Oliver and I went to Baba’s for supper one night last week, his first time there, what with it being primarily a bar and all. I have a good meal every time I eat at Baba’s, and during the day and early evening it’s almost never crowded, so you have the place to yourself (and the ghosts of musicians past).

The service is always good too; this is to be expected from a person named “Night Bartend,” of course, who was presumably being groomed for the position since birth.

On Sunday morning Oliver alerted me that Darcie Lanthier, our Green candidate for Charlottetown, had put out a call for volunteers to meet that afternoon on the Confederation Centre of the Arts plaza to accompany her around Farm Day in the City for a video shoot. Without entirely knowing what I was getting myself into, I asked Oliver if he wanted to go and, of course, Green-blooded Oliver said yes.

It was an interesting process to simultaneously watch and be a part of. Mille Clarkes was shooting the video, and it was “B-roll” that she was after–shots of Darcie walking around and talking to electors that would run under Darcie’s voiceover. I can attest that this wasn’t a pantomime: Darcie actually took the opportunity to talk to actual electors about actual things. Here she is talking to an elector-to-be while Mille is shooting:

My primary role in all of this, other than accompanying Oliver and keeping him out of trouble, was to carry Darcie’s cloak, cast off when it became apparent that it was actually quite balmy out. I think I did a good job of cloak-carrying.

What I didn’t completely grasp is just how much of me and Oliver would be in the “B-roll.” Given my affinity for Darcie’s candidacy, I’m fine with that. And I was happy to see that I was apparently enjoying myself, as I’m smiling throughout.

The end result–turned around in amazingly short order–is as heartfelt and genuine a campaign video as I’ve ever seen.

With the release of MacOS Catalina yesterday, I was reminded that it’s no longer possibleto run 32 bit applications if I upgrade.

If you’re a Mac user, you’ve likely wondered about dialog boxes like this that have been popping up in recent years:

The “not optimized for your Mac” is kind of a misnomer, especially because the meat of the issue is in smaller print below in the “this app will not work with future versions of macOS.”

MacOS Catalina is that version.

And so if I were to upgrade my Mac to Catalina today, for example, I could no longer use the app installed for my Doxie scanner.

Indeed, according to the maker of the scanner, the software will not be updated, so if and when I update to Catalina, I’ll no longer be able to use the scanner at all.

You can get a list of all of what Apple now refers to as “legacy software” by clicking the Apple menu, then About This Mac, System Report, and, finally, Legacy Software in the left-hand sidebar: this will show you all the 32 bit applications currently installed on your Mac that won’t run if you update to Catalina.

Here’s what’s on the list for me:

• AccountEdge Pro v2019 (it will be updated, but not yet)
• BBEdit (an update is available; I just need to install it)
• CoolTerm (an update is available; I just need to install it)
• Doxie (no update available)
• Google’s Android File Transfer (no update available)
• GraphicConverter (a paid update is available)
• Logitech Camera Settings (no update available)
• PDFpenPro (a paid update is available)
• Sound Studio (a paid update is available)

The only real deal breaker for me (other than bricking my scanner) is AccountEdge, which I use for bookkeeping, so cannot be without. So I’ve turned off automatic updates, and I’ll wait for the update to be released.

Jeremy Cherfas talks to Laura Valli about porridge, and the Estonian porridge café she helped to found, on the latest episode of Eat This Podcast.

Ten top simple field recording tips from Cities and Memory; includes:

You might think that’s only a gentle breeze, and it can’t possibly do anything to your recording, but IT WILL. Even a light wind sounds like someone’s ripped your mic in half, and will render your recording unusable. Use wind shields, use shelter, avoid wind at all costs.

The recording here is a classic example of it: riding our bicycles by the metal fence surrounding the Charlottetown Event Grounds on Saturday, I noticed the the gusty winds were making beautiful music through the slats. So I pulled out my phone and pressed “record,” trying to shield it from the wind. I failed. So you’ll have to take my word for it.

