I've been wanting to update the look of my blog for a long time, so I started doing that yesterday. Well I don't like to leave things unfinished so I finished it today. I originally meant to go to bed in good time but this is more exciting I think. Feel free to leave comments on the new look, although I'm not likely to change what I have here for a while. Also, let me know if you see any bugs. I think it is good, but I didn't really put a lot of time into it so I'm sure I missed things. Entries now have titles, but I was too lazy to go back though all my old posts to title them, so there are only titles back until the point when I moved to Toronto.

I think having my laptop made this a lot easier. I spent Sunday afternoon on the couch developing while watching Nascar in the background. Yay for laptops!

Now I need to just replace the backend and my work here will be done for a time. I want to make the site database driven so that I can stop parsing a stupid XML file. It's really cumbersome and every time I look at the code I just cry. I think I will also make the image in the navigation box be random at some point, but I need to collect a decent set of images first. Bonus points to anyone who knows where the current image is from!

Last night was my Grandpa's birthday and my mom and aunt wanted to take him out to dinner at the Cove Room in Port Dover. I didn't really want to get a bus or train all the way to London just to get a ride to Port Dover so I rented a car and drove myself. I've always talked about how you don't really need a car in Toronto because in the rare instance you really do you can just rent one. That's fine to say, but I'd never actually tried it before so I'm glad that it turned out well and validated my opinion. I had no trouble renting (although I had to pay an extra $27 because I'm under 25) and the car got me to and from Port Dover without any problems. I also was impressed that I didn't miss an exit or get lost in the tangle of highways through Hamilton (QEW, 403, 407, 6, etc).

The restaurant was really good too, the specialize in Lake Erie perch which may or may not be a delicacy. I'm not totally sure about the story on that. Anyway it was good, although I did drench it in tartar sauce so I may have masked the natural flavours of the fish a bit. The restaurant also did something unique by giving complimentary salad. As soon as you sit down they put a selection of salads for sharing at your table, like coleslaw, cucumber salad, bean salda, mixed veggies, ambrosia, and a couple others. Also part of the meal was something called "celery bread" which was damn tasty. But I'm a big fan of bread in general so it's not hard to impress me. We had strawberry shortcake for dessert and then I drove back in the dark without any problems.

I still have the car until 2pm today so I'm heading out to Ikea, Costco and No Frills to pick up a bunch of useful things that would be too annoying to take on the subway.

I helped Chris move into my building this morning! I really liked his apartment too. I'm the type of person who likes to see apartments and is constantly curious about what they're like inside. I always try to peak in to my neighbours apartments when they open the door.

There were standard moving prizes after we had finished and I won the award for "Best Orbital Fortress of Doom." I'm so proud of myself!

Chris also has a Wii so we played a bit before I left. I'm not surprised that it is destroying the PS3 in the market, it was pretty legendary.

TV update! Last night was the final episode of The OC, which I have faithfully watched every week since it returned from hiatus after that first summer. It used to be an awesome guilty pleasure, but the last couple seasons it's been a bit...meh. They did have some good episodes earlier this season, but it faltered again at the end. I imagine that might be related to having to cram an ending in at the last minute (the cancellation wasn't definite until after this season had started airing). The final episode was fairly amusing, and it had a great ending, until they decided to tack on a 2 minute "5-10 years later segment" that showed everyone all happy and good. So lame. Have to get my guilty enjoyment from Grey's Anatomy now.

I've also been watching a bunch of Arrested Development (almost done season 2) and I can't believe I waited so long to do that. It's hilarious and brilliant! I also will be watching the US version of The Office soon, because Mike gave me a bunch of them and it seems to also be quite classic. It's nice that in the whole pile of crap that is TV there are still some truly awesome shows.

As far as sports on TV goes I watched more than normal recently (ie. more than nothing). I watched both the Superbowl and the Daytona 500, in high definition! Both events were slightly food motivated (that which was being served to me while I watched) but they were both still fun on their own.

I bought a laptop! Finally! I've been wanting one for a long time now, and I feel I've shown a good amount of restraint waiting as long as I have. This is my first new computer since I bought the one I took to university...FIVE AND A HALF years ago! For someone in CS that is pretty crazy. Matt bought 2 other computers since his first and he is starting to think about another now. The laptop is just a cheap Dell 640m, but money goes a lot further with computers now than it used to. It has a Core 2 Duo at 1.66GHz and 1GB of RAM. Just integrated video, but I wasn't planning on doing graphics stuff on it. I bought a cheap laptop on purpose because I still intend on building a new desktop in a year or so. It's so nice to have a laptop!

Last weekend was Rob's birthday party and it was super fun. I got him a bag of forbidden rice for his birthday. It comes from China and according to legend was only allowed to be eaten by the Emperor or those who he chose to allow (ie. concubines). We decided that Rob was not the emperor so he must have been a concubine. Good times! The party had lots of people and lots of cake but I didn't end up eating enough which may have been a mistake.

Before the party a bunch of us went with Rob to the Bier Markt for supper. The food was pretty expensive, but soooooooo good. I had veal schnitzel with these tasty spiced garlic mashed potatos and some special tomato sauce. I also had a couple unique beers, although I don't remember the names of either of them. One had a 10% alcohol content though and they were both pretty good.

Tonight I made tuna stir fry with cabbage, broccoli and carrots with soy sauce and lemon juice. It's the second time I've made it and it's really good. It is also super fast to make so I think I'll probably make it more often. In other tasty food news, I went with Mike to Trimurti on Monday and to Terroni on Tuesday for wing night. I must say I'm a fan of awesome food.

Matt and I bought a domain and webhosting from Dreamhost! It means that when the University deactivates my account this fall my blog will continue to exist! Phew! The world almost lost a staple of modern literature. Narrowly avoided cultural and social collapse. Good thing I got that domain. Right.

Anyway, the new official address of this blog is http://matter.sawkmonkey.com and you should update your bookmarks before the Fall if you don't want to be confused when my University account goes away. We got the domain www.sawkmonkey.com and it comes with unlimited subdomains so if anyone needs a quick hosting of something just ask.

In the near term I also intend to change a bunch of things around here and get a new look and layout and backend and everything.

I've been climbing a bit more lately. I got out this past weekend and again tonight and I will be going again this weekend at some point. I'm really progressing and it's pretty cool. It's nice to be able to do some harder climbs without struggling for half an hour. I also think it is improving my strength, but I don't notice anymore because I'm using more technique instead of just brute force arm work. I'm quite happy with how it's going. Now I just need to get some of my friends out so that I have more climbing partners.