Johnny and Jodi and I headed off to Interlude for lunch this afternoon only to find it closed (for today only). Suddenly Jodi remembered a new restaurant, called Queue, had opened beside the Pilot House on Grafton St., so we walked over and had lunch there instead. (Don’t ask me how a major new restaurant can be open for 4 weeks, a block from my house and two blocks from my office and I don’t hear about it…)

Queue is in the space at the end of the Pilot House parking lot formerly used as an office and storage space by The Two Sisters. In its new incarnation, however, it bears little resemblance to a warehouse: it’s been refreshingly renovated into a large open space, with bright colours, Karen Gallant paintings and lots of light. There’s a very pleasant patio outside — perhaps the nicest patio space in the city; the owners deserve credit for investing in high-quality metal patio furniture (pictured here) instead of the default “buy whatever’s cheapest at Canadian Tire” that is the norm.

Although the waitress suggested that Queue is the “healthy” cousin to the Pilot House — they don’t serve french fries, for example — the menu was pretty straight ahead “family dining” style: crepes, pizza, pasta, salad. Think Piece a Cake but without the bravado.

I had high hopes for Thai Peanut Pizza, but it ended up being an uninspiring crust topped with french onion soup-style mozzarella and only the vaguest hint of thai spice or peanuts; more “cheese on toast” than “tasty spice explosion.”

Jodi had crepes and Johnny had a steak cheese wrap, and both seemed to quite enjoy their meals, so perhaps if I set my sights on less of a transformative experience (always the trap I fall into in new restaurants) I would have been happier with the results.

Non-alcoholic drink selection (another “must-have” for me) was as poor as any other restaurant in Charlottetown; I settled for an apple juice when my lips were crying “non-sweetened iced tea.”

Service was pleasant and prompt.

Final verdict: excellent location, very pleasant space, don’t expect to be moved by the food.

The CBC is reporting that [t]ourism numbers down again on Prince Edward Island this summer. And like last year, the air is thick with speculation as to why.

But here’s a thought: what if tourists visit Prince Edward Island “just because.” What if they don’t pay attention to advertising or marketing or the weather. What if it’s not about “effective golf packaging” or “powerful family-themed vacation opportunities?” What if it’s not about the 1-800 number or the website or the ease of the bridge or the romance of the ferry?

What if tourism on Prince Edward Island is mostly just the result of a whole bunch of irrational, unpredictable, largely non-influencable decisions? And so sometimes lots of people come, and sometimes not so many.

Or what if the more we try to make people visit, the less likely they are to do so.

I’ve no evidence to suggest that either of these theories is correct. But it seems to me that we’re shoveling a lot of money into tourism marketing and advertising and packaging based on a largely untestable assumption that it has a chance of actually working.

So here’s my idea: let’s take a year off. Shut off the website. Stop the TV commercials. Pull the colour supplements from the Toronto Star. Cancel the subsidized rock concerts and golf tournaments.

And see what happens.

Maybe people would visit anyway. Just because.

I’ve given the weblog another small aesthetic adjustment, all relating to the display of various information at the bottom of every post. The goal was to make it all less obscure without making it visually overbearing.

I’ve also revamped the various category-specific pages in the weblog archives. Look at the iPod category page, for example, and you’ll see links to “related categories” like Podcasting and iTunes, and a bunch of pre-packaged links to other websites for the same category. And of course, just to be contrary, I had to create a tag cloud:

Based largely on this testimonial from David Heinemeier Hansson and seeing it in action in this Ruby on Rails video, I’m making an experimental switch this week from editing in the venerable BBEdit to using new entry TextMate.

TextMate doesn’t have the feature weight of BBEdit (which can seemingly do anything with text), but it loads faster, has collapsable blocks, and neater syntax completion. I’ll let you know if I stick with it.

