The Brackley Drive-in Theatre opens for the season on Friday, May 4 with Spiderman 3.

Well, it only took 6 years, 6 months and 27 days, but yesterday we finally got to confront one of those things that eventually must happen to all parents and children: [[Oliver]] and I found ourselves on opposite sides of a locked washroom door.

In our case the setting was Tai Chi Gardens. Yesterday afternoon after a morning of hair cut and market visit Oliver and I rendezvoused there with [[Catherine]] for a snack.

When Oliver announced that he had to pee, I figured that, familiar as he was with Kenny and Winnie’s washroom — turn on the chicken light, shut the door, and don’t forget to flush and wash your hands — he could go it alone.

As on an earlier visit Oliver had completed all of the above but with the door wide open, I reminded him to shut the door. Therein sowing the seeds of our undoing.

It didn’t take very long for Oliver to realize that he’d locked himself in — we heard tentative shrieks of terror after only a few minutes. After an vain attempt to talk Oliver through the unlocking process, Winnie generously came to our assistance with a kitchen knife and engaged the special override mode of the lock and Oliver was freed.

With this episode over (and Oliver now thoroughly schooled in the arts of unlocking the door from the inside) I’m now free to obsess about “Oliver falling down a well,” “Oliver stranded on an ice floe” and “Oliver taking the car for a ride at age 7.”

I’ve had a re-occurring sinus infection for the last month — just when I think it’s gone, it comes back with a vengeance. But what, I ask myself, sinuses? It says here that sinuses are “air pockets located inside the bones in the skull” that are “probably present to reduce the weight of the skull as well as to create resonance to the voice.” Who knew.

A sinus infection — sinusitis — occurs when the ostium, a tiny hole “about the size of a pin hole which provides drainage for the sinus,” gets blocked. The result is that “mucus that normally is expelled from the sinus builds up in the sinus.” This I know very well by now.

The most interesting fact about sinuses I learned on my question:

Since the Spring of 1990, we have noticed a significant increase in the number of people who have sinus infections. The reason for this is not clear at the present, but it is most likely due to increasing amounts of pollution and ozone. There have been similar increases in other major cities in the United States.

It says here that the rise is 50 per cent:

Between 1990 and 1992, people with sinusitis reported approximately 73 million restricted activity days — a 50 percent increase from the 50 million restricted activity days reported between 1986 and 1988.

To my untrained eye this would seem, like the sudden disappearance of bees one of those “canary in the coal mine” signs that there might be Something Wrong.

But then again, my sinuses are plugged and I’m not thinking straight.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture hosts a weekly farmer’s market in Washington, DC. They call it “an integral part of USDA’s commitment to develop effective direct marketing strategies for farmers.”

I’ve released an update to class.jaiku.php, a PHP class that allows Jaiku presence information to be set and retrieved. The updated version uses the swanky new Jaiku API.

One obvious-to-civilians spin-off of this is that my Jaiku-driven “What am I up to?” message in the sidebar here on ruk.ca will be complete rather than an abbreviated snippet.

As a test of what I might learn I’ve wired this site into Quantcast and you can see the results on the ruk.ca Quantcast page (always handy under the “What Are You Like?” link in the sidebar on the website).

Quantcast works by collecting anonymous personal data about website visitors (see their Privacy Policy here) and using this to develop an aggregate demographic profile.

The profile of ruk.ca visitors is early on in its maturity — the more data Quantcast gathers, obviously the better guesses it can make — and of course all such tools are at best a “decent estimate” of the actual nature of actual people. That all said, it would seem, from the ruk.ca profile, that this site is popular with childless college-educated 65+ Hispanics with a household income of $30-60K.

I think that I can honestly say that I don’t personally know anyone who falls into that demographic category. So if it’s true, I’m obviously opening up whole new vistas of worldliness.

I assume that shortly the profile will flip over to show April 2007 data, which should be more accurate and tell us all something about who we’re sharing these pages with.

Every once in a while the show Songwriters’ Circle shows on on CBC Television as part of the early evening Atlantic Focus program.

