2006-10-16: Nouveau

Having seen Nouveau, the open source 3-D drivers for Nvidia cards, mentioned in Linux Weekly News and recalling that I wanted to help work on them myself, I decided to use some of my free time to give it a try.

So I followed the instructions, and then got a compilation error. The driver could not find the linux/config.h header. Per the advice of someone on Freenode's #nouveau, I changed it to linux/autoconf.h, and that made it compile. (I'm using the latest -rc kernel). I later encountered some problems with getting the driver insmod'ed but these were also resolvable.

Then I restarted X to run it with it. It worked. I encountered a problem with the fact that in KDE and multitple workspaces and .jpg files as background that cover the whole screen, then I get tiling behaviour in the background when switching workspaces that doesn't exist with "nv". What I mean is that the redrawing of the new background is visible (left-to-right, top-to-bottom). The people on #nouveau said that it is planned that this will be resolved independently of Nouveau.

I'm planning to continue using this driver, and also potentially help by writing code for it. La revolution lives on! (or in our case la nouveau-lution lives on!)

By the way, this was the first time I used git, because that's the version control system that Nouveau is using. It was not a very painful experience and I survived to tell the tale. ;-)

2006-10-17: Eclipse on Mandriva 2007

So I was editing XML using vim and again decided that there may be a better editor out there. A google search for "XML editor" or "open source XML editor" yielded nothing. Then I thought that maybe Eclipse has a good XML editing mode. So off to install Eclipse

I'm running Mandriva 2007 and the urpmi (Mandriva's package manager) command for installing Eclipse ("urpmi eclipse") completed successfully, after installing a lot of dependencies. Then I tried to run it from the command line. It took it a long time, and then it crashed. After consulting with the people on Freenode's #java, I was told that I should run it using Sun's Java Development Kit instead of with gcj.

So I downloaded it, and the people there told me how to run Eclipse using it. Just use the following commands:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_09
PATH="$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH"

Then I was able to run Eclipse. However, when I tried to edit an XML file, I got it without syntax highlighting, and without anything else. Turns out the default XML editing mode of Eclipse is pretty lame. And a Google search for "Eclipse XML" yielded only non-open-source solutions. So I still don't have a better XML editor than gvim.

Again on #java, someone recommended Vex, which is a visual editor for XML. But it provides a word-processor-like interface, that I won't like as I want to edit the tags and need to edit "data-style" XML documents.

If anyone can suggest a good open-source XML editor that runs on Linux, please comment here. In the meantime, gvim is all I have.

2006-10-17: www.shlomifish.org now Fully Validates

It took me a lot of hours of work, but I got all the files on my homesite (including those that were not directly accessible), to validate as valid HTML or XHTML. This is in continuation to this entry. Using a customised version of the WDG validator that I installed on the localhost, I was able to find all the errors and warnings, as well as fix many broken links, etc. It took a lot of work of tweaking HTML, fixing broken links, adding DOCTYPE's and sometimes fixing the tools that generated bad HTML.

Like I said, it took a lot of work, but now I feel both accomplished and relieved. The validator reports a few errors for the DocBook/XML files because it cannot find their DTD, but that's it. Now I'd better start doing something more important... ;-).

2006-11-03: Building GHC 6.6 on Mandriva

I decided to try to build the latest Pugs (from the subversion trunk). The INSTALL file said: "Pugs needs the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC), preferably version 6.6 or above.". OK, but Mandriva only has GHC 6.4. So I decided to make the world a bit better by preparing ghc-6.6 packages for Mandriva.

At first I installed the Mandriva ghc-6.4 source rpm, and then looked at the ghc 6.6 RPM Spec from the ghc homepage and adapted the Mandriva RPM accordingly. Then I started the building. It took a long time so I let it run overnight. In the morning when I woke up, I realised the RPM building was not successful. Apparently, the Mandriva RPM Spec building process also built the documentation and the makefile called haddock with an unknown flag. I realised I had to install the latest haddock version (0.8).

