Here’s a clip from tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, from a story titled Meet the Bloggers (link appears not to require registration):

Peter Rukavina, 38, computer programmer, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Reinvented. Describe your blog. Comment, opinion and news about local and national issues, technology, and everyday life. How do you plan to cover the convention? What kind of content can readers expect? I am interested in the convention as a theatrical event and as a large public gathering as much as I’m interested in the political ramifications. As such, my readers can expect reporting on the technical and logistical minutiae, on how the convention is covered by the mainstream media, etc. Why should people read your coverage? I hope they share my approach to the world, enjoy my writing, and want to learn more about how events like this work. What’s the biggest gap in convention coverage by mainstream media in prior election years? Haven’t been involved enough — as a distant Canadian — to know. Moment/speaker/event you’re most looking forward to covering. Jimmy Carter. Whom did you support in the Democratic primary? Howard Dean.

In one fell swoop I give away my age and my political inclinations to the nation.

I won’t compare and contrast what they printed with what I answered, as they didn’t cut anything.

The photo in the article is a self-portrait taken poolside at the aiport Hampton Inn in Phoenix, New Mexico. I’m talking to Oliver on my cell phone.

Readers from yesterday may recall that I tempted the digital fates by making snide reference to the possibility that my trusty iBook computer would “implode.” At the time, with a fresh battery, and no sign of non-battery trouble for almost three years, I had every reason to think that this was an ironic comment — that all my backups onto USB key drives, and the OS X install CDs in my backpack were simply the result of paranoia.

Oh how wrong I was.

After a tasty dinner of fresh spring rolls and spicy basil chicken at the excellent Vien Dong restaurant on the main street of Moncton, I spent the balance of the evening fine-tuning the weblog and playing with the new digital camera in my hotel room (Country Inn and Suites; short review: free WiFi only works in the center core of the hotel; card-key doors locks don’t work more often than they do; be prepared for vague carpet mold smells throughout).

Just before going to bed, around 10:30 p.m., I decide to try out the whizzy movie-recording features of the new camera: I shot a little movie, and dumped it into the iBook using Image Capture.

It was then that things went horribly, horribly wrong.

The computer froze up tight, with the hard drive making a sound very akin to that which a 45 rpm record used to make when it was skipping — a-rat-tat-tat… a-rat-tat-tat… a-rat-tat-tat… a-rat-tat-tat. Not Good, I thought to myself.

My only choice was to do a hard reboot — hold down the power key until the iBook turned off, and then power it up again.

When the iBook sprang to life, it didn’t: on the screen was a folder with a flashing question mark super-imposed on it. This I took to mean “I can’t seem to find a start-up disk.”

I powered down and rebooted again. Same result. Again. Same result.

I inserted the install disk, figuring that the Disk Utility included on it could be used to fix a disk problem. Except that when I powered up the Disk Utility, it didn’t actually see the disk at all. And thus couldn’t fix it.

I rebooted. By some magic, this time the computer powered up. Perhaps this was just a freak occurrence? I got online, went to the Apple support site, and looked around the “start up troubleshooting” section for possible answers. The best answer seemed to be “call your authorized support technician.”

At 11:30 p.m., in Moncton, the day before I was due to fly to Boston, this was not a helpful solution.

My scenario-planning system sprang into action. I figured there wasn’t much point in going to Boston to blog a convention without a machine to blog with. I temporarily flirted with the notion of ditching the iBook and relying on public libraries and Internet cafes, but then I realized this would mean competing with thousands of other laptopless delegates, media and guests for scarce resource.

My mind immediately turned to Johnny’s iBook. We had made arrangements for Johnny, who is in Montreal this week, to leave his laptop at his house in case my earlier battery situation didn’t get solved. Because the situation with the battery did get solved, I’d just left his laptop back at home.

I did the driving math: 2 hours back to Charlottetown, maybe an hour and 45 if I drove fast. Same to get back. Four hours of driving. Flight leaves at 7:00 a.m., in 7 hours. Be at the airport an hour early. It would work, leaving me two hours of sleep in Charlottetown and lots of crazy, sleepy driving.

But I’d come too far to stop now.

So I called Catherine to warn her I was coming, checked out of my hotel (I did get a good 8 hours worth of use out of the room…) and headed back to the Island.

I pulled into my driveway in Charlottetown at exactly 2:00 a.m. Grabbed two hours of sleep, waking up at 4:00 a.m. Headed over to Johnny’s. Brought the wrong key. Back home. Back to Johnny’s. Got the laptop. Stopped at Tim Hortons for an Ice Cap and a bagel to as to pry my eyelids open and power up the adrenaline generators.

