PEIBlogs.com: the definitive Prince Edward Island blogroll since 2004.: What's Cool - The Top 3%!

I don't often cross post on Pownce and here on my blog, but this is worth an exception I think. A few minutes ago, a friend reminded me of the Barenaked Ladies' cover of Lovers in a Dangerous Time. I hadn't heard it in years and I'd never seen the video. The song is as good or better than I remembered. I don't care what you think of what the band's done since the famous (at least in Canada) and elusive Yellow Tape, this cover stands on its own.

The fantastic Canadian Design Resource has an article today about the historical flag of Canada's Metis people. I've made several posts in the past about flags and the Metis flag fits well with the other standouts I've mentioned previously. According the description, the Metis flag "represents the coming together of two distinct and vibrant cultures, European and indigenous, to produce a distinctly new culture, the Metis... the infinity symbol suggests that the Metis people will exist forever."

I've been spending many of my recent weekend days working from cafes near my apartment in San Francisco. There's a new one called On the Corner on Divisidero about two blocks from where I live and it gives me a nice break from my small apartment to go down there to write email and work on Pownce stuff — plus their coffee is very drinkable.

However, I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels guilty throwing down a couple of bucks for a coffee and then mooching wifi, power, and a comfy chair for a few hours. I try to get up every once in a while and grab a snack or a coffee refill. I hardly need the extra caffeine and I especially could handle eating fewer pastries, but I feel obliged to support the cafe.

In many ways, cafes serve a very similar purpose as co-working space. Many people come much more often than I do and stay longer, essentially using the cafe as temporary office. For co-working space, like the Queen Street Commons, people pay a decent sum for the convenience.

I'm curious if anyone out there has seen cafes experimenting with alternative payment schemes? I could imagine either a subscription scheme or something as simple as special tip jar clearly indicated as a 'thanks-for-the-wifi-comfy-chair-music-bathroom' donation. I know I'd be willing to pay — and my body would thank me for the reduced consumption of guilty pastries and extra cups of coffee.

I'm currently in Toronto at the Mesh conference taking place at the MaRS centre on College Street. Today was the MeshU day of workshops, including great presentations by John Lax, Leah Culver, Ryan Carson, John Resig, and a bunch of others. I presented in the morning and promised that I'd stick my slides online, so here they are. If audio is available later, I'll try to add it on, but I promised to get them up there at least in a basic way. Thanks to anyone/everyone who came out!

As I've talked about at a few conferences recently, one of the exciting/difficult things about working in-house, on a project with the scope of something like Digg, is the luxury/challenge to adapt your own work. The comments system on Digg is a perfect example. Just this past week, we rolled out the latest iteration of the comments system, which is the fourth major adaption of the system since the site launched over four years ago. It's a project that's been a long time coming and has been under development for a fairly long period. What a relief to finally see it out in the wild.

In his blog post about the release, Micah described several of the important changes that we made from both a design and performance standpoint. From the design side, we've made the comments visually lighter, reduced the metadata around each comment, improved the visual flow down the comment threads, added subtler functionality, and significantly improved the interaction design. When I say we improved the interaction design, I mean that as you interact with the comments (e.g. digg a comment, write a comment, edit your comments, etc) all of the pieces fit together more naturally.

The next step will be to iterate on the comments system once we've seen how people use, abuse, and break the one we just built. We certainly plan on doing more small adaptations over the next months as opposed to waiting to perform a large revision. As always with Digg projects, it's pretty exciting to watch a few million people use a feature that, up until launch, had only been seen or used by a few people... it'll be interesting to see what they do.

I feel badly for Hans. I even drove near Heuvleton, NY on the way here so the whole family could wave at the ancestral home of Hans. But I have to get to the South Portland library to post this week, it was closed yesterday and, frankly, there is sea life to consume instead of blogging. Notes so far:

• Hotels with no free breakfast are not good. I had to hunt for groceries at 10 pm on Friday instead of waking up to someone else's work of making me faux scrabled eggs and "breakfast links." Oddly, Double Tree with no breakfast is part of the same hotel group as the much preferred, feast o'breakfasting (yet cheaper) Homestead Suites.
• The smoked chowder at 3 Dollar Dooies is still great.
• Get to the South Portland Library early as there is already only one computer free. People do not whisper here, either, which is good. No library nazis.
• Gas is not as expensive here as in NY state. We went from 4.09 a gallon upstate to 3.69 here.
• Renting a cottage in a normal neighbourhood is a great thing. My neighbour came over to help with the garbage. My kids are among families with kids. I walk to ice cream.
• I am going to kick the second annual 35 yard field goal in America as part of my continuing "Glory Years" project - this time with a 19.99 NFL sized Wilson. Last year was celebrated in Ithaca NY with a CFL ball. When I kick my 35 yard kick, my kids will shout "you still got it, Dad" because I am going to give them ice cream if they do.

