This is Just Wrong

Hep C sufferers endangering health to get treatment

B.C., Ont. won't cover antiviral drugs without liver damage, so patients binge drink

Health-care workers who treat hepatitis C are raising the alarm about patients who are binge drinking and taking dangerous herbal concoctions to try to inflame their own livers in a desperate bid to get provincial governments to pay for their medication.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/03/02/bc-hepcbinging.html#ixzz0h9zosnHT

Firefox versus Chrome

Mozilla Firefox has been my browser of choice for many years, now. Unfortunately, consistent and frequent hanging issues in the past couple years have made me wish for another alternative to Internet Explorer.

I recently tested Google Chrome and liked it, but a couple issues make me reluctant (at least for now) to completely switch over.

First, Firefox offers better control over cookies. In comparison, Chrome's cookie controls are too all or none in nature. Second and more importantly, I've grown accustomed to the Firefox add-on NoScript. It's amazing how well it cleans up webpages of all the stuff I have no interest in seeing -- or if I do, then it's quick and simple to remedy. Chrome, as far as I can determine, doesn't have an extension of similar utility not because no one has produced one but because Chrome's design and/or infrastructure doesn't make such an extension possible.

Oh well. Back to my hanging Firefox, rebooting, hanging Firefox, rebooting... ad nauseum.

Formatting a Large HDD to FAT32

When I used to format HDDs or USB drives I never really thought about the different options available, like NTFS, FAT or FAT32. As long as it worked, right? And they all did.

Though there have been times when a USB drive wasn't recognized for no discernible reason, I attributed these instances to cheap USB drives. It wasn't until recently when my PS3 wouldn't recognize a USB drive that I gained enough motivation to investigate.

Turns out the PS3 will only recognize FAT32-formatted disks. It also turns out that FAT32 is format that's pretty much universally recognized by various O/S.

Unfortunately, while Windows Vista will recognize HDDs of any size formatted as FAT32, Vista itself will not -- by design -- format anything larger than 32GB as FAT32. Eh?

I think that deserves another, emphatic eh?! Especially as HDDs these days are much, much, much larger than 32GB, and I don't really want to partition a 1-2TB HDD 30-60 times.

FAT32 does have limitations, however, which is at least in part why Microsoft prefers formatting HDDs via NTFS. FAT32 is only useful for up to 2TB, I gather, and individual files can't be larger than 4GB.

I hope there are other technical issues that contributed to Microsoft's decision to not allow formatting anything larger than 32GB in FAT32, though frankly I can't be bothered to find out if there are.

All I wanted to do was format a 500GB external HDD via FAT32.

The first potential solution I found was appealing and simple. In Vista, open the DOS/command window as an adminstrator, format /FS:FAT32 x: Although this appeared to work at first ultimately an error message came up stating the drive was too big.

The second and successful solution I discovered was utilizing a little FAT32 format routine (free!) from Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd.. A simple matter of putting the exe file on my computer and running it (fat32format x:) from the command/DOS window allowed me to format my 500GB as FAT32 in a single partition.

Anywhoo, apparently I can now hook up my FAT32-formatted external 500GB HDD to my PS3 via USB for increased storage space, or do a complete backup of my PS3 should I so desire.

Oh yeah, I'm sure everyone is already aware of this but, in the interest of preventing a nasty surprise, I feel compelled to unnecessarily remind anyone reading this post that formatting a disk will wipe the HDD clean of any data or files. Backup as appropriate.

Hamilton's Misnomer?

When I moved to the Land of Tim Hortons I found it somewhat confusing, direction wise.

The place I'm looking for is on the mountain? What mountain? I don't see a mountain.

I learned that Hamilton is typically divided in two, "The mountain" and downtown. The latter is next to Lake Ontario with the former adjacent to the south. Perhaps it's because I grew up in B.C. with the Rocky Mountains, but there's no way no how I'm ever going to call Hamilton's mountain "The mountain."

Of course the Rockies are geological youths, and not all mountains appear like the Rockies. Still, "The mountain" at best is a plateau. There's an escarpment, and then it's flat. F-L-A-T.

Perhaps at one time it was a real mountain and 90% of it was carved off for city development and expansion. I don't know. But as only a recent resident of the Land of Tim Hortons I'd feel silly describing it as one.

Video Review of Phantom Menace

/Film posted someone's 70-minute video review of the disappointing disaster that was the Phantom Menace. Whenever someone asks whether I like Star Wars (the topic doesn't really arise that often these days, but when it does...) I always have to qualify my positive response by saying I only like the original trilogy, and not the prequels. Well, the creator of this video review of feels the same way and offers some salient reasons as to why Episode I is so terrible.

Quite well done, actually. The review is divided into seven parts. Warning for mild profanity.

Part 1/7


Part 2/7


Part 3/7


Part 4/7


Part 5/7


Part 6/7


Part 7/7

Does Rogers Think I'm Stupid?

As glad as I was to return to Canada after several years of living in the United States, there are a few things I find severely lacking north of the 49th parallel.

One, amazon.ca is an extremely pitiful, pathetic cousin to amazon.com in terms of variety of products offered. I'd grown accustomed to the one-stop-shop nature of amazon.com -- a characteristic the Canadian iteration doesn't even come close to matching.

Two, is the lack of competition and poor service in some industries compared to the United States. In the case of the telecom industry not only is service relatively poor in Canada, but Canadians for larcenous reasons are forced to pay more for less. A few mobiles have caught my eye over the past few years, but I never want to be stuck with a contract, again. Besides, my s620 still serves me well.

Anywhoo, I digress. This post was meant originally to relate an inane text message I received from Rogers, recently (I use Rogers Pay As You Go). Rogers periodically sends me text messages offering various services and options. This one said in effect, "you've had x number of text messages in the past 7 days. Pay $3 per month for 30 free text messages!"

As with all others from Rogers, this one was deleted. But in the midst of deletion it occurred to me that I really don't use text messages often, and certainly not the x number Rogers says I had in the past week.

My first thought was that somehow someone else was using my mobile number. A second after that, though, I realized the more likely scenario was that in calculating the number of text messages per week, Rogers must be including the texts Rogers themselves were sending me.

Not only does Rogers insist on spamming me, they want me to pay for the dubious privilege. Idiots.

Lego Matrix

Found these youtube videos posted on /Film. The filmers recreated the roof-top bullet-time scene from the original Matrix, using Lego. 440 hours to film 1 minute 24 seconds.



This second video is a side by side comparison of the original with the Lego Matrix version: