General

Ready for summer now

It’s mid February and today was cool and showery. This means it’s time for my annual ‘ready for summer’ post. And here it is.

I’m at least glad it’s no longer dark when I leave work. There’s something mildly depressing about wrapping up a shift to find it looks like midnight.

I conclude this post with a yearning-for-summer haiku:

Inviting summer
How I miss you and your warmth
Winter sucks corn dogs

Happy candy manufacturers appreciation day!

It’s my favourite manufactured holiday of the year–or at least it was when I was a wee lad. Back then I loved scarfing chocolate-coated marshmallow hearts and trading Valentine cards with classmates. Nowadays I try to limit my indulgence of sweets to a few carefully-chosen targets and sadly exchange cards with no one. The face-stuffing has been relegated to a fond, gooey memory.

And so Valentine’s Day is now simply that time of year when store shelves overflowing with Valentine-themed candy will soon be replaced with shelves overflowing with Easter-themed candy. Easter was my second favourite manufactured holiday as a kid because I loved scarfing chocolate-coated marshmallow Easter bunnies. I suppose the holiday itself isn’t manufactured but as a kid I didn’t care much one way or the other because of the chocolate-coated marshmallow Easter bunnies.

Thinking about it now I kind of have a craving for one of those horrifically sweet Cadbury creme eggs they roll out (ho ho) for the season. I just checked and they apparently have only 150 calories each. I say only because the taste suggests the number would be closer to 10,000. I remember when I could eat a 3-pack of the things without stopping to take a breath. By coincidence I also weighed 40 pounds more back then. By fat overindulgent coincidence.

The zombie apocalypse is upon us

You see them everyday, their numbers slowly and steadily increasing. They are identified by the familiar gait, the shambling and mindless shuffle of the unthinking, the unfeeling, the unknowing.

“Must text…must post status update…rarrr…”

I am, of course, referring to cell phone users. At first I thought the novelty of the smartphone would wear off–the iPhone is six years old, after all, a veritable lifetime for a tech product–and people would treat the devices like a tool, a convenience.

Instead I see more and more doing the zombie shuffle as they step off trains or walk down sidewalks ever-so-slowly, their heads tilted down, their eyes focused on the tiny screen clutched in their hands, their world compressed into a glossy four to five inch display, their lives inescapably linked to the information conveyed from those tiny screens.

Most of that information being Facebook updates and other miscellany that they somehow survived without just fine for all the years before the smartphone existed.

I have a smartphone and it’s nice. It can be handy, entertaining and as my only actual phone it serves a very practical purpose in keeping me in communication with family, friends and co-workers. But I do not do the zombie shuffle. The Internet offers a smorgasbord of information–much of it dross or more generously, not particularly necessary or enriching. But instead of being discerning, instead of picking and choosing it seems many are gorging instead, filling up on the information equivalent of fast food.

And even that is not all so bad. I can be a slave to pop culture and fads if I want to be (I managed to duck acid wash jeans, though). Mostly I just hate that these slowly shuffling zombies always seem to end up in front of me.

So I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re going to be a brainless zombie checking Twitter for your entire six block stroll, can you at least not shamble down the center of the sidewalk when you do it so I can more easily get by you? Thanks!

P.S. I like the stock photo I found not only because it shows people doing the ‘zombie cell phone walk’ but also because the guy appears to be some sort of hill giant.

A short review of Windows 8: 7 out of 10 tiny Bill Gates

I took advantage of the $15 upgrade for Windows 8 back in October thinking it was cheap enough that if I had any regrets I could just go back to Windows 7 and write off the experience as the equivalent of a lunch in a new restaurant I’d not go back to.

Some four months later I’m willing to say the restaurant wasn’t too bad but the presentation of the menu and dessert could use a little work.

