A handy new feature of Google Voice: if I get a voicemail message there’s now the option to embed it in a web page.  Like this 3-second voicemail, origin unknown, that I got this morning:

The message got automatically machine-transcribed by Google Voice as “Unfortunately, I don’t feel like.” Which means either Google Voice has better ears than I do — I can’t make out any words — or that it just took a wild guess.

I got a call from Google Engage yesterday that went to voicemail and was transcribed as follows:

Hello Peter, My name is anyway. Duke’ll would engage agencies. I was calling to be about your membership google blondie. And the package that was made. If you have a phone inside of the mouse and Ten coupons. Gorgeous golden coupons. I was hoping to get some feedback from you. Just wanna follow up and answer any questions you may have about the use of the coupon. If there’s anything we can do. I think we can decide to go to a customer base. Please let me know. If you need to ask for a client those complaints everything off. Rex, or did agency scene. The can walk into the computer is set up the dumping.

Listening to the audio, she actually did say “gorgeous golden coupons” but almost everything else was mis-transcribed. 

My Golding Jobber No. 8 letterpress came without a brake pad, so I’d been running it without brakes since I started using it, which made for the awkward need to slow down the flywheel with the palm of my hand. I resolved to solve this problem yesterday: I bought a $6 piece of leather from Michaels (Tandy brand!), cut down a piece of wooden furniture to fit the brake pad holder, and affixed the leather to the wood. Here’s the result:

And here’s the result in action:

Regular readers may recall my efforts, starting over a year ago, to have open data about Prince Edward Island electricity load and generation released.

I’m happy to report that the Province of Prince Edward Island has now, at long last, made this available, both in human-readable form with pretty charts and as JSON-formatted raw data.

To grab the raw data, point your clients at this JSON and you’ll get back something like this:

[
{
    data1: 152.13,
    data2: 25.58,
    data3: 0,
    data4: 23.3,
    data5: 2.28,
    updateDate: 1340234042,
    error: 0
}
]

The values returned are as follows (with explanations courtesy of here):

• data1 is Total On-Island Load — the amount of electricity required to power lights, motors, appliances and other users of electric energy in PEI.
• data2 is Total On-Island Wind Generated — the amount of electricity being generated from all wind facilities in the province.
• data3 is Total On-Island Fossil Fueled Generation — the amount of electricity being generated from oil fired equipment. Typically, this generation is only required when there is an interruption of supply from off Island.
• data4 is Wind Power Used On-Island — only that portion of the Total Wind Generated that is being used to meet purchase agreements of the province’s two electrical utilities, Maritime Electric Company, Limited (MECL) and City of Summerside Electric Utility.
• data5 is Wind Power Exported Off-Island — that portion of wind generation that is supplying contracts elsewhere. The actual electricity from this portion of wind generation may stay within PEI but is satisfying a contractual arrangement in another jurisdiction. 
• updateDate is the unixtime the data was updated (I’m not sure of the schedule, but it’s not real time data).
• error — I presume this is some sort of error code, but in my experience it’s always been zero (0).

Based on the work I did with Pachube (now Cosm) last year, I’ve created a Cosm Feed for the data, fed by a PHP script that grabs the data and reformats it into either more readable JSON, XML or the Cosm datastream format. 

While we wait around for Maritime Electric or others to enable the “smart grid,” this data can be used, right now, to build intelligence on a DIY level. 

Pull the data from the Cosm feeds for on-island-wind and on-island-load, compare the two, and generate an RSS feed item if the wind generation exceeds the load (meaning we’re getting ALL of our energy from the wind); feed the RSS feed to If This Then That and then build a recipe that turns a Belkin WeMo switch on to make you coffee: voila, you’ve got always-wind-powered-coffee.

The Province is to be lauded for this effort, especially for making the data available in JSON so that it can be re-used elsewhere; it’s a fantastic development, and a nice complement to Prince Edward Island’s Wind Energy Strategy.

This afternoon I printed up a sort of “do it yourself civil disobedience kit” with an excerpt from the City of Charlottetown’s Zoning and Development Bylaw: an excerpt from its section on signage, which places rather inflexible limits on our constitutionally-guaranteed right to “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.”

