hwan.com

I finally got a working version of my new RSS feed up and running. I changed it so that it follows a (slightly) more chronological approach to feeding links. The order will now be in the order in which news items (links, songs, journal entries, comments and twitters) occur, rather than my previously forced and much simpler hard-coded method. Truthfully, it was Facebook that pointed out the trouble with my old approach, as it caused readers to have problems recognizing what was actually new items. Am home now, having begun to feel the pain of being with the parental units for more than 24 hours. I also got a cramped neck sleeping on the new mattress they put in my old room, which bothers me still. Ok, I'll drop a line later.

Am at the parent's place, doing some work (hwan.com work) and checking for Boxing Day sales, of which I did not see any that fit my fancy. I've been thinking of really reducing my consumer footprint of late, and not merely because I am cheap. I just hate gathering things I never use, and I feel like I already have plenty of junk. Simplify, simplify. I am however happy that for Christmas I received a pair of Grado SR125 headphones , which I first experienced at my friend's condo where they pretty much blew me away, giving a depth to music I had not known previously possible. Indeed, a blind man seeing the world anew. If you listen to music on any type of regular basis, I wholeheartedly suggest investing in some good headphones. What's the use of delicious food if you have not the palate to enjoy every aspect of its taste? My sister brought her copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) and while it was indeed "darker" than what I had previously s...

Ugh, am zonked. I did a silly thing by booking a DriveClean appointment for early this morning, this morning being the morning after our office party. That party I was a little late for, as I had gone shopping having been late for my doctor's appointment. It seems every year this happens wherein I forget to compensate for the insanity that is Toronto commuter traffic. I've actually been contemplating, in the early stages of contemplating, selling my car and being car-free. I am not particularly sentimentally attached to it, apart from it being my first car. Anyway, zonked as I fell asleep around 5 and woke up around 8. Zonked on red wine and sleep deprivation. Christmas shopping mostly done, doing my best to avoid thinking about the crowds, the shuffling, asphyxiating crowds. I know I am tired but cannot seem to fall asleep like I want to. I do not have plans for the holidays, not really anyway. Play some games, write some code, do some work.

Blast those greedy bums... I was going through my list of charities that I've been thinking of donating to and when I got to "Ontario food bank" via google, it sent me to CanadaHelps.org , "Canada's only donation portal". A bit of reading and one discovers that they pocket 3% of donations as a transaction fee . Right, they charge more than those 3rd party ATM machines. Makes me sick it does. Snow is here. I kind of like it, as it gives me an excuse not to do anything which I am GREAT AT.

December 6, 2007 Dear Sir, I am a constituent who lives in the Toronto Parkdale/High Park area and cares about Canada's cultural policies. I am writing in regard to recent legislative proposals for "copyright reform". Bill C-60 provided some very sensible approaches to this complicated topic but it also left much room for improvement. It is my hope that you will work to ensure that any new legislation does not invalidate the sensible policies set out in Bill C-60. Specifically, I do not believe that "digital rights management" (DRM) technologies should stop the public from making lawful uses of their legitimately acquired media. Publishers use DRM to disregard the delicate balance between copyright and the rights of the public - a balance set according to an assessment of the public interest by legislators - and replace it with one-sided rules that reflect publishers' private interests. The artists themselves disagree with publishers' anti-consumer use o...

I started and finished Portal tonight. Wow. That was just.. wonderful! Fun, fun.. addictive. I'm willing to bet that most people that tried it ended up spending hours (as I did) saying "Just one more level..." until finding that they'd finished the game. I loved the atmosphere. Most reviews you read talk about the dark humor, which certainly was entertaining, but what got me was the gloom of being a test subject in a capricious, arbitrary experiment. It reminded me a lot of Cube , which, again, I'll emphasize I liked for its setting, for which I was willing to endure a contrived plot and logic holes. Anyway, yeah, that feeling of being taken out of one's life and thinking of nothing but survival, escape and, eventually, revenge. Of course, the Valve/Half-Life 2 engine makes the game SUPER pretty and pretty damn realistic (it helps that there is almost none biological life in this world). While short at about 2-4 hours of play time, it's an intense couple ...

