Want to televise your own event? Why not rent a CBC mobile production truck!

Are your needs more “pretend Charlottetown is Toronto?” Rent a Markham Street backdrop (or one of their other city backdrops).

You can even rent the Barbara Frum Atrium for only $2,900/day.

I’ve become fascinated by the idea of “working bicycles” and Henry WorkCycles in Amsterdam sells a wonderful collection. It’s a shame that overseas shipping makes actually buying from them prohibitive.

There’s also Xtracycle, which appears to be as much a movement as a bike shop. Despite what is otherwise an excellent feature-filled website, I still can’t quite get my head around what they actually do to bicycles — it looks like they stick an extension on the back and build a platform over it. It turns out that if you actually read their website, they make it perfectly clear what they’re all about; sorry about that.

Meanwhile, Catherine is raring to hook up the welding torch and start crafting a custom job for me.

From [[Guy]] comes a pointer to TEDTalks, selected audio and video from the 2006 TED conference in Monterey. Given the expense of actually going to TED physically ($4400 for 2007) this might be the closest I ever come to experiencing the TED magic.

It’s not every day that news of your European travels gets entered into the official record:

Hon. Robert Ghiz: I saw some familiar face who I don’t know if I’ve ever met with before, and I apologize if I get his last name wrong, but Peter — ah — Ru — kook — kooveena is his name Mr. Speaker and I followed on his website and I know he had a great tour, I think through Europe recently Mr. Speaker and I’m glad he was able to provide all that information for us Mr. Speaker.

(This is my unofficial transcript — Hansard doesn’t come out for two days). I was in the Legislative Assembly — my first trip to the public gallery in the 13 years we’ve been here! — to watch debate over the electoral boundaries issue. It was a good day to be in the chamber, with lots of hard-edged democracy flowing around (although a tad hot and humid — I understand why our legislative ancestors arranged to sit in the spring and fall).

It was ironic that it took 13 years to get me into the chamber itself, as I worked on the Legislative Assembly website for many years, set up the system for streaming audio broadcast of the proceedings, and have worked on the systems that manage the elections that see members ending up there.

I think, perhaps, I was afraid that seeing the actual workings up close — looking into the whites of their eyes, so to speak — would corrupt my impression of the institution. I am happy (and somewhat surprised) to report that it didn’t: despite what you might think of the current debate on electoral boundaries, that the institution exists at all, that it follows a set of rules that everyone agrees to abide, and that we all follow the laws it enacts seems like something of a miracle to me. Score one for faith in democracy.

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my own MLA, Richard Brown, for also recognizing my presence and for saying some kind words about my work. Now if Richard can only get his leader to pronounce my name correctly…

My recent adventures in GPS have me returning to the warm embrace of MapServer, the open source mapping server that I first implemented for the Province of PEI, and later for [[Yankee]]. It’s a wonderful project: well supported, well documented, and very powerful.

One of the neat feature of MapServer is its ability to pull map layers from remote WMS servers. [[Olle]] asked me “what is a wms server?” and I replied “Think ‘webserver for GIS layers’,” which pretty much covers it.

Here in Canada we benefit from a pleasantly progressive and technically savvy group of mapocrats who consider it their responsibility to spread mapping data far and wide; one result of their efforts is GeoBase, a project that describes itself as existing to “ensure the provision of, and access to, a common, up-to-date and maintained base of quality geospatial data for all of Canada.” That’s pretty cool.

The GeoBase WMS server has a fulsome collection of GIS layers available, including the nascent National Road Network (“the representation of a continuous accurate centerline for all non-restricted use roads in Canada”). Inside the cryptic XML file that describes the capabilities of the GeoBase WMS server, you find the following description of what a “Road Segment” is:

A linear section of the earth designed for or the result of vehicular movement.

It’s a very elegant description, I think — especially the “or the result of” part, which admits that sometimes roads are roads because drivers drive places.

