Some nights don’t end the way they start.

Tonight Oliver and I were in the audience at The Walrus Talks at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, an evening of short talks by interesting Canadians, one of 13 such events organized this spring across Canada.

Oliver, for reasons I didn’t completely understand, but nevertheless supported, came equipped with a list of questions.

By way of trying to head off any frustration that might arise both from the night’s programming seeming not have much in common with the questions on Oliver’s list, and from there being no Q&A on the agenda, I gently suggested that this might not be a night where Oliver’s specific intellectual itches got scratched.

Alas this groundwork had the opposite effect: Oliver immediately got rather agitated, and my mind started to go into “how am I going to maneuver my anxious son out of here without upsetting Graham Greene” mode.

Oliver, of course, would have none of this, as if anything is true of him, it is a steely determination to finish anything he starts.

So we stayed. Oliver took deep breaths and, by times, squeezed my hand so tight I thought it might fall off.

And we survived. Even relaxed a little toward the end.

As the crowd let out, we dutifully subscribed to The Walrus as was requested, enjoyed the bountiful buffet lunch, chatted with friends, signed the big map of Canada, and then prepared to head off into the night.

But remember the questions? And the steely determination to finish? Oliver made it clear that we weren’t done yet. There were still questions on the floor.

So I proposed, what with eminent Canadians in the room, that we pluck up our courage and seek answers.

Truth be told, it was only I that needed pluck, as Oliver was primed and ready.

He started with the speaker Clifton van der Linden, CEO of Vox Pop Labs. Oliver asked him about fake news and real news and genuine news. We had a nice chat about Google and Facebook and AI.

Next he sought out speaker (and Colonel Gray alum) Chris Zhou for answers about his views on social media. This led to a chat about engagement and voting and whether politicians who seek advice from advisory councils actually want to listen to it.

Oliver finished the evening by patiently waiting to speak with The Walrus Publisher—and the evening’s convenor—Shelley Ambrose, and asking her “what’s your view of this Island of ours from the viewpoint of The Walrus?”

Shelley, it immediately became obvious, has exceptional people skills, and spoke directly to Oliver—rarer than you might think, alas—and answered his question with passion and conviction.

Questions answered, off into cold spring air we went.

A night that started in distress ended up a night of engagement and answered questions.

And proof—yet again—that if I breathe deeply myself, and listen to my son, he’ll show me what he needs.

And take me places I’d never go on my own to boot.

Stumbling across the LIDAR data for Prince Edward Island made me think “I wonder if I can print 3D maps on my 3D printer” (this is called either “lateral thinking” or “getting easily distracted”).

So I decided to try my hand at it.

Here’s what I did.

First, I used the Natural Resources Canada Geospatial Data Extraction tool to grab a digital elevation model of the greater Charlottetown area.

Here are the options I selected:

1. I zoomed the map into Charlottetown, and selected “Current Map Extent” for the “Clipping Area.”
2. Under “Select Data” I chose “Elevation Model (CDEM).”
3. Under “Data Options” I selected “Colour Relief.”

Everything else I left with the default settings. I submitted my request, and about 5 minutes later, I got a download link by email, and that download contained a GeoTIFF file that looks like this:

I loaded the GeoTIFF file into QGIS, enabled the DEM 3D plugin (Plugins > Manage and Install Plugins… > DEMto3D), and then, under Raster > DEMto3D, I selected DEM 3D printing and set the printing options as follows:

I set the “exaggeration factor” to 1.5 to have the terrain accentuated: Charlottetown’s not a hilly place, and with the resolution of the printer combined with the small size of the print (about 1 inch by 2 inches), I didn’t want to end up printing a formless void.

I exported an STL file and then loaded this STL file into Cura for slicing; in the “layers” view in Cura it looked like this (I added a removable “raft” around the the model to mitigate against warping; this may or may not have been useful):

The print took 61 minutes to print; here’s what it looked like when it was done:

It’s not a stunning visual tour de force, but it’s a start–really a proof of concept more than anything else–that sets the path for more experimenting.

Six years ago I built a little script to scrape all of the public GIS data from the Province of PEI’s GIS Data Layers website; the script still works, and you can grab it here.

By way of making sure it still works, I ran it, and grabbed all the data–1.2 GB in all.

One layer caught my eye in the downloads directory, Lidar_Ct.SHP. I loaded it up into QGIS and this lovely rendering of the Island appeared before me:

This is one of those situations where it’s helpful not to see the trees in the forest: zoom in closer and all you see is a confusing thicket of contour lines, but zoom out to the entire Island, and it’s rich Corinthian leather.

Want to try this at home? Follow these steps:

1. Download an install QGIS (it’s free).
2. Download and unzip the LIDAR GIS layer (that’s a direct-download link to save you steps).
3. Open the resulting Lidar_Ct.shp file in QGIS.
4. Enjoy.

Oliver read this post from earlier today about animal testing while he was at school today.

I know this because in his communication book there was a note describing how he’d made a poster this afternoon called “cruelty-free and forever against animal testing.”

I think this is the way education is supposed to work.

It gives me great comfort that the entrance to Catholic Family Services Bureau here in Charlottetown sports a rainbow flag. It tells me I’m welcome here, no matter my assumptions.

One of my favourite possessions is a custom-made type holder from Japan that I purchased in 2015.