So I had to prepare an up-to-date haddock package. I started but then the build failed towards the end because the /usr/bin/haddock-0.8 binary was not installed. I guessed it was removed, and removed it from the RPM spec and built again. This time it was OK and I was able to install the binary RPM.

After haddock-0.8 was installed, I was able to install and build ghc-6.6. (After a few hours of compilation time). However, afterwards when I tried to compile pugs, but it compiled that it could not find the "mtl" library. I consulted people on the IRC about it and someone told me I should also build the src-extralibs package of ghc by unpacking it in the same directory.

I modified the RPM SPEC of ghc-6.6 to do exactly that, and rebuilt. I installed ghc-6.6 again, and again tried to compile pugs. It still complained about the "mtl library". Searcing for "mtl" in the ghc RPM build tree yielded the fact it was installed under the "ghc-6.6/ghc-6.6/" sub-directory there. As it turned out I used the rpm %setup macro in the wrong way: I used the -a 1 (which unpacks the source in 1 after cd'ing into the directory) instead of -b 1, which unpacks the source before cd'ing there.

Thus, I had to rebuild ghc after this correction. After a few more hours of compilation, the rpm was prepared, and I was able to install it. This time, I was able to compile pugs, and I even tested it and submitted a smoke test. This report to the Mandriva bug tracker is the result of my efforts and contains links to the RPMs I prepared.

I spent at least a day working on it, but a hacker got to do what a hacker got to do.

2006-11-11: Lately I've been...

Lately I've been playing a lot of computer games. Mostly PySol, Fish Fillets, WarCraft 3, or Monkey Island 4 (last both on the nearby Windows machine). I've made quite a lot of progress in them. While I don't play too much, it seems that I've been much less productive than at the times I didn't play at all. I mostly didn't code.

I've also been resting at bed during the mornings, and yesterday also rested for an hour or so after lunch. Today, however, I woke up early, ate breakfast at 11:00 and did not sleep, so maybe I'm back on track. I also spent the day until now doing some mostly productive work (like fixing WWW-Search-MSN bugs, or writing a report on the last meeting of the Israeli Perl mongers.)

I've been making some progress on Practical Common Lisp, and also a lot of other reading. Sometimes I feel that I'm reading too much. And I'm having a love-hate relationship with my RSS aggregator.

2006-11-16: Inbox Cleanup

I'm down to 3 messages in my email inbox. All the other ones that got gathered there have been sorted out, deleted or archived. I don't remember having so few messages there since I started using kmail (and my inbox was empty).

Of course, I have more messages in my Gmail inbox and my inbox in a Technion host, but I can still give myself a positive feedback. Yay!

2006-11-17: Editors and IDEs Resources

Recently there were two discussions on editors/IDEs for Perl on two mailing lists I'm subscribed to: one on the Perl XML mailing list and one on the Catalyst mailing list.

They are interesting and informative and not too flamatory. In one post someone posted a link to texteditors.org, which is a wiki dedicated to text editors, which seems nice as well. I already added several Emacs jokes.

2006-11-17: htdig on Mandriva

After I woke up today, I decided to make myself a daily schedule. So I copied my last daily schedule (back from 8-August) and updated. One of the items there read - "htdig Mandriva bug." (that my friend reported and I confirmed). Since it was very old, I decided to finally get to investigate it.

Searching for "htdig" on the Mandriva bug tracker yielded this bug report, which was still open, and I could confirm the bug still existed by installing htdig and running it. After I downloaded the source RPM and looked at it and the htdig site, I saw that the version in the source RPM was out of date (3.2.0b2-something while 3.2.0b5 has already been released). So I updated it, and tried to recompile. It took several "rpm -bb" iterations to get the RPMs to build: I had to remove out of date patches, add one of my own to fix a compilation bug, and mess up with the installed files list. Eventualy it got built and I installed the modified package, and tried to run it again. This time the bug was not reproduced.

I uploaded the updated package only in the evening and posted a link in the bug report. Between that, I got my aggregated RSS feed to work again. Now I've built the new kernel and am preparing to install it. There goes my 8 days uptime...

