Cascade Complete from the grocery store is better than Cascade Complete from Amazon

I previously tried Cascade Complete, and found it subpar and ineffective.

However, I recently ran out of dishwasher detergent, and Cascade Complete was the only one I could find in store. So I bought it, thinking it's better than nothing until I can get something else.

My first surprise is that the detergent was a different colour. My previous Cascade Complete (which I bought on Amazon) was a kind of dull greyish blue. The new one from the grocery store was a bright greenish blue.

 

My second surprise was that it worked! No food left on pans, no stained teacups, my dishes were clean!

I've been using it for some time, and it's on par with the lemon Cascade I was using before!

So maybe the Cascade I bought from Amazon was a bad batch?

So far I've only tried one bottle of Cascade from Amazon and one from the grocery store so I don't know how widespread the problem is, but I'm glad to know that the most common liquid dishwasher detergent actually works when I buy it in store!

And if I ever again get a bottle of Cascade that's dull greyish blue, I'm returning it right away.

I do not recommend front fill coffee makers

I had to buy a new coffee maker last year, and ended up with a 5 cup Hamilton Beach front fill, basically because that was the first one available to me. (Mine is smaller than the one shown in the image, but the image makes it clear how much of the lid does and does not open.)

Hamilton Beach front fill coffee maker

Occasionally, I find a small puddle of water under it, as though it's leaking somewhere.

The problem is the front fill structure makes it difficult (or perhaps even impossible) to get into the reservoir and see what might be leaking. 

Googling around the idea (stymied by interference from AI-generated content, which is a whole nother blog post), I found that there might be a hose or gasket that's developed build-up or come loose or cracked, which would most likely be apparent from inside the reservoir. But, unlike every other coffee maker I've owned, it was impossible to get inside to see.

I could maybe, maybe, maybe get in there by unscrewing the base of the coffee maker (right where it says "DO NOT OPEN, NO USER-SERVICEABLE PARTS"), but I'm less than certain that it would work, or that it would be safe to operate the coffee maker after my amateur attempt to open it up and close it again.

The instructions that come with the coffee maker claim it has a five-year warranty to I might follow up on that (and if I do, I'll blog about it), but I'm not sure if it will work or will just get me another coffee maker that will leak again in a year, or if they'll require me to take the device in to a repair shop (which would mean a subway ride, time, potential COVID exposure, etc.)

My immediate solution was to order a $9 coffee maker on clearance from walmart (looking through my records, I see that my last cheap walmart coffee maker last me 7 years!) and then figure out what, if anything, to do once I have a backup and can be confident in the availability of my morning coffee.

 

(I really want to be a person who buys quality products and gets extensive use out of them, but it's a real struggle to find quality small coffee makers. The brands Consumer Reports lists as most reliable are dramatically different than what I'm used to  - different shapes, non-identical brewing mechanisms, in some cases reusable mesh filters - and I'm reluctant to pay $100+ for something that may or may not make me happy.)

But in general, I recommend avoiding front fill coffee makers because they hinder what should be standard user servicing, making what may well be a simply 10 second repair into a whole ordeal.

Knix Catalyst: a full-support sports bra that doesn't hurt!

This post is a review of a bra. The content contains non-sexual descriptions of breasts, and the links contain catalogue-style photos of bras being worn by models.

 

Three years after my very first bra-induced back pain incident rendered every sports bra I was professionally fitted with useless, I've finally found a sports bra that provides full support and doesn't hurt at all: the Knix Catalyst!

It holds my E-cup breasts firmly in place with no bouncing whatsoever, and it simply doesn't hurt my back or my ribs or anything. Despite my heavy breasts and protruding ribcage, it keeps my breasts lifted up high enough that they don't rest on my ribcage. Even if I have it on a too-loose setting (there are five rows of hooks rather than the usual three, so there's a lot of range available!), it gaps in the back and still stays snug and supportive under the underbust, unlike all too many bras that gap under the underbust (thereby making my breasts fall straight down with no support whatsoever) while still applying pressure (and, often, pain!) on my back.

I suspect the design feature that makes it painless is that all of the band is equally stretchy. There isn't an elastic at the bottom that's stiffer than the rest of the band, there are none of these things (I don't know what they're called) that are somehow stiffer than the rest of the band and consequently exert pressure in that part of my ribs. It's all perfectly even, thereby distributing the pressure over as much area as possible.

And, as an added bonus, it's a gorgeous shade of purple! (And is available in a bunch of other colours as well!)

A few things to know about buying from Knix:

- Knix products are not available at any other store. Therefore, this bra is likely not in your friendly local bra fitter's repertoire.

