Commercial Alert is a Portland, OR-based non-profit organization working to “keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy.”

We’ve all heard of the “cola company sponsors high school” phenomenon; looking at Commerial Alert’s Issues list, it’s shocking to see that this is only one front in a war against the commercialization of everything.

I’ve slimmed down the sidebar here on ruk.ca (which you’ll see, of course, only if you’re viewing the site in an actual web browser).

I decided that the upside of having random photos of my current Plazes location wasn’t worth the additional work and bandwidth required to obtain them, and I find removing them creates a calmer visual environment.

I also removed the “latest photos” collection of Flickr thumbnails: I’m not taking many photos these days (it being freezing cold and all), so this wasn’t as relevant as it may have once been. Removing these also removes a site-loading bottleneck, as the sidebar was often slow to load because of the necessity of a connection to Flickr to get the photos (I had planned to modify the code to cache the thumbnails locally, but didn’t get around to it).

Anyone have any thoughts on the “Posts since your last visit” and “Comments since your last visit” sections. They’re certainly not an industry standard blog feature, so perhaps they’re superfluous. Let me know if they help you or not.

Oh, and one more thing: if you’re a regular reader who wants to say “hi” without actually throwing your hat into the conversational fray, you’re welcome to drop a comment into the Who Are You? thread. 114 of you already have, and reading through those comments is an interesting way to get a sense of the otherwise anonymous readership.

After another hiatus, RealCharlottetown.com is operational again. Turns out that a bug in the code manifested itself only when Good News Baptist Church was added. I don’t blame God.

Looking at this slideshow of the new Nokia store in Moscow, I suddenly realized why I absolutely hate mobile phone stores: they don’t let you actually experience the merchandise.

In the worst cases — like at large electronics retailers like Staples and Future Shop — they have faked up demo models of phones, often solid chunks of plastic pseudo-phone with buttons that don’t even work. At best we’re given “real,” albeit non-working phones annoyingly tethered by wire rope to anchor posts “for our protection.”

Why is it that I can go up to Charlottetown Toyota, let them take a photocopy of my driver’s license, and drive away in a $20,000 automobile for a test drive, but my experience of a $400 mobile phone is limited to fondling an inert lump while surrounded by giant photos of happy people calling their loved ones in Prague?

So here’s my idea for cell phone stores: start a “try before you buy” program. Have a fleet of phones — one or two of every model you sell — available for a 24 hour “test drive.” Take a deposit if you must. Stick “pay as you go” SIM cards in the phone with a couple of dollars worth of calling time on them to ensure I don’t run up your bill with calls to Myanmar.

With this program in place customer could get a real feel for the best phone for their life. I could take the phone home and see if it really syncs with my Mac address book like Apple claims it will. I could see if Bluetooth is all it’s really cracked up to be. Take some pictures with the built-in camera and post them to Flickr and see how they rate.

I’m tired of walking into swanky lifestyle showrooms, pursued by ravenous salesguys looking to upsell me on a 1,500 minute plan “with a free phone included.” A phone — like pants — is a personal object and to truly try one on demands actually being able to, well, make a phone call with it.

I have inexplicably become a fan of the NBC Monday night television programme Las Vegas.

By most measures it is a truly dreadful show; it’s more like a “sexed up Love Boat in the desert” than anything else. Cleavage is important. And the show truly jumped the shark when Lara Flynn Boyle’s guest start run came to and end by flying her off the edge of the hotel, carried on wings created by her puffy dress.

But, for all those reasons, Las Vegas makes for compelling (if mindless) Monday evening entertainment. It helps that it’s on late, after Catherine has gone to bed and G. has packed up his bike and ridden up to NoEu.

Most of the show is shot in and around the Montecito Resort and Casino. I’d simply assumed that this was a real Las Vegas hotel; this assumption was bolstered by the fly-over shots of the city in the opening credits clearly showing the Montecito on the Las Vegas strip.

Turns out that I was wrong: it’s all a fiction: the Montecito doesn’t actually exist. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

Many of Mandalay Bay’s interiors and exteriors (including its wave pool) have been used as Montecito exteriors, although (according to the Internet Movie Database) interiors are now filmed in a California set that is a replica of the Mandalay Bay. In several episodes, the fly-through video clips inaccurately depict the movement of the camera into a casino which is clearly the Mandalay Bay - not the Montecito. Many of the interiors and exterior shots of the casino can be shown depicting Mandalay signage and names.

Surely it can’t be too long before NBC opens a real Montecito in Las Vegas?

Google Transit. Only for Portland, OR right now. Thanks to the many people who pointed me there.

So, Oliver survived the Christmas play. We admired his steely resolve (read “stage struckedness”) to not sing any of the words to the “and shepherds salved Jesus’ heart upon the breast of Mary”-type songs. He was cute in his shepherd costume, delighted to see Santa Claus, and happy to introduce his Uncle Johnny to all his friends and teachers.

Earlier in the day our attempt to go to Interlude for “Gung Bao Thursday” was thwarted by Jodi’s revelation that they are closed until Dec. 14th. So I had to make do with a cheeseburger platter from The Town & Country. I miss you, Gung Bao… I miss you.

On the way to the T&C I noticed that the City of Charlottetown is about to unveil a new Town Clock on a pedestal on the corner of Kent and Queen. As the person who (inadvertently) drummed the last public clock out of town back in 2002, don’t I deserve some place at the opening ceremonies later in the month?

Finally, I am giving serious consideration to the notion of switching from a “bar” shaver (a Braun 3612) to one of the newer “rotary” models, like those made by Philips. When I first started to shave, it was with my Grandpa Ross’ Norelco (it was later stolen from my house, believe it or not, in a brazen robbery); I’ve been using Brauns (with a break for a Panasonic wet/dry, also a “bar” shaver) ever since. I simply seems like the three rotating blades would inevitably make shaving go faster and “closer.” I welcome any comments from the readership on this feeling.

Here’s an error message thrown by a NOAA application:

Error: Not Enough Data Available to be Displayed

There are less than 5 observations available for the selected parameter. Attempting to graph this data may give the impression that no data is available, so building of the graph was aborted.

I understand completely what the error message means, mostly because it sounds like the kind of error message that a programmer (like me) would write to describe what had happened. But it does strike me as rather user-hostile.

Courtesy of Microsoft’s new “Google Maps killer,” here’s a bird’s eye view of downtown Boston.

On the right is Government Center, running up the middle is the New England Holocaust Memorial and near the middle is The Yankee Publishing Building, at 33 Union Street, home to our advertising department colleagues at Yankee Publishing.

Just out of view at the top of the photo (you can scroll) is Faneuil Hall.

Doesn’t work in Safari, but works fine in Firefox on the Mac.