P.S.: if you want to get an audio feedback once a long compilation ends, you can do something like: make bzImage modules ; mplayer -ao arts /home/shlomi/Music/mp3s/"Jenna Drey - Why Should I Believe You (Rock Version ).mp3" . Substitute "make bzImage modules" with the compilation command, "-ao arts" with your favourite "mplayer" params", and the Jenna Drey song with a media file you'd like to hear.

2006-11-18: Daily Log

Today was a productive day, as it was not interrupted by bugs or other disrepencies. It started with writing and posting a blog entry about Test::Run. Then I added pages for the "Lotg" code and my own situation puzzle to my home site.

I was able to bike during the afternoon (starting around 15:00). Afterwards, I worked on WWW::Form: fixing a bug that was caused due to a Test::More regression (hopefully more about it later), raising its kwalitee and releasing a new version on CPAN.

Finally, during the evening when I was tired, I caught up with my Slashdot interview backlog.

Tomorrow there's a Telux "Welcome-to-Linux" meeting and there's going to be a Pythoneers meeting on wednesday. I also have to find out the whereabouts of the next Perl-IL meeting so I can publicise it.

2006-11-21: Spaceballs

I just returned from a walk where it occured to me that Spaceballs is a pun on Baseball. And it came to me when thinking of one of the latest Foxtrot cartoons, which I read earlier today.

It often takes me a lot of time to detect some puns, but this one took about 15 years for me to get to the bottom of, which is very exceptional, even for me.

2006-11-22: Adventures of a Finite Simple Group of Order Two

Today I checked my gmail E-mail and saw that my friend sent me a link to a hilarious videoclip of "A Finite Simple Group (of Order Two) by the Klein Four Group, which are a mathematically-inclined a-capella group. I liked it so much that I decided to send it to the members of my long-forgotten Jokes Distribution List using my KDE mail account.

Well, the problem was that it really was long-forgotten as KAddressbook did not list it or any other distribution list I had prepared in its previous incarnations. So I decided to investigate. I created a new distribution list with a few members and saved it. When inspecting the KAddressbook directory (~/.kde/share/apps/kabc/) I found it no longer stored them in the file distlists but rather inside std.vcf in specially-formatted records. So I whipped up a quick Perl script to convert it to the new format, which worked after a tweak or two. After restarting kmail, I was able to see my distribution lists' again, and could send my mail.

Since the video had no sub-titles and one of the people on the list is deaf, I googled for the lyrics for this song and found them, and included a link to them in my email.

So far so good. But then I decided I like the song so much that I wanted to listen to it using Amarok (my music player) from time to time. So I moved the .flv (Flash Video) file I had downloaded from the Youtube link using youtube-dl, to my mp3's directory and tried to enqueue it using Amarok. It didn't work, as Amarok complained it lacked an audio channel. Trying to play it in xine, which is the Amarok media-playing backend I'm using didn't work as well. It seemed like a xine limitation.

Then I remembered this article about converting from .flv to DivX or Xvid that I saw on Linux.com. I followed its instructions and ran the script. It did a whole lot of stuff, but I couldn't find the file. As it turned out, my filename contained whitespace characters, which broke the script and caused it to output to the file .avi (which is normally invisible). To fix it I had to change:

 "`basename $1 .flv`.avi"
with:
 "`basename "$1" .flv`.avi"

Which made it work. Now Amarok could play the AVI file, but not rewind and fast-forward it. Possibly another limitation.

All this time I was talking on IRC. I joined #kde in order to resolve my distribution list problem, and there I helped a few people. While I was in the neighbourhood, I decided to join #math and let them know of the song. Someone there recognised it, and gave me the link to the Klein Four Group's. There I found audios in mp3's formats and videos in Windows Media's .wmv format for many of their songs (including "Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)"). So in this case, I didn't have had to bother with flv2avi.sh. (Albeit it may come in handy some other time).

So now the Jews have Joy and Aura, and I can listen to the song comfortably. I listened to it at least 5 times today. I'd also like to check their other recordings.

P.S: when I said that "C++ is complex, complexified and complexifying", I thought the verb "complexify" did not really exist, but it does, and it appears in this song.

