Back in the days when I was working for Scott Linkletter and Chris Cudmore, partners in The Anne of Green Gables Store, on the concept plan for what became Avonlea, I spent a lot of time up in the offices at Henderson and Cudmore, the venerable clothing store in downtown Charlottetown.

Every time I walked through the front doors, pictured below, I noticed that the door handles weren’t aligned. So one day I asked Brian Cudmore why this was: he told me that the glass in one of the door had been broken at one point, and the company that repaired it put the replacement in upside down. Although H&C is no longer, the doors are still there, emblazoned with the store logo. And one of them is still upside down.

All other issues aside, it appears as though, in the game of political chicken that resulted in Air Canada cancelling their direct Charlottetown-Toronto service the airline may have misjudged its opponent.

Something Premier Pat Binns knows that Air Canada doesn’t is that in any match that pits Islanders against an Upper Canada corporation, Islanders will always side with Islanders.

I don’t know if Air Canada was hoping that the Binns government would be swayed by some sort of public groundswell against their subsidies for WestJet, but I’ve a feeling it ain’t coming.

While I don’t always agree with the Premier or his government, listening to him on As It Happens last night, my thoughts were not to the political minutiae but rather more along the lines of “You Rock, Pat — Give ‘Em Hell!”

Stephen Desroches has posted photos here and here of my paint-ball performance yesterday at the Steven Garrity all-day bachelor party. Think “cowering.”

Remember Dick Gordon? Back in the post-Gzowski days when CBC tried to mix the oil of Avril Benoit and the water of Michael Enright with a rebranded morning show called This Morning, Dick Gordon was one of the few bright lights: when he guest-hosted, the show had a grace that it never reached otherwise.

He moved to Boston shortly thereafter to host the NPR-affiliate WBUR’s morning show The Connection. I listen to it every time I’m in Boston, and find Gordon as compelling a host there as he was on the CBC.

Alas WBUR has cancelled The Connection (official announcement here).

Perhaps this means Dick Gordon can return to the CBC, where he belongs?

I’ve been experimenting with Ruby of late, and decided it would be good practice to try and code up a Plazes “Where Am I?” application to learn more about the languages ins and outs.

The result is PlazesWhereAmIRuby-0.2.tar.gz. This is my first Ruby script (or whatever they’re called), so I can’t claim that this is anywhere near Ruby best practices. But it works. To use the script:

• Get Ruby (here’s a place to start). Mac OS X users (post-Jaguar) can skip this step; you already have Ruby installed by default.
• Download PlazesWhereAmIRuby-0.2.tar.gz.
• tar -xzvf PlazesWhereAmIRuby-0.2.tar.gz
• Edit the file PlazesWhereAmIRuby.rb and replace the ‘username’ and ‘password’ with your Plazes username and password.
• ruby PlazesWhereAmIRuby.rb

The result will be something like this:

{“plazestate”=>”Prince Edward Island”, “username”=>”reinvented”, “plazelat”=>46.2361, “plazelon”=>-63.13, “plazecity”=>”Charlottetown”, “plazename”=>”Reinvented Office”, “plazeurl”=>”http://beta.plazes.com/plaze/2dbbe7a819b01317eb2ce58272b95f70/”, “plazecountry”=>”CA”}

…which is simply a dump of the parameters returned from the Plazes server.

Update: I’ve created a more general-purpose module for Ruby that implements not only the WhereAmI API, but also the Launcher API.

Skype chat with Olle Jonsson this afternoon (earlier in the day I had Skyped Olle when I meant to Skype me father):

Sorry about earlier kerflufle — I am still getting used to the UI in Skype, and I am always mistakenly calling around the globe when I mean to call across the street.

My old friend from Peterborough, Sandy Hunter, continues her adventures. In today’s episode, she goes sailing and breaks her ribs.

Dan James, Nick Burka and I are hosting a “little travel slideshow” tonight (July 19th, 2005) at 7:00 p.m. at the Queen Street Commons. Dan will show slides of his trip to Peru, Nick of his time in Paris, and me of our time in the south of France. Everyone is invited — you don’t need to be a member of the Commons or a silverorange insider.

The CBC is reporting that Air Canada will cut its direct flight from Charlottetown to Toronto this fall. They quote a Globe and Mail story that begins:

Air Canada is cancelling its Toronto-Charlottetown fall and winter flights because it’s livid about the PEI government’s subsidies for rival WestJet Airlines Ltd.

The change won’t exactly leave the Island cut off from the rest of Canada, but it certainly will have a negative impact on leisure and business travelers flying off-season because it will mean that all connections through Toronto will involve a flight to Montreal or Halifax first.

Mark McQuaid passed along a pointer to Free Beer for Geeks, a WIRED story about an open source beer project in Copenhagen.