Amazon.com has new recommendations for you based on items you purchased or told us you own.

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• Perl Best Practices
• Essential System Administration
• Curling For Dummies
• How to Be a Canadian
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
• Motorcycle Electrical Systems: Troubleshooting and Repair (Motorbooks Workshop)

Ages ago I told Amazon about every book I owned, to get better recommendations (didn’t work very well), and recently I copied my Ottawa Library holds list into a wishlist so I had a record of it somewhere (seems to have worked better). Usually the recommendations are along the lines of “Here are ten Perl books we know about”, but today they’ve decided to diversify.

Which reminds me: I need to start exploring GoodReads. I’m right over here if you want to add me to your listything.

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Half a kilometer down Dupont is a Sobeys. The selection is a little narrow there for me, but it’s 24h, and Candice thinks it’s neat to shop at a Sobeys again — it’s a Maritime chain. Another half-kilometer that way is a Loblaws, which is smaller than the Superstore we shopped at in Ottawa but still has all the President’s Choice brands we’re used to.

A half-kilometer in the other direction gets us a Price Chopper, which we haven’t tried yet. I’m not in any huge hurry to try it, since it’s a really low-price-oriented store and it’s in the Dufferin Galleria, which is a really creepy “dirty mall” that hasn’t been renovated (or had its low, arched, stucco ceilings cleaned) since the late 70s or so. I’m sure it’s fine, it just doesn’t seem to offer anything that the Sobey’s or Loblaws wouldn’t.

Then tonight we went to No Frills in the Dufferin Mall. The Dufferin Mall used to be a dirty mall but renovated in the last few years and is now a nice, clean little mall (and has an H&M, yay!), even if it is anchored by a Wal-Mart. But I’m pleased with No Frills. It’s not less, uh, frilly than any other grocery store, except for having to bag your own groceries (in your own bags, please, or 5c/bag for theirs).

But the selection there is interesting — not only does it have the usual national brands and the Loblaws-specific brands like President’s Choice, it also has a lot of brands and foods that I’d expect to have to go to an ethnic grocery store for. The Mexican section has sauces practically labeled only in Spanish; the frozen section has the kind of dim sum I’d have had to go to Kowloon Market for in Ottawa; even the beans shelves have a lot more Goya and other “second-tier” brands than just Libby’s and Unico — which is a plus, since brands like Goya have a lot more variety.

Now part of me wants to just chalk this down to being in a more diverse city, but none of the other grocery stores around here are like that! So yay for an easy place to find difficult-to-find ingredients at good prices.

And finally, a little ways down Christie from the Loblaws is Fiesta Farms, which I’m really excited about — the one time I walked by it it was so late at night that they were closed, but I saw banners on the outside promoting local food. Turns out it’s Toronto’s largest independent grocery store and it’s partnered with Local Food Plus, an organization which promotes and certifies local producers.

So we can join the local food movement at an independent grocery store that’s a fifteen minute walk away!

(Incidentally, when I get around to it, I think I’m going to pick up an unlocked PAP2 with Sipura firmware from the most enthusiastic ATA seller I’ve ever seen.)

New Sorels
Originally uploaded by mendel

I bought boots today! Sorel’s 1964 re-issues. I wanted winter boots that I could tuck jeans into that didn’t look like I was going on an Arctic expedition, and I liked these because they don’t look like modern high-tech winter boots. I figure they’re anti-fashion enough to be hip.

There’s going to be a lot of trudging around snowy and slushy neighbourhoods in the next month and a half, and my only insulated boots are ankle-height — the net effect is that the bottom of my jeans get wet and salty, and with dry denim I’m trying to break in that’s not good, because it’s not like I can just throw them in the washer or even scrub spots to get the salt out.

But now I have my dorky boots.

(I went for a walk earlier just to walk through some slushy corners and unplowed spots. This is basically the winter equivalent of buying rubber boots and going out splashing in puddles. Whee!)

It’s small (12″ screen, one-spindle) but not ridiculously small. The keyboard is slightly smaller than standard but it’s easy to adapt to. Here’s a comparison with my current work-provided laptop, a Dell Latitude D600:

The outside of the case is standard Dell gray like the palm rest on the D600, but they’ve gone darker inside. I like it. I think I might look for some sort of skin for the front. This one makes me wish I could get a Kozyndan print as a skin.

I managed to get pretty much all the software I needed installed last night. I’m wondering whether or not to bother with the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, or if I should just configure things from scratch.