- Knix has its own sizing system that is completely unlike any other sizing system I have ever encountered. I am a 36E (in Simone Perele, Fantasie, Freya and Panache), and the Knix size chart put me at at size 7. However, the cups in the size 7 were too small, and I had to exchange it for a size 7+. Knix offers virtual fittings (which I haven't tried), and has stores in a few North American cities (including Toronto, but I haven't visited it).

 

 - Knix offers a 30 days to wash and wear return policy, so you can try on bras, sweat in them, wash them, etc. and return them if they don't work for you. As the Knix website repeatedly states, the bras do start out rather snug, but they loosen with washing and wearing. But even when it was snug, it didn't induce any back pain.

 

- The Knix website led me to believe that I'd be required or at least pressured to go through a virtual fitting in order to return my too-small bra, but in reality it was an automated system that produced a return mailing label instantly without any human intervention.

Overall, if you think any of Knix's products might meet your needs, I recommend trying them. The process is risk-free, the Catalyst certainly lived up to the hype, and I am definitely going to be trying a few other Knix products in the future.

If anyone from Knix is reading this, I'd love to see more bras that accommodate larger cups (quite a few of the styles seem to top out at the equivalent of a DD cup), and I'd also love to see a sleep bra made of a softer, more t-shirt-like material than the Catalyst is.

Food storage containers with clip lids are extremely difficult to open and close

Latest pandemic malfunction: the container I use to store my cooked pasta broke!

When shopping online for an appropriate-sized replacement, the option I found was a "Clip It" container - a glass container with a plastic lid that has clips along the side, as shown in the image.

Clip It food storage containers

Unfortunately, it turns out they're extremely difficult to use.

It takes a lot of force to push the clips down in a way that will allow them to clip over the lip of the glass containers, and therefore to seal the lid. If I handle it like a normal container with a normal amount of force and strength, I can get a maximum of one (1) clip to clip. If I use my body weight and gravity, I can get a maximum of two (2) clips to clip. I have never, not once, been able to get all four to clip. 

I know I'm not especially strong, but it really shouldn't be at all difficult to operate a food storage container!

If you are considering buying this style of food storage container, I strongly recommend trying it out before you buy it - or, at least, keeping it in returnable condition until you're certain you can make it work - so you don't end up paying for a container that's difficult to operate.  (I made the mistake of removing the labels, throwing out the receipt, running it through the dishwasher, and filling it with food before I discovered that the lid was difficult to close, because, like, it never occurred to me that a food container could be difficult to operate!)

And if, like me, you are stuck with this style of container, I found it's less difficult to put the lid on if I do so on a table rather than on the counter. The table is lower than the counter, so I can press downwards and use my body weight, which gives me enough leverage to get two of the clips to clip and therefore for the lid to be reasonably closed.

However, it shouldn't be this hard! I shouldn't need leverage and body weight and strategy to operate a food container. And, for that reason, I strongly recommend avoiding them.

Gold Bond Ultimate Healing: a hand cream that meets my pandemic needs

 As I've blogged about before, I've needed to up my hand lotion game because of all the additional pandemic handwashing.

Lately I've been using Gold Bond Ultimate Healing Hand Cream, and it seems to do the job. I'm moisturizing my hands exactly the way I was before the pandemic, and they feel comparable to their pre-pandemic state, with no cracking or pain.

My dyshidrotic eczema is still present, but under control, but which I mean it's in the calmest and least itchy state it can be in while still existing.  

I haven't tried every hand cream out there so I don't know if this is the best one, but my hands feel like there's no pandemic, and that's not nothing.

Cascade Complete is inferior to Cascade Original

I've always used the lemon-scented Cascade gel dishwasher detergent, which I believe is currently marketed as Cascade Original.

However, I haven't been able to find my usual Cascade during the pandemic (can't tell whether it's because of the pandemic or just a coincidence), so I bought Cascade Complete, which is blue, not lemon-scented, and claims to have more cleaning power.

Unfortunately, Cascade Complete is an inferior product. It doesn't always get fried egg remnants off the pan, and it often leave brown stains in the white mugs I used for coffee or tea. I've never before had either of these problems either with my current (decent quality) dishwasher or my previous (very mediocre) dishwasher.

At this point, some people (and, I'm sure, the Cascade corporation) would recommend using detergent in the pod format. Unfortunately, that simply doesn't work for me. the result is always a dishwasher full of dirty dishes with a mess of half-dissolved dishwasher pod at the bottom. Only liquid/gel dish detergent has ever worked with the combination of water and dishwasher that I have here.

