I ran the Island’s first webserver at the end of a 14.4 Kbps modem. It worked just fine. Although it took about 24 hours to download a CD-ROM’s worth of data over that line, it was more than enough for the traffic of that day (circa 1994). If memory serves, the PEI Crafts Council paid PEINet about $350/month for that connection.

Fast forward to the present: Island Tel or Eastlink will now sell me 1 Mbps (that’s one million bits per second, 71 times faster than a 14.4 modem) for half that price.

Sometimes, if you’re not watching the ball, orders of magnitiude can change and you don’t notice. Amazing.

I made two calls today, one to Eastlink and one to Island Tel, to ask about their low-end, static-IP “high speed” Internet products. Here’s what I found:

When I called Eastlink’s toll-free line, I had to wade down two levels through the telephone tree, then wait 4 minutes on hold before I could talk to someone. The person I ended up with seemed quite capable, and could answer all my questions.

Eastlink’s bottom-end service, branded Enhance, is $150/month, with an $89 installation fee. It includes 1 to 5 static IP addresses, DNS service, and 10MB of web space. Bandwidth is 1 Mbps up, 5 Mbps down.

Island Tel’s toll-free number was answered on the first ring by a live operator. The operator was quite helpful, and answered my basic questions. When I had additional questions that were beyond her knowledge, she promised to get back to me, and approx. 1 hour later I received a call back from a very knowledgeable sales rep.

Island Tel’s bottom-end service, branded OfficeLink, is $199.95/month (however various discounts can take this as low as $139.95/month) with a $150 installation fee (no discount for existing DSL service switched over). It includes 5 static IP addresses, DNS service, 5 MB of web space, 15 hours of dial-up service an a Merx account. Bandwidth is 1 Mbps.

In a previous life I earned a small income training blind people to use computers with screen readers and voice boards. This was in the DOS era, and the word processor of choice — indeed about the only major word processor available other than WordStar — was WordPerfect.

At that time WordPerfect was still produced and marketed by its original maker, WordPerfect Corp., based in Utah (the product was later acquired by Novell, then sold to Corel; back in those days WordPerfect Corp. was well known for offering free lifetime technical support).

Anyway, whenever you started WordPerfect for DOS, the first screen you would see would flash by in a second or two, giving the program’s title and copyright; most people would’t ever see this, as it flashed by so quickly.

However screen readers “see” everything, so every time you started WordPerfect, the screen reader would dutifully read the entire mesage, including “Orem, Utah, USA”, which was the location of WordPerfect Corp. Except that the screen readers of the day weren’t smart enough to read “USA” as U-S-A, so they would read “usa”, sounding like “youse-ah”. So we would hear “Orem you-tah youse-ah”.

This little bit of audio is burned into my ears. And, no doubt, the ears of many others from those times.

Under the category “things you learn when you read the fine print” is the fact that the cost from Maritime Electric to power an air raid or fire siren is “$3.30 per month per HP of nameplate rating.” This according to their Rate Schedules and Policies document.

Roman Holiday and Heaven Can Wait are very similar films, made 25 years apart. Beyond that they are both Paramount Pictures releases, both movies involve a romance where mistaken (or hidden, or misunderstood) identity plays a central role (in Roman Holiday, Gregory Peck as reporter Joe Bradley falls for the Audrey Hepburn as Princess Ann, but Hepburn’s character doesn’t know that Peck’s character knows she’s a Princess; in Heaven Can Wait, Warren Beatty as Joe Pendleton living in Leo Farnsworth’s body falls for Julie Christie as activist Betty Logan, but Christie’s character doesn’t know that Beatty’s character is a football player living in an industrialist’s body). And both movies end in a press conference (of sorts), after which the plot resolves itself.

The two films end in very different ways, however: in 1953 in Roman Holiday, it was acceptable to have a movie end with the romantic leads forever apart (Gregory Peck takes that long, lonely walk into the credits, after a press conference during which he shares some of the most delightful “we know that we will forever be apart” body language ever captured on film), whereas by 1979 in Heaven Can Wait, a twist of fate leads the characters back together (“You’re the quarterback…?” says Julie Christie, realizing that the football player she’s met in the corridor is her reincarnated love).