I like Maine. You know I like Maine. Google knows I like Maine for God's sake. This year we are renting an urban cottage and looking forward to it. I have no idea as to the internet access so we will see how you cope.

• Your weekly PEI is outraged over something update: Now the government is apparently outraged this week at the media's lack of magic mushroom coverage.
• One Canadian politician now wants our own cult of sport apparently. I hope I spelled that correctly.
• Eight days later, my take on Georgia? Don't attack Russian held ground. El Tigre points to other views.
• Nigeria has given away a chunk of itself to Cameroons after an international court ruling based on an early 19th century colonial agreement between Britain and Germany. How refreshing and relatively peaceful - and as worthy a settlement as the Georgian-South Ossetian debacle is disturbing. All hail Nigeria and Cameroon! I will now support each at the Olympics and buy their products.
• Chris Taylor poses the aeronautical question - how dey do dat?
• Beautiful photos from North Korea. This must be the prettiest girl in the land. Read the whole set to see how poignant a shot that is. This one, on the other hand, is not.
• Health watch: I knew this and apparently I knew this, too.

So goodbye for now. I am at the whim of librarians and hoteliers for my internet access. It's not like I would buy a laptop to do this, you know.

You know I care. I do care. I care deeply for all those foundering in the world of Federal politics, each participant unable to get a foot hold, make a good impression, get their heads above water let alone the fray. So it was with some interest that I read the latest poll on who we like amongst the Ottawanians...the Ottawaites?

Nationally, Prime Minister Harper's Tories remained stuck in a dead heat with the Liberals. Liberal support was up slightly to 33 per cent, statistically tied with the Tories at 32 per cent and followed by the NDP at 15 per cent and the Greens at 13 per cent.

Hmmm. Tories stuck. The lesson there may be no one like warms to people who jerk around Parliament. Hmmm. Greens at 13 percent. It'll never happen and the Liberals may have cleverly (did I just write that?) set up a green bleed towards themselves when the campaign is on...if they ever make it happen. Hmmm. NDP at 15. Where has Jack been? He is so quiet this year. Why? Hmm - the last one, I promise. A slim Grit minority. How disfunctional would that be.

But, really, has Dion's putting up with the insults, chiding and jibes actually paid off? Has the Tory strategy of presenting themselves as something between moody governors and disruptive bullies finally flopped?

You knew it was coming. Usually it doesn't start up until the second week. But accusations are now flying, claiming that the reason Canada has no medals in the Olympics yet is due to the fact that our "sport spending" falls short:

"Why are they so good?" Diving Canada technical director Mitch Geller said Tuesday after the Chinese synchronized diving team easily won a gold medal in the women's competition and the Canadians finished seventh. "They screen tons of kids. They put them all through some very, very good fundamental training. And then the cream rises to the top." In Canada, governments and business are offering more money than ever, but the country's sport spending lags behind that of China, Russia and other modern countries.

Wow. Did anyone tell Mitch that China, that most modern of countries, is a totalitarian dictatorship which may go some way to explain how they get to "screen tons of kids"? That the Chinese even measure kids by the ton may have been a hint.

But setting aside of those dreams of Nicolae Ceausescu's 1970's gymnastics teams - though he apparently hated sport - have to explain how it is that those who are well funded, got to China and have the best chances have failed. Yesterday, Brent Hayden, Canada's fastest man in the pool, the reigning world champion failed to make the Olympic men's 100-metre freestyle final. Ottawa's fault? Did you know we had the fifth best fencer? She lost in her first match. She gone. Stephen Harper made it so. Personally. So unmodern of him.

There are reasons our entertainments are not as entertaining as others - and Olympic sport is just that, entertainment. First, we are a middling nation with middling resources which are actually allocated by Federal and Provincial governments ranging from socialists to neo-cons with a great measure of prudence. Second, we lack a pervasive national joy in achievement that drives the competitive spirit. Third, we simply like winter sports better. Fourth, the CFL gets all the real cash from Ottawa and you might as well get used to it.