I sincerely hope they haven't discontinued the lemon Cascade and it becomes available again quickly, because Cascade Complete is far less adequate, and I won't be buying it again.

Cutex Nourishing nail polish remover

I've been doing my own nails at home for 25 years, and every nail polish remover I've tried takes a few scrubs and leaves my nails feeling naked and hungry for base coat.

Cutex Nourishing nail polish remover doesn't do this. Polish comes off at a single wipe, and my nails are significantly less hungry - if, for whatever reason, it wasn't possible to put base coat on immediately, I think I could adjust easily.

I've never before had nail polish remover brand loyalty, but I think I do now.

O'Keeffe's Working Hands: a hand cream like any other

With all the extra pandemic handwashing, I needed to level up my hand cream game, so I decided to try O'Keeffe's Working Hands, which purports to be for dry, cracked hands resulting from manual labour.  Surely, I thought, a hand cream designed for working hands will be particularly magical on hands that normally do nothing more demanding than type, and are now being put to the test with a few extra washings a day.

Turned out, it's not particularly magical. It's no better on dry, cracked areas (or on eczema) than any other hand cream I've tried.

It's no worse than any other hand cream either, so if you feel like trying it, there's no reason not to try it.

Breathe Right nasal strips for a runny nose: effective but messy

I have some serious and complex blog posts I'm working on that were stymied first by xmas, then by an annoying cold/virus thing that left me unable to do anything but drink tea while wrapped in blankets for over a week.

But, during the course of my cold/virus thingy, I finally had the opportunity to try a sample of Breathe Right nasal strips that I'd received ages ago. I was skeptical that they'd work for a cold, but I was too congested to sleep and I don't like taking decongestant (makes me wake up with my mouth painfully dry. So I decided to give them a try.

Surprisingly, they helped! They opened my nose by just a tiny amount, but it was enough to let me breathe well enough to fall asleep without decongestant.

The downside: if you have a really runny nose and you open it up wider, more snot comes out!  I woke up looking like a toddler who doesn't know how to wipe their nose!

I found this worthwhile, but other people might not.

I also developed an enormous cystic zit in the tip of my nose after using the Breathe Right strip. I can't tell if this was just coincidence (I tend to get more acne when my immune system is working on something) or if they actually exacerbate acne.

I will be trying them again next time I'm congested enough that it hinders sleep.

Things the LCBO Should Invent (or, rather, re-implement)

1. Indicate on your Favourite Products list whether each product is available in your preferred store.

2. Indicate on your Favourite Products list which products are on sale.

Both of these functions were available in the previous version of their website, but were eliminated in their last website update, and it really cramps my style!

I was thrilled when the Favourite Products list was introduced, because it made the way I shop so much easier!  Whenever I particularly enjoy a product, or hear about a new product that sounds interesting, I add it to my list.  Then, next time I'm going to buy a bottle, I simply scroll through my list, see at a glance what's both on sale and in stock at my local store, and buy whichever of those items best meets my current needs.

But since they changed their website, I now have to click through to each item to see if it's on sale, and to see if it's in stock.

The new website design seems more focused on trying to get you to order online, but that also cramps my style.

Online orders take multiple days to ship, and even ordering online and picking up in store takes multiple hours. In contrast, my local LCBO store is literally across the street, so I can go buy a bottle and be back home in under 10 minutes if the lines aren't too long.

Also, the LCBO website has a minimum order of $50, whereas I tend to buy only one (cheap) bottle at a time for personal use.

(Given the LCBO's mandate, perhaps they shouldn't be incentivizing buying larger quantities all at once?  I've heard that alcoholics will drink all available alcohol, so if anything the LCBO should be incentivizing buying only one bottle at a time!)

They had a fantastic feature that met my needs perfectly, and then changed it for no apparent reason!  I wish I knew how to convince them to bring it back!

How the Big Bang Theory writing team is like a deadbeat dad

This post contains full spoilers for The Big Bang Theory, up to and including the end of the finale.

Bringing a new baby into the universe means work. You have to care for the baby and the subsequent child and the subsequent teen and the subsequent adult, providing for their physical and emotional and material and logistical needs and launching them into an adult who can function and thrive in the society into which they were born and whatever that society evolves into.

Bringing a new baby into a fictional universe also entails a certain amount of work. You have to figure out and reflect in the story you're telling how this new baby affects their parents and the characters around them, and how they are affected by the particularities of the universe you're bringing them into.  When you're starting with pregnancy, you have to address how the pregnant parent feels about the pregnancy, how this affects their relationship if they're coupled, the implications pregnancy and childbirth and childrearing have for their life (and for the plot).


