Here’s a final round-up of good kid-friendly experiences that Oliver and I indulged in over the weekend.

The Discovery Center on Barrington Street was a lot of fun: we spent almost three hours there. It’s no Ontario Science Centre and it looks like no new money has been invested in a decade, as things are a little dated. But its small size works for it: we didn’t get exhausted or overwhelmed by the need to “see everything.” The Van der Graaf show uses a dinky little aparatus and cotton balls, but the host is goofy and endearing and, again, the small scale (there were only 8 of us in the audience) makes for a much better experience — and more opportunities for questions — than in a “big city” science centre. Highlights for us: the Bernoulli exhibit, with compressed air and pingpong balls, kept both of us entertained for at least 15 minutes; the bubble room is great, especially the “wrap yourself inside a giant bubble” exhibit; there’s a great set of Brio-brand construction toys on the third floor that were a sort of cross between Meccano and Lego. Cost: $11.50 for both of us.

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic was somewhat less kid-centric, with lots of ship models and examples of historical lamps. But the original models from the ill-fated Theodore Tugboat program are there, which was enough to keep Oliver going for half an hour (it is really quite a neat setup) and there are enough old anchors, full-sized sailboats and canoes, and giant lighthouse mirrors to make it a worthwhile visit. Theodore Too, a full-sized replica of Theodore, is moored in the harbour just up the shore near Murphy’s restaurant; in the summer they offer tours of the harbour, but even in the winter it’s a cool stop just to take a look from the wharf. Admission to the Museum was $4.00 for me, and free for Oliver.

Even though I’m quite averse to the “ye olde” waterfront developments that have infected the eastern seaboard, the Historic Properties on the waterfront in Halifax do have a couple of things going for them: there’s a nice food court with a decent selection of vendors at the water-end of the main building, and the Maps & Ducks store — selling maps, travel guides and duck decoys — was interesting (Oliver likes globes and flags) and the staff were nice. We gave the balance of the ye olde merchants a pass.

Right next door is the Dartmouth Ferry where, for $1.75 each way, you can cruise over to Dartmouth and back. We didn’t do it this visit — ran out of time — but we did go over last year, and it was lot’s of fun.

The big Mountain Equipment Coop store downtown was interesting, and they had a surprisingly broad selection of surprisingly inexpensive (at least relative to expectation, if not to Wal-mart) children’s gear.

Otherwise for eating, we ate Friday dinner at “I Love Sushi” on Blowers Street, a longtime favourite of ours. Friendly staff, a nice fish pond, and good food. Saturday night we hiked up to Maki Maki on Spring Garden Road for another sushi meal, this time in a bento box, which Oliver quite enjoyed (we walked, but there’s a bus that goes right out Spring Garden that would be a good option on a really cold day). It turns out that Satisfaction Feast, a vegetarian restaurant, was right next door to our hotel; we didn’t go in this visit, but we plan to try it next time. Finally, there’s a brand new downtown Pete’s Frootique on Dresden Row, off Spring Garden Road, open 7 days a week long hours. We picked up Samosas for the train ride home, along with special Christmas treats for our friend Ann. They also have a very nice juice bar and deli counter.

We stayed two nights at the new Residence Inn by Marriott, which is very central — on Grafton St. between the Public Library and the Metro Centre. We had a “studio suite” for $99/night, which was the special weekend rate. This was a larger room with king bed, pull-out sofa bed, and full kitchen. They have a great selection of videotapes that you can borrow and watch in the lounge downstairs, and the rate includes a full hot breakfast buffet, which was better than most (and included do-it-yourself waffle making station, which Oliver really liked). The place was clean, and the staff were universally nice and helpful. We’ll stay there again.

Catherine and Oliver tried to go and see Boomer Gallant and Bruce Rainnie in their “night of songs and comedy” next door at Trinity United Church tonight, but there wasn’t a seat in the house to be had. As anyone who has watched the Trinity services on cable television on Sunday mornings knows, Trinity is a huge church, so this is quite a feat. Who can pass up the opportunity to see their beloved local news and weather men sing Christmas carols? Obviously not many!

My IAXy arrived today. This is a little blue and orange box, about the size of a deck of cards, that lets me connect a regular old telephone set to my Asterisk phone system.

The IAXy has an RJ-45 Ethernet jack and a RJ-11 phone jack: I plug the Ethernet into the network (which gets it to the Asterisk server) and the phone into the phone jack, and I’ve done all my hardware setup.

