Crocuses gave way to tulips. Tulips have given way to ferns.

My friend Bruce tells the miraculous story of meeting his wife Shirley.

Happy 35th anniversary!

Having exhausted our supply of front yard rhubarb, we were forced into the inexorable choice between Johnston’s River rhubarb and Belfast rhubarb.

I would have loved Barenaked Ladies’ new song New Disaster based solely on its creative rhyming of prestidigitation: they’re the only band on Earth that could get away with that with such aplomb.

But it’s also a catchy track, with lyrics on the needle of the zeitgeist, and a chorus that’s infected my ears:

Here comes the new disaster

Here comes the end of days

Next up the sweet hereafter

We’ll tell you all about it at the next commercial break

Stay tuned for scary monsters

Watch out for rising tides

But first a word from sponsors

Might be a mess but it’s a hell of a good time

Perfect.

I’m certain there are many estimable women in Pugwash for whom I’m an ideal suitor. And, let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to date a gal from Pugwash. The only strike against it is that it’s 2 hours away by bridge, 3½ hours by ferry.

Unless it’s Bumble that’s doing the calculating, in which case Pugwash is a mere 59 km from my front door. Because Bumble measures as the crow, or bee, flies.

Now Bumble provides many mechanisms for nudging you to possible consorts: you can filter by age, height, politics, or religion. You can filter out smokers. Or people who do (or do not) want children. But surely one of Bumble’s most basic levers is distance, especially in the time of COVID, when our Island is even more an island than usual.

So while I’d happily pop out for coffee with someone from Park Corner (46 km), or grab a drink with a friendly face from Cable Head East (49 km), Pugwash, for the moment and perhaps forever, falls outside my range.

And it’s not just Pugwash.

Let’s say I fancied a date from Miminegash (hours of fun just saying that euphonious wonder of a name alone): it’s 110 km away, as the bee flies. That becomes 136 km and 1¾ hours when you get driving directions, but it’s on the Island.

Alas, within the same 110 km radius you’ll also find Shediac (110 km), Springhill (98 km), Truro (97 km), and Antigonish (110 km). I can attest, from my casual Bumble swiping, that these communities are filled with perfectly wonderful possible assignations, but they are, literally, an ocean (and several prohibitory public health orders) away.

Now this isn’t a real romantic problem for me: I’m remarkably happy as I am, and have come to treat Bumble, as apparently many have, as much as a sort of curious hobby as anything else. But it’s an interesting computational problem.

How could Bumble do better?

In my case, an “in my Province only” checkbox, added to the distance slider, would work well. But that’s not going to solve the problem for people, say, on Bainbridge Island, WA who would happily look for a date up the road in Suquamish, WA (14 km), but aren’t interested in a ferry-mediated courtship with any of the millions of someones in Seattle, WA (13 km).

Ultimately, travel time is what we’re really interested in when looking at potential suitors.

While the algorithmic challenge might seem to be “calculate the travel distance between me and every Bumble prospect in the world,” it’s actually much simpler than that.

First, there’s never a situation where the “as the bee flies” distance is shorter than the travel distance; indeed, it is the shortest possible distance. So the challenge is the much more reasonable “calculate the travel distance between me and every Bumble prospect inside this radius.”

Second, the world is, relatively speaking, immutable, so as Bumble learns the travel time from Charlottetown to Pugwash, and Charlottetown to Miminegash, and Charlottetown to Shediac, it can build a model of the “reasonable travel” landscape, and save computing in real time on every go.

And, finally, there are only a limited number of places on Earth where this matters at all: islands far enough practically disconnected from mainland populations and, perhaps, people living on opposite sides of mountains.

And that’s why this is a problem unlikely to ever be addressed: the dozen or two single Prince Edward Islanders are far enough down the analytics report at Bumble HQ to be practically invisible.

So the lonely hearted of the Island will simply have to get used to swiping left on the forbidden fruit of the mainland.

On this day, 15 years ago, we were in Copenhagen as a family, and took advantage of an unseasonably warm and sunny day to spend the afternoon in Frederiksberg Have, a 160 acre oasis of forest, river, and gardens.

A fun aid to our visit was The Mat Map, a piece of fabric that served dual duty as a map of the park and a mat to sit or eat your lunch on:

The maps cum mats were available for free from a large red translucent dispenser, an interesting object in its own right:

Among the things the map led us to was a delightful collection of art and design installations scattered round the park; I only learned today that these (as well as the map itself) were part of the The Cabinetmaker’s Autumn Exhibition 2006:

The Mat Map and its dispenser were designed by architect and designer Karen Kjaergaard, who also contributed SHUT UP! (detail above).

Although it was a lifetime and 15 years ago, the sense of that sunny afternoon rides with me still, and I’m so glad we happened upon the map and the things that it led us to.

Both my washing machine and my dryer have a “permanent press” setting; I realized this morning that I had no idea what that meant, putting it in the same class as “ball joint” or “surf break” or “remoulade”.

So I looked it up:

Permanent press fabrics are textiles that have been treated to resist external stress and hold their shape. Clothing made from this fabric does not need to be ironed.

Those settings on my washer and dryer? Here’s what they do:

In older washing machines, the permanent press setting sprays moisture during the spin cycle to maintain the moisture content of the permanent press fabrics above a certain specified limit to reduce wrinkling. Most older clothes dryers feature an automatic permanent press setting, which puts clothes through a cool-down cycle at the end of the normal heated drying cycle. Modern dryers tend to include this as a standard feature.

I have a laundry philosophy that skews heavily toward “just throw it all into together,” so I’m not sure whether I’d be better served by this setting or not.

I would have been much better served by taking home economics in high school than wood shop.

I stumbled across this blog post of mine from 2001 about Reboot 4.0, three years before I made my way to Reboot 7, and two years before I’ve always thought I’d first heard of the Copenhagen conference that went on to change my life.

This time of year I always get the Reboot tingle in my throat, as my blog’s “on this day” fills up within swashbuckling tales of Reboots past. Spring just isn’t the same without that cocktail of people, ideas, and adventures.

I’m late to the seedling-hardening game by about a week, but today I’ve got my tomatoes, acorn squash, eggplant, watermelon, and the tenacious last-surviving broccoli out for a day in the warm and sun.

Also, I bought new shoes on Monday, a pair of Oboz Bozeman Low Leather from Proude’s Shoes the description of which is:

Mountain town life is busy, and the Bozeman Low Leather hiker is ready to take on any and all of the fun and adventure that comes with it—a lunch time hike on the Highland Glen Trail or any last-minute errands around town.

That’s me: on the trail, on the errands, living the high mountain life! They’re very comfortable.

This is my second pair of Oboz: I bought a pair of their boots for the winter, and have been very happy with them.

With the closure of Wright’s and Corney’s, Proude’s is the last independent shoe store standing in Charlottetown; I encourage you to support them.