Blurgh. Another Sunday spent indoors. It's a bit cold outside. Whenever I stay in I can't help but feel kind of sickly. Perhaps it's the air? Oh, and something super gross -- in my bathroom there's some kind of leak going on. It's actually inside the wall, creating a bulge using the paint as a skin, like a growth. I haven't bothered trying to determine what's inside. I'm hoping it's related to the slightly warm weather, and isn't sewage or the like. That would be gross. Friday night I was NOT able to go to White Orchid. Thanks to those who tried. Saturday I went shopping with QYV at Dufferin Mall, which wasn't so bad even with the insane crowds. I guess it wasn't so bad because I didn't do much shopping for myself, and I wasn't driving. Watched Lars and the Real Girl at the Varsity. Pretty good film, sweet, quiet, not at all nasty. Certainly capable of teasing a few tears here and there, both of mirth and of sadness. Surprisingly...

Holy ship-shop, they're thinking of introducing a Canadian version of the DMCA , those lousy bastards taking advantage of the Christmas season! Curse their scaly hides! This will, however, give me a chance, well, perhaps excuse/reason to write a letter and/or hopefully cast some influence on the matter. I'm going to copy from Michael Geist's " Fair Copyright for Canada " Facebook group and post their links here: Web-Based Resources on Canadian Copyright Michael Geist: http://www.michaelgeist.ca Digital-Copyright.ca: http://www.digital-copyright.ca Fair Copyright: http://www.faircopyright.ca CIPPIC: http://www.cippic.ca Online Rights Canada: http://www.onlinerights.ca Excess Copyright: http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/ Michael Geist's The Canadian DMCA: What You Can Do http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/vie w/2431/125/ Michael Geist's Copyright Choices and Voices http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/vie w/2419/125/ BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow on Canadia...

I love that youtube has finally FINALLY implemented some comment moderation to their videos. However, I wish that it would actually remove them from view, rather than simply replace them with the commenter's username, like slashdot and other rational websites do. That is all, I've been watching Eddie Izzard + Lego videos. Also, been reading up on Steve Jackson's Ogre microgame. Hmmm.. Christmas ideas forming....

Hey.. yeah, just been out of sorts lately, you know, the same old chestnut -- women, and the role they play in society. You should try googling or wikipedia'ing them, the results are hilarious and somewhat informative, but ultimately unsatisfying, much like the creatures themselves! Anyway, I was moved to write about iTunes YET AGAIN with a minor rant. Actually not a rant so much as a ... well, whatever. What's up with iTunes random play? iTunes calls it "shuffle" which seems to give an order number to each track. The crux of the problem is that this is only done ONCE per session -- so every time you play a certain track, you always hear the same one immediately afterwards. I mean really, finding a random song is SURELY not that difficult. I've stopped buying tracks on iTunes. Too much hassle! Actually it just didn't seem to make sense, since I could buy used CDs for about the same price. Hmm, but maybe I'll give it another go, since I haven't bought ...

I am seriously going to burn any article of clothing that dares do this to me again, which is to not have enough length to be tucked into my pants and stay there. I made the mistake this morning of putting on a stretchy t-shirt and a stretchy sweater on top, neither of which will stay over the small of my back. Do you know how very AGGRAVATING that is?? I don't know how women do it -- I am so on edge right now. Punchy, upset etc. Is it really the clothes? For goodness sakes this is annoying! I can see why suspenders were so popular at one time. Not for the keeping pants up, but for keeping shirts down!