2006-11-22: Personal Log

Yesterday's afernoon I got a throat ache, which worsened towards the night. Then as I was trying to sleep, I got shivers. I guess I became sick. Today I'm feeling better, with a post-shiver feeling.

Due to this flu, I missed a job interview today (that was supposed to take place at a nearby cafรฉ) and a meeting of the Israeli Pythoneers which seemed very interesting. This was the first meeting in a long time, and I missed many meetings before that, due to my work schedule. So I was really looking forward to it.

So instead I'm working on the computer, taking walks in the neighbourhood, eating, and drinking water. I woke up today at 6 AM (while falling asleep at around 2 AM), but still cannot really get myself to rest. So, it's a more or less typical day except for feeling a bit worse physically.

On a different note, I've been chatting on the IRC with Ken Coar, and trying to help him with some Perl and perl-related problems. It's quite a honour.

2006-11-24: Word of the Day: Lough

I've been chatting on Instant Messaging today, and accidently typed "lough" instead of "laugh". I noticed the spell checker did not highlight it when I corrected my mistake and decided to check what it means. Here's the definition of "lough" - it's Irish for "lake".

It reminded me of "loch" (which is the Scottish Gaelic equivalent) and the English word "lake" so I checked their etymologies on m-w.com. Turns out they all stem from the same root, which is common in many Indo-European languages.

I normally don't recall new words that I encounter, but I think I'll remember this one. Of course, it seems too obscure to be useful.

2006-11-25: My First Amarok Scripting Experience

Currently I'm still using Amarok as a music player, and I like very much. One thing that kept bothering me, even back when I was using XMMS, was that sometimes I had to fiddle with the volume because the songs were too loud or too soft. I tried using XMMS Volnorm but it caused the songs to have artificats and since it operated only on portions of the songs, damaged volume increasing and decreasing effects.

But I had a better idea. Why not keep track of the volume the user used for each song, and restore it to its last value when the song is played again? Today, I finally decided to implement exactly that on my Amarok system somehow. When I searched for something to do that on Google, I could not find anything for Amarok, but found a different Java player that sported "per-song volume". So per-song volume it would be.

After reading the Amarok Script-Writing Howto, I knew how to write this script. It's very simple really: one used the dcop command line command to control Amarok, and listens to events that are sent as lines on the standard input. I initially thought I'll need to use Ruby for that, but the Ruby examples on the page did not use any external KDE or Amarok-specific bindings, so Perl is also suitable, and I used it instead due to the laziness factor.

The script I wrote keeps a state of the current volume and the current song, and maintains the recorded volumes inside an SQLite database (which is just a single file on the filesystem.). Writing it was not very hard, but I encountered a few bugs I had to tackle.

What turned out to be more irritating was uploading the script to kde-apps.org. I had an account there (possibly due to my old kde-look.org account), and so logged in, but after changing the password got rejected. An email with the password that I sent to myself indicate the password I had was correct. I opened another account with the same password and again no luck.

After inspecting the markup and seeing that the password <input /> tag contained a truncated version of the password, I conjectured that maybe it couldn't handled long passwords properly. That was indeed the case, and I could login from a new account I opened and upload the script. I recall that I struggled with it so much that I didn't eat by 8:20 PM.

After the script was uploaded I updated the Amarok wiki. I noticed at the top that there were also French and German versions of that page. Therefore, I joined #perlcafe, and got someone to update the French page with that information as well (just for the heck of it). Looking at a note inside the WikiWiki markup at the top it seems that I also need to add it to the German page (so it'll be in the sync with the English one).

Today I also added a section to my Open-Source "Bits and Bobs" page with this script.

At the moment, this script received an average rating of "50% Good" in the kde-apps.org page, and no comments were posted on the page. I've started using it and it seems to work very nicely for me so far. Maybe you'll find it useful too, or would like to implement similar functionality for other music players. Oh and I'd also like to implement a compatible script in Common Lisp because I'm learning it now. Stay tuned.

2006-11-29: Vim Tips

I apologise for not posting here in a few days, but publicising the Tel Aviv Linux club meetings, and working on this year's Perl Advent Calendar is relatively time-consuming. But now happy that I finished two articles for the calendar, I can blog a little about other stuff, like Vim Tips.

