There is a “flash freeze” warning in place for Prince Edward Island today, something that this temperature chart, from Dark Sky, shows the backstory of very well:

When I woke up this morning it was above freezing and our eavestroughs were filled with water from the snow melting from the roof.

As I made my way to Receiver Coffee for breakfast at 8:30 a.m.–a rare treat, as school is cancelled so I have a more flexible morning–the temperature had just dropped below 0ºC and the water on the sidewalks had started to freeze. When I finished breakfast and walked back to the office, the sidewalks were ice rink-like.

As a result of all this, the streets and sidewalks of Charlottetown are deserted this morning; combine this with my American colleagues having the day off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and it’s a very quiet day in the Reinventorium.

Earlier in the month I printed myself a fountain pen on my 3D printer. Without a nib assembly–the only part I couldn’t print myself–I wasn’t able to actually use the pen, however. This changed today when a Rosetta JoWo #6 Fountain Pen Nib, Ruthenium, Broad assembly arrived in the post from ipenstore.com. It screwed right into the barrel of the pen, I installed a J. Herbin larmes de cassis ink cartridge and, voila, I had myself a new pen:

J. Herbin translates its larmes de cassis ink as “tears of blackcurrant,” which has got to be about the best name for an ink I can imagine; they continue: “this ink with a dark purple hue is the symbol of grievance and penitence.”

I will use the pen accordingly.

Regarding the Ruthenium-plated nib, my choice, it seems, was predestined; from Wikipedia:

Ruthenium is a chemical element with symbol Ru and atomic number 44. It is a rare transition metal belonging to the platinum group of the periodic table. Like the other metals of the platinum group, ruthenium is inert to most other chemicals. Russian-born scientist of Baltic-German ancestry Karl Ernst Claus discovered the element in 1844 at Kazan State University and named it after the Latin name of his homeland, Ruthenia.

My great-grandfather John’s record in the 1911 census shows Galicia as his “country of origin,” and Ruthenian as both his “racial or tribal origin” and “nationality.” He was born in Серафинці (Serafyntsi) in what is now western Ukraine, and arrived in Canada in 1908.

Patrick Rhone:

When passing by a used bookstore, there are certain things that I must buy if I see them. I simply can’t help myself, no matter the price. This is one of those things.

“One of those things,” in this case, is copies of the Whole Earth Catalog.

I suffer from the same condition:

From Archdeacon John Clarke’s blog, describing a church event that included farm animals:

I didn’t get to see if for myself but, after the worship (when most of us were enjoying the potluck), as they were putting the animals back into the truck, the sheep made a dash for it. I can only imagine the hilarious sight of Stephen and Harley chasing a sheep in -14 degree weather. I can only imagine being the innocent guy just out for a stroll on a Sunday when suddenly he sees a sheep running towards him, being chased by two people. This heroic stranger managed to corral the sheep long enough for Stephen and Harley to capture the sheep and return it to the truck.

I’m eleven notebooks into the binding of the 23 Perforated Notes notebooks, and I think I’m finally getting a handle on the hand contortions needed to render a clean-looking result.

From today’s Autism Society of PEI newsletter:

The Autism Society of PEI and the PEI Public Library Service are happy to partner on a new collection sharing initiative. Islanders can now access the Autism Society’s in-house collection with their PEI Public Library card. Members of the public can search and request these materials through the library’s online catalogue and have them delivered directly to their local library. Thank you to the PEI Public Library for this great partnership opportunity!

This is tremendous news, and a fantastic move forward given the previously muddled situation with autism resources.

You can see all of the available resources like this:

1. Go to the Public Library Service catalogue in your browser.
2. Click Advanced Search.
3. Select “Autism PEI” under Location.
4. Click Search.

As of this writing there are about one hundred items in this collection, from 101 tips for the parents of boys with autism to Video modeling for young children with autism spectrum disorders. The ability to order these resources for delivery to one of the 26 library branches across the Island makes the collection so much more valuable than when items were only available from the Autism Society’s office in Charlottetown.

This is also a good example of interlibrary cooperation in general: there are myriad resource libraries held by non-profit organizations and institutions across the Island, with collections that could benefit greatly from exposure to a wider audience. Cooperative projects like this leverage the curatorial skills of subject-matter-expert organizations with the visibility, systems and logistics expertise of the Public Library Service.

Bravo!

Printing my ink vial holder last night on the 3D printer took a lot longer than I thought it was going to, and I had to leave the office for supper midway through the print.

I didn’t want to leave the printer unsupervised lest something go wrong and I burn down the Parish Hall, so I took advantage of the OctoPrint feature that streams a view of the printer to a browser and also of the Android “split screen” feature that allows two apps to run at the same time, to watch YouTube and the 3D printer at the same time:

I finally found a Canadian source for good quality typewriter ribbons: Toronto Typewriters. I ordered a Big 3 Combo a couple of weeks ago, and it arrived yesterday.

The “Big 3” are a black, a black/red, and a purple; I installed the purple and it’s like I have a new typewriter:

That’s a line from Marlene on the Wall, by Suzanne Vega that’s always stuck with me since I first heard it:

Even if I am in love with you
All this to say, what’s it to you?
Observe the blood, the rose tattoo
Of the fingerprints on me from you

As I related in October, my friend Nene turned me on to the world of Pen Chalet fountain pen ink samples, and starting from her lovely gift of a sample of Morning Star ink, I’ve acquired a small fleet of 4 ml vials of my own.

The only downside of the tiny sample vials from Pen Chalet is that it’s hard to keep them upright: they’re top heavy, and so whether on a table or in a drawer, I find they’re forever falling over on me.

Not such a bad thing, really.

Unless I have the top off to refill a pen (fortunately this hasn’t happened yet).

I set out this afternoon to solve this problem: I used my calipers to find that the diameter of the vials is 16mm and then designed a 3D model of an “ink vial holder” in Tinkercad:

I printed the model on my Monoprice Select Mini 3D printer this afternoon and the result does exactly what I set out to have it do, holding four Pen Chalet sample vials upright:

An unintended side-effect of the design is that it also works really well for moving the vials around; it reminds me of those boards used to transport sampler flights of beer:

Keen-eyed readers will note that my ring finger in the photo above bears witness to accidentally touching the “hot end” of the 3D printer a few weeks ago when making an adjustment. As burns go, this one went very well and served mostly as a lesson to me to never touch the hot end of a 3D printer.