Oh hey just a quickie between days... I've been really getting into that Radiohead "In Rainbows" album. Silly me for doubting that I would come to love it. Other news? No! Well, I suppose the weather has been playing havoc with .. well, it's just been up and down. It's funny every year I seem to forget how viciously cold it can get. I'm still riding my bike, and will do so until the snow or ice starts to make a regular appearance. I've been avoiding taking it to a bike shop, which I feel it desperately needs. Mostly because I was the last one to have done anything to it. A co-worker got me a bunch of I'm Alan Partridge episodes, which I've been slowly digesting and enjoying. However, mentioning them now I am feeling a little guilty for not finishing Battlestar Galactica 2nd series, Hikaru No Go , Legend of the Galactic Heroes , Little Britain 2nd series... uhm, and more, I'm sure. Just a little guilty. Perhaps with the coming holidays I'...

Oh man I am SO addicted to coffee. I realize this now, as I experience a strange euphoria upon having drowned one mug of that black bitter stuff. Maybe in the new year I'll.. uhm, no. No, I won't.

A co-worker lent me his copy of No Limit Hold'em: Theory and Practice (David Sklansky, Ed Miller). Rather, he told me to read it and I said ok. And I am, slowly, reading it. It's actually opened my eyes to the meta-math involved in numerous aspects of the game, far above and beyond simple probabilities. What's particularly interesting, for me, is the usage of Baye's theorem , bringing me back to my days as a student working for the government. Games within games. And sometimes, you play those games on a Friday night with friends and stranger alike and end up only $20 down. Sometimes anyway. Also, sometimes you find out that the 504 TTC streetcar you THOUGHT was 24 hour turns out, in fact, to stop at 2:55 AM, a fact which leads to you not getting home until 4 in the morning, after seeing a woman with huge feet on the car. Also, sometimes Googling this (the 504 streetcar, not women with large feet) leads to a page of some really old pictures of 504 TTC streetcars . Spen...

Whoo, I was upset today. It's just.. man, Visual Studio is such a piece of garbage. PURE GARBAGE. Actually, no, it's not that bad but there are some strange bits to it. Like, why can't I change the references (that is, where files actually reside) in a Solution file? I asked around and the answer was "Use a text editor". Uhm, is Visual Studio ITSELF not one big fancy color-laden text editor???? Albeit, with debugging as well. Anyway, I'm beginning to wish we had one of those heavy punching bags at work. What else... there was something but it has escaped me! I was mildly annoyed that the TTC raised their fare prices again, yet somehow the cash fare is the same? I was also disgusted to learn that my tickets I'd bought only a few months before now required an extra $0.15. What the hell is that all about? Is not one "Adult Fare Ticket" always one "Adult Fare Ticket"? Huh, well supposedly you can return them for a cash refund. Still.. blood...

I was reading the Slashdot thread, " In The US, Email Is Only For Old People ", pointing to a Slate article which I did not bother reading. It's so cliché, but sometimes I am only interested in the Insightful/Interesting Slashdot posts and not the front page post's link. Anyway, the whole idea is such bosh, e-mail has been around for ages and is not going to die any time soon. Heck, writing letters has pretty much been since writing has been. Unless we devise a new way of communicating ideas and thoughts, a way to form, store and pass them conveniently to others, letters and their electronic equivalents will be around. Sure, spam has tainted e-mail to some extent, and I wish nothing but the most gruesome ends for those who would profit by it.... but again, that's a technology thing which can be worked around. It did make me think of my own e-mail usage -- personal e-mail has gone WAY down. I remember actually taking the time to compose thoughtful e-mails, generall...

Quickly the days they seem to pass. They sure do when you've had a few beers, as I did Friday.  Actually no, now that I think of it what I had wanted to say was that I was extremely agitated by ASP.Net, Microsoft Access and... just IIS and Microsoft and the whole kit and caboodle. At first, I was upset by one of the controls that I was using did not work -- it had a minor bug, fine. I trudged on, only to discover that the database table I had based my documentation on was tragically flawed: not only did it not have a primary key, but the data itself was actually full of duplicates. An affront to my data analysis mores, and also, most regrettably, unusable in certain ASP.Net structures (and with good reason). So, I modified my code to handle this abnormality, this flagrant transgression against all things logical, only to encounter yet another roadblock, the dreaded " Server Application Unavailable ". Oh, I'm sorry, did I tax IIS too much by asking it to serve a page? ...

