Breakfast Links: Mooninite wrapup, Plupon & FlightMemory
Well Boston finally gave up on trying to get Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens behind bars. The two who were charged with putting up “hoax” terrorist devices around Boston. Charges were dropped in exchange for community service and a public apology. The whole thing was ridiculous and while I can totally and completely understand the guys’ want to get this behind them, I kind of wish they had gone through with the trial to highlight just how ridiculous this whole thing was. It might help put the kibosh on the incredibly scary bill currently trying to get passed that would have made what they did illegal and punishable despite any reasonable belief that this was in no way a terrorist hoax. Grrr. Argh.
Ugh. At least there’s always Plupon. This one’s a puzzley flash game which has you linking together 3 falling bubbles that then get added up. The directions are in japanese, but it’s super easy. The goal is to have them add up to 10 or 20. If they add up to more than 10 but less than 20 your time goes down. The first level is super easy, but it gets much harder after that - it’s addictive in the way these games always are. Good times, you should give it a shot and see how good your single digit math is under pressure!
I just checked out FlightMemory.com. It’s a site that’s kind of a travel log and kind of a plane spotting thing, I’m not sure how compelling it really is. You put in your flights and various info about it and it keeps stats and your notes on it. The cool thing they have is a map of the world graphing the flights of all their users - as far as I can tell, though, it can’t draw that map just for your flights, which is totally lame. They also actually charge you a non-trivial amount to bulk import your flights ($20-$45+ depending on what info and how big), you can go 1 by 1 for free, though. What they need is a way for me just to input my flight number (say UA232 or CO2345 or whatever) and a date and they should be able to extract all the time, location, etc.. from that. Ah well, I don’t love the site although it has potential - perhaps some o’ you other big travellers out there might dig something like this, though. What say you? Yay or nay?
May 15th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Whoa, is that true? I know now that the hoax device statute stipulates that there must be an “intent” to terrorize. If people can arrest you for doing whatever they claim terrorizes them, um. Wow.
Anyway, I saw Zebbler, one of those charged with the act, on local station Boston.tv the other day, too:
May 15th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Oops, I tried to embed it but it fucked up:
http://www.boston.tv/beta2/clips/290973893.html
May 15th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Yeah, the new law will let them prosecute if the parties don’t immediately alert someone as to the intentions. You gotta to love the ass covering!
Wow, that’s a strange video. And a strange man. :)