So here are two Vim tips I've found:

  1. When using the visual mode, one can use the o to move to the other end of the selection and modify it. Read more about it in the link.
  2. If you are in insert mode and your line is indented (say after pressing o on an indented line) but wish to start writing from the beginning of the line, you can press Ctrl+W to delete the leading whitespace and start typing at the beginning of the line.

That put aside the last Tel Aviv Linux Club meeting was very successful - many people came, Gilad gave a good presentation about Development Tools for Linux, and four of us went to the cafรฉ afterwards. And here's some publicity for the next presentation in the series. (Ignore the title of the page and message - they're a leftover from the previous announcement).

Have a lot of fun!

2006-12-07: The LoggedFS Chronicles

(This entry was adapted from an IRC monologue I made on the fly yesterday.)

I have a problem with KDE that some of the colours get reverted to bad settings. And as I found out (by reading the KDE source) it is stored in kdeglobals, which keeps getting over-rided to one without the appropriate keys.

So I was looking for a way to find out which process overwrites kdeglobals. Now I knew about FUSE which allows one to write File Systems in user-land. And on the FUSE filesystemspage I found loggedFS, which is a logging file system that takes a directory, over-rides it and logs all actions (using the over-rided filesystem as the backend). I decided to give it a try.

Well, it took me some time to get it up and running with my ~/.kde/share/config directory. It required some change to the build system because there was a new FUSE API version. And I needed to add a flag (after trying to find how). I also had to compile and install the fuse kernel module for my kernel. After all that it was up and running.

So I tried to use it with KDE. KDE loaded but konqueror did not run. After some stracing I found the problem was with the KLockFile class and a lock file that was created in the config/ directory.

So after some time of inspecting the code without knowing why exactly it failed, I decided to add some fprintf's there to see what's wrong. I had to compile the apporpriate "kdecore" library, with the changes I added and then use LD_LIBRARY_PATH with konqueror to load the custom library.

And as it turned out the temporary lock file and its permanent hard link did not have the same inode. This seemed like a problem with the loggedFS mounted filesystem as ls -i returned very low numbers and not the real inodes. So I wanted to see what's wrong.

I added debugs to the loggedFS driver. And debugged the kernel using User-mode Linux. As it turned out the kernel received 0xFFFFFFFF as the inode number. This took me a lot of time to find out. So I decided to compile libfuse with debugging information and find out. After stepping into the fuse functions, I found out that there was a line there that set the inodes to this 0xFFFFFFFF value, because it didn't receive the use_ino option. After I added the use_ino option to loggedFS, konqueror worked with the config directory mounted using it.

I then felt like I wanted to faint.

After running loggedfs, I realised kdeglobals was changed, but the change was not logged. As it turned out it was not done by a write call, but by moving a temporary kdeglobals on top of the permanent one (Using a rename system call). And is it turned out, this was done many times, and only at certain times resulted in the faulty contents. Therefore, I decided to create my own modification of loggedFS, to check for such renames. After doing that, I received the appropriate notice today, and as it turns out it is a kio_smtp kdeinit process. Which means, I'll have to look at its source code.

All of this took more than an entire day of work, while I neglected other priorities. I ended up with 177 unread items in my feeds' aggregator (which I've gone over since), and also neglected my email and had no IM presence. But at least I was successful in getting the problem traced.

2006-12-08: LoggedFS and KDE Problem Update

As an update to my previous entry, I'd like to note that the changes I made to LoggedFS are now available as this patch. I sent it to the author for incorporation into the main code, but until then it can be downloaded from my site.

The KDE Problem I discovered is now tracked in this Mandriva Bug, and if anyone who reads this blog can try to reproduce it with his version of KDE and kmail, I'd be happy to hear such reports.

2006-12-12: Tip: Mandriva's msec resetting permissions of directories and how to prevent that

Mandriva Linux' msec cron job has a tendency to reset the permissions of several files and directories on a Mandriva system. If you want to keep a certain permission, then what you need to do is invoke drakperm as root, and add a rule there to set the permission to a certain (usually more permissive) value.

