By some quirk, I am on the mailing list for the Nuremberg International Toy Fair. By virtue of this, I receive an annual invitation to the fair, along with related toy-industry propaganda.

In the 2007 issue of play it, the Toy Fair’s magazine, there’s a section on “Product Trends” in the global toy market. Gathered together under product groupings like “wooden toys / arts & crafts” and “outdoor leisure” are pithy comments on the toy marketplace, like:

The inline skating and Nordic walking sectors are stagnating, but football and garden trampolines are booming.

and:

The doll and soft toy market has been lagging behind for years… a new and popular development comes in the form of a new, extra soft plush material known in the trade as “Softissimo.”

and:

In the case of toys that are specially designed to appeal to girls, the theme of “princesses” is important.

While I don’t doubt the veracity of comments like these, reading them makes me realize that there’s a huge gap in my understanding of how the world works that exists in the space between understanding immediate personal and family needs — “Dad, I need to pee” or “I feel like an iced tea!” — and understanding “mass culture” — like the notion that “the theme of ‘princesses’ is important” on a global scale.

As soon as you start to deal in the marketplace of aggregate opinion I find myself without the vocabulary to understand the terrain.

Is mass culture really about aggregate opinion, for example? Presumably the “popularity of theme of princesses” is something that, even if it can be empirically measured, can’t be understood in anything approaching a rational, cause-and-effect way. Or maybe it can.

Because at its root understanding this world would seem to be a basic requirement for understanding modern society, I welcome high-level pointers to where I should turn for wisdom in this domain.

Picking up The Guardian early this morning in [[Timothy’s]], this is the flag on the front page I came across:

And this is what my eye was drawn to:

And they say graphic design doesn’t matter.

Wingmap appears to be a useful European flight-planning tool, with a much more elegant UI than Skyscanner (although at the expense of a lot of Skyscanner’s flexibility).

Skyscanner, by the way, now covers the U.S. and Canada:

Although the day was considerably diminished by the absence of P. and J., who had accompanied us to the New Year’s Day levees for the previous three years, G. and I were graced by the presence of S. from Denmark, which removed some of the sting.

As is the custom, we all gathered for some of [[Catherine]]’s excellent coffee around 9:30 a.m. At 9:55 a.m. G. stood up with a start and proclaimed “It’s almost 10:00! We’re going to be late for the Governor’s!” So we hurried off into the crisp 2007 morning.

The day, as I heard someone later proclaim, was “very large.” A little colder than 2006, but sunny and just warm enough that you could walk around without a hat.

We sprinted over to Fanningbank to find the line pleasantly short. By lucky happenstance, we arrived at the same time as CGH and sister and brother-in-law from Victoria and a happy reunion was had by all. Then it was into the house, a wend and wind around the entrance halls, off with the coats, and into the receiving line.

This was my first Lieutenant Governor’s levee without Hon. J. Léonce Bernard: regular readers will recall that back in 2004 I managed to completely miss him in the receiving line. I had no such problems this year, as his replacement, the ebullient Hon. Barbara A. Hagerman and her imposing husband Nelson, were unmistakably and warmly greeting all callers.

Per protocol I whispered my name in the ear of Her Honour’s aid, and he, in turn, whispered my name in Her Honour’s ear.

At which point ensued an extended conversation about how my last name is not Roggeveen.

By way of explanation:

One Christmas back in the early 1990s I was in at the CBC taping a radio piece and technician Andy Morrow, wishing me the best of the season, asked how my “father in Scotchfort” was doing.

Given that my father was not, in fact, in Scotchfort. And had never, as far as I know, been to Scotchfort, I was confused. The confusion was cleared up when we realized that it was Mr. Roggeveen of Scotchfort that Andy was referring to.

It seems that, to the Island ear, Roggeveen is the same as Rukavina. How this works I do not know, but it’s certainly not limited to Andy.

In the intervening years, I’ve been asked “is that your wife who runs Just Us Girls?” (Susan Roggeveen) several times. And we’ve received calls at the house from people wanting to place orders for Christmas boughs or trees (the aforementioned Mr. Roggeveen is in forestry). People think I’m related, by marriage at least, to Bobby Clow (there’s a Roggeveen connection in there somewhere).

So Her Honour’s confusion was understandable in an Island context.

Fortunately, by the end of our exchange I believe I properly schooled her in the proper nuances of Rukavina pronunciation.

I’m not completely sure of the protocol here, but I believe this might also signify that I’ve formally informed Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada of same.

With my family’s honour now intact, I graduated to the beverage line, and had two very pleasant conversations. The first was with Hon. Robert Ghiz — one not immune to Rukavina-pronunciation problems, although he’s atoned for his sins several times — wherein we agreed that it was, indeed, hard to find a good cappuccino in Charlottetown (I believe I may have extracted a commitment to launch a vigorous Italian immigration program in any future Ghiz administration). The second was with Wayne Collins, my former radio colleague who’s now sitting across the floor from Mr. Ghiz (in truth he’s actually behind him and to the left a little) as MLA for Winsloe-West Royalty. Wayne admitted to being a regular reader of my Italo-blogging, and suggested that I lived a charmed life. Perhaps I do.

