Founders’ Hall has been gutted of its interpretive elements, including the once state-of-the-art holographic Harry Holman. What’s left is a simple brick shell, ready for its next chapter.

On Saturday, Oliver and I had a lovely day in Central Queens, punctuated by lunch at the Landmark Café.

Between courses I was chatting to Olivier Sauvé about how Bryson Guptill had written a book about his walk of the Camino Francés, despite having no experience writing or publishing books. We agreed that this was a good thing, and that more people should publish books, especially now that the barriers to entry are so low. Olivier joked “Like you could make a book about this lunch.”

So, of course, I did.

The volume of maximum fun we had outstripped my ability to set and print the body of the book using traditional means, so I resorted to using word processor and laser printer means, albeit wrapped in a binding that allowed me to use my newfound bookbinding skills. Here’s what it looks like:

While the book is best-experienced in printed form, that it takes 30 minutes to print and bind every copy means that doesn’t scale to the size of the blog readership, so you’re also welcome to read it as a PDF.

If it was a book in need of an excerpt for the back cover, here’s what I’d use:

Oliver doesn’t like to leave things unfinished, and he gets stressed out by the transition from one activity to another, so shifting him into a mindset where he was ready to head to the farmers’ market was stressful for both of us: there was some yelling and swearing (by him) and some subterfuge (“well, I can just go to the market by myself, I guess”) by me. It was not the finest hour for either of us, but we came out the other end.

Olivier is right: more people should make more books about more things.

What’s yours?

Seven years ago (!), a font of Bodoni was my first typeface purchase; I bought it from Don Black after I started printing, looking for a workaday face that I could use to get my hands dirty.

This weekend, I received the lovely gift of a ragtag collection of metal type that had been hiding out in a garage in Crapaud, and face number one, in the first layer of ice cube trays in the box, turned out to be 14 pt. Ultra Bodoni. I printed up some cards for the donor, and here’s a sample:

McGrew’s book says this about it:

Ultra Bodoni and its variations are now well established under the Bodoni name, but historically they hardly belong there, being more closely related to the nineteenth-century English “fat” faces. One reviewer called Ultra Bodoni “an old Bruce face with a few redrawn characters.” Actually it was entirely redrawn, but the resemblance is there. The Ultra Bodonis do not have the long ascenders and descenders of other Bodonis, and the transition from thick to thin is more abrupt.

Whether it’s strictly a Bodoni or not, it is an intoxicating typeface, full of lovely details, like the way the lower case ‘f’ and ‘j’ have a little curl in them:

I’d like to think that the typefaces gossip about each other when nobody’s looking, and so one could imagine one typeface saying snootily to another “Oh, they’re from the Ultra Bodonis, and aren’t really Bodonis at all.”

One can dream.

Oliver and I were having our supper last week at My Plum, My Duck, the new vegan restaurant on University Avenue (try explaining that to your 1995 self). While I was tucking in to my macrobiotic plate and Oliver into his veggie burger, Kate & Anna McGarrigle came on the hi-fi, which was almost too much of a cliché to be a cliché, Kate & Anna being something of standard-bearers for the macrobiotic vegan social justice warriors of the 1980s.

Some say the heart is just like a wheel. I cannot hear that song without being transported back to 1986, spinning LPs in the booth at Trent Radio.

Now this is going to get complicated, so hold on.

Kate McGarrigle was married, from 1971 to 1977, to musician Loudon Wainwright III.

They had two children, both of whom went on to become successful musicians in their own right: Rufus (Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk) and Martha (Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole).

Loudon Wainwright later had a relationship with Suzzy Roche (Death of Suzzy Roche), who was another mainstay of the late-century singer-songwriter intelligentsia. The Roches’ Hammond Song was on my playlist for many years; we’ll always love you, but that’s not the point.

In 1981, Roche and Wainwright had a daughter, Lucy Wainwright Roche. Lucy is herself also an accomplished musician (Call Your Girlfriend); as if proving that Spotify is more than it’s cracked up to be, she just showed up in my “discover” playlist. And so now I am.

The amount of musical DNA coursing through the veins of the members of that extended family is mind-boggling; what Thanksgiving dinners they must have.

The Catholic infrastructure of Charlottetown will keep me sketching for years.

Remember the entrance to Victoria Row last year, with its crazy oversignage that looked like this:

Well, the City of Charlottetown has kicked the crazy up a notch this year, adding even more unwelcoming signage:

If the trend continues, next year we’ll see flashing electronic “YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE” signs.

As last year, I humbly offer an alternative:

A young man among trees.

Librarians from across Atlantic Canada are meeting in Charlottetown this week for the 2017 Atlantic Provinces Library Association conference. I’m presenting a talk this afternoon on my experiences as Hacker in Residence at Robertson Library called Why your Library Needs a Hacker in Residence  (and what I’ve learned being one).

I’m a let-the-cat-out-of-the-bag-early kind of speaker, so you can grab the slides for my talk now as a PDF. Or, if you’re near the Rodd Charlottetown from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. today, you’re welcome to crash the talk: just walk in like you own the place, and come up to the second floor to the scenic Richmond Room and take a seat.

As my jumping off point, I’m starting with a quote from Dave Winer’s seminal 1995 blog post We Make Shitty Software:

Software is a process, it’s never finished, it’s always evolving. That’s its nature. We know our software sucks. But it’s shipping! Next time we’ll do better, but even then it will be shitty. The only software that’s perfect is one you’re dreaming about. Real software crashes, loses data, is hard to learn and hard to use. But it’s a process. We’ll make it less shitty. Just watch!

This by way of putting my first slide in context:

Which is to say: because libraries suck, and libraries know they suck, they are uniquely capable of enthusiastically integrating a Hacker in Residence into their midst. It’s a process.

It’s a big day in the neighbourhood: the 18 bells of St. Dunstan’s Basilica, silent and grounded for many years, are being remounted inside the eastern spire.

This wouldn’t have happened without the tenacious work of our friend Catherine Hennessey and the generosity of those that donated to the cause.

If you’re downtown today, come watch the spectacle.