Starting this Friday, March 1, at Noon (Atlantic Standard Time), you can watch the livestream of the “Bluefield High School Mega Concert” online. The concert runs for hours and hours, so you can watch all day, or dip in and out. It’s all being done in support of the school band’s trip to Newfoundland.

By virtue of maintaining the unofficial digital version of the Prince Edward Island school calendar, it’s been on my radar for more than 6 months that this spring’s March school break, being followed as it is the next weekend by a 4-day Easter long weekend, presents a unique “go away somewhere far away with Oliver and don’t miss too much school” opportunity. And so, for most of the fall and winter the notion of where has been tickling the back of my mind.

As March drew nearer and the sense of urgency grew – I didn’t want to try to spin “hey, a trip to Bathurst!” to Oliver because of my procrastination – I started to narrow down the possibilities.

Norway was high on my list: what’s not to love about a country that’s mad for coffee, has this amazing building, this amazing voice and otherwise remains a complete mystery to me (I don’t believe I’ve ever met a single person from Norway). The idea of Norway got me started experimenting with the Aeroplan, where I’ve been collecting and not redeeming “miles” for long enough to have accumulated 110,000 of them, which is, in theory, enough to get somewhere serious, even for two people.

What I kept coming up against, however, is routings across the Atlantic that saw Air Canada tacking on a $500 “fuel surcharge” on top regular airport taxes and fees that aren’t included in the “free” Aeroplan trips. I noticed, however, that one return routing from Oslo to Charlottetown via Newark was on United Airlines, and that booking only had half the fuel surcharge of others, suggesting that United doesn’t have the same (or perhaps any) fuel surcharge regime that Air Canada does.

Then I recalled a casual comment the other week by Isaac Grant in the coffee shop: “Dan always calls,” he said, referring to consummate traveler Dan James, and he doesn’t stop until he finds an agent that will work with him. And then I realized something else: you don’t actually have to have enough “miles” in your Aeroplan “bank” to pay for the entire cost of a trip: you can purchase “top-up miles” with cash.

Together this got me thinking more ambitiously: what about trying to max out the Aeroplan system and the super-March-holiday opportunity and go to Japan, which is a county I’ve wanted to visit for a long, long time but which has always seemed too far away, in time and money, to be a reasonable school break destination.

I started to poke around the possible routes to Japan from Charlottetown (when you’re flying on points it doesn’t make any sense to do a “drive to Halifax” or “drive to Moncton” unless scheduling requires it). Japan is in the Asia 1 Aeroplan region, and requires 75,000 “miles” return per person from Charlottetown.

I was 39,937 “miles” short of the 150,000 I needed, and the Aeroplan booking engine quoted me $1198.11 (or 3 cents/mile) to top up and $251 in taxes and fees without fuel surcharges. Routing by Air Canada showed fuel surcharges of $584 per person, for a total of $1168 on top of that.

So, I decided to try and pull a Dan.

Last night before supper I called Aeroplan on the phone. I laid out my plan honestly: “I want to take my son to Japan, but I won’t fly on Air Canada because I don’t want to pay $1168 in fuel surcharges; can you route me from Charlottetown to Tokyo without Air Canada?”

Fortunately I got a good, helpful agent who understood my plight and resolved to help me. I told him I wanted to leave on March 15th and come back on March 31st, but that I was flexible.

He worked away for about 10 minutes and then presented me with a plan: Charlottetown to Toronto on Air Canada followed by Toronto-Washington Dulles-Tokyo on United to get there on March 13th, and then Tokyo-Chicago-Halifax on United followed by Halifax-Charlottetown on Air Canada to get back on March 27th. Fuel surcharge: $0. The only downside was the need to stay overnight in Halifax on the way back, but I was willing to eat that.

“Book it!”, I said.

Total cost for the airfare was $1449.37.

Comparing an AirCanada.com booking for the same dates the best routing (Charlottetown-Toronto-Narita) was quoted at $3892.76 and an overnight-in-Halifax-en-route-routing was $3156.76, so we “saved” about $1700 over buying tickets with cash.

“Saving” is all relative in the virtual world of airline points, of course, and I may live to regret not paying an extra $2400 to get a one-stop trip to Japan. But I come from a long line of “walk 12 blocks to save 50 cents on a tub of yogurt” suckers-for-a-good-bargain, so we’ll go via Washington and Chicago and be happy.

Why Japan? What will we do?

Well, [[Oliver]] really likes sushi. And that neat FabCafe that Peter Bihr wrote about. And the Printing Museum. And the 9 hours capsule hotel. And the chance to stay on a mountain.

But if I’m being honest, the attraction is in the unknown: I know almost nothing about Japan. I’m afraid of the food, and prospect of strange toilets. I’m not sure how I’m going to be an effective parent after flying across the Pacific. And, of course, I neither speak nor read Japanese. And what’s that about there being no street addresses in Tokyo?

