hwan.com

Of course, the Friday night I pick up StarCraft 2, Battle.net decides to go down for a few hours of maintenance/upgrades. Which means that I couldn't log in, preventing me from playing the game I just bought. Oh technology, why must you be so ugly? But I haven't come to you to write about the annoyances of StarCraft 2, have I? No wait, I have one more complaint -- my video card is prone to overheating! Indeed, after being off for so long (20 or so days, while I was away on vacation ), my computer started overheating at the mere hint of doing something GPU intensive. I also coincidentally upgraded my ATI (now AMD) drivers, so that may also have played a part in this near disaster. With some careful rebooting (as my machine would also freeze randomly), I was able to install a handy tweaker application, ATI Tray Tools for my Radeon HD4870 X2, mercifully allowing me to manually control the card's powerful fan, which I now leave blowing at a much higher speed than was p...

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 went to Buffalo on the May 2-4 weekend. Victoria Day. The same. Anyway, I left the photos at home so I don't have anything to link to. I haven't much in terms of a story to tell anyway, other than why would anyone go to Buffalo? Shopping? Sure. Some historical buildings, of which we saw a few. The most upsetting bit was that the swimming pool of the Holiday Inn was closed for the weekend! Much grumbling ensued. Ok, whatever. I've been playing Starcraft 2 regularly since I got it a couple weeks ago, and I'm slowly polishing my Zerg play. Here are a few mental notes I've developed in that time. Practice: Concentrate on one race, one map, one match up (although these last two are not directly supported by the Quick Match system). Often not that easy to hold an early expansion -- scouting is very key here. As Zerg: Use Overlords to lay down Creep highways to expansion, on important corridors. Consider using a few burrowed Roaches to sneak behi...

Confound it! I spent a couple hours Saturday attempting to get my OLPC to work with my WPA connection. Unfortunately it very much appears that I'll have to wait until they release a patch, as my varied manual attempts garnered little success. There really does appear to be some kind of odd 10 character minimum or the like at work with the passphrase. Maybe I'll get the gumption to try again later, but for now it's pretty much a disappointment at home. So fiddling with my wireless involved re-booting my router, which I seem to always forget makes it lose its virtual settings and so that's why hwan.com wasn't available today. Sorry! Not that you missed much. I spent the weekend at home, sleeping, watching the second season of 30 Rock as well as the first season of the American The Office. A much different type of humour, but it's nice to see the translation from the original UK version. Our office has become quite the games-atorium, what with Go , backgammon, St...

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....

" Every time I have to remove my shoes at an airport it would be nice if there were a picture of Bush nearby to throw them at. " -- twoleftfeet Been watching and playing a lot of StarCraft lately. Yes you heard right. Watching videos on GOM TV has really opened up my mind to the complexities and intricate nature of the game. Well, of course it helps that the commentary is in English and reasonably entertaining in of itself. At work too the spirit of RTS is alive and well, with many people working to improve their skills. Certainly passions also run high, and can bring out the worst in us. Oh, how the tempers do flare! What is it about creating an army and watching it die that frustrates one so? And why do we keep playing when it happens? Such a struggle! I find the Canada Revenue Agency Charity site helpful in choosing where to send my donations. I'm thinking that I can judge them by how much of their revenue was spent on advertising. For example, the Canadian Wild...

Hola amigos!! Summer has finally come around the bend and I now find myself trying to find the optimal balance between cooling the condo and dealing with the noise of the heat pump. That is to say, if I choose too low a temperature the heat pump is on frequently and it's loud enough that it can wake me. Of course, if I use it less then I'm sweating uncomfortably. Such was the battle fought last night, a three hour battle I might add. The thought of sleeping downstairs occurs to me now. I've been watching StarCraft 2 beta videos for the past while and although the game is a lot different from the original, there seems to be enough carried over that older SC1 skills still apply in the new game. I like that they've cleaned up much of the micro, allowing players (like carpel tunnel-sufferers like me) to concentrate more on strategy. It does seem that many newer players still have problems with their macro game , something I (and perhaps many others) consider the ab...

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...

So, uh, I finally upgraded my system to Windows XP. For whatever reason the "Upgrade" option didn't work for me, so I ended up doing a full install on my primary OS drive. Which is probably a good thing. I have noticed a huge improvement in system start-up and shut-down time. And it is nice to have a fresh system, unfettered by neglected games and applications. Yes, only the cores applications thus far on this system: Firefox, Google talk, putty and StarCraft. The one hiccup I encountered was that I didn't have my on-board audio drivers handy. Or rather, I had the ones from my previous motherboard, but I mistakenly thought they were my current one's, which led to several hours of fist-shaking frustration. After taking a break, I downloaded a motherboard diagnostic application, Everest, which is pretty damn cool if you're into inspecting the internals of your computer without having to open up the awkward thing.

