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What the web version of this CBC story about ministerial travel on Prince Edward Island cannot effectively communicate is the sense of righteous indignation with which is was delivered on the local radio news this morning.

Of the myriad traits of Prince Edward Islanders, good and bad, the most poisonous and self-defeating one is xenophobia: the sense that we've got a good thing going on here and the associated resistance to the strange, the foreign and the unusual. As if accepting a world beyond our borders risks pollution of the Island Way of Life.

This is by no means a universal trait, and there are many, many Islanders with minds open to the world. But still the tendency lurks in the heart of the Island identity. And that's not only unfortunate for the rest of the world, which could learn a thing or two from Islanders, but more so for the Island: restricting the oxygen of the novel is not the way to thrive in the interconnected world.

Which is why the CBC's "gotcha" approach to "uncovering" ministerial travel, as though finding evidence of an egregious crime, is so galling. It is the role of the fourth estate to be vigilant, and certainly the CBC fulfills this role every day. To fan the flames of the natural tendency of Islanders to be suspicious of anyone travelling off the Island, however, is irresponsible, and goes beyond vigilance and into tabloidism.

I'm certain the some ministerial travel is vital to the life of the province. I'm equally certain that, on occasion, ministerial travel is essentially ceremonial and at least somewhat self-indulgent. Which travel is which deserves scrutiny.

But regardless of how practical ministerial travel is, it is important to the life of the province that ministers travel, broadly and frequently: to remain solely inside the echo chamber that is Island politics leaves a minister exposed to a limited slice of ideas, approaches, opportunities and ways of doing things; the simple fact of being immersed in a different environment is reason enough to travel, for the openness of mind that inevitably results.

When Premier Robert Ghiz went to China earlier this autumn there may well have been practical reasons for doing so.

But, more importantly, when Islanders saw Robert Ghiz on television standing on a stage in China with his fellow Premiers it communicated, as the Premier himself said, "We need to look outwardly." That's an impulse we should celebrate.

Update for non-Islanders: "ministers" are member of the provincial cabinet, chosen by the Premier to lead government departments.

There's activity at The Town and Country Restaurant on Queen Street near City Hall in Charlottetown: the lights are on, the windows are clean, and people are going in and out. Not open yet, but it looks like the something's afoot. Nice to see after a year of being shuttered.

Possible reasons that Bruce Rainnie would email me looking for a telephone number where he could call me:

1. Sally Pitt unavailable to pinch hit on Compass tonight and they need a last-minute fill-in host.
2. Decided to ditch the Five Minute Flurry sports segment in favour of a Open Source Orgy segment; wants me to produce.
3. Trouble getting along with brother Matthew; seeking advice from someone else who works with a brother.
4. CBC management thinking of changing the name of Compass to Cross-Canada Newscape; wants me to make it stop.
5. Needs someone to call the Leafs-Blackhawks game on Saturday night.

Actual reason the Bruce Rainnie emailed me looking for a telephone number where he could call me:

• Wireless networking issues with Vista and Windows XP.

If you use Gizmo5 or another VOIP client, you can now get Charlottetown Public Transit schedule information simply by dialing sip:info@thebus.ca. You'll get the same interactive system you get if you dial (902) 367-3694 on a regular telephone.

How To Read Your Bill on the Maritime Electric website is a partially useful tool for helping decrypt your electric bill. While it would be nice if there was more detailed information provided, it's still an excellent starting point for figuring out what you're paying and for how much.

My favourite part of the page is the address of the customer on the sample bill: only on PEI is it conceivable that there would be a community called Anywheres:

It's been raining babies in Charlottetown this year -- everywhere you look they're breaking out. Oliver is no longer wee by comparison, but sometimes it's good to remember that he once was:

The photo is by my friend Steve Muskie and was taken at Steve's house in Harrisville, NH in the spring of 2001 when Oliver was eight months old.

And as proof of what utterly irresponsible parents we were, here's me hanging on to Oliver in the back up a pickup truck cum taxi in Chiang Mai, Thailand 8 months later in the water of 2002:

And finally here's a photo from that summer, when Oliver was walking (he'd taken his first real steps the month before during a visit from my parents):

Our house at 100 Prince Street has two rooms, the upstairs bath and the downstairs kitchen, that are lit with halogen light bulbs on tracks. Each track holds four 50 watt bulbs. The bulbs are hot, burn out a lot, and are expensive to replace ($17 for a package of three).

