Not news
Most of this stuff is old, but some new and some new to me
I don’t put stuff here often, but most of the time it’s a quick note from the news or even sometimes I put stuff here that i’m experimenting with.
You broke the law, but we won't tell you why
Should you have to obey a law which is kept secret from you?
This is another interesting article from Papers Please. I simply cannot understand why a people who reward individuality and applaude freedom put up with this kind of treatment. The rules we obey just don’t make sense. We cannot take a bottle of water or lipstick or toothpaste on the plane. But, somehow we are allowed to take a laptop.
The law is not for sale
Supremes say the law is public domain
On 27 April 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the state of Georgia can’t claim copyright over its laws. Many companies make a fortune printing legal codes, providing online access the the laws, and they don’t want to give up that gravy train.
Conference Call Bingo
How long have we been doing conference calls? ... Can you ... me ...?
So, you ever sit in a conference call and get super annoyed, because Bob can’t work the mute button or Suzy is trying to talk over the traffic in her convertible or John is presenting his second monitor, which coincidently has a photo collection that’s quite embarrassing. It happens every call. So I decided to make a game of it and you can play along. I did this silliness as an exercise to teach myself how to read and manipulate an XML file using JavaScript, then load them into a web page with formatting controlled by CSS.
Swine flu
This is just another influenza
The only weird thing is that it started (or got caught) in Mexico instead of Asia. Pigs don’t cause the flu. Most modern influenzas breed in pigs (for at least part of their evolutions). An average influenza normally infects 5-15% of the population. An average influenza outbreak normally kills 5-10% of infected individuals (or 0.25-0.1 percent of the population). In the US alone, 30,000 to 50,000 people per year die of influenza.
The things I've seen
I might be a little jaded
I’m not the typical traveler. I’ve flown almost 2 million miles, I’ve traveled to 46 states, over 40 countries, and lived in 4 countries. I’ve slept in hotels without hot running water and been chased out of a restaurant by a pissed off man wielding a cleaver. I’ve been to a restaurant that prides itself on the number of animals on the menu. I’ve waited in a traffic jam for 2 hours for a cow to move, and I’ve broken the suspension on my truck crossing a river, and had it welded back together in a little shop.
Rediscovering my wanderlust
Finding my sense of adventure
Over the last 30 years, I’ve travelled millions of miles, and stayed away from home more than half the time. A few years ago, a friend asked me about the nicest place to stay and I replied, “At some point, all hotels are the same. If the bed is good enough, they have coffee and air conditioning, and they’re close to work, then it doesn’t really matter.” With almost a look of pity, she said, “That not really what I meant. But, after living and traveling to some of the most amazing places, your answer is ‘Close to work’?” We went on to talk about the cool cities, hotels, natural beauty, but that first exchange really stuck with me.
Thoughts on living abroad
Living overseas for the 2nd time after 30 years of world travel
For the last 30 years, I’ve traveled for work and vacation 60-85% percent of the days in a year. I’ve worked in over 40 countries. And I’ve had lived in many cities while supporting remote projects. Today marks 6 months living permanently in Germany.
Notes:
Terms of service
Don't promise anything. Don't care about your data.
In order to sign up for Google API access, I had to write some terms of service, a privacy policy and a license.
License
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license. Disclaimer. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, but don’t change it. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms below: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
Privacy
I don't care about any of your private data.
To the best of my knowledge, I’m not storing your personal data.I’m certainly not using it. Any personal data of yours that gets shared to others is purely accidental. In fact, maybe I should charge you storage fees. But, see the terms of service, if it does happen, it’s because you’re using software that I’m experimenting with and you shouldn’t be using this site anyway.
Warranty
Do not use this under any circumstances
If you followed a Terms of Service link and got here, then you’re out of luck. These terms of service are for programming experiments and stupid hacks intended solely for my personal use. I don’t promise anything about this at all. Any problems caused by this are yours and yours alone. In fact, you probably should’t be using whatever app or product or site it’s related to. I don’t authorize this for use by anyone other than myself, and it will likely brick your phone, set your computer on fire, and make your children ugly.