Recent versions of Mint support a non-administrative public view of statistics (you enable it under “Enable open, Client mode” in the “Login” section of the Preferences screen). So you’re now welcome to take a look around for yourself at ruk.ca traffic statistics.

In addition to the stock Mint installation, I’ve added a few add-on modules (in the world of Mint these are called “Pepper”); right now you’ll find Window Width, User Agent 007, Sparks! and Fresh View. Note that Fresh View requires an SVG-capable browser (it’s working fine in the latest stock Safari for me Safari requires the Adobe SVG Viewer v3.0 for Macintosh).

Later in Nicole Simon’s conversation with Stefan and Felix from Plazes they talk about their plans to roll out a new mobile-phone based twist on Plazes soon. Felix pointed me to these Flickr photos of the new “Plazes for phones” application; they’ve got it running on Nokia phones, and have plans to work on other platforms in the future. Cool.

“Once elected, we will ingest special giantification drugs that will allow us to grow to an enormous size, and lord over Charlottetown like gods…”

Back in the late 1980s, I filled in as office manager in the NDP campaign office of Linda Slavin, who was running for the party in Peterborough. It was a non-political temp job, and I was only there for a week — not enough time to really do any damage to me or to the party; the most remarkable event I can recall is that my bicycle was stolen from just outside the campaign office.

Linda is running for the NDP in the current federal election, and is keeping up a campaign weblog. Here’s what she has to say about the local Green Party candidate she’s running against:

While I really respect and welcome the ideas of local candidate, Brent Wood, I’m still concerned about the party itself: it’s right-wing, corporate-friendly stance on issues including voluntary auto emissions, and the top-down structure that Jim Harris has put in place, witness the total lack of a party convention to decide on policy. As a single issue party, the Greens lack coherence. And the formal complaints to Elections Canada of former Board members (six have resigned) that allege violations of both federal law and the Green Party Constitution are worrying.

For the record, the Green party platform plank on transportation says they’ll “enforce a mandatory target of 25 per cent better fuel efficiency for the automobile industry and increase standards over the next 5 years.” while the NDP platform says they’ll “establish mandatory vehicle emission standards, opposed by the Liberals, applicable to all vehicles and modeled on the tough California emissions standards.”

NDP candidates are, of course, genetically pre-disposed to finding holes in the Green Party — Dody Crane almost lost it back in 2004 when she visited the office and was asked about the Greens.

That said, there is a certain pallor the Green Party has taken on that suggests not all is right (of course this taste could simply be the result of the party’s opponents spreading rumours, I really don’t know). The profile earlier in the campaign of the party and its leader Jim Harris on The National certainly did little to dispel this problem.

In any case, I’m certainly giving Green candidate David Daughton serious consideration.

By the way, in the CBC Island Morning debate amongst candidates in the Cardigan riding, Green candidate Haida Arsenault-Antolick kicked ass, and more then held her own against the likes of Laurence MacAulay.

I was listening to this interview with Stefan Kellner and Felix Petersen by Nicole Simon — one of her podcasts in advance of Digital Lifestyle Day in Munich — on my way home this afternoon.

Nicole starts off the podcast by telling a version of my Hey, Plazes works! story from reboot. Which just goes to prove that success stories are viral. In Nicole’s version of the story, I become the subject — “a person from Canada” — rather than the object, switching places with Ton and Martin). It’s still a cool story, though.

DLD sounds cool, and if it weren’t full, I would have tried to combine it with my trip to LIFT the week after.

I’ve created a frappr map for ruk.ca — if you’re a reader, and want to take frappr for a spin, feel free to add yourself to the map.

During my visit to the Confederation Centre Public Library on Tuesday, I noticed again how “out in public” their public access Internet terminals are: they’re all arranged in a big “L” shape, in plain view of the checkout desk and in plain view of anyone arriving at or leaving the library. The arrangement means that it’s essentially impossible to have any meaningful sense of privacy when using the terminals, and means that “public access” really does mean “access, in public.”

When I was a kid, the public library afforded a rare opportunity for me to find information in an unfettered environment. Indeed libraries were staffed by people, I had the impression, who would be willing to go to the wall for my right to be unfettered. And so if I, as a 14 year old, wanted, say, to see a picture of a vagina, or to otherwise follow my curiosity towards any of the myriad other things that a 14 year old mind is curious about, I could do so simply by wandering the stacks or using the card catalogue. I could then settle down in a comfortable chair and explore the inner workings of the female reproductive system in relative privacy.

As the Internet replaces, or at least enhances, the printed holdings of libraries, I think it’s important that we not lose that right to access information without oversight. This is especially true as governments look to libraries, and other public access Internet sites, to fill the role of making up the “digital divide,” getting people online who can’t otherwise afford to do so.

The Internet is an amazing and powerful tool, a tool that’s even more amazing and more powerful out here on the edge of civilization where our libraries and bookstores have small collections compared to big cities.

I can think of many things that the Internet can be useful for — finding information about where to get an abortion, looking up divorce laws, finding out about that strange growth under your knee, even looking up information about universities or colleges in far away places if you’re in a family that wants to keep you close to home — that it would be inconvenient or impossible to use the Internet for in a situation where your friends and neighbours can easily look over your shoulder.

If we’re going to decide that public access Internet use is going to have to do for a certain portion of society, I think it’s important that we have respect for the privacy rights of those people, and at the very least reconsider the physical setup of public terminals so that they afford at least as much privacy as curling up with a book in a comfortable chair would.

I didn’t know that Kinko’s, or FedExKinko’s as it’s now called, had expanded to Canada. There’s even a store over in Halifax.

When I was in Montreal in last 2005, I happened into the Ta-Ze in the anachronistically-named Centre Eaton on Sainte-Catherine near University. The store sells nothing both olives and olive-related products — oil, soap, books. You can taste all of their products in the store, and they seemed quite knowledgeable about the differences between different varieties.

The store is related to the Turkish Taris Zeytin company.

I set Oliver up with the BBC’s Clifford the Big Red Dog page this afternoon and went into the kitchen to start dinner. When I came back to check on him ten minutes later, he was looking at the online advertising rates page for The Buzz. This was either due to an accidental click somewhere, or Oliver has something to advertise.