But that’s why we travel, isn’t it? To see through new eyes. To take ourselves out of the “who moved the toothpaste to the other side of the sink!?” regularlity of every day life. And, with Oliver, the chance to ramble into this as father-and-son, showing him the value on leaping into the unknown and affording me the chance to see the world through his eyes.

The PEI Home and School Federation is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2013, and a big part of this celebrating involves a fantastic concert coming up on March 2, 2013 at the Confederation Centre of the Arts. Featuring current students in the Prince Edward Island public school system as well as a collection of talented alumni, it promises to be a great night; see the full line-up here.

You can get tickets for $14 ($10 plus their fees) online or over the phone from Confederation Centre of the Arts box office, or if you’d like to get them “wholesale” without those fees you can order them from me (or any local home and school) for only $11.

One of the innovations here at Robertson Library that I most appreciate is that there’s a coffee shop right in the library lobby. At Samuel’s (named for the library’s namesake Samuel Napier Robertson) one can get a bagel, a sandwich, a cup of tea of coffee, or, much to my surprise this afternoon, sushi. If you know anything about library administration, you can only imagine the heated debates that must have taken place leading up to the establishing Samuel’s – indeed the library needed to rewrite its own Food and Drink/Noise Policy (note, however, the boldfacing of  “is permitted on a limited basis,” and the specific prohibition of “smelly or messy foods”).

One thing you cannot get at Samuel’s, however – nor, indeed, anywhere on the University of PEI campus – are espresso-based beverages. In all the myriad food service outlets on campus there is nary a one that offers a cappuccino, a macchiato or an espresso. This has always struck me as absurd, given the centrality of the espresso to academic study. There is, however, faint hope on the horizon.

It turns out that Justin Ford, Head Chef at UPEI is the same Justin who used to serve me a cappuccino every morning at Casa Mia Café in downtown Charlottetown when he was chef there. Justin knows his espresso, and so I thought an appeal to him might be in order, so when I began my term here in the library I dropped him a line; I heard back shortly from one of his staff that, in fact, plans were already underway:

Currently there is no espresso machine on campus, but we have one on order with Vanhoutte, it will be put in Samuels sometime next month.

And, sure enough, when I stopped by Samuel’s this afternoon for lunch I saw a new piece of equipment installed on the counter:

It’s a Necta-brand Colibri model automatic machine. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a Colibri Instant or a Colibri Espresso, although the selections on the front suggest that it’s the later, which is a good sign, as it means that it’s a “bean to cup” model rather than an “instant cappuccino mix” model.

I’m told that the machine is being broken in now and will be ready to serve to the public shortly. I’ve had some surprisingly good machine-made espresso over the years (and some mind-numbingly bad machine-made espresso too). Stay tuned.

The City of Charlottetown is justly proud of its “Winterfun Weekend”, held over the last three days.

But there’s a glaring hole in the event – and other Sunday and holiday events like it – and it’s that public transit isn’t available on these days.

That means that any city resident without a car, whether for reasons of economy or choice, is left without access to many venues.

So, for example, while “CARI Complex was full for all three days,” it wasn’t full of carless downtown residents with children, for whom the prospect of a 6 km walk to and from CARI from downtown on ice-covered sidewalks with children was simply untenable. Similarly, for a carless Hillsborough Park resident the events held Sunday and Monday downtown might as well have been in Moncton.

It is fantastic that the City of Charlottetown has decided to focus its winter event attention on residents rather than tourists, on family engagement rather than filling hotel rooms. But City events must be events for all, and now that we have a robust public transit system there’s no excuse for its absence on Sundays and holidays, especially on weekends like this.

Next year, let’s do better.

Remembert this? Well, today it became these, invitations for Catherine’s Confederation Centre Art Gallery show, which opens on February 24, 2013:

The Prince Edward Island letterpress cut was a loan from Ian Scott; the headline are in Akzidenz Grotesk 48 point and 60 point, the date and time in Bodini Bold 24 point and the credit line in Bodini 12 point.  Because I only had one “Island,” I had to run each of the 75 copies through the press 3 times, and then another time for the black, so it was a 3-4 hour job. But I’m very happy with the result.

My first job on Prince Edward Island, 20 years ago, was at the PEI Crafts Council. Two years later I began working with the Province of PEI on creating a provincial government website, and in the spring of the following year, in April 1996, Premier Catherine Callbeck rose in the house to speak about this project; I believe this to be the first use of the word “Internet” in the official records of the Legislative Assembly:

Premier: Madam Speaker, last year the Province of Prince Edward Island established a horne page that we call the “Internet Information Centre.” Our intent was to use the Internet to promote Prince Edward Island as a place to do business and as a place to visit. We also plan to use the Internet to provide government information to the Internet community. We’re extremely pleased, Madam Speaker, with the results of the Internet Information Centre to date. Our home page has received several awards, including the top five percent on the Internet and mentioned at the top 100 list from PC magazine. This is quite an accomplishment, considering that there are more than six million sites on the Internet. In addition, our site has been mentioned in several Internet books and computer magazines. The site was also featured in a recent book regarding Canadian Internet sites. According to reviews, we have an excellent Internet home page. Now Madam Speaker, thousands of people from around the world visit our site every month. The best measure of our Internet Information Centre is electronic mail that we receive from those people who use our site.

