A Day in Paradise

OK the name is cheezy, but my goal was to write this thing before #24 ends.

It’s really simple. All you need to do is drag the bookmarklet link to your bookmark bar (this has been tested in Firefox ONLY)

I can’t post the link in wordpress so here is a simple page with it: http://www.wormus.com/rot13/

Once the bookmarklet is on your bookmark bar click on it to post a rot13 tweet. To un “encrypt” a tweek, select the rot13 text and click the bookmarklet.

Pretty simple!

A St. Cloud, Minn. woman in the middle of a custody battle is facing an unusual order from the court. A district court investigator is recommending that Christa Burton stop breastfeeding her 15-month-old child, Carter.

I guess in a custody battle everything is game…

Full Story Here

In the footsteps of a couple good friends I’ve decided to make the first blog entry of the new year yet another year in review round-up for the year 2006.

It’s hard to believe that we’re already done with 2006, this one went by fast. A lot happened, and due to the overflow of work, I missed a lot of what I did last year (specifically LinuxWorld Expo and LinuxTag).

One of the big work-related events is a new venture that I’ve been working on this year. <project-pimping>HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website Creation was officially launched on December 1st, however about 18 months worth of work had gone into the product and building a client list before the site launch. The sprang out of my work with HedgeCo Networks which involved a the development of a high-end statistics/graphing package which generated quantitative statistics for Hedge Funds. After deploying the product on their flagship product, they started receiving request to license the package on various other website platforms, so the package was reworked into a slimmed down edition which can be deployed in smaller sites.

As we started deploying the product we realized the potential, and reallocated some of the design talent that we had been working on other project into creating entire websites and Hedge Fund start-up consulting/compliance packages. Since our Dec. 1 launch we have had a fantastically profitable month (to keep up-to-date with what we’re doing check out the Hedge Fund Websites blog)</project-pimping>

All of the above required me to reallocate my own time away from other projects, until the point that for the last year I have done little else. So as of Jan 1, 2007 I am officially working full time for HedgeCo Hedge Fund Websites… Freelancer no longer! This year I’m also moving my family up to West Palm Beach, Florida and will be working in the brand new HedgeCo offices (will post pics of when we move in later this month).

OK, so now that I’ve spent all my time pimping my current project I’ll skim through the news.

January: Slow month, Sid officially joined our family as “brother”. I weighed in on the PHP Security debate du jour wondering when good security verges on paranoia and the side effects.

February: Traveled to UK for PHPLondon conference. This was a fantastic event (looking forward to next year), as far as I remembered there were about 250 geeks attending the 1-day event. Got a cool new LCD. In defense of PHPNuke (and other applications of low repute whose name starts with PHP*) I responded to Marco’s post reminiscing about how great PHPNuke was back in the day.

March: Slow month… google releases finance portal, barra stops reporting S&P numbers and screws up my webservice. Tom Fox is Executed.

April: Gearing up for the world cup 32Cards PHP-based card game is released. I start using backpackit to organize my life (note to reader, I stop using it in a couple months, when it stops scaling with my needs). I spent 10 days in Florida, unfortunately missing PHPTek by 10 days.

May: I question open-source for highly specific niche applications (more specifically my statistic package). I enjoy Scott Sigler’s “Infection” which is in full swing. I start watching theshow with ze frank.

June: DSL CRASH!!! I try to “upgrade” my connection by switching providers which turns into 3 weeks on dial-up. During this time I camp at friends houses during all night product launches, and drive everyone around me insane. I finally return. World cup is in full swing, and Germany is World Cup CRAZY! I take pictures.
I travel to Norway for the eZpublish conference & PHPVikinger. Ammar Ibrahim comes to Frankfurt, we watch some football!

July: A slow month… I try Fedora Core, only to get frustrated when I can’t mount my ntfs external drive with the correct permissions (worked fine in root, was able to find no usable explanation). Infection ends. Put out a notice for css code monkeys get more response than I can handle. Macs Rock? During one of the hottest months on record the kids have chickenpox and we are confined indoors.

August: I subscribe to Gail Orenstein’s Flickr feed during her trip to Israel. cool pictures (quite possibly NSFW) with political commentary. Two talks are accepted for ZendCon. I manage to squeeze into the PHPConference schedule at the last minute. We take the kids on a mini-vacation to Legoland and then visit some friends in Switzerland.

September: Catch Mark Nemcoff on in a 5-minute-review. I deploy a site using eZpublish, blog about lessons learned. RIP Lilo. Do some myspace defending.

October: The Pear book is out!. I speculate about google world domination, and yahoo opens up the login api. Spend a week in WPB Florida, then fly to LA and drive down to San Jose for Zendcon.

