You may recall a post here back in January about a project to bring the home and schools of the five downtown Charlottetown elementary schools together to organize a joint activity together. I’m happy to report that we’ve been meeting over the winter and spring (at each other’s schools, which has been a great learning experience in and of itself) and our activity is happening this Saturday, June 2, 2012 at the University of PEI campus.

We sent out registration sheets to all of the families in the five schools (West Kent, St. Jean, Spring Park, Prince Street and Parkdale) last week, but just in case your family’s sheet didn’t make it home, here are the details.

The “Downtown Schools Family Fun” event runs from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on June 2 at UPEI. Everything is free, and the event is limited to parents, students and other family members of those from one of the five participating schools (families of children entering kindergarten in the fall are welcome). Registration starts at 11:00 a.m. in the foyer of the CARI complex. The following activities are scheduled:

• Atlantic Veterinary College “Teddy Bear Clinic” — bring your teddy bear or other stuffed animal to the vet college where vet students will give it a check-up and treat for any illnesses or injuries. In the AVC foyer.
• Mini-university Activities — a selection of activities from UPEI’s summertime “Mini-University Camps,” all with an emphasis on participation and involvement of everyone in the family. In the AVC gymnasium.
• Mult-Sport Activities — a selection of sports and recreation activities, also geared for everyone in the family. In the AVC gym and, if the weather is good, on the turf field to the north of the CARI complex.
• Open Swim — starting at 2:00 p.m. and runing until 4:00 p.m., in the CARI pool, a free open swim for all attendees in the CARI pool.
• The Provincial School Track and Field Meet is being held on the track next to the CARI complex, and everyone attending our event is welcome to take in some of the action there (admission is free there too).

You can pick and choose which events you want to attend, or do everything. You don’t have to show up right at 11:00 a.m. — the registration desk will be staffed until 1:00 p.m.

We asked families to register in advance on the forms that were sent home last week, but if for some reason yours didn’t, don’t let that stop you from attending: just show up at the registration desk any time after 11:00 a.m. You don’t need “proof of studentship” — it’s on the honour system.

Parking is free (park in the CARI lot behind the pool/rink complex) but we’re encouraging families to take public transit: just tell the driver you’re going to the Family Fun event at UPEI and fare is only $1 per person each way.

The event is happening with the generous support of the UPEI Athletics Department, the CARI complex, principals and parents at the five schools, and with funding from a Parent Leadership Grant from the PEI Home and School Federation.

We had our annual meeting of the L.M. Montgomery Land Trust last night out in Sea View, and on the way out I snapped this photo of French River from the lookout.

You never know where the tangents will take you. My cruise ship schedule experiments began when a newspaper ad led me to a not-helpful-enough web page and, in learning about cruise ships and how and where they move around, I learned a lot that I hadn’t planned on learning.

Like about the Automatic Identification System (AIS), for example, wherein ships of a certain size broadcast digital information about themselves, in the clear, over VHF frequencies. Using a decentralized network of AIS receivers, websites like Google Maps APRS, Vessel Finder, AIS Hub, MarineTraffic.com, VesselTracker.com that aggregate ship position information onto maps and other feeds. It’s an interesting example of data that needs to be free and open — it’s primarily intended as collision avoidance data — can be shared in unanticipated ways.

One of the important components of the AIS system is the MMSI — Maritime Mobile Service Identity — which is a 9-digit unique identifier assigned to each vessel. Not only is a ship’s MMSI broadcast as part of its AIS data, but it it’s also used to allow voice and data connections to vessels. 

If you know a vessel’s MMSI, and you’re set up to monitor AIS broadcasts in your area, you can tell when a vessel comes into range.

I added the MMSI to the XML data file of cruise ships coming into Charlottetown this year — Maasdam, which arrives tomorrow, has an MMSI of 244958000, for example. If you Google that number you can find all manner of interesting information about the ship, from myriad photos (there is, apparently, an entire sub-hobby called “ship-spotting”) to its current position.

One can imagine — or at least I can imagine — an interesting hack that would monitor AIS data for Charlottetown and when a cruise ship was about to dock would sound some sort of klaxon to alert we citizens that the streets would soon be fully of horses pulling wagons, double decker buses, and rove bands of costumed fathers and mothers of Confederation.

I’ve become a tiny bit obsessed with this tiny website, and so have added a few new features:

• Is there a cruise ship in Charlottetown today? was the original page.
• 2012 Cruise Ship Calendar is a six-month calendar showing all ships in port.
• Look up any day with URLs like http://cruise.reinvented.net/on/2012-09-20
• Get JSON or XML output by appending /json or /xml, like:
  • http://cruise.reinvented.net/today/xml
  • http://cruise.reinvented.net/on/2012-09-20/json
• Embedded Schema.org microdata is in each date’s page.
• iCal Calendar can be loaded into iCal or other calendar applications.
• Google Calendar (embedded below).

I’ve also updated the raw XML of the cruise ship data with the MMSI for each ship.

Is there a cruise ship in Charlottetown today?

Data scraped out of here with this handy Chrome extension, cleaned up in Numbers and imported into a MySQL table around which a PHP app was wrapped. Here’s the data if you want to roll your own.

One of my favourite places to eat — indeed one of my favourite places on earth — is the back garden at Tai Chi Gardens here in Charlottetown. Every time I visit there’s something new to see, and this morning it was these men.

No matter your opinion on plans to re-route the Trans-Canada Highway out in Bonshaw, you have to admire these posters, which have gone up all over downtown Charlottetown over the past few days. Simple, bright, powerful, and on almost every electic pole south of Euston Street.

I didn’t plan for this, but I really like the way it worked out: “Casa Mia Café” is framed perfectly by the envelope when you open the flap. A taste of things to come, so to speak. The envelope, like the gift certificate paper, comes from Papeterie Saint-Armand.

I have been putting the pieces together for a new Casa Mia Café gift certificate for a couple of months. Not quite finished yet, but the paper (from Papeterie Saint-Armand) is ready, and I’m experimenting with the type. Here’s where I’ve arrived so far:

The “Casa Mia Cafe” is from a font of Stephenson Blake Reversed I bought from Atelier Domino a couple of weeks ago. The ornament at the bottom is one I picked up from the Museum of Printing sale last year north of Boston.