I don’t think anyone under 50 uses the term “CPU” to describe their computer, do they? I just got email from a friend who said “I just got a new CPU.” It sounded weird.

A new Robin’s Donuts has suddenly appeared on University Avenue in downtown [[Charlottetown]]:

Although nobody in the building itself seems to know (or at least willing to tell), all that renovation on the ground floor of the Atlantic Technology Centre is related to expansion by CHTN. I asked at the main desk and was told simply that it was “new office space,” but the blueprints, clearly visible through the front window, are labeled “CHTN South Studio.”

I’m now a couple of weeks in to my money saving chai trick and I’m loving it; while the original inspiration was cost-savings, I actually like straight-ahead brewed chai tea, sweetened and milked to taste, a lot better than the expensive “latte” version I’d been drinking all along. And it’s even cheaper at Timothy’s: you can walk out with a reasonable approximation of a high-fallutin “chai latte” for less than $1.50.

I thought I was going to be pulled back into world of the Tim Horton’s “Iced Capp” this season, what with the sexy new packaging and new “flavour shots.” But I had a raspberry-flavoured one, and it tasted like cough syrup, so I’ve escaped the grasp.

We’re off on our EuroTrip starting Monday, so I’m busily trying to mail off tax payments and clean up the physical realm so I can work entirely virtually. Stay tuned for updates From The Road.

For eight years now I’ve been on the board of the L.M. Montgomery Land Trust, an organization devoted to preserving the scenic north shore coastal agricultural lands between French River and Sea View, Prince Edward Island free from intensive cottage development.

In 2004 our chair Hon. Marion Reid and I were interviewed for a CBC [[Compass]] story about the work of the Land Trust; at the time, one of the iconic properties in our area of interest, Cousins Shore, had recently been partially preserved when the Land Trust was able to acquire the “development rights” to a large chunk of the property there. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to acquire the entire property, and the most “desirable” (for cottage development) lots were sold for development.

Here’s the CBC Compass story:

And here’s some video that I shot last night in exactly the same area, showing the obscene monster homes that have been developed along the shore:

These are not homes for normal people, they are giant homes built so close to the shore that many think they’ll be in the ocean within a decade. Marc Gallant, highlighted in the Compass story, was standing on the same land in 1996 where these homes have now been built when he said:

If we don’t have the courage, if we don’t have the determination to protect this province, however difficult that might be, we’re going to end up losing it. Twenty years from now they’ll be none of this left; Islanders will have no access to it, they’ll be ‘No Trespassing’ signs and we’ll have no access to our own beaches.

At this point, Marc’s prophecy has come true. There remains precious little undeveloped shoreline between French River and Sea View. If you’d like to help the Land Trust work to preserve what’s left, please visit our website and consider making a donation.

Every Saturday morning for almost a year [[Oliver]] and I have gone to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market. And, being creatures of habit, we always take the same route through the building. Our first stop is always [[Kim Dormaar]]’s stall for smoked salmon on a bagel.

Oliver, being little, needs to be picked up to talk with Kim. After a while, as Oliver grew heavier, and the amount of snow and mud on him accumulated because of winter, it became hard to hold him up. His solution was to climb up on the stand of the potato seller at the next stall over, something I was tentative about because I had vague concerns about food safety and foot mud, and it sort of felt like trespassing.

So, most weeks, I would actively discourage Oliver from climbing up there, and reconcile myself to holding him up.

Four weeks ago, however, the friendly potato seller actually came out from behind their table and moved some bags of potatoes over so that there was space for Oliver to stand.

And last week, when Oliver was in Ontario, everyone, potato seller included, wanted to know where he was.

This is how it works here.

My friends at [[Plazes]] were kind enough to send along an alpha version of the Plazer for Series 60 devices so that I could try it out on my new [[Nokia N70]]. Here’s what it looks like:

The application installs under “My Own” under the main menu, where all new apps end up.	The slash screen with the app starts.
The app asks to connect to the Internet when it starts.	The application menu. Nice and simple.
When you first hit a new cell, you identify its general location; from that point on, the app knows your general location when using that cell.	…and can tell you who’s nearby.
You can get specific by selecting the “Set Plaze” option, which shows you a list of current Plazes in your general area.	Once you set your current Plaze, that’s what shows up on the Plazes website.
And, as you would expect, you can find out where your Plazes “buddies” are.

I was impressed with how little data actually had to be sent over the air to do all this: all of the above happened in 11KB of back and forth, and cost me 57 cents with my [expensive] “Pay As You Go” Rogers Wireless account.

As a small shop without administrative staff, the task of handling the bookkeeping for [[Reinvented]] falls to me. I mostly loathe this task, and most of my loathing is due to the seemingly endless stream of brown envelopes the the federal government disgorges at me for various income tax, GST, payroll remittance, statistics keeping and other functions.

I also have a very short administrative memory, and so it always seems like a big surprise to me that I haven’t, say, paid the telephone bill for three months — it seems like just yesterday. It’s been a major accomplishment to have gone a complete year now without any penalties for late payroll remittance payment (they sock it to you hard, with multi-hundred dollar penalties for even being a day late).