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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 I am back from my 20 days driving with the girlfriend through Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont. A different route from last time in March , Maine exposing us to Mount Desert Island and the gorgeous Acadia National Park . We spent six days on the island, with many of those hours shopping or strolling in Bar Harbor 's many shops and cafes and restaurants. The star of course was the park proper, an immaculate fairy-tale of a park, verdant with vivid greens and blues, breathtaking views from the mountain and the surrounds. Jordan Pond, with "The Bubbles" Provincetown and Cape Cod, well, we saw more of the same as last time, only under a much warmer sun. The water remained chilling however and my swims were brief, shoulder-shakingly, teeth-chatteringly cold. We managed to see Yarmouth and Wood's Hole but mistakingly assumed we could just drive to the ferry dock to go to Martha's Vineyard (apparently one has to take a shuttle from Yarmouth) so instead we...

I had a dream Sunday morning wherein I.. no, now I'm mixing it up entirely with Wall-E . No! Ok, I was supposed to take a test or exam (yes, in my dreams I'm often back in school, make what you will of that) and I wasn't prepared. It's funny, I haven't really had many stressful situations like that since school or university. When it comes to work you just need to surround yourself with resources -- people, internet, files and numbers. Rarely do you have to memorize a bunch of stuff and be prepared to demonstrate your skills. Except maybe in interviews. Anyway, the wall-e bit was.. hmm.. there was this kind of shuffling shelf unit, like where wall-e stores things he finds interesting. Eh, I did remember more at the time but it's all gone now, to a better place outside my head. In a not so guilty way, I played several hours of Call of Duty 4 Sunday and yesterday. I was lightly upset that I had to tone down the graphics quite a bit for it to run on my machine, b...

My internet, that blessed fount of procrastination, has been restored, restored after no less than five Bell technicians and uncounted phone conversations. What a kerfuffle! But now that it is here, surrounding me, binding me to the outer world, I have drunk deeply from its waters and have been fairly actively playing video games. Peace, when have I done otherwise? For the computer, I have thus far played: - The Book of Unwritten Tales: Downloaded this one way, way back and finally got around to finishing it. Really a lot of fun, with intricate hand-drawn graphics and lots of self-referential humour. Worthy point-and-click adventure. - Convoy: I Kickstarted this one, intrigued by the notion of a FTL-like in a Mad Max-esque world. The combat employs a novel engine that plays like an RTS on rails. Fun, but graphics leave much to be desired. - The Curious Expedition: Lovely, tiny pixel figures crawl around the world, annoying (and sometimes befriending) the locals while pillaging t...

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...

Well, it certainly has been a while. Am I still passing through a cleansing fire? I certainly feel my mind is not entirely there. This past weekend my girlfriend and I went to Niagara-on-the-Lake, a short drive from Toronto, though it's made much longer by traffic. We stopped in St. Catherines, which I liken to a somewhat less classy Waterloo. Oh, of course, we drove through the fields of wine country, which, if you skip actually going inside the wineries, can be done in nearly a day. The stretching verdant fields of grapes is much like you'd imagine, and a rewarding sight. The next day we walked about the downtown proper, the sidewalks teeming with tourists. All of the eateries we tried were overpriced and staffed by disinterested teenagers serving uninspired, bland dishes; thankfully we brought some sandwiches for picnicking so not all of our meals were complete disappointments. We saw Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard , which was billed (seemingly to me) as a comedy...

Indeed, this Hwan is losing the energy to update hwan.com. I have watched a few films of late, though recalling them is not all that easy. Kick-Ass . I enjoyed the fighting and the daughter/father team, but the rest of the film was mostly unpalatable. The obvious Toronto landmarks mercifully distracted me from some of the more painful bits. Disgrace , 2009. Shakes up everything without closure; some things can't be fixed even when they obviously need to be. Uncomfortable to watch. Malkovich is excellent. Battle in Heaven . Yikes, just yikes. Another film difficult to, ahem, swallow. Leaves a lasting visual impression, even if the plot is otherwise non-existent. Broken Embraces . Well-acted enough but predictable, obvious. Departures . I thought it was rather enjoyable. Quirky. Right up my alley. 3 Extremes , 2005. Not for the faint of heart: bloody gristly crunchy goodness. Fruit Chan, Takashi Miike, Chan Wook Park. In truth I only saw two of the three storie...

A relatively quiet Sunday. I slept in until noon, which was an hour too late to save myself on UrbanDead. Yes I still play -- I get a kick out of attempting to reach a high experience level. Sigh.. it's not easy being human. Bought season 3 of The Office , so I'm back on that train for a little while. Oh, I also caught up with season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. Whoo what an ending! I am however so ready for them to finish the show. If they dare go on for a 5th season I may just give up on them in disgust. Oh, and after much self-debate and reflection, I picked up a Starcraft "Battle Chest", a whole kit and kaboodle package so that I can play on-line. And I must say that already, after only a handful of games, my game has improved considerably. Still, I must be careful not to let myself become immersed in late-night videogames yet again. Time, I have so precious little of it, not nearly enough it seems to do everything I want. How cruel is that? One thing I did get to d...