If you scrape beneath the irony that the Capital Commission is making fake snow for a celebration that purports to be about winter, you reach even higher levels of absurdity. The CBC is reporting that the Capital Commission is preventing kids from playing in the fake snow:

“It’s amazing how many people have come down and looked, and kids… we’ve been having to chase them away because they’ve been wanting to come down and play in the snow,” says Green.

“We need the snow white and clean of debris, so we’ve been chasing them away continuously from the snow. It’s the snow and just the marvel of being able to make snow on the waterfront that’s attracting a lot of people.”

So not only is the Capital Commission hijacking winter with their fake celebration and their fake snow, but they’re preventing children from playing in the fake snow because they “need the snow white and clean of debris.”

What would good old Charlie Town think about all this? The mind boggles.

Today was the big public open house at the CBC in Charlottetown. It was a stunningly beautiful mid-winter day, and seemingly most every Islander decided to come into town to attend: by the time we arrived around 1:30 p.m., they were lined up out the front door and down the wheelchair ramp.

All due respect to the Radio Master Control and the like, Oliver’s raison d’etre at the open house was seeing Bruce Rainnie and Boomer from Compass. Truth be told, it was all about Boomer. And Clifford the Big Red Dog. Except Clifford wasn’t there. So it was all about Boomer.

But, as with the Santa Claus Parade, the main attraction was at the end and so we spent a couple of hours wending through the various radio and television studios, with Oliver checking in every couple of minutes to make sure that Boomer was still on the agenda (and checking with everyone else in line to make sure they knew that Boomer was coming up).

The pedagogical highlight of the extended wending was, of all things, Pat Martel. Pat was set up in the radio bullpen with a little demo of analog vs. digital audio editing systems, and in a few short minutes he gave a really concise “new vs. old” demonstration with audience participation.

From there it was the radio studio shared by Island Morning and Mainstreet, where we got to see Karen Mair and Matthew Rainnie and Oliver got to sit in the big chair and do some studio work (hats off to Matthew, by the way, who has lost a ton of weight and looks like a million bucks).

Next was the Compass bullpen for an introduction to the VJ system by Laura Meader followed by a session next door with Clair Nantes (who, we learned from secret CBC bulletin boards, in addition to being Assignment Editor for Compass is also fire marshall responsible for the women’s washroom) and Mitch Cormier (responsible for the CBC website, but apparently without fire-related duties at this time).

As the afternoon was evaporating quickly, we skipped the TV edit demo and TV master control, and got in the long line to see Boomer and Bruce. Thirty minutes later, we were in the well-appointed TV studio (it’s about 1/4 the size you think it is when you see it on television). Boomer and Bruce didn’t disappoint: Boomer is, of course, Boomer, a delight for children and adults everywhere. And that Bruce Rainnie has more social skills in his little finger than I will muster in a lifetime, and was able to equally charm everyone from toddlers to fishermen.

Along the way, what with the entire Island turning out and all, we got to see lots of people we knew, perhaps most importantly Riley, who turned 6 years old today (Happy Birthday, Riley!). There were thousands of CBC-branded cupcakes available at the exit, but as Oliver was completely wound-up post-Boomer, we decided to skate by and head for the exit.

Despite the lines and the sheer exhaustion of it, the open house was a good show — way better than the opening of the GST Centre in Summerside! — and everyone at the CBC is to be commended for being so nice and hospitable with a bunch of stranger traipsing through their offices.

Special bonus intelligence finding of the day: buried deep behind several layers of old sets in the Compass studio, to the right of Bruce’s head as you’re watching, is the old giant wooden compass, once the focal point of the news set before the name of the show was mistakenly changed. This certainly bodes well for we in the movement.

I was mistakenly listening to CBC Radio Two this morning on my way around town, and overheard the announcer suggesting that listeners looking for more information about a Mozart-related contest they’re running “Google CBC and Mozart.”

This seems like an odd thing to do, given that the CBC (a) has no control over Google’s search results and (b) the CBC could have easily created a web address like “cbc.ca/mozart” that would have been just as easy to convey over the radio, and more reliable.

Speaking of the CBC, remember that tomorrow, Saturday, January 28th from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. is the open house at the broadcast building on University Ave. in Charlottetown. Word on the street is that there are door prizes galore.

After walking around the block earlier in the week, today I went warwalking from the office to home and back to see what sort of wifi saturation I would find.

I walked down Queen St. to Richmond, left on Richmond to Prince, left on Prince to Kent, left on Kent to University, right on University to Fitzroy, and left on Fitzroy back to the office. Here’s what’s out there:

• 68 wireless access points detected
• 56% open access (38 of 68)
• 44% WEP-enabled (30 of 68)
• Recognizable locations (from the SSID):
• Beanz
• The Dundee Arms
• Formosa Tea House
• Inn on the Hill
• Mackenzie Theatre
• Atlantic Technology Centre
• 14 access points didn’t broadcast an SSID.
• 20 access points supported rates up to 54 Mbps

Today was supposed to be Oliver’s big kindergarten trip out to the woods for a winter sleigh ride. As the house driver (and having been away for the fall apple picking field trip) this was to be my first chaperoning experience.

So Oliver and I woke up at 7:15 a.m., got breakfast, got all bundled up in several layers clothing, brushed off the car, and headed over to the school to rendezvous with the other kids and parents.

Alas when we arrived we found a sign on the door saying that the trip was postponed until Tuesday. So my chaperoning will have to wait until next week.

The irony is that after a January that was more spring-like than wintery, it actually snowed last night, and the woods, I think, would have sparkled like Narnia. It’s the bitter cold that’s calling things off, I guess.