DUDE! I found out, via slashdot , that the OLPC [wikipedia] is now available for sale ! To US and Canadian residents. Oh man, my only question is how many should I get! I am so pumped about this. WOOO!

"I'm all for smaller government sooner rather than later. Apparently, at least in Mass., it's okay to propose legislation that makes you look so corrupt that half the world is reading about you. The throngs of people (Honorable J Carter even) that want to decriminalize things that have been prohibited for a while is getting bigger and bigger, approaching critical mass, yet the US believes it can ban all online gambling? WTF? Prohibition and censorship do NOT work. I wish the US had a government that understood that. Oh, let me add abstinence to that list also. If only god had been so forward thinking as to add an 11th commandment: Thou shalt not legislate morality. Even if Moses had had an epiphany on the way down the mountain... two really good opportunities missed!! Just one little commandment, 5 words, even in stone tablet writing costs, that is cheap." -- As commented on a Slashdot thread: " MA Proposes Two Year Jail Term for Online Gambling "

I seem to be pouring more and more of my time into work. Voluntarily, mind, but it does seem like I have less of it for myself. Which, when I have it, is spent either doing chores, reading Slashdot or playing StarCraft. Yes, even in this day and age I find that game hmmm.. shall we say, satisfying? No, more like.. entertaining. Indulgent? Saturday I did get quite a bit of sleep... some 15 hours worth, making me just in time to be late for a friend's birthday. Late, and a little dishevelled. Speaking of appearances, I'm to get a haircut tomorrow. I offered to allow someone to use my hair for practice. I hope I can stay awake! And by that I'm thinking of how I often fall asleep when I get my haircut. Mostly because of how warm those places tend to be, what with wearing that non-breathing apron and all that hot air. But also because I can't see worth a damn without my glasses so I pretty much keep them closed all the time anyway. Sleep just a sniff away. Oh right.. the bir...

So there I was, typing in Outlook like I do, oh, 10-20 times a day I guess, when my pinky slipped and I had entered the " smart quotes " zone -- double and single quotes had turned into their curly, foreign, evil replicant versions of themselves. The scary bit was that I didn't how to make it stop! I always use Plain Text, as I see anything fancier as being frivolous, and yet here they were, quotes that leaned, based on context. Trapped I was, doomed to forever send slightly arrogant replies, adorned as they were with alien characters. Isn't it odd that whenever you read about drug busts in the news, the headline is always in dollars.. like "Ecstasy worth $7 million seized"? I mean, surely the value of ecstasy is non-constant, and is prone, nay, more than prone, to market shifts and location and all those other economical factors? Not to mention the fact that an illicit good like illegal drugs has questionable value, if any, after seizure. It all seems a bi...

Eh. As I mentioned before, I've been throwing myself into work, at work. It's busy enough to keep my mind occupied during the day, and even some of the evening. The weekend passed quickly, Saturday was lunch at HoSu with an old work friend and then some LAN-tastic stuff at QYV's condo. Sunday was sleep and Dawn of War , which I played most of yesterday evening as well. I've forgotten how fun RTS campaigns can really be, though I do wonder if perhaps I should be spending my time more wisely. Just a little. Weather's taken quite the turn, and riding my bicycle isn't the usual fun cycle-fest it normally is, though my long hair does help keep my ears warm. See? This is why I didn't post anything, because I basically have nothing to say. I remember wanting to mention a grief I have with the focus of windows in Windows, like when you're typing a password and another window pops up that has a text field.. er, wait a minute.. I wrote about this exact phenomenon ...