I left Charlottetown at 4:30 a.m., arrived at the Moncton airport at 6:15 a.m. Checked in for my flight. Through security, and into the waiting room. Only then did I get a chance to make sure that Johnny’s computer was actually working.

It is. And I’m sitting here in seat 8C on flight 613 from Moncton to Montreal at 7:22 a.m. Atlantic. Two hours sleep. Heavy Ice Cap buzz means I can’t get any more sleep.

Let’s rock…

Posted from the Air Canada lounge at Dorval Airport.

“Peter Rukavina of reinvented@DNC describes his experiences with a variety of photoblog tools and links to his future DNC album.” (from Convention Blog Watch in the LA Times; registration required).

If you’re interested in reading many DNC-related weblogs all in one place, ConventionBloggers.com is the place.

It’s easy to forget that not everyone reads their weblogs with an RSS reader. Indeed Rob thanked me this week for www.84Fitzoy.org, which aggregates all of the blogs from our office into one site. Rob’s at the bleeding edge; if he’s not using an RSS reader, than my grandmother probably isn’t either.

David Weinberger wrote about his own solution to getting pictures out of his camera and up on the web (he wrote a Visual Basic script to let him “one click publish”).

After reading that, I realized that I needed a place for my own photos from the convention to live. Thanks to the good graces of my landlords, I used the silverorange <a href=http://labs.silverorange.com/a/photogallery”>Photo Gallery System to post photos from the New Hampshire Primary back in January; while their system is, as advertised, “powerful and easy-to-manage,” I found the process of uploading photos without a desktop component quite cumbersome.

Conversely, using Apple’s iPhoto and publishing photos to my dotMac account is really, really easy. But the resulting galleries are, to my eye, ugly. And there’s not a lot of flexibility with format and design.

So last night I installed Gallery, a photo gallery system for PHP, on the server (I had tried Exhibit Engine earlier in the night, but it requires an FTP server, and I wasn’t keen on that).

Gallery installed in a snap. It’s a little confusing to configure, mostly because there are so many options that your mind gets dizzy. But it’s all very “wizardy,” and if you follow all the instructions, it’s about 30 minutes from download to done.

The result is photos.reinvented.net and, for current purposes, the 2004 U.S. Election Album therein.

The neato thing about Gallery is that it has a companion client application, Gallery Remote, that runs under Mac OS X (as well as myriad other systems), and you can drag-and-drop photos from iPhoto into Gallery Remote, add a caption, and — blamo! — upload them to the web.

I’ve already posted my New Hampshire Primary photos and some photos from Super Tuesday in San Francisco. All of my photos from the DNC will end up in this DNC Album.

Back in the spring I took my first plunge into Extreme Packing for my trip to San Francisco with the silverorange boys. With this trip to the DNC, I’m cranking things up a notch:

Here’s what you see in the picture, roughly running clockwise from the top-left:

1. Apple iBook laptop: I’ll use this for blogging, photo processing, email, IM and what have you. It’s got a brand new battery (after the second battery failed: here’s the whole sordid tale)
2. Print out of various hotel and airline reservations.
3. One shirt (in fact it’s this shirt!), one pair of socks, one pair of Gap-brand boxers.
4. One package of Shoppers Drug Mart-brand tissues (I can never find a tissue in Boston when I need one).
5. Pair of Shure e2c earphones.
6. A four-foot Ethernet cable.
7. USB cable to connect my Canon PowerShot S100 to the iBook.
8. My U.S. Passport.
9. Battery charger for the Canon S100.
10. The Canon S100 itself, with neoprene case.
11. A cheap $19 USB key drive with copies of various stuff backed up in case my laptop implodes.
12. My “You’ve Got Credentials” letter from the DNC — required to pick up my credentials tomorrow morning.
13. Braun shaver, in a Ziploc bag.
14. Toothbrush and comb (hair brush takes up too much room).
15. A six-foot run of telephone cord with RJ-11s at each end, in case I need to use the modem or send a fax from somewhere.
16. Battery charger for the new Canon S1 IS camera (I took the picture with it, which is why it’s not in the picture).
17. Nokia 3285 cell phone, with charger.
18. My wallet.
19. The July 12 and 19 double issue of The New Yorker magazine.
20. My OS X Panther CDs, in case I need to give my laptop digital CPR at some point.

Not in the picture are the new camera, a trial-size tube of Toms of Maine toothepaste, a small tin of Altoids, and the charger for the iBook.

All of this fits nicely inside my Targus laptop bag. It’s not feather-light, but it’s manageable, which is important because I won’t actually be checking in to my hotel until late tomorrow night, so all of the above is on my back while I’m blogging around the Fleet Center tomorrow.

Here’s the Newsday story that I wrote about being interviewed for.

As an exercise in seeing how stories like this get edited down from the original interview (which in this case was conducted by email), here’s a comparison of what I said vs. what got printed.

