I’m taking a week off!

I’m going on an all expenses paid nation-trotting voyage next week so there will be less Rob on AOV. Unless I can find some kind of net access on the road.

I trust Steve will keep it real in my absence, if not, go read some of Matt’s stuff at the greatest e-zine in the world. Feel free to read other content too, but think of AOV when you see Matt’s stuff.

In other news, I just saw AI and it was amazing. It was long though. If I was the world famous director, I would have cut it off at one point, but it kicked back up for another half hour or so. I’m being vague but when you see the flick, you’ll understand. It’s kind of like the new Godzilla (not 2000, just ‘Godzilla’), that movie had like 7 climaxes and possible times to end.

Ben Sankey had an excellent game for the Stamps last night, helping Calgary defeat the defending Grey Cup champs, the BC Lions, 35-28 in an exibition game.

Read “San-key!” at Forget Magazine.

In England, a Pony who had an “exotic past in a wildlife park” gave birth to what scientists call a “Zeedonk”.

I for one think it’s cute. Too bad about the scientist’s name, ‘Shebra’ is much cooler. Here’s hoping that someday well discover a squoctopus…

For those who participate in this discussion following a post here on aov about the death of the free web, you may find this comic interesting as it deals with the topic of file-sharing and micropayments.

The comic, by Scott McCloud is interesting for what it says and for how it says it. Check out I Can’t Stop Thinking #6.

Sundays I like to sleep in until 10. But I’m not today. It’s 8:30 now, not 10. And I can’t fall back to sleep, because I’ve moved around too much.

At about quarter after eight, I was rolling around on my bed when I heard my door crack open a bit, then close. I heard this, but decided to stay snoozing.

Two minutes later, my mom comes into the room and says, “Rob, 911’s here, but you’ve been asleep, you didn’t dial did you?”

I hadn’t. But I crawled out of bed to see a cop at my front door checking things out. Saying they got a call ten minutes ago from my line. We have two phone numbers, the one with the DSL did it.

The 911 guy (who I assumed was a cop, I was too sleepy and dumb to look at his uniform, but he was packing heat), said that something happened with a guy not long ago and they think it was the internet. “Something about email or something, but I don’t know that stuff, so I can’t say”.

This made me think, yesterday morning at about the same time, my phone woke me up by making a strange ringing noise. It ‘blipped’ once, and then 30 seconds later, ‘blipped’ again. I don’t know any more about phones than that guy knows about the internet, but that DSL line also rang a few times last summer and I answered to find a strange noise (not a modem handshaking). But my phone actually calling somebody seems a little strange. Has anybody heard of this? We’re calling Island Tel tomorrow to see if they’ve ever heard of this or if they’ll tell us we actually dialed the number without knowing.

I think I’m tired again, I’m going back for another hour.

Prince Edward Island’s Department of Agriculture and Forestry has photographed every inch of the Island from about 9000 feet. The provincial government website has combined these photos with their powerful mapping plugin to make for an amazing way to view the Island.

You’ll need to download the Autodesk MapGuide plugin and the browsing can be slow (it’s always “requesting dynamic map layers”) and the images are large (between 150Kb and 200Kb each) but it is worth it.

See the photos »
Note: You have to double click on the photo dots to open the images.

Big ups to Peter at Reinvented for this.

I was sitting in the waiting room of my ENT doctor’s office, and I heard the regular music broadcast interupted with a boil order followed by the cancellation of all the Charlottetown area schools.

Looks like boiled-water sponge baths and hair dippings for the next week or so. Unless you want to attempt the whole javex-in-the-tub suggestion for killing e-coli.

I don’t know what to think. Somebody jumped Cookie Monster and kicked his ass.

One cool thing is that guy who beat Cookie’s name is ‘McPhatter’. What a great last name.

Alex, a friend of mine, has been busy taking pictures of pretty island things. He sent me a collection of them.

You get so used to scenes like these living here (if you ever drive out to the country), you tend to forget why the tourists keep coming.