Work has become increasingly busy of late. 'Tis the season, perhaps. In any case, I find myself wanting to spend more and more time doing work, actual work work. I was pondering the idea (though not really entertaining it) of what I would do if I were to find myself suddenly jobless. And I'm pretty sure I'd either go for a teaching degree or something much more humanitarian, you know, like volunteer teach or working abroad or the like. It'd be unlikely that I would be able to find another job in the computer industry that I liked as much as the one I have now, with the same type of freedom, atmosphere, and so on. I cycled for much of yesterday, it being an unseasonably lovely and mild day, the wind holding a small reminder of the weather to come. I caught a bit of the toronto zombie walk along Queen, of which I took a few pictures but my cellphone's digital photo quality is quite the suck. That's partially why I haven't bothered posting any of those pictures...

Continuing on the bicycle talk from yesterday, my co-worker got his front tire stolen from in front of our office this week. That's the second time someone has lost a tire -- last time was during the summer . We're on a very busy street (King Street West, just west of Spadina), and it happened right in the middle of the day. I know this because when I went to pick up my lunch it was gone when I returned. This is starting to really piss me off. Theft is annoying enough, but the sheer audacity of these drive-by bicycle thieves is just... oh man I'm just overcome with an ardent fervour to do SOMETHING. I've actually given thought to picking up a cheap used bike and plant a GPS or other homing device on the thing, a honeypot if you will. But I would need a posse to kick their t'iefing asses. I'm almost serious. Serious enough that I wished that I had witnessed the theft, so that I could at least see who it was and what vehicle they used. OOH! Toronto installs post a...

I got another flat tire on my bicycle! If you're tired of hearing me talk about it, well guess just how happy I was to discover it this morning. Actually it wasn't that bad, kind of one of those, "Oh well, dem's the breaks!" I probably should replace the tread -- the piece of metal was just a tiny sliver, a flechette, probably from a car accident, a part of a momentarily violent puzzle. Do I dare say that I'm getting good at fixing flat tires? No. It does seem rather.. hmm, coincidental, shall we say, that I've had THREE flats in the past couple weeks. Hmmm yes, very. On another thread of thought, I tried one of those instant Korean rice bowls my mom gave me the last time I was up at the parent's house. It's pretty neat, and the rice is actually quite good BUT when you open the sucker up it has this nasty naphtha mothball smell. It doesn't taste anything like that, and it goes away after a while but it does kind of turn your appetite. But apar...

So I've been having problems falling asleep. It's the age-old conundrum -- I want to get something done, but I should go to bed. A classic duel, surely. I don't think I mentioned this, but a few weeks ago I had a terrible time going to bed because of a constant bass-y hum, whose source I could not pinpoint. It drove me up the wall, leading to dreams of insanity and MURDER i.e. me beating up whoever or whatever was making the noise at that hour. Well. I get home late (after a few drinks, I will admit) and arrive to find that the construction going on at the adjacent public school is.. well, I do not really know what they are doing other than making a damned racket at 11 at night. Seriously folks, do not be surprised to see headlines of "Berserk bachelor goes on sleep-deprived rampage" or "Crazed Korean kills construction crew". I'm fairly certain that it would be the most fulfilling thing I'd ever done. Is it wrong for me to wish I had a gun right...

It's no secret; I'm not a very good Korean. I can recognize the language and understand a handful of phrases (as spoken by my parents) but outside of that, nada. I don't keep up with Korean events, I have but one Korean friend, I'm almost indifferent to Korean food. The weird thing probably is that I'm almost proud of how un-Korean I am. On the other hand, I am... hmm, a little ashamed, do once in a while think about picking up a course or the like. So whenever I get a Korean spam e-mail it's as if someone is trying to guilt me into getting to know my, uh, heritage. I spent much of the weekend asleep. I did manage to watch a couple episodes of Freaks and Geeks , which I'm quite warming up to. Sorry, I kind of lost my thread of thought there -- started Wikipedia'ing Korea, then Aegukga, then Yi Sun-sin, then Turtle Ship, then Horatio Nelson, then "England expects that every man will do his duty". And now I find myself contemplated my death. Agai...