I'd always been under the impression that there was something special about the whole halogen-lighting setup, and that these were bulbs we couldn't replace unless we replaced the fixtures; a helpful clerk at Canadian Tire disabused me of this notion this afternoon, telling me and another guy with the same issue that although a compact fluorescent replacement might stick out a little more, there's no problem with swapping out halogen and replacing them.

And so I bought two packages of two 9 watt ECObulbPLUS compact fluorescent bulbs to retrofit the bulbs in the upstairs bath -- three of them burnt out over the last week anyway, so it was high time.

The new bulbs were just a little longer than the ones they replace, but because the fixtures aren't the kind where the bulbs are flush, this didn't matter at all.

The light is only slightly less "warm feeling" than the halogens, and not at all like the "fluorescent-lit 1975 high school history classroom in the middle of winter"-light I assumed I might be ending up with:

I replaced 200 watts of bulbs with 36 watts of bulbs. Assuming we have the bathroom lights on for 2 hours a day, or 730 hours a year, that would mean that, before the change, we were using 146 kilowatt hours to light the bathroom every year, for a cost, at the Maritime Electric rate of 15.15 cents/kwh, of $22.11 per year.

After swapping in the new bulbs we'll use 26.28 kwh/year for a cost of $3.98/year. The bulbs were on sale for $10 per package, so the $20 total cost will be paid for in the first year of the bulbs 9-year rated lifespan.

Next stop: the kitchen. There are six of the 50 watt halogen bulbs there that need replacing, and the Canadian Tire sale is still on.

I'm running an experimental telephone-based bus schedule for the University Avenue line Charlottetown at (902) 367-3694. Phone that number and you'll hear when the next buses are leaving from the Confederation Centre and from the Charlottetown Mall, and you'll then have the option of selecting a stop and hearing the next four buses outbound and inbound from that stop. You're welcome to try it out and get back to me with feedback in the comments.

The same information is available, of course, on the web at thebus.ca and on your mobile browser at m.thebus.ca.

My colleagues upstairs have released a new photo-brokering website, and as a result you can now license my photographs for the cover of your next book about Porto, party invitation, or Wal-Mart "insert your photo here" placeholder. Royalty-free licenses are $2.22 an image.

A helpful piece of guidance from G. this afternoon: Queens Square in downtown Charlottetown, bounded by Queen, Prince, Grafton and Richmond Streets, is 4 acres. The other squares downtown -- Rochford, Connaught, Hillsborough and Kings -- are 2 acres.

You may recall my shameful commentary on the presentation regarding bottled water made to the Eastern School District back in September. Well, something must have stuck with me.

At a catered meeting yesterday at the University of PEI we were offered chilled bottles of Aquafina bottled water. I reached for one, and then realized that someone else at the meeting had just complained about how the china mugs we'd been provided with for coffee were freezing cold. Then I spotted the tiny kitchen, with a sink, about 6 steps from the meeting room.

I put back the Aquafina, took a pre-chilled mug into the kitchen, and filled it up with good old Charlottetown tap water.

One of my favourite events is the somewhat-annual CBC Prince Edward Island Open House, where the local CBC facility here in Charlottetown throws its door open and lets we in the listenership meet the bodies behind the voices, try on Boomer's Hawaiian shirts, make our own radio documentaries, run the robotic cameras and eat baklava. Or something like that.

This year's edition is happening on November 29, 2008 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.. Which hardly seems enough time to get the thousands of people through the doors (really: there were super-long lines last time). But, regardless, it's well worth a visit if you haven't before.

When I first landed on Prince Edward Island almost fifteen years ago, one of the first places I went was to the Computer Services department at the University of PEI. At the time UPEI was running a pilot project to provide dial-up Internet access to Islanders, and anyone who asked could sign up. Which is how I became caprukav@atlas.cs.upei.ca.

This project was revolutionary: it got the Internet to Prince Edward Island well before the days of a market for Internet, and a lot of what's happened on the Internet here on the Island can be traced back to people who were involved, as users or organizers, in that project.

Which is why it's unfortunate that the same "Internet for the people" ethic doesn't apply to the provision of wireless access on the UPEI campus.

Visiting UPEI this morning I fired up my wifi-enabled Nokia N95 to find wireless infrastructure spread across much of the campus, with four SSIDs in evidence almost everywhere:

Unfortunately the two non-secured networks, named, ironically it would seem, "OPEN" and "GUEST," both lead to a PantherNet Open Wireless Login screen:

The network is locked down, and only students, faculty, and staff are permitted access.

This would be fine if you have a vision of the University as a walled institution with limited intrusions from outsiders.

However I prefer a model where UPEI is a centre of scholarship and resources for all, regardless of formal affiliation.