One American user said and I quote, Madam Speaker:

“I am extremely impressed with all of the work that Prince Edward Island does to attract visitors to their Island. I visit every year and truly believe that PEl is in fact the most beautiful place on earth. I know that I will retire and move to the Island some day. I have never met anyone unkind on Prince Edward Island I’ve never been to any other place in the U.S.” and he’s got in brackets (my home), “where a community is so down to earth. Thank you for being the way you are. Regarding the Internet Information Centre, I am simply amazed. I have not been able to locate any other service on the Internet where the government has done such a great job to promote their products.”

And that’s the end of the quote.

Our site, Madam Speaker, contains a broad variety of information including our electronic visitors guide that permits searching for accommodation. We also have information about doing business on Prince Edward Island. The site is a greeting card centre and information on the PEl Legislature. Last month for the first time we put both the Throne Speech and the Budget Speech on the Internet Access was provided at the same time as they were being delivered in the Legislative Assembly. This means that an Internet user anywhere in the world could read the speeches at the same time as they were being delivered. Given the success of the last year’s efforts, we also provided immediate Internet access to the Throne and Budget Speeches this year. I’m pleased to tell the members of this House that there has been considerable interest in both speeches.

To date more than 450 people have looked at the Budget Speech on the Internet. This represents 1,250 hits. More than 200 have taken a copy from the Internet for use in their computer. Madam Speaker, some of the persons assessing the Budget Speech are off-Island users. Provincial and federal government officials across Canada, as well as financial institutions have utilized the Internet to read or to take a copy of our Budget Speech. Some of those accessing the Budget Speech were also from the United States. More than 400 people have accessed the Throne Speech on the Internet.

This year we have put the Hansard on the Internet, which enables Internet users to read about our Session. Last year former Islanders sent E-mail to tell us that they loved to read about the Session in the Legislature as they kept in touch, because they could keep in touch with what was going on back home. The fact that the speeches are available electronically has reduced the demand for printed copy of the speeches. We have reduced the number of paper copies this year for the Budget Speech.

Also, Madam Speaker, for the Christmas of 1995, we introduced an Internet Christmas greeting card. From the time we began the service in early December to early January, more than 48,000 Christmas cards were sent Anyone with an Internet account could send an electronic Christmas card to another Internet user. The card included the option to select a scenic view of PEl and verses. People from around the world used our greeting card centre - people from Taiwan, from Australia, from England, used the service to send Christmas cards. Based on this success, we introduced a greeting card service which allows Internet users to send birthday cards, as well as any other cards - Valentine, Easter. Since we introduced that, we’ve had more than 10,000 card (Indistinct). We’ve received electronic mail from many users thanking us for the service and telling us what a great means of promoting Prince Edward Island.

Madam Speaker, we can take pride in the fact that we are using leading edge technology to promote Prince Edward Island to provide information to the public. We plan to continue to use the Internet to promote PEl to provide information to Islanders and other Internet users. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I came across this statement via the newly-lauched PEI Legslative Documents Online project, a rich and well-crafted collaboration of the Legislative Assembly, Hansard office, the government services library and the provincial archives, led by my colleagues at Robertson Library at the University of PEI.

My obituary will relate, I think, that I operated one of the Island’s leading humidity-monitoring-related websites. It’s a badge I will take to my death proudly. With that in mind, here’s the humidity rising in the Reinventorium this morning from 6:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.  I have our Venta humidifier plugged into a WeMo Switch and a rule on the WeMo iOS app turns the switch on at 6:00 a.m.; this avoids running the humidifier all night, and ensures a pleasant office when we arrive 3 hours later.

As you can see from the graph (with each horizontal segment representing 30 minutes), things are pretty optimal by 7:30 a.m., so I can probably change the rule so that the humidifier turns on 90 minutes later and still find the office pleasant on arrival.

A note to those playing the home game, I’ve also updated the Python code that polls the Arduino to solve what I took to be an issue with the way I was reading the serial report (readings were, I think, being buffered because I was only polling the serial port every 30 seconds, resulting in herky-jerky data).

Catherine’s show, Changing Environs, has been open at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery since the beginning of the month; it’s really quite wonderful, and one of the highpoints of my day is wandering through the Centre lobby on the way to or from coffee and seeing something I didn’t see before (can there be any greater gift from a love than the opportuntity to see into their soul through their art?). 

The “official opening” (where there’s wine and cheese and talk of “conceptual intentionality”) is coming up on February 24, 2013 at 3:00 p.m. at the Centre, and you are all heartily invited (Catherine’s parents will be here, and they live in Ontario!). I started work – late, admitedly, but better than never – on the invitation for the opening; it will be printed in two colours on my letterpress, and here’s the black set up and almost ready to print:

I hope to have these printed and off into the hands of patrons of the arts Friday or Monday.