Oh man! It looks like the Ontario will keep the First-Past-Post system! Yeah, I voted for MMP. Ah well. What is really interesting about these results is the growing Green Party votes -- 8% is no small amount. Really rather surprising, and a little refreshing. For those interested, check out CBC.ca's Ontario Votes 2007 page and their regional results . Well, I find the numbers interesting.

I've been helping the tide of go wash over our office, mainly by getting people to watch Hikaru no Go and bringing a practice board in. It's funny how fun I find the game now, many, many years after my father attempted to teach me the fundamentals, a lesson that ended in much frustration on my part. It helps that in the office, we are all pretty much at the same level, and actively try to help each other, to improve each other's game. This could very well turn into a hobby. Oh, there's still the office StarCraft matches, though we are down to four players. Still, the teams are reasonably balanced and so the games are not that predictable. I suppose that my always playing as Random helps keep the game lively, and that we are not above trying out new strategies. I used to hate the Terrans, finding them requiring too much micro-management, with too many casting abilities. Turns out I was being too technology heavy with them, that you can get pretty far with just Siege T...

I went to see a friend's new apartment, and we tried out the Spring Rolls nearby, the one in the little Chinatown by Gerrald and Broadview. I should've walked out when I saw that the menu not only had the usual Thai fare, but also Chinese dishes AND Vietnamese ones. I ordered pad thai, thinking that it would be the safe one to have. What a disaster! It was a mound of overcooked noodles, the reddish-orange coloring belying the blandness of the sauce. And way WAY too much white onion. Oh man it was just gross! And the worst part is, well, I get these bumps on my mouth when I eat "questionable" food, shall we say, stuff that hasn't been cleaned or hasn't been fully cleaned. So I'm enjoying a couple nice bumps right now! I guess it must be a very new one, since it's not listed on their website . Still... pretty yucky! Hmmmm.. upon further reflection, I guess I can't necessarily place the blame on Spring Rolls, as I did buy a can of San Pellegrino Limon...

I got into an accident this morning while riding my bicycle. I was going to say, "I was hit by a car," but the way it happened I did most of the hitting. It was on Queen, just a few minutes from my apartment, as I was going east towards work. A car in the opposite lane was inching forward into my lane to make a left turn into a parking lot that was coming up on my right. I slowed down, but the car kept going right into me and I couldn't stop in time, and swerving to avoid was not an option at that point, in the sense that no matter what I did I still was going to make contact. I recall yelling something and looking down as I watched my front tire make strike the right front side of the car, a silver Toyota Echo. The car must've seen me at the last moment because luckily it swerved to its left, missing the parking lot entrance and ending up on the sidewalk, facing east, narrowly avoiding a parking meter, one of those printing ones with the solar panel on top. I didn...

So, there's this Ontario election and referendum , yeah? Only, I'm not sure I see the full story regarding the pros and cons of "Mixed Member proportional" over the older "First-Past-the-Post" system. Would people actually vote for one party locally, but a different party for the province? See, I'm just asking, does this make sense to do, or will it result in very little improvement/change, in which case why bother?

Nuit Blanche was fun and tiring and just.. wow. Fun because, well, it seemed like the entire city was alive and awake and it was neat to walk into welcoming galleries and just take in everything. Tiring because, well for me, my bicycle got a flat tire and I ended up walking for much of the night. Tiresome also were the throngs of drunken club and bar patrons as they mingled and mixed with the other denizens, slurring their way through the streets. Still, there was so much to see and do -- a buffet of events and screenings and mixed-media. You can get a taste of it from my Nuit Blanche flickr set . I suppose the highlight was the spontaneous dance party inside the Bloor United Church . Also cool: The dance of the knitting sisters . Mixed-media stuff in the Gladstone . String of Diamonds . Pandas giving manicures . Children singing [ myspace link ].

For once I have some plans for the weekend. Tomorrow I'll be helping a friend celebrate their birthday, Saturday will be Nuit Blanche and Sunday I'm going to try to catch Ryan North in Queen's Park for The Word On The Street . Will all go well? Or will I find something, yet again, to complain about, perhaps one of those typical Hwan.com sour moods wherein I wallow in a pit of my own self-pity and despair ? Stay tuned!

