At Adam Curry’s suggestion, I got myself a MySpace profile. I imagine Oliver will have one, of his own volition, within the month; as a Responsible Parent, I need to see what the kids are up to these days.

I figured if I did a search of Charlottetown I might find a MySpace user or two. To my surprise, there are 1487 MySpace users within 5 miles of where I type. Who knew.

And they’re not all young rockers: Lobie Daughton and Campbell Webster are both there. I halfway expect to encounter Wilbur MacDonald in there somewhere (with apologies to Wilbur for using him as the archetypal “non-young rocker”).

Off to type my list of favourite bandz in.

Tomorrow is “Good” Friday. So we’ve all got the day off (or at least free to engage in solemn remembrance, etc.). For we of the tea-drinking persuasion, however, the day brings danger: Shoppers Drug Mart is out of Honest Tea, both outlets of the Formosa Tea House will be closed for the day, as will Interlude and Monsoon. Perhaps I’ll have to make my own tea.

Catherine has an appointment out in Hunter River for the day, and Oliver and I might use the opportunity for a drive to loop up to PEI National Park for a hike in the woods. Perhaps they’ll have tea on in Rustico?

At least we’ve got a free pass from doing yard work; according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac:

The Creoles of Louisiana believed that if the ground were cut open on this day, Christ’s blood would run out into the rows.

We wouldn’t want that to happen, would we.

I’m sad to report that PDFReports, an excellent Romanian-built product that I talked about in this video about the 2003 election, has been discontinued by Interakt. In response to an email I sent yesterday, I got the following kind reply this morning:

I am sorry to inform you but the PDF Reports tool has been discontinued for the past 2 years. We are no longer supporting nor updating this tool, so my best advice would be to search for something else that will offer you the same type of functionality.

What I can tell you is that due to the fact it has not been updated, PDF Reports will not work properly with PHP 5. I do feel sorry about this. If there is anything else we can do for you please let me know.

I’ve used PDFReports for a variety of systems: it produced the List of Electors for the 2003 election and for the municipal elections that followed, and we use it at Yankee to produce financial reports. It’s flexible, has an XML-based template system, and is quite extensible in PHP. So before we make the jump to PHP5 at Elections PEI and Yankee, I’ll be looking for a replacement.

One of my Copenhagen team points to christiania bikes as a possible way of meeting our transport needs when we visit this spring:

Christiania bikes was, as the name suggests, developed in car-free Christiania, Copenhagen. Bicycle trailers, an early product, were followed on the market in 1984 by the first CA-Bike. The bikes were developed in dialogue with the consumers, and safety, quality and durability became the hallmarks of the design. Outside Christiania notice was taken of these solid environmental bikes, which are now exported around the world.

I find myself in the same odd position as the Atlantic Technology Centre (for the first time, I think!). If you go to their website with a .com on the end, you’ll get a helpful teen porn guide (their actual web address ends in .ca). Same thing, alas, with ruk.com. Oh well. At least r - u - k - dot - c - a has a sort of rhythm to it.

The Plazes API has gone 1.0, and has lots of interesting new features. But, oddly, no “launch” method. Update: there’s a new Plazer API for this (thanks Stefan).

I brought the camera alone on my way to work this morning and took some photos of spring’s arrival in Charlottetown.

I was down on Queen Street this evening, on my way to the Churchill Arms for dinner with Catherine and Oliver, and I popped my head into the old Carter’s building across the street to see how the renovations are coming along on the new grocery store.

To my surprise they’re making excellent headway: the wall between the two halves of the building has been breached and dry-walled, there’s a new floor installed, and coolers are set up along one wall. It looks like they could be open with a month.

There’s a note on Suzanne Vega’s website about her recent marriage to trial lawyer Paul Mills. In addition to coming as a blow to all of us who hoped to one day marry Suzanne Vega ourselves, the item suggests a very, very long engagement:

The couple met at Folk City on West 4th Street in 1981. Mr. Mills proposed to Miss Vega in May, 1983, and she accepted his proposal on Christmas Day, 2005.

It concludes:

This is the bride’s second marriage and the groom’s first, the last for both.

If you’ll be in New England at the end of May, you can catch Suzanne playing at the Mohegan Sun Casino “Wolf Den” in Uncasville, CT on May 31st and June 1, 2006. Be sure to visit The Old Farmer’s Almanac General Store while you’re there.

One of the skills that Oliver gets from his Miller DNA is an uncanny ability to play the card game Concentration and related “turn over random things until you find two that match” activities. Catherine is a Concentration savant, as is our niece Patricia, and in recent weeks Oliver has been sourcing Concentration-like games online and watching him play is like watching Frank Sinatra sing.

By way of pre-Denmark cultural preparation, I added a bookmark to Oliver’s Firefox last night pointing at Oline, a pre-schooler website from Danish television. True to form, Oliver found a Concentration-like activity there, and Catherine just phoned me to say that every time he finds a match a big Danish cheer emits from the computer. As such, Oliver is becoming well-equipped to attend football matches and other cheering-related events in Copenhagen this spring.