I got a friendly call back from Aliant Mobility in Moncton this morning regarding sending Internet email from a cell phone. He told me that, despite the fact that I was, and am still, able to send Internet email from my Aliant cell phone, officially this is something that doesn’t work. Indeed both the operator I talked to last night, and the person I talked to this morning claimed that it was impossible.

For regular readers the irony of this will not be lost: when Aliant, at long last, does something right, they both claim that they’re not doing it and, further, claim that it’s impossible.

Sigh.

Last March I wrote about Danger Bay. Late last week, I got an email from the creator of Danger Bay.

Last December I wrote about our old friend Mikey. A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Mikey, who I hadn’t spoken to in 10 years.

Last month I wrote a review of Angels Restaurant. This morning I got a call from the owner of Angels, Ken Zakem.

The Internet is like a message in a bottle. Except it’s like a million messages in a million bottles that are bound to bump into their intended recipient eventually.

Although I never thought I would use the words “Aliant” and “Cool” in the same paragraph, I must give them credit for finally turning on a neato feature on their digital cellular network: the ability to send real Internet email.

Previously you could send SMS messages to other cell phones right from the phone, but sending bona fide email meant entering the clunkoverse of their WAP browser, which is tantamount to inscribing messages on stone tablets.

Now that they’ve turned this feature on, I can send email to anyone with an Internet email address right from the phone. I’ve tested this feature several times, and messages have arrived almost instantaneously.

The only glitch: email messages from cell to Internet come “from” your phone number @txt.bell.ca (presumably because they’re using the Bell Canada SMS-to-Email gateway). If this email is replied to, it doesn’t ever reach the cell phone, and never bounces back unsent. Email addresses for Aliant phones, for some bazonko reason, are @wirefree.informe.ca.

I called Aliant Mobility about this, and they told me that I’m not actually supposed to be able to send email from cell to Internet, although they promised to get back to me to explain why it was that I can.

Still, it is cool.

The CBC is reporting that Dr. Ralph September will begin a temporary contract assignment at Souris Hospital.

I would like to formally nominate that as being among the best names of all time, and perhaps the best doctor name ever.

I walked out of my office to eat lunch, and Clifford the Big Red Dog was playing on the television in the living room. Clifford and his canine pals were debating as to whether to go to Rocky Point or to the Dunes for the afternoon.

I’ve been having accessing my local server using the Safari version 1.0 browser. I never had any problems with the beta versions; since I upgraded to 1.0, however, the browser freezes up when POSTing forms to this webserver, which is on the local WAN.

Reading this interesting article about the ‘cents’ symbol [pointer from Ian], I remembered that the first printer I ever owned — it came used, from Langford’s Drug Store — did underlining by printing the characters to be underlined, doing a carriage return (but no line feed), and then running underscore symbols along the same line, where underlining was required. It was an amazing dance to watch.

Which reminds me that for a time, if you wanted to check your email at Trent, there was an unlocked room in the basement of the Science Complex that contained an old DEC line printer connected to the network. You could login to your UNIX account, and use mail to read email, everthing printing out on paper as you typed. Somewhat cumbersome (especially if you ran out of paper), but a handy printed record of all your correspondence was a useful byproduct.

Kids I knew in Hamilton who were two or three years ahead of me in school used to do their high school computer programming assignments by filling out punch cards and sending them to City Hall for processing.

Ironic that now that almost all the physicality of computing has been removed, we see more physical problems resulting from data processing than ever before.

The Edmonton Folk Music Festival takes place in Gallagher Park in the downtown Edmonton neighbourhood of Cloverdale. According to IABC Edmonton:

Most residents of Cloverdale also receive free tickets, a way of compensating them for the extra noise and traffic levels in their neighbourhood during the Festival.

This seems like a possible model for Charlottetown. If the rock weekends are inevitable, perhaps the least the organizers can do is take the edge off and let downtown residents actually see the performers we can otherwise only hear from behind the fences.

I am not a big beach-goer. Catherine would like me to be. And, indeed, we have been to the beach two days running, which is something of a first. It seems absurd, living in the beachy paradise that we do, to not go to the beach as much as humanly possible, if only to ramble around in the shallows.

Beach going is much easier, and much more fun, now that Oliver will wade independently, something he started, appropriately enough, in the Mediterranean south of Barcelona in May. Today at Tea Hill beach he was romping around in the water like a duck. Although, for now, he can only “swim” backwards.

In any case, even with my relatively infrequent beach-going, I’ve seen a lot of the beaches that the Island has to offer, both in the spring and fall and in the heart of tourist season. With the exception of a rather busy day up at Basin Head, I don’t think I’ve ever shared a beach with more than a dozen people. Indeed, most of the time, especially if you visit in the late afternoon, you literally can have miles and miles of beach to yourself.

Which makes this photo of Coney Island on July 4th seem like another planet of beach-going. I’ve never been to Cavendish in the heart of the season… does it ever get that crowded there?

Reminder to fellow Island indoor geekfolk: do not let the summer go by again without noticing; soon the snow will be flying, and you will regret every sunny afternoon spent in front of the screen.

From time to time the discussion in this space has turned to the technical arcana of the web. When this happens, there are usually one or two grumpy gusses who chime in with a comment like “hey, less talk about HTTPS and SSL and more talk about rock bands and breakfast spots.”

For that reason, and in a breathless attempt to keep up with the young lads at silverorange, I’m happy to announce a new ‘blog, Reinvented Labs. This is where you will find technical discussions, code we release for use by others, and other such circus tricks.

Things over on this side of the door to the lab will continue on much as they have otherwise.