Lisa and I walked up to CBC Charlottetown this morning to record an interview with Matt Rainnie about our This Box is for Good project. As usual, Matt was an amiable and welcoming host.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

Every year I sponsor the Oscar Wilde Award at Island Fringe, given to the show that “most effectively celebrates non-conformity.” The award-winning show is chosen by a jury, and evidence suggests that the process of jurying the shows is done with considerable thoughtfulness. Island Fringe is one of my favourite things, and watching the Oscar Wilde …

The birds were alive and musical as I was pottering around with my bicycle in the back yard yesterday.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

Sitting by the ocean on the western shore of Cape Breton.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

I have long enjoyed the 1980 Christopher Cross song Ride Like the Wind. Listening to it this morning I realized that one of the reasons I like it so much is the backing vocals by the estimable Michael McDonald (he of the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, and a successful solo career). Oliver and I listened to the song this morning in the car: McDonald’s…

The generous helping of topsy-turvy in the air caused me to think Thursday was Wednesday and thus to miss my scheduled 5:00 p.m. Charlottetown Farmers’ Market pickup. My penance was to ride my bicycle up today, a day late and in the rain; I was happy to find Caledonia House Coffee still open, and so I am currently fortifying myself with an espresso…

Back in mid-March I received an email from Matt Rainnie, personable host of CBC Mainstreet: would I be interested, he asked, in being the “Spin Time DJ” for the show on an upcoming Friday. Would I be interested? Of course I’d be interested. Had I not been dreaming of this very moment for years! “Spin Time DJ,” for those from away, is a regular Frid…

I love Siri’s enthusiasm with this answer.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

A previously-unreleased episode recorded on October 1, 2020, Oliver’s 20th birthday. Earlier in the day he’d received a negative COVID-19 test.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

It’s tricky to get my Google Home to play CBC Radio One: depending on the way I ask, it’s as likely, for reasons unknown, to play the private radio station CFCY instead. Here’s a transcript of my attempts: Me: OK Google, play CBC Radio One. Google Home: Streaming 95.1 FM CFCY from Tunein. Me: OK Google, stop. OK Google, play CBC Radio. Google Home:…

I sat down in the studio the Matt Rainnie yesterday morning (although I wasn’t in the studio, I was on Skype, and Matt, oddly, was standing not sitting) to have a conversation about Using Her Marbles. You can listen to our conversation, which aired between 5:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. last night on Mainstreet. Update: the CBC has posted a “web story” ve…

Shortcuts are a delightfully powerful set of digital Lego blocks for iOS, a modern day HyperCard, in a way. This guide from Apple to creating Siri Shortcuts using web APIs prompted me to try creating one for myself, a Shortcut to retrieve the percentage of PEI’s electricity load generated from the wind. As a starting place, I used this wind energy …

Back in the day, when it seemed like Nickelback was playing at the Charlottetown waterfront every second weekend, I developed the reputation of being something of a curmudgeon. Truth be told my protests were always rooted in a feeling that public land should remain public, not given over to concert prompters, but the subtlety was often lost on the …

When Oliver and I were on the beach at Wood Islands Provincial Park on Sunday, I recorded just under two minutes of the same of the water lapping against the rocks. You’ll hear birdsong in the background if you listen carefully. An interesting project in these pandemic times would be to stick a permanent microphone at the shore to broadcast sounds …

I was saddened to read of the death of former Member of Parliament, Member of the Legislative Assembly, and Speaker Wilbur Macdonald this morning. I could not help but think back to the warm summer afternoon of June 27, 2006 when, from the public gallery in Province House, I witnessed him hold forth at some length so as to keep the Legislative Asse…

My friend Dave Atkinson mused that an oral history of how I learned the things I learned the other day came to be learned. So I recorded one.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

In this brave new world we’re all jacked into Zoom (or, maybe, Jitsi) all day long. We’ve been at this for a month, and it’s remarkable how little most of us continue to pay attention to video and audio, as if living the Dick Tracy future is enough, and we don’t really need to be concerned with seeing and hearing other clearly. Here in my office I …

Recorded eight days ago (8 months in quarantine years) on the Charlottetown waterfront at the end of a drive in the countryside on a sunny Sunday.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

On Thursday morning I was immersed in a video conference, with the personable Josh MacFadyen, when I got a text message: As Oliver was across the street, at home, and “five machine” sounds a lot like “fire machine,” which is something someone might say when the house is burning down and they are panicking, I immediately ran across the street to res…

My friend Dave does a regular segment on CBC’s Island Morning called The Things We Do For Love, wherein he interviews people about their esoteric passions. Tuesday morning Dave dipped into Pen Night. Things don’t get much more esoteric than pen geeks talking about pens, inks and paper. I’ve attached the MP3 that aired this morning.…

Oliver’s got the death of a cold, so I made my way to the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market by myself this morning. After a healthy amount of Duckduckgoing “how to cycle in the rain,” I decided I was not up for it, so I took the bus instead. It was a soggy walk from Subway to the market, but the passing cars were kind, and slowed down to prevent causin…

Ten top simple field recording tips from Cities and Memory; includes: You might think that’s only a gentle breeze, and it can’t possibly do anything to your recording, but IT WILL. Even a light wind sounds like someone’s ripped your mic in half, and will render your recording unusable. Use wind shields, use shelter, avoid wind at all costs. The rec…

When booking a room at the lovely Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, Vermont, you can select a “mountain view” room (with windows looking out on Wantastiquet Mountain, just across the border in New Hampshire) or a less expensive “interior view” room (with a view of, well, not much at all). What they don’t tell you, however, is that an “interior view” ro…