Do you care? I don't. I am happy to see some Canadians play an excellent game of softball and even was interested to see we have a men's field hockey team even if the Ozzies smoked them. That's what the Olympics mean to me - learning that we have citizens who love weird sports, having a slight interest in that oddly placed passion rise to my mind's eye for about seven minutes and then moving on, forgetting them for another four years.

If the hostilities in Georgia have now actually stopped - not a sure thing - what of the aftermath? To say the strike against South Ossetia was ill advised is an over statement but so was Russia's response...unless their statement really was "you are mine". So where are we:

...there is a growing belief in European capitals and in Washington that the return of Russia to a position of great power could mean a redrawing of the Eurasia map, with Europe and the United States giving up on attempts to integrate former Soviet republics in the Caucasus into the Western orbit, while battling with Russia to keep Eastern European countries like Poland and the Baltic states. And Russia?s resurgence could mean an end to already-dwindling American and European hopes of bringing Russia along eventually as an ally of the West. At best, Russia would never be trusted; at worst, it would be seen as an adversary.

Ahhh...the old enemy. Nothing like the recollection of nuclear fear of my youth to put the last seven and twenty years in perspective. The Bear. The Red Empire. To my mind, Russia - being something of a kleptocracy on one hand and a new oil power on the other - may not have the stuff that was behind the communist push for global domination. It could want to be a player but surely can't hope to lead to a one world government - nor would they want to.

So no new Soviet Union. But should we cut trade? Should they get the boot from the G8? Should they be cutout of co-operation with NATO and a few ambassadors cut out? To their defense, Georgia clearly did start this - or at least this phase of this. I would expect reprisals if anyone went anywhere and killed Russian or US soldiers...or Belgians for that matter. So is this really a single incident or part of a trend?

One of the many great things about Maine is you can buy beer at a grocery store - and wine and what they call "haaaard liqaaaah" around here. So far I have only hit two stores in South Portland, Shaw's and Hannaford, but it is interesting to note the different treatment. At clean and bright and helpful Shaw's, the beer is in the chip and soda aisle. There are a few locals but it is treated as largely a commodity beverage with no focus on craft or even Maine. This is odd because at the other side of the store they have a dandy and quite large fine wine area with phoney rich wood panelling as well as a lay-out that creates a quiter shopping moment.

Hannaford, also clean and bright and helpful, clearly takes a different approach with a significant placement at the end of the aisles for Maine craft beers, plenty of fridge space including Allagash white - and, low and behold, fine high end craft beer in the fine wine area. There were well-priced examples from Allagash and Dogfish head as well as a few others. Nothing to compare with a specialty shop but clearly an effort to point out that instead of that bottle of red or white Ozzie or Cali plonk you may want to try a locally made triple for about the same price or maybe even a little less. A great idea and a great way to put good beer into the hands of your average family shoppers or folks like me travelling through.

More as I continue my quest to consume the entire output of the north Atlantic Ocean.

I should get a photo later this week (here is a good wintery one on Flickr) but just a note that it's nice to find a rental house five blocks from Scratch Bakery in South Portland Maine where you can buy fine cheese, fine wines, a whole whack of great breads and other backed goods - not to mention Saison Dupont for $7.99 for 750ml as well as a bunch of great Maine craft beers...even at 9 am Sunday morning. More here. Run by Bob who was one of the founders of Magic Hat, it's a cornerstone of the revival of Willard Square.

I must be a homebody. A homer. A slug-a-bed. But, after a six hour drive from the east of Lake Ontario to beyond Lake Champlain, the last thing I want most times is a beer. Driving around Burlington at 9:30 pm last night trying to find a grocery store to lay in some breakfast, I passed any number of great bars and places to grab a local craft beer but was just too tired to imagine stopping. I'd be nose first in the stein or, worse, pulled over for weaving as I drove away after half a pint. And right now all I need to find is a big coffee. Hours to go before the sea.

