Pleasant Interruption blogs

Mmm Maple Leaf Foods

Hiro — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:01:01 -0500

Anyone that watches Canadian media have recently been hearing a lot of Listeria and Listeriosis and the knee-jerk reaction against Maple Leaf Foods.

The long story short is as follows: some foods produced by Maple Leaf Foods were contaminated with Listeria, a bacteria that can make you sick. Some people died. More got sick. Maple Leaf recalled a shit-ton of their foods. People stopped buying Maple Leaf products.

I've been reading comments on news articles from people saying that they would stop buying anything Maple Leaf and "let other people be the guinea pigs." My alma matter, University of Waterloo, has stated "Since the initial recall announcement, our chefs have discontinued purchasing any Maple Leaf Foods product and will continue to buy our deli meats from other sources, like Piller and Olymel, going into the Fall term."

Seems like a normal reaction. But the "normal" reaction is just that: a reaction. It's not proactive nor does it protect oneself from future harm. It's emotional and counter-productive. If people think that other food manufacturers are infallible to Listeria(or any other bacteria) contamination, they are living in a dream-world.

Ironically, Maple Leaf Foods has the most incentive to tighten up their production and be as pristine as possible. They're spending millions on the recall and likely millions more cleaning up their plants.

If anything, the safest bet on a source of uncontaminated foods in the coming months and well into the future is from Maple Leaf Foods themselves.

2010: The Journey Begins

Hiro — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:14:12 -0500

The 2008 nationals just took place this past week in New Brunswick.

It's now been 2 years since I left the karate world. My last official competition was in the fall of 2006 when I competed in Japan for the SKIF World Championships. In terms of the WKF/NKA circuit, my last competition was the 2006 National Championships in Newfoundland.

Karate has been a part of my life ever since I could walk. Since I was 14, the Ontario Karate team has been like my extended family that I would see 4-5 times a year, culminating in a week-long bash that is the National Championships. I miss my karate family. I also miss the rest of my karate family that spans the whole country. I've made so many great friends from the rest of the country over the 8 years that I competed at nationals and the two times I competed at the pan-american championships in Venezuela and Chile.

2 years ago I made the difficult decision of ending my karate career. Or rather, putting it on hold. I hadn't trained at all during my 5 years in university and I was having the time of my life and karate just wasn't a priority. Simply travelling to Toronto 4 times a year for the provincial meets was a hassle for me. Between not wanting to embarrass myself with my slowly deteriorating karate skills and wanting to give the younger up-and-coming stars an open road, I stopped competing.

I think it was the right decision but now that I am done school I feel it was such a big part of my life that I should give it another chance. For the last few months I've been thinking about returning to the karate world. Since the 2nd week of May I've been doing intense physical training with Mariano and I'm already in the best physical condition I've ever been in my life after 7 weeks.

Tonight I had a moment. I saw pictures of all my old karate teammates on the podium. They are cleaning up. The young kids that used to look up to me have far surpassed anything I ever accomplished and have more than filled my shoes. I am so proud of them. Trevor Sheppard, whom I have so much respect for, finally took the national title for Men's Kata. He has deserved it for so many years now and he finally did it. I'd like to think Arjun and I are his biggest fans.

This moment reaffirmed my desire to return to the karate world and compete at the national championships in 2010. I want to medal for Men's Individual Kata. I want to perform the best Shotokan katas that have ever been performed at the Canadian National Karate Championships.

I have a a year and a few months before I need to begin competing at the provincial level to qualify for the provincial team and I have roughly 2 years before the 2010 nationals.

Two years to get bigger, stronger, faster, jump higher, and more flexible.

Two years to hone my art.

The journey begins.

Best 50 bucks I ever spent

Hiro — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 01:17:16 -0500

Today I bought a 1 gig stick of A-Data ram for my 12" Powerbook G4. I gave up on the idea of upgrading my ram over a year ago when Canada Computers had them for about $180 and didn't even have them in stock.

All hope was lost until today when Ahmed told me that, miraculously, they seemed to have an abundance of them now and at rock bottom prices.

I've been getting increasingly frustrated as of yet with my laptop and have been yearning for a new one. Getting beachballs every few minutes every time I switch windows or tabs was getting really annoying. I've been lusting after the Macbook Pro but I've been waiting until they come out with the newer designs, hopefully by the end of summer or end of the year.

In any case, the extra 512 mb of ram(I had 768 before) has really juiced things up and I can happily say that I'm in no hurry for a new computer anymore.

Yes I'm a computer nerd.

If I Could Program My Camera

Hiro — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:40:39 -0500

If I could program my camera, I'd add a shooting mode that would take a picture without flash, and then take another picture with flash immediately afterwards.

