After last month’s first take on a hybrid Pen Night, we did better last night, with two members from away joining us on Zoom, one from Ottawa and one from Belgium.

We switched from using my MacBook Air for the Zoom to using Dan’s Windows laptop, and this addressed the audio feedback issues we had last time. We used my external Logitech wide-angle USB webcam as both camera and microphone.

A key innovation introduced midstream: moving the laptop and camera around the room as people spoke. The Achilles heel continues to be outbound audio, and this really helped, although those away were still unable to hear casual table talk.

Other than Chantal’s excellent presentation on nib grinds, the big news from the meeting was a decision to name our group, heretofore known only as “Pen Night,” as “The Pen and Pencil Club of Prince Edward Island,” a historical hat-tip to the great Robert Harris and The Pen and Pencil Club of Montréal that he cofounded in 1890:

The majority of each meeting was devoted to a discussion of the literary and visual works presented by the members. The works generally dealt with a subject that had been agreed upon in advance (for example, summer, hell, a duel). The essays, poems, watercolours and oil or pencil compositions were analyzed, and often criticized, by all those in attendance.

Thank you to my neighbour Norman for pointing me to the artifacts in the Confederation Centre Art Gallery that prompted this suggestion.

Late last night Olivia got concerned that she wouldn’t be able to vote as Olivia in the federal election.

In a drive to help clarify, I pored through the Elections Canada FAQ on identification, and was perplexed to find, highlighted in yellow, in ALL CAPS, a passage:

WAITING FOR OLIVIA TO CONFIRM IF WE KEEP THE LAST TWO FAQS

In my late-Friday, concerned-parent, tired state, I had no idea what was happening to make Elections Canada’s website talk to me.

If you’re playing the home game, you will recall that we switched from Spotify to Apple Music as our household streaming music provider back in July.

Today we switched back.

Two reasons:

First, Apple Music isn’t supported with an app for Google Home, meaning that Olivia needs to “cast” from her Android phone to her bedroom Google Home to listen to music when she’s going to sleep. Which means she needs to take her phone to bed with her. Which has all sorts of distracting repercussions.

Second, I’d underestimated the degree to which the Spotify algorithm “gets me.” Throwing back to Apple Music meant returning to a music fingerprint that I had 5 or 6 years ago, and I’ve evolved since then. This would change with time, but I simply got tired of hearing the songs of 2015 Peter in my recommended stream.

Both of these are a case for better interoperability, and for migration paths from streaming service to streaming service. Music streaming should be more like email: it should work everywhere there’s a speaker, and I should be able to transfer my taste profile from service to service.

Until that happens, I’m rejoining regularly scheduled July 2021 musical fingerprint, already in progress.

(To Apple’s credit, it was very easy to downgrade from Apple One to the component services I want to keep–iCloud storage and Apple TV+, and to Spotify’s credit, everything was waiting back where I left it when I downgraded to a free plan).

The “pano” mode on the iPhone camera is an under-appreciated tool. Especially if you avoid shooting 360° scenes.

Today Olivia and I combined a Truckin’ Roll ice cream sandwich run with a survey of the surveillance cameras in our neighbourhood.

We counted 47.

(That includes our Ring doorbell camera: glass houses.)

We didn’t have to walk far.

I mapped them all on OpenStreetMap.

Inspired by Surveillance under Surveillance (where, because it’s driven by OpenStreetMap, all 47 should shortly appear). 

I’ve sat on a committee that reviews manuscripts submitted for publication for the last three or four years. Every nine months or so I receive a stack of PDFs to read, review, and then discuss with my colleagues. It’s been a fantastic education in how to write, and an even better one and how not to write.

When things go off the rails in a manuscript, almost always it’s because there’s an absence of story. Someone gets interested in a particular topic enough to write a book about it. They are captivated by the details of some person, or some event. So captivated that, in writing it all down, they forget to provide the connective tissue that weaves it all together. Into a story.

My own shortcut for describing what it’s like to read these: “this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.” Great information, dull as a doornail.

Beau Miles uncovers the same issue with his own work in Junk Films, a commentary on four of his films, films that never saw the light of day. Because he forgot to tell a story.

Beau, you went to the Outer Hebrides, with this great group of people, with a camera that has a microphone within it, and you didn’t talk.

Ironically, the story of the failed films is, in itself, a good story.

I don’t write books, I write blog posts. But blog posts can tell stories too, and when the stars align they can tell good stories. One thing I’ve discovered in writing blog posts for 22 years is that the good ones always hurt just a little to publish: if, at the moment I’m about to click Submit, I feel twingey “can I really write this?” butterflies, that’s a good sign I’m onto something.

Miles found the same thing: if you don’t care, nobody else will.

I used tape to fix up my pants: that’s a story, Beau. If there’s one thing about my films, I try and make them personal, because that’s the only expertise I have, on myself. Stories are hard to tell because they become the essence of a big thing into something small. You gotta nail it: you find yourself waffling on and you’ve bored yourself.

Your yearly reminder that the new edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac is now in stock at The Bookmark.

This is the 25th edition of the Almanac since I started work with the publisher in 1997. That seems like a long time until you remember that this is the 230th edition.

When you buy the Almanac, you not only get a helpful guide to the natural world, useful with a pleasant degree of humour, but you’re also supporting my little business and my little family!

I can’t listen to Sound the Alarm from The Knocks without thinking of the theme for S Club 7.

Instead of “Epekwitk is the Miꞌkmaq name for Prince Edward Island,” say “Prince Edward Island is the colonial name for Epekwitk.”