I never used to be a breakfast eater. For me, breakfast usually consisted of a coffee. Maybe two. In fact, the last time that I think that I got in the habit of eating "breakfast" was when I'd grab a muffin on the way to class in fifth year.

But with waffles, pancakes or french toast, amazing smoothies, and an abundance of fruit, available at google every morn', I've suddenly found myself as one of Those People who are hungry by the ungodly hour of eight in the morning.

Of course then the problem becomes ... what do I eat when I work from home?

Thankfully this is where my childhood helps out. Presenting: "Cinnamon Sugar Biscuit Flower...Things..."


It may not look like much, but this recipe rocks.

Ingredients:

• Your favourite pancake mix
• Water (or milk, depending on which your pancake mix requires)
• A few pinches of cinnamon
• A few pinches of sugar

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 425.
2. Make the recipe for biscuits found on your pancake box. If there is no recipe, halve the liquid (milk or water) for the pancake recipe.
3. Pour a small handful of the dry pancake mix onto the counter top and kneed the dough on the counter top about ten times.
4. Flatten the dough with your hands (no need for a roller) to about half an inch tall
5. Grab a small glass and flip it over. Use it as a cookie cutter to cut the biscuits into circles.
6. On each biscuit, grab a knife and score it four times on each side (that means cut almost to the bottom but not quite).
7. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top of the biscuit.
8. Bake for about 7-9 mins until juuust golden brown.
9. Serve with jam and coffee/tea.

Why they don't let me write movie plots:
"If spiderman was crucified and rose from the dead, would he still be able to shoot web from his wrists even though there would be holes there now?"

I'm not going to bother coming up with a good excuse for why I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot, okay okay, I know it, let's move on.

And of course it's on my back where I can't reach to put soothing lotion on it. Waaah!

Though I'm no Joi, I'm not an unfrequent flyer. In the last twelve months, I've been on 7.5 trips (15 there-and-backs, 19 airplanes, over 35,000 miles...) and so I sort of feel like "hey, I've been flying a lot this year ... where's my reward?"

And it looks like united/air canada requires 50,000 miles for a free trip to Toronto, say, when Graeme's getting married in July. Since Toronto and back is actually about 5000 miles, the deal here is essentially "Buy 10 flights, get 1 free".

This seems like a pretty crappy return value on airmiles, imho. It might not seem horrible, but those ten flights aren't cheap. Especially since every time I fly with my knees up against my face, it's pretty tempting to throw in the extra dollars to get those extra three inches of leg room in "Economy Plus".

Maybe I should get one of those credit cards where every dollar you spend on the credit card gives you an air mile. And then buy a boat.

Has anyone had any success with air miles? Is there something in the system that I'm just totally missing?

I have a secret number that belongs to me. It's mine. You can't know it. If you tell it to anyone, I'll sue you.

As freedom to tinker says, "My number is AF BC 9C 5D DA 6B 7A A8 7C 33 A1 2B E7 D3 EA 11. You aren't allowed to know this number. I also reloaded the page and generated a few more numbers. I'm not telling you what they are, but I'll be setting up a Google alert for them and if I catch you using them, I'm gonna take your house away."

What's all this about?

The AACS recently vowed to use legal action to shutdown the then 802,000+ (and now more) websites which published a number which they claimed was ........ wait for it ....... theirs. They essentially picked a random number and have been using it as a basis for an encryption algorithm. Make no mistake, this number has no inherent value like a kabazillion-digit prime number, this is just a random number that they picked out of a hat. And they're not only claiming that they own this number, they're claiming that it's illegal for you to use it.



People have been creating all sorts of things that have AACS' ZOMG SECRET number written in it. Sorry, AACS, but now that it's out in the wild, good luck keeping it contained.

It's not stopping them, though, from threatening to sue every person who uses this number. This is reaching new heights in suing stupidity.

So get aboard the number-owning train now, while there are still numbers for you to own. And if you want to learn more about the AACS' claims, start here.

And if you learn my secret number and tell it to anyone, you can expect an angry squad of flying monkeys to be beating down your door. And they're not known for showing mercy.

One of the aspects of American culture that frequently makes me uncomfortable is how often race is mentioned. And I don't mean in the context of political debate or social reform or philosophical discussion or anything like that. I mean in total casual conversation for seemingly no reason, as far as I can tell.

