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{ Monthly Archives } November 2006

Shut up on mute, already

Excerpted from TheFreeDictionary:

moot  (mt)

adj.

2. b. Of no practical importance; irrelevant.

From the Kemsley Guide to Bad Writing:

mute  (myt)

adj.

1. Unable to understand when to use the word “moot”, as in “moot point”.

In the past two days, I’ve seen two technical articles online (that I won’t embarrass by linking) that have used “mute” when they clearly intended “moot”. One was a blog post, which is a bit forgivable, but the other was a 3-page edited (?) article on a well-known technical website. I may have been trained as an engineer, but my schooling did include some English courses along the way (plus some time with an English major as a university roommate), and I expect anyone who is going to take on writing lengthy articles on any subject to at least make sure that their use of the language is correct. Otherwise, there will be some people — like me — who judge a writer’s overall capabilities based on their inability to use the correct word in a sentence.

2006 11 30 rant Comments (2)

Blackberry trivia: using other applications while on the phone

I always thought that I couldn’t access other Blackberry applications while I was talking on its phone, but I saw a video review of the new Blackberry Pearl today that made me try something that I’ve never tried before.

I just found out a few weeks ago (yeah, okay, I finally read some of the documentation after a year) that I could switch applications on my Blackberry 8720 by holding the Alt key and clicking the Escape button, which makes perfect sense considering that you use Alt+Tab in the Windows world to switch applications. That means that I can be in a message, then switch over to my calendar to check a date without exiting the message, then switch back to the same spot in the message. When I’m viewing a long message from a long list of messages, this is very handy.

I thought that I’d try this out with phone calls, and it works perfectly. Of course, you probably want to be on a headset to do this, otherwise you have to take the phone away from your ear in order to view the other applications, but if you’re on a headset you can just keep talking while you switch to other applications. I can even send a text message at the same time as I’m on the phone, for example, if the person that I’m talking to wants me to send them an address or other information by SMS or email. Cool!

This means that I’ll be carrying my headphone with me a lot more often, I think, although I rarely talk on the phone and tend to use much more email and SMS.

2006 11 29 technology Comments (0)

Making the world smaller with Skype

I love this time of day, late afternoon, when I check my buddy list on Skype and see the early birds in Australia and the night owls in Europe all on line, plus the usual contingent of those on my own continent. Makes me feel like I can put my arms around the whole world, if that’s not too excessively gooey.

2006 11 28 friends Comments (0)

LibraryThing

Check out the new widget in my sidebar, just below the photos, called “What I’m Reading”. It’s generated from LibraryThing, where I can enter in books that I have in my library — using some very easy search tools that check Amazon and a number of other sources, so that I can just enter the title or author and see a list of hits — then create a widget for my sidebar that shows my recent books. By just adding in each book as I’m reading it, and setting the number of books to display to 1, it always shows what I’m reading right now. Okay, it shows one of what I’m reading right now, since I often read more than one at a time.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I really need some sort of social networking mashup around the Toronto Public Library site, where I could show the list of books on my hold list, and see those of my friends in order to get ideas of what to line up next. I have to check out more of the LibraryThing functionality, but this might serve a similar purpose.

2006 11 27 blogging
books Comments (0)

‘Tis the season to eat squash

Over on BlogHer, a veritable orgy of butternut squash recipes.

2006 11 23 food & wine Comments (0)

I love the internet

It’s not even 9am, and I’ve had an “I love the internet” moment. Two nights ago, I was helping a friend to work out a few Blackberry problems, one of which was that her browser icons disappeared from the main screen after a recent reinstall. She doesn’t use the browser a lot, but I had set it up previously for her with some bookmarks for local weather and the movie times are her favourite theatres, so it was definitely an inconvenience not to have it. At the time, I just downloaded and reinstalled software from the Rogers site and re-synched her device, and the icons magically reappeared — I really hate when that happens.

Last night, I decided to check if there was an upgrade on the Rogers site for my Blackberry, and sure enough, I could move from my current OS 4.0 to the newer 4.1. I figured that it would be a 15-minute job to do while I was running my regular backup, but it turned out to require several device restarts and a complete backup and restore of all data and applications in “snail pace” mode, taking more like 1-1/2 hours. When I was done, no browser icons. Shit.