See also diy (do it yourself) from Quiet American.

Link provenance: William Denton to Radio Apogee to this exhortation to make field recordings of decent quality.

A couple of years ago I wrote about how the CBC was A/B testing different headlines on its local news website. They’re back at it again today, testing the headlines “P.E.I. plastic bag recycling cut ‘to almost nothing’ by ban” and “P.E.I. plastic bag recycling troubles disappear with ban” on this story:

Using the little hack I wrote back when this first appeared, you can see which headline is “winning” (which is to say “most clicked upon by readers”):

I’d love to sit in on the meeting where the results of this test were discussed: if “to almost nothing” is the winner, what would the instruction to headline writers be?

From my friend Vivian comes a pointer to Our Happy Life, an exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture that closes this week:

The exhibition Our Happy Life is a three-act study on the new spatial models founded on the measurement of happiness; including a dissection of the political project behind methods of city data collection and application, an investigation of the emotional component of the real estate market, and a demystification of the idea of social space. Our Happy Life is a narrative anti-manual which explores and interprets recent paradigms that are shaping our present perception of place, giving new identity to the materials of the private space of our homes, reconceiving our working environments, and transforming development itself through the planning of our cities.

Photo by Vivan Beer
Our Happy Life: Architecture and Well-Being in the Age of Emotional Capitalism
Installation view, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal, 2019. © CCA

Oliver and I have now been bicycling to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market every Saturday for two months.

Since we began in August, quite literally from a standing start, the weather has turned cool and the trail’s gotten a little muddy, but Oliver’s cycling has improved, bit by bit, every week.

As the University of PEI is only a few hundred metres up the trail, every Thursday we also cycle the same route up to campus for Oliver’s Thursday afternoon class.

Our only real issue now (other than the incline from Joe Ghiz Park to the 1911 Jail, which we both complain about every time we encounter it uphill), is that I haven’t found a safe way to transport Ethan the Dog with us, so he’s had to stay home on Saturdays and Thursdays.

We’re going to try and keep this up until the snow means we can’t.

The temporary death of our refrigerator (it died completely; then, after a 12 hour rest and defrost, sprang back to life) resulted in a lot of spoiled food (sigh) and an opportunity to really clean out the fridge and freezer (yeah!).

So before supper I made a bicycle run, with trailer in tow, up to Sobeys to replenish our larder.

After supper it became obvious that I had left out several important things, like danishes and toilet paper. So I got back on the bike and rode back to Sobeys. I didn’t need the trailer for this run, but I did need something to hold the groceries, so I snapped a pannier onto the bike.

Which is how I came to discover that bicycle panniers snap equally as well onto the side of Sobeys grocery carts, providing not only a handy place to stick the pannier while shopping, but also an easy way to load up the pannier at the cash.

See also How to Pronounce Pannier.

At the federal candidates forum on environmental issues on October 3, 2019 at the University PEI, here’s what Liberal incumbent Sean Casey finished with (emphasis mine):

I want to talk now to progressive voters, and I think everyone here would put themselves in that category. On October 22, Canada’s going to have Prime Minister Andrew Scheer or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 

I think that anyone that honestly believes that there’s a third possibility probably isn’t following the news. There’s only one way to stop Andrew Scheer, and anyone that cares about progressive values will want to stop Andrew Sheer. 

Is the risk of voting with your heart worth it?

Cynical fear-mongering aside, the calculus of this doesn’t made sense.

A vote for Sean Casey results in, well, more Sean Casey.

No matter the national result, a vote for Green candidate Darcie Lanthier — the “voting with your heart” option, in Mr. Casey’s take, I imagine — results in effective representation from an enthusiastic new legislator as part of a larger Green caucus working to leverage Green values into Parliament’s agenda, and an MP who will not only work hard for Charlottetown, but is sure to be a national figure.

That not only seems like a vote my heart can live with, but makes a lot of sense to my head as well.

(Video clip from Environmental Coalition of PEI Livestream of the meeting)