Oliver was dismayed to learn that the 2019 Island Fringe Festival wasn’t going to include any audience-participation activities in its launch event, as it had in previous years. “For every problem, there is a solution,” I am forever telling Oliver. So he reached out to Fringe officials and, to their eminent credit, the decided to correct this overs…

There was a baby crow born in our back yard last week that’s been learning to fly this week. Its parents have been understandably protective, and so every time Ethan the Dog goes outside they go on high alert, cawing and swooping. It’s been very effective.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

Manitoba fiddler Patti Kusturok accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Rusu at the National Fiddling Day celebration at St. Paul’s Anglican Church on May 18, 2019. Sound engineering in the hall was by Brent Chaisson; I plucked this sound from the back of the church with my phone.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

St. Paul’s Anglican Church commemorated the beginning of its 250th year by ringing its bells 250 times at midnight tonight.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

St. Paul’s Anglican Church participated in the Bells of Peace initiative today, ringing its bell 100 times to mark the centenary of the end of World War I. The church generously offered the opportunity to ring the bell to all comers, so Oliver and I lined up, at sunset, with a diverse group, parishioners and otherwise, for our chance. The stairway …

The final event of Oliver’s Birthday Season, a trip to Wolfville to bear witness to a live taping of Laurie Brown’s Pondercast podcast. So, of course, we recorded a podcast while waiting for the show to start.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

The first time Oliver used the sink at our Malmö Airbnb, he emerged exclaiming “The sink sounds like a didgeridoo!” I asked him to record this, and he emailed me this sound. Which does, indeed, sound like a didgeridoo.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

We are heading home, and recorded a quick podcast here in Schiphol Airport after going through security. Security passage, as you will hear, was greatly aided by advance planning: last week I contacted Condor, our “host” airline, requesting assistance for Oliver. They responded with a “DPNA” PDF file that I could print out that identified Oliver as…

Matt Rainnie produced this spot for CBC Prince Edward Island’s Island Morning that aired on Friday, August 10, 2018 after the 8:00 a.m. news. He interviewed me about the Charlottetown Boulder Park, and interviewed the proprietors of the new food trucks about their role in the park’s revivification.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

You may recall my report that Archdeacon John Clarke, who leads the parish here at St. Paul’s Anglican Church, took a sabbatical this summer to learn to play the guitar. Well, his sabbatical is over, and he’s reflected on the experience on his blog, where he writes, in part: It has been a challenge, to say the least, but one that I have thoroughly …

저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

For my old friend John Muir, who introduced me to BB Gabor 33 years ago, this lovely rendition of Big Yellow Taxi.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

When Matt Rainnie was host of Mainstreet on CBC Radio we produced a couple of summer’s worth of eclectic radio pieces, like Everything You Wanted to Know About Ice Tea in 2004. Matt is inveterately curious and a great interviewer, so when I wanted to flush subscribers to The New Yorker out of the bushes I dropped him a line, and he quickly bit, com…

I have an Amazon Echo at home, and one at the office. Both are set to allow “drop in” calls: I can just say “Alexa, drop in on the Reinventorium” and I get a live microphone into the office, no questions asked. Tonight I had to get home for supper before my 3D printer was finished printing. I plan to go back to the office when it’s done to shut thi…

About a year ago, when Amazon unleashed the ability for third-party developers to create skills for its Echo speaker devices, the first one I created was a skill that allowed you to ask questions about Prince Edward Island’s electricity load and generation. But I never took the skill to certification (the review process by which Amazon certifies a …

저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

I popped in to Brìgh Music & Tea after lunch today for a spot of chocolate (they carry Katlin’s, and it is excellent). It turned out to be a bustling day in the shop, with guitars being sold, and tea being offered, and questions being answered. Between tea and chocolate I happened upon a Mano Percussion shaker, tucked away in a hidden corner, and, …

Oliver recites the poem We are here, turning the mundane into the delightful.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

Summer Kitchen is a new restaurant in Charlottetown that’s moved into the space occupied for decades previous by the venerable Noodle House, which moved downtown recently. The building has received a long-deserved clean-up and renovation; the pervasive pink has been expunged, and replaced by shades of red. The place has never looked better. Oliver …

I’ve had Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet running through my head all weekend. I finally found an outlet for my earworm in the public piano in Confederation Landing Park. It’s impossible not to hear this without thinking of the last episode of M*A*S*H.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

Oliver and I took Ethan for a windy Thanksgiving Sunday walk around the waterfront. When we got to the Charlottetown Yacht Club we were greeted by a cacophony of jingle-jangle. Here’s 23 seconds of it.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

I mistakenly told my Google Home to make a telephone call this morning–”Hey Google, call Richard’s Fish & Chips.” This was a mistake, because the Google Home can’t make telephone calls. Except that it can. Apparently the Google Home now has a new superpower, which is making free telephone calls in the U.S. and Canada. So when I said “Hey Google, ca…

Sara Fraser at CBC Prince Edward Island asked me and Oliver for a photo of us recording a podcast. So we recorded a podcast. And we took some photos.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)

Art in the Open was wonderful. Again. In a new way. As it always is. My favourite part of it all was watching people amble—and ambling is truly the best word for it—across the fields and through the forest and around the campfires. The pace, the expressions on the face, it’s not like anything else: it’s not work, it’s not shopping, it’s not enterta…

Oliver was very passionate about getting a chance to speak at the “Inaction is Not an Option” rally today here in Charlottetown, organized to give Islanders a chance to gather to speak out against racism, hatred, white supremacy and nationalism. The organizers generously allowed his name to be added to the speakers list at the last minute; he chose…

Oliver made this piece of audio art by overlaying multiple TED Talks and then manipulating the audio in GarageBand on his Mac. I love this.저자 peter@rukavina.net (Peter Rukavina)