But the writers of Big Bang Theory didn't do any of this work when they decided to make Penny pregnant in the season finale.

Penny is the one character who has expressed the wish to never have children.  The show has spent some time on this, and on what it means for her marriage to Leonard (who is amenable to having children).

But when they presented her as pregnant in the series finale, they didn't show us how she got from her previously-established point of never wanting children to her new point of having no apparent objections.


As everyone who has ever either made a choice to have children or made a choice not to have children knows, this is not a decision made lightly or on a whim.

And as those of us who have changed our minds know, changing your mind requires even more soul-searching than making the original decision. I myself spent night after night working my way from "Aww, babies are cute and make my ovaries ache!" to "Given what I suffer in day-to-day life, could I really look my child in the eye and justify bringing them into the world" to "You know, what I want isn't actually a human being that I have to keep forever - I just want a small adorable creature to look at me with love in its eyes."

Changing one's mind about whether to have children is an excruciating process of working through hard truths, and that needs to be honoured.

What hard truths did Penny have to work through? What did she think and feel?  What is it like to find yourself with an unwanted pregnancy while married to someone who wants children?  Did she consider terminating the pregnancy?  Did she talk to anyone?  Did she tell Leonard? Before or after she made the decision to keep it?

There's a lot going on here, in a character that the show worked hard to make us care about from the beginning and in a relationship the show worked hard to make us care about from the beginning, and they didn't do the work of showing us any of it.

And it doesn't just stop with the decision to keep and welcome the baby - there's also the future to think about.  How does a baby affect their lives and careers and housing situation?  Penny is the primary breadwinner - how does her pregnancy affect her career?  How does that end up affecting their finances?  How does that end up affecting their relationship? How does a pregnancy affect Penny's health, both during and after the pregnancy?  How does the whole situation affect the baby?  What's it like to be a child who was originally unwanted? How does the fact that Penny originally didn't want the child affect her relationship with the child?  How does Leonard's fraught relationship with his mother affect his relationship with the child?  What happens if the kid gets Leonard's looks and Penny's brains?  And then has another sibling who gets Penny's looks and Leonard's brains?

The writers spent 12 years carefully crafting a scenario that gives rise to all these interesting questions, then abdicated responsibility for answering any of them.


If they didn't want to raise all these questions, they could have not brought up the idea that Penny doesn't want to have children - they could have simply not mentioned it at all and instead focused on the geeky science antics that we're all here for in the first place! But since they did introduce the idea that Penny doesn't want children in the first place, their duty as writers is to work through the consequences of this decision and their subsequent reversal of the decision.


And on top of all this, we live in a reality where the "but what if you change your mind" excuse is all too often used to deny people the reproductive health care that's best for them.  The Big Bang Theory is both set and produced in the US, and this episode aired at a moment when laws are being changed in the US to deny people the reproductive health care that's best for them.  And the Big Bang Theory people who are on Twitter do seem to object to this development.  And yet they made a much-watched season finale that reinforced the excuses used to deny people the reproductive health care that's best for them.


So basically, after 12 years of working on making us care and proactively reassuring us that they wanted a childfree marriage, the Big Bang Theory writers up and impregnated the one person who had expressed the desire never to have children, then ended things and ran off without doing any of the work that resulted from the pregnancy.

They never gave a moment's thought to our feelings and the expectations that they had spent 12 years building up. They never gave a moment's thought to what this means for the baby. They never gave a moment's thought to what this means for the mother. They never gave a moment's thought to what this means for the marriage. They never gave a moment's thought to the example they're setting for the many other people over whom they have influence that they've carefully cultivated over years.

Where I come from, we call that a deadbeat dad.

Bra options for if Fantasie 4510 makes your back hurt

This post contains descriptions of bras and of breasts, from a technical bra-fitting perspective. Linked images are catalogue-style photos of bras being worn by human models.

The Problem

After years of comfortably and happily wearing the same style of bra, (Fantasie 4510 in 34E) I suddenly started experiencing back pain caused by my bra digging into my spine.

Body Type

The Bra That Fits calculator puts me at a 34F. Most of the substance of my breasts naturally falls towards the outside, under my armpits. My ribcage protrudes under my bra band, to the extent that if the protruding part of my ribs were breasts, they would be B cups.

Bras I tried 

Freya Idol AA1050, beige, 36E 

On the first (outermost) hook, this bra is actually a bit too big based on how bras are supposed to fit theoretically. Sometimes this is comfortable, sometimes it's uncomfortable because the wires (sometimes - I haven't yet identified under what conditions) rest on my ribs rather than being tucked up neatly under my inframammary fold.

