Back in 2001 I wrote about switching my domain name registrar from Network Solutions to a small Edmonton company called Trinic. After dealing with the non-responsive behemoth that was Network Solutions, Trinic’s lean, mean interface was a pleasure, and for a long time I was pleased with their services.

Starting in early 2002, I encountered some customer service problems with Trinic. Then, later that year, I heaped some more praise their way.

Since that point, however, it has been mostly downhill. When their services work, they work well. When they don’t work, it’s almost impossible to get a human being on the phone, and email response time has gotten longer and longer. Their web-based systems are “quirky” at best, and often contain incomplete information, and there have been several instances where domains have become “stuck” somehow, and have required them to clear something manually. With the exception of some outages in their DNS services, I’ve never encountered a serious service-affecting issue; that said, I’m gradually lost faith in the integrity of their systems.

All of which has led me, this week, to switch registrars again. This isn’t something I do lightly, mostly because of the amount of work it takes to transfer everything — seemingly endless streams of confirmation emails to go through, mostly, punctuated by waiting times for various third parties to do things.

I choose Webnames.ca as my new home. This company is an outgrowth of the original “dot ca” domain name registry at the University of British Columbia (back in the days when registering a .ca name was as simple as sending off an email message to John Demco). I first used their systems several years ago, and I wasn’t impressed: I ran into frequent problems, and found their customer service lacking.

I revisited them this week, and found things had improved dramatically. They have just unwrapped a new web-based management tool that is, in large part, intuitive, fast, and easy to use. In transferring a menagerie of 30 .ca and .com domain names this week, I ran into a couple of problems, mostly CIRA-related, and I never had to wait more than a couple of minutes to talk to a real, live, helpful person. The kind of person that could actually fix my problem, not simply take the details and promise to call me back.

I had a longer conversation yesterday with the company’s Business Development Manager, Rupert Lindsay, yesterday, and found him knowledgeable, helpful, and willing to answer almost any question I had.

I’m going to be sending more business their way in the days and weeks to come; if you want to register a domain name yourself, early indications are that Webnames.ca is a good destination.

My re-entry into the world of print has required finding good printers. This week I found two.

As much as I am firmly against casual mis-use of the letter K, Kwik Kopy, in its new location at the corner of Queen and Euston Streets in Charlottetown, is very handy, and thus was my default choice. They’ve been running some colour copying on coated card stock — business cards and posters — and the results have been excellent. Not only are the copies good, but I’ve been able to email PDF files to them, and their staff, including Shawn MacKenzie, the owner, have been good about getting back to me. I’ll use them again.

I also needed some larger versions of the poster produced, and for that I turned to Atlantic Digital Imaging at the corner of University and Kent. They work in large-format printing exclusively, and they do good work. They ran a proof copy of a 22 x 34 poster for me this morning, and the results were better than I expected. It’s not cheap (one copy of the poster is $49), but for small quantities it’s the only thing going. As with Kwik Kopy, they have no trouble accepting files by email, and have been very responsive.

Having good printers is like having a good ISP in the digital work. Fortunately, I have both now.

On Friday I will wing west by aeroplane, joining Steven, Daniel, Stephen and Dan (all being members of my landlord Borg collective), as well as Johnny and Jodi, in San Francisco for a 4 days of high-level corporate discussions and strategic planning exercises.

I’ll also get a chance to see Oliver and Sophie, and to tour the Scharffen Berger Chocolate plant in Berkeley.

Although others have asked the same question, it bears repeating: if there’s something in San Francsico you think I should see, let me know!

According to ISN, a logging truck on the other side of the Confederation Bridge drove into the Eastlink fibre that runs to Halifax. This left me without Internet (as ISN’s upstream is Eastlink) and telephone (as Eastlink is my telephone company at the office).

As things turned out, I missed the entire debacle because I was out at meetings. Things appear to be operating normally now.

After almost a decade of purely digital design, I’ve re-entered the print world, if only for a brief diversionary sabbatical, creating materials for my friends Coleman et Lemieux in Montreal.

Oh how I’d forgotten the fundamental, visceral thrill of seeing a digital conception born on the printed page. No amount of browser goodness can ever duplicate this physicality: being able to pick up, hold, fold, flip over, throw, lick, and overwise fondle a printed piece can never compare to moving patterns of light around the video screen.

The first product of this re-entry is the poster at right, for The Near Room, a piece that Bill choreographed that runs March 11, 12, and 13 at the Théâtre La Chapelle in Montreal. Bill promotes the piece as follows:

His first new work in 3 years, Bill is hoping it will go unnoticed beside his war memorial Convoy PQ 17 for orchestra, chorus and dancers to be presented at Pierre Mecure, June 6, 2004. Why shouldn’t it? Well for one reason, it has more firearms in it then Brian De Palma’s Scarface, and for another, the evening seems to consist of everything we dread: death, premature death, violent death and cancerous death. Juxtaposed against the impossible innocence of a 14 girl.

Print has limits — cost, colours, the size of the printed page — that the endless screen doesn’t. I’m finding these limits oddly comforting.

Stay tuned for the PQ 17 work, coming soon.