So I stopped by Bushtukah today and noticed that their medium-size Timbuk2 messenger bags were mislabeled as large, and that made the price reasonable, so I now have a medium laptop messenger which looks like this:

That, plus my strap pad from my laptop briefcase, makes for a very roomy, comfy bag. 24 litres! I thought about getting a plain messenger bag and a separate laptop sleeve, but figured I wouldn’t use the sleeve alone much, and a sleeve was $50ish while a laptop messenger was only something like $10 more than a standard.

I figure it straddles the line nicely between “student” and “consultant”.

You can see how the thin leather’s already starting to crease a bit. That’s fine for these guys, they’re meant to be a bit beat up. But you can also see that I’m fighting the creases with shoe trees!

If you’re a typical guy, you probably have at least one or two pairs of shoes with leather uppers and sole like these. (Or maybe with leather uppers and a rubber sole made to look like a leather sole. Those probably count too, although it’s not as urgent.) If you do, you should have at least one pair of shoe trees.

Shoe trees are cedar (or plastic, but you want cedar) forms which wedge into your shoes to restore their condition after you’re done wearing them. Here’s what the sort you’d pick up for $20-$30 at a typical mall shoe store look like:

There’s a few moving parts: the bar between the toe and heel parts is hinged vertically at the toe and spring-loaded for length, and there’s an expander wedge between the two toe parts which pushes them outwards to fill the toe box when the heel is pushed down into the shoe.

Two particular elements of daily wear greatly accelerate the wearing out of leather shoes. First,when you walk around, you roll on the ball of your foot, and that curves the sole upwards. That creases the upper and slowly bends the sole up at the toe. Second, you sweat, which means the shoe goes through moist-then-dry cycles with every wearing. That’s hard on the leather to begin with, but it magnifies the potential damage of the sole-bending: moistening stiff leather is how cobblers intentionally bend it!

Shoe trees address both of those problems. The unfinished cedar slowly absorbs the moisture from the leather, and the spring between the toe and heel stretches the sole out flat so that it dries in that position.

Because shoe trees work on moist leather, it’s important to get them in the shoes as soon as they come off your feet, and then leave them in for a day or two. (You can leave them in longer if you want; some people buy a couple pair of trees for all their shoes, and others buy one pair of trees for each pair of shoes.) Note that that means that you need at least two pairs of shoes for daily wear. The easiest way to destroy a pair of leather shoes is to regularly wear them two or more days in a row without letting them recover for a day.

Shoe trees can easily double the lifespan of a pair of inexpensive (sub-$300) leather shoes. I recommend considering them a necessity, just like a hanger is a necessity for a suit jacket. Shoe trees come in sizes, so be sure to find the size that matches the shoes they’re going in. (Don’t confuse them with shoe stretchers, which are of a similar shape but which apply much more pressure between the heel and toe and across the toe box, intended to stretch the leather instead of maintain it!)

(Leather dress boots like Chelsea boots also benefit from trees and can often get by with shoe trees, but it’s worth looking for boot trees that also shape the ankle of the boot. Expensive shoes often include their own shoe trees, carved to match the last on which the shoe was formed!)

Books: Super Bowl Opus MVP Edition (Leather Bound), $40,000 (with free shipping!). The second-most expensive “book” is a $12,000 collection of 201 psychology books.

DVDs: Mapping Your Value Stream, $280. DVDs are the great equalizer, apparently. This is a business logistics course on DVD. I stand corrected: Essential Art House – 50 Years of Janus Films, a 50-DVD collection for $764.99. Still, that’s only $15 per DVD!

Music: Luminous Arc: Music from the game, $6,442.99. The soundtrack to a Nintendo DS game that’s going to be released later this year.

Magazines: Comprehensive Data Base of US Chemical Patents. 12 months for $71,722. I knew this would end up being something other than what normal people consider magazines.

Toys: A city-park-size playground system for $32,229.59. The most expensive toy for a single child is an electric monster truck for $13,800. For that I bet the kid would have more fun with a real, yet not monster, truck.

Video games: A Playstation 3 60GB bundle for $799. No surprise there.

Audio-Video Electronics: A grandfather clock for $12,463.50. You were expecting a big TV? You’re wondering why a grandfather clock is Audio-Video Electronics? How about that.

Camera and Photo: A high-speed sheet-feed scanner for $14,805. I’m really surprised there’s no actual camera equipment up in that range.

Musical Instruments: Gulbransen Bottle Organ, $33,150. Now that’s the kind of thing I want to see as the most expensive thing in a category! The runners-up here are big outdoor searchlights, like you’d expect at a theatre opening, and a $17,500 violin-playing robot.