Software setup is a little more cumbersome than with the Sipura SPA-2000 that we use here for the same purpose (albeit using the SIP rather than the IAX2 protocol): while the Sipura unit has a friendly web-based configuration tool, the IAXy requires compiling a small Unix utility which is then used to provision the IAXy, which has already obtained an IP address via DHCP. This went quickly and easily, though, and wasn’t really a problem. Otherwise, all that was required was some small additions to the Asterisk iax.conf file. The installation guide covers this in just enough detail.

On the networking side, all I needed to do was open up UDP port 4659 in the firewall to allow access via IAX2 to the Asterisk server (I forgot to do this originally, and nothing was working at all).

Twenty minutes after I started, I was in business: picked up the phone and got a dial tone and phoned home and Catherine sounded like she was in the next room.

Next step is to take little IAXy home, where, if all goes according to plan, he will become the gateway to the Asterisk system from there.

Steven points out that the CBC has reworked their new RSS feeds page and removed all of the annoying “you must sign over your firstborn child” legalese. Heck, they’ve even got an OPML file listing all their feeds.

Saturday night: Oliver, drifting off to sleep and doing his usual sleep-singing and sleep-talking routine while doing so, is clearly heard to be repeating, mantra-like, “news, weather, Boomer.” He is obviously channelling Bruce Rainnie.

Sunday night: Oliver and I run into Matthew, Stephanie, Mollie and Sam Rainnie outside of Cedar’s where we’d just picked up a Boca Burger to go.

Monday morning: I wake up to CBC Island Morning with Bruce Rainnie singing an Australian Christmas carol about kangaroos.

Monday night: I walk out of Indigo in Charlottetown just as Matthew Rainnie is walking in.

They’re everywhere.

PS: the last time I mentioned Matthew Rainnie in this space, the post was reprinted in the National Post. I should be more careful.

From Steven comes a link to this article in This Magazine, the most salient (and accurate) quote from which is:

The problem is that all of these comparative preferences generate competitive consumption. “Keeping up with the Joneses,” in today’s world, does not always mean buying a tract home in the suburbs. It means buying a loft downtown, eating at the right restaurants, listening to obscure bands, having a pile of Mountain Equipment Co-op gear and vacationing in Thailand. It doesn’t matter how much people spend on these things, what matters is the competitive structure of the consumption. Once too many people get on the bandwagon, it forces the early adopters to get off, in order to preserve their distinction. This is what generates the cycles of obsolescence and waste that we condemn as “consumerism.”

MEC. Check (bought a hat for Oliver there on Friday night). Thailand. Check (February 2002). Right restaurants. Not sure (what’s right? do we have “right” restaurants in Charlottetown?). Obscure bands. Check. Loft downtown. Not really, but pretty close. In general, however, they’ve got me pegged.

Three vignettes from the life of Oliver.

On Saturday night in Halifax we walked up a foggy and misty Spring Garden Road to find Maki Maki, a Japanese restaurant near the Dalhousie campus; I suspect we kept walking only because we both enjoyed saying “Maki Maki” so much. Halfway through our excellent meal (a bento box of soup, sushi, salad, tofu and rice) I said to Oliver “would you like some of the seaweed part of my soup.” He responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!” thus placing himself in the small class of preschool seaweed-loving WASP children in Atlantic Canada.

Next, today at Oliver’s pre-school Christmas play, his group led off the festivities with a sing-song of three carols. Oliver not only refused to do any of the song actions nor sing any of the words, but he kept trying to hold the hand of the little girl beside him. Rock on you iconoclast you.

Finally, Oliver, completely of his own invention, has decided to call Chistmas trees “crispin’ trees” this year.

Oliver and I were off this weekend to Halifax, and I decided that we should take the train from Sackville. Not only would it allow Oliver and I to spend more time together, but it would means we wouldn’t have a car to lug around (and park) in downtown Halifax, and Oliver would get to ride the train, which he really enjoys (as do I).

We left Charlottetown at 10:30 a.m. for a 12:43 p.m. departure, and had plenty of time to spare in Sackville (it’s amazing how much of the bridge-to-Moncton run is taken up on the Sackville to Moncton portion; it’s less than an hour and a half from Charlottetown to Sackville).

Much to my surprise, there’s a full-fledged VIA station in Sackville, complete with waiting room, luggage check and, most important for our purposes, a free parking lot. I think we’ll switch all of our arrivals and departures by train to Sackville from now on: it’s closer, much less crowded, and you don’t have to experience Moncton at all.

The train from Sackville to Halifax was marred by a problem with the rails downstream, apparently caused by a freight train, so we and our 70-odd fellow passengers were forced to transfer to buses at Amherst for the balance of the trip. The train left Sackville at 12:43 p.m. and we arrived in Halifax by bus about 5:45 p.m., almost two hours late. VIA was helpful and efficient about all of this, and Oliver seemed delighted by the prospect of adding a third method of transport to our day, so we were none the worse for wear as a result.

