Today’s experiment in Voice Over IP is as follows: I’m running the free X-Lite software telephone on my Apple iBook here at Yankee in New Hampshire. X-Lite is configured to register with my Asterisk PBX back in the office in Charlottetown.

The end result is that when callers “press 1 for Peter” when calling the office, the calls get routed to my laptop.

Conversely, I have a Charlottetown dial tone here when I need it.

I just got off the phone with Johnny, then Catherine. Quality appears to be fair to poor — possibly because I’m just using the iBook’s built-in microphone. I’m going to do some twiddling.

Air Canada appears to be digging itself out of its financial woes and flying in to Montreal today, things did feel somewhat less teetering. But maybe I’m under the sway of Celine Dion.

Here’s the thing, though, Air Canada: lose Celine, the new visual identity and the new uniforms and upgrade the cardboardesque standard issue “sesame snacks” you serve in lieu of real food, and you would send a much louder, tastier, more effective signal that you’re back.

Last chapter of my year-long U.S. election journey starts tomorrow morning: I’m off for a week in New Hampshire, which is where it all started back in January.

Off to the battleground…

On the off chance that you, as I, were wondering which actor played the kindly priest on the recently aired episode of NCIS titled “A Weak Link,” it was Doug Savant, who played Matt Fielding on Melrose Place.

You may now resume your regular lives.

Princess Alice has died. She was the oldest member of the Royal Family. Here’s where she fit into the family tree (click for big image):

In other words, she was Edward VIII’s sister-in-law.

Trivial fact: the two Linux servers at Elections PEI are named Edward and Wallis.

For some reason, the search feature on the City of Charlottetown website doesn’t search the Bylaws.

To facilitate my own research, I’ve set up an ugly little Bylaw search tool. You’re welcome to use it for your own purposes. Not guaranteed to work, or to work properly.

My friend G. claims that Charlottetown residents cannot keep chickens in their backyards. I can’t find anything in the City Bylaws on this topic.

The Nuisance Bylaw says the “Any person who keeps, owns, or harbors animals or birds which make or cause noises or sounds that disturb or tend to disturb the quiet, peace, rest, enjoyment or comfort… is guilty of an offence.”

But it doesn’t say you can’t have animals, just that they can’t be annoying.

Did I miss something?

My friend Oliver asked me “Do cities have ordinances about trick or treating?” So I looked to see what Charlottetown’s Bylaws say on the subject.

Hallowe’en is covered under the same Nuisance Bylaw that covers subjects like “injuring trees” and “trnasport of rubbish.” Section 2.20 of the Bylaw reads:

2.20 (a) Unless accompanied by a person over the age of 18 years, no person under the age of 16 years shall be in a public place within the City of Charlottetown between 8:00 p.m. October 31st and 7:00 a.m. November 1st.

(b) In a year that October 31st falls on a Sunday, the restrictions provided in paragraph (a) shall also apply from 8:00 p.m. October 30th to 7:00 a.m. October 31st.

The Summary Proceedings Bylaw weighs in on the consequences of “disobeying Halloween curfew”: a minimum fine of $100, a maximum fine is $500, or imprisonment of 90 days.

This is the same penalty you get for “maintaining an unsafe hatchway,” “moving a building without permission” or “injuring city trees.”

I’m especially intrigued by the penalty for “moving a building without permission:” it almost seems like an invitation to just up and move somebody’s house without telling them. I’d gladly pay $100 for that much fun.

I’ve been surfing through the City of Charlottetown Bylaws today. It’s an interesting collection: reading through it tells you a lot about what the City thinks is important. Or at least important to define and regulate.

For example, there is the Victoria Park and Promenade Bylaw, which runs 29 pages long, and includes such things as this definition of what a bicycle is:

Bicycle means any cycle propelled by human power on which a person may ride, regardless of the number of wheels it has.

It also defines, in considerable detail, what isn’t allowed inside Victoria Park (for example: archery, using sling-shots, obscene or vulgar language, bonfires, planting trees of shrubs, trapping animals).

By contrast, the Policing Services Bylaw is only 3 pages long. And if you remove the sections titled “Emblem” and “Uniform,” the meat of the Bylaw consists of the 142 words in the section “Police Services.”

It seems remarkable that the complexity of policing our little city can be boiled down to so little. Part of me thinks this is a good thing — “small government” and all — and part of me thinks there should be a lot more in the bylaw about what the proper limits and responsibilities of the police are.

I have a lot of respect for smalltown daily newspaper reporters, most of which extends from having worked closely with them in my newspapering days. They are, as a group, generally intelligent, witty, and patient. You’ve gotta be patient to survive on a diet that includes school board meetings, parades, and stories about fantastic pets; there are only so many hurricanes, Province House explosions and general elections to being you to the top of your game.

When Jim Day from the Guardian phoned me on Thursday to interview me about the U.S. election, his original reason for calling was because his Managing Editor, Gary MacDougall, had read some of my blog posts about various election-related topics.

Jim, however, didn’t really know what a weblog was — he initially described it as “a chat room sort of thing” — and so as we were talking, he kept having to interrupt me when I offhandly used words like “blogger” and “blogging” and “posted.” I tried my best to describe what a weblog is, but I don’t really think I did it justice.

I came away from the experience thinking “wow, is he out of touch!?”

Upon reconsideration, though, I’ve come around to thinking this says more about how self-referrential and closed the “blogosphere” is. Sure there are millions of blogs written by millions of people. But I think if you drew a giant Venn diagram of the system, you would find that the world of blogs mostly intersects with itself, and doesn’t overlap with regular everyday reality all that much.

In other words, if you remove bloggers themselves, along with their immediate family and friends, from the readership, there are far fewer “civilians” left over than we all assume. We are, by and large, talking to ourselves.

That doesn’t bother me, and I don’t think it invalidates the medium at all. But it is important to remember, especially when we get irrational heady thoughts about our blogs as the new media’s new media, that we’re more like monks illuminating manuscripts for the church than scrappy New Journalists shouting out to the general public.