Note that I’m not presented this as some sort of “hey, they misrepresented me!” complaint, simply as an demonstration of how interviews, of necessity, get distilled down into print. I’ve boldfaced the sections of my original responses that made it into print.

In response to the question “What is your general strategy for covering the convention? Where and how will you spend your time?” I wrote:

I’m interested in four things:

(a) How the convention is covered by the “mainstream” media. I’d like to get a sense of, and report about, the mechanisms “behind the curtain,” and how they relate to what I hear/read/watch at home.

(b) The convention as a giant piece of political theatre. As a Canadian, I am fascinated with the pomp and circumstance of U.S. politics (it makes what we do here in Canada appear very, very sedate by comparison). I got a taste of this when I blogged the New Hampshire primary in January; I’m interested in seeing more, and trying to get a handle of how the theatricality relates to the real world of politics, elections, and public policy.

(c) As a dual-national (I was born in New York state in 1966, but have been a Canadian resident most of my life), I’m entitled to vote in the election. But, as a Canadian, my only real exposure to the election, my only mechanism for learning about candidates and policy, is through the media. So I have a very real, if selfish interest in the convention as a sort of extended, full-on civics course.

(d) As a weblogger, I’m interesting in learning more about how webloggers can provide an alternative, supplementary view of events like the convention. I truly don’t know whether it will be useful (lots of diverse views from lots of diverse perspectives) or whether it all boils down to rather mundane amateur journalism without the editorial oversight and ethical guidelines of “real” reporting. And the best way of finding that out is to jump right in a do it.

Put that all together, and perhaps you don’t get a “general strategy,” but you get some idea of what I’ll be there to do.

The responses to that question weren’t included in the article, although some of my response was incorporated into the answer to the next question.

In response to the question “Is there a particular gap that you are trying to fill with your coverage?” I responded:

No. “I’m there mostly as a producer, not as a consumer. In other words, I’m filling in my own gaps (as above); whether or not this of use or interest to others, while not insignificant, isn’t front and center, and it’s not how I’m making plans.

And the article printed:

I’m filling in my own gaps. I am interested in how the convention is covered by the media; the convention as a giant piece of political theater; and I have a very real, if selfish, interest in the convention as a sort of extended, full-on civics course. Whether this is of use or interest to others, while not insignificant, isn’t front and center, and it’s not how I’m making plans.

They combined my answer to their first question with my answer to the second, but they didn’t print what I thought was the most important point: I’m there mostly as a producer, not as a consumer.

For the question “What will you do at the convention that a mainstream journalist would not do?” I responded:

1. I won’t get paid.

2. I won’t have deadlines.

3. I won’t have anyone to tell me what/where/when to cover.

4. I won’t be responsible to anyone but myself.

As such, I’ll be able to write as much or as little as I like, about whatever I like, whenever I like.

And the article printed that verbatim.

Finally, I responded to the question “Are there any ethical rules that you plan to follow?” simply “Only to tell the truth.” They printed this verbatim as well.

There were several other questions that weren’t printed in the article.

For the question “Please list five questions you would like to have answered in your coverage of the convention, in order of importance.” I [honestly] responded:

I have absolutely no idea.

To the question “Who is your readership?” I responded:

I have just a little more than absolutely no idea.

Many readers are people who live within a mile or two of my house, here in rural Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. If I have a “responsibility” to any chunk of my readership, it’s probably to them — a motely collection of friends, family, acquaintances and strangers. So on one level I’m simply a sort of “personal reporter” for my local community.

I’m also a de facto participant in what’s loosely known as the “blogosphere” — what I write will get syndicated and linked and otherwise worked into the web. So I feel, to some extent, like I’m working together with a decentralized group of other bloggers (none of whom I actually know) on a sort of “group project” to cover the convention.

For the question “Will your blog be reviewed by anyone before it goes out? If so, how will that process work?” I answered:

No review at all. I generally post live immediately after writing, then re-read and make spelling, grammar and factual edits as required. Thus I’m sort of editing “live” in front of the audience, if you will.

And finally, to the question “How long will your dispatches be? How will you decide that?” I responded:

No idea at that point; the digital page has no boundaries, so I don’t really need to figure that out.

This is an interview I did with Matt Rainnie for CBC Prince Edward Island’s Mainstreet on Friday, July 23, 2004. We talked about my trip to Boston to cover the DNC for my weblog: why I’m going, how I got credentials, and how I’m going.

I’m scheduled to call into Mainstreet at least once from Boston for a report from the ground there.

