hwan.com

It pains me every time I think about it -- my parents have sold their house. They've done so many renovations in anticipation of it going to the market, you'd hardly recognize it now. Well, the interior anyway -- the kitchen is completely redone, upstairs is all hardwood, as are the stairs. The cobblestoned backyard patio they've had for a while but looking at it now I'm amazed anew at the result that my dad put so many hours into. I really should visit them more often. I've just about picked out a new video card, and am aiming for either the XFX ATI Radeon HD 5850 ($280) or the XFX ATI Radeon 5870 ($380). I'd forgotten that there are so many flavours of each GPU these days. I used Ars Technica's system picks to help me get to my decision, which I've always found useful in the past. My current card, a Sapphire ATI HD 4870 x2 (2x1GB), conks out whenever I start doing anything that tasks the 3D GPU stuff, though at times (and more frequently with each ...

Ok, I did mean to update earlier but I've been... preoccupied of late. Well, my video card slowly dying is part of the excuse to be sure. I only realized today that it's actually over two years old! Seems like I only got it last year. Have I been playing games on it for that long?? It's a tiresome bore, I'll tell you. And I'm somewhat torn on what to "upgrade" to -- I bought my Sapphire ATI HD 4870 x2 2GB for $580, and it's now worth $300 new, which is actually about what I would like to spend, money not flowing as easily as it once did for me. I'll have to bite the bullet soon enough, there being a stack of games (Civ 5, Dead Rising 2, StarCraft 2, Fallout New Vegas) beckoning me to return. So Toronto voted in Rob Ford! What rot, what rot. I'm sure most of you are by now aware of the "amalgamation gap", the stark difference in voting attitudes between downtown Toronto and the suburbs. I mean, on some subconscious level I suppose I kn...

I was walking home and fiddling with my iPhone when it slipped out of my hands and bounced into a storm grate. Scrambling on the floor I tried in vain to squeeze an arm through. I continued home distraught when I ran into Sarah Silverman. I don't actually recall sleeping with her but it may have happened, I'm not sure. There was another girl in the dream, in another setting, unnamed and faceless now, a sidenote in my imagination. I do remember coming back the next day to the grate and prying it open. I lowered myself gingerly into the water and lifted my iPhone out, shaking off the excess water. I don't look at it, for fear of what I might see. I've grown rather accustomed to it. Outside of the iPod functionality I primarily use it for its WiFi though I have been more active with taking pictures and posting them to twitter. Speaking of which, I'm finding it very difficult to come up with material for hwan.com these days. It's just that there's no...

First things first, I got my new iPhone. I had lost my old one the night of my birthday , it having likely fallen out of my pocket into a taxi from the same pants I lost my trusty SCP-4000 . Comfortable those pants but negligent in their holding of valuables! And I say "old", but I only had that iPhone for about 3 months, sigh. So, it turns out that to replace a 16 GB iPhone costs $650 CDN I kid you not. Once again I had to turn to Rogers customer service to rant about the price thrust upon me. After an anxious wait they offered me a refurbished one for $250 which I greedily took. It has since arrived and iTunes, surprisingly to me, restored all my files and setting properly and conveniently so that I am back to where I was, minus $250 but without the scratches and the wonky Home button my old iPhone had. Today I applied that Invisible Shield I had ordered on-line, a small project reminiscent of my days working with vinyl graphics. Second things second, my apartment ...

Birthday was a quiet night out with a friend, playing pool and such. So much so that I seem to have misplaced my iPhone, yes precious. I briefly flirted with the idea of not getting a replacement but it seems nobody wants me to go without it. I miss the iPod functionality most and have turned to imeem.com for my temporary music fix. Oh, but back to my birthday. Yes very quiet and I have no recollection of the latter parts of the evening. Exactly. Saturday I spent primarily in bed haunted by odd, unexpected dreams. In the late afternoon I was able to finally drag myself from my hangover grave to frantically clean my apartment before my family came over for dinner. My mom brought her usual serving of far more food than necessary, though all completely appreciated. Presents, yes. Nothing extravagant, some books, a plant, bowls, homemade cookies. Funny, I was so stressed trying to get my apartment in shape and it seemed to all work out and I guess I stressed for naught. Sund...

Much of my guilt of having and using an iPhone has dissipated by now, I think. I mean, I don't feel great about it, but there is certainly a pleasure in using it. A new toy, sure. Obviously not perfect. One of my top griefs is its lack of iPod interface -- no dial for skipping or advancing or adjusting the volume without having to fish the thing out of one's pocket and look at it. The ringtones are customizable, but the other sounds (such as SMSes arriving) are not. The battery life is not very good. The App Store is polluted with garbage, spam applications that are just a waste of everyone's time. I believe in the freedom of choice, sure, but I'd like to not have to weed the wheat from the chaff. I am really upset that I can't upload some files from my computer at home and some from another -- it can only accept files from ONE machine at a time. If I try to put some from another machine on, it has to first erase everything already on it. Blurgh! Also, ...

Nuit Blanche this year was just.. well, it was just too busy. WAY too busy -- drunken, riot-minded swarms of entertainment-starved streetlings, bustling here and there, yammering away bubbly nothings. It was more than a little upsetting when I think about their wanton destruction of art and latent disregard for the works. But mostly, just too too many people every which way. Make the TTC free for the night! Close the streets! Bah... next year I won't start until after 3 AM. iPhone? Yes, I got one. Guilty? Very much feeling so. Paying more for a toy, a shiny technophilic toy, money going from me to them, voting finanically in the wrong way. And ringtones! Why can I not simply make my songs ringtones! Damn you APPLE, will you not free us from these scalywags who would have me pay for the air I breath and the sounds I hear? It's not all bad, of course. The mapping and GPS-like ability is neat. Visual voicemail is dreamy. Email and SMS in my hand is.. handy? ...

I went to a Rogers store last week to find out what it would take to get an iPhone. Yes, I've been tempted by the fruit of others. It's funny, really -- I've always wanted a phone-PDA-camera-mp3 player, but when the iPhone, a seemingly ultimate all-in-one came out, I was STILL not ready to commit to it. Other than that, nothing is really prompting me to upgrade except that the $30/6 GB/month offer ends September 30th. Anyway, so I went to the store and apparently I have to pay a penalty above the regular price! What rot was that, I wondered? It seems that if you spend less than some number (I'm guessing $30) a month, then you fall into a "beggar's tier" (my term), in which you're not considered a very good customer and thus must pay extra to upgrade your hardware! I ranted to the Rogers store rep about this, who agreed that it was a bit draconian (I would add capricious and arbitrary) and that I might be able talk to Rogers sales to get them to give me...