I met Henriette Weber Andersen at Reboot in June. When I say “met,” I mean “we ate dinner in the same restaurant the closing night of the conference and were briefly introduced.” But I’ve been reading her blog ever since.

Henriette recently launched a genius project called Can I Crash?, subtitled “a service that lets you lend your sofa to travelling bloggers.”

The idea is that if you’re a blogger on the road, you look up your destination and find a helpful blog-friendly host with a free couch or room or cabin or small place on the floor willing to put you up.

It’s like a blog-specific version of a similar service offered by The Globetrotters Club, which publishes a member directory wherein each member can indicate whether they’re willing to offer advice, guiding and/or accommodations for their local area.

The interesting thing about Henriette’s project is that it’s based around the idea that “if you have a blog, you probably won’t kill me in my sleep.”

In other words “writing = trust”.

One’s blog, then, becomes a sort of extended narrative resumé, and the “authenticity” of the writing (to say nothing of its Technorati ranking) establishes ones credentials.

And so as we collect mojo points on eBay, we now collect “humanity juice” by blogging.

It’s just this sort of juice that politicians — like our own Shawn Murphy — are looking for when they set up campaign blogs.

“Vote for me and I’ll build a big building” and “vote for me and I’ll make sure you have a job” don’t cut it any longer with early adopter voters: we want a window into the soul.

And while “Earlier in the morning I had a workout at the Spa” [ref] isn’t exactly that, it’s certainly a wider window than “I am proud of the unparalleled investment our government has committed to Charlottetown and across the province.” [ref].

Because I live in a place where trust is established largely on the basis of social and family networks — if I know your father or your aunt, and I trust them, I’m pretty sure I can trust you — it’s going to be fascinating to see how this new sort of credentials plays out locally.

In the meantime, I’m going to follow Can I Crash? closely. My favourite offer of a crashpad to date comes from my friend Olle in Copenhagen: “Couch in kitchen, in central Nørrebro. (When we get up, you get up.) Vegan food. No pets. Slow WLAN.”

High-level sources inside the Compass organization tell me that the supper hour television news on CBC is up for a re-branding — again — starting January 9. What once was Compass, then Canada Now will become CBC News at 6:00.

Except in St. John’s, Newfoundland where owing in part, one assumes, that it airs at 5:30 p.m. in sections of the province, it will continue to be known as CBC News: Here & Now.

My sources say that the irony is that, given the upcoming Olympics and other events, the new “CBC News at 6:00” will often not actually appear at 6:00 p.m., leaving commentators in the awkward position of having to announce the “CBC News at 6:00 at 7:00” and the like.

If there was ever an obvious time to repatriate the Prince Edward Island edition of the supper hour newscast as Compass, now is it.

The Globe and Mail reports: Christmas trees combat bird flu. Cool.

My in-laws, Grant and Marina, arrived from Ontario last night to spend the holidays with us, so this morning’s regular Saturday morning outing around Charlottetown had a special guest-star: Papa.

The market was as bustling as a midsummer’s day, and we saw lots of people we know: along with our “regular stops” with Kim Dormaar and Karin LaRonde, we saw Nils Ling, Darren Peters, Hope Paterson (down from Toronto) later her father Rob Paterson, Catherine Hennessey and her sister Betty Maurice (over from Vancouver). Jim Lea and Jeannie Lea were there too (I kind of wish someone had turned me on to the fact that they were married; I suppose everyone assumed I knew). If we’d stayed a little longer, I figure we would have seen everyone pass through; at the very least we would have run into Mac Campbell and Tim Banks (who, if you think about it, are quite unalike). Oliver enjoyed showing off his grandfather to all present, and especially enjoyed the gift of Christmas cookies from Karin.

Next stop was Indigo. I gotta admit that our local branch has improved a lot from back in 2001 when it first opened. My last several visits I’ve been overwhelmed by the friendliness and professionalism of the staff; last night in particular I received some of the best bookstore service I’ve ever received (making a purchase that, for now, must dare not speak its name). I finally relented, after all these years, and upped for the special $25 discount card; the same salesperson that tried to sell me on the benefits last year went at it again this year, and I found myself unable to say no. I just know that I’ll forget to use it as the year wears on, but my purchase seemed to make her so happy that it was a worthwhile investment.

