If you Google for "it disturbs my Wa", my site is the only one listed in the results. This seriously disturbs my Wa.

I can't post to this blog for a little bit, but feel free to browse the archives -- click "bloggishness" on the left.

Winter, in its final twitchings of death, has dropped a chilly, overcast day on us. Even so, the sun peeks through a ragged hole in the grey firmament, as if to reassure the damp city-dwellers with their dogs, children, and grande café lattés, that the vernal equinox arrives tomorrow, bringing cheer and green and drying the sidewalks and streets and dogs and children, but not the lattés.

It's times like this when, in spite of winter's hacking death rattle, a watery sunlight warms the sides of homes and buildings and the scalps of balding men, and people smile at each other without provocation and are prone to humming "Here Comes the Sun" at length while they go for jogs across still-squishy soccer fields, because their minds are on the equinox and the renewal of spring and not at all on how the mud is seeping into their 300-dollar running shoes.

For my part, I'll take long walks past the daffodils, irises, and the other ones -- the little purple and yellow ones that I always forget the name of -- and appreciate the lively crop of algae on the roof of my car that signals that the frost is truly gone, because tomorrow... tomorrow, spring will kick winter's cold, wet ass.

Unlike some bloggers, I don't have time to redo my CSS for the day, so I hope this will suffice:

Astronomers have discovered a planetoid beyond the orbit of Pluto, more than eight billion miles from the sun. It's the largest object to be discovered in our own solar system since Pluto was discovered in 1930.

At more than 8 billion miles from the sun, the temperature on Sedna never gets above minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

"The sun appears so small from that distance that you could completely block it out with the head of a pin," said Mike Brown, an astronomer at California Institute of Technology, who led the research team.

I hate to nit-pick, but I believe you can block out the sun with the head of a pin on Earth too. You just have to hold the pin right in front of your eye. Or inside it.

Link: Wired.com: "Welcome to S-s-s-s-edna"

A contentious issue in the blogging community is whether a hyperlink should open a new window or replace the current page. It's a heated debate that's rife with outrage and moral indignation on both sides of the issue.

A while back, I decided that links in this blog should spawn new browser windows. It's something that I thought about carefully first before making it a habit. To me it's a usability issue. I start with the assumption that the user wants to read my article. After all, if nobody wants to read my articles, then why do I have the site in the first place? (Hmm. If nobody responds to this, then maybe I should address that issue at a later date.)

Here's the no-spawn scenario: User is in the middle of reading my article, and clicks a link in the middle of a sentence. My article (my entire site, in fact) is replaced by the new page. If the user does too much surfing in the new site, it's difficult or tedious to back out of it and return to the unfinished sentence. My no-spawn hyperlink is like a trap door for unsuspecting readers.

Here's the spawn scenario: User is reading my article, clicks a link, and the new page opens in a window overtop of my site. In their detour from my ariticle, the user can click around in the new site. When they're done, the user can close the new window and finish reading the article.

Some people feel that it's enough that IE users can SHIFT-click (Mozilla users can CTRL-click) to spawn new windows, and that website designers shouldn't force a new window. That's fine for expert users who know that poorly-documented trick, but I would like to think that my readers don't need to be experts just to browse my website. The web should be a novice-friendly place.

So... to conclude my ramble, unless your audience is comprised of highly technical types, not spawning windows makes browsing difficult for regular people.

As a technical writer, I'm a strong supporter of undocumented features. Not only does it make my job easier, but it also enriches the end-user's experience when they discover that the feature exists. And in that way, I add value to the product by doing nothing.

And speaking of differences between US and Canada, here's a couple of products and/or services that just refuse to cross the border.

TiVo. TiVo is a DVR -- a digital video recorder -- which can record your tv shows without the hassle of programming the channel and time like a VCR. It records shows digitally onto an internal hard drive, so the recording quality is great, and it can hold (I think) around 30 hours.

For some wacky reason, TiVo isn't available in Canada. Why not? Canada is one of the most wired countries in the world. You'd think that marketing it here would be profitable and easy. But no, when TiVo expanded, they expanded to the UK instead. Hmph.

Netflix. Netflix is an Internet company with a mail-order scheme for renting videos. Customers pay a monthly flat fee and can pick a certain number of DVDs, which are mailed to them. Customers can keep them as long as they like, then return them by mail for a different selection. This is a very cool concept... and it's also not available in Canada.

I'm not a tv addict -- I hardly watch tv shows at all these days -- but these two things would be very nice to have. And that silly border thing shouldn't keep me from enjoying them.

And if that weren't annoying enough... as I surf the web, I'm constantly running into ads and articles about them. As if they're taunting me. Taunting me, saying "You like these nice shiny things? Well no shiny things for you, stupid Canuck-boy! Ha! I spit on you and your country!"

Grumble grumble grumble, rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb.

Maybe I'm taking this too personally.

There's a (delicious) caramel candy called Toffifée -- yummy little cups of caramel with nuts and chocolate. Goes well with a cup of coffee. I noticed that, in a tv advertisement, the US version of the same candy is spelled "Toffifay". I guess people south of the border have trouble with the double E.

Y'all want some Toe-Fifi?

Toffifée

Toffifay

Here is one of the photos I took while trying to capture shadow-themed subjects. Thanks, Anna, for the challenge. It was good to look through the lens again.



The loon was carved in soapstone by my brother.

So I was gazing out the window, thinking about cloud formations and munching on "zesty cheese" flavour nachos, when an amazing idea struck me. I now know the answer. The big one. I now know that the only way to bring about lasting world peace is-- Oh, hold on. I have a call on my cell phone...

OK, I'm back. So... where was I? Hmm... my memory really isn't what it used to be. Oh well.

Mmm. Cheesy nachos.

There's a little takeout place called "Little Panda" near the office that serves reasonably priced noodles and fried things. I go there at least once a week because the helpings are huge, and I love that heart-pounding MSG rush I get afterwards.

The owners are friendly and the service is good, but for some reason, I always feel slightly uncomfortable ordering the "battered chicken balls".