Leonhard’s Café and Bakery on University Avenue has been slowing building out their “patio” and last week the tables got tiny chairs. As a parent of a formerly-tiny child, I applaud this: with the exception of McDonald’s, restaurants almost universally ignore the fact that children eat out too.

The Alibi Lounge, taking over the old Royal Tandoor space on University Avenue, was supposed to open last week. But it didn’t. But they explained the delay well:

There’s just over 12 hours left for you to place your online bids in the Prince Street School Silent Auction: online bidding closes tomorrow (Friday, June 5, 2009) at 12 Noon, and then in-person bidding starts at 5:30 p.m. at the Spring Fling at Prince Street School, closing at 7:30. So bid online, and if you really want something, come to the Spring Fling to make sure you’re not outbid.

Some new items have just gone online for bidding:

• 9-Hole Green Fees at Countryview Golf Club
• One night at the Quality Inn on the Hill
• Two 30-minute Piano Lessons with Natasha Hall

The network really came through in response to my request for translation help for a flier for the Prince Street School Spring Fling and I ended up with translations in French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Persian. You can download a PDF of the flier and we’d really appreciate if you’d print a few copies and stick them up around your office or school or neighbourhood.

And, of course, I encourage you to come out to the Spring Fling yourself: it’s this Friday, June 5, 2009 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Prince Street School, 60 Upper Prince Street in Charlottetown. And even if you can’t make it out in person, you can still bid online in our silent auction until Noon on Friday.

Here’s what the final version of the flier looks like:

Thank you to Philip Brown, PEI Association for Newcomers to Canada, Launa Gauthier, Clark MacLeod, Rob Lantz, Olga Erasova, Mike Brychuk, Svetlana Tenetko, Josephine Sahely, Liane Khoury, Anne Putnam and Mehrnoosh Aghdassi for translation help.

Today is both my 10th year of blogging and the 10th anniversary of Reinvented Inc..

Reinvented is the butterfly the emerged from the chrysalis of digital island, the company I founded in 1995 to take on the task of working with the Province of Prince Edward Island on their nascent website. On May 31, 1999 digital island became Reinvented as the digital island name was ceded to Digital Island Inc., a Honolulu-based company about to launch an IPO.

Interestingly, the domain name digitalisland.com is now controlled by SAVVIS, Inc., a Missouri-based IT company. Presumably SAVVIS acquired the domain when they acquired the assets of Cable & Wireless America in 2004, Cable & Wireless having purchased Digital Island in 2001. What a tangled web we weave.

On May 31, 1999 Reinvented HQ was in the spare bedroom of our house out on the Kingston Road, Reinvented was just me, and I spent most of my time concerned with the minutiae of Island life.

On May 31, 2009 Reinvented HQ is on the first floor of 84 Fitzroy Street in downtown Charlottetown, Reinvented has tripled in size (from “me” to “me plus brother Johnny and partner Catherine”), and I spend most of my time concerned with the minutiae of the cosmos.

Back in the middle of the winter I had grand plans for fireworks and brass bands to help us celebrate this milestone, but the day-to-day deadlines of current projects were enough to distract me from the goal. As a result I’m left to simply thank Catherine for many years of support (and putting up with late night kernel panics), Johnny for many years of hard work (and putting up with working for his scatter-brained brother), our longtime client Yankee Publishing for many years of challenging projects and, more importantly, for the friendships that came with that work, and my former colleagues in the Province of PEI for getting me started at a time when there was still a lot of doubt that this “information superhighway” thing would take off.

• 5,388 blog posts (1.47 per day on average)
• 996,016 words (273 words per day on average)
• First post: Digital Island gets Reinvented
• Most popular topics:
  • Charlottetown (613 posts)
  • Prince Edward Island (302 posts)
  • Design (245 posts)
  • Travel (236 posts)
  • CBC (140 posts)
• Most popular posts (Google Analytics, since January 2007):
  • Air Canada Seat Sale (82,578 pageviews)
  • Montecito Resort and Casino (27,805 pageviews)
  • T@B Trailer (23,358 pageviews)
  • Motorola Helps You Hack Your Motorola (21,882 pageviews)
  • Iced Cappuccino (19,703 pageviews)
• Number of times someone’s asked me to remove a post: 2
• Number of times I complied and removed the post: 2 (in both cases the post was causing the subject of an otherwise benign post difficulties when finding employment)
• 17,987 blog comments
• First comment: Johnny on Good Plumbers Redux (comments didn’t begin until September 2001)
• Top commenters:
  • 1,160 from Alan
  • 818 from Oliver
  • 526 from Ken
  • 515 from Steven Garrity
  • 434 from Wayne
• Most commented-on posts:
  • T@B Trailer (444 comments)
  • Tim Hortons Responds (319 comments)
  • What does sic mean? (296 comments)
  • Toby McGuire (285 comments)
  • WigWag Bar from the Tuck Shop (216 comments)

I was walking down the street yesterday when a man, obviously a tourist, asked me where to find Starbucks. When I told him we didn’t have a Starbucks he look aghast, as though he’d taken a right turn in Borden and ended up on the Moon.

