If you need to quickly geocode U.S. addresses, and you can’t afford a commercial solution or a service bureau, Daniel Egnor’s winning entry in the Google programming contest will get you at least part of the way there. I’ve used it. It works.

Here is an interesting opportunity to sponsor a gypsy wagon, and travel with a gypsy cabaret.

Via my father comes the revelation that you can cut and paste plain text into QuickTime Pro.

In versions 5 and earlier, the text would all be pasted into a new frame, white text with a black background, sized accordingly, centred. In version 6.5, this behaviour has changed, and the text is split, frame by frame, using carriage returns as the delimiter.

Dad’s contractor found this link at Apple about QuickTime “text descriptors,” that can be used to format QuickTime text tracks, including those that you cut and paste in.

Kudos to Editor Gary MacDougall for this column in yesterday’s Guardian about the new waterfront developments in Charlottetown.

Ironically, Jim Larkin, whose obscene Lobster on the Wharf expansion has removed the view of Charlottetown Harbour down Prince Street, received the Premier’s Award for Tourism in 2004. While there’s no doubt that Jim has done much good for the tourism industry on the Island, I’m afraid that this behemoth of an expansion makes it difficult to remember that.

Strike procurement question: how do picket lines so quickly get equipped with flaming oil barrels that strikers can warm their hands over? Aliant workers down the street haven’t been on strike more than 48 hours, and they’ve already got one going. Are oil barrels really that easy to come by? Give ‘em hell, guys.

Catherine and Oliver and I went to the Formosa Tea House earlier in the week. We showed up near closing time (which is now 7:30 p.m., by the way), so it was empty, and we had a chance to chat with the owners.

During that conversation, I commended them for sticking with it, knowing that the first “reputation building” phase of a restaurant’s life is often not only the most important, but also the most frustrating for the owners. They agreed, and said during the first month they were open, at the old location on University Ave., they were empty more often than not, and made a grand total of $400 for the entire month.

Of course today, in the new location with lots of room, an expanded menu and, most importantly, several years worth of word of mouth, you can often not get a table during the lunch hour. They stuck with it, and they’ve got a sustainable business now.

Monsoon, the new sushi restaurant that occupies the Formosa’s old location, is at the beginning of this curve now, and I hope they stick with it too. I was there for an hour today, and I was the only customer. Their sushi, freshly prepared, is very nice, and they serve a mean jasmine tea. While they’ve got some work to do on the interior decor, the owner is incredibly kind and helpful, and I’m sure that once word gets around, she will be as busy as the Formosa was in that location.

In the meantime, if you’re an early adopter, and want to get in some good sushi and a nice cup of tea before the crowds start to arrive, drop in.

I stumbled across this post from 2002 about soju tents this morning. I realized that bootleggers in Charlottetown are akin to soju tents in Pusan: both are a socially necessary “third space.”

I just balance the company cheque book for the months August 2003 until today. Everything balance to the penny. Some days you get lucky.

It is income tax season, and thus I am in heavy procrastination mode, avoiding the gathering of relevant papers, forms, etc.

Which gives rise to the new Good Music Recently Heard feature here. Look over on the right. Down there under Discussion since your Last Visit. You’ll see a new section titled, appropriately enough, Good Music Recently Heard.

What you’ll find there is a simply list of artists and tracks that have passed through my iTunes that caught my ear and prompted me to say to myself “more people should hear this.”

Click on the track and you’ll jump to a Google search for the track name and artist.

There’s an RSS feed to go with this, which shows the same information, but with a couple more links to other web searches.

Enjoy.

Three Minutes and Six Seconds in Terminal C [2.9 MB MP3]. Licensed under a Creative Commons License. One in a series.