Hosted by Cape Breton singer-songwriter Bruce Guthro, each episode features Guthro and two singer-songwriter guests singing their own songs and telling the stories behind them.

While the guests and their songs and stories are great — Randy Bachman was amazing — the standout feature of the show is the quality of the sound.

I don’t know why or how, but through some combination of acoustics, technology and mixing finesse Songwriters’ Circle has purer more vibrant audio than any show I’ve ever seen on television. If anyone knows those behind the show, please pass along my regards for their sonic excellence.

The Guardian is reporting that Nickelback to rock city this summer This is something, alas, confirmed by the tourismocrats responsible themselves.

My ears are still ringing from the last appearance of Nickelback on [[Charlottetown]]’s waterfront — sitting in my living room, 5 blocks away, it literally sounded like I was sitting right at the waterfront.

The return of Nickelback is a testament to my awesome powers of prediction.

While I’ve obviously retained my old “where do these people get off renting out my neighbourhood for 3 days to become a rock concert venue without consulting with me or compensating me” feelings about this issue, the return of Nickelback unleashes an entirely new “do these people really have no imagination” level of vitriol.

Oh for the days of Lennie Gallant in a tent playing solo-acoustic.

I was riding my bicycle downtown from the Metro Credit Union back to the office along University Avenue when, near the intersection with Euston Street I was passed by a Brinks armoured truck with about 4 inches to spare between me and them. If they’d been any closer to me, I would have been knocked off my bike.

As the truck drove away I noticed at the the toll-free telephone number 1-800-827-SAFE was printed on the back, along with a vehicle ID number of UL524.

When I got back to the office I called the number to report the incident. The call was answered on the first ring, and the operator took me through a questionnaire: what kind of truck was it, what colour, where to the incident occur, and so on. And the end of the call they indicated that the file would be passed on to “the safety director.”

It turns out that 1-800-827-SAFE is operated by Driver’s Alert:

Driver’s Alert helps companies manage their fleet safety and vehicle monitoring whether they have one vehicle or tens of thousands, all at one location or with multiple locations in the US, US territories and Canada. There are over 10,000 companies on our vehicle monitoring program and that number is increasing. Our clients include insurance companies, trucking companies, law enforcement agencies, school districts, delivery services, utilities,waste management companies and many more.

While I’m normally not a big fan of 1-800-SNITCH-ON-SOMEONE services, in this case I was happy to have the opportunity to at least record my frustration and know that, even if some infinitesimally small way, I might be making the roads safer for the next bike.

The Globe and Mail unveiled a new design on Monday, and today was my first experience of it:

The dominant feature of the new design? It’s all about bold 8-point lines: they’re everywhere.

Back in the day when we wanted to put lines under or around things in the newspaper we used self-adhesive line tape. Because you always wanted to have line tape when you needed it, in a complete range of 1pt, 2pt, 4pt, 6pt, 8pt thicknesses, in the composing room we all used to keep personal caches of the stuff hidden within easy reach. I’ve still got a couple of rolls at home, just in case there’s a sudden need.

The biggest mistake of my professional newspaper career involved 8-point line tape.

Late one Friday afternoon I was charged with pasting up a full-age ad for Sears. The ad was mostly black-and-white, but there were a couple of red 8-point lines in the design, which meant that I had to paste up one sheet with the ad itself, and then overlay a clear sheet of acetate and lay the spot-colour for the red lines on that with 8-point line tape. I would then shoot two negatives for the ad, one for the black ink and one for the red ink.

All was well and good until, at the very last minute, some changes came in from Sears that required moving some parts of the ad around. After I made the changes I shot a new black negative, but I forgot to re-shoot the red one. The result was that the next morning in Saturday’s paper there was a full-page Sears ad with red lines running right through the middle of the text and photos.

Fortunately the newspaper world is nothing if not ephemeral, and by the time Monday rolled around all was forgotten — if, indeed, anyone but me actually noticed.

Reading the new Globe sort of feels like being under assault by 8-point line tape (now applied, of course, by computer). I’m sure the effect will wear off, but because of my tortured relationship with the 8-point line, I don’t think it will ever wear off completely.