In the two years since it arrived, I’ve seldom had occasion to use it; that’s okay, as my purchase was as much to express my support for the creation of such a well-crafted object as it was to acquire a tool I’d immediately put to use.

But today, at long last, I finally had a job where it was exactly what I needed.

I’ve been printing 3D Pie Men for The Handpie Company for the last few hours, and I needed a way to customize the piece of chipboard I fashioned to act as their temporary home while en route to Borden.

So I opened a drawer of 36 point sans serif type, assembled the letters for PIE MAN, got out a green stamp pad I bought at Yu Yo back in March, and I was ready for action:

Using the heel of my hand for pressure, I carefully laid down the type onto the chipboard, and, rocking back and forth, pressed down as hard as I could. The result is not letterpress-quality, but it will do just fine for this temporary Pie Man holder:

For those that have been following along (start here, then read here), Pie Men Mark IV are about 2mm thinner than the previous version, following on from feedback from Handpie HQ.

There’s still some work to be done: a desire for scalloped pie-like edges, and slightly tapered struts for letterboard-insertion. But for now, Mark IV Pie Men are ready for duty and should be up on the Handpie letterboard shortly.

Want to see them up close? Go buy a yourself a handpie!

For reasons that will become much more obvious shortly, I’ve been spending a lot of time trying out various ways to order food and drinks for pickup using mobile apps.

Starbucks has a very slick mobile app, with solid logistical support for it in their restaurants, and because you need to preload the mobile app with a minimum of $25, I’ve had more experience with it than others (despite not really having a taste for Starbucks coffee).

The one thing about the app that’s confounded me is that I haven’t been able to figure out how to order a decaf espresso macchiato.

I can select the cup size, the number of shots, the milk type and degree of froth, the sweetener, and whether I want extra water or not.

I can choose to add caramel sauce or cinnamon dolce syrup, or sugar-free cinnamon dolce syrup.

But there’s no way to select decaf coffee.

So I contacted Starbucks using the form linked to from the app, and their quick reply was:

I am so sorry that the mobile application is not set up for the option of a Decaffeinated Espresso Macchiato due to no decaf option. I will be sure to share your feedback to the correct department to be considered on the next update. Once again I am very sorry for the inconvenience.

So at the very least I’m not crazy: there is no option for selecting decaf.

This is such a bizarre design decision, that runs contrary to the app’s flexibility otherwise, that I have to imagine it’s tied to a process issue that’s not obvious.

Any thoughts?

I found a bottle of Expo-brand white board cleaner on the table outside my office, and I was curious to know what was in it, so I Googled “expo whiteboard care msds” and ended up at this list of Material Safety Data Sheets, one of which was for Expo Cleaner in Bottles.

This MSDS lists the composition of the white board cleaner as a 0.1% to 2% concentration of 3-butoxypropan-2-ol, another search for which leads me to another MSDS for this ingredient alone, under the brand name “Dowanol PnB,” from Dow Chemical. It’s described there as follows:

DOWANOL^TM PnB glycol ether is a fast-evaporating, hydrophobic glycol ether with high solvency and excellent coupling abilities. DOWANOL^TM PnB glycol ether is extensively used in heavy-duty cleaning formulations. It does an excellent job of solvating and coupling hydrophobic greases and oils in household as well as industrial formulations. It is partly water soluble and miscible with most organic solvents. DOWANOL^TM PnB glycol ether also provides excellent surface-tension lowering ability. In coatings DOWANOL^TM PnB offers good coalescing ability in systems requiring fast evaporation.

If you’re curious, here’s what the molecule looks like.

But back to the rabbits.

Here’s Section 11, Toxicological Information, from the Expo Cleaner in Bottles information:

I was just quickly breezing through the details on the sheet when the word “Rabbit” jumped out at me.

“Rabbit?”, I wondered to myself. What does this have to do with rabbits?

Some more Googling led me to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety page about LD50, which defined the term thus:

LD stands for “Lethal Dose”. LD50 is the amount of a material, given all at once, which causes the death of 50% (one half) of a group of test animals. The LD50 is one way to measure the short-term poisoning potential (acute toxicity) of a material.

Toxicologists can use many kinds of animals but most often testing is done with rats and mice. It is usually expressed as the amount of chemical administered (e.g., milligrams) per 100 grams (for smaller animals) or per kilogram (for bigger test subjects) of the body weight of the test animal. The LD50 can be found for any route of entry or administration but dermal (applied to the skin) and oral (given by mouth) administration methods are the most common.

So if I’m reading this correctly, 50% of rabbits that were given a dermal 3100 mg/kg dose of 3-butoxypropan-2-ol died as a result.

The heart of the popular opposition to animal testing has focused on cosmetics; indeed the Body Shop page on the issue is headed by adorable-looking rabbits. I don’t know if I’ve ever come across office products, like white board cleaner, that make animal testing claims; it had never occurred to me that the cousins–or at least half of the cousins–of the Body Shop’s rabbits were killed to allow me to feel safe cleaning my white boards.

I’d like to know more about this.

Here’s Oliver running Aldus PageMaker inside a browser that’s running a Mac System 7 emulator on his contemporary MacBook.

Thanks to the generosity of friend Bob, Pie Man 3.0 was ferried to Borden for review by staff in the Department of Three Dimensions at Handpie Company HQ. Here he is on the board.