As I’ve retreated inside the earphones so as to avoid the invasion of the jackhammers ([[Daniel]] to Peter this morning: “That’s the noise that’s bothering you!?”), I have rediscovered Radio Paradise. In this age of rampant podcasting, it’s easy to neglect the good old streaming music “stations” out there like Radio Paradise and its spiritual east coast cousin Grassy Hill Radio.

Special correspondent [[Ann Thurlow]] just dropped by, fresh from a news conference at City Hall announcing that a new grocery store has been secured for downtown [[Charlottetown]]. Here’s an artist’s rendering:

The store, to be branded Clover Farm, will be housed in the old Carter’s store on Queen Street, most recently home to Home Accents and Beyond The Beach. It’s a wonderful space, with high ceilings and wood floors; I have many fond memories of buying office supplies there from Carter’s. The store will be operated by Gary Currie.

Ever since the Coop and Uncommon Grocer closed and the Root Cellar went all Leacock, buying food downtown has meant trudging up to one of the grocery megastores uptown. This new store, which Ann reports to have all the variety and richness of inventory we might ask for, has the potential to reinvigorate the downtown as a residential destination. Kudos to the Mayor, to Councillor Kim Devine, and to the City’s development staff (to say nothing of Mr. Currie) for making this happen.

So here I am on Sunday afternoon, in at the office hoping to get some work done without the din of the jackhammers. Except that today’s the day that [[Nathan]] has decided to construct some sort of sailboat out of 2x4s in the back yard, 4 feet from my office window. Which requires use of Noisy Power Tools.

Try as I might, thus, I cannot escape the din. I might as well fold and move to New York City and set up on the sidewalk. Sigh.

This project, an “Animated Atlas of Flight Traffic Over North America,” produces oddly compelling time-lapse animations of flights over North America. Look at the sample animation of Atlanta airport traffic.

The more I peel off the layers of the new Plazer application for OS X, the more I like. Truth be told, the original Plazes Launcher for the Mac didn’t have any layers to peel; the Plazer, though, is a bona fide Mac app with lots of nice touches. My favourite so far is this:

No more “left the Launcher running at the office so everybody thinks that I’m there and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

The big Plazes challenge for me now is to convince other locals of its value. While it’s proved an excellent tool to locate [[Cynthia Dunsford]], its practical utility as a general purpose “find my friends and family” tool has been limited by slow uptake (or uptake and then opt out). If you’re interested in experimenting with Plazes, but need an overview (complete with what the privacy implications are), get in touch.

I’m happy to report that we’ve located housing in Copenhagen. Thanks to everyone who helped with the search; craigslist provided the lead that panned out.

The jackhammers are back at it again today. Dennis upstairs said last night that the silver lining the the cacophony is that when the knock off at the end of the day it seems more silent than usual.

I’ve still received no reply to my email to Les Parsons at CADC, but I did receive an encouraging email from the City of Charlottetown Planning Department indicating that they would bring the matter forward to CADC on our behalf.

David from Calgary suggested that I try to contact the Project Manager for the work, reasoning that it’s always in a contractor’s best interests to maintain good community relations. I tried to find out who’s doing the work through the Construction Association of PEI, but they told me that because the work wasn’t put to tender (!), they have no record of this; they suggested I contact CADC.

More as the hammering continues…

My friends over at [[Plazes]] have released new ‘launcher’ applications for Windows and Mac — now rebranded Plazers. You can download them now.

The new application is considerably more capable than the old “Plazes Launcher,” and it does more than just “launch” you with Plazes, it has built-in search tools:

The menu-bar icon also has a lot more information, including a map showing the current Plazes. Kudos to the Plazes team for the sweetness.

Several weeks ago the [[CBC]] here in [[Prince Edward Island]] ran an excellent series of radio and television pieces called Is there a doctor in the house?. This is the kind of “integration” of radio and television that’s always talked about when “synergy” rears its head around the CBC table. Sometimes — like with the old “big picture” projects of olde — this seemed like an annoyance for reporters more than an opportunity; in this case it worked, and it worked extremely well. Perhaps because it was a local effort not saddled by a national agenda?

There are audio and video excerpts on the CBC website; several of them feature our own family physician, Dr. Pauline Champion.

I spend an inordinate amount of my spare cycles thinking about latitude and longitude. Today I went looking for some ballpark figure to use that would let me approximate measurement in degrees, minutes and seconds of latitude in miles. I was intrigued to find that:

The nautical mile was historically defined as a minute of arc along a great circle of the Earth.

An extremely helpful forum post tells more of the story.

Special bonus revelation: speed measured in knots is really just speed measured in nautical miles per hour.

Stay tuned for picas, points and agate lines.