Category: my ramblings

I wrote this up as part of a discussion from boingboing, but I should post it here. These are the gadgets I carry around regularly.

On the belt, a Motorola V101. Sure, it’s ugly as sin, bulky as hell, and sucks for actual voice calls. But it has a screen that you can actually read some text on and it’s beautiful for sending SMSes and using the ICQMobile integration just kicks ass. I think this phone is only available in Canada.

In my bag:

• Apple Newton MessagePad 2100. Still the most usable PDA ever created. I organize my life and my work tasks on this puppy, and wouldn’t change that for the world. Of course, I’m a little biased since I happen to also run a very large Newton mailing list… This is actually kept in a BurroPak padded sleeve inside the bag. If you were a Newton user and you remember the BurroPak from Landware, you get a gold star.
• Game Boy Advance with a 128 megabit flash cartridge. Real games on the go, and even Classic Nintendo games to boot.
• AVC Soul Player CD/MP3 player. Coupled with some Sony MDR-V150 headphones. I don’t need an iPod; CDRs are still cheap. If I scratch one, I just re-burn it from my hard disk at home.
• Canon PowerShot S230 camera. Man, I love this camera. It’s tiny, it’s 3.1MP, it uses CompactFlash, it shoots movie clips with sound, it has great low-light performance, and digital zoom that actually looks good. It has a Lexar 128MB CF card in it.
• AComData USB CompactFlash reader. It’s also nice and small. It’s mostly for using a 16MB CF card that I use to ferry files back and forth from work without exposing data to the wilds of the net. Also for showing photos from the camera on any PC, of course. For $20 minus $20 rebate, I wish I had bought two.
• Leatherman PST II multitool. For everything from a quick nail file to cutting wire. Also has a decent phillips-head screwdriver and three sizes of slot drivers, well suited for the inside of a PC case.
• Sanford PhD Multi. Stylus, Pen, Pencil, and only $15.

I’m back, 100% feeling fine. Returning to broadcasting at ya.

Sandy and I found a new apartment on Friday! It’s around the Don Mills & Sheppard area of Toronto, right across from Fairview Mall. It’s a nice building – possibly the only really nice one in that area – and it’s right on the subway, next to the mall, and 10 minutes away from Seneca, where Sandy will be starting her ECE course this summer. And it’s not in the ghetto. Ahem. I didn’t realize all the hoops you have to jump through to rent in Toronto – credit check, letter from your employer (or proof of other income), letter from your bank… but I did all that and we got it.

Yesterday it hit me like a sack of potatoes falling on my stomach. Today I am back, but running at around 80% capacity.

My cell phone does strange things when its battery gets really really low, like either turn on every pixel in the display, or just give a garbled display. Or the display is dying, which would suck and probably make me wish I had bought the stupid extended warranty.

I saw the following on a small unassuming sign at the north door of the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto:

The CBC is looking for people who would like to be in the audience at a special live edition of The National to be aired on March 6, 2003. The show would start at 8pm and would be a discussion of [something to do about war in Iraq, I don’t remember exactly what it said now]. There would be some audience participation and afterwards audience comments about the show will be taped and shown on The National the next day. People who are interested and can attend are asked to call (416) 205 5029 to be put on the waiting list.

I’ll go take a photo of the sign in a little while and post it up here.

I left my wallet at home today. Need I say more? I have $2.72 on me. Looks like a hot dog lunch for me…

Damn I’m hungry.

Weekend began with the two-hour train and bus ride up to Cannington. The family and some friends sat down for a nice dinner for Sandy’s birthday. I’d already given Sandy her birthday present from me, an AVC Soul III MP3/CD player. She got various little things from her mom.

I spent most of the weekend sleeping, helping out in Michael’s computer store, and playing various game systems. I put some time into both Metroid Prime and Zelda: OoT, which was good as I need to finish a frickin’ game. I’m still stuck in Mario Sunshine – I need a serious few hours of gameplay to get to the last level, I’m about four or five shines away I think. Michael has so much damn used hardware lying around in the store, it would probably take me a full week to go through and test it all. I tested a bunch of stuff for him, and should have taken some more home to test…

On Saturday night it snowed. A lot. A whole lot. Something like 10 inches where they were. The roads weren’t great, but were fine once we got down to Highway 7. Once we got home, 45 minutes of shoveling the driveway with one of those BIG snow pushers ensued… man those things are fun.