November: Conference season. Meet Scott Sigler!!! Give talks at Zendcon, fly back home and give tutorial at IPC2k6. After seeing that the Zend Framework is more than hype I take a look at it and start my Zend Framework Hidden Gems article series. I dump backpackit for google docs (which I am still happily using). When is it a good time to rewrite your platform?

December: HedgeCo Hedge Fund Website launch. Fantastic month on the work front, however not a whole lot of time for anything else. David (CPUNerd) on the other hand has way too much time on his hands, and immortalizes me in kilt.

And that’s about it… probably the longest blog entry ever! I’m looking forward to this year as being the craziest yet. I’ll be flying to WPB next week, and for this first quarter will probably spend more time on that side of the pond.

A big THANK YOU to my readers (let’s make that anyone who made it this far into the blog entry). And most of all thanks to Stella, Annie and Mia for putting up with me during this hectic time.

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times – Times Online

And finally a bit of good news…

Three Western peace workers held hostage in Iraq, including retired British professor Norman Kember, were freed today in a special forces operation near Baghdad after four months in captivity.

Details of the operation early this morning are still unclear but it was thought to have been led by Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) and to have involved other units from the United States and Iraq.

Mr Kember, 74, was kidnapped with two Canadians, James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, in Baghdad on November 26.

A fourth member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams abducted alongside them, Tom Fox, an American, was killed two weeks ago. Mr Fox was found handcuffed and shot dead on a rubbish dump in west Baghdad on March 9, his battered body wrapped in a blanket and stuffed in a plastic bag.

I’ve wanted to comment on Tom Fox, the member of the team who was executed. Anyone who is interested should listen to the March 13th episode of Democracy Now, which talks with the CPT coordinators about Tom Fox and his execution.

The most powerful part of the broadcast was the reading of the “Statement of Conviction” as written by Tom Fox and Matthew Chandler in October of last year. Following is the rush transcript taken from the Democracy Now website. Read it through till the end.

“We members of Christian Peacemakers Teams in Iraq are aware of the many risks both Iraqis and internationals currently face. However, we are convinced at this time that the risks, while significant, do not outweigh our purpose in remaining. Many Iraqi friends and human rights workers have welcomed us as nonviolent independent presence. During the previous year, they asked us to tell their stories, since they could not easily be heard, nor could most flee to a safer country. We continue to act as a resource to connect citizens of Iraq with human rights organizations, both local and international, as well as accompanying them as they interact with the multinational military personnel and Iraqi provisional government officials.

”As Peacemaking Team, we need to cross boundaries, help soldiers and other armed actors be humane, and invite them to refuse unjust orders. We need to help preserve what is human in all of us and so offer glimpses of hope in a dark time.

”We reject kidnapping and hostage-taking wholesale. If any of us are taken hostage, absolutely no ransom will be paid. In such an event, C.P.T. will attempt to communicate with the hostage takers or their sponsors and work against journalists’ inclinations to vilify and demonize the offenders. We will try to understand the motives of these actions and to articulate them, while maintaining a firm stance that such actions are wrong. If appropriate, C.P.T. will work with diplomatic officials from our representative governments to avoid a violent outcome. We reject the use of violent force to save our lives, should we be kidnapped, held hostage or caught in the middle of violent conflict situation.

”We also reject violence to punish anyone who harms us. We ask for equal justice in the arrest and trial of anyone, soldier or civilian, who commits an act of violence, and we ask that there be no retaliation on their relatives or property. We forgive those who consider us their enemies. Therefore, any penalty should be in the spirit of restorative justice, rather than in the form of violent retribution. We hope that in loving both friends and enemies and by intervening nonviolently to aid those who are systematically oppressed, we can contribute in some small way to transforming this volatile situation.”

13 Convicted Insurgents Are Executed in Iraq – Los Angeles Times

Iraqi authorities Thursday hanged 13 prisoners, including a woman, convicted of being insurgents, said an official who was present.

The executions, which were authorized by the Iraqi government, were the first to involve insurgents. It was the second time since Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003 that the death penalty was carried out.

Isn’t killing people who disagreed and faught against the government what Saddam Hussein is no trial for right now?

For a company that’s all about marketing Project Origami was a very lame attempt of the Applesque  “don’t say anything and surprise everyone” guerilla marketing technique. The little hype that was generated when it broke on scoble’s blog an other places, was totally killed when it seems that MS couldn’t stand the pressure and just came out with the fact that it was just another tablet PC.

