There’s a good article at Motive Magazine about winter tires. While they define three categories, one of their categories are still all-season tires which I don’t recommend for winteres - even in Toronto. Instead I’ve removed that catagory and added a third: the performance winter tire.

Ice and snow tires - the most hardcore of winter tires and is used for driving on packed snow and ice. Perfect for Dawson Creek weather but probably a bit too hardcore for Toronto with our adequate snow removal.

Winter tires - the “true” winter tire which is made to be good in snow but won’t give the same performance on packed as and snow as the “ice and snow” tires. However, these will not wear away as quickly when driven on lots of dry ashphalt and highway driving. These are best suited for Toronto winters.

Performance winter tires - these are a pretty new catagory and basically are winter tires made for low-profiles like sports cars. These generally have higher speed ratings as winter tires but you sacrifice some snow traction. I’ve been using the Pirelli Wintersport 210’s which fall in this category. Good for getting around but if there is 4″ of snow on the ground, stay home.

If you’re still running on all-seasons, it’s not too late to buy a set of winter tires and not have white-knuckle driving this Monday - yes, a storm is coming.

Every day, the Globe and Mail has been answering questions people have about the markets. The answers are a contribution of a number of their writers instead of a single author, but the quality and value of the information is suprisingly good, especially for a newspaper. Check out the article, today’s question is about buying gold.

Ok, admittedly Microsoft Vista is a failure. Noone “wants” Vista, everyone just gets it or upgrades it because they have to through Microsoft’s monopoly of offering it on every new computer built. I don’t even want to know what tactics they’ve used to get corporations to adopt it but considering they’ve been target of antitrust lawsuits in most of the G8 nations, it’s probably not very nice.

Windows 7 is the next version of Windows, and it’s coming next year. In the latest demo of their beta build, it shows that they’ve been paying attention to what matters most: the user interface. While Vista brought technical enhancements to customers without any visible benefits, Windows 7 trys to use the original enhancements as well as some new ones, in a way that people can see and visualize right away. Gee, it’s like they’re actually thinking about people using their software.

On Lifehacker, Get Window’s 7 Best Features Now, shows people how to enhance Vista to get many of these features right away, without waiting for the late and very expensive Windows 7. Many of the addons are really good and have a nice benefit.

Chuck Klosterman is the author of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. It was introduced to me by a friend who told me it was his “manifesto” and that I would like it. I read the first chapter and was hooked! The first chapter of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs is available in the “Exerpts” section at Barnes and Noble.

He has a new novel out, named Downtown Owl, that I just bought and started reading. Here’s the description from Barnes and Noble:

Somewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn’t there. Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don’t have cable. They don’t really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that’s not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it’s perfect.

Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. She gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer who listens to Goats Head Soup. Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. He consumes a lot of coffee, thinks about his dead wife, and understands the truth. They all know each other completely, except that they’ve never met.

Like a colder, Reagan-era version of The Last Picture Show fused with Friday Night Lights, Chuck Klosterman’s Downtown Owl is the unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where rural mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing. Loaded with detail and unified by a (very real) blizzard, it’s technically about certain people in a certain place at a certain time…but it’s really about a problem. And the problem is this: What does it mean to be a normal person? And there is no answer. But in Downtown Owl, what matters more is how you ask the question.

J.A. Henckels, a long chef standard for knives, has introduced a new line of Japanese-construction knives. These are designed and made by J.A. Henckels Japan. There’s four lines of knives available ranging from the lower 5000 S series to the high end damascus 7000 D (pictured). It should be a nice knife to try and may compare favorably to Henckel’s “Professional S”, MAC or Globals.

Last month I mentioned that everyone should be saving $5000 to take advantage of the new Tax Free Savings Account. Now I’ve noticed that my broker, TD Waterhouse, has allowed people to pre-register so they have the accounts to be used first thing on January 2nd. I think this is a great idea and should allow people to avoid the lineups in January and avoid the crush of the beginning of RRSP season (although this years RRSP rush will probably be very slow).

Check your local broker to see if they allow pre-registering too. Links are below:

• RBC Direct Investing (no pre-registration)
• CIBC (pre-registration only for daily savings account, not investing account)
• BMO InvestorLine (pre-registration online)
• Scotiabank (pre-registration online)
• TD Waterhouse (pre-registration via mail or branch)

I was surprised by this result, The Gadget Show in the UK took the same picture using the same lens but two different bodies: Nikon’s F5 vs. D700. They blew it up to a very large (27′) picture and hung it outside a building and compared the two. Guess what won?

Seven East opened up over a year ago in north Rosedale just tucked between the Summerhill and Rosedale subway stations. Like many of the pan-asian restaurants that are sprouting out all over the city, it offers a “best of everything” menu that ranges from Chinese chow mein, Thai pad thais, and Malay and Vietnamese dishes.

Dishes are served quiet tastefully arranged, looking better than you can find at other places. One thing that you must try is the Mango fish which was nice and delicate, but still had a tasty seared outside crust. The other dishes I tried was the chow mein, which was served in a “nest” of noodles (nice touch), and the thai green curry which ended up being spicier than normal thai restaurant serves, but I liked the punch it had.

Although more expensive than it’s Yonge/Bloor st. cousins, Seven East is still a nice way to have some Asian dining uptown instead of hiking it all the way down to Spadina.

Seven East
1116 Yonge St.
(416) 966-3278

Was in the Sony Store earlier this week and found this cool laptop sleeve for my new 12″ dell. It’s a small sleeve and pretty thin. Like the famous Incase sleeves for Macbooks, these sleeves are made up of durable neopreene like a wet suit to prevent scratching.

Unfortunately, the 12-13″ version only comes in black.

The new version of iPhone firmware is out. Don’t upgrade if you are jailbroken and/or unlocked as this will probably lock you out until it’s cracked by the “iPhone Dev Team”. Use iTunes to get the latest update if you have a legit phone.