All of which led to the following instant message exchange between Catherine and me when I got back to the office after leaving Oliver for a normal school day:

catherine: where are you

peter: Here on the sleigh.

peter: They have wireless Internet access out here in the woods.

catherine: i couldn’t sleep

peter: It’s very cold.

peter: And my fingers tire easily.

catherine: oh

peter: But I’m getting lots of work done.

peter: The kids make too much noise, though.

catherine: did you take the camera

peter: I did, but it fell off the sleigh and the horses stepped on it.

peter: Damn horses.

This marks only the second time in our almost 15 years together that I’ve been able to deceive Catherine, albeit only temporarily. To her credit, she had just gotten up, and it’s entirely believable, given my history, that I would choose to work wirelessly from atop a sleigh.

Thoughtful comments from readers. Thank you. If you’ve not been following the story on the CBC, the latest is that David has been removed from his teaching position.

The reaction from the University of PEI reminds me of an episode at the public debate held by the CBC on the bootlegger issue several years ago: a local restaurant owner stood and spoke about all the “negative publicity” the issue was creating for the city in the national media. Say what you will about bootlegging, the publicity it gave Charlottetown was net positive; not only because “any publicity is good publicity,” but also because it telegraphed to the world that Charlottetown is, well, unique.

David Weale’s actions, taken, he says, to focus attention on large class sizes, are, if anything, a net positive for UPEI too: they telegraph to the world that professors at the institution care about teaching so much that they’ll go to great lengths — crazy, outlandish lengths — to point out the extent of the problem.

If the University was smart — and could muster a sense of humour — it could have effectively handled this situation by admitting that David’s concerns are real, laughing off “the 70% deal” as a publicity stunt, and promising to work to address the situation. As it is, the administration comes across as a group of dour prigs, obsessed with an artificial “excellence” construct that is appealing only to passionless technocrats.

I really like the way that the developers of Adium, a Mac OS X instant messaging application, put an alias to the Applications folder right in the install disk image:

The result is that all I need to do when installing the application is drag it into the alias; otherwise (and much more commonly with OS X applications), I need to open up another Finder window, position it so that I can drag and drop from the Adium install window, and then drag Adium into Applications in the second window.

It would be nice if all OS X developers did what the Adium developers do.

In the meantime, something that can make application installing a little faster is to drag the Applications folder into the documents section of the OS X “dock,” so that you end up like this:

Now installing apps is as simple as draging them from the install image onto this icon on the dock.

Ever since I switched my business telephone account over to Eastlink several years ago, I’ve been frustrated that, on the business side, they don’t support online bill payment. My natural inclination would be to jump ship back to Aliant. But they spent 10 years pissing me off, and I’m not ready to make up just yet.

As I abhor writing cheques (too many steps required, and who has stamps just lying around?), my billing relationship with Eastlink to date has gone like this:

• Bill arrives.
• Bill placed aside.
• Month passes.
• Another bill arrives.
• Another bill placed aside.
• Month passes.
• Another bill arrives.
• Another bill placed aside.
• Friendly Eastlink clerk calls and leaves a “we are going to disconnect your phone” message for me.
• I call clerk back, ask if I can pay the bill online.
• Clerk tells me “we’re working on that” and I pay by credit card over the phone.
• Repeat.

Today, though, the pattern broke: apparently I can pay my Eastlink bill online now, using a kludge that they’ve worked out:

• I need to select “Eastlink Long Distance” as my payee.
• I need to pad my 6-digit account number with an initial four zeros because a 10-digit account number is expected.

I’ll let you know if this works.

I didn’t think I’d be able to get over Tom Cavanagh doing those icky CIBC commercials. But I have: I really like his new CBS show, Love Monkey.

(Updated later in the day…) Things I like about the show:

• Jason Priestly. Yes, Jason Priestly. I’m as amazed as you are.
• Judy Greer playing the “best friend” (i.e. George Costanza) character. Finally a mainstream show with a no-sexual-tensions man-woman friendship.
• Jokes about grammar. This could get tiresome, but it’s funny for now.
• Eric Bogosian. Yes, Eric Bogosian.
• Good interiors; good exteriors; good music.

It’s possible that the show could crash and burn: introducing “new love interest” thing so early in the series means that there’s a lot of “will they or won’t they” sexual tension; I hope that doesn’t become too much of a focal point (remember Anything But Love?)

And while you have to appreciate the anti-corporate “indie” attitudes espoused by Cavanagh’s character (complete with “you worked for a multi-national corporation for 3 years — you are a suit” retorts from his friends), the whole “it’s all about the music” thing can’t be the bedrock on which the series is mounted either.

If things succeed it will be because the series pulls off the “ensemble comedo-drama” thing much in the same way that Ed and thirtysomething did. Indeed it occurred to me that Love Monkey might be a just heir to thirtysomething’s throne; we’ll see.

At long last I was able to get Kismet running on my Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 (these instructions did the trick). For the uninitiated, the Zaurus is a little handheld computer that runs Linux, and Kismet is a “wifi sniffing” program that lets me walk around with my wifi-equipped Zaurus and lists all of the wireless networks it encounters along the way.

So tonight I did a simple walk around the block to see what I could find in the neighbourhood.

To my surprise, there was a lot to be found:

• 15 wireless access points
• 9 of 15 were using WEP, 6 were free and open
• Manufacturer breakdown:
• Linksys: 4
• D-Link: 4
• Netgear: 2
• Gemtek: 1
• Zyxel: 1
• Siemens: 1
• Global Sun: 1
• SMC: 1

That’s 15 networks detectable over about 2 acres of land. This is about as close to “open wireless access everywhere” as you can get, I think.