After hearing Jill Barber live this afternoon, I immediately wanted to purchase her music. So I went to her website, which led me to Zunior.com, a download-for-money site with a refreshingly enlightened attitude:

All music downloads are in MP3 format (encoded at 192 kpbs, using Lame MP3 Encoder). We believe MP3 format still provides the most flexibility for music lovers. We want you to own the music you buy. Digital Rights Management encryption that is used by major labels (ITunes, Napster) severely limits your options and flexibility. Our MP3 music files do not require special players, or special permissions. When you buy from Zunior, you own the music. Although we do encourage you not to upload the music to file sharing sites like Kazaa, we realize that you want to own the music you buy. File sharing is part of the modern music exerience, and we support the philosophy of sample…then buy. zunior.com allows you to buy, and own, the music you ve discovered. We hope you discover even more on zunior.com.

I bought both of Jill Barber’s albums from them. It was quick and easy, and I’m enjoying her music as I type this. I encourage you to do the same.

As music overtakes the city this weekend, it seems our neighbourhood is on the bluegrass side of the street: St. Paul’s Anglican Church (across the street from us at 101 Prince St.), not otherwise known as a hotbed of funky rhythm, is bluegrass central all weekend long. Oliver and I are going over for the Bluegrass Songwriters Circle 2:00 p.m. this afternoon; there’s more bluegrass action tonight from 7:00 p.m. onwards, and again at the same time tomorrow. Somewhere in the middle I assume they’ll break for some solemn old tyme religion.

If you’re here in Charlottetown, tune your radio to 90.1 FM to listen to Radio ECMA for 24h/day of east coast music; if you’re not, tune your PC to the live audio and video streams.

For time-delayed action, radio@upei is blogging and podcasting. I especially like this Catherine Maclellan set (I see Catherine all the time at the Formosa Tea House, and only learned last week, after seeing her on Compass, that she’s a musician).

There was a great confluence of GTD energy washing over me today. First, I listened to the latest Inside the Net wherein Amber and Leo interview Merlin Mann of 43 Folders. Then, following up on a mention of Kinkless GTD, I upgrade my OmniOutliner to “pro” and installed the set of add-ons known as kGTD. Finally, I spent about 3 hours emptying my email in-box, either deleting, archiving, or moving items into my snazzy new GTDly outline. And so now, for the first time in many months, I’ve achieved:

And:

I’m the last one to adopt new “organizational systems” like Getting Things Done; I’m just too suspicious. But the coincidence of overwhelmingness, an organizational system, and a cool Mac OS X tool that can help has pushed me over into the deep end.

I’ll let you know if it works.

Next time you’re making a salad, take a flour tortilla, roll it up, and then slice it up so that you’re left with stringy tortilla ribbons. Put under the broiler until crisp, and sprinkle on top of salad. Mmmm. (stolen from Nigella Lawson)

Need a quick dessert? Buy a bag of Lindt chocolate squares and serve with ginger snaps: you can’t beat the taste sensation of the combination.

Now that I’ve been schooled in the ways of ‘I’ vs. ‘me’ (not that I’ve completely reformed), I feel that I need some help on the “which” vs. “that” front. I’ve a vague feeling that I’m forever using the wrong one of these in the wrong place. Please help.

I was talking on the phone with a friend in Montreal this morning. The subject of a mutual acquaintance here in Charlottetown came up, and my friend’s lamenting comment about him was “He’s a great guy, he just forgot to ever leave Charlottetown.”

We’re into the last week of free access to the digital channels in our cable package — you know, those ones like “National Geographic Channel” and “Game Show Network” that have tiny subscriber bases and very, very narrowly focused programming.

With the exception of English Teachers: Taiwan, which I’ve become addicted to, and the occasionally novel BBC Kids, I can’t say as though I’ve found much that I couldn’t do without. In fact it seems that most of the programming on most of the digital channels most of the time is either Frontiers of Construction or Opening Soon.

But I did record Die Hard II last night on Scream, a channel that plays nothing but horror movies. Wow: people don’t swear like they used to in movies back in the 90s; what happened?

For the record, I am 11 years younger than Steve Jobs, and the same age as Kiefer Sutherland.

Ever since I saw my first spotlights, I’ve been a huge fan of the genre. I remember being able to go right up to the big spotlight trucks at the Canadian National Exhibition back in the 1970s: it was like looking into the eyes of God. Which is why it’s so exciting that, due to the presence of the East Coast Music Awards here in Charlottetown this week, we have spotlights of our very own:

For my next trip down to visit my colleagues at Yankee, I’m taking a new route: Charlottetown - Montreal - Hartford, this after years of flying into Boston, either via Halifax or via Montreal.

Besides the novelty, my rationale for the switch is Air Canada’s schedule: travel time to Hartford is only 4-1/2 hours from Charlottetown, whereas most routings through to Boston take 6 or 7 hours once you factor in all the time in various airports (to say nothing of the airline’s increasing tendency to route Montreal - Boston flights through Ottawa).

Flying to Hartford also lets me leave Charlottetown later and get back earlier: I leave PEI at 5:20 p.m. and get to Hartford at 9:00 p.m., and on the return flight I leave Hartford at 5:40 p.m. and I’m back on the Island at 11:00 p.m. In both cases my layover in Montreal is about an hour. By comparison, to get back from Boston to Charlottetown in one day usually requires leaving Logan by 2:00 p.m.

There are only two downsides that I can see: the plane from Montreal to Bradley Airport in Connecticut is a Beech 1900D, a truly microscopic airplane. And it appears as though it’s going to take about 45 minutes longer to drive up into New Hampshire from Hartford than it does from Boston (although if you factor in Friday Boston traffic, I might still come out ahead).

Oh, and the Hartford routing was $150 cheaper than any Boston flight I could find for the same dates.

If you’ve any pointers or advice regarding Bradley Airport in Hartford (or the drive north into New Hampshire), I’d welcome it.