Each is a perfectly wonderful and endearing ending, but the difference points out a trend that has only grown stronger in the intervening years, which is that modern audiences now demand satisfaction at the end of their movies: Meg Ryan must find Tom Hanks, ad infinitum. This is sad: it means that movies just snap out of a mold, have little romantic suspense; these movies teach us little about the delights of ephemeral experiences. Sometimes it’s okay that things don’t get resolved. Sometimes it’s better.

Don’t the members of Boy Bands like ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys actually play instruments? I never see them with any in their videos on MuchMusic. Where does the music come from? Who’s playing?

I received this email from the WebTV ombudsman yesterday:

Dear peter,

Thank you for your inquiry about WebTV hardware.

Unfortunately, WebTV is no longer being sold in Canada. You may wish to contact the manufacturers to see if they know of any outlets that may still have some WebTVs for sell.

Here are the manufacturers’ toll free numbers: Philips/Magnavox at 1-888-813-7069 Mitsubishi at 1-800-332-2119 Samsung at 1-800-SAMSUNG Sony at 1-888-772-7669 Echostar at 1- 800-333-3474.

I am not a coffee drinker. At all. Never have been. However I’m fairly confident that Tim Hortons’ Iced Cappuccino bears little relation to bona fide cappuccino.

That said, Tim Hortons’ Iced Cappuccino is my current most favourite drink in the whole wide world, something that, given the caffine and other goo that drinking one pumps into my body, is no doubt to my detriment.

Curious to know what the nutritional value (or deficit) of the Iced Cappuccino is, I was happy to find Tim Hortons’ Nutrition Guide [PDF] on their website.

And so I was able to learn that a 10 oz. Iced Cappuccino made with cream (apparently I have the choice of having it made with cream or with 2% milk) has 230 calories, 2 g of protein, 11 g of fat, and 87 mg of caffeine.

This compares to 78 calories, 0.6 g of protein, 4 g of far, and 106 mg of caffeine for a 10 oz. regular coffee.

If the on-shore flurry activity and general slush are getting to you, take a look at Air Canada’s seat sale, announced today. There are quite good fares: Halifax to London return for $448, Halifax to Bermuda return for $358.

Oddly enough, the Tim Hortons menu item with the most total fat is the Garden Vegetable Sandwich, with 23 g (just a titch above the chocolate glazed donut, with 22 g). And to think I’d been ordering that as a “healthy alternative”!

The USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans tells us to use fats and oils sparingly: they suggest a healthy diet contains no more than 30 percent of calories from fat. About 45% of the calories in a Garden Vegetable Sandwich are from fat; in an Iced Cappucino, it’s about 43%.

WARNING: I am not a nutrionist. We suggest you consult a nutrionist before you stop or start eating Iced Cappucinnos or Garden Vegetable Sandwiches to determine if they’re right for your diet. If you die a thousands deaths from drinking too many Iced Cappuccinos, we cannot be held responsible. But you will probably die happy anyway.

One of the most perplexing things about Microsoft Windows (any version) is that sometimes you need to click once, and sometimes you need to click twice (aka double-clicking). By this point in my life, the difference between the two is hard-wired into my DNA, and I don’t have to think about it. However when training new computer users how to use Windows, I’m at a loss as to how to explain what the difference is. How does once describe situations in which a double-click is required vs. situations where a single-click is required (esp. without using the work invoke)?
Perhaps the only honest advice I could find online to this question is on this University of Michigan website: If a single click does not work, try a double-click.

There’s an attempt at a fuller explanation on the geekgirl.talk website. It’s about 1,200 words long.

I had a weird dream last night in which I discovered that in the U.S.A., names in the telephone books are sorted by first name rather than last name. This came as a big shock to me, and I realized that I had to scurry around changing all sorts of web applications in which I’d assumed the opposite. Fortunately, when I woke up this was no longer a problem.