Since I switched to the Mac over a year ago, I’ve been using Canvas 8 as a replacement for the much-beloved Xara that I used under Windows for years.

I’ve struggled with Canvas: it’s not an intuitive product in many aspects, and there are many annoying bugs and inconsistencies. For example, often the result of an export will not look like the design: there will be small differences, and type can appear wonky. Part of this might be due to “operator error,” but I could never find solutions to these problems, and the Deneba help (which is web-based) and support system are anemic.

So this week, faced with a series of print jobs over the next month, and unable to stomach using Canvas, I downloaded the 30 day trial of Freehand MX. After using it for 5 days, I can say without reservation that it is a truly wonderful piece of software, and using it makes using Canvas seem like using a Model T Ford to drive to Toronto.

I’ll have more to report once my jobs have hit the press, but for now, if you’re struggling with Canvas, you might want to give Freehand a look.

If you hold CIBC Aerogold VISA, you can get emergency travel medical insurance for an addition fee of $122/year for a family of 3 (this example assumes that your family of 3 includes me, Catherine and Oliver: your mileage may vary, depending on your age). This covers you for multiple trips of up to 15 days, with additional top-up days available for $5.13/day.

However, CIBC also offers the CIBC Club Privileges Travel program, which costs $199/year, and includes family emergency travel medical insurance for multiple trips of up to 7 days, with the top-up amount the same $5.13/day. However this program also includes priority boarding, lounge access, and a yearly free companion ticket.

Depending on your travel patterns, this second program might end up being a better deal. It was for me.

I don’t know what the statistics are, but I imagine many people travel without insurance (many people probably have it included in their work health plan, I imagine). I’ve heard enough “if I didn’t have that insurance I would have had a $50,000 hospital bill” stories from travelers to the U.S. to invest in it every time I go out of the country. Thanks to brother Johnny, I remembered to do so for a trip coming up later this week.

One of the things we have realized about Oliver is that he has a very detailed mental map of Charlottetown in his head, and he attaches events and characteristics to geographical locations in a very sticky way.

Every Saturday, Oliver and I go to the Formosa Tea House. We always walk the same way: up Prince, down Kent, up University.

And every time we go, as soon as we get within spitting distance of the big Department of Veteran’s Affairs building on Kent St., Oliver starts saying something that sounds like “epo, epo, epo.”

It was only this week that I realized that he has been saying “echo, echo, echo” — the entrance to the basement parking garage in this building makes your voice echo if you’re talking when you walk by. I pointed this out to him once about 9 months ago, and he remembered.

I am obviously not very quick on the uptake.

My ACOA, KPMG and how they used CBC post this weekend appears to have unearthed some strong feelings.

There is a somewhat confusing thread here (which includes the line, referring to me, “While there are some who appear to follow his guidance like sheep…” Who knew I had such power!).

Matthew posted here about bloggers “atop high horses (or Shetland Ponies)” taking “shots at the local CBC.”

Nils offers an uncharacteristic defence of the CBC.

And the readership has commented here on the original post.

I know, respect, and consider as friends, many people who work at the CBC, or who have worked at the CBC. My brother Steve works for the CBC. I have worked for the CBC as a freelance contributor, both paid and not. I listen to CBC Radio and watch CBC Television 10 or 20 hours a week in one form or another. I would go (and have gone) to the barricades to preserve the CBC, as I consider it vital to the national interest.

I am also an occasional critic of the CBC: I’ve written on my weblog about the Corporation’s attitude towards RSS, about seemingly misguided experiments with technology, about Andy Barrie. And more.

I always consider my criticism to be reasonable (if sometimes overly rhetorical), and offered out of care and concern for the institution. I offer criticism because I consider the CBC to be relevant, and worthy of criticism. I think the CBC matters, and I consider it vitally important, and a responsibility on my part, to engage the CBC as an active listener / watcher / consumer when the opportunity arises.

I don’t think there’s any reasonable excuse for what amounted to reprinting an ACOA news release. Nils says that “nobody is getting slandered or seriously hurt” when the CBC does this. But it’s the CBC itself that is hurt by this: its journalistic integrity has been compromised, if only slightly, and every loss in that column chips away at the integrity of the institution regarding things that do matter.

I don’t know what the answer to decreasing budgets and overtaxed employees is, but I’m absolutely certain that it doesn’t involve letting the integrity guard down.

One more thing: this weblog isn’t news. It’s not comprehensive. There’s no editorial oversight. I am not a journalist, and I couldn’t be one if I tried. This weblog is, at best, a personal commentary on matters that catch my attention. I claim no authority. I am self-funded, and responsible to nobody but myself. While I invite comment about anything I write, I don’t promise that I’ll pay any attention to it (although often I do). I write here mostly for selfish reasons, with occasional sprinkles of Jeffersonian pretense, and everything you read here should taken in that light.

The Formosa Tea House is shutting down on February 27 in its current location on University Avenue and reopening the following week in its new location on Prince Street. Because they’ve been so good to we bloggers over the last year (Zap Your PRAM was conceived and born there, after all), I propose a Meeting of the Bloggers to take place Tuesday, February 24 at 1:30 p.m..

If you can make it, please RSVP by adding a reply to this post (click DISCUSS).