A Day in Paradise

A friend of mine is looking for someone to help him with a personal project of his

I’m finding it a frustration that whilst we refer to Australians and News Zealanders as ‘westerners’ our printed maps always show both countries in the far south-east.

I’ve tried using Photoshop to move both countries to the west of the map however this is very much a short-term and localized fix.

I’d ideally like to find somebody able to physically move both countries a few thousand miles towards Hawaii.

I appreciate that this would not be a suitable project for an individual but would require a team effort so please be aware of this when bidding.

I also would prefer that you read the project specs entirely before bidding as I get a little peeved when people just bid without really understanding the nature of the work.

A sample of similar completed projects will be greatly appreciated and will increase the chances of your bid being accepted.

As Scriptlance is somewhat limited in it’s project categories I’ve listed it under graphic design work, rather than in a unique “geographical relocation of continental mass” category.

I look forward to your bidding.

Best wishes,

Martin

He already has 2 people bidding at $100 for the job… excellent opportunity for anyone looking to change the world (literally instead of figuratively)

The problem of dog overpopulation is a real one. However, the noble goal of preventing unwanted dog pregnancy does not justify the means being used. Millions of brutal forced castrations and female genital mutilations take place every year in America. We need to put a stop to these atrocities and give every living creature the respect it deserves.

Get them here!

Setting up my new computer, unfortunately orders got switched (dell didn’t register the first order, and then screwed up the second) and I’m stuck with Windows Vista Home Premium (32 bit), and too little RAM (seems like 4gigs is the sweet spot).

Having said that, I’m pretty pleased with Vista. The user interface is much more userfriendly than XP, I love the new “Start Search”. I am not sad to see multiple levels of fly-out menus getting thrown out.

One thing that is a bit annoying is all the security checks that you have to go through to do simple things.

Delete file:
Windows Explorer asks if you want to do this
Windows asks if you want to allow Windows Explorer to delete files
I get an alert that I am making changes to the configuration and get asked to confirm.

Obviously this is just the first time, so I guess I can live with it.

Will post more updates in my shiney new Vista category. Oh yeah… and I can’t seem to install firefox…

So, today is yet another travel day, this time heading back to West Palm Beach, FL. This’ll be the last time I’m over there until I bring the family over, so I have a lot to do.

It seems like whenever I’m away from home my blogging suffers. So if this is my last post in 3 weeks I apologize… for constant updates check my flickr feed (which seems to be down now).

As you may know, it’s a sin for a Taliban male to see a woman other than his wife, naked. He must commit suicide if he does. So this Saturday at 4 P.M. eastern time, all American women are asked to walk out of their houses, completely naked, to weed out any terrorists in your neighborhood. Circling the block for one hour is suggested for this anti-terrorist effort.All men to position themselves in lawn chairs in front of their homes to prove they are not Taliban, and to show support for American women. Since the Taliban also does not approve of alcohol, a cold six pack beside your seat is further proof of your anti-Taliban sentiment.

The U S government appreciates your participation in this anti-terrorist activity.

God bless America!

seen here

This picture on andrei’s flickr feed sent me on a journey of xbox modding discovery.

Some links:

• http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/
• http://www.xbox-scene.com/
• http://www.globe-360.com/
• http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/39872/Preview_Xbox_Mods.html

that reminds me, I upgraded rockbox on my iriver h340! Been about a year since I’ve upgraded… the movie player is pretty nice. unfortunately doom seems to lock it up.

Nice toy, they are just missing a PHP interpreter.

CD Player region free hack.

The ultimate video conversion tool.

These two items have no connection, I’m just in the market for a good region-free dvd player that I can buy in the US so I won’t have a problem bringing the hundreds of region 2 dvds over. Any suggestions?

During my early morning browsing session I noticed the truth behind FF2’s choice in abbreviating the title from Jeremy’s latest blog entry “Google as our Culture“.

My name is Aaron Wormus, and I’ve been a card-carrying member of the Google Cult for 3 years. I grovel when my ranks are dumped, and squeal with joy when I get back on (yes, I am listed again!), and track every change in my ranking for the term “aaron“. I grovel for invitations to every google product, and rejoice when I have the honor of being an early adopter.

Oh great google, where would we be without you?

While drinking my coffee this morning I caught up on my PHP Architect mag (yes, I am 3 months behind). The interesting bit was Marco’s rant on the “insurmountable” difficulties in code interoperability. One of the examples was why we can’t use Wordpress plugins inside Serendipity.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not such a big deal. Porting a plugin from Wordpress to Serendipity is usually trivial, and as we see more web-services based plugins (stuff like the awesome askimet) the task becomes simpler and simpler.

Interoperability is overrated, the more you think of it the more complex it gets. As you start throwing in new factors into the equation (how will this interoperate with a java/c# application) you start to develop monsters like JSR 170 which solve a lot of problems on paper, but in reality are too unwieldy to be truly useful.

My steps to interoperability are pretty much the same as steps to writing good code.

1. Use as much abstract code as possible: Most problems have already been solved in stand-alone PHP packages such as those found in PEAR or Zend Framework. These are (mostly) solid and (mostly) well tested solutions, use them!
2. Create new libraries to encapsulate new functionality: If you need to add some complex functionality, create and publish a reusable library which encapsulates the functionality. This will make your work not only simpler to interoperate with other applications, but also enable your code to function in scenarios you may never think of.
3. Keep your “glue code” as simple as possible: When it comes to the proprietary code which glues all your pieces together, keep the probability of someone porting the code to another platform, and stay as simple as possible.
4. Use services: Whenever possible make your application available as a webservice. This will offer a level of interoperability that is available to any application regardless of shape, size and programming language.

Anyone else see any of this?

Fire extinguisher called for in lethal injections

Tennessee’s procedure manual for executing prisoners is a jumble of conflicting instructions that mixes new lethal injection instructions with those for the old electric chair, an Associated Press review found.

Before a lethal injection, the 100-page “Manual of Execution” instructs prison officials to begin by shaving the condemned prisoner’s head — as if preparing him for electrocution. They would also need a fire extinguisher nearby, it says.

Gov. Phil Bredesen suspended four executions last week, calling the document a “cut-and-paste job” that needs significant revision. He set a May 2 deadline for the overhaul.

The mistakes were added last summer when Tennessee decided to update the manual after a death row inmate asked to be electrocuted, Correction Commissioner George Little said. The state’s last execution took place in June, before the manual was revised.

George Little justified the manual by explaining that they copied the text from wikipedia.

some “intelectual comedy” for a saturday afternoon!

notice the new mybloglog link in the sidebar and thanks ChristyZ for being my first community member

I’ve always liked M.R., he’s a focused businessman whose goals line up roughly with those of the the open source community.

Yesterday linspire annouced a partnership with Canonical to use the Ubuntu OS as the new base for Linspire (a no-brainer choice as far as I am concerned), which will have the added benefit(?) of giving current Ubuntu users access to the Click n’ Run repository.

In his latest “michael’s minute” he challenged Steve Jobs to back up his latest rant against DRM by starting to distribute MP3s on iTunes Music Store. He also encouraged Apple to port iTunes to Linux and offered to do the engineering “if engineering resources were an issue”

I just discovered Songbird, which totally rocks as far as a bloated music system goes. I use foobar2000 for my daily music needs, and think directories are perfect ways to organize your files, but it does offer some nice looking features. Far better than iTunes, which I only use when I need to buy some DRM’d music of iTunes Music Store