The second hook is a correct theoretical fit. Sometimes it's comfortable, sometimes it's uncomfortably tight and I like to loosen it.

The advantage of this bra is it gives me both these options.

The disadvantage of this bra is that the elastic at the very bottom of the band is "stiffer" than the rest of the band. In other words, if I put my hands on the elastic at the very bottom of the band and stretch it side to side, then move my hands up to the body of the band and stretch it with the same force, the body of the band stretches far more.  This means I'm hyper-aware of the elastic (the part that's painted red in this picture - the picture only shows a portion of the bra, but I feel it all the way around) and sometimes always feel like it's slipping between my ribs.

I'm also more aware of the wires in this bra, even though their fit is appropriate.  So, while it was the first bra I could wear comfortably, and is a lovely, high-quality garment, I've put it aside after arriving at the Fantasie and Simone Perele options below.

Freya Idol AA1050, white, 36E

After confirming that my first Freya Idol was a painless bra, I went to purchase a second one.  I bought it on ebay from a retailer in the UK, because that's where the best price was and I had to spend so much on bras during this endeavour that I want to save money where I could.

Unfortunately, it didn't fit the same way as the beige one.  The first hook on the white bra gave me the same fit (and maybe even a bit snugger) than the second hook on the beige bra, which, in combination with the same stiffness issues as the beige bra, rendered it useless to me.

Fantasie 4510, 36E

My bra fitter  had stopped stocking the Fantasie 4510, citing a decline in quality.  But I decided to see what my old style was like in my new size, so I ordered one online. The fit is correct from a technical perspective, it doesn't induce pain, but I'm still more aware of it than I prefer. I'm very aware of the part outlined here against my ribs. Sometimes I feel a tinge of something that's almost, but not quite, nausea when I wear it.  I want to take it off after 6 hours. The problem isn't what I actually feel when I'm wearing it, but rather what I'm afraid I'll feel after wearing it longer.

I did not notice the decline in quality cited by my bra fitter in this bra - all these problems are a combination of the fit of the bra and the finicky needs of my back.

I'm keeping it in my arsenal because it still gives me the best line, but it's not for everyday wear.

Fantasie 4510, 38D

Since I thought the band on the 36E was a bit snug, I decided to try a larger band with a sister size cup.  The 38 band is sometimes comfortable on loosest hook and other times has fit problem associated with a too-loose band.  Sometimes it is comfortable on the middle hook and other times I prefer to loosen it.  However, the cups are a bit too small, I bounce more in this bra, and the back arm of the wires is a bit further forward than I'm comfortable with.

This bra was manufactured slightly differently than the 36E (and than my previous Fantasie bras), in a way that looks a bit more crude and utilitarian, so that might be the decline in quality that my bra fitter was referring to. I can't tell if the difference is specific to the sizes or if my E-cup is just an older one and the D-cup is a newer one.

Fantasie 4510, 38DD

Further interneting suggested that, in the Fantasie brand, DD might be a size between D and E (I'd assumed it was a synonym for E, because Americans can be weird about letters beyond D appearing in their bra sizes).  If that's the case, the 38DD would actually be the sister size to the 38D, so I decided to give it a try.


It turns out the cups of the 38DD are a bit too big - I don't fill them entirely, even though the cups are slightly smaller than those of my 36E.  The fact that I'm not filling my cups is obvious when I'm not wearing a shirt, but a shirt conceals this.

The 38DD is the same style of manufacturing as the 38D.

I decided to keep one of the 38s in case I find myself in a situation where I need a magnificent line but can't handle the Fantasie 36E. It was a toss-up, but I decided to go with the 38DD.

Simone Perele Caresse 3D plunge bra, 36E

This was another option provided by my bra fitter.  It doesn't give me as magnificent a line as the Fantasie and the Freya, but the band gently embraces my back without applying nearly as much pressure as the others.  It's now my day-to-day go-to, with the Fantasie held in reserve for when my shape is particularly important.

The only disadvantage of this bra is it shows sweat stains at the slightest provocation, in the area painted red in this picture. Because of this, despite the beauty and comfort of the garment itself, it wouldn't be the right bra for if I had to look good without my shirt on.

Nevertheless, if I were only allowed to own one style of bra, I'd choose this one.

The unsolved sports bra problem

Alongside the Fantasie 4510 in 34E, I was also wearing Panache's wired sports bra in 34E.

I went in for a fitting of sports bras as well, and, after trying a variety of things, found the best fit was the same Panache wired sports bra in 36E.