It was late, I went to bed, but the first thing that I did this morning was to Google “blackberry browser icons disappear after software upgrade”, figuring that I couldn’t be the only person with this problem. Sure enough, the first search result was an entry in the BBHub Blackberry blog (a site that I didn’t previously know about) discussing someone else with the identical problem. Their solution was to suggest Opera Mini (which I don’t really like, although I’m now giving it another try), but they linked through to the original forum conversation that spawned this post over on the Pinstack Blackberry forums (another site that I didn’t know about, free registration required). The 6th post in the thread solved my problem:

I’m sure the Cingular rep had you do this, but the option for register now in version 4.1 is under Options > Advanced Options > Host Routing Table. Pick an entry in that list, click and choose Register Now. That should bring back the Cingular Browser or mMode, as well as the Internet Browser.

Host Routing Table? Register Now? Tried it, it worked like a charm, problem solved.

Anything that saves me having to actually call Rogers customer service is reason enough to love the internet.

2006 11 23 technology Comments (0)

A tempting reason to stay in bed

I was browsing through the most recent Victoria’s Secret catalogue this morning over tea, and amidst the wundergirls in lingerie, there was a spread for “glamourous bedding” showing some really awful purple and lavender velvet and satin bedding, with the subhead “give her a tempting reason to stay in bed”.

This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, by addressing the subhead to a male reader (assuming that they’re not primarily targetting the lesbian market with this ad), it’s a slap-in-the-face reminder that many, many men read this catalogue, and likely don’t do it to compare lingerie prices, if you know what I mean. Eeeew. Even though I’m the only one reading my particular copy, it makes it feel somewhat sleazy. You might think that VS is sleazy anyway, but for the most part, that’s not true: I buy all my bras from them, since I find Body By Victoria to be the most comfortable bra in the world and have worn nothing but that for the past 10+ years, and the catalogue (unlike the stores) carries a nice line of clothes including some great sweaters and sleepwear that I purchase regularly.

Secondly, it’s wrong because the bedding, or maybe just that particular layout shot, is just so damned ugly. In ivory or white (colours also offered), it might have looked a bit less tacky, although I’m not a big fan of either velvet or satin on my bed: give me high-quality cotton any time. The moment that I opened my eyes in that bed, I’d be getting out, exiting the room, and firmly shutting the door.

Third, bedding is not the primary reason that any man should be giving a woman to stay in bed. Hey, guys, give us great sex and breakfast in bed, and we’ll stay there all day!

2006 11 21 fashion Comments (0)

Linda, Linda, Linda

The night of The Magic Flute, I met my opera companions at Linda for an early dinner. This upstairs dining room above Salad King is a really lovely place to enjoy deliciously prepared and elegantly served Thai food, although it’s a bit disconcerting the first time that you have to shove your way through the Salad King entrance, past the long communal tables of inexpensive but good Thai served downstairs, and up the stairs to the subdued lighting and calm of Linda. It’s definitely worth the trip, however, but make a reservation since the upstairs room is small. There was, in fact, a weird misunderstanding over our reservation: one of my friends had called to make it, and they’d even called her back to confirm that afternoon, but when I arrived there was no reservation for 3 on their books. We had a long conversation about why it wasn’t there before one of the senior staff said “well, we have a table for three available”. Duh, if you’d just said that in the first place, it would have saved a lot of time and aggravation!

I’ve been to Linda a couple of times before, and the last time they had introduced a 4-course menu for $30 that we tried, and loved. Apparently it changes, since this time there was a completely different 4-course menu; in spite of having only about an hour and a quarter to eat, we all ordered it, cracked a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and sat back to enjoy the feast.

The first course was a salad of cucumber and pineapple chunks over organic greens with a bit of spice and a lime dressing/marinade. I seem to remember a similar salad from a visit in the summer, so it may be a staple on the menu. The first thing that struck me was the smell: a fresh blend of pineapple and cucumber, with the undercurrents of lime. The salad is crisp and refreshing, and would actually make a great palate cleanser between courses, too.

Second was a sour scallop soup, which was a thick puree of scallops and I’m not sure what else, although I could taste the Kaffir lime leaves as a predominant flavour, which is common in Thai sour seafood soups. It was dressed with a whole scallop and a bit of cilantro, and had enough spice in it to warm us all up a bit. I’m a big fan of sour shrimp soup, which I used to make from time to time, and this was a similar blend of flavours but with a subtlety not usually found in Thai soups. We all agreed that it was amazingly good, and cleaned our bowls.