Example sentence: "I was sitting on the bus yesterday and this black guy was snoring so loudly, it was driving me crazy."

Why was race even mentioned in that sentence? It has absolutely nothing to do with the story. No one else here seems uncomfortable with how often race is used as a generic descriptor, so it's clearly a cultural thing on this side of the border, and so I've given this some thought.

In English we almost always have to mention gender simply because gender is built in to our language: if I'm going to be using a pronoun, gender will be mentioned. But race doesn't fall into the same category, there's no reason to specify race any more than any other physical characteristic.

An equally valid sentence is: "I was sitting on the bus yesterday and this guy of average weight was snoring so loudly, it was driving me crazy."

And of course I'd be waiting for the catch of what his average weight had to do with the story, because we normally don't give descriptors like that unless we're supposed to be forming conclusions based on them.


Stephen Colbert often cites this picture as proof that he's not a racist: he has a black friend! Do people not realize that this is a parody? But more than just casual mention of race, something that has driving me insane is how often I've been hearing racist comments followed by the sentence "but I'm not racist".

I was in my local coffee shop this morning and someone said: "Yeah but you know how mexican immigrants are when it comes to tipping. They're okay taking our money in welfare cheques but then they're stingy giving it back. I'm not racist or anything, I'm just saying."

Actually, lady, I have some news for you. You are racist. Let me explain how: you made a generalization based on race -- what's more, a negative generalization. That's what racism is. Go look it up.

I'm hardly saying that Canadians are perfect in this respect: we have more than our own bucketload of issues when it comes to minority rights. But I have to admit that I'm hearing a lot more of these types of comments south of the border. And what's more, they seem to be socially accepted.

It seems like I'm living in the States in an interesting time where it is culturally accepted that racism is bad (hence the need to clarify "But I'm not racist") but racism is still rampant and people aren't really exactly sure what that term even entails. There seems to be the general belief that in order to be "racist", you have to grab a gun and start shooting people based on race, and that these "subtle" jibes don't actually "count".

I'd be interested in hearing from other Americans in the audience -- am I making faulty conclusions? Have I just had a string of bad luck and my experiences aren't representative of the overall American culture? Comments welcome.

• CitLab - Ol' CitizenLab folks
• WoW - People who played with me in We Know
• Google - Work friends
• IRC - #joiito friends
• CSers - Those back from my life at UofT
• Individuals - Misc. Toronto friends
• Mooers - Friends from Moo Canada
• People - Misc. friends from other places

What are the categories of your IM list?

"I gotta work out. I keep saying it all the time. I keep saying I gotta start working out. It's been about two months since I've worked out. And I just don't have the time. Which uh..is odd. Because I have the time to go out to dinner. And uh..and watch tv. And get a bone density test. And uh.. try to figure out what my phone number spells in words." -- Ellen DeGeneres

I'm not an "exercise" kind of person. A friend at work recently said to me: "You know, if you lived in the wild, you'd probably die because you'd be too lazy to hunt your own food." I replied that if I lived in the wild, I'd be smart enough to figure out how to make other people hunt my food for me.

I do recognize that exercise is important, blahblahblah, it just goes against my programmer instincts which strongly believe that exercise should comprise of the lifting and lowering of my coffee mug.

To try to motivate myself to incorporate exercise into my daily routine, I've begun a three step process.

1) Tell people it's part of your routine
Now when I say "hey, I'll call you at 5", people say back "isn't that your running time?". It's amazing how effective a little bit of indirect peer pressure can be. I'm currently running 3-4 times a week for half an hour. I'm trying to work that up to 4-5 times a week. There. Now it's on the blagoblogowebsphere so it must become true.

2) Fancypants running outfit
If I have to bring a change of clothes to work to exercise in anyway, it might as well be a fancypants running outfit that makes me feel like a pro every time I put it on. Crappy cell phone pic on the left. The speed stripes may you go faster.

3) Multitask
I'm part of the nintendo generation, which means that I have the attention span of a gnat on steroids. If I'm doing nothing but running, I find that within a few minutes I start thinking about how much I dislike running and how long it is before I get to stop. Thanks to Google's awesome fitness center, I can watch the Daily Show while I run, but that's often still not enough stimulation. So now I play games like during commercials listening closely and seeing if I can hear all of the letters of the alphabet, consecutively, before the Daily Show starts again. I'm paying too much attention to my game to focus on being tired.