Regular readers will recall that this very issue was the topic considered in the 1993 Supreme Court of Canada case Ramsden v. Peterborough (City) where the court said, of the City of Peterborough, Ontario bylaw of the day, in part:

It is clear that the effect of the by-law is to limit expression.  The absolute prohibition of postering on public property prevents the communication of political, cultural and artistic messages. 

The Peterborough bylaw’s wording was:

No bill, poster, sign or other advertisement of any nature whatsoever shall be placed on or caused to be placed on any public property or placed on or attached to or caused to be placed or attached to any tree situate on any public property within the limits of the City of Peterborough or any pole, post, stanchion or other object which is used for the purpose of carrying the transmission lines of any telephone, telegraph or electric power company situate on any public property within the limits of the City of Peterborough.

In other words, much the same as we have today here in Charlottetown, albeit without the prohibition on affixing signs to shrubs, rocks and other natural objects we enjoy.

The Court cited another case, Committee for the Commonwealth of Canada v. Canada, and in that ruling Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé commented:

If members of the public had no right whatsoever to distribute leaflets or engage in other expressive activity on government-owned property (except with permission), then therea would be little if any opportunity to exercise their rights of freedom of expression.  Only those with enough wealth to own land, or mass media facilities (whose ownership is largely concentrated), would be able to engage in free expression.  This would subvert achievement of the Charter’s basic purpose as identified by this Court, i.e., the free exchange of ideas, open debate of public affairs, the effective working of democratic institutions and the pursuit of knowledge and truth.  These eminent goals would be frustrated if for practical purposes, only the favoured few have any avenue to communicate with the public.

It’s been 19 years since the Ramsden case; I would encourage the City of Charlottetown to review this section of the Zoning and Development Bylaw with an eye to bringing it into line with the letter and spirit of the court’s ruling in that case.

(Fun fact: Chief Justice Bora Laskin, leading the court when Committee for the Commonwealth of Canada v. Canada was ruled upon, went to high school with my grandmother in Fort William, Ontario).

Although I am loathe to suggest anything that would limit freedom of expression, I think the sandwich board situation in Charlottetown is a little out of control, and there are issues of accessibility to consider separate and apart from the freedom of businesses to hawk their wares. Take the southeast corner of Queen and Richmond, for example, at the head end of Victoria Row: there are 6 sandwich board signs in the photo below, and if you were to look slightly to the right there are an additional four on the sidewalk.

I’m sure that if questioned the businesses would claim the need to direct tourist traffic their way; surely, though, we could come up with a coordinated method of achieving that goal.

I’ve not been able to parse the City of Charlottetown Zoning and Development Bylaw enough to understand what the law says on this topic; section 5.12 says:

No more than two (2) Signs, other than Facia Signs, Shall be Erected on any premises at any one time, and this includes a sandwich board Sign in the DMU Zone or on any City right-of-way.

Section 5.15.6 goes on to say:

Sandwich Signs Shall be permitted in all commercial, business Office, business Park, mixed Use, institutional, and industrial zones provided that:

1. it is the only Sandwich Sign on the Lot;
2. it does not obstruct pedestrian or vehicular traffic or impede visibility of pedestrians or traffic accessing the Lot;
3. in the DMU zone, it does not exceed a single-faced area of 0.6 sq. m (6.4 sq. ft.), and in all other permitted zones, a single-face area Shall not exceed 1.2 sq. m (12.9 sq. ft.);
4. in the DMU zone, it May be placed on the City right-of-way provided that it is located in front of the Building but not on a City sidewalk and it does not obstruct pedestrian or vehicular traffic or impede visibility of pedestrians or traffic accessing the Lot;
5. if the Sign meets the size requirements of this subsection, Council May permit one (1) Sign per season on a Street corner for Buildings not located on an arterial or collector Street or require a group Sign with all Owners on one Sign; and
6. the applicant Shall carry liability insurance satisfactory to the City.

I’m not sure how to relate “premises” (with a limit of 2 signs) to “zones” (with a limit of a single sign) in this language.

