hwan.com

Okay fine here is my update. Twenty-fifteen! What joys do you have in store for the Hwanner? At this time I have no plans other than to keep karate going. Can I push myself onto a regular sleep schedule? That would be nice, for I suffer currently from night-restlessness. But 2014! In review, I did a bit of travelling: 4 days in New York City for NECSS  in April 2 days in Ottawa for SkeptiCamp  in May 8 days in Scotland for a road-trip in August 2 days in Montreal for stag activities in October 7 days in the Dominican Republic for Reg's wedding in October 2 days in London (Ontario) to visit a friend in December While my gym attendance went way down I still managed to get my blue belt in karate. Finished Breaking Bad over several weeks. Had some laughs at JFL 42. Volunteered with Cycle Toronto. Saw the Pixies play at Massey Hall. Went dog-sledding. Marched at a bunch of protests. Participated in yet another Board Game Jam. Saw Neil deGrasse Tyson talk at U of T....

I returned a couple days before New Year's day, deprived of sleep but still basking in the memories of Maui. What follows are my notes while there, and my observations that have since emerged, so please excuse the switching of tense. Day one: Denver was an easy enough flight, and the one to LAX was just as uneventful -- had a sandwich and juice in the terminal, briefly tempted by the greasy wares of McDonald's. It's funny that the place always brings Doris to mind, due to the disgust it invoked in her. I am glad to be offline, without the distraction, to really be unavailable to the cares of the daily grind and the holidays. It was a combination of work, life and Christmas that drove me out here, an escape from choices. I'd forgotten how maddeningly loud it is inside the plane, a constantly surging white noise, clouding my attempts at concentration and knocking me into dozing. There's a 5 hour time difference between Hawaii and Toronto -- I wonder how I w...

I guess Christmas wasn't that bad. I did however suffer from a most dreadful bout of the flu, or something that I thought might be the flu -- soreness, an extreme lack of energy, dizziness, chills, a runny nose. I was out for a good four days, four days of misery and woe, physically and emotionally draining. And while the worst is over, I find that my emotions are still somewhat subdued. Indeed it's hard for me to find much joy in anything, anymore. My mind continues to turn over the events of the past year, of words said and left unsaid. I remember being unhappy and yet.... and yet I yearn to return, unwisely and beyond counsel. While ill I caught up on a few serials, namely The Office. I also started watching Justice League , mostly on a whim, and am very much enjoying it, though I admit that much of that enjoyment comes from guffawing and pointing out all the logical flaws and plot inconsistencies. Even so, more than a handful of the episodes have brought tears to my wi...

Ok, I wanted to quickly write up about the stuff I've been learning at those LiveGreen meetings. A couple weeks ago we talked about Toronto's waste disposal -- someone in the know explained how green bin waste is taken care of. Rather than just being cooked for a couple weeks (as some places do), it actually gets processed. First, everything's ground up into a finer mulch, to which water is added, making a slurry of guck. It is then put into a spinning tank, letting centrifugal force do the work of separating out the different parts so that heavier or lighter stuff (wood, or diaper tape, etc) is conveniently removed from the main mass. Tt this point it goes through the cooking stage (if I recall correctly, maybe not?), before it is mixed with regular soil as, by itself, it contains too much salt, etc. I also learned that, while there are no regulations in terms of how much non-City garbage has to be recycled, private waste disposal companies are actually quite good about...

Holy cow you mean to say that I haven't updated hwan.com in 11 days? Yikes. That is.. well, I am sorry. Not that sorry, but surprised certainly. Actually, I'm here to write about windows, er, Windows. In particular, reordering of items in the Start menu. For the longest time I would, when tidying up my Start programs, press really hard on the mouse button, sometimes getting the item to drag and sometimes not, not really knowing why it would or wouldn't work. Irrational I know, but it just felt that doing so would help. I finally figured it out just now -- if you drag a folder, you have to wait for Windows to expand it. Otherwise, the expand animation unsets the click and doesn't recognize that you are attempting a drag action. THIS IS STUPID!!! Oh WOW that bugs me ever so much. How did this possibly get past user testing? How is it that this has been this way since.. since dragging of expandable Start Menu items was allowed? Windows Explorer certainly doesn't act ...

Silly times, my friends. Drinking, drinking, drunk. Tonight more of the like for the office Christmas party, this year at Tappo Restaurant out in the Distillery district. Yesterday was the Charlotte room, Wednesday was Bar Wellington. Oh my sides! In the latter parts of the evening I was trying to convince my friend to drink some water, him being in the state he was, by applying various slogans to make water more appealing. "Water, It's In You To Give", "Water, Nature's Fruit-juice", "Water, The Sweat of the Earth". Actually, the bartender came up with the brilliant "Water, Turn It On" and the memorable "Water, Put It In Your Mouth". Indeed. I floated in out and out consciousness, trying to sleep but my mind all a-buzz. I thought about the upcoming StarCraft 2 and how, if at all, they plan to improve the game. I mean, aside from the graphics. A huge gripe of mine with the original (bless it's well-balanced hear...