The Guardian reported earlier this week Binns moving to new Dublin home as ambassadorial residence sold and identified the new residence as being at 22 Oakley Road, Dublin.

Back in April 2008, the Irish Times reported Record price for Oakley Road on the property, writing, in part:

If Sherry FitzGerald gets the asking price of EUR12 million for 22 Oakley Road it will be a record for a family house in Ranelagh but then this is a jaw-droppingly impressive property.

It’s been worked on for the past year by owners who intended living there as their family home, so everything is done to the highest specifications — from the underfloor heating throughout downstairs to the solar panels on the roof — and all with cool, sophisticated and expensive good taste.

The Times also reported on the new ambassadorial housing: If you can’t sell, swap: how the rich do it. They included a photo of the property, which looks suitably grand.

There’s no AM radio left on Prince Edward Island:

A short video, shot this morning in front of the three green men in downtown Charlottetown:

Oliver and I completed our second round of raffle ticket selling at the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market this morning — we were selling $2 tickets on a gift basket, with proceeds to the Home and School.

To be honest, I was dreading the experience: flashbacks to the door-to-door hawking of oranges and grapefruit for the Senior Band trip to Washington, DC. Or the time I went canvassing for OXFAM and gave up after the first door I had slammed in my face. Or, further back, days and days and days traipsing through the neighbourhoods of the Golden Horseshoe selling subscriptions to The Hamilton Spectator in the semi-annual contests of paperboys.

But I’m the treasurer, and if the treasurer can’t get out there and sell tickets, well what hope do we have of getting anyone else to sign on. So we showed up at our post at 10:00 a.m. last Saturday for our 90 minute shift, and repeated again this week.

And you know what: it was loads of fun.

All we needed to do, I found out, was stand there and wait for everyone Oliver and I have ever met to walk by our booth (it turns out that Oliver and I together know a lot of people).

So we sold tickets to teachers and principals. Spinners and weavers. Slices of silverorange and their parents. Innumerable Prince Street School alumni. One Member of Parliament and one Senator. To all of our regular market vendors. To the occasional OpenCorporations supporter. Loads of friends and neighbours. To Leo Cheverie, of course. And even to Tim Banks, bless his heart.

We discovered that there’s a sort of cabal of of former raffle ticket sellers who, having gone through the experience themselves resolve to forever buy tickets from others (thank you all!).

Oliver, as you might imagine if you’ve met him, is a born salesperson: he knows no fear, is tireless, and has social skills that eclipse those of almost everyone I know.

The draw took place on the third shift, so I’m not sure who won. But I imagine we’ll be back next near for the next round, free of dread.

And I expect that, as newly-minted cabal members, we’ll be buying a lot of raffle tickets this year.

Last night was the end-of-year Compass political panel: host Bruce Rainnie gathered with pundits Rick MacLean and Ian Dowbiggin to talk about the stories of 2008. Rick gave a tip-of-the-hat to OpenCorporations, proving that one excellent way of ending up on “stories of the year” lists is to do your swashbuckling in the closing weeks of the year.

As you can see from the statistics page, traffic has simmered down considerably on the site since the crazy heights of last week; other shiny objects are now attracting our eyes.

As my friends at Casa Mia know well, I’ve got strong opinions about music played in restaurants. Admittedly it’s a hard thing to get right: too much Perry Como and you risk losing the young rockers, too much Bedouin Soundclash and you loose the suits. Personally I would be a happy man if I never had to listen to Andrea Bocelli again for as long as I live.

So here’s my proposed solution: each restaurant should have its own last.fm group and invite customers to become members of the group (here’s a group I’ve created for Casa Mia as an experiment; feel free to join it).

Then all that’s left to do is to stream the group’s radio station into the restaurant; in theory, while every track won’t appeal to every customer, at least every customer’s taste will be factored into the playlist.