The City’s own Awareness Guide to Accessibility for Persons with Physical Challenges (PDF) weighs in on the issue, however, with this helpful illustration of the hazards of sandwich boards placed where people expect to be able to walk:

Posted by the King Cole tea at the Walker Drive Co-op in Charlottetown, a notice that the tea will now come in paper rather than gauze tea bags.

It would be interesting to know that the “unforseen changes in the world economy” that precipitated this are.

While looking through my video archives, I came across this review of Yotel, the capsule hotel at Heathrow airport, that Oliver did when we stayed there back in 2009. I wrote a review myself the day after we stayed there, but I think Oliver’s tour tells a better story.

CBC reports today “Private liquor stores bad for health”:

Alcohol-related deaths from such things as liver disease and car accidents, increased substantially after private liquor stores were introduced in British Columbia says a report from that province.

The report from the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia raises concerns as P.E.I. moves forward with plans to open five new privately-operated stores in the province.

“The reality is, the evidence from all over the world, that availability — physical ease of access and price — are the things that most determine how much drinking goes on and then how much harm flows from that across the population,” said report co-author Tim Stockwell.

From The Morning Guardian, April 6, 1900, commentary from C.N. Howard of Rochester, NY:

In the name of Jesus Christ the King the Liquor Traffic Ought to Die.

It is a crime against the state; the state ought to supress it.

It is a crime against humanity; humanity ought to rise up against it.

It has opened dens of anarchy, schooled our young manhood to a life of sensual indulgence, personal impurity and profanity; sickened the public conscience with its daily horrible detail of debauchery, deviltry and crime, blocked the wheels of every righteous reform, payalyzed industry; crucified labor, defeated the church; outraged the heathen; blasphemed the Almighty and crucifies afresh the Son of God every hour of its life.

It ought to die. Every man that loves his home, his country and God ought to be arrayed against it.

You would think that after 112 years we could have figured all of this out.

Once of the first things I did when I landed here in Charlottetown 19 years ago was to join Central Farmer’s Coop, which operated the cooperative grocery store on Queen Street. It was as much a political act as a practical one: I’d never had the opportunity to join a coop before, and I seized the opportunity when it presented itself. I was member number 8254.

I had an up and down relationship with the coop after that: I went to every Annual General meeting and was dismayed by fellow members referring to the coop in the third person (“when are you guys going to get better peas?” instead of “how can we get better peas?”). Dismayed enough that, after a rousing speech by Vance Bridges I stood up and commited to shopping only at the Coop for the next year (an announcement I made without consulting Catherine, primary buyer-of-groceries in our family; that didn’t go over well).

After the consolidation in the coop movement in Atlantic Canada, a perhaps-necesary merger that saw local control lessen and Coop Atlantic control increase, I became disilluisioned, especially after I was invited to join the local coop council for the Queen Street store only to find, at the first meeting, that it was a council with no power or practical influence.

My inclinaction to shop at the Coop only lessened after the closure of the downtown store and the conversion of the Upper Queen St. to a “Coop Basics” format, which turned it into little more than a cheap food warehouse.

But if my wallet hasn’t been with the Coop, my heart’s been there, on the outskirts, waiting to return to the fold. I’ve been buying gasoline almost exclusively at the Coop Gas Bar on Walker Drive for the last year. And of course we’ve always taken Coop Taxi and bought our home heating oil from Coop Energy.

And so finally, inevitably, it was time for me to return to the grocery fold.

Thankfully, in recent years both the Queen Street and Walker Drive grocery stores have undergone substantial renovations, and while they might not be drenched in imported Belgian arugula oil like the Sobeys and Superstore mega-outlets, they’ve both got a good selection of products, and are pleasantly compact to shop in (it’s only 30 seconds from cabbage aisle to milk aisle and not wading through yards and yards of coffee makers and childrens clothing to get there!).

And so last Saturday after getting gasoline Oliver and I went inside to the Walker Drive Coop, did our grocery shopping, and then signed up to become members again.

Rachel Morrison was our cashier, and she was friendly, welcoming and helpful; a credit to the store. It was so much more pleasant experience, on every level, to join and shop there than it has ever been to shop at the large box stores that I doubt I’ll ever do anything but.