However, this still exacerbated the back pain. I went and got refitted, and the best we could do was the same Panache wired sports bra in 38DD. Sometimes I wear it on the first hook, and sometimes I wear it on the second hook.

However, it isn't a proper fit, and I find myself wanting to take it off after a couple of hours.  (My life doesn't require me to wear a sports bra for more than a couple of hours, but I still consider it an unacceptable degree of discomfort if I can't wear a bra all day without thinking about it.)

I still haven't found an optimal sports bra.  I have to find out which Toronto bra fitter has a better selection of sports bras (or, barring that, a drastically different selection of sports bras) and get fitted again, and I haven't yet reached the point where the Panache is bugging me enough to motivate me to do that.

The bra fitters I worked with did repeatedly have me trying on various styles that pull over the head and then hook up behind the back (I don't remember the brands or styles), but I couldn't reliably do them up properly.  So if you can do that style of bra up properly, that might be a fruitful direction to look in.

March 2022 update: The Knix Catalyst meets my needs! Full review here

Takeaway

• If the Fantasie 4510 is causing you pain by digging into your spine, try Simone Perele Caresse 3D plunge in a band size larger.
• The Fantasie 4510 in a band size larger fits, but isn't comfortable enough for all day wear. In two band sizes larger and one cup size smaller, it is comfortable but doesn't fit perfectly.
• The Freya Idol is comparable to the Fantasie 4510, but the sizing is unpredictable and the elastic at the bottom of the band feels uncomfortably conspicuous.
• If the Panache wired sports bra is causing you pain by digging into your spine, try two band sizes up and one cup size smaller. But this is not an optimal solution and I have not yet found the optimal solution. (If you have it, post here!)
• Sports bra update! The Knix Catalyst meets my needs! full review here
  

I will update this post as and when I gather new data.

Tide Ultra Oxi has a stronger scent than Tide Ultra Stain Release

I've been trying and failing to figure out the difference between Tide Ultra Oxi and Tide Ultra Stain Release (i.e. which product is better for which laundry challenges?) but I have observed one difference: Tide Ultra Oxi has a stronger scent.

I find the scent pleasant, but I know that not everyone likes every scent, and some people are sensitive to scents.

So the moral of the story is smell a new detergent before you buy it.

I'm currently testing the Ultra Oxi after having previously used Ultra Stain Release, so I'll make another post if I come up with any substantive findings about how they work for actual laundry, as opposed to just smelling pretty.

The Dyslexie font helps me read with convergence and accommodative insufficiency resulting from head trauma

The biggest problem with the visual issues that came with my head injury (for the googlers: my diagnosis was convergence insufficiency and accommodative insufficiency) is that I can no longer effortlessly skim large, dense pages of text, especially on screen.

Instead of "YAY, a new article/blog post/fanfic!", my visceral reaction is "AAAAH! Wall of text!"  It takes work to read things that would previously need no work, and all too often I'd just skip interesting articles or stories that I would otherwise enjoy, because I don't have it in me to put in the work. (Especially after a full day of translating, where I have to put in the work).

When I was researching vision therapy, I stumbled upon the fact that many child vision therapy patients are initially diagnosed as dyslexic. Apparently the difficulties with reading look the same to external observers, and, since the children have never been able to read, they can't tell the difference between "pulling the letters into focus and keeping them there is hard" and "reading is hard".

I remembered seeing something about a font designed for people with dyslexia. Even though I'm not dyslexic, maybe it could also help me?

It turns out there's a browser extension called OpenDyslexic that lets you toggle the Dyslexie font on and off.  So I gave it a try, my eyes instantly relaxed, and I could once again effortlessly skim and absorb everything.

When I hit a wall of text, I just toggle it on, and suddenly it's back to being effortless to read!  It doesn't change the formatting like Firefox's reader mode does, it's the same layout and design as the regular webpage - just with this funny-looking font instead.  It even works with dynamic, constantly-updating pages like Twitter!

Because Dyslexie is funny-looking, I don't like to use it all the time. When the combination of font, layout, spacing and colours is such that I don't struggle to read, I actually find Dyslexie intrusive. Fortunately, the OpenDyslexia browser extension makes it effortless to toggle on and off, so I don't have to choose.

I don't know if the improvements I experience with OpenDyslexia are specific to my post head trauma convergence insufficiency and accommodative insufficiency, or if the design of the Dyslexie font can make dense text more skimmable to anyone. But if you struggle with walls of text for any reason, it might be worth giving OpenDyslexia a try. It's free, it takes seconds to install, and you can switch if off instantly if it doesn't help.