The main course was a choice of grilled lamb kebabs (I think), crispy duck breast, or a whole fish steamed in banana leaves. We all opted for the fish, and it was truly impressive. First of all the presentation: sealed foil packets were brought to our table and opened to reveal the banana leaves, which were in turn peeled back to reveal the fish. It was some sort of flat round fish, certainly flatter than a snapper, but with a similarly delicate flesh, and had been infused with spices prior to steaming. The server sliced off the top fillet, removed the backbone and tail, and returned the top fillet to its place before presenting me with the dish. Another server spooned fresh rice onto our plates (and returned later to see if we wanted more), and provided a lime and chili sauce for the fish. My two friends, one of whom is from Singapore and the other from Sri Lanka, opted for the spiciest sauce, while I went for the medium-spiced sauce - yum! The fish was heaven: light, perfectly cooked, and wonderfully spiced. I could tell that the opinion was unanimous at the end of the main course when we were all digging the last bits of fish from the heads and off the serving dishes.

The final course was a dessert of a small piece of deep-fried banana accompanied by a scoop of ice cream, with a choice of ice cream flavours including coconut, mango, lichee and others. We all picked coconut, which I found a bit waxy — possibly made with processed coconut rather than fresh — but the bit of banana was tasty and the plating was magnificent. Each plate was decorated in chocolate that had been put on a cold plate and allowed to harden: mine was a floral pattern with bits of strawberry used to fill in the “petals”, one of my friends’ was a delicate abstract geometric pattern, and the third was a very detailed palm tree, complete with little birds flying around.

Marred only by our rush to leave — we ended up in a quick march down Yonge Street to the theatre, and made it there just as the curtain was going up — this was a spectacular combination of flavours and just the right amount of food to leave us satisfied but not too sleepy for the opera.

I really want to go back for the crispy duck and lamb mains before they change the menu.

2006 11 20 food & wine Comments (0)

Men in tights, packing flutes

Going from Mozart’s Requiem a week ago to his Magic Flute last Friday was really looking at the extreme ends of the Mozart spectrum, and I haven’t crammed that much culture into one week since my last marathon weekend at the Shakespearean festival in Stratford.

Concerning the operetta, I don’t know what the prince was carrying in that oversized codpiece stuffed into his ballet tights, but I really enjoyed Opera Atelier’s version of The Magic Flute, as did the G&M’s reviewer. They did make Papageno completely and campily gay, so much so that I was expecting Papagena to be another man, but that provided one of the main comic themes of the operetta. The other fine comedic bit was that of Monastatos, the Moor who evilly and lustfully chases the princess around.

The voices and performances were outstanding, and the costumes were brilliant. They were backed up by the Tafelmusik Orchestra, also excellent.

Tickets have just been made available for a new, final matinee on November 26th.

2006 11 20 culture Comments (1)

On the move again

After just moving my wine club’s hosting from Netfirms to 8i a couple of weeks ago, I find myself moving once again, to GoDaddy. I have this blog hosted at GoDaddy, plus a few other domains and small sites, and I know that it works for WordPress and my other needs.

Unfortunately, although the performance was much better at 8i than Netfirms, I appear to have been put on a new server (which is why the performance was good, I suppose), but one that didn’t quite have all the bugs worked out yet. I now believe that they don’t have any WordPress blogs hosted on 8i, since I had to request that they open the outbound HTTP port to akismet.com, the site that handles blog spam for WordPress blogs, after I started getting nailed with a ton of blog comment spam — something that would have been requested by other WordPress users if there were any. Then on Friday, I noticed that I was getting no email through 8i, and my email to that address were bouncing, so by Saturday I decided to just pull the plug. Too bad, because they were quite responsive from a customer service standpoint (in spite of having no phone support), but I just don’t have the time to work out their bugs for them. Luckily, I had the foresight to pay only for a month at 8i, and the refund from Netfirms was enough to pay for that month plus my domain transfer back to DomainsAtCost.ca plus a year of hosting at GoDaddy. I’m sorry to be having to go to an American company for hosting, but after trying two local ones that appeared to have good reputations, I had no choice.

It’s been a frustrating couple of months, but I admit that I’ve learned quite a bit in the process, which is always good. Also, having the wine club site hosted by GoDaddy gives me a chance to try out their email as well as their site hosting, and consider moving my corporate site over there since it would be about 1/4 the price that it currently is at Yahoo — not a big cost in any case, but I don’t like paying more than I have to for a commodity service as long as the quality is comparable. I like the GoDaddy webmail (although not as much as Yahoo), and so far the spam filtering seems to be working just fine.

My next step, if everything looks good for the next week or so, is to finally get the wine club site up on WordPress instead of static HTML. That would allow me to update it from anywhere that I had internet access, not just my own computer like I do now with FrontPage, and I can have a clean design consistent with the blog design. I’m quite sure that there will be some amount of drama around that, so stay tuned. If you want to check out the test site in WordPress now, it’s at www.aws.ca/test.

2006 11 19 blogging
technology Comments (0)