The good things about Windows 8:

  • I was able to upgrade my existing Windows 7 installation on my SSD quickly and without issue. The whole thing was up and running in less than half an hour.
  • It works fast and has been extremely stable.
  • Task Manager is vastly improved and startup items are now easily accessible instead of being tucked away in msconfig.exe.
  • Some of the Metro* apps are decent, like the PDF reader and weather. Live tiles can be handy especially if you spend a lot of time on the Start screen (or pin apps — see the ‘bad things’ section below for more).
  • Windows Defender now does everything MS Security Essentials did, so there’s integrated anti-virus right from the start.
  • The right-click in the bottom-left corner is handy for accessing items like Control Panel, Device Manager and an admin command prompt.
  • The desktop is pretty much the same as the one we know and love in Win7 but with lots of small refinements in dialogs for common tasks like copying files.
  • The flat UI is kind of nice in how it gets out of the way.

The bad things about Windows 8:

  • Some things don’t seem to work right. I never get notified for Windows Updates, despite having set it up to alert me, so I have to look for them myself, even if they are critical security fixes.
  • File History, which backs up user data, will appear in Action Center when the drive needs to be reconnected but Action Center never makes itself visible, even when it has multiple alerts.
  • Discoverability is poor. You get shown a few gestures while the OS is installing but after that you are left to bumble around trying to figure out how to access features. A lot of it is not intuitive (try snapping two apps onto the same screen without reading how to do it first–assuming you even knew it was possible to begin with). Much of the potential of Windows 8 is hidden away and items can be difficult to find even if you know they exist.
  • The Start screen is okay as a replacement for the Start menu but it’s limited in odd ways, probably as a compromise for working with tablets. Re-ordering tiles is possible but not very flexible and tiles only come in two sizes. The All Apps view is a cluttered mess with no easy way to modify it.
  • Customization in general is poor. A lot of the UI design is ‘like it or lump it’.
  • I miss the dedicated links to Documents, Pictures, etc. that appeared in the Start menu. In terms of actual clicks it’s still the same but having to go to a different screen feels more cumbersome. You can bring these dedicated folders up by starting File Explorer but it still feels inelegant. I’d at least like to pin shortcuts to these folders on the taskbar but it can only be done on the Start screen. Boo.
  • You get one choice for window titles: black. If you don’t like it, too bad. If you selected a dark border color for your windows, it’s even worse, as those window titles will now be illegible. I’m not sure why this can’t be customized.
  • Most of the included apps (mail, photos, etc.) are half-baked and feature-poor.
  • The store (equivalent to Google Play or Apple’s App Store) has a fairly small selection and is missing some fairly big name apps. On a desktop machine this isn’t as big a deal because if you want Facebook, you can just hit the website. On a tablet this is more of an issue.

I spend nearly all of my time in the desktop away from the Metro* interface (apart from starting programs and occasionally checking the weather or something) and here the experience is so similar to Windows 7 but with (mostly) improvements I don’t regret making the switch to Windows 8. On the other hand if I was forced back to using Windows 7 it wouldn’t feel like a significant downgrade, either, nothing like going back to, say, Windows XP or even Vista.

Microsoft needs to provide a better experience on the Metro* side of things for (desktop) PC users, though. I doubt we’ll see much of that coming for Windows 8 but I am curious to see how Windows 9 will evolve. I suspect it will either better integrate the disparate Metro and desktop elements or further move away from the desktop in favor of a more touch-based experience.

In all I rate Windows 8  a score of 7 out of 10 tiny Bill Gates.

 

* it’s not officially called Metro anymore but much like Kleenex, that battle has been lost.

Goodbye Programming category, I hardly knew ye

Earlier today I added the Creative category to the blog. With one post it already equaled one-third of the total posts found under the Programming category. As such I have chucked the Programming category into the vast sea of tags I have on the site (390 and counting!)

This concludes both the Programming category and my attempts at programming. I know when to move on, even if it’s 20 years late.

I’m just glad I was able to solve the Rubik’s Cube when I was a kid. I don’t think I could have taken the lack of closure on that.

Self-diagnosis: The grand tradition of being your own inept doctor

As I enter my third day of being truly and awfully sick it came to mind that I wasn’t sure if this was just a bad cold or the flu, so I did what any like-minded person would do: I searched the web.

