I often trace my interest in letterpress back to my 2010 visit to Berlin with Oliver and the numerous printing exhibits we found in the museums of the city. But, in truth, my first taste of letterpress came much earlier, when, in the late 1990s, I had business cards made for Digital Island, the name of my company at the time.

I’d somehow made contact with Fred Louder, who’d recently relocated from Montreal to O’Leary, with his press in tow; I was so inspired by what he showed me that I asked Fred if he would create business cards for me, and he generously agreed.

The resulting cards, printed on a rainbow of lovely, toothy paper, are works of art.

Digital Island is, of course, no longer Digital Island. And we no longer live in the New Haven 675 exchange. So the cards have receded out of utility and into examples of the craft and memories of the way things used to me.

Frances Ann Squire was Oliver’s teacher in grade 9. Today it was announced that she’s been recognized with a Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence. So now everyone else can come to know what Oliver has known for years: she is a skilled, dedicated, innovative educator.

“Trust grows when you take time to understand the thoughts and feelings of others before you act.”

So starts the third chapter of The Right Honourable David Johnston’s book Trust: Twenty Ways to Build a Better Country. He continues:

My grandmother told me that people were given two ears and just one mouth for a good reason: we should listen before we speak. She was a wise woman and an early proponent of what we refer to now as emotional intelligence. While that term gets bandied about quite a bit these days, emotional intelligence at its core is the simple act of listening to and empathizing with another person—and using that listening and empathizing to inform your decisions and actions.

His Excellency’s motto as Governor General was Contemplare Meliora – To envisage a better world – and this book is an surprisingly useful guide to doing just that.

In December 2018, at great expense and complexity, we insulated our attic, removing decades old asbestos insulation and replacing it with R40 of blown fiberglass.

Did it help our energy consumption?

Here’s a comparison of our 2018 and 2019 winter season oil bills:

Oil usage information alone doesn’t account for differences in heating due to differences in the weather; with the help of Efficiency PEI, I determined that there were 2,391 heating degrees days in the first four months of 2018, and 2,567 heating degree days in the first four months of 2019, suggesting that, all other things being equal, we would have used 7% more oil in 2019 (about 2,580 litres).

But we actually used 2% less oil, so our net oil savings due to insulation was closer to 9%.

Our home heating oil cost, because of the increase in the price of oil, doesn’t reflect savings, but rather a 2% increase:

Had our consumption not dropped due to insulation, we would have spent about $2,348 on oil in 2019, meaning our net cost savings was about $129.

From Fairphone: The most sustainable phone is the one you already own. In part:

A phone’s biggest environmental impact comes from the manufacturing process. That’s why – whether it’s a Fairphone or something else – the most sustainable phone available is the one you already own. So the longer you keep it, the more sustainable it becomes. Extending the lifespan of existing phones is the best strategy for reducing their impact on the planet. And it’s not only good for the earth – it’s easy on your wallet, too!

While keeping our 2000 Volkswagen Jetta has been mostly due to frugality and limited resources, I do take some pride in having not needed to cause another car to be created to replace ours.

Seth Godin on digital hygeine:

The solution is fun and simple: find a smart person and have them watch you use the computer for an hour.

She’ll share ten shortcuts and principles that will amaze you.

And then you can return the favor.

I did, albeit less intentionally, with Olle several years ago, the big payoff of which was turning off email notifications; this has improved my productivity and reduced work stress.

Last month I watched Josh MacFadyen use QGIS in a coffee shop for 15 minutes and I’ve been using what I’ve learned to great effect ever since.

Manitoba fiddler Patti Kusturok accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Rusu at the National Fiddling Day celebration at St. Paul’s Anglican Church on May 18, 2019. Sound engineering in the hall was by Brent Chaisson; I plucked this sound from the back of the church with my phone.

I’m putting this here because I ran into a confounding issue that it took me a long time to find a solution for, and I’m hoping to solve the issue for others in the same situation.

You’re using Firefox and OpenStreetMap on a Mac and you’re clicking on the “Show My Location” icon in the toolbar and you’re seeing the error “Geolocation error: User denied geolocation prompt”:

You’re seeing this despite having granted Firefox permission to use your location for openstreetmap.org:

You are confounded. You search for answers, and all you find are references to geolocation and https, but you’re already accessing openstreetmap.org via https, so that’s not the issue.

The issue might lie with your macOS Location Settings:

Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Location Services and make sure the Firefox.app settings is checked (you might need to click on the padlock in the bottom-left and enter your system password to be able to make this change).

Once you do this, you should find that the “Show My Location” process works in OpenStreetMap as expected:

Today was National Fiddling Day, an occasion for which we have Libbe Hubley to thank, as it was her Private Members Bill in the Senate that conjured it into being.

The day was marked here in Charlottetown with a rousing concert St Paul’s Anglican Church.

Just in case you were concerned that you might have missed a statutory holiday, An Act Respecting National Fiddling Day offers clarity on this point:

For greater certainty, National Fiddling Day is not a legal holiday or a non-juridical day.

We refilled this hand soap dispenser with Downeast Hand & Body Soap at Riverview Country Market for 98 cents. (the original bottle of Nature Clean soap cost more than $5.00).