I ran into such a problem when Mandriva kept removing the group and public read flags from the "shlomi" user home directory (and from other users under /home). After I ran drakperm and added a rule for /home/shlomi it no longer happened. I got the "drakperm" tip today from people on the IRC (Freenode's #mandriva channel), so thanks to them as well.

2006-12-12: New Screen

Earlier when I reported on my hardware wishlist, I mentioned that I want a new screen and one that's flat. My sister's workplace had a special offer of such a screen so we decided to buy one. I got it today, and my father and I set it up at the evening.

It's a ViewSonic VA903m screen, a flat one, and it's either 19" or 17", but still bigger than my previous CRT one. Mandriva 2007 did not have an Xorg pre-definition for it, so I used the VA800 one (which was the closest) and it seems fine. I'm doing 1280*1024 on this screen, and can see two konsoles (KDE's terminal emulator) one below the other. It comes with speakers, but when my father and I tested them they sounded awful so we reverted to our standalone speakers.

The picture is very sharp, but some of the colours are wrong. Using the screen's controls, I set the brightness and contrast to their minimum, but some colours still look weird. I still like it better than the previous screen, due to the size and the resolution.

2006-12-12: Grey Cat, Puzzles and some Vim Tips

When I went out today on a walk, I saw a pure grey (not striped) street cat walking on the sidewalk. I don't believe I've seen him before. He was very majestic and reminded me of a majestic grey cat who used to hang around the ground floor of my previous building. The fur of the cat I saw today was somewhat darker, though.

That put aside, I dedicated some time to work on my home site's puzzles section. I traced the solution of the Ravensborg's Guild puzzle, and as I discovered it had some missing information required to solve it. The corrected riddle along with the solution is on that page now. I also traced the solution of "Between the Screws. This time there wasn't any missing information but there were a few hints that I did not need.

Next on my agenda in the puzzle arena is to trace the solution (and the final outcome) for another puzzle, and to integrate the grammatical corrections an IRC correspondant reported on "Between the Screws".

And now for some Vim tips. One can use the vim black hole register (or null register) "_ (:help "_) to delete text using the "d" or "c" commands without affecting the other registers. So one can press "_d{movement}p to safely paste text. The second tip (which I discovered when looking for the reference for this one) is that pressing " followed by the uppercase letter of a register, will append text to this register.

I hope you enjoyed this entry. Until next time, stay cool!

2006-12-14: Vim Tip: Pasting with "P"

Today I suddenly wondered that if "p" (in lowercase) was paste in Vim, what did "P" (in uppercase) do. I guessed that what it did was that it pasted before the line of the cursor, rather than after it. (In a similar fashion to the distinction between "o" and "O"). And that's what it indeed does (:help P).

This is useful because it behaves more like the MS-Windows paste, and also allows one to paste to the first line of the file. I'm now thinking it might be a good idea to go over all the uppercase letter commands in Vim and see what they do because I don't know them all.

2006-12-15: Mandriva Tip: Cancelling the Initial Konqueror Redirect

When you fire up a konqueror window on Mandriva Linux then what happens is that it loads a page and then redirect you to a page on the Mandriva servers. This redirect is annoying because it takes place even if you start to type an address in the address bar. Here's how to cancel it.

Fire up a terminal and type the following command:

perl -pe '/^View0_URL/ && s/(about:)mandrakelinux/${1}blank/' < /usr/share/apps/konqueror/profiles/webbrowsing > ~/.kde/share/apps/konqueror/profiles/webbrowsing

What this command does is create a custom user "webbrowsing" profile for Konqueror where the default page is converted from "about:mandrakelinux" to "about:blank". It affects only a single user. If you're interested in making this change system wide then use the following untested command as root:

perl -pi -e '/^View0_URL/ && s/(about:)mandrakelinux/${1}blank/' /usr/share/apps/konqueror/profiles/webbrowsing

Now my redirect is gone and I'm much less annoyed. Happy browsing!