Young Sheldon

The interesting thing about Young Sheldon is it hardly ever makes me laugh, but is still very effective.

Each episode is a gentle, heartwarming, effective piece of storytelling, and every story told is a story worth telling. But I very rarely end up laughing. Is there even anything else like that on TV?

I don't think it would have gotten made if it weren't a spin-off about a break-out character from a hit sitcom. I don't see how they could have marketed it in a vacuum. I don't see how the idea of watching it would have occurred to me in a vacuum.

But because it is about a character I enjoy, I did start watching it. And I am enjoying it, even though I would never have thought I'd enjoy gentle, heartwarming storytelling that only rarely makes me laugh.

Why I'm not happy with the Weather Network latest website redesign

Weather Network 7-day forecast

The default page for each city is the 7-day forecast, shown to the right. (Click to embiggen. The long and narrow shape is the result of Firefox's awesome screenshot function, which allows you to take a screenshot of the full page, rather than just what appears on screen.)

At the top of the page are the current conditions.  That part's good - that's exactly the information I'm looking for.

However, the next thing I'm looking for is the short-range forecast, which isn't there.  There are two small boxes below the current conditions giving a brief summary of the next two 12-hour periods (labelled "Tonight" and "Tuesday" in this screenshot), but that isn't sufficient information. At a minimum, I'm also looking for humidex/windchill (labelled as "Feels like" in these screenshots) and probability of precipitation (labelled "POP" in these screenshots), but they don't have that information on the default page for the short-range forecast. They just have those stingy, inadequate summary boxes with way too wordy a description and way too little quantitative information.

I do want to see the long-range forecast on the main page as well, and it's right there in a format that makes me happy, just below the row of news videos.  But without a proper short-range forecast, there's a gap in the information provided.

Weather Network 36-hour forecast

The short-range forecast can be found on the 36-hour page, shown to the left.  (Click to embiggen).  And all the information I'm looking for is right there, in a format that makes me happy, in the table just below the row of news videos.

However, the current conditions at the top are incomplete. They  have the sky condition with the temperature and humidex, but that's it. No wind speed, humidity, air quality, UV, etc.

This is a problem, because now I have to have two tabs open to get all the information I want, especially when I have weather-sensitive outdoor plans, or in shoulder seasons where I have to make multiple decisions throughout the day about heating/air conditioning, windows open/closed, blinds open/closed to keep my home comfortable.

For example, I'm currently trying to find a good time to wash my windows.  To do this, I need to know the current temperature, humidex, wind, humidity and sunset time, all of which are in the current conditions on the main 7-day page, but not all of which are on the 36-hour page.  I also need the temperature, POP, and wind for the next couple of days, all of which are on the 36-hour page but not the main 7-day page.  So what was a simple at-a-glance task with the Weather Network's old design now requires two tabs.

The best thing the Weather Network could do to fix this is remove the two small boxes ("Tonight" and "Tuesday" in the 7-day screenshot) from the 7-day page, and remove the row of news videos. Then they should put the 36-hour chart from the 36-hour page in their place.  This would give us the same at-a-glance skimmability we had on the old website.

If it really is important to separate 7-day and 36-day, the second most useful thing the Weather Network could do is put full current conditions on the 36-day page. This would provide a single-page at-a-glance of the information that updates most frequently throughout the day, and whose updates are most immediately relevant.  (In other words, if the overnight forecast changes, that becomes relevant to me far earlier than if the forecast four days from now changes.)

If they really, really, really can't do either of those things, one very simple thing they definitely can do is put humidex/windchill information in those two inadequate short-term boxes on the 7-day page ("Tonight" and "Tuesday" in the screenshot.)  They have the information, it appears in every other place in the forecast that mentions temperature, and there's room in the boxes.  I have no clue why they chose to omit it in that one very specific location, but that would be easily remedied.

And if they want a bold, innovative option, they could let users customize their own homepage, with the forecasts and data of their choice.  This would have the additional benefit (from the Weather Network's point of view) of incentivizing users to create accounts and stay logged in.  They've been trying for ages to convince me to create an account and I haven't seen the need to, but I'd do it in an instant if that were the price of admission for all the at-a-glance information I want on one page.  The technology exists - iGoogle did it in 2005!

Disappointed with Fresh's latest menu update

I've finally had a chance to try every new item on Fresh's menu, and I'm not impressed. All of the new items are less yummy than the items they removed. The only new item that makes me go "Yay!" is the essential greens, but that's an appetizer-sized dish at an entree-sized price. Meanwhile, several of my favourites are gone. (holiday wrap! mega life salad! jerusalem bowl!)

