In 1827 Beethoven died and our house at [[100 Prince Street]] was built.

When I learned about this coincidence, I realized I have little idea about the order of historical events that are older than I am.

I thought the U.S. Civil War, for example, was back in the 1700s. It actually happened from 1861 to 1865 (just as Canada was creating itself).

I also thought that Bach and Beethoven were contemporaries. But J.S. Bach lived from 1685 to 1750 whereas Beethoven wasn’t born until 1770. So they probably never met.

The key to learning how to spell Ljubljana is realizing that it has no letter i in it anywhere.

If you read Get your Own Domain for your Email, decided it’s something you want to do, but would like some help doing so, I’m hosting a free workshop here at Reinvented HQ on Fitzroy Street on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. (tomorrow, as I write this).

I’ll simply walk through the steps I covered in the blog post, elaborating as I go along and answering any questions you might have. The entire session shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes.

Everyone is welcome to attend; please send me an email to RSVP, however, so I figure out what to do if 200 people decide to come.

Here’s the full text of the email message that Eastlink is sending to ISN customers about the @isn.net email situation (I received a copy because I have been peter@isn.net since day one):

On January 31, 2008, EastLink became your Internet service provider as a result of our purchase of Island Services Network (ISN). EastLink has been proudly serving Maritimers for more than 35 years. During this time, we have grown to become the largest privately held communications and entertainment company in Canada and have more than 800 employees located in offices throughout Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.

EastLink will be converting all customer email addresses from the existing ISN email address to new EastLink addresses throughout March and early April. This change is necessary to provide the full range of features and benefits provided with EastLink’s email service including expanded virus protection and spam filtering.

Please call us at 1-888-345-1111 to select your new EastLink email address. It is imperative that this occur before April 15th, 2008, the date which ISN email addresses will no longer operate. If you have already changed your email address, please disregard this message.

Our Technical Support Representatives will be happy to assist you in setting up your new EastLink email address and updating your email client. Throughout this time, you will continue to receive email at your current ISN address, however, please note as of April 15th, 2008 emails sent to your old ISN email address will be returned to sender as undeliverable. We understand that changing your email address is inconvenient, however it is a necessary step in providing you with the reliability and performance that has made EastLink’s Internet service one of the best in North America.

Please note that customers who utilize personal webspace will also need to transfer it to EastLink by April 15th, 2008. This can be arranged on the same call.

Note: If you are an EastLink Business client, and currently use an ISN email account, please call 1-877-813-1727 to select your new EastLink address. If you have a business vanity email (i.e. johnsmith@abccompany.com) no changes are required.

Thank you for your understanding during the transition to EastLink. We look forward to providing you with the excellent service for which EastLink is known.

The email is signed by Dan McKeen and Lee Bragg, co-CEOs of Eastlink.

Setting aside the essential inaccuracy of the argument — that disabling @isn.net email address “is necessary to provide the full range of features and benefits provided with EastLink’s email service,” which is more marketing-speak and than technical analysis — it’s March 17 today, meaning that they’re giving me and my fellow @isn.netters a month to change over email addresses we’ve have for more than a decade.

Nora Young explains how the CBC makes radio shows:

The lasting impressions I’m left with are surprise both that Nora Young wears blue jeans to the office and that the CBC uses Windows PCs to make its radio shows.

I’m also prone to wondering how CBC Radio has changed since producers and hosts moved out of an old building on Jarvis Street and into a cube farm. I think I would go crazy, and find my creativity completely sucked out of my brain, if I had to work in such a (literally) grey environment.

It seems all anyone was talking about for a few days last week was an episode of Land and Sea on the CBC about the [[Charlottetown Farmer’s Market]]. It’s a very good piece that accurately captures the essence of why and how we have such a great market here (besides teaching me a few things I didn’t know).

Halifax, on the other hand, currently has a dreadfully claustrophobic farmers’ market shoehorned into a collection of old buildings downtown. But they will soon have a brand new market at Pier 20 right on the waterfront — the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market, and in this video the designer explains its main features.

When we were in Halifax a couple of weeks ago, we ate dinner at The Wooden Monkey, an excellent restaurant with a menu, they say, “based on organic, macrobiotic, and locally grown fresh ingredients.” The food was very, very good, as was the service.”

The visit afforded me my first opportunity to have a Cannonball Chocolate Soda, the best new cold beverage I’ve had in a long time. It appears to only be available in Halifax from the Garrison Beer Store right now.

The Trent University Archives holds the 8 m of textual records and other material from Peter Gzowski. The collection includes items like “Advance Galleys of Books Not Written by Peter Gzowski” and “table napkin with signatures of Sid Abel, Ted Lindsay, and Marty Howe.” I imagine that spending a week (or two, or three) sifting through it all would make for an interesting education.

You may recall that two years ago I touched on the foaming soap situation (i.e. “suddenly it’s everywhere”). Since that time we have become regular customers of the method brand of foaming soap sold at Shoppers Drug Mart.

Ironically, for a company that says that it “looks at the world through green colored glasses, it doesn’t seem possible to buy refills for the method-brand foaming soap dispenser. Meaning that one must, all other things being equal, throw away a perfectly good dispenser to get more method soap.

Except that you don’t. Thanks to some instructions I found attached to a china foaming soap dispenser at Backyard and Veranda in Halifax (to say nothing of the comment on my original post), I now have the secret formula: combined 60% regular old liquid soap with %20 water and 20% air in the empty foaming soap dispenser, shake it up, and you’re ready to foam.

Senator Barack Obama sat down with the Chicago Tribune editorial board. The paper reports:

The most remarkable facet of Obama’s 92-minute discussion was that, at the outset, he pledged to answer every question the three dozen Tribune journalists crammed into the room would put to him. And he did.

There’s an audio file of the entire session available. It’s a worthwhile listen to get a sense of Obama’s intellect when he’s not engaged in full-on change rhetoric.

Thanks to Dave Winer for the pointer.