Having effectively liaised with two sides of the political spectrum, and after a brief hello to Shawn Murphy, our MP in Ottawa, on the way out the door, we were off to City Hall.

On the way there I suddenly recalled the Croatian New Year’s greeting of “Sretna Nova Godina” just in time to wish same to my clarinet-playing friend from the old country; alas this year he wasn’t in his traditional spot at the bottom of City Hall stairs and I was left to wish it to G. and S.

We slowly made our way up the stairs, with G. establishing family connections to most of the people in the line. Two spots back in line was the Premier, Hon. Pat Binns: kudos to him for lining up with the rest of we civilians, something I can’t imagine happening in any other province.

From there it was through the receiving line in the council chamber where I was happy to encounter fellow blogger and now Councillor for Ward 3 Rob Lantz, well turned-out in a suit and with a rose in his lapel. He looked right at home.

The City Hall levee is renowned for its food, and this year they pulled out all the stops: they had cheese on the cheese plate that I’d never seen anywhere before, endless platters of sweets, and hearty sandwiches with the corners left on.

Leaving City Hall I ended up going down the stairs behind two kilt-wearing men who it seemed had some connection to absolutely every family on the Island — even more connections than G.! As a result it took us about 15 minutes to make our way down as they stopped to greet every person on the way up.

At the bottom of the stairs I ran into the well-turned-out Ann and David, and into Nils Ling, and then it was off to the Charlottetown Hotel next door for the UPEI Levee.

Truth be told, I would skip the UPEI levee — they host what is arguably the least bountiful of all the levees from a food and drink perspective — if it weren’t for the warm greeting I receive every year from President Wade MacLauchlan; he certainly knows how to make one feel welcome. This year I had the additional pleasure of formally meeting Fred Hyndman, pillar of the community, owner of my insurance company, and sometime commenter in this space, for the first time.

From the hotel we rocketed ourselves down Pownal Street and around the corner to the Haviland Club. Mistaken reading of the schedule on my part meant that we arrived there 30 minutes too early. Fortunately they were quite accommodating, and we were admitted early and thus had advance access to the sweets table and the 75th Anniversary Cake:

Moving through the receiving line at the club I met another reader of the weblog: he’d Googled for Haviland Club and ended up here and seemed quite delighted by it all.

We milled about the club, enjoying the fire and the sweets and the fellowship of our co-revelers. G. generously introduced me to Father Francis Bolger, and I got to thank him for his book Canada’s Smallest Province and all that it taught me about my adopted home.

Another scheduling error on my part sent us out into the cold 30 minutes too early for the levee at the Queen Charlotte Armoury next door, a problem we solved by taking a quick walk around the boardwalk (where we got to see, among other things, the monsterous new condos that are going up at the end of Haviland St.).

The final stop of the day for me was the aforementioned Armoury, arguably the liveliest stop on the levee circuit what with the full orchestra and all. Our early arrival meant that I got to see the highlight of the decorating effort at the Armoury, the word ARMY spelled out in saltines:

A bowl of chowder, a quick trip through the regimental museum, some quick New Year’s greetings to friends, and we headed back outside.

Along Water St. and up Great George and around the corner to our house where I changed places with [[Catherine]] who joined the G. and S. train for the levee at the Bishop’s Palace (I wasn’t feeling very pious this year).

By the time Catherine returned, I was settled in to some serious Google Earth browsing with [[Oliver]], and so I also passed on the Premier’s Levee, leaving me without my traditional formal documentation of the year. Nothing wrong with skipping a year here and there, though: it means I’ll be 39 in the eyes of the blogosphere into 2007.

When Rob tagged me to “tell the world about 5 things that most people may not know of you,” my original reaction was that over 6 years of writing in this space, there’s nothing left. But I’ve had three weeks to ponder, so here goes:

• At the end of high school I considered going on major in classical history, cognitive science, aerospace engineering or journalism. I opted for none of the above.
• I’ve have almost no knowledge whatsoever of things that would, in another time and place, be considered fundamental parts of a basic education: I’ve read almost none of the classics of English literature, I’ve never knowingly read a poem, I know very little about art history, and I’ve never opened the Bible.
• Although I’m not a vegetarian, I rarely eat meat — perhaps 5 or 6 times a month at most.
• My favourite movie is the 1978 Warren Beatty picture Heaven Can Wait. I’ve never seen any of the Godfather movies, the Rocky movies, nor Apocalypse Now and of the AFI Top 100, I’ve only seen 23. And yet going to the movies is one of my favourite things to do and I would happily do it every day if circumstances allowed.
• I’ve been to church only twice, once on Easter Sunday when I was a kid, and once with a friend to a service overseen by his father (where, although this is in some dispute, I may have illegally taken communion). I think I may have violated 8 out of the 10 commandments at one time or another.

