I’ve done a little tweaking of [[RubyforPlazes]] so that it now works properly under Linux (it used to be Mac OS X-specific). I’ve also posted some notes about [[RubyforPlazes on Zaurus]], the result of which is:

Next stop: Ruby/Qte.

In anticipation of the roll-out of routes 2, 3, and 4 of the new Charlottetown public transit system, I’ve been working on geocoding the new routes, and I’ve been updating the demonstration page and the source code to match.

The route and stops for the new routes are now in place; I’ll add schedule information as the new routes come online. I’ve done some reformatting to accommodate the multiple routes (still playing with the colour scheme), and I’ve modified the pop-up boxes for each stop so that they display all of the scheduled stops, not just the next one.

I’ve also updated the schedule based on some feedback from Trius Tours: Route #1 now stops at the Charlottetown Mall and Wal-mart on all runs.

The World, a cruise ship that bills itself “a ship that carries our luxury vacation residences across the ocean and seasons to the four corners of the earth” is in port here in Charlottetown today:

Expatriate Islander, bassist Ross Macdonald was a musician/resident on the ship, and has a collection of photos in his gallery if you want a look inside; you can also follow his adventures on his blog, starting last January.

The gates are drawn pretty tight down at the Charlottetown Marine Terminal where it’s tied up, so there’s no “wandering down just to have a look.” The parking lot is full of onlookers in their cars, though, even though it’s driving rain outside.

There’s an interview with Stefan Kellner, Felix Petersen, and Christoph Maire of [[Plazes]] in the eHub.

From [[Dad]] comes a pointer to OneBag.com, subtitled “The Art and Science of Travelling Light.” From the introduction:

There’s no question: overpacking easily heads the list of biggest travel mistakes. Thus this Web site, offering exhaustive (some might say exhausting) detail on the art of travelling light, living for an indefinite period of time out of a single (carryon-sized) bag.

There’s a nice article in the New York Times about YankeeFoliage.com and Yankee’s Foliage Podcasts.

Who would have thought that when we started podcasting Jud’s New England Journal back in May (which was really just an afternoon’s distraction from “real work” for me) that six months later we’d warrant mention in the Times.

The folks at [[Yankee]] have really picked up the podcasting ball and run with it; this week’s episode of the foliage podcast sounds great.

[[Oliver]] had his 5th birthday over the weekend, and [[Catherine]] organized a wonderful party for him. About a dozen of his friends gathered under a faux circus tent in our living room and in our back yard for crafts and games and cupcakes. Catherine dressed up like a clown (okay, I’m sorry: next time I’ll be the clown, I promise). Everybody seemed to have fun, and I got to put faces to the names of lots of Oliver’s friends (including a special bonus: I found out the name of the person previously referred to by Oliver as simply “little girl.”).

What with all the trained killers waiting to steal our children out from underneath us at any minute, I’m not going to post any photos of the party; in lieu thereof, here’s a photo from my sixth birthday ([[Mom]] says she thinks I didn’t have a 5th birthday party, or at least that there are no pictures of it):

I turned 6 in April of 1972, and I started Kindergarten in the fall of 1971. We still lived in Burlington, Ontario at the time, so the party would have been held in the basement of 1471 Augustine Drive. [[Mom]] and [[Dad]] still have those chairs. I think the checker board went at a garage sale. Neither Mom nor I can remember the names of the other kids in the picture (I’m the one in the middle).

Interestingly, it appears from the top of the cake that, like Oliver, I had a circus-theme birthday.

I’ve finally had a chance to start playing with The New Yorker DVD. To my surprise and delight, the issues are stored on the DVDs as DjVu files, the same format that NOAA is using for their archival weather maps.

What’s more, there’s a Zaurus DjVu viewer available, which should enable mobile reading, and DjVuLibre is an open source project that enables viewers and plug-ins to be created.

Cool.

Update: I received the following from The New Yorker technical support in response to a query about whether it’s possible to view the DjVu files in other applications:

Unfortunately, this is not possible. The discs are copy-protected to prevent successful copying or viewing files in another application.

Since I returned from [[reboot]] in June, I’ve been praying in the church of open source. Partly this is because I think open source is cool, and [[reboot]] introduced me to some cool practitioners (of course there are some cool practitioners right upstairs too). And partly this is because distracting myself with open source fiddling is a procrastinator’s dream: why spend time on meeting deadlines for paying work when you can connect [[Plazes]] to your toaster instead!

Until now my open source experiments have existed in a ragtag collection of weblog posts and Rukapedia pages, with a combination of licensing that ranged from “none” to inappropriate use of Creative Commons licensing.

I took some time today to better organize my open source house; specifically:

• I’ve created a directory in the Rukapedia of all of the projects, with a page for each one. These pages are the new “homes” for the projects.
• I’ve modified all of the weblog posts related to these projects to point to these new homes (here’s an example).
• I’ve moved all of the source code into a Subversion repositories; this will allow for much better version control and distribution. If you’re new to Subversion, Version Control with Subversion is an excellent introduction.
• I’ve modified the license for all of the bits of code to the GNU General Public License. To do this I actually had to read the GPL for the first time; my how wonderful it is. I’ve still a little but of work to do to better document the GPLness of the code, but the basics are in place.

I am quickly becoming a fan of MINT, an elegant web traffic reporting application. And I just discovered something.

To have MINT count hits on each page, you need to include a bit of JavaScript on each page. If you put this JavaScript before the <title> section in the head of your page, then MINT won’t grab the title, and traffic to pages will be reported by URL. If you include the JavaScript after the <title> section, then MINT will grab the actual title.

Here’s a screen snap from my MINT showing the changeover (it’s a lot more useful with the page titles):