Friends of Acts of Volition and speakers at the Zap Your PRAM Conference Robert Patterson and Will Pate have been running the Election Watch weblog to blog the Prince Edward Island provincial election.

They’ve done a fine job. I was hoping to participate myself, but it didn’t pan out (too much else going on). CBC PEI has an in-depth RealVideo piece on Robert and Will’s Election (6min 44sec – RealVideo).

They even have Premier Pat Binns on camera explaining why he doesn’t post to his weblog himself. CBC did a good job of covering the convergence the weblog and politics. It’s not an easy thing for the traditional media to cover. Well done to Nancy Russell and all of CBC PEI.

Since my day-to-day life is already quite a bit like what most people would consider a vacation, taking an actual vacation isn’t something I do very often. This year, I decided to take a week, pack up some book, and take to my parent’s cottage in Stanhope, Prince Edward Island.

My parents built this cottage with my grandparents back in the early 1970s. I spent most of my summers here as a child. As a teenager, I came to associate the cottage with boredom and a lack of television channels (ironically, now the cottage here has way more channels that I have at home). Now, it’s exactly what I need.

Only on Prince Edward Island would someone take a vacation at a cottage that is only a fifteen minute drive from their home. However, it’s not so much the location that I was looking for (as beautiful as it is), and the fact that it was somewhere else. I needed a break in routine and a change of scenery (both literally and figuratively).

I’m pleased to report that I actually feel like I’m on vacation. I was a little concerned that I’d get bored after a few hours and just go back to work. That won’t be a problem.

A few observations from living on a dial-up connection for a few days:

• It works — I can do most everything I need on a dialup.
• If something is slow, you don’t bother — I’ve dropped heavy sites from my regular visit list (News.com was going to be dropped, but they conveniently redesigned with CSS during my vacation).
• Tabbed browsing is a mixed blessing on a dialup. On one hand, it’s a bandwidth killer — I often open a group of 10 or more weblogs in tabs — that really swamps a dialup. On the other hand, you can open 10 sites in tabs, get a cup of tea, and do all of your waiting/downloading at once.
• Spam goes from being a small annoyance on a fast connection with good filtering to being a major pain in the ass on a dialup, where you have to download all the spam before filtering (on the bright side, we’ll soon be able to handle spam on the server side).

I’m only half-way through, but I’ve already got a load of vacation photos up in my gallery. The one advantage of tourists feading the foxes in the National Park is that the foxes will walk right up to your car (bad for foxes, good for photos).

Oh, and if you would like to rent my parent’s cottage next summer, let them know.

Pat Martael from CBC Radio PEI did a quick interview with me today for the morning show tommorrow (Tuesday, Sept 9). I’m not sure what time it will be on – probably between 6AM and 8AM – before I get up.

We spoke about how weblogs are being used, or could be used, by polititians. I understand the story will focus on the unusually personal weblog of Jean Tingley, who is running in District 18 on Prince Edward Island for the Liberal party (warning: website plays stupid music).

If, by some chance, I’m awake – I will try to record and post the segment.

After resisting for months, I finally gave into peer-pressure at work and bought a digital camera. I couldn’t justify spending the better part of $1,000 (Canadian, that is) since I really just use the camera as a toy. I opted for a refurbished 2-megapixel Canon Digital Elph PowerShot S330 from a shop called Carman’s Foto Source via eBay.ca.

The price was right and I’m quite happy with the camera. Now, thanks for my friends at silverorange, I have a photo gallery. This new found photo publishing power has brought up some interesting questions about permission and privacy.

When I take photos with close friends and family, there is implicit permission for me to post the photos online for anyone to see. They all know I have the gallery and generally trust in my discretion as to what gets posted online and what stays private.

This gets a little more complicated when the circle of those photographed expands beyond this close group. If I go to a party (which I may, someday) and snap some group photos, with friends and friends of friends (aka, strangers), may I post these photos online? Must I ask permission of all those photographed?

I don’t link prominently to many photos, but security by obscurity just doesn’t work in the age of Google. Even if you prevent search engines from indexing your photos, a link from another site (by a human being) can put a photo of an unsuspecting friend at the top of Google when you search for their name. After posting about a set of photos from a recent para-sailing excusion, I got an email from man England wondering where I got my leather shoes – as he was in the market for a pair and liked what he saw (they were from Payless). Apparently, people are looking at these photos.

So far, the tack I have taken is to use my own judgement and discretion. If I think a person might have a problem with a particular photo being online, I either don’t post it, or I ask explicit permission (explaining the implications).

This is really just an extension of the dilemma many webloggers face when writing about personal issues or other people in their lives. This hasn’t been an issue for me on Acts of Volition as most of my writing does not focus directly on personal issues or other people in my life. Having a digital camera, though, has brought the issue to my attention, as many of my photos are of friends and family.

I’m curious to how others are dealing with this issue. Do you always ask permission? Do you avoid posting any photos online for these reasons? Do you have a story about photos posted online showing up in awkward ways?

Daniel Burka’s first annual silverorange Frisbee Golf Tournament for Charity was a great success. Over 50 people on 9 teams played 18 “holes” (poles?) of Frisbee golf and raised over $1,000 for Habitat for Humany on Prince Edward Island.

Daniel did a fine job of organizing, and I was pleased to see that his requests for sponsorship or donations were answered quite positively. He was able to secure enough volunteerism and donations that the registration fee ($20) went entirely and directory to Habitat for Humanity.

I’ve posted my photos from the tournament in my gallery.