A friend of mine is coming to Prince Edward Island this summer with her family to write an article for a travel magazine and she sought my advice on where to stay. When recommending places in Charlottetown, I suggested the Inns on Great George, as I’ve only heard good things from people who’ve stayed there.

I added the following caveat, though:

I would avoid if you’re coming the first week in July, as the waterfront celebrations are only blocks away and consume the neighbourhood in an unpleasant way.

I did this only to be helpful, and not as part of some well-planned campaign to discredit the Festival of Lights. I truly couldn’t recommend staying in downtown Charlottetown to a visitor during that week.

The irony is that the Festival of Lights are supposed to help tourism, aren’t they? Of course the even will be attractive to some, but I wonder what the net effect for smaller inns and B&Bs downtown is: if they had a choice, would they take the festival or leave it.

Let it never be said that politics on Prince Edward Island doesn’t move quickly. The story at the bottom was posted to the CBC website at 2:26 p.m. Thirty-four minutes later, at 3:00 p.m., the story at the top was posted.

All of this played out in reaction to an announcement made yesterday morning.

Here’s an interesting tale of soaring in a glider from Stanley, Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Island in a glider.

Doing something called Repair Disk Permissions is the scratch, it seems, to many itches under Mac OS X (example from Apple along with a detailed explanation of what it does and an introduction to file permissions), so it’s something I do, using the Disk Utility application, every so often.

What I’ve never understood is why I have to run this multiple times for all “file permissions issues” to be resolved. It seems that the first time through some permissions are repaired, then the next time through there are some additional ones repaired, and so on, until finally, after three or four times, everything gets addressed.

How come?

This isn’t news — the CBC has been covering the story — but it’s interesting nonetheless to read the details of CHTN’s license renewal.

CHTN is owned by Newfoundland Capital Corporation, a Nova Scotia-based company that holds more than 60 radio station licenses across the country. CHTN, it says on the company’s website, was the company’s first station, purchased in 1986.

Because it’s a public company, you can read their public documents filed with SEDAR.

Something I’ve not seen reported elsewhere is (from the company’s annual report): “In November 2004, the Company filed an application to convert CHTN-AM in Charlottetown, PEI to an FM signal.”

As part of its hiving off from a local management agreement with Maritime Broadcasting, CHTN is moving to the Atlantic Technology Centre. Apparently when the province says about the Technology Centre that it is “designed to help stimulate growth in the province’s emerging IT industry” our definition of “IT” includes anything that uses complicated machines with lights and dials. Look for a John Deere dealer to be the next tenant.

In other Charlottetown broadcasting news, the CRTC will hold public hearings on October 3, 2005 in Charlottetown to consider [v]arious broadcasting applications further to call for applications for licence to carry on radio programming undertakings to serve Charlottetown. The CRTC has released the list of applications received.

Sometimes you hear someone described as having a “take no prisoners attitude.” I always thought this meant they were generous — heck, they aren’t taking any prisoners, that’s nice of them. It turns out — and I learned this only today on Bunny Watson — that when you “take no prisoners” it means that you kill everyone. Which isn’t very nice at all.

Learn more from the Waramps.

The Voltigeur avion is the kind of toy that every kid would love. At least I would. The description translates (by machine) to:

An original activity for the aces of the stunt-flying! It is enough to fix the steel wire rope (10 m) between 2 trees and it left! Small and even larger will hustle themselves to be the first to split the air. Very drink some and simple to go up.

Imagine being the first kid to “split the air.”

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.”