Two “secret” format strings for strftime are documented here:

• %k - hour (24 hour clock) leading zero replaced with space
• %l - hour (12 hour clock) leading zero replaced with space

Stefan and Felix rolled out an upgrade to Plazes today (see it in action at plazes.com). New and improved features include integration with Google Maps throughout, and a new Where is Peter Rukavina? feature (that works for other people too!).

A reminder that Stefan and Felix are dropping in via iChat to the Confederation Centre of the Arts next Wednesday, August 3 for a live introduction to Plazes. They’re good speakers, and they’re passionate about the system, so it promises to be a good event.

Frequently Asked Questions about living on Kwajalein, a U.S.-controlled atoll located in the western Pacific Ocean.

From Doc Searls comes a pointer to more audio from reboot 7.0. These are in addition to the audio of the Saturday sessions released earlier. There’s some really good stuff there.

From Dan Misener comes a link to the MicroTrack 2496, which the company describes as:

…a rugged high-fidelity mobile 2-channel digital recorder that records WAV and MP3 files to CompactFlash or microdrives… Record via balanced line inputs or built-in high-fidelity microphone preamps complete with 48V phantom power for studio-quality microphones. Connect MicroTrack to a PC or Mac via USB and simply drag and drop recordings to your computer for immediate editing or Web posting. Power derives from a lithium-ion battery, and the unit can recharge via the computer’s USB connection or optional USB power adapter.

This sounds perfect for mobile digital recording.

As a “pay as you go” customer of Rogers Wireless, using an unlocked T610 I bought on eBay (aka “a non-Rogers phone” in their parlance), I inhabit a murky nether-world where Rogers treats me as a full customer as regards billing, but as a sort of pseudo-customer as regards customer service.

Partly this is because their “pay as you go” offering is the bastard child of their mobile service — something that, from all appearances, they offer grudgingly and view as an entry-level drug for real “3 year contract” service. And partly it’s because I have a phone that they didn’t get to program, that they don’t sell, and therefore that they don’t support.

I know my T610 is a data-capable phone because I used it successfully to browse the web, send and receive email, and even as a wireless modem for my laptop while I was in France on the Orange network.

Rogers has a brief FAQ about WAP settings on their website, but it’s just generic enough that I could never get it to work. Tonight, however, I found this very helpful forum post that contains the same information but with helpful annotation. Worked like a dream, and I can now press the mysterious silver button on the top right side of the phone and get the Google WAP-specific page loading up in the phone’s tiny browser window.

I followed the instructions on the same page to set up “MMS” (multi-media messaging?), which my T610 calls “Picture Messaging.”

Next, I wanted to know how much all this would cost me (there’s no information about data rates on Rogers rates page). So I visited the front page of Google (but didn’t search for anything) and then I send a picture to myself using “Picture Messaging.” Here’s what appeared a few minutes later in my Rogers transaction history (read up from the bottom):

The first charge is a mysterious $2.00 charge that was refunded a minute later (later experimenting suggests Rogers does this every time you use the data features of the phone). This was followed by a 2 cent charge, which I assume is associated with loading up the Google front page. I also assume that the 50 cent “Data Usage Charge” is what it cost me to email a photo to myself (that seems to be confirmed here).

The “picture messaging” (MMS), which Rogers brands as My Pix but my phone, perhaps because of its complicated provenance, calls “t-zones,” is a freaky proprietary-seeming system that sticks a Rogers branding wrap around the photo, and then emails it. Here’s what the photo I emailed myself looked like when it arrived:

Much to my surprise, Flickr’s send photos from your phone system was smart enough to rip out all the Rogers crap and grab and post my photo, which is neat (that one cost me another 50 cents, of course). Fortunately, my phone has Bluetooth built in, so I don’t need to MMS myself all my photos!

The grim reality of all this is that now that my access is enabled, I’m still faced with the prospect of browsing the web with a tiny screen and numeric keyboard for data entry, but I imagine there will be times when even this little window to the net will be helpful in a pinch.