This morning I received a big, big box filled with 10 copies of a book I created two weeks ago using Lulu.com, the publish-on-demand company founded by fellow Hamiltonian Bob Young.

The Lulu experience was a pleasure from start to end: I used Apple’s Pages word processor to create a 346 page book, complete with table of contents, and Wordle to make a colour image for the cover. I created two PDF files, one for the inside and one for the cover and uploaded them to Lulu, used their tools to set up the page size, cover format and binding, paid for 10 copies (I could have ordered as few as one), and that was it: the next thing that happend was the box at my door.

The quality of the finished product is excellent: I ordered perfect-bound 6”x9” books on ivory paper with a full-colour coated cover. You wouldn’t know that these were “self-published” books from the look, feel and heft of them: they are every inch bona fide books.

I was inspired to do all this by my friend Steven Garrity, who achieved “The Best Christmas Presents Ever” by creating a book of Garrity family aphorisms. In my case a good friend and fellow blogger is having a significant birthday, and to mark the occasion I turned her blog into a book.

While not quite owning the means of production, Lulu certainly puts those means closer to the ground than ever before and makes creating lasting cultural objects within reach of anyone with something to say, some basic design sense, and an application that can emit PDF files.

The skycraper that’s going up two doors down from the office has finally started construction this week — I know this, in part, because they are using some sort of vibrating machine to excavate the basement that causes my office chair to vibrate as well. It’s interesting how you can start to see the shape of the new building even at this early stage:

There’s been a lot of change over the bridge in Stratford at Home Hardware over the last few years. After the Home Hardware is a co-op, and I’m just not a co-op kind of guy days, there was a brief flirtation with Callbeck’s, and now, staff tell me, the store is a corporate store managed by Home Hardware itself.

I hadn’t been in for a while, but as the store is helping to sponsor some painting at Prince Street School, Catherine, volunteer colour consultant on the job, had to go over to immerse herself in the Beauti-Tone and Oliver and I went along for the ride.

They certainly have changed things around. The second-floor furniture section has been moved downstairs, and now takes up almost half of the retail floor area, squishing out the hardware section to the back, and moving the paint section up to the front. The co-located Radio Shack is gone. The in-store Tim Hortons has a reduced footprint. It’s essentially a brand new store inside.

The newly-expanded furniture section is a sort of mixed bag: they had several really nice and not-too-expensive dining room tables that were refreshingly simple in their design, but the balance of the living room furniture seemed to fall into “overstuffed recliner” category that you’ll find elsewhere on the Island. Which is too bad, as one of the nice things about the old era was modern, non-gingham furniture.

Staff were as pleasant as ever. Worth a visit if you haven’t been over since the upheavals.

Apparently a “looking glass” is a mirror. I went 42 years thinking it was another name for “magnifying glass.”

The Merchantman Pub, on Queen Street in Charlottetown, built on an addition last year and, after opening a restaurant extension around the corner on Water Street called Gooner’s Bar & Grill, this year the owners have opened Merchantman Galley, a bakery cum coffee shop.

Last week we had a baguette from the bakery — very good — and today on the way back to the office from Tai Chi Gardens I stopped in for some dessert. I ended up choosing their dessert of the day, a fruit-infused bread pudding with rum sauce. It was very good. And very substantial (i.e. enough to sate the dessert appetites of a small family).

My favourite aspect of the Merchantman Gallery experience, however, is the note “We reserve the right to be spontaneous” on their menu:

I had the added pleasure of being served by a recent immigrant to the Island who, it seems, is also a longtime reader of this blog.

Although you’d never know it by watching or reading the media, Ralph Nader is running for President again this year, along with his running mate Matt Gonzalez.

Nader joined Ron Paul and other independent candidates last week in a press-conference to release a joint statement on foreign policy, privacy, the national debt, and the Federal Reserve. You can watch the video of the event on C-SPAN.

From Rob’s Island Energy weblog, a link to Fortune, PEI company Prompt Plumbling’s geothermal energy page.

Earlier this week Catherine and I stopped in for supper at the Seatreat before “meet the teacher night” at Prince Street School. Catherine had french fries with her meal, and the french fries struck us as being markedly different from any french fries we’d had a the Seatreat before: they actually tasted good. Not that the french fries we’d had there before were unusually bad; they were simply the same run-of-the-mill fries you get in most Island restaurants.

When I stopped in again this afternoon for a bowl of Louis’ chicken and rice soup I ran into Joe, personable owner of the Seatreat, and I complimented him on the change, and asked him what they were doing differently, thinking perhaps they’d upgraded to “McCain Super-Duper Premium Extra” fries or some such thing.

“We just switched to using potatoes,” Joe said. “You mean regular old everyday potatoes?” I asked. “Yes,” said Joe.

This would explain why the french fries tasted, well, so much like potatoes.

If you are a fan of the occasional fry, I encourage you to drop in and sample the “old and improved” ones at the Seatreat.

Three years ago we found ourselves in the the village of Aniane in the south of France at Au Bonheur des Jardins, a celebration of food and the earth and all things related. Among the things I purchased there were three books from Epure Editions, one on basil, one on olive oil, and one on eggs:

I bought the books mostly because they had beautiful covers, beautiful binding, and beautiful paper. But they are also, for some reason, somewhat unworkable as actual usable books because the inside papers aren’t cut:

I’m not sure whether this is standard practice, or whether I bought distressed “seconds,” but it does make using the books rather difficult, and I’m loathe to slice the pages myself as I’m certain I would butcher the books in the process. I might have to be content with using every second page spread — the ones that don’t depend on page-slicing. That recipe for Pêches Rôties au Poivre Long d’Indonésie does sound quite tasty.

I’ve probably seen two or three hundred movies in my life. Maybe more. And I’ve only walked out on three: Rain Man, Strange Days and, last night, Righteous Kill, the new De Niro-Pacino cop film. It was very, very, very bad: generic plot, dreadful dialogue, wooden acting. And just plain boring.