A Day in Paradise

This is beyond insane…

A 22-year-old Californian man who received oral sex from a sixteen-year-old girl should not be forced to register for life as a sex offender, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

The state’s top court found that California denied Vincent Hofsheier equal protection under the law because those having intercourse in such circumstances would not be forced to register as lifetime sex offenders.

Hofsheier appealed after being ordered to register his name on the list, which is shared with the public and carries significant stigma.

How a civilized country can allow people to commit crimes like that and get away with it is beyond my comprehension! I say make him put his name on the list AND lock him up!! Execute him for that matter! This story proves how screwed up this legal system is. At least I can go to bed at night knowing that he’s going to burn in hell for what he’s done!</sarcasm>

Spore Gameplay Video - Google Video

Totally awesome!!!

Just bumped into this cool contest. Find a bug, blog about it and add your feed to Planet MySQL and you can be eligible to win a weekly iPod Nano!

I clicked through the “Ask Robbie” web design site today, and he has the coolest flash header… great toy!

I was getting my cup of coffee… I grabed a cup from the sink, rinsed it out (I think) and then filled it up with coffee. As I was mixing the milk in, I wondered if this was a different type of milk since it was a lot more foamy than usual.

There must be something different about this coffee, since it has a fruity taste, almost like lemon or orange or something… it’s hard to place.

I’m half way through my cup when Stella calls out “Aaron, did you take the cup that I put the dishsoap in?”

Time for a premature refill.

When I first started listening to podcast novels, I had a hard time getting used to the fact that unlike dead tree books, unless the author decides to tell you how much of the book is left, you have no idea how many chapters are left. When Matthew Wayne Selznick’s performed the final chapters of his first book and brought the podcast novel “Brave Men Run” to a close, I along with several thousand listeners were left at the edges of our seats waiting for more.

Brave Men Run - A Novel of the Sovereign Era, is hard to describe. As a sci-fi story, set in an alternative version of the early 80s, BMR introduces us to the “Sovereign Era” and the politics surrounding the revelation that amongst humans live “Sovereigns” each of whom weilds extraordinary abilities. As a character study, BMR looks at this monumental event through the eyes of Nate Charters, a teenage Sovereign who fights to deal with the sudden realities of who he is and the past which has been hidden from him.

At it’s core, Brave Men Run is not about spaceships, action sequences or any other elements which are commonly associated with science fiction. BMR is about it’s characters, and the character development and dialog which takes place between the characters is masterfully done.

While Brave Men Run is a complete book and satisfying read, the author has left many questions open in regard to the “Sovereign Era” as well as Nate’s character and the history of “Sovereign” people. The premise could very easily support several more “Sovereign Era” books.

Matthew Wayne Selznick has released the audio versions of BMR for free on Podiobooks.com and has made the electronic versions of the book available for the cheap price of $5. As an independant, self published author, Matthew has placed the future of the series in the hands of the readers.

I throughly enjoyed the book, and would recommend it not only to sci-fi fans, but to all bookworms who are interested in a good read and the growth of independent authors. In support, I’ve set up a page through which you can subscribe to the podcast or buy the ebook or paperback version.

So visit my Brave Men Run page, subscribe to the feed, buy the ebook, blog about it, and tell your friends to do the same. You won’t be disappointed.

And the internet grinds to a halt!

Seriously though, I went to blog something yesterday and discovered that my page was taking forever to load. It was pretty clear that the reason for the delay was the ads which were being displayed synchronously from google and holding up the display of my page. I did a bit of surfing and found this problem on just about every site I visited, either because of adsense advertising or the use of the google analytics.

I went to search for something and for about 40 minutes google was dead. Scary!

Having said that I’ve noticed some nice things about the Gmail chat interface. It is a lot smarter than your average Ajax client. As I type I noticed that because I was logged int Gmail someone sent me an IM. Google must be down (again) because when I look at the chat sidebar I get an “Unable to reach Google Mail. Please check your internet connection” which is followed with a little clock which is ticking down until it will try again. Strangely I can still respond to the IM, although my messages aren’t going anywhere.

I’ll be doing the “opening act” for Tobias Schlitt’s talk on eZcomponents at the next PHP Usergroup meeting.

My talk will be a quick overview of the various error handling techniques available to PHP programs. This is a beginner subject, but I will show code using not only native PHP techniques (exceptions and native error handling in PHP) but will also touch on a couple third-party error handling packages such as PEAR_ErrorStack, PatError.

So mark down 16th of March, on your schedule. Same place as usual.

Every drop of rain that falls
in sahara desert says it all
It’s a miracle

All god’s creations great and small
The Golden Gate and the Taj Mahal
That’s a miracle

Test tube babies being born
Mothers, fathers dead and gone
It’s a miracle

We’re having a miracle on earth
Mother nature does it all for us
The wonders of this world go on
The hanging gardens of babylon
Captain cook and Cain and Abel
Jimi hendrix to the tower of babel
It’s a miracle

The one thing we’re all waiting for
is peace on earth - an end to war
It’s a miracle we need - the miracle

The miracle we’re all waiting for today

If every leaf on every tree
could tell a story that would be
A miracle

If every child on every street
had clothes to wear and food to eat
That’s a miracle

If all God’s people could be free
to live in perfect harmony
It’s a miracle

We’re having a miracle on earth
Mother nature does it all for us

Open hearts and surgery
Sunday mornings with a cup of tea
Super powers always fighting
But Mona Lisa just keeps on smiling
It’s a miracle

The one thing we’re all waiting for
Is peace on earth and an end to war
It’s a miracle we need - the miracle
Peace on earth and end to war today

MC Hammer is Blogging up a storm over at his blogspot hosted blog! He includeds links to a video of his on google video.

Good to see that MC Hammer is back in action! An interesting blog as well… complete with google adsense

The new slashdot, still ugly as hell, but now with a beta Tagging system! All they need now is to round of the remaining 3 corners of all the boxes and they will be fully web2.0 compatible!

It doesn’t seem that slashdotters have really “gotten” what tagging is about, since the tags currently assigned to articles are all but useless. Maybe it’s just that there aren’t that many subscribers to tag articles.

Anything from the 2600 store will do. But on the top of the list is a 2600 Hoodie or a 1, 2, 3 year or LIFETIME subscription to 2600 magazine.

The Freedom Downtime DVD would also be cool. I’ve read all the books, seen the movie, bought the stickers, stuck the button on my site… I haven’t read Kevin’s books either, so if you want to send those please do

OK, the next thing on my list is becoming an FSFE Fellow. So much to buy, so little time!

You can’t wish pain and suffering on somebody if you don’t have a geographic location [for them].

– Emmanuel Goldstein (OTW - 28/2/2006)