WebMD’s guide compares the symptoms of each and the results are inconclusive:

Symptoms Cold Flu
Fever Rare Characteristic, high
(100-102 degrees F); lasts three to four days
Headache Rare Prominent
General Aches, Pains Slight Usual; often severe
Fatigue, Weakness Quite mild Can last up to two to three weeks
Extreme Exhaustion Never Early and prominent
Stuffy Nose Common Sometimes
Sneezing Usual Sometimes
Sore Throat Common Sometimes
Chest Discomfort,
Cough		 Mild to moderate;
hacking cough		 Common; can become severe
Complications Sinus congestion
or earache		 Bronchitis, pneumonia;
can be life-threatening
Prevention Good hygiene Annual flu shot or FluMist
Treatment Only
temporary
relief of symptoms		 Antiviral drugs (Tamiflu or
or Relenza) within 24-48 hours
of onset

I haven’t had a fever, though I have had periods of feeling too warm/too cold. I have had an on/off headache (a bit of one right now, in fact) and weakness…well, let’s say the idea of replicating Saturday’s 20 km walk is not exactly a tantalizing prospect at the moment. The only things I have to treat the symptoms right now are Nyquil and sodium-encrusted noodle soup. I’ll take what I can get.

The problem with doing the thing I most want to — lay down and doze — is that my sinuses are so clogged up that reclining makes it nearly impossible to breathe. Perhaps a nice warm bath would help. Or some miracle pill invented by science.

Get to work, scientists! And deliver direct to door, please.

The coincidental timing of colds

At the end of each semester at the college I work at there is a break of 10 days or so where the college is pretty much shut down. The winter one began a few days before Christmas and I was looking forward to some quality loafing off time. A few days in I developed what turned out to be an awful head cold that lingered on until just before the break ended, meaning I was sick for nearly the entire time. My loafing turned out to be enforced rather than voluntary. I did not like this.

I blamed the germ carriers on mass transit, as I always do.

This past Friday, within a few hours of getting home for the weekend, I developed a clone of the same head cold. As I write this I am experiencing its unpleasant effects in all their glory. I do not like this.

I again blame the germ carriers on mass transit.

In each case it’s as if the head cold was lying in wait until I had some quality free time, then struck as if to say, “Nuh uh! Your free time shall be filled with misery and runny noses!” And lo, it was.

I am also reminded that when I was running regularly I seemed to get sick a lot less often. I hope to resume this month to put that theory to the test. In the meantime, I shake my fist at you, head cold. I shake it weakly and while stifling a cough, but I shake it all the same.

My Windows 8 review in haiku form

I took advantage of the $15 upgrade offer to get Windows 8 shortly after it launched in October 2012 because I am a sucker for new tech/nerd stuff. It has its good points and its not-so-good points. I’ll have something more substantial to say in a later post but for now here is a summary in haiku:

I got Windows 8
It’s mostly Windows 7
With secret clicking

iPost

I am posting this from an iPad. Why? Because iCan (lol).

Seriously, though, think of a new naming scheme, Apple. You made more money than Canada did last year, you can come up with something better than a variation of McDonald’s McEverything.

In other news, because February is the shortest month of the year and I can now post from the comfort of bed, I am once again going to try posting at least once per day. This will undoubtedly end in tears. Or apathy.

The ‘where did December go?’ post

In which I remember a month later that I have a blog.

There is not much new to report from the past 30 days. I have been working a temp position I hope will become permanent and should know whether that happens in the next week or so. Regular work would be nice.

I have not been running this month after noticing how the bone structure of my right foot does not quite match the bone structure of my left foot. Is it due to injury or just goofy asymmetry? I hope to find out at the doctor’s appointment next week.

With the lack of running and a bit of overindulgence my weight has crept past 150 pounds. I should be able to get it back down under control in the new year once I am back running. If I can’t run then…um…I’ll improvise, somehow.

Other than that, Christmas was pleasant and unexciting, just the way I like it, though I got a bothersome head cold as a bonus and unwanted extra gift.

I shall endeavor to blog more in 2013 but will make no specific resolutions for such, beyond making an official and content-free ‘first blog post of 2013’. You’re excited, I’m excited, everyone’s excited.