I tag Hon. Pat Binns, Olle, Dan, Murky and Steve.

Much of my fall was consumed with the behind-the-scenes development of a new web-based content management system for our longtime client [[Yankee Publishing]]. The end result of this work, on the back-end, looks a little like this:

Suffice to say that it’s a completely Web 2.0-buzzword-compliant web-based system for managing online magazine content. On the back-end, editors use the system to manage articles, photos, recipes and travel lsitings; on the front-end side of things, the content automagically squirts out into pages that look like this.

The project has taken me to new levels of intimacy with the Yahoo! User Interface Library, which has proven quite useful as a toolkit for driving things like “drag and drop a photo into an article.” Similarly, a recent infrastructure upgrade on the server-side brought a move to version 5 of PHP, and that move provided the opportunity to recast much of the back-end code in beautiful PHP objects.

The reason for all this work has been the relaunching of YankeeMagazine.com, the companion website to YANKEE magazine. The relaunch of the site provided us with an opportunity to move much closer to complete “separation of content from presentation” nirvana: for the most part the new site consists of XHTML “content” from the content management system rendered inside a brand-new utterly CSS-driven design by Todd Libby.

And the reason for all of that is this:

On the right is the December 2006 issue of YANKEE, on the right is a press-proof of the January/February 2007 issue. You’ll notice that the one on the right is bigger. The change, which is explained here by Editor Mel Allen (and here in the Boston Herald) is rather dramatic. Especially when you’ve worked with the old “tiny YANKEE” for ten years, as I have.

The renovated magazine is bigger, brighter and, I dare say, bolder. The new issue really takes the new size out for a ride — there’s lots of air in the design, and the new typography is a pleasant blend of old and new. Look at this double-page spread, for example (and then read the article here — it brought tears to my eyes):

The new YankeeMagazine.com contains the complete contents of the print magazine. But to truly appreciate it in a form that you can carry in your pocket and read over breakfast, you should probably buy yourself a subscription too.

In the weeks and months to come we’ll be taking the new CMS out for a ride too, adding new features to the site that let articles and photos be sliced and diced in new and interesting ways.

It’s an interesting time to be a friend of YANKEE.

Thoughtfully provided by Mandy MacNevin:

Here is the schedule for the levees in and around Charlottetown for January 1, 2007. All times have now been confirmed, either directly or with the kind help of David Jabbour from Central Beauty Supply.

THE LEVEE OF…	HELD AT…	STARTS	ENDS
Lieutenant Governor	Government House	10:00 a.m.	11:30 a.m.
City of Charlottetown	Charlottetown City Hall	10:30 a.m.	12:00 Noon
University of PEI	Charlottetown Hotel	11:00 a.m.	12:30 p.m.
Haviland Club	2 Haviland Street	Noon	1:00 p.m.
Town of Stratford	Stratford Town Centre	Noon	1:30 p.m.
Queen Charlotte Armouries	Foot of Havilland	12:30 p.m.	1:30 p.m.
Seniors Active Living Centre	550 University Avenue	12:30 p.m.	2:00 p.m.
HMCS Queen Charlotte	10 Water Street Pkwy.	11:30 p.m.	1:00 p.m.
Diocese of Charlottetown	Bishop’s Palace	1:30 p.m.	2:30 p.m.
Town of Cornwall	New Cornwall Town Hall	1:00 p.m.	3:00 p.m.
Royal Canadian Legion	99 Pownal Street	2:00 p.m.	3:00 p.m.
Premier Pat Binns	Confederation Centre of the Arts	3:00 p.m.	5:00 p.m.
Charlottetown Curling Club	241 Euston Street	4:00 p.m.	6:00 p.m.

After a dozen futile attempts to recapture the joy of the Italian cappuccino experience, I turned to the place I should have turned to begin with: [[Catherine]]. Using her Coffee Gaggia, Lavazza beans I brought from Italy, some china mugs I brought from Copenhagen, she whipped up a tour de force:

Two important developments on the Christmas Magic front this year.

First, [[Oliver]]’s first baby tooth fell out while he was asleep on Christmas Eve, perhaps the result of the vigorous carrot-eating bing he’s been on courtesy of orders from [[Don the Dentist]]. This meant a visit from Santa on Christmas Eve and a visit from the Tooth Fairy on Christmas Day.

[[Catherine]] had a book of “baby teeth practices from around the world” at the ready for this moment and so Oliver and I learned that in many places in the world the custom is to throw the tooth on the roof or to bury it in the ground.

Second magic came just after Oliver went to bed on Christmas Eve: a horse and wagon with bells clopped down the street in front of the house, creating a very effective illusion that Santa was in the neighbourhood. Kudos to the downtown horse people for their assistances in this regard.