Here’s the latest reply from CBC on the RSS issue:

As previously explained by the customer support representant, CBC does not allow external use of our RSS or XML files. This is a very strict policy to ensure full control by the corporation over the editorial content and branding. If I do understand your interest for a RSS feed, I have the regret to notify you that this service is not available for public use.

This leads me to understand that there actually are RSS and XML files somewhere inside the CBC; they’re just not letting them leak outside.

I can’t claim to understand their “very strict policy to ensure full control by the corporation over the editorial content and branding.”

Probably time to take this higher.

It would seem to me that if I was the CBC, I would want my work product spread as far and wide as possible. They’re a public service, after all, with a primary goal being something along the lines of “the greater good of all mankind.”

So if there was ever a technology that lent itself to eager and quick adoption by the CBC, you would think it would be the web syndication facilities offered by technologies like RSS.

RSS provides the CBC with an opportunity to, at no cost, spread its content to new and interesting audiences.

Thinking that perhaps I’d missed something, and that the CBC actually does provide RSS feeds, I sent an exploratory email to the contact address listed for their Free Headlines service (a complex, proprietary server-side solution that forces syndicators to accept the CBC’s “look and feel” and affords none of the benefits of RSS). To which I received the following response:

Following your request, it is impossible to send you any RSS feed due to our strict policy. We understand your point, but we do not send it to particulars. We hope this will answer your questions

The mind boggles. On so many levels.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Self, please note that if it’s after 1:00 p.m., and you’re starting to feel run down, and you think “maybe I should just skip lunch so that I can save time and get this work done,” what will inevitably result is an afternoon where you are working at 35-50% efficiency. If you take 30 minutes and eat lunch, you’ll bounce back to peak efficiency, and more than make up for the “lost” 30 minutes. Really.

Let me note, for the record, that it is 7:08 a.m. Atlantic Time as I write this. Which is 6:08 a.m. Eastern (which is the time zone my body is still on). I have a lot of work to do today. I’m experimenting with opening up more time on the front end to see if that helps. I will either succeed, or fall asleep on my keyboard sometime around Noon. In any case, I’m off to Cora’s for a Fruit Crunch to give me the energy I need. Catherine and Oliver are back this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. on the jet from Toronto; happy day.

P.S. I note with some interest that it is actually dark this early in the morning.

Update: People are very groggy in the morning. I’m used to seeing my fellow citizens at 11:00 a.m., not 7:08 a.m. I just assumed everyone was as cheery and bright at 7:08 a.m. They’re not.

Just in time for Zap, Ian gets an RSS feed, with all the blogger street cred that brings with it.

For all you Zap stragglers out there, one of the highlights of the conference is going to be Ian and Tessa showing their film The Pink House followed by what I’m sure will be a rollicking good question and answer sesstion.

Although registrations officially closed on the 14th, and we’ve got a healthy complement of people attending (about 30 at last count), we can probably squeeze in a few more. Visit the Zap site for details.

As the official Island weblog repository for “memories of the 1970s and 1980s,” I feel an obligation to point out that Hinterland Who’s Who [QuickTime] is back. Music smoothed out; new announcer; same subject matter. Can’t put a good woodchuck down.

Which reminds me, speaking of the 1970s, does anyone else remember Hammy Hampster? This was a live-action animal show that aired, I think, on Global in the early days. Talking hampsters, with houses, boats, cars, etc. It was a magical little world.

By all rights, Peter Pan shouldn’t exist. 

Like its independent burger-focused restaurant brothers and sisters, it should have been rendered extinct by the fast food giants. I am convinced that Peter Pan survives because (a) the famous Peter Pan Burger Basket $1.99 commercial which, like Stompin’ Tom singing the 1-800 tourism number, drilled its way into the public’s mind and (b) because the only effective way to refer to the intersection of Rte. 1 and Rte. 2 by the Charlottetown Mall is as “the Peter Pan corner.”

They also make a good milkshake. And there’s that special relish.

Here’s a Peter Pan TV commercial than ran locally. Directed by my friend Dave Moses.

Self, please note that your aging body no longer has the capacity to effortlessly absorb a large-format Hershey Chocolate Bar with Almonds. Your head will twitter and your limbs shake. Please avoid this behaviour in future. Really.

I’m just off the phone with a colleague. I asked him if he was “chomping at the bit” for a piece of work he’s waiting on. I suddenly realized that, without being totally aware of it, I may pepper my day-to-day conversation with expressions like this, and may thus be suffering from some sort of Dan Rather-like perception in the conversation space. I believe I may have actually said “oh, go on…” to someone the other day. What’s happening to me?