Horrell.ca

I just bought three more horrell.* TLDs last week:

• horrell.ws
• horrell.tv
• horrell.me

All of them redirect here, naturally.

Well, that turned out well, didn’t it?

Congratulations America.

I’m looking forward to checking in on this later this evening.

This past Friday I dressed up for Halloween in what I think may have been the first time in over 10 years. Not sure if you can tell from the photo, but I’m supposed to be a grey-bearded cyclist, the kind you usually see downtown. It turns out I really missed dressing up!

This picture was taken much later in the night after spending the evening at a Karaoke bar. I’ve never done karaoke before and was nervous about it. I end up having a great time and even sang a song (“All The Small Things” by Blink 82 — it was easy).

I think Scareoke will be a new Halloween tradition for years to come. More pictures from the night are here.

During the week of my birthday (July 4th) I spent five fabulous days and four awesome nights in New York City!¹. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and I ended up having a great time! Of course it helps when you’re with the right company my G/F Lianne joined me on said journey.

It’s a damn big city, to be sure, and of course the food was great as well. In fact, I had the best pizza in my life at Lombardi’s in Manhattan. I don’t think I can ever have pizza in this city again as it won’t even come close. Well, Magic Oven will probably get me through, but I don’t think they can ever come close. The sauce, the crust, everything was just perfect. Just like Dean, I’ve even tried making my own. I’ve come pretty close, but you just can’t compete with an old-school coal oven.

Anyway, back to the trip. The city is a monster, as the kid in the Ben Sherman store said to me, and five days just wasn’t long enough. Still, I saw quite a bit:

• Grand Central
• Rockefeller Plaza
• Radio City Music Hall (I didn’t go inside)
• NBC Studios (also, didn’t go inside)
• Art!
• The Apple Store (I totally went inside!)
• Times Square
• FAO Schwartz (Lianne bought a limited edition Domo doll)
• Lombardi’s (I couldn’t get a decent shot)
• Little Italy
• The Empire State Building (that’s the top taken from the observation deck)
• And the MoMA (of course I went inside!)

Phew! And, while I was there I also did a little shopping and picked up a Wii. At the time they were hard to come by in T.O. but now they seem to be everywhere. Still, I think I saved about $20 bucks when you knock off the tax.

So I’m definitely going back, possibly next year. Oh, and the best recommendation I can make for anyone in the GTA planning a trip to New York City! is to take Porter airlines. Trust me, it’s totally worth it.

¹ From now on, this is how I will refer to New York City!. Small caps and an exclamation point. Always.

You may recall me mentioning the deficiencies in my loft and the painful long wait to have them fixed. This Monday, after several months, one of the major items was finally resolved: the missing kitchen cabinet door. Oh how it mocked me, but no more!

Witness its splendour!

Last night I had a recurring dream, or rather imagery, that I’ve had for years, at least since I was in my twenties.

In it, I’m in a neighbourhood in some part of Scarborough (where I grew up). This neighbourhood wasn’t once that actually existed but one based on all the streets and houses that I was familiar with growing up.

I’m riding my bike (I think it’s an old one I used to own, but it didn’t seem familiar) down a street that had one of those well grass islands in the middle of it. It’s the kind of situation where the street is too wide that planners felt compelled to have a tiny parklet (just with grass and surrounded by a curb) in the centre of it. Usually, this is the kind of thing you see in large circular dead end streets, but this one was more oval shaped, kind of like an eye.

In the middle of this island of grass, which was probably 20 feet long and 10 feet wide, there was a for sale sign by a real estate agent and close to the tip of the island was a a circular brick structure with a door in it. The door lead underground to a house which someone had built under the island and, possibly, under the street. Never in any of my dreams that I can recall have I ever been in this underground house.