2006-12-16: SQL Trouble - String Concatenation

For a web application I'm working on, I need to concatenate many fields delimited by a delimiter into one large text field. So I lookuped up a way to do concatenation in SQL, and found out that there is no standard way to concatenate in SQL:

  1. In MySQL, one uses the a concat() function which accepts multiple arguments.
  2. In Oracle, concat() accepts only two arguments, and there's also the "||" infix operator which can be chained.
  3. In MS SQL Server, one uses the "+" operator.
  4. In SQLite also has the "||" operator.
  5. PostgreSQL also has the || operator

In short, there's no portable way to do such an elementary operation. The "||" operator seems to be the most widely supported but it is not supported by MSSQL and MySQL. Thus, for the application I wrote I ended up doing the concatenation in Perl.

('ANSI ' || 'SQL' || ' Standard')-- (Assuming it will work in your SQL implementation).

2006-12-18: Puzzles by Wei-Hwa Huang

bramcohen points to a capture only chess puzzle by Wei-Hwa Huang. I already solved the first three puzzles from there, and found the rest too complicated for my taste. Huang has put other puzzles on his site which look interesting.

I tried to solve the 3, 3, 8, 8 one, and when I could not find a solution, I wrote a Perl script to verify that such a solution exists. The script failed, but by printing the solutions, I found that such a solution existed, only it was a rounding error. Memo to self: next time use a fraction module for such things.

2006-12-18: MSN Password Trouble

I decided to change my MSN password yesterday as my previous password was relatively simple. So I changed it to a long password with some gibberish words that were partly l33t-speaked. The change at the Microsoft Passport site worked fine in Mozilla (in Konqueror it had some display problems). Then I tried to log in using the new password from Kopete.

It didn't work. I typed it again - still no. I decided that maybe the password was too long, and reduced it one character after the other manually. Still no good. Eventually (quite late at night), I changed the password to a shorter one that did not overflow the MSN password field. This time I was able to login using Kopete.

This reminded me of this incident only this time, I was able to revert. My password is now 11 alpha-numeric characters, in case anyone is experiencing any similar problems.

2006-12-19: New Zealand DMCA

Slashdot reports on DMCA-like legal provisions brewing up in New Zealand. New Zealanders should notice and take the necessary steps to prevent it from entering the bylaws. Please help spread the word.

2006-12-20: The End of an Era: Closing my Account at Bank Discount

Bank Discount was the first bank I opened an account in, back when I was in high school. However, due to the poor support its site had for Linux-based browsers at the time, I opened an account in the First International Bank of Israel, whose site admins were more conscious to web standards. There I received my payments from my last workplace, and also started having a credit card proper.

Now since I'm paying a commission fee for the account in Bank Discount, and don't make much use of it, I decided to close it. So I went there a few days ago, and closed my account, while taking all my money out and putting it in the other bank account. So this is the end of an era where I had an account in Bank Discount, which was my first bank, and the one with which I dealt most of my banking life.

Recently it was published that Bank Discount blocks Firefox. As it turned out, it was only Firefox 2.0, and not Firefox 1.5.0.x. Hmmm...

2006-12-21: Getting Nouveau to run with kernel 2.6.20-rc1

The Mesa DRM kernel drivers as available from the Mesa DRM GIT repository have been broken with kernel 2.6.20-rc1 since its release. Yesterday, I spent some time getting them to compile and was able to do so. This issue tracks the patch which I wrote, which is apparently incorrect in some respects. It took me quite some time to write it, because I'm not a kernel expert, because some of the #ifdef magic was confusing, and because it took me some time to find out how to make the kernel makefile print the gcc invocation command (which for the record is "make V=1").

After that, what I did to get Nouveau (the Open-Source Nvidia drivers) up and running is based but deviating from these instructions:

  1. Built the intel_agp kernel module which was missing from my configuration. This module, or a different AGP module depending on your system is required for Nouveau to run in recent releases.

  2. One should use the default branch ("master") instead of the "nouveau-1" branch as "nouveau-1" was already merged into it.

  3. I built and installed the drm library and headers but under /usr/local (./configure with no parameters), so it will not interfere with the distribution copy.