In other words, I can use any little edge I can in the war against paper and money, and here’s one of my best edges:

This is my “PAID” rubber stamp. It cost me about $9, and it has a set of rotating month, day and year straps that let any date up to 2013 be dialed in.

Every time I pay a bill or submit a remittance, I dial in the day’s date, stamp the bill PAID, and write in the cheque number of online banking transaction number in the space provided.

This helps me out in a number of ways. First, it’s so much fun to do that I never forget to do it, so every bill gets stamped, and I have a record of every payment. Second, I only need to look at the date on the stamp to know the last date I sat down to “do the bills.” So if I look at the stamp and the date is two months old, I know that there are bills unpaid festering away somewhere.

Stamps like this are cheap, and available almost everywhere. I’m already looking forward to buying another one at the end of 2013.

The Letter of the Week at [[Oliver]]’s school is O. All hail O.

CellTrack is a neat little application for Series 60 mobile phones, like my [[Nokia N70]], that displays information about the current “cell” in the network that the phone is connected to. Here’s a screen shot:

But what does all that stuff mean?

The first item, CellId, is “the id from the actual cell” says the CellTrack documentation. Add that to information from this useful page:

The last digit of the Cell ID is actually the sector number, and it will be 7, 8, or 9 on any 1900 MHz channel, and 1, 2, or 3 on any 850 MHz channel. The remaining digits are the CID shown in the list below. That means that if you see 22148 on your phone, the CID is 2214, and you are picking up sector 8 (which is a 1900 MHz channel). 22142 would be the same sector, but on an 850 MHz channel. Rogers are very methodical about their sector designations. Sectors 2 and 8 are the ones that face south, while sectors 1 and 7 face northeast, and sectors 3 and 9 face northwest.

Moving around town I see that the CellId varies through 7177, 7178 and 7179; this suggests that the “Cell ID” is 717, that it’s communicating on 1900 MHz, and that my phone is variously communicating with the south, northeast and northwest “sectors” of the cell. So I’m presuming this means that I’m talking to various bits of the same cell tower. Note that the 1C0B is just 7179 in hex.

The LAC of 1300 is said to be the “Location Area Code from your cell.” Obviously this isn’t my “area code” in the classic telephone sense (902); apparently it identifies “which general area you are in.” This is further explained in this document, which offers the definition (“PLMN” means “Public Land Mobile Network” or, in other words, “mobile phone company”):

a set of cells of a PLMN grouped together may for[m] a LA. A LA is identified by a LAC. A LA the smallest area where a MS can be paged. A LA is also the smallest area, which can be barred for roaming

The Net of 302 72 is a two-part code that, it says here is the “network code” for Rogers Wireless. The 302 is the “Mobile Country Code” for Canada; the 72 is the “Mobile Network Code” for Rogers.

I presume that those with access to Rogers cell databases can use this information to pinpoint my location somewhat. There are grassroots efforts to tie cell IDs to locations: here’s one for Australia, and this one and this one for Canada. And of course there’s the upcoming [[Plazes]] feature that uses the same data.

I welcome additional fleshing out of the information above by those who Know More.

One of the roles of the Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission (IRAC) is to oversee the administrative aspects of amendment and cancellation applications under the Lands Protection Act. In short, this means that they handle the paperwork when land owners wish to have their land “de-identified” for non-development; this is traditionally undertaken when owners of “identified” agricultural land want to subdivide it, or use it for commercial or industrial purposes.

Once IRAC’s administrative role is complete, the applications go to the Department of Community Services for decision by the Minister and an Executive Council Order is made pursuant to that decision.

IRAC has helpful page on its website that allows a search of processed applications. If you’re interested in following the activity in this area, however, you need to regularly visit the website to check for new applications. This is an area where RSS could be quite handy, so I’ve created an experimental RSS feed of processed applications.

The RSS feed is generated by scraping the data from the IRAC website, dumping it into a database, sorting in reverse chronological order of decision date, and then spitting out the most recent 25 processed applications. Here’s what it looks like in NetNewsWire:

In theory, thus, every time a new application is processed and added to IRAC’s database, the RSS feed should show it as the latest item.

IRAC offers permissions for use of its information in this manner, with the following proviso:

Information on this Web Site is made available by the Commission for the purpose of public information and research. The Commission hereby grants permission to use the information provided it is accurately reproduced and an acknowledgement of the source is given. The information may not be sold or offered for sale without the express written authorization of the Commission.

Note that, at present, the RSS feed doesn’t include “Corporate and Non-Resident Applications.”

Regular readers will recall my tales of our yearly trips to the New Years Day Levees in Charlottetown. This year I got my photo with Premier Pat Binns mailed to me 7 months earlier than last year; I can only assume I’m moving up the provincial hierarchy. Here’s a gallery:

2004

2005

2006

It seems that at least four of Prince Edward Island’s radio stations are streaming their programs to the Internet:

• CBC Radio One
• Radio Canada Première Chaîne
• CHTN
• CHLQ (Magic 93)