As I was riding my bike past and then slowly around this island, a couple emerged from the door. They had a small child, I think a girl, who was being carried by her mother. They looked kind of depressed as probably any couple who lived underground could look and also, predictably, pale. I suppose they also looked down cast as it’s not the kind of abode that’s easy to sell and perhaps some financial misfortunes lead them to this cheap (presumably) subterranean living arrangement.

Then, shortly after, a group of half a dozen kids on BMX style bikes (they looked like trouble) rode past me, the island, and the sad family.

And that was it.

The dream is never quite the same each time and this one was new as I don’t recall the family or the kids in my previous dreams, but the island and the house are pretty much the same.

It’s a little weird, to be sure, and I do think the concept for the house is kind of cool, so the dream is kind of enjoyable in that regard and I do like the strangeness of it all. What I can’t figure out, though, is where it comes from or why it repeats every few years.

Starting back on May 5th I was taking an intro computer science course that will began my path (and hopefully not an overly slow one) towards obtaining a Certificate in Computer Programming Applications from Ryerson University. It was a night course: three hours on Monday and Wednesday nights and an optional lab on Friday nights. The course used Java as it’s programming language and it finished on June 23 with the final and a programming project. I actually did pretty well, which surprised me a little, but let me back up a bit and give you some background as to why I’m doing this.

For a long time, I’ve always been studying this stuff on the side, reading up on different languages, creating my own plugins etc. I wanted to take it to the next level and get a better understanding of programming in general. The certificate is a means to that end. But my hope is this experience and education will lead to new career opportunities because, quick frankly, the current job that pays the bills just isn’t cutting it for me anymore. More importantly one for me is that to me this is fun. I love learning this stuff, whether or not I become a software developer or something else, so if I can be involved in it in any way, bonus.

And the fact that the first class of the course uses Java seemed like a great starting point, an idea I read about a few years ago that stuck with me ever since.

I’m on a break now and just came back from vacation in New York City(!), which I’ll post about later, so I thought this would be a good time to start posting to this much neglected blog again. No more long breaks, I promise.

Here’s a little recipe for a delightfully spicy rub that I found in Sobey’s Inspired by Compliments magazine a little while ago and modified to my liking. I use it almost exclusively with chicken, but I’m sure it would work with other meat options.

Ingredients

• 2 Tablespoons paprika
• 2 Tablespoons smoked paprika (trust me on this one)
• 2 Tablespoons chipotle chilli pepper powder
• 2 Teaspoons sea salt
• 1 Teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1 Teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 Teaspoon ground coriander (also known as cilantro)
• 1 Teaspoon black pepper
• 1 Teaspoon garlic powder

Now, here’s a couple of ingredients I like to add to make it interesting. They’re optional, so feel free to omit them, but you’ll be missing out:

• 2 Tablespoons dark cocoa (I prefer organic, but your call)
• 2 Tablespoons finely ground coffee (an espresso roast works best)

Now, mix it all up real good and store it in an airtight container.

Method

As I said, I use this mostly with chicken. I rub it on a couple of chicken breast and then store them in an airtight bag or container for an hour or so and then I grill them up. Delicious!

So there you go, something tasty for the summer barbeque season. Now get to it!

Here’s a little handy tip I discovered today thanks to the Apple Quick Tip of the Week podcast:

You can use Spotlight as a basic calculator.

Now the the thing is, the Dashboard widget is fine and all, but this is so much simpler and faster for doing quick math. And the other cool thing is that if you press Return, the calculator application will open up if you need to do something more advanced.

The episode I found this in (“Tip 44: Do More Than Search”) also shows how you can use Spotlight to look up a definition of a word, but I think that one is kind of obvious. Of course, I’m probably one of the few people left who didn’t know about the calculator thing, but whatev’.

So, here’s how it works:

1. Open Spotlight in the usual manner (either by clicking the Spotlight icon on the right side of the menu bar or by pressing Command-Space).
2. Now, type out a simple calculation like, say, this: 6*7

And you should see something like this:

Pretty neat-o, huh?