Anyway, it’s out now, and it does look fairly interesting. There are no technical specs yet, but from what you can see from the flash animation is that it has:

• SD Card Slot (ASUS model)
• 1.3 megapixel camera
• 2 usb slots (keyboard and mouse?)
• Firewire slot (or is that Mini USB, hard to tell)
• Antenna (on the Samsung model)
• Built in “Joystick” mouse

More details are here and here. Oh, and here… damn 2-3 hours of battery life??? I wonder if that’s regular usage or something other high resource usage, like say watching a movie…

The Samsung certainly looks better. It weighs 2 pounds, so it’s not exactly a blackberry killer. But for a full featured computer it does look fairly slim. Again, no hardware details are available.

Oh, and now I see that it’s already been slashdotted… $599 – $999 Not bad. Beats the Mac Mini

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>

‘Lost’ Actor Delivers State Senate Prayer – Yahoo! News

One of the actors of the ABC series “Lost” left behind his star power to promote a different type of strength among local lawmakers %u2014 harmony and hope.
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Dressed in a simple gray suit draped with a single strand of maile leaves, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, a devout Buddhist, quietly delivered the traditional daily prayer before the state Senate on Wednesday.

“I thank you very much, deeply, from the root of my heart because I believe this is what my mission is in life to share this practice and to create dialogue with others,” Akinnuoye-Agbaje said.

It must be a major downer to be watching the series on TV and then seeing the characters shoping in your supermarkets and praying in your Senate.

Adam Curry, former MTV DJ and podcasting visionary, announced in episode #320 of his Daily Source Code podcast, that he will be suing a Dutch Tabloid based on the misuse of Creative Commons licensed work.

The tabloid “Weekend”, on Wednesday, ran a frontpage headline article about him and his family which included pictures which were taken off his flicker photostream.

Apart from suing the magazine for endangering his (15-year-old) daughter by publishing the address of her school and other personal details about her, Adam is sueing the magazine for copyright infringement by breaking the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike under which the photos in question were released.

Is this the first time the Creative Commons license will be taken to court?

California Executes Oldest Inmate – Yahoo! News

Is it just me or is this story absurd?

Allen, who was blind and mostly deaf, suffered from diabetes and had a nearly fatal heart attack in September only to be revived and returned to death row, was assisted into the death chamber by four large correctional officers and lifted out of his wheelchair.

His lawyers had raised two claims never before endorsed by the high court: that executing a frail old man would violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that the 23 years he spent on death row were unconstitutionally cruel as well.

How can executing a 76 year old man be considered a punishment at all? It’s just revenge, not justice.

ABC News: 16-Year-Old Wins Science Scholarship

Now, not to brag… but as soon as I saw the headline on google news a little voice in my head said “home schooled”.

A 16-year-old, homeschooled California boy won a premier high school science competition Monday for his innovative approach to an old math problem that could help in the design of airplane wings.

Michael Viscardi, a senior from San Diego, won a $100,000 college scholarship, the top individual prize in the Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology.

Viscardi tackled a 19th century math problem and his new method of solving it has potential applications in the fields of engineering and physics.

Reminds me of a US spelling bee which made news because the winner wasn’t home schooled

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Australian executed in Singapore

Nguyen Tuong Van, 25, of Vietnamese descent, was hanged at Changi prison despite repeated pleas for clemency from the Australian government.

He was convicted three years ago of carrying nearly 400g (14 ounces) of heroin at Singapore airport while travelling from Cambodia to Australia.

US carries out 1,000th execution

Kenneth Boyd, a convicted killer, was put to death by lethal injection in North Carolina for the murder of his estranged wife and her father in 1988.

He was given three drugs – one to put him to sleep, another to paralyse him, and a third to stop his heart.

Boyd, 57, has said the death penalty is “nothing but revenge”. Relatives of his victims say he deserves to die.

Ford may sell historic Jaguar plant – Yahoo! News

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Ford Motor Co (NYSE:F – news) is mulling the sale of its historic Browns Lane plant near Coventry, central England, that was the home of its iconic Jaguar brand since 1928, Jaguar said on Wednesday.

“The possible sale of Browns Lane is one of several options that is currently being studied,” spokesman Don Hume said, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

Vote for Podcast: Another Day in Paradise

I’m waaaay to tired/busy for blogging these days (DST took out a couple hours of my sleep :S), but if you’ve liked my podcast recently please vote for me using the above link.

If you don’t know what podcasts are, read this and then subscribe to my podcast at Yahoo, PodcastAlley or PodcastPickle.

Fun Stuff : Global Nomad & Third Culture Kids : CafePress.com

TCK : CafePress.com

Thanks to the comment on my last post from Shoshauna, I was informed of a new shop for TCK gear. Thanks for the post and best of luck with the endeavour.

One interesting thing about TCK’s (that’s Third Culture Kids, for the uninitiated) is that I am not aware of any good internet based forum, if anyone comes to this post while looking for one, email me at (firstname@lastname.com) and let me know if you found something interesting.