Posting my eyeglasses prescription here has got me out of a jam more than once since I started doing it, so I’ll continue the tradition: here’s the updated prescription for progressive bifocals I received this morning from Charlottetown Vision Care:

Moving back in time, here’s the 2016 prescription:

And the prescription from 2014, one I never had filled:

And the prescription from 2012:

And the prescription from 2008:

I’ve now enough data points that making a table is useful to see the evolution of my prescription:

Right Eye (OD)

My right eye, at least from the inside looking out, is the most challenged one: if I toggle back and forth between my eyes, whether wearing my existing prescription or without eyeglasses, the right eye is demonstrably weaker than the left.

The only change this time from the last prescription is in the “Add” column. This is described here as:

The Add, short for Reading Addition, is the additional correction required for reading, this can be used to make either reading glasses, bifocal glasses or Varifocal glasses. This figure is an indication of how much extra power is required ‘on top’ of the distance prescription for near or intermediate glasses.

On this prescription the “Add” went from +1.50 to +2.00:

Left Eye (OS)

The stronger eye, which presumably why its “Sphere” measure (“the strength of lens required to correct your focus “) is less than the right. Again, the only change here is the “Add” from +1.50 to +2.00:

My optometrist assures me that there’s lots of room in the corrective spectrum to continue correcting my vision for years to come.

Oliver is taking Global Issues this semester at Colonel Gray, and to start things off the class talked a lot about the United Nations.

This prompted me to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the first time, and, by way of helping to commit it to memory, to start to set and print portions of it.

Here’s the result of the first effort: the first sentence of Article 1, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

It’s set in a mixture of 30 point Futura Regular and Bold, and printed in black ink on standard white index cards.

It turned out, despite its simplicity and brevity, to be a bear of a passage to print, as there wasn’t anywhere particularly convenient to tuck the tongues of the gauge pins, so I had to improvise. But I persevered, and managed to print 100 copies. I’m going to try to print the title, in something resembling United Nations Blue, as a next step. Which will be my first attempt at mixing colours.

This photo, taken early this morning, sums up the winter of 2018 perfectly. Yesterday was warm, today is cold. The cycle repeats week after week after week. As a result, our backyard is, alternatively, an ice rink, a swimming pool, and a mud bath. Ethan the dog is not amused.

While I feel guilty for patronizing Big Tea, on a cold winter afternoon there’s no better place for a break than the front counter at David’s Tea.

Every morning The Old Farmer’s Almanac sends a tweet with a photo of the sunrise over its Dublin, New Hampshire headquarters. This morning’s photo was simply spectacular:

When Matt Rainnie was host of Mainstreet on CBC Radio we produced a couple of summer’s worth of eclectic radio pieces, like Everything You Wanted to Know About Ice Tea in 2004.

Matt is inveterately curious and a great interviewer, so when I wanted to flush subscribers to The New Yorker out of the bushes I dropped him a line, and he quickly bit, coming along to the Reinventorium yesterday morning to tape a short piece that aired this morning.

The awesome power of radio has resulted in a half dozen more subscribers outing themselves.

Two items of note on the typography trail this morning:

1. Maria Montes (you’ll remember her from Scared Shitless) posted a comprehensive list of typography events in 2018 on the Alphabettes site (itself a constant source of inspiration).
2. A fascinating post about the “angled terminal” on London street nameplates (via the Fresh Signals RSS feed from Coudal Partners)

It turns out that I’ve misunderstood the meaning of “Always Open With” on a Mac for all the years I’ve been using one.

Here’s where I’ve been going wrong.

Let’s say I have a PDF file on my Desktop, and I want to open it with the Mac Preview.app. I right-click on the PDF, select Open With, then Other…, then select Preview.app and, finally, check the Always Open With checkbox. Like this:

I’d always assumed this means “always open PDF files with Preview.app.”

But it doesn’t.

It means “always open this specific PDF file with Preview.app.”

The real way to change the default app for all PDF files is to right-click on a PDF file, select Get Info, then, in the Open with: section, select Preview.app and click the Change All… button. Like this:

Thanks to The Mac Observer and Smile technical support for steering me straight on this one.

We workers of Queen Street arrived Monday morning this week to find that the Freshii location in the old Woolworth’s was closing up shop.

When Freshii first opened I was a regular customer, often getting lunch there two or three times a week: the food was, true to the name, fresh, the staff were friendly, and it was handy-by.

Over the last while, though, I soured.

From a quality and service perspective things never seemed to be the same once partner-business Dynamic Fitness moved to Pownal Street. The Freshii online ordering app, which I tried to use as an early-adopter, was an unmitigated disaster. Other places opened nearby that were more on their game.

The straws that broke the camel’s back happened at a brand level: first came the refusal to abide by Ontario’s requirement to publish calorie counts for menu items, and second was what appeared to be a doubling-down on the “juice cleanse” fad, something that is absent scientific evidence.

And so I hadn’t been into Freshii for more than a year when the news came. And so I was right: 2016 was Peak Juice Bar in Charlottetown.

The Guardian reports that the City of Charlottetown Planning Department is seeking input on any amendments to the Zoning and Development Bylaw that might be required once the retail sale of cannabis becomes legal later this year.

Here’s the input I offered:

This email is in response to reports in The Guardian that you are seeking input from the public on any amendments that might be required to the Zoning and Development Bylaw regarding the retail sale of cannabis, and, specifically, distance limitations with relation to “schools, daycares and places where children assemble.”

My input is: there is no need to any amendment to the Zoning and Development Bylaw at all. 

The retail sales of cannabis should be permitted anywhere that the retail sale of anything else is permitted.

I see no conflict between the retail sales of cannabis and the presence of children, or of anyone else.

I am fascinated by how provincial and municipal politicians are riding a knife-edge of favouring legalization while feeling an obligation (or genuine feeling) to express vague discomfort about the entire notion. Former Finance Minister Albert Roach, for example, was quoted on the CBC in December discussing locations for provincial cannabis stores:

“To ensure that wherever we put them, that they are not in any sort of a co-location, next door or in the same mall as a current liquor store … We don’t want to locate near schools or playgrounds … we want to be very clear that that’s a concern to us,” he said.

I’m not sure what evils Mr. Roach, or the City of Charlottetown, might come from playground-cannabis store-proximity; it’s truly perplexing. Are they expecting gun play? Do they imagine stoned people milling about expressing dangerous, divergent thoughts?

I hope the City does the sensible thing, and simply proceeds business-as-usual.