Going up on Friday and back on Sunday gave us a good view of the contrast between the old VIA rolling stock and the new “Renaissance” stock that’s gradually taking over the eastern line.

How these new cars can be called “Renaissance,” I don’t know. They were acquired after a cancelled European contract left them available: the cars have a storied history as part of an ill-fated overnight Chunnel train project; VIA bought them out of storage in 2000.

In coach class — now re-branded as “comfort” class — the old VIA stock is open and roomy. There are two large seats on either side of the aisle, a wide overhead luggage shelf, plenty of leg room, and everything is on the same level.

In the Renaissance cars, there is 25% less seating, with one seat on one side and two on the other. There is a tiny luggage compartment about each seat that appears not to fit most luggage (our modest daypack didn’t fit), much less leg room, and a foot-high step up into the seats (read “foot-high precipice for children to fall off” or “foot high impendent to mobility-impaired people to conquer”) and, despite taking out 1/4 of the seats, the cars been more like airplane cabins than trains: cramped and claustrophobic.

Perhaps the greatest indignity of all is that the Renaissance trains don’t include the Dome Car (VIA inexplicably calls this the “Park Car,” a term I’ve never heard a real person use; even the conductor calls is the Dome Car).

I heard a lot of chatter about the new cars on both ends of the trip, and nobody seems impressed. Even the train conductors, if pressed, appear willing to admit that the new cars are a big step backwards.

It’s too bad that VIA has taken this tack, especially now that energy and transportation issues are again coming to the fore and efficient rail transport has a chance of winning new converts.

Our train trip back from Halifax to Sackville was, thankfully, actually by train. Despite the aforementioned Renaissance cars, the trip was pleasant. One plus for the Renaissance setup is that the snack bar, replaced by candy machines on the older cars, is staffed and has a broad selection of snacks. They were nice enough to heat up the tasty samosas we’d purchased earlier in the at Pete’s Frootique in their microwave. The train pulled in to Sackville on time at 4:43 p.m., and we pulled into our driveway in Charlottetown, with a brief stop for a snack on the way, at 6:30.

All said, we’d do it again.

From the excellent Slovenia Bulletin comes news of a Big Brother-like show called To sem jaz. My favourite part of the story:

OBN has had experience with reality TV in the past, having aired the first Balkan reality TV show in June 2001. The show, 60 Hours, featured two Bosnian Serbs, a Bosnian Muslim, a Croatian from Zagreb and Jana Prepeluh of Ljubljana. The five spent 60 hours in a luxury apartment in Sarajevo, and the whole thing was not only televised, but aired over BH Radio 1. The show did not include the concept of voting contestants out of the house, since it was decided that it could cause unwanted nationalist tensions. The show itself turned out to be rather boring, and viewers were particularly disappointed that there was no nudity or sex. Lav, the Croat, was the only one to venture into the shower during the show, but he wore a bathing suit.

There is nudity and sex on To sem jaz, Slovenia Bulletin reports.

An eagle-eyed anonymous user points to the new CBC RSS feeds. They’re not perfect — headers only, with no actual text — but it’s certainly a great start. Here’s the Prince Edward Island headlines RSS feed. Of course the CBC can’t do anything without paying a lot of lawyers; here’s a snip from the terms and conditions:

Journalistic control. CBC/Radio-Canada has full journalistic control over the CBC Feed and Feed Content; this includes the exclusive right to amend, correct, withdraw or drop the CBC Feed and Feed Content incorporated in your website and you undertake to amend, correct, withdraw or drop the CBC Feed and Feed Content in accordance with CBC/Radio-Canada’s decisions in its sole discretion. Furthermore, you undertake to display the CBC Feed and Feed Content as they are provided by CBC/Radio-Canada, without altering them in any way, or changing their order of presentation, unless CBC/Radio-Canada expressly indicates you should do so or if you receive the written authorization of CBC/Radio-Canada. You undertake not to combine content from other sources with the CBC Feed and Feed Content. You also undertake to clearly indicate that the CBC Feed and Feed Content has been produced by CBC/Radio-Canada and display a CBC/Radio-Canada copyright notice at all times and under all circumstances. You may not archive the CBC Feed and Feed Content. You will not edit, alter or in any way manipulate the CBC Feed and Feed Content nor shall you allow its reproduction by anyone. You will not distribute the CBC Feed and Feed Content in any way or allow its distribution or redistribution in any manner or form by anyone.

The entire text of the terms runs 3,361 words.