Interesting Google Satellite Maps. Neato.

We’ve set up a podcast feed for the Commission on Prince Edward Island’s Electoral Future. You’ll find the complete audio of the June 15, 2005 public forum in the feed right now; additional public meeting audio to follow.

I once bought a pair of headphones from AVShop and by virtue of this ended up on their emailing list. Which I actually find somewhat useful as they have interesting products, even if you’re not a pilot.

It occurred to me that it would be nice if they were to set up an RSS feed of their “new product flow,” so I decided to ask for this:

I’ll send off the email and let you know what happens.

Update: My email bounced back with a “smtp;550 unknown user ” error. Hmmmm.

Update: Many of the links on their contact us page are broken, including the one that reads “We want you to be satisfied…if you’ve already communicated with someone from our Customer Service Team, an Ask The Manager feature is also available if you believe your concerns need further attention.” Maybe I’ll phone them.

Update: I had another chat with Kim, and she explained “…we have just converted to a new website and those links have not been changed to the new address. They should be working shortly.” She also gave me another email address to try.

Olle Jonsson told me today that he has signed up for a service in Copenhagen wherein he receives an SMS on his mobile phone when his local ice cream shop has too much ice cream in inventory. If he responds to the SMS by going to the ice cream shop to eat ice cream, he receives a substantial discount.

Here’s Olle blogging about an ice cream-worthy event.

Olle’s fiancée Luisa Carbonelli, who otherwise blogs in Danish, has a most excellent answer to the question “Who Am I?” on her about page:

In short: I like living and I am easily fascinated.

In the book Almost French, Australian expat Sarah Turnbull describes the challenges of living as a new Parisian. She encounters particular difficulties in trying to understand the cool attitude of people she meets at dinner parties. She gets an opportunity to question a hard-won Parisian friend about this after he’s warmed to her:

“Why where you so unfriendly at first?”

Arnaud contemplates my question, which doesn’t seem to have offended or even surprised him. “The problem is the French aren’t very comfortable meeting new people,” he says. “For us, friendships form over years, at school or university. And after that, we’re not interested, we’re no longer curious. We think we’ve got enough friends already.”

I wonder how much the same could be said of Prince Edward Islanders, or, indeed, of people living in any place with a tradition of insularity.

Transit buttons: “a collection of 1-inch buttons featuring replicas of the tile art and visual landmarks of Toronto’s subway stations.” $45 for the entire set. Nice. An indirect link from Leah Tremain.

From the same source: The Details of the TTC: “some up-close details of the beautifully understated tile-work and design throughout Toronto’s transit system.”

Here’s a satellite image (on Google Maps) of the city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. The city walls are very clear.

Escaping Canada, by Robert Hof, is a quick summary of what it takes to stop being “Canadian” as far as paying taxes is concerned. Pointer, indirectly, from Daniel.

In this week’s episode, Stephen Southall reviews Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the new Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie.

After receiving some useful comments about the first Southall at the Movies, I did some experimenting with this one: I edited. The original tape was 34 minutes long; the version here is just over 12 minutes. I’m an apprentice digital audio editor, so the cut-down isn’t as smooth as it could be, and there were several instances where I was talking over Stephen so it was hard to make a cut where I would have liked.

There are some other rough edges: I just up and appear half way through out of nowhere (I tried to but myself out, but it just didn’t work). I go back and forth on the trailer clips. And we did sort of ramble on out.

But I think this one is better then the last. And I think we can get a lot better if we keep at it.

Again, comments are welcome.

Felix points out that Google now has satellite imagery covering the whole wide world. For example:

• Perusic, Croatia, where my grandfather Dan was born.
• The hotel I stayed at in Copenhagen.
• Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain.
• Ljubljana, Slovenia.