Self-described “inventor, author, revolutionary” and sometimes Island resident Doug Hall is podcasting.

I found this out using Podscape, which arrived on the scene while I was in France. I did a podscape search for “Prince Edward Island” and Doug showed up.

I have successfully avoided using the ‘awk’ command over more than a decade of Unix/Linux use. I fear that someday I will have no choice but to jump in and learn its voodoo. This simply-worded guide looks like a good place to start.

As I type brother Steve is interviewing Jack Layton on the CBC Montreal noon-hour phone-in show. He’s doing a good job. Jack just called him “Steve.”

Pete Townshend turns 60 today.

As I write there has been a vote call on Bill C-43, Budget Implementation Act, 2005 in the House of Commons. You can watch the proceedings live on Parliament’s excellent ParlVU webcast site. 12 minutes until the vote, members have been called:

Update at 5:59 EDT: So the first vote is done: the Liberals, NDP and Conservatives supported it, the Bloc voted against. Results: 250 to 54. Now on to the next vote.

Update at 6:01 EDT:They’re now on to Bill C-48, An Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to make certain payments.

Update at 6:04 EDT: Liberals all supported. NDP all supporting. Parrish supports. Cadman supports. Now counting the Nays.

Update at 6:10 EDT: Conservatives and Bloc opposed. Kilgour opposed. Final tally: 152 to 152. Speaker has to vote: “I don’t know why honourable members keep doing this to me.”

Update at 6:13 EDT: Speakers votes for the bill. Motion carries. Bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Finance.

Thanks to Dan Cederholm for pointing this out: hover over a word (you need neither to click on it nor highlight it) anywhere in Mac OS X Tiger, press Control + Command + D and the dictionary definition for the word will magically pop-up right there:

So I’m sitting there inside /usr/local/src. There’s a subdirectory called sox-12.17.7. I want to move into that subdirectory. Apparently — and I only found this today for the first time — I can simply type cd sox and then press the TAB key, and the OS automagically inserts the rest for me.

I stumbled on this Google Cheat Sheet today. Very useful.

I’d like to know how many Prince Edward Islanders there have been. We all know the current population of PEI (137,734), and there are readily available statistics about births and deaths). What I want to know, however, is, from the beginning of humanity, how many people have been born on Prince Edward Island. In other words, what is the size of the community of “native born Islanders” that Oliver joined when he was born, current and “alumni” both.

By the way, there’s a very interesting population backgrounder, prepared in 1999 for the Premier’s Population Strategy. Here’s something I didn’t know, for example:

Stereotypes, both past and present, have tended to portray Prince Edward Island as a settled, stable place, outside the mainstream of population change. The data outlined above give the lie to this assumption, demonstrating that the Island has experienced substantial inflows and outflows of population throughout its history.

Here’s another interesting trend:

Families of common-law couples are still less common throughout the Atlantic Provinces than in the rest of Canada, and are the lowest in the country in PEI, at 7.7% of all families. However, this category is catching up, with particularly sharp increases in New Brunswick and Newfoundland, followed by PEI. While in most Canadian provinces, the number of common-law families with children is growing more strongly than those without children, PEI and Newfoundland are bucking the trend, with faster growth among common-law couples without children than among those with children.

The companion question to this one is “are there more people or cows on Prince Edward Island.” I was going to do a radio piece on this several years ago, but I never got around to it. Presumably this question is much easier to answer.

The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute has an interesting article about taking kids on bikes. I’d been thinking about finding a way for Oliver and I to ride together; the article was enough to make me wait until he can ride his own.