As if it was possible to have the Canadian telecommunications landscape get more complicated, Angus TeleManagement Group is reporting that Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS) is acquiring Allstream (which used to be AT&T Canada). MTS is 21.7% owned by BCE, which also owns 53.5% of Aliant.
On some level, this is like Eatons buying Simpsons, but through a third party.
If you were going to design a bureacracy’s policies related to the free and public dissemination of information on the web, you could probably do no better than the U.S. National Weather Service.
They simply make reams and reams of information available for free. And they support this with reams and reams of supporting materials, like databases and GIS files.
Case in point: from this page on their website you can obtain RSS and CAP feeds of weather alerts for every U.S. state, or for the entire country.
That’s a good idea, a good use of open standards, and they’ve done a good job of it.
But it gets better: yesterday, in experimenting with the CAP feeds, I found a small technical problem (geeknote: they were using non-encoded greater and less than signs in their XML text). So I sent them a note. This morning, less than 18 hours later, I received a note back: problem fixed.
That’s good customer service, and it demonstrates care and concern for data that is sometimes sadly lacking elsewhere.
Compared to the National Weather Service, our own Environment Canada is a veritable locked castle of data. While they have experimented with XML forecasts (an experiment that appears, sadly, to have ended), they regard their data (as does most of the federal bureaucracy here in Canada) as a sort of digital crown jewels. They could learn a lot from their peers in the U.S.
Today in the mail I received a copy of the Annual Report for the Town of Dublin, New Hampshire, courtesy of my friend (and town resident) John.
Last week it was time for the Dublin Town Meeting, and after discussing this with John on the phone, and finding out about how New England town meetings work, John thought I might be interested in seeing one of the artifacts of direct democracy.
Here’s how the Highway Department Annual Report section begins:
The year started out with a lot of snow (like in the 70’s) and cold temperatures. There was no January thaw and it stayed cold all season. In April, we started out spring clean up of the village and sidewalk. In July, all the roadside mowing was completed.
Among other things, the report includes:
The complete report runs 101 pages.
By way of comparison, I dropped by Charlottetown City Hall this morning to pick up a copy of the City of Charlottetown Annual Report.
Except there isn’t one.
The best they could do was this 2003 budget summary on the City website (they did offer to locate a printed copy for me.
Perhaps we should have one. An Annual Report from the City would be good for recording our history — a good snapshot of the City and its activities — and, even better, a way for citizens to understand more about the mysteries of City Hall.
If you’re going to fly in the US, check out SeatGuru.com, which rates the seats on most US airlines.
I’m in the market for competitive auto insurance, as Dominion of Canada has just
raised my rates 15% for no reason.
Last year’s rate was $806. This year it’s gone up to $940. Can you do better?
Kent Street Pizza (in the space formerly occupied by Mr. Big Pizza at Kent and Prince) makes good pizza: thin crust, good ingredients, friendly phone staff. A little too much cheese on our test pizza, but we’ll ask them to adjust that next time.
Century City, the new legal drama on CBS set in 2030, is interesting, but I think they’re going to run out of interesting “future legal issue” plotlines before a single season is over. Suggestion to producers: if you’re trying to convince us that it’s 2030, don’t cast Hector Elizondo and Donnelly Rhodes.
TLC aka The Learning Channel, is now almost completely home renovations shows. In prime time you’d be hard pressed to see something that’s not Trading Spaces, While You Were Out, or some variation thereof. Prediction: in the next 24 months TLC will spin off a new channel, called “The Renovation Channel,” that plays nothing else but.
The Formosa Tea House in its new location is a rousing success. The Rice Topping (vegetables and mushrooms over rice) is the star of the new menu. The space is open and bright. New staff are nice. And the Wasabi Peas are back (25 cents a pack at the front counter).
The Taj Mahal, the Indian restaurant on University Ave., is now scheduled to open in April rather than June.
You can fly JetBlue from Denver to Boston for $79US. This is crazy.
You can take the Fung Wah Bus from Boston to New York for $10US. This is crazy too.
Prediction: within 12 months at least one hotel or B&B on Prince Edward Island will offer guests an optional goldfish in tank for the duration of their stay.
This House Has 22 Minutes is no longer funny. Monday Report is funny.
Bruce Rainnie is doing a good job on Compass. Prediction: within 36 months, I will be the only person left on PEI calling the supper hour newscast Compass.
Note to self: On March 15, 2004, a Google search for “Oliver Rukavina” results in three hits. Check back in ten years.
We are on the cusp of that season, known well to those of us who call the northeastern seaboard home, where morning can feel like the fullest bloomiest time of spring only to have a full-fledged blizzard hit by afternoon.
This is what happened in Dublin, New Hampshire this afternoon.
Witness the following shots from The Old Farmer’s Almanac Webcam:
The top shot is from 9:55 a.m. this morning, the bottom one was taken seven hours later at 4:55 p.m.
As reported in this space earlier, I engaged in “extreme packing” for my trip to San Francisco earlier this month.
The untold story behind this (and, to be honest, unrealized truth for me until I arrived there) is that when I was 14 and traveled around the U.S.A. with my father by Greyhound Bus, I overpacked, and was forced to lug way, way too much luggage around the country. For example, I carried not one, but two transistor radios with me. It was the latent memory of this lugging, I think, that got me on the extreme packing plan.
And, of course, there was no small amount of street cred establishing at stake, what given that I was traveling aside my young compatriots/landlords from upstairs.
My usual traveling kit is an American Tourister soft-sided briefcase that holds my laptop, assorted chargers and papers, passport, etc. along with a Jack Wolfskin pack that we purchased to go to Thailand that carries everything else.
For this extreme packing trip, I slimmed down to fit everything inside a smallish Targus knapsack/laptop case. Here’s what I did to shrink down:
As a result, I was able to handily fit everything inside the knapsack, which I carried on rather than checking.
While things were still perhaps 2-3 pounds heavier than I would have liked, the effect was rather dramatic: I felt much more mobile, much less tied to my luggage. While I did leave my knapsack at my hotel after checking out on the last day, I could have easily carried it with me.
Here’s a complete list of the contents of my knapsack:
Compare this to what Tom Peters carries in his luggage, which includes an eighteen-pound bolt-cutter, and an Australian cricket ball but, oddly, only T-shirts and ball caps for clothing. Hmmmm.
I’m off again in April for another bizarre trip (Charlottetown - Montreal - New York - Boston - New Hampshire - Boston - Phoenix - Denver - Boston - Charlottetown), and I’m going to take another crack at this. Stay tuned.
The CBC is reporting that “Native activist John Joe Sark wants to change Founders’ Hall to reflect the Island’s Miꞌkmaq heritage.” The response from the Capital Commission, through their Executive Director, is:
“Unfortunately, history is such that Aboriginal people were not invited to the table,” she says. “Founders’ Hall acknowledges that, acknowledges the fact that they were not invited, nor were women invited. You know, that’s history and we can’t rewrite history.”
While I agreed with the substance of what Green says, it does beg the question: why have we built a monument that pays homage to a racist, sexist event in our history?
Indeed perhaps we would learn more about ourselves as a society if Founders’ Hall abandoned its rather pointless elevation of the “Fathers” (do rich white men from two centuries ago really need more deification?) and rather concentrated exclusively on that selfsame exclusion of women and aboriginals from the process. I think that the social, cultural, and political forces that allowed for that exclusion are far more worthy of examination, discussion, and public display.
Of course that wouldn’t “sell well” to the bus tours.
And that’s the problem when tourism, rather than building a civil society, is the guiding force behind institutions like this.
I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
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