I’m sure that shoplifting is quite dispiriting if you’re in the retail business. But it’s hard to imagine how the owner of the new bookstore in [[Charlottetown]] can expect customers to feel welcome when this is the first thing they see:

Why not just post a sign that says “I’m going to assume you’re a criminal.”

I’ve begun dumping my GPS traces of cycle rides around downtown Charlottetown into OpenStreetMap and then converting the traces into city streets:

I’ve had some challenges using the web-based map edit applet — it seems to work slowly and inconsistently. But it does work, and the actual trace-to-street process is quite elegant.

Riding my bike down Prince Street this afternoon I spotted a Lexar 128MB CompactFlash card — the kind you stick inside a digital camera — lying on the street near the corner of Sydney St. I picked it up and when I got to the office I stuck it into my USB CF card reader. The card immediately got so hot that I couldn’t touch it. I managed to pull the card out of the socket before it caught on fire or melted. If you’re missing a CF card and don’t mind melting your hands, please get in touch.

The CBC archives has a wonderful video feature from July 1966 on the victory of Alex Campbell’s Liberal government after what amounts to perhaps the oddest election the province has ever seen: after the death of candidate William A. Acorn in 1st Kings, the May 30th election wasn’t decided until a follow-up election on July 11th. Forty years ago next month.

The piece includes a wonderful segment where soon-to-be-Premier Alex Campbell is being interviewed on the street as Premier Walter Shaw drives by in his car and the two candidates share a moment with the interviewer. Only in PEI.

Walter Shaw was 78 that year, Alex Campbell was 32; from here in 2006 he’s still 6 years younger than Walter Shaw was when they ran against each other.

Determined not to lose the euro-momentum that’s still swirling through my spirit, I decided the time was ripe for figuring out how [[Oliver]] and I could get to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market by bicycle. After consulting with the cycling intelligensia — Smooth Cycle, [[Cynthia Dunsford]] and MacQueen’s — I ended up renting a “chariot” to pull behind my bike:

The rental experience, at MacQueen’s, was classic PEI: they took my name and $40, hooked up the trailer and I was on my way; in the Big City I would have had to hand over my passport, have my photo taken, or at least leave my telephone number.

The trailer is very easy to attach to the bike — it just clamps on to the back with a handy quick-release mechanism. I was in and out in 5 minutes.

The big issue with towing fragile kids behind a bike is safety — as a rule Island drivers don’t understand bicycles, and when you throw a low-slung trailer behind them, it doesn’t improve the safety quotient. Inside the trailer there’s a bench that can accommodate one or two kids, and a variety of five-point harness straps for holding them in; to improve our chances of not being run over, I figured out the most road-free route to the market and out to the uptown [[Formosa Tea House]]: we headed down Richmond St. to Weymouth, joined the Confederation Trail and headed out to the Market, crossing streets at Grafton, Longworth and Allen. After a stop at the Market we headed through the University of PEI campus, by sidewalk down the dip out to the mall, cross University Ave. and then cycled through the Charlottetown Rural parking lot over to a path that runs out to North River Road right in front of Ellen’s Creek Plaza.

The trail is an excellent riding surface, and it’s a nice resource to have, cutting through the spine of the city as it does. It could use some additional “bike crossing” signage and road markings when it crosses roads — only 50% of cars stopped to let us cross (on foot) despite the zebra markings.

The one thing I didn’t count on was rain. It was drizzly when we set off, but I naively assumed that the rain was on its way out, not in. I was wrong: by the time we left the Formosa around 1:00 p.m., there was a steady downpour. Fortunately, Oliver was happily ensconced inside the trailer under a plastic curtain, and stayed dry all the way home. I got wet, but not too wet, all things considered: my bike helmet kept most of the rain off my head, and did a good job keeping rain out of my eyes.

If it’s a nice day tomorrow, we’ll be out again to get some additional experience. MacQueen’s says they’re getting in new stock of a sweet single-kid chariot in a few weeks, retailing for $199; I’ll have to consult with Oliver to see whether the bike-trailer lifestyle is for us.