How is that I've not mentioned Legend of the Galactic Heroes on hwan.com? I'm almost certain that I have, yet I cannot find any reference (but one, from 2005) to them. How odd. I watched the main OVA (110 episodes) over a couple years, and am now getting into the side stories, which I'd neglected for so long. Neglected because knowing how it ended I didn't feel that compelled to see the other stories. Watching them now I again am filled with admiration for this space opera, with its huge cast of characters and complex storyline. It's like seeing an old friend again, one you'd forgotten you'd had. The animation in the side stories seems somewhat improved, and it gives glimpses into relationships, or rather, gives relationships an entirely different air or slant. Aye, in this life we have only one thread we can really follow.. how many paths have we ignored or passed by, or have passed by us? Soon perhaps I will cease to consider those other paths, lest I all...

Quick recap of the past few days: Friday I went to see William Gibson give a reading and informal interview, along with some 300 other sci-fi nerds and geeks. He was there to talk about his new book, but I was mostly there just to see and hear the man up close. It was quite the experience, dampened only ever so slightly by the humidity and heaviness of the air in the church. I went through a brief period wherein I read everything the man was involved in, hungry for more of that Neuromancer-magic. That might be the first book I've read that actually made me melancholy, which I suppose says a lot about the type of books I read. Afterwards I caught up with some other friends for some HD BluRay movie watching: SPL and Planet Earth in this case. We also managed a couple games of EA's NHL 08, which is possibly the best hockey game I've ever played. The animation has taken quite a leap from NHL 07, so that the players now look like they're actually skating, instead of the od...

Eating is so important to me. Hmm, that's not quite how I meant to start this entry, but it is the sentiment I wanted to convey, which is that I love to eat well. Ever since I got out of the hospital, way back whenever it was , I've been starved for good food. I find I can no longer abide tasteless chaff that is so frequently made available. I say this now to give a greater impression, or perhaps more insight into why I did not enjoy my stay in Washington DC as much as I would've liked. Also, I find saying "Washington D.C." to be a little pretentious and pompous ass-sounding. It's just one of those aggravating things about the USA, like their stance on metric versus imperial . Bah! So I'm making some ramen right now, using the microwave. Dangerman actually was the first to show me the alternative method of making instant noodles -- that is, by not cooking them but rather heating up the water and mixing the stuff together after letting it sit. I'm not...

Washington was... well, it was alright. I can't really say that I had a great time, but perhaps I went with the wrong impressions or expectations. I did get to see much of the National mall , and passed by the White House every day, due to the hotel's location. While I didn't take part, I was at the anti-war protests on Saturday. It felt weird to be witness to something you might read on Fox News . The city itself? Uhmm... well... unfortunately I didn't really get a chance to feel it out. Our hotel was right downtown, in the business area right beside the major political buildings and the tourist stuff. I do feel a tinge of regret now, for going -- I missed the rest of the TIFF, including a chance to attend the closing gala and the Polish festival . In turn, when I tried to get home Roncesvalles was still closed off so I ended up taking a taxi. I wanted to drive up to my parent's place to drop off and pick up some stuff before the week started, but it turned out th...

I went to a TIFF Midnight Madness show to see Sukiyaki Western Django, the latest from Takashi Miike (Rekka, Ichi the Killer, Audition, Full Metal Yakuza). Actually, I haven't seen any of his previous work, though after this film I'm curious to see what they're like. Sukiyaki was, well.. like a heavy metal rock video version of Ran , except based on Shakespeare's Henry VI (The War of the Roses) instead of King Lear. It made me laugh, anyway. Oh, and I guess it's also loosely based on Django, the old Italian western. But I hadn't seen it. Buh yeah.. eh, not much else going on that I haven't already mentioned. Maybe I'll bring back a story or two from Washington.

