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):

I’ve been working on getting a Plazes Launcher for Zaurus running; I reasoned that a portable device able to ping Plazes with my location would make Plazes more useful.

As it turned out, it was relatively trivial to get my BashLauncher script working on the Zaurus: I just needed to install cURL and OpenSSL. I’ve written some sketchy instructions on how to do this; in the meantime, here’s proof that it worked:

I’ll work on making the instructions a little less sketchy.

Based on some feedback from users, I’ve updated the interactive bus map application. Things should work properly in Internet Explorer for Windows now (thanks Greg!).

I’ve moved the source code for the application into a Subversion repository; I’ve also written instructions for downloading and installing the source code and the data and put together a brief Making of the Charlottetown Transit Map page that describes my method for gathering the data required to drive the map.

I don’t read printed bus timetables very well. So I created the Charlottetown Transit Interactive Bus Map:

This is a little Google Maps hack that uses PHP and JavaScript to display information about Charlottetown bus routes and schedules.

This is just a tentative first go; specifically:

• Only the Winsloe - University Ave. line is included (it’s the only one in operation as I write).
• Stop and route location may be incorrect; I simply recreated this as best I could from the published schedules and maps. If you find problems, please let me know.
• I left out the early morning and early evening swings to the Garfield St. terminal.
• Assumes a Big Browser Window (map is 700 pixels wide); future versions should be more flexible.
• No allowance made for the fact that there are no buses on Sundays.
• Doesn’t span days — after the transit day is over, all times display as “n/a”.

You’re welcome to grab the source and the data and improve. Steven says I need a source code repository for all my little code experiments; expect this soon.

It goes without saying that this project is unaffiliated with the City of Charlottetown or the transit operator; if it breaks, or sends you to the wrong place at the wrong time, it’s my fault, not theirs.

Oliver and I go to the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market most Saturday mornings. And this morning Oliver insisted that we take the bus rather than the car, thus proving that hope is with the children.

We caught the 10:00 a.m. from the Atlantic Technology Centre and arrived at the Atlantic Superstore at 10:15; the bus made a special stop up by the Belvedere Ave. sidewalk, and we got off and walked across University Ave. to the Market (seems like it would take a long time; takes 4 minutes).

One would think that weirdo hippie freaks (a term I use with endearment) who come out of the woodwork for the Market every Saturday would be a natural public transit constituency, but save for one fellow traveller, we were it. Of course there is a tendency in the weirdo hippie freak community to live in the country, so one wouldn’t expect a complete absence of cars — but I know that some of my fellow market-goers are “downtown livers” (as Catherine Hennessey calls us), so there’s some work to be done.

We walked back over to the Superstore for the 11:15 a.m. bus, which turned out, because I misread the schedule, to be the 11:30 a.m. bus. We were back downtown at 11:40.

The schedule is almost perfect for spending an hour at the market, and I would encourage my fellow downtown livers to give it a try.

I learned last night that one of the helpful “concierge-educators” that we encountered on yesterday’s trip is Charlottetown business impresario Mike Cassidy, one of the partners in the bus initiative. Kudos to Mike for a truly hands-on approach to business; sitting near the front we could see the bus service literally evolve before our very eyes as decisions were made to adjust the schedule and stops to accommodate the real world.

This Guardian article provides a good summary of plans for the service, including this:

A single bus will be assigned to each route at the time of launch, but Cassidy said they hope to build the fleet to as many as nine buses in the next 24 months so that they can pick up more people during times of heavy ridership. As Cornwall and Stratford decide whether to join the new setup, Cassidy said new routes will hook the suburbs to the city core.

If that pans out, I think we’ll end up with a very usable transit system, “ye olde” buses and all.