Making use of the resources of the University is considerably enhanced by having free and unfettered and anonymous access to the Internet, whether it be to find out when the next bus is leaving, to snap a photo of an article in the library for OCR and translation to a different language, to send and receive email, or any of the myriad other usefulnesses the network can provide to a curious person in an environment that should be seeking to embrace and extend curiousity in every way possible.

I know that there are issues of resources and bandwidth and the possibility of some anonymous pirate running a porn site from a weather-proof PC in the quadrangle. But all of these issues are ones that others have dealt with. There are best practises out there, and ways of making this work.

Can someone at UPEI make this happen, please.

The Charlottetown Transit system up and down University Avenue now runs every 30 minutes, which is often enough to graduate at least that route into "regular world" status: it's often enough that you don't need to make special plans to sync with the bus, as one will always be along in a reasonable amount of time.

I took the bus up to UPEI this morning for an Access 2009 planning meeting and got the rare opportunity to ride one of the special hydrogen-powered buses that are more often used in a back-up or special-purpose role:

The hydrogen buses are a pilot project of the Governments of Canada and Prince Edward Island, along with Ford and Air Liquide, and they were announced a year ago this month.

While I can't say anything bad about the ride itself -- it seemed like a regular everyday bus ride in all respects -- that this is a prototype that's not ready for prime time was clear from the fact that the buses only hold 12 passengers: in the photo above the part of the bus with windows holds people; the large section at the back of the bus holds whatever hydrogen-powered magic that makes the buses go.

Unfortunately the hydrogen that powers the buses is being trucked in from off-Island, something that presumably reduces the clean ride aspect of the project; the plan is that eventually something like the Wind-Hydrogen Village project might generate the hydrogen, but this hasn't happened yet.

A concerned family member writes, about my experiments with OpenStreetMap:

The OpenStreetMap FAQ has an answer to this; it says, in part:

I would add that the notion of outsourcing something as integral to the public good as street maps to a corporation is irresponsible: maps are important enough that they should be owned by the commons, not by a corporation, however benevolent.

Equally important, and perhaps more interesting, than these intellectual property concerns, however, is that OpenStreetMap maps can be better than anything Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can offer. Here, for example, is snippet of the OpenStreetMap for Reykjavik, Iceland:

And here's the Google Map of the same area (yes, it's empty -- Google has no map data for Reykjavik):

But this isn't restricted to areas like Iceland where commercial maps companies don't have any coverage, it's true of anywhere that the OpenStreetMap has been locally enhanced. Here in Charlottetown, for example. Here's the OpenStreetMap for an area of downtown Charlottetown:

Here's the same area in Google Maps:

Not only is the OpenStreetMap more complete with more showing more detail, it's also more accurate. Notice how Google shows Rochford Square as Rockford Square? I submitted a bug report to TeleAtlas on March 19, 2008 and the misspelling is still there.

Because OpenStreetMap can be enhanced by people who live in a community, drive the roads and walk the trails and pass the buildings every day, it has the potential not only to be the best map available, but also to take community mapping to a level of detail and utility that commercial companies will simply never be able to muster.

I'm considering organizing a free day of training and doing on OpenStreetMap for Charlottetown.

Likely on a Saturday or Sunday in late November or early December, the day would be designed for absolute beginners with an interest in learning how to contribute to the OpenStreetMap project: we'd cover the basics, and then spend the balance of the time doing actual mapping.

The "actual mapping" process can involve both going out into the field on foot or bicycle to gather GPS traces and staying indoors and tracing map features over satellite photos, so people with a wide variety of abilities, interests, and mobilities would be welcome. I've got a couple of co-conspirators who've agreed to help, but we could always use more.

If this is something you'd be interested in either helping to organize or attending, please leave a comment here.

In the almost 10 years that I've been writing in this space there's always been a page for "posts" and a separate page for "comments" on those articles.

When I first cobbled together the application that allows me to write and you to read these pages, there were no "best practises" for how blogs should work other than the "show posts in reverse chronological order." Since that time the world has decided that comments should appear at the end of posts. And so I figured it was probably time to catch up.

Starting today, thus, every post has a permalink, and on that single page you'll find the post itself, followed by any comments, followed by a comment form where you can leave your own. This is neither revolutionary, nor particularly elegantly grafted together for the moment. But perhaps it will, by conforming to the de facto standard, make this space a little easier to digest.

Thanks go to Steven Garrity who first suggested that I move in this direction about five years ago. I am nothing if not slow to act.

Please let me know if you notice any inconsistencies in the comment-leaving and comment-reading process.