“Shirley is in bed and Jem and Walter and the twins are down in their beloved Rainbow Valley,” said Anne. “They just came home this afternoon, you know, and they could hardly wait until supper was over before rushing down to the valley. They love it above every spot on earth. Even the maple grove doesn’t rival it in their affections.” 
— from Rainbow Valley, L.M. Montgomery

Those who grew up on Prince Edward Island (i.e. not me) in the last couple of decades have the distinct benefit, upon becoming parents, of thorough familiarity with Rainbow Valley, the amusement park in Cavendish.

Rainbow Valley is the closest thing Prince Edward Island has to a bona fide theme park (the theme, in this case, being something like “Anne of Green Gables and lots of animals, with waterslides”). And, at least from the “And because of the rain, the Birchwood Intermediate trip to Rainbow Valley is cancelled” announcements on the CBC every spring, it seems like every school child on the Island goes to Rainbow Valley every spring on a school trip.

Having no personal experience of these trips — we were stuck with the docents at the Art Gallery of Hamilton every spring for our school trips — I can only hope that they are intended to be 100% pure fun, and are not tainted with any sort of academic purpose (“Compare and contrast your feelings on the waterslide to your feelings on the roller coaster”).

And having no personal experience of these trips means that, until today, I was a Rainbow Valley virgin.

At the suggestion of our friend Ann, who knows enough to know these things, Oliver and I spent the afternoon there today while Catherine was slaving away here at the office painting Johnny’s office with blue suede shoes-coloured paint.

For other parents-from-away who find themselves with a planned trip to Rainbow Valley, I present the following pointers, with hopes that your visit will be all that much better.

• First, fear not: Rainbow Valley is actually lots of fun. Even (or perhaps especially) for a 3-1/2 year old like Oliver. It truly is geared for “family fun” and that includes little kids.
• Kids under five get in for free. Adult admission is $14. This is very good value.
• Bring your bathing suit: there are many, many very fun looking water-related activities, including water slides, squirty zones and pools. We had no idea, came without bathing suits, and lost out. Next time! There appear to be plenty of change rooms.
• If you forget towels or swimmy diapers, you can buy both in the space-ship shaped gift shop. It’s also very cool up there if you need a quick time out of the heat.
• If you let your child go up the “House That Jack Built” you may never see them again. Or at least you will be very nervous, because they will disappear for a while, only to return several minutes later at the head of the exciting-looking slide. It is possible (but awkward) to climb back down the stairs, but if your child is prone to “holy shit, that’s a very high slide” freakouts, this attraction is best avoided. Fortunately Oliver, although slide averse, had no problems here.
• You have to oversteer in the swan boats. And it is hard to manage one small child in the swan boats, especially if they want to climb in the back where, because you have to steer, you will not be able to prevent them from jumping out into the pond.
• The man who runs the “for kids under 48 inches tall” airplane ride is perhaps the nicest carnival attraction operator I have ever met. Say hello to him.
• Be sure to read the ride restrictions twice: you may think it says “no kids under 48 inches tall” when it might say “no kids under 48 inches tall can ride alone.” Or it might say “no kids over 48 inches tall.” It’s like on-street parking in Montreal.
• You may think the “fire safety” exhibit is lame. It is not: kids like climbing inside a fire truck. So do adults. At least we did.
• The train goes through the woods. It too is more fun than you think it will be. Although it does not run on tracks, which is confusing.
• The pizza is good. Not great, but good.
• They appear to welcome families who bring in their own food. Indeed there are picnic tables all over the place, and barbeques available for free borrowing.
• The magic show is weird. It reminded me of the movie Blue Velvet.
• Be sure to wander around a lot: one of the neatest aspects of the park is that it is chocked full of neat things in odd corners.
• Riding in the whale monorail requires that you press down on the accelerator with your foot. If you don’t do this, your whale will not move, and you will be snickered at by the lanky overseer.
• There is no parking lot, per se: all parking is on the grass. So just because you see cars on the grass, you need not think “wow, it’s so busy they ran out of parking spaces.”
• Even when the grass cum parking lot is full, as it was today, the park is big enough that it doesn’t feel overly busy or crowded.

Oliver and I arrived at the park about 11:00 a.m. and left around 2:00 p.m. We could have stayed longer — Oliver certainly had energy left in him — but there was rain on the horizon and we decided to get out while the getting was good. I imagine that a properly equipped family could spend the entire day there and not experience any boredom at all.

Oh to be a kid on Prince Edward Island, where the spring field trip meant the fun of cotton candy, water slides and roller coaster rather than the funereal drone of retired art lovers attempting to turn us on to the wonders of the Renaissance painters. Oliver don’t know how good he got it.

I’ve set up a special Reinvented @ DNC page that will just contain posts about or from the DNC next week. These posts will also appear on the main weblog, so unless you just want Convention-related items, you can continue on as normal.

There’s a special RSS feed for the DNC too.