I note, for the record, that I have subscribed to the actual printed copy of a newspaper for the first time in 10 years: I took our a “Saturday-only” subscription to the Globe and Mail two weeks and. It’s delivered to my vestibule every Saturday morning before I get up. And I’m really enjoying it: it’s a completely re-made Globe from the one I remember, and it’s completely unlike the National Post, which I’d fallen into the habit of treating as my “national newspaper” in recent years. $11.25 a month.

Pita Express is a new take-out counter built into part of The Seatreat restaurant at the corner of University and Euston Streets in Charlottetown. I stopped in today for a 12” chicken shawarma, and it was fantastic — maybe the best in town. The 12” is huge, and a great deal for $6.99; they’ve got a range of sandwiches running from shawarma and falafel to philly cheese steak and lobster. It’s a welcome addition to the neighbourhood.

I was up at the Robertson Library at UPEI for a secret high-level meeting this morning, and got a demo of their latest item of cool gear, a 3D scanner.

You stick any object (up to the size of a shoebox) on the turntable and a combination of a camera and a team of lasers scan the object 8 times as the turntable rotates. Some magic software on the workstation driving the whole thing stitches it all together, and when you’re done you have a 3D model that you can, well, ogle at (or put in Second Life, or add to a collection of digital artifacts, or send to Pixar for inclusion on Toy Story 3). Obviously there are Serious Research Purposes for the technology, but it’s also very, very cool.

Every time I’ve visited the library this year I find partitions being installed, boxes of supercomputers piled high, and smart people doing interesting stuff. It’s a far cry from ye olde musty library, but is also pleasantly libraryesque in approach and demeanor.

If you’ve got an inkling of an idea that involves the overlap of any of scholarship, technology, information, archives, digitization, UPEI seems increasingly like the place to be on PEI. There was already plenty of evidence of this during the winter. Now there’s more.

So there I was driving down Belvedere Avenue after dropping Catherine and Oliver off at Ellis Bros. thinking to myself “wow, I could sure use a coffee.” And then, in the distance, rose the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market, now open, during the summer months, on Wednesdays.

I lurched the car over into the turning lane and two minutes later there was a high-quality cappuccino being lovingly prepared for me. Five minutes later I had coffee and bagel with high-quality smoked salmon in hand and was a much, much happier person.

The market is open 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Wednesdays through August. It’s a short bike ride from downtown Charlottetown (and an even shorter ride from Holland College Royalty Centre) and thus an excellent choice for lunch. As a bonus, the Wednesday market is much less crazy and claustrophobia-inducing than the Saturday one.

The CBC is reporting that Flex Mussels’ application for a late-nite liquor permit (they wanted to be able to serve drinks until 2:00 a.m.) was denied, and that they’ll only be allowed to stay open until midnight.

Much of the discussion surrounding this issue, at least from Flex Mussels’ perspective, seemed to centre around the difference between low-class rowdy drunks and their breed of high-class wine-drinking effete drunks; their representative was quoted:

We have every intention, we’ve had every intention all along, of bringing something classy and nice to the Charlottetown waterfront.

Here’s the thing about that (and I speak from personal experience here): put some drink into anyone and put them out on the street at 2:00 a.m. and they’re going to be annoying. They don’t need to be peeing on the neighbourhood begonias or breaking into musical theatre numbers: simply walking up Prince Street in the middle of the night talking about Brahms in that slightly-too-loud way that endrunkened people do is enough to disturb the peace of the neighbourhood.

Nobody’s suggesting that there be a total ban on movement and activity on Charlottetown city streets after midnight, but over the last 7 years we’ve lived downtown there’s been an incremental tilt in the late nite atmosphere away from “comfortable urban residential neighbourhood” and toward lively outdoor music (etc.). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the tilt has to be managed against the needs of residents who want to do things like “sleep” and “think” at night.

Kudos to city council for recognizing this.

gOffice, designed for the iPhone, also happens to work quite well on my Nokia E61i. Not surprising given the common ancestry of the web browsers of each.

Our multi-year plan to outpace the Macdonalds and the Arsenaults and become a Prominent Island Family achieved another milestone on Friday evening with the birth in Charlottetown of Ava Frances Rukavina, daughter to my brother Johnny and sister-in-law Jodi.

Ava is the first girl born into our immediate family since my mother was born, which means that she has an additional miracle to add to her belt in addition to the regular “miracle of birth.”

We visited on Saturday, and I can affirm that Ava is adorable.

By the way, it’s Aaa-va-ah, like Ava Gardner.

Ava happens to share her birth date with Nanci Griffith and Peter Mansbridge, and Janet Leigh.

Ava Gardner was in The Kidnapping of the President with Hal Holbrook Hal Holbrook was in The Fog (1980) with Janet Leigh.

And if you want to get really funky: Peter Mansbridge was in April One (1993) with David Strathairn. David Strathairn was in The Firm (1993) with Hal Holbrook. You do the rest.

Here’s what The Old Farmer’s Almanac says for those born on July 6:

You are serious in everything you do, whether love, work, or recreation. You are a great reader, a profound thinker, and an ardent student, and make the most of your abilities. You enjoy culture and refinement, and whatever you undertake is done to the best of your ability.

Welcome to the family.

In line at the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market for a bagel with smoked salmon this morning, Oliver excitedly pointed down the way and claimed that he saw “the guy from that show.” It turns out he was pointing at Nobu Adilman, erstwhile-Islander and host of television’s Food Jammers (perhaps the greatest food show ever produced for television).

So while Oliver took an opportunity to bask in Nobu’s glow, I took an opportunity to introduce myself to his brother Mio. Regular readers may recall that a couple of weeks ago Mio, in his capacity as Q correspondent, blew the lid off l’affaire café for a national radio audience. Mio graciously offered me protection should my assailant send henchmen my way.

Speaking of television, earlier in the week Oliver and were playing the “name 5 things that are X” game with each other, and my challenge to him was “name 5 people on television.” After the expected Dora, Franklin and Bob The Builder, Oliver named Boomer Gallant and “that other guy who helps Boomer” (who we assumed to be Bruce).

This collage of computer-generated images taken from flight data is beautiful. It’s also scary, as it shows the monumental task of reducing airplane emissions given the huge volume of flights over North America. It’s part of a project by artist Aaron Koblin whose work includes the brilliant Sheep Market project.