Here's a tip: The next time you buy one of those fruit platters and you end up with leftovers, make sure to consume the strawberries first. With all that humidity in the platter, they mold over within a couple days. Also, if you mistakenly eat one, you can potentially get some sores on the inside of your mouth, including the tongue. Uhm yeah. Ok. Some news -- I'll be in Washington DC for the weekend coming up. I'm looking forward to it, but I will feel bad for my job as we are currently a little short of staff. And it's been pretty busy of late. I actually got quite upset one of the day's last week, and unfortunately some of the stress was vented on one my co-workers, which I still regret. Oh well. I also get that way, irritable and unpleasant, when I haven't eaten. Yeah, I'm one of those people. I need to eat! What else, what else.... Oh yeah, I'm watching "Hikaru No Go", an anime about this 6th grader who talks to the spirit of a great go mas...

I had drinks with friends Sunday night, a fairly informal and small affair. After several beers someone broke out a bottle of Mezcal , that wormed Mexican firewater. Decidely wretched tasting stuff, though I found it had little effect on my state of mind. I also went drinking Friday night, ending up at Sneaky Dee's. I manage to never have a really great time there, though I was with good company. I've been playing more and more with my phone, even though much of the novelty has already worn off. I'm going to see if I can't use its camera functionality more. I am a little annoyed that one cannot turn off the shutter-noise -- that's just dumb. So I like to take some surreptitious pictures now and then. Just leave me in peace! Whoooo! According to VIm, this is my 2000th hwan.com entry! Well how do you like them apples? It does rather seem like I've been talking about myself, to myself, for a very long time now. I had given some thought to quitting hwan.com this yea...

I've been getting my ass kicked lately in StarCraft. Well, it IS 2 versus 3, which is never an easy task, but my team is simply being served and served again. I place much of the blame on the map, "Diablo", which features 5 bases, 1 large group of resources in the middle, and 5 expansion plateaus in a ring on the outside, dividing the 5 bases. The primary problem is that the Protoss players build up heavy defences (Cannons, Reavers, and High Templar) while quickly expanding to their adjacent expansions. If I go ground, I must sacrifice a fair amount of units to simply break into a base. If I go air, it's a 2 vs 3 air race that I have yet to come close to winning. Normally I go heavy ground and can do enough, but the way the map is laid out there are lots of good bottlenecks and choke points preventing a strong ground group from breaking through more than one or two of the opponents. By the time I get to the third, he's amassed a nigh unstoppable force of Carriers....

Ok, so it looks like it (my cellphone) will accept MIDI files, which I guess is something but still bullshit. Good thing I have a large collection of .mid files from my Gravis UltraSound days. Oh, these sound just as bad as they did then. But before the advent of mp3, midi and mod files were what you used to listen to music on your computer. Well, if you were a nerd and had no musical taste to speak of. And no, no-one said anything about a MIDI party .

Wait, you mean to tell me that cellphone providers LOCK the phone so that people cannot, for example, use MP3 files as their ringtones?? That is outrageous! Oh, I am so upset by this, so very upset. I've been fiddling with my new phone and couldn't figure out how to set up new ringtones. Oh what a world, what a world that we should pay for crippled hardware!

Oh man how to describe this one? Certainly my playing of Psychonauts influenced much of the dream's dynamics, wherein I'm on the upper tier of a ziggurat-like building, a shopping mall or something. There are people with me, but none that I can specifically recall. Yeah, you know what? I remember almost nothing at all about this dream. A barbecue. A cola taste-test. Being crammed into a van and driven around the town. Have you seen the new season 2 of The IT Crowd ? The first episode, "The Work Outing", had me in stitches, oh my it was funny. It had little to do with IT, it just a very amusing situation. Oh, I got a new cellphone and switched to Rogers. The Sony Ericsson W200a. I plan to eventually buy a WiFi-enabled phone, but this one should tide me over for now. I like that it's super light. I may need to research how to turn off all of the Rogers swooshes and animations it has. I will say that the transition and acquisition was SUPER easy, the girl at the Rog...