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.

The sound of silence — CNET reviews noise canceling headphones. Cost, including shipping and taxes, of the Bose QuietComfort 2 headphones to Prince Edward Island: $503.

Update: someone upstairs just bought a pair of the QuietComforts for $267 on eBay.

The City of Vancouver has a program called SoundSmart that provides comprehensive urban noise information, including:

In our daily lives we are rarely exposed to sound levels near either end of our huge (0 to 130 dBA) audible range. Typically we encounter noise levels between about 20 and 30 dBA (a faint whisper or night-time background noise in a quiet suburban bedroom) and 100 dBA (unmuffled motorcycle or jackhammer operating nearby). Typical noise levels experienced include:

• 40 to 50 dBA in a general office situation.
• 60 dBA when talking normally to someone 1 to 2 m away.
• 65 to 75 dBA when riding in a car at highway speeds.
• 85 to 95 dBA while cutting the grass with power mower.

Roughly speaking, each 10 dBA increase in sound level corresponds to a “doubling of subjective loudness” so that, for example, jackhammer noise at 110 dBA would typically be judged to be 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 16 times as loud as the inside of a car at 70 dBA.

In other words, I’m 64 times more likely to go crazy from noise today than I was on Sunday.

Excerpt from the Big Dig Construction Noise Control rules in Boston:

Work shall be performed in a manner to prevent nuisance conditions such as noise which exhibits a specific audible frequency or tone (e.g., backup alarms, unmaintained equipment, brake squeal) or impact noise (e.g., jackhammers, hoe rams). The Engineer will make any final interpretation concerning whether or not nuisance noise conditions exist. The Engineer has the authority to stop the Work until nuisance noise conditions are resolved, without additional time or compensation for the Contractor.

FAQ from the Noise Abatement Society in the U.K., an organization:

…instrumental in making noise a statutory nuisance in 1960. Its aims are to eliminate excessive noise in all its forms by campaigning to raise awareness, by lobbying parliament and through education to enhance the environment for all. It is an active and effective problem solving organisation with strong contacts in Government.

The jackhammers are back in the Queen Parkade this morning. They’ve been joined, from the sounds of it, by concrete saws. Email to Les Parsons at CADC that I sent yesterday, seeking steps to mitigate the problem, has so far gone unanswered.

Back last year I stumbled across the book Cork Boat, the tale of a crazy American who built a boat out of wine corks and sailed it down the Douro River in Portugal.

It only serves to reason that when I stumbled across an offer of a “renovated fisherman’s cottage” in Porto (where the Douro enters the ocean) on craigslist.com, we carved out part of our spring trip to take us to Portugal for two weeks.

So from May 13 to 26, before flying up to Copenhagen, we’ll be living just north of Porto in Leca da Palmeira.

When I later found out that airport code for Porto’s airport is OPO, my faith in our decision was only reinforced.

Perhaps you were thinking, after reading of my jackhammer plight, “I wonder what that actually sounds like.”

Attached hereto for your listening pleasure are 40 seconds of sound recorded with the internal microphone on my iMac after the jackhammers started up after lunch today. Suggestion for stress test: blast this through your headphones in an endless loop, and try to complete a complex technical task.