I’m sitting here at ye olde PDX waiting for my flight and surfing on free wifi. I’ll be shooting my sister’s wedding (with a camera, not guns) in less than 72 hours. I’m hoping it’ll be pretty laid back. I’ve gotten the impression that it will be a small, um, ‘loosely organized’ event.

Anyway, just a news flash update for the loyal readers. I’m going to try to pop in with an update at the next airport.

What a great idea. For the 1337, the Daily WTF? offers a chance to look at a new piece of code every day that makes you say, “huh?” It’s a great programming blog for showing exactly what not to do.

I dropped a chunk of change today and bought a few books. Later on in the day, I dived headfirst into 43 Things and set up an account for myself. 43 Things is a hybrid, combining del.icio.us-style folksonomy with a personal planner. I found a few interesting goals on it, but I was kind of bummed that after I blew my discretionary income, I found the goal, “Read ‘The Pragmatic Programmer’” and found The Pragmatic Programmer at Amazon. Somebody buy this for me, and I’ll spread the story of your generosity across the globe with the power of my publishing empire.

Adobe and Macromedia have combined to form one supercompany because this will help them rape the market deliver more value to their customers. Daring Fireball has taken the time to translate the announcement from Adobe into plain English. It’s very informative and answers many questions I had about the merger.

I thought it was hard enough to meet girls when I was in Computer Science classes in college, but these people want to make it harder. They plan to moor a cruise ship off the coast of California, hook it up with a wireless T3 connection, and proceed to underpay non-US citizens in international waters. Wow, this is the ultimate in complete isolation from members of the opposite sex: crossing programmers with sailors.

By stationing the ship in international waters, the company, called SeaCode, will be able to remain close to U.S. clients while picking and choosing IT talent from around the world—something that tightening H1B visa requirements have made difficult in the U.S.

Depending on your point of view, it may also allow them to pay less than the rate a team of U.S. developers would command.

On the other hand, perhaps the founders of SeaCode had other plans…

Cook also says that SeaCode will be able to hire many highly talented women developers, who because of social norms often have difficulty finding work in third-world countries. “If you go to India, some incredibly talented women [developers] have a very difficult time getting a job.” In contrast, Cook says, his company specifically plans to hire some percentage of women to take advantage of that overlooked talent pool.

That’s right…a cruise ship with full facilities intact (that means bar, hot tubs, pool with awesome slide) and girls. It’ll make it easy to forget about the $8 an hour you’re raking in.

Ok, not really punishing the enemies, but definitely rewarding friends. Really rewarding the friends.

Hi mullingitover!

You may have heard on the grapevine that we planned to
reward our dear Flickr members who bought a Pro Account in
the early days. Well, it’s true! And since you’re one of
those lovely people, here’s a little something to say YOU
ROCK!

1. Double what you paid for!
Your original 1 year pro account has been doubled to
2 years, and your new expiry date is Mar 9, 2007.

2. More capacity!
Now you can upload 2 GB per month.

3. 2 free Pro Accounts to give away to your friends!
This won’t be activated for a day or two, but when it
is, you’ll see a note on your home page telling you
what to do.

Thank you so much for putting your money where your mouth
is and supporting us, even while we’re in beta. Your
generosity and cold, hard cash helped us get where we are
today.

Kind regards,
The Flickreenies.

Great, now I’ll be even harder pressed to figure out what to do with that much upload. What am I going to do with these two free pro accounts?

This took me buy surprise: Adobe bought Macromedia.

“This is all about growth,” Bruce Chizen, chief executive officer of Adobe, said in a conference call. He said he expects the combined companies to grow faster than they would as stand-alone players.

I say it took me by surprise because it seems to border on anticompetitive. Adobe seemed to be playing catch-up to Macromedia in many areas, having practically abandoned attempts to work with Flash. It’s going to be interesting to see how this affects Adobe’s uber-bundle, Creative Suite, and Macromedia’s MX Studio. Creative MX Studio Suite? Creative Studio? I think it’s going to be Creative Studio MX. What will they do with Dreamweaver/GoLive? Will it be DreamLive? GoWeaver?

Read the full text of the resolution. Wow.

HCR029…………………………………………….by WAYS AND MEANS
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE - Stating findings of the Legislature and commending
Jared and Jerusha Hess and the City of Preston for the production of the
movie “Napoleon Dynamite.”

I guess the legislative branch of Idaho’s government aren’t complete idiots.

2 WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the
3 Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote “Nay” on this concurrent
4 resolution are “FREAKIN’ IDIOTS!” and run the risk of having the “Worst Day of
5 Their Lives!”
6 NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the members of the First Regular Session
7 of the Fifty-eighth Idaho Legislature, the House of Representatives and the
8 Senate concurring therein, that we commend Jared and Jerusha Hess and the City
9 of Preston for showcasing the positive aspects of Idaho’s youth, rural cul-
10 ture, education system, athletics, economic prosperity and diversity.

Wow. It doesn’t get much better than this.

According to the draft, the duo want ISPs and network operators to “enforce terms of service that prohibit a subscriber from operating a server, or from consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth where such consumption is a good indicator of infringing activities.” A summary of the draft can be found at the Electronic Digital Rights site’s latest EDRIgram.

Still stunned that the public hasn’t given up on the whole ‘internet’ fad, the music industry is working to convince ISPs that they should sign a new Code of Conduct. The purpose of the Code of Conduct is to strip every shred of privacy from their subscribers, block common file sharing services, and offer up the identity of suspected infringers without the need for a pasky supoena. Of course, the subscribers would have to agree to the terms of this new agreement.

The ISPs must be thinking to themselves, “What a wonderful idea! We’re desperate for a way to differentiate ourselves from our competitors, this is perfect!” Because they know that any ISP that willingly signs up for this will soon have large groups of customers looking for a new ISP. I use Comcast. It’s so fast, sometimes I get whiplash. I hate to think of going back to slowpoke DSL, but I’d do it in a heartbeat if Comcast signed up for this nonsense.