Peter Rukavina's Podcast

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 Assembly busy while, behind the scenes, the Pat Binns government sought to put the finishing touches on its electoral redistricting plan, An Act to Amend the Electoral Boundaries Act (the “Cletus Dunn map,” as it had come to be known).With the introduction from the Speaker, “The hon. Member from Belfast-Pownal Bay,” he began (you can follow along in the day’s Hansard, starting on page 3,304):I rise to speak on the budget which we had brought in in the spring. It’s an opportunity for me to talk about my riding and about what is taking place in the province.One of the things that has really happened in this province in the last number of years is the ex

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.

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 mostly use the “Display Audio” microphone built into the front of my Apple Cinema Display. It’s always been good enough. But, I wondered, could I do better.So I dug the old Live from the Formosa Tea House audio setup (Apex 435 microphone, Behringer 802 mixer) out of storage, bought myself a line-to-USB cable, and set everything up beside my computer to see if that would prove the audio quality.If you listen to the same here, I think you’ll agree that it did.I’m taking it out for a real ride in 15 minutes on my weekly conference call with my colleagues in New Hampshire.I’m also using the opportunity to promote the brand (get your Vegetable Gar

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.

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 rescue Oliver.Oliver was fine.The buzzer on the clothes dryer had gone off, and Oliver was simply, helpfully, letting me know.Here’s how the text message got to me:Oliver was upstairs in bed.The dryer’s buzzer went off.Oliver has a Google Home in his bedroom, so he asked it to call me:OK Google, call Peter.The Google Home dutifully called my office number.But my officer number automatically goes to voicemail, so Oliver left a voicemail (the one you can listen to above).The voicemail went to my voicemail system, which is set to automatically speech-to-text transcribe voicemails and email them to me.Which is how