A previously-unreleased episode recorded on October 1, 2020, Oliver’s 20th birthday. Earlier in the day he’d received a negative COVID-19 test.

For the past five years a lot of the posts you’ve read here are ones I wrote and posted via email, using a process I described in 2016. Having my phone or tablet become a mobile blogging platform was a tectonic shift in my blogging practice, freeing me from posting only while in the office in front of my computer. I

When I originally set this system up, I added a feature to look for an MP3 file in the email, and add this as a playable attachment to the blog post. This was fine when I was blogging from my Android phones, where I used a third-party audio recorder that saved audio in MP3 format, but since I moved to use an iPhone in mid-2020, I haven’t been able to do this because the Voice Memos app on the phone saves audio as M4A files.

I set out to solve this today by installing FFmpeg on my server, and then looking for incoming files with a MIME type of audio/x-m4a; when my script finds them, it converts them to MP3s:

system("/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i $sanitized_filename -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k $sanitized_filename_mp3");

I used the new capability with this post this morning.

Stay tuned for a revivified Peter and Oliver Podcast, missing in action since March 2020!

It’s tricky to get my Google Home to play CBC Radio One: depending on the way I ask, it’s as likely, for reasons unknown, to play the private radio station CFCY instead.

Here’s a transcript of my attempts:

Me: OK Google, play CBC Radio One.

Google Home: Streaming 95.1 FM CFCY from Tunein.

Me: OK Google, stop. OK Google, play CBC Radio.

Google Home: Streaming 95.1 FM CFCY from Tunein.

Me: OK Google, stop. OK Google, play CBC Charlottetown.

Google Home: Streaming CBC Radio One from Tunein.

I’ve almost trained my brain to do this the right way every time, but I still get it wrong about 20% of the time.

A look out our front door on this Groundhog Day morning that’s been declared an official snow day:

From a sign board on the Wright’s Creek trail (emphasis mine):

In three years, the beavers have made their presence very apparent. They even managed, likely accidentally, to remove $3000 of pond monitoring equipment.

We took advantage of the warm and sunny winter afternoon to explore the northern part of the Wright’s Creek trail system.

We ran into my friend Chantal and her family on the trail and learned that if we return someday at dusk we are likely as not to see the beavers that have moved into the area.

This spring, when the passageway under St. Peters Road is completed, there will be a seamless trail from the creek’s headwaters by the airport all the way to its mouth.

We’ll be back.

Kudos to John Andrew, and those he’s rallied over the years, for making this happen.

Rivets, eyelets, and similar fasteners have always fascinated me, and seemed like the kind of thing you would need complicated pinching tools to install. It turns out that all you need is a tiny “anvil” (really just a metal disc with a depression in it) and a “punch” (a tiny metal rod with the yin to the anvil’s yang). It takes some practice to get a nice join; once you master it, though, it’s very, very pleasing.

I used my newfound skill to make a coptic-stitched book this afternoon, installing six eyelets in each of the covers:

I have a parasocial crush on Alison Roman. Here she is cooking pasta with shallots.

Parasocial is a word I learned listening to You’re Wrong About. I don’t have a crush on its hosts, but I’m a regular listener, more for the journey than the destination.

You should almost certainly not take alcohol advice from me: you’ve likely had more to drink in the last hour than I’ve had in the last year.

But let me put in a good word for little pig cider, made in Hazel Grove, Prince Edward Island with actual pig involvement (they eat the windfall around the orchard). Oliver and I have split a bottle with supper a few times, and I’ve really liked it.

Margaret Atwood guest-edited the BBC program Today:

Twice Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood guest edits Today, looking at the theme of change. She interviews climate activist (and 2019 Today guest editor) Greta Thunberg and speaks to The Prince of Wales about campaigning for the environment over several decades. Also, Margaret’s Booker Prize co-winner Bernardine Evaristo speaks to gal-dem founder Liv Little and birdwatcher extraordinaire Mya-Rose Craig, aka Birdgirl. Hosted by Margaret Atwood - including Martha Kearney and Mishal Husain.

The episode ends with a version of The Parting Glass by Karine Polwart.