I have to admit that I am not exactly a guy with a regular pub. Frankly, when I head to the States on holiday with our pals like I will tomorrow for ten days, I am more likely to have a favorite bar I go to regularly than I would have here. But none are like the pub mentioned at the BBC today, "The Pigs" at Edgefield:

Locals at a village pub in Norfolk are beating the credit crunch by bartering home-grown produce for pints. The Pigs public house, in Edgefield, near Holt, encourages drinkers to contribute to its traditional food menu in return for free alcohol. A sign placed inside the pub reads: "If you grow, breed, shoot or steal anything that may look at home on our menu, bring it in and let's do a deal."

Who wouldn't want to go to a pub where this could happen: "someone will say 'that rabbit tasted great' and we say 'here, meet the person who shot it'." But it's not the food that particularly attracted me when I checked out the pub's website, it's the games. Sure there are quizzes, darts, billiards, dominoes and even shove ha'penny but right there to the lower left of the page so generously titled simply "drinking" it says you can play "I Spy". What better indication of a genial spirit than the invitation to spy with one's little eye something that begins with "J".

Something green perhaps. Michael Jackson wrote in his Great Beers of Belgium that this beer has "a powerfully earthy, herbal aroma; a light, firm body; and an intensely appetising hop bitterness". Any beer that can generate that word to semi-colon ratio is fine by me, I suppose.

But first, it is apparently important that I have a moment of guilt. I traded this beer for a third of a month's worth of ad space a couple of years ago. Its siblings at 8 and 12 are in the stash. I am not overly concerned, being Protestant, as to the resulting valuation of the brew but - as you might expect - am skeptical as to the price others have paid and the lengths they have gone to (or been put to) for a sip. I protest such things, as my creed would have me. Yet, unlike the man behind Cantillon, I also don't think these things are just for drinking as judging goes along with thinking. After all, this is a thinking person's guide to beer. So let us think of the thing in itself, judge it for what it is and not worry how many Hank Aaron baseball cards I might have traded it for.

A rich sheeting fine white head sits over clear golden ale. In the distance I hear the laundry going and children refusing to go to bed. The smell is quite wonderful, like Orval without all that lavendar-ish-ness. A mildly peachy, creamy, twiggy smell with...hey, herself goes by, grabs the glass and takes the first swig. "You'll like it" she says walking on. Soft water, fruit perfumed malt giving way to two level bitterness: a fairly strong tea plus an nettle thing to the back of the throat. Somewhere I hear a Red Sox player wiff at a ball that was never going to be a strike. Bitterness becomes rounded astringency in a light grainy pale malt finish.

This brew is pushing a year and a half years old so I have no idea if this is faded or not. But, on the other hand, I may never have it again given the way things are so what the heck. Short take? Like a cross between or even blend of Orval and a light English pale ale. BAers are surprisingly a tad cool to it - but primarily as a beer for aging.

The difference between America and Canada is that Americans don't care what the difference between America and Canada is.

Adams' method was established in Fire and Ice: he notes at one point that in the U.S. SUVs outsell minivans by two-to-one, whereas in Canada it's vice versa. That's a fact. The fancy is in the meaning he appends to it. "This is a stark difference," he writes, "whose roots can be traced directly to the differing values of our two countries." This assertion seems to have no basis other than a casual assumption that Canadians are more environmentally responsible and thus more concerned with "excessive gasoline consumption, pollution and safety violations."

Isn't there a more obvious correlation? Minivans are cheaper than SUVs, and Canadians have less disposable income than Americans. It's easy to be "socially responsible" if you've got no choice in the matter. On the Continent they're driving around in things the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger's cup holder, so presumably they're more "socially responsible" still. In Canada those who can afford SUVs buy them, it's just that their numbers are smaller. Remember Herb Dhaliwal? Well, no, you probably don't. But a couple of years back M. Chrétien made him minister of natural resources, and he certainly got through a lot of them. He drove around like a Hamas warlord in a three-ton Cadillac Escalade. That's bigger than my SUV and I'm in favour of global warming. The difference is that the high living of a Liberal cabinet minister is confined, north of the border, mainly to Liberal cabinet ministers while down south it's more widely available.

Lost in Iceland? suggests that it's because the government's price for the GIS data is too high:

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How to Drive in Iceland is a useful video. In particular the section on seat belts, starting at 4:35, is enough to convince anyone of the utility of seatbelts.

Some short video clips of the Gold Cup and Saucer parade this morning in downtown Charlottetown:

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<Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor plays at Pitchfork. Photo taken by Flickr's Staciaann Photography.