It seems this is about to change. Speculation has been swirling that the old Tweel’s store at the corner of Kent and University, recently under heavy renovation and shrouded in construction cladding, is being renovated into the Island’s first Starbucks.

While there’s been no confirmation of this as the new location, the fact that Starbucks is currently advertising for a Store Manager for Prince Edward Island would seem to suggest that the rumours are at least partially true.

Thanks to the kind assistance of many blog readers and radio listeners, I’ve received several of the language translations I needed for the Prince Street School “Spring Fling” invitation. While I’m still waiting for a few more languages to come in at the last minute, I’ve prepared a first draft of the invite with hopes that others might take a look and point out any spelling, formatting or other errors.

Updated: right-justified the Arabic.

Updated: changed Chinese to use LiHei Pro font, changed Russian “мероприятие” to “празднество”.

Actual conversation with [[Oliver]] on the way to school earlier this week:

Oliver: Catherine’s getting her hair cut today at her barber Blue Note.

Me: Blue Note is really more of a “hair dresser.”

Oliver: Why?

Me: Well, places where women get their hair cut tend to be called “hair dresser” instead of “barber.”

Oliver: Why?

Me: I don’t know. Although some people I know who are men get their hair cut at Blue Note.

Oliver: Who?

Me: People at [[silverorange]] like Steven and Isaac.

Oliver: There’s an Isak at my school.

Me: Yes, he spells his name differently though.

Oliver: Oh, that’s a homophone.

Me: A homophone?

Oliver: Spelled different, sounds the same.

I looked it up. He’s right. I thought it was a homonym, but it isn’t. I’ve a feeling this is the start of a long slow slide into the intellectual shadow of my son.

Distressing news in the Island mediasphere this morning: among the six positions “made redundant” in the CBC cuts announced yesterday are four people I’ve had the pleasure of working with: reporter and erstwhile radio host Kerry Campbell, [[Compass]] assignment editor Claire Nantes, [[Compass]] reporter Ian Petrie, and radio studio director and technician Barry Vessey.

Kerry Campbell is one of those “jack of all media trades” people who seems equally comfortable as a TV reporter, radio reporter, radio features producer and radio host. He is arguably one of the better radio hosts ever to grace the Island radio dial, and if his “redundancy” means that we’ll no longer hear him in that capacity we will all be the worse for it.

Claire Nantes’ job as “assignment editor” is a behind-the-scenes roles that few people know exists but that is integral to production of a daily television newscast. Think of Claire as both the conductor of the symphony of reporters and camera operators, a liaison between the news-generating public and what gets covered, and someone who always needs her ear to the ground. I’ve no idea how you make a newscast — especially one that’s soon to expand to 90 minutes — without an assignment editor, especially one with Claire’s considerable talents.

Ian Petrie and Barry Vessey are in the slightly better position of not having had this all sprung on them, as they choose to make themselves redundant. But this doesn’t mean their absence will be felt any less.

I think it’s safe to say that Ian is the best television news reporter the Island has ever seen, someone with a great depth of understanding for his beat, the resource sector, and a talent for telling complicated stories and asking hard questions without needing to be confrontational or sensational. I’ve worked with Ian on several stories over the years, and it’s always been a joy; more importantly I look forward every evening to his reporting on [[Compass]] and I’m not quite sure I’ll properly be able to understand the Island without his nightly interpretation of it.

While Barry Vessey has a higher profile than Claire, as he squeaks out onto the air from time to time, his role as technician and studio director is, like Claire’s, a role that the public knows little about. I know Barry best from my days working with Wayne Collins on Island Morning: I would show up dark and early every week to do a live technology segment with Wayne on [[Island Morning]] and Barry would my first point of contact… he’d buzz me in the front door, greet when I made my way to the control room, and get me set up in the studio. Most importantly his steady demeanor was exactly what was needed to calm my frazzled pre-air nerves. A few years later, as a result of a bizarre double-booking, I found myself in a field at UPEI appearing on Morningside with Barry running the complicated-seeming gear that somehow beamed my voice to Toronto; again, having Barry behind the scenes, technically and otherwise, made it possible. In recent years as the CBC has scraped away more and more positions, and “synergized” others, Barry’s role has only grown in complexity and importance to the point where, for practical purposes, he’s “running the show.” I’m not sure how they’ll do it without him.

It’s one thing to hear about anonymous “redundancies” at the CBC and benignly imagine them away as “cutting the morning show in Moose Jaw.” It’s another thing entirely to know that when a position is “made redundant” there are smart, skilled people vital to the public broadcasting enterprise who are being sent away with it. Not only is a personal loss for those affected, but it’s a siphoning off of skilled interpreters at a time when the world needs people like this more than ever.

While I trust that all affected will land on their feet, and even return to the CBC in another guise, let’s all just take a moment to recognize them for the debt we owe them for their public service.