more of a sprinter than a long-distance runner when it came to poker, a decision that would haunt me the following day. Again I would start well, and about 2 hours in Saturday I was up $450 over my initial $100 investment... and during the next 4 hours I would lose it all. My theory is that I get tired if I win too much, that I lose my instinct to protect my money while at the same time being hungry for more. I just lost my desire to keep playing and to keep winning, and my game got dull and predictable. So, the first night I was $100 down, and the next night I was $30 down. It's not TOO bad when I cons

Another hour to go, why I should be bothered I don't know. Valentine's day! It's really a lose-lose-win situation. The man loses because he is pressured to get things for his sweetie, which is really the third punch of the Christmas/New Year's/Valentine's combo. The woman loses if she's disappointed by what the man does/gets or doesn't do/get. They're both losers if they happen to be single and witness public displays of affection. Obviously I am of this category and it sickens me to see open-mouth kissing on the streetcar! The only winners are the florists, chocolatiers, card makers, barf-bag suppliers, etc. for this cockamamie non-holiday. It can't be over soon enough. Speaking of useless holidays, what's up with Family Day, eh?? I mean seriously. I don't mind getting another provincial day off, but I don't approve of the pro-life sound of it. It also kind of crept up on me, so here's another long weekend wherein I didn't make p

Joel Johnson wrote an article of some of his favorite Lego sets ( 50 Years of LEGO: Nine Sets I Have Known and Loved ), and the pictures inspired me to look up some of my beloved sets (you'll have to click through to see the pictures): 483 Alpha-1 Rocket Base . It came with rubber tubes for fun space plumbing. Multiple steering wheels made for vehicles that supported multiple drivers. Love those crazy transparent yellow bricks, which I'd use as a Energon cube -type resource. Also see all those kind of boomerang thingies? Three of them are being used in the box photo to support the rocket. Well, those were spaceship guns! At least in my variants. Hmmm... I guess they're more mini-handsaws than boomerangs. 6970 Beta-1 Command Base . Oh yeah, here's the megapuppy of the bunch. So many goodies here, from the flag (important for landings and exploration!) to the big screen piece (high def, natch), to those awesome clear mugs. No day in space is complete without your space ca

I guess I'd forgotten hearing about it but apparently Canadians can opt out of junk mail with Canada Post. You fill out a form, sign it, and they don't deliver unaddressed mail to you. There's now a campaign ( reddotcampaign.ca ) to get people more involved. I was reading some comments on cbc.ca ( Will you be putting a red dot on your mailbox? ) and someone mentioned that they always use the self-addressed envelopes given out by banks to return empty envelopes to waste the bank's time. Would that really be effective? I wonder how many people do it, and how many it would take for the banks (or whomever) to get the hint. Ok, that's it! I'm going to write letters to anyone who advertises with unsolicited mail. To be truthful, all advertising annoys me. I mean, do not the sane and learned trust only their own ability to judge whether a product is one they want? Who is so moved by ads that they feel they must go and purchase it, based on an AD?! All advertising is ga

So I finally got WPA working on my OLPC after upgrading to Build 656 (G1G1 came with 650). The various workarounds I'd read didn't work for me, although it's probably true that my fiddling and tinkering didn't help things. Anyway, for posterity here's what I did to get WPA working: Downloaded the latest build, placed it on a USB stick (needs about 300 MB of space) and loaded it up. Full instructions here: OLPC Off-line update steps . This involves clearing out everything on the machine, which for me was nothing of consequence. Remove network.cfg from /home/olpc/.sugar/nm/. A reboot might be necessary afterwards to get the OLPC to forget the old network.cfg settings. In the Neighbourhood view, click on the WPA point and enter the password in plain-text. The connection dialog imposes an 8 character minimum, but you'd want a fairly large keyphrase anyway. The 10 character limit I read about did not apply to me, or perhaps no longer applies with 656. All in all th

Minor spoilers follow. Huh. I am now basking in the glow of I Am Legend (careful as here there be spoilers at the very top!), the story which recently was remade into a movie for the third time. I spent much of yesterday enjoying the story and today I am digesting it, the beauty that I was only vaguely aware of as I hurriedly read one suspenseful sentence after another. I even went so far as to use two sheets of paper to cover up parts of the page that I hadn't read yet as my eyes have a nasty habit of skipping ahead, seeking out the juiciest plot points. I related a lot with the main character, Robert Neville, who spends his time alone, constantly questioning why he goes on, his mind stuck in the past, nagging and admonishing himself for giving into vice and laziness, his soul eroding away with the grind of his daily, joyless routine. I love reading books that are as influential as I Am Legend (written in 1954), to recognize and admire its long fingers at the center of so many bo

Tired of confusing lowercase L's with 1's (and, for that matter, zero's with O's), I have switched my monospaced font to Bitstream Vera , a very readable and sensible font. It has made a world of difference at my work. Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better. Speaking of getting better and better, I am nearly halfway through season 2 of The Office US and am enjoying it greatly. I find the second season much more endurable than the first as they've softened (or so it seems to me) the Michael character while at the same time turned up the heat on the Jim and Pam situation. Oh, office romances are so much fun! I mean, to watch.

I hate cold sores, I really do. I am also so amazingly frustrated that they should appear not only on my lip, but also my chin. How messed up is that? Bloody hell! I am vain it is true and having this awful pox does much to deter my going outdoors. Look away, I'm hideous! In less hideous but equally annoying news, my Bodum French press broke! Or rather, I found that the glass part had a huge crack in it when I removed it from the drying rack. My guess is either that using a metal spoon to stir caused this or that the metal press part was too tight/had a stray wire scratching the inside. Either way, I am less than impressed. Apparently there are plastic-coated versions of the same press which, if I come across them, I will snag one. For now, I have downgraded back to instant when making coffee at home. What a world, what a world! Tired of being tied to my meagre supply of TTC tickets, I went and bought myself a TTC pass for February. Finally I am free to roam, to explore, to shop u