Electronics: HP StorageWorks SDLT Tape Library, $351,816. 400 tapes, 16 drives, 3.2TB capacity.

Computers and PC Hardware: The same HP tape library. Clearly no-one is paying attention to the category names at Amazon, what with this and the grandfather clock.

Office supplies: The same stupid tape library. #2 is an online coffee and chocolate business for sale for $55,000 (one used or new, hah).

Computer software: Cisco Security Agent, 100-license pack, for $64,274.84. Please excuse the computer-related doldrums, it gets more interesting shortly.

Automotive: A JIC EK2D1-TI res Spartan DE Type 1 TI Exhaust System for a 2dr 1996-2000 Honda Civic for… $891,480. I don’t understand either. #2 is an actual physical auto parts store for sale for $750,000.

Industrial and Scientific: a 3-Axis CNC Milling Machine for $22,195. From the photo I see that this is the thing you strap Bond to when you expect him to die.

Tools and Hardware: The number 9, for $254,623. So far I’ve been leaving out things that were mis-entered but that one was too weird not to share. The most expensive correctly-entered thing in this category is a $81,890 Thawzall construction site heater, although there’s also a notable $60,000 chandelier.

Gourmet Food: 4 lbs Russian Beluga Caviar for $10,560. I was expecting something even more ridiculous, but ok.

Grocery: Skin cream for $340, but that’s boring. How about 25 lbs of Altoids for $337? 22 lbs of chocolate powder for $313? (Gourmet Food and Grocery? Classist!)

Pet Supplies: Giant parrot cage for $3886.61. The cage is big. Standard parrots.

Bed and Bath: Egyptian cotton eiderdown comforter, $9435.99.

Fresh Flowers and Plants: 12 months of roses for $495. I think they’d get old fast.

Furniture & Décor: “Goddard replica“, $9,999,999. I’m not sure what it’s a replica of, but I’m betting it’s not the entire space research complex. If that seems a bit too much, then there’s a $999,999 space rock paperweight. Incidentally Amazon themselves put the accent on the “e” in “Décor”.

(Right now I’m going “Holy cow, why did I start this? And why am I continuing?” But continue I do, for you, the reader.)

Home and Garden: Like a crazy top-ten list, this gets us the Goddard replica, the space rock paperweight, and the number 9! Other than those, there’s a $99,999 solar cell and an $85,000 antique 1840s Russian glass paperweight.

Outdoor Living: 10×18 Log Wedding Chapel with Wooden Roof, $20,319.97. Now this is the kind of ridiculous-but-not-impossible thing I wanted to find on a list of Amazon’s most expensive things. But a wedding chapel really ought to cost twenty grand, right? So there’s also a $14,662 barbecue grill that you could use beside your $13,997 tiki hut.

Apparel: Space suit, $999,999. I think they’re pulling my leg, though, so skipping over the jewelry that is in the wrong category, we have a $40,000 fur coat from WEBFURS. You know, if you’d asked me what WEBFURS was, I wouldn’t have guessed “fur coat company”.

Jewelry and Watches: This category got things started on IRC! #1 is a 7.12 carat diamond for $495,830. But that’s only potential jewelry, so there’s also a $225,000 Cartier tank watch with diamond band. Would you believe that the movement on that Cartier is quartz?

Shoes: Dolce and Gabbana boots, $1,596. That was disappointing.

Beauty: a Nicole Chignon Swarovski hairbun holder for $1700 which is clearly not a beauty product. #2 is a limited-edition 15ml bottle of Lalique Deux Coeurs perfume for $1600.

Health and Personal Care: 24-station home fitness centre, $39,999.

Kids and Baby: Grim Reaper on Skeleton Horseback Lifesize Prop, $2,995. In case your kids were turning out too well-adjusted.

Baby (which is apparently subtly different from “Kids and Baby”): Kensington traditional pram, $2,995. Boy, tough call between that and the grim reaper.

Exercise and Fitness: The same fitness centre as in Health and Personal Care. A bit down the list is a $25,187 jacuzzi spa with built-in flat panel TV.

Sporting Goods: Football arcade game, with real football-throwing, for $88,550. #2 is an extremely dorky golf cart for $77,988.

Thank God, it’s done. That was a lot of work with remarkably few lols. Ah, well, now you know not to try it yourselves!

(Edit: I’ve been linked from The Consumerist and Boing Boing! Hello, new people! And hello, mefites!)