Pictures always look better without flash because it doesn't wash out people's skin and also has a much warmer colour, but unless the lighting conditions are really good you end up with a blurry picture. You can compensate for it with a higher ISO (the digital camera's sensitivity to light) but the trade-off is a grainy image.

Sometimes it's worth having a bit of graininess because it still looks far better than a picture taken with flash. But sometimes it's so grainy that the picture with flash is more bearable. So what I end up doing is taking pictures with and without flash and then discarding the one I don't like.

It's just a pain in the ass - to myself and to my subjects - to have to take a picture, change the setting, then take another picture. Why can't I just do both at once?

Snake-Charming the Masses

Tony — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:42:01 -0500

Off "The Stills" next album, dropping soon.

Sounds Awesome...Enjoy!

J.C. Pays The Bills

Nana — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:28:58 -0600

The other day, I saw a dog wearing a hoodie. How awesome is that? Normally, I hate it when dogs wear clothing, but this was really cool.

And I'm back, folks. More posts to come.

-- Can I change my picture Hiro? I'm gonna send you a picture to change my picture. --

Ghosts

Tony — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:37:48 -0600

So, I was sitting around reading the news (which is awesome), and I came across a CBC article saying that Nine Inch Nails has just released a new Instrumental album called "Ghosts". I was like "what the fuck?" so i went to the site, and there it was.

It is FUCKING AWESOME, I don't care what anyone thinks about NIN, Trent Reznor is a genius.

Anyways, he is releasing it independently with some minor help, no crappy Interscope stealing our money.

The site is sort of down, they secretly released it, and then they were flooded with hits and downloads.

The album on the other hand is amazing, It kind of reminds me of something theatrical. There is a great mix of synth, and acoustic sounds all mixed up, but it sounds great. Reznor created four acts for this EP, and the first one is available for free.

You can get the first act of the four on Pirate Bay Here You can find all four acts elsewhere, but because I want NIN to get as much support as possible, I'd rather you get it from the official torrent site.

Also you can hit up www.nin.com to purchase it officially, there are several different packages available where you will get the download right away (when the site is back up), and a cd package at a later date. You can also get it free here as well (but again the site is down temporarily).

GET IT AND ENJOY!

Love,

Tony

UPDATE

Here are some reviews for those that are skeptical about what i'm trying to push onto you. Here and Here

Ringtones

Hiro — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:33:49 -0600

The only person that enjoys hearing your ringtone is yourself.

Just sayin'.

Also, I had a funny idea for a ringtone: record yourself coughing.

Rarely would people look for the source of your ringtone!

Happy Valentines Day

Tony — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:32:05 -0600

For all the lovers out there

A note to myself─ II

Rua — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:09:35 -0600

The purpose of this prose is for a reference to myself.
Viewer discretion is advised. -lol

%%Commencing inquiries

Knowledge.

%% Personal history:

%% Simulation
"Simulacres" }
{ signs of culture and media that create the perceived reality }
{ "Simulation" }
{ modern society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that the human experience is of a simulation of reality rather than reality itself }
>>

%% Loop

/terminate
%%

It is something to be said with certainty that no one would deny his/her right to know truth─ fidelity of life. Rather the question that is to be sought is what is the truth.

Mr P once said there exists a world, a perfect one, over this world we live in. This world is only a reflection of the perfection that exist somewhere outside of this dimension of life.

Among the creatures of the Earth, for being imperfect reflections of truth, humans can create. However the creation can never reach the quality of the real one since for being a copy of something else.

Mr A then talks about how world is based on its realization of truth. Although truth will be there, somewhere but we do not know where, where it reveals would be here on earth. What pleases us is to dig out what we know, to realize what's revealed.

According to Mr A, creation is an imitation. A mimesis that reveals truth. A mimesis that reveals truth. A mimesis that reveals truth. Through rediscovery, Mr A rediscover delights of knowledge, truth, and the world.

Then Herr H insists; TRUTH is something which allows to see what hasn't seen yet, to give birth to what hasn't existed yet. What ART ought to do is to reveal the unseen, to show the forgotten, to tell the forgiven.

%% INNOVATION
/break { code }
/oxymoron { beauty = vulgar }

%% Commencing the answer

/truth of the age
{ Strive to remain the individual against the violence of standardization }

The universe is a closed labyrinth.

There is no outward, there is no inward; and all the passages will never reach the destination.

They are not right, nor wrong, rather they are true and false simultaneously.

Then what is there for us to do?

%% Lineage

/Resemblance

/similitude

{ Mirror, mask, dagger }

* the sublime
─the beauty a man must not seek after