Also, there are now fewer wellness choices on Ritual (which is significant because that's the only nutritional indicators we have), and the only new item that's a wellness choice is the dragon broccoli, which is too spicy for my refluxy self.

Fresh has been a favourite since they moved to my neighbourhood, so it's disappointing that this latest update made it meet my needs less well than before.

The final score in the laptop battery management match-up

I bought my laptop in December 2010, and started indiscriminately plugging it in whenever possible, without regard for any battery management strategy. The battery stopped working in April 2013, for a total of 2 years and 4 months.

Then I started putting the laptop in airplane mode whenever it was plugged in, and completely draining and recharging the battery on the rare occasions when I needed to work from battery. The laptop lived until November 2017, for a total of 4 years and 7 months.

Shortly before the laptop died, the battery status said something to the effect that my battery wasn't working at top performance and it was time to get a new one, although I could keep using this one for as long as it lasted. (I don't have the exact message.) It didn't display this message before the previous battery suddenly stopped working. (I noticed there was a problem because the battery light was suddenly blinking orange.) I currently don't know whether the battery had anything to do with why the laptop stopped working.

Therefore, based on my one-person study, airplane mode is better for laptop batteries (at least the kinds of batteries computers used in 2010) than leaving it plugged in indiscriminately.

Note that this is the exact opposite of what all Dell online support said, but consistent with what every in-person tech said.

City Shoe Repair in Eglinton station has moved to 2200 Yonge St., 2nd floor

Looking for the awesome shoe repair place that, until very recently, was in Eglinton station?

They've moved to the 2nd floor of the Canada Square building at 2200 Yonge St.

If you're standing in front of their old location, go up the stairs to the southwest corner of Yonge and Eglinton, then up the next set of stairs (or the escalator) into Canada Square.

Then keep walking south through the building (parallel to Yonge, away from Eglinton). Go past the little stairs that go down to the lobby, past the elevators, and keep going. It's, on the left side (closest to Yonge St.) about three storefronts past the point where you start thinking "Did I miss it?" You can see the big red boot through the store windows. If you reach TPH The Printing House, you've gone too far.


The nice people at City Shoe Repair have saved my ass and my shoes multiple times, including when my shoes literally fell apart while I was walking down the street and when my boot wouldn't unzip leaving me stuck inside it.  So hopefully I can use my googleability to help people find them now that their new location has less foot traffic.

King Charles III (and some thoughts on cultural references)

I recently saw the movie King Charles III. The premise is that, after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles ascends to the throne and causes a constitutional crisis by refusing to sign a bill into law.

The plot I could take or leave, but what made this movie particularly interesting is that it's written in a Shakespearean style, using blank verse, iambic pentameter, asides to the audience, etc. So watching it was akin to being one of Shakespeare's contemporaries watching a Shakespearean history play.  In fact, as I was watching it, I kept finding myself noticing references that would need to be footnoted if this were taught in schools centuries in the future.  But for me, they were just common knowledge with a soupçon of tabloid gossip.

It might be interesting to show this movie to students learning Shakespeare, just to give them that experience.  Anyone who can name or extrapolate from context the names of most of the people in this photo already has the necessary cultural references.

***

When I studied Shakespeare in school, the plays came in these books with extensive footnotes explaining the wordplay or cultural references that weren't part of our vernacular. The teachers said that in Shakespeare's time, everyone understood these references, with tone, delivery and connotations suggesting that if Kids Today would just be more diligent, we'd understand it too just like in the Good Old Days.

But as I watched King Charles III, I realized that those were just their modern cultural references at the time - contemporary slang, basic current events, current social media use patterns, the sort of celebrity gossip you pick up from seeing tabloid covers while waiting in line at the grocery store, etc.

Similarly, when we did an extensive unit on Greek and Roman mythology in Grade 8, the teacher said that people used to know all these references, again with tone and delivery suggesting that our lack of knowledge of these references that are apparently so crucial and vital and baseline to our culture made us somehow subpar.

But the 90s Jane Austen movies, and some subsequent reading on the concept of neo-classicism, made me realize that this whole Greco-Roman thing was basically a trend too. It was that era's equivalent of Simpsons references and/or dank memes. The flowery, wordy reference-laden Romantic-era writing style was that era's equivalent of today's dense, reference-laden hip-hop lyrics. And people were familiar with them simply because they had consumed the era's popular culture, just like how people who have seen the Marvel Thor movies starring Chris Hemsworth might pick up a thing or two about Norse mythology.


I think if our teachers had presented these aspects of the curriculum as a glimpse into the popular culture of the olden days, we would have found it much more approachable and much more interesting.