I'd give myself a B+ in terms of exercise. I'm fairly good about going 3-4 times a week and constantly pushing myself in terms of running speed. But I still let excuses destroy my routine far too easily. ("Instead of running today, I'm gonna go home earlier so I can ... reach the post office before it closes. Mwahaha. Yes, perfect.")

Who would've thunk that exercising would be so much work?!

10 mg: an online timed game where you need to save the cute stuffed bunny!


There's something infinitely disturbing about this game, despite the fact that you're trying to help a cute stuffed bunny. If you're squeamish, don't play.

As Cory Doctorow put it perfectly: "Bigoted religious phony Jerry Falwell went to hell [on Tuesday]."


That's right, Jerry Falwell is dead, and the world is glad to be rid of him. He's said some lovely things in his life, like: "It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.".

So someone brilliant put together this game: Hitler or Falwell. You're presented with a bunch of quotes and have to guess who said it: Hitler or Falwell. Fun for the whole family! How did you do?

As blogged today on the official Google blog, I'm one of the lucky few Googlers who conducts massage interviews.

What this entails is a few times a week, I sit in a massage chair and receive a massage and then write feedback about it. Oh yeah. Life really is that sweet.

When I started, I felt a bit like a poser -- I knew absolutely nothing about massages, so how could I evaluate them? -- but after a few months of experience doing these interviews, I'm starting to actually feel like I'm getting a pretty good sense about what constitutes an okay massage, a good one and an awesome one. Of course, Google is looking to hire the best of the best.

Candidates who are really nervous express this through body language and it takes a lot longer for them to get me to relax, because they're not relaxed. I've also started to learn that there's all different types of styles: some massage therapists are closer to chiropractors and work on alleviating tension, while other massage therapists seek to just relax you and let you zone out for a while. Both have their merits.

But when you find an awesome candidate who gives off a warm, calming attitude and just keeps magically making my (almost always) sore back disappear and lets me forget about all the stresses of the world for a few minutes, that's when I know we've found the next Google massage therapist.

Getting a lovely massage several times a week is hard work; but someone's got to do it.

I finally backed down and bought myself a bread maker. And instead of going the generic route for your typical white loaf of bread, I decided to try something semi-fancy and made the following:



What you can't see in this unfortunately generic-looking photo is that this bread is amaaaaaaaazingly moist and sweet. For those of you with a bread maker at home, here's what you need to have your own:

• 2/3 c applesauce
• 1/2 c apple juice
• 1/2 c grated fresh apple
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 tbs sugar
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 2 c bread flour
• 1 c whole wheat flour
• 1 pkg active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp)

I have a feeling that my breadmaker is going to start making a regular entry in my culinary rotations. Because who doesn't want to wake up in the morning to freshly made bread?

The trailer for the The Golden Compass movie is out:



Even though I suspect they're going to dim down some of the theological aspects of the novels, I'm totally seeing this movie.

Okay, maybe I'm easy to amuse, but this video made me laugh.


Pippy, the begging kitty, will beg for kitty treats. No surprise. She'll also beg for cheese. Still, no big surprise. But ... a q-tip? A banana? Oh yes, Pippy begs for everything.

Someone has taken the time to compile a list of SciFi, Fantasy and Horror novels that take place in Toronto. Some of them I've read, some of them are new to me.

** "My Mother in the Market," Neo-Opsis, Issue 4, 2004. Canada has an out-of-control Werewolf Situation (source of the contagion, unknown), but a new section of the federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects werewolves at the expense of humans. When a young woman's mother is killed by a werewolf in broad daylight in Kensington Market, she knows there's nothing she or the law can do about it. The Toronto police were accustomed to the carnage "of such scenes; weekend mornings were prime Feeding times, especially now that the prisons and hospital were practically empty. People were afraid to get sick, afraid to commit even the smallest of traffic infractions. The government couldn't keep up with the demand for food, and werewolves were always hungry" (p. 41).

I love seeing Toronto getting in fiction -- like the other day I was watching Boondock Saints and they walked into the Lakeview Lunch on Dundas. Or when they blow up Union Station in the X-Men.

Toronto being in movies and such isn't exactly a new phenomenon but I still get a little excited when it happens.