From Indigo we drove up to Staples to return a pair of Linksys WRT54G wireless routers. I’ve been intrigued by the possibility of running Linux on Linksys units for a while, and an opportunity to install a wireless bridge at a friend’s house finally presented a good reason to purchase one, while a need to move from WEP to WPA (two different methods for securing wireless networks; WEP, the old way, having been shown to be, well, not all that secure after all) here at the office presented an opportunity to purchase another. So last night I bought two WRT54G’s, and this morning I returned them because I discovered, to my chagrin, that they sported “v5” firmware, which no longer uses Linux at all, and thus doesn’t support things like OpenWRT and DD-WRT (two open source projects that let you replace the “brains” of your wireless access point with a more capable set of code). Fortunately, Staples also sells the WRT54GS, which is still Linux-based, so I ended up swapping the 54G’s for two 54GS’s.

At the checkout at Staples I ran into my old friend Cam Beck. I first met Cam when he was working for Scott Linkletter at COWS back in the mid-1990s. He’s since joined the forces of the dark lord and Cam and I had a good chat about all that.

From Staples we drove down through the rabbit warren of streets that lead from University Ave., past Charlottetown Rural High School and out to North River Road so we could make a stop at Sporting Intentions to pick up a newly outfitted set of skis for Oliver. Oliver, if you suddenly gain the ability to read before Christmas morning, please ignore this paragraph. Darren Peters was at Sporting Intentions too (proving that he really is ubiquitous).

Our final stop of the morning was at the Ellen’s Creek Plaza Formosa Tea House, which has become a regular stop on our Saturday morning journey. Oliver got to introduce Papa to his friends there, we had a refreshing iced tea and sushi, Oliver received a kind gift of orange slices and some cookies, and we had a good chance to have a pre-Christmas chat.

Our morning at an end, we piled back into the car and headed back down North River Rd. to home. Later in the afternoon we’ll head over to Ann and David’s for our annual Christmas Eve lunch (we’re all very excited — especially Jodi — about a secret present I found last night for Ann). Then quickly home to bed so that visions of sugarplums might dance in our heads. Or at least in Oliver’s.

Best wishes to all for a good holiday.

Despite having gassed numerous Drosophila in high school to better my understanding of genetics, most of what I ever knew about the science has faded away. Today I read:

The males inherit their X chromosomes solely from their mothers and transmit them solely to their daughters. Females receive one X from their father and one from their mother.

…and it blew my mind. I’m sure that I knew this at one point, but it seemed new (and fascinating) information this afternoon.

This is all quite relevant to me this week because I received the results of my DNA test from The Genographic Project, a National Geographic program that’s a “landmark five-year study that will assemble the world’s largest collection of DNA samples to map how humankind populated the planet.”

My Y-Chromosome, a chromosome I received from my father, who received it from his father, and so on, identifies me, because of a marker called M170, as a member of “Haplogroup I.” The National Geographic says:

Haplogroup I, is widespread throughout southeastern and central Europe and most common in the Balkans. Members of this haplogroup carry a 20,000-year-old marker dubbed M170.

This Y chromosome marker first appeared in the Middle East. Its subsequent spread into southeastern Europe may have accompanied the expansion of the prosperous Gravettian culture. These Upper Paleolithic people used effective communal hunting techniques and developed art notable for voluptuous female carvings often dubbed “Venus” figures.

The later spread of this lineage could be also tied to the mid-first millennium B.C. Celtic culture. The tantalizing possibility could explain the wider dispersal of this unique genetic marker.

Here’s the map of the “M170 journey:”

I’ve got a lot more to learn now about what all this means.

I’ve been a contented user of the excellent (if unfortunately named) del.icio.us “social bookmarking” service; indeed saving bookmarks to del.icio.us has all but replaced keeping bookmarks in my browser.

But their technical problems recently, which included a long period of downtime, made me realize that relying on a third-party service to store my bookmarks left me too vulnerable to the whims of someone else: what good are bookmarks if you can’t visit them!

Additionally, del.icio.us was recently acquired by Yahoo! and that only added to my queasiness. Yahoo! may be in the geek karma sweet spot these days, but I’m not too keen on relying on them to shepherd my links.

The answer is bookmarks.ruk.ca (or bm.ruk.ca if you’re short on fingers and don’t mind the scatology), a implementation of the excellent PHP-based “del.icio.us clone” called Scuttle. Scuttle supports the del.icio.us API, so switching was as easy as a quick install, an export from del.icio.us, an import into Scuttle, and changing my pointers in the various clients I use the drink in del.icio.us data.

While I intend this primarily as a personal tool, you’re welcome to register your own account (free, easy, etc.) and use it to maintain your own bookmarks.