Listening: Sleater-Kinney: You’re No Rock n’ Roll Fun

Hey, it’s been about a month since I moved this page to using MovableType, and I’ve been pretty happy so far. Looks like it’s time to upgrade to version 2.63, though. Mmm, features and bugfixes.

I just spend an hour trying to figure out why my script wasn’t writing any output and not producing any error messages. I left out one tiny little damn statement. Grrrr………

I didn’t go to Sleater-Kinney on Monday. I am somewhat kicking myself for this, and if you’d like to come and give me a swift kick in the ass and yell “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, MAN!!!!!” then be my guest. But when the friend you were going to go with informs you a hour and a half before the show that she is having serious problems, it sucks. I hope you’re alright, J. No hard feelings, seriously. It just kinda put me down for a while. And since I had driven all the way in that morning, I had to drive all the way back to Guelph, which took 2:40 during rush hour. During the first hour, I moved a total of 6.5km.

Okay, so now that I think about it I REALLY REALLY wanted to go to that show. A lot. At least Wes went, so I can read his take. Cool. Damn, maybe if I had gone I would have found him and at least remotely known someone there. Fuck. I need more caffeine this morning. I get paid tonight, but I have less than $20 right now because my parking ticket cheque just went through. I guess it’s a good thing that it didn’t bounce. So anyways, I can’t take out cash to buy coffee and I only have green tea here at work. this. sucks. i. am. grumpy. and. i. need. to. launch. this. site. today. Maybe I should just stop listening to Rage Against the Machine and get along with my life?

Enough griping. There have been good things too, I just need to vent. On Monday I finally got my Zelda Bonus Disc! This is given to everyone with a pre-order on the new Zelda GameCube game, and it has Zelda: Ocarina of Time and the previously-unreleased Master Quest on it, as well as movies for current and upcoming games. First thing I did was watch the movie for F-Zero, and immediately after I almost creamed my pants. WOW. If the game really actually looks like that, it will be insane. The draw distance alone… anyways. I also started playing Ocarina, which I have never played before. I’ve never played a 3D Zelda game before, so its taking some getting used to, but not as much as Metroid Prime. I’m not used to the non-linearness and the hella inflexible camera. But it’s fun. And it’s a new game, and who can beat that? I wish I had more time for games. And everything else.

Also, yesterday Sandy got me a present that totally floored me. Thanks, Hon.

I will write more later.

This morning I had a rather harrowing experience on the 401 (very long, large highway). I was on a ramp that was joining with some other ramps to create the collector lanes on the 401 Eastbound around Dixie Rd. in Mississauga. As such, there was lots of nice empty pavement in front of me and the few cars around me, and so we were accelerating up to around 110kph. Suddenly, ahead of me in the lane on my left, cars started swerving out of that lane rather quickly. I caught a glimpse of what they were dodging from between bumpers: a concrete barrier, about 1.5m square, was skidding along in the middle of the lane. I was forced to move into the lane next to me to avoid cars that were swerving into my lane and decelerating – I’m lucky that the lane was there and that it was unoccupied. As I passed the commotion, I noticed a pickup truck that was pulling over onto the shoulder – which had another of these concrete thingys in its bed. Evidently, the barrier had fallen out of that truck somehow – I didn’t actually see it happen, so I have no idea how. It didn’t even look like two of these things would have fit in the pickup’s bed, so maybe it was balancing on the edge of the tailgate or something…

Anyways. The only reason I drove all the way into the city today was because I’m going to the Sleater-Kinney show tonight. Seeing that they only play north of the border every few years or so, I jumped on this once I saw the announcement in my weekly TicketBastard mailing. And I’m going with Jordan, which will be fun. Damn, that’s an old photo of her.