By the way, if you were subscribing to the old del.icio.us RSS feed, here’s the new RSS feed.

Back in August I wrote about the new “.travel” (aka “dot travel”) domain, and included some information sent to me by the Tourism Industry Association of PEI as well as some important information about the controversial domain from writer and travel agent Edward Hasbrouck.

Edward’s efforts have continued, and his most recent update on the situation is chilling, and not only for what it says about ICANN and .travel, but also for what it portends for other top-level domains in the future:

The issues for travellers, and the public interest, remain as significant (if subtle, because almost no one is actually using “.aero” or “.travel” yet) as ever. While keeping top-level domains artificially scarce to enhance their value to the handful of companies given the franchise to control them, ICANN is allocating a huge proportion of this limited Internet “namespace” for the exclusive use of the industry that sells travel-related services — and is equating that “industry” with the entire concept of “travel”. What should be a public commons is being captured by corporate interests, travel is being reduced to the purchase of services, and travellers and the rest of the public are being reduced to “consumers”. “.Aero” and “travel” are the first industry-specific TLD’s, making travel the test case of the corporate enclosure of this virtual commons.

Coincidentally, the December TIAPEI e-NEWS FLASH! contains the following item:

.travel Place Name Deadline December 31

Tourism officials would be well advised to ensure their place names are registered on the new top level domain name, .travel, before the window closes on Dec. 31, 2005. Any Place Names not applied for by the December 31, 2005 deadline will be returned to the general pool of domain names, allowing any travel entities to potentially secure unclaimed Place Names.

Over six million Place Names, including the names of cities, towns, heritage sites, and parks that are reserved exclusively for authorized bodies, will expire at the end of this calendar year. Addresses such as www.princeedwardisland.travel, www.charlottetown.travel and some of the most valuable online domain names on the Internet will then become available.

In light of Edward’s stated concerns, this “place name” issue seems doubly concerning: it means that “travel entities” will be in sole control of place name dot travel domains; if that’s not “corporate enclosure of this virtual commons,” I don’t know what is.

My friend G. recalled that on a visit to Indonesia he had a pocket-sized game with him that entertained and delighted his riverboat mates on a long voyage along the water. He couldn’t remember what game it was — I thought it sounded like Battleship. Karen came to my rescue last night, recalling the old game called Mastermind.

I can’t recall the specific rules of the game, but I know it involved a board that looked a lot like a cribbage board and lots of pegs. I seem to remember that the original version of the game had black and white pegs, and was followed several years later by an exciting new version with coloured pegs.

Hard to imagine, in this day of Killer Attack Droid IV, that we used to get excited about multi-coloured peg games.

A faithful reader from Vermont writes:

You are too smart a guy to keep using “I” instead of “me.” Twice today pushed me over the grammatical edge.

I presume the error in question is phrases like “He’s driving Oliver and I…” Here’s a good explanation of the error, in part:

The first person singular pronoun is “I” when it’s a subject and “me” when it’s an object…

In other words, my error was this: in the sentence above, it is “He” (Dad) who is the subject, and Oliver and I [sic] who are the objects — it is Dad’s manipulation of us that is being discussed.

So while I might say “Oliver and I are driving Dad to the airport,” I should say “He’s driving Oliver and me to the airport.”

That all said, if you’re coming here expecting a grammatical paradise, you’re in the wrong place: I’m strongly on the “as long as you understand me, it’s all okay” side of the grammar wars, and those of the “it’s the end of civilized society when we start using ‘I’ where we should use ‘me’ ” don’t hold much stock in my world.

That all said, thanks to my helpful correspondent for pointing out the error of me ways.

This is as early as I’ve been up in a long time: it’s 6:20 a.m. and I’ve preemptively fallen out of bed in anticipation of Dad waking me up in 10 minutes. He’s driving Oliver and I to the airport this morning for our return flight to Charlottetown.

This has been a very short visit — too short really — but I’m glad we came, as it was nice to see Mom and Dad and Mike and Karen and Joe before Christmas. Catherine, from all reports, has completely renovated the house in our absence, which is pretty well par for the course when she’s left without the need to shepherd Oliver and I through our daily lives.

All systems willing, we’ll be back on PEI by 1:00 p.m.

Afterthought: isn’t there a song that has the words “back to Ontario” in it? Or maybe I’m just thinking of that kid’s rhyme that we used to sing on the school bus that started “They say you’re in the army…”.