  4. Afterwards when building "xf86-video-nouveau", I got some errors starting with /usr/local/include/xf86drm.h:569: error: expected declaration specifiers or `...' before `drm_drawable_info_type_t'. To fix it, I had to tweak the include paths.

    Change the includes on the line starting with AM_CFLAGS = from something like:

    -I/usr/include/xorg -I/usr/include/drm -I/usr/include/X11/dri

    to:

    -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/drm -I/usr/include/xorg -I/usr/include/X11/dri

Afterwards, I was able to get Nouveau up and running and am using it now. Enjoy!

2006-12-22: Sokoban

Yesterday, I started playing Sokoban again (using the KSokoban implementation for KDE that is part of kdegames). I solved one level that seemed intimidating, and then also another one. So it's another puzzle game for me to waste time on. ;-).

2006-12-22: Job-Related Reading

I don't know if I mentioned it, but I eventually decided against becoming a freelancer, and spent some time looking for a suitable job. A week or two ago, I was accepted into a job as a Linux kernel/rivers programmer, over in Herzliya Pituakh, and decided to accept it. This is especially encouraging, because it was one of the first few jobs I was interviewed in, and because I was not looking too hard. I'm starting to work on January.

Since I don't have a lot of experience doing kernel development, I was given a reading list. So now I'm in the middle of reading Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition from the online PDFs. I finished the first five chapters and am now about to start chapter #6 which is 48 pages long - %-). Guess, I'd better get back to reading.

2006-12-23: Vista Shortcomings

All about Linux has a list of 25 Vista Shortcomings with some comments which makes for a nice read.

Otherwise I also spotted the following song about the gdb debugger, to the melody of "Tragedy" by the Bee Gees, linked from this LWN.net page (which is currently Subscribers-only). There's also this gdb song to the Tune of Do-Re-Mi from "The Sound of Music", which I was aware of for a few years.

Any my reading progress: I finished chapter 6 (of "Linux Device Drivers") today and continued to read chapters 7 and chapter 8. Now I'm about to start chapter 9.

2006-12-28: Update

Three nights ago, my computer made strange noises. They had a certain long repetition duration. I decided to turn off the computer for the night, and see what happens in the morning. When I turned on the computer the next morning it made loud noises. Since this had me worried I decided to do a backup of all the files, in case something happens - which I did. I left it on since, and the noises subsided, so I don't know what was wrong originally.

I've finished reading all the relevant chapters out of Linux Device Drivers. I kept some notes with Errors I found, and reported the ones that have not been reported yet to the book errata. Otherwise I've been heavily immersed in working on this Golf quiz. I hope tomorrow I'll do some other things besides it, though.

Today I went to the Israeli Pythoneers meeting. The small conference room we gathered in was crowded with people, and we heard two interesting presentations: one about TurboGears and the other one about Construct, which is a framework for writing protocol and formats dissectors, which the presentor has been working on. After the meeting we went to a cafรฉ for some food and chat. This has been my first Python-Israel meeting in quite a while, and I wasn't disappointed.

2007-01-01: Gringotts-Shlomif Patch

Today was my first day at work. I needed to use the Gringotts secure notes application, for which I've been maintaining a patch, to read some files. So I built it by downloading the gringotts-1.2.9pre1 archive from the Debian servers, and applying my patch from my site. However, when I invoked the preferences dialog, it crashed. So I decided to check it at home.

Back at home, I found that I couldn't reproduce the crash. However, a version that I compiled using the archive and patch still crashed. What I found out after a small amount of debugging was that I fixed this regression in my local repository back in July, but did not release a new patch to fix it for the rest of the world. (Including me at work). Quite the negligence on my part.

So today, I updated the changelog, tagged the trunk, created a new patch, uploaded it to my site, and posted an annoucement on Freshmeat (which isn't on the front page yet). I'll try to be more responsible in this regard in the future.

As for my first day at work - today I set up my work computer. I installed Mandriva on it using the Mandriva One 2007 CD, and coped with several problems that arised in getting myself up and running. At the end of the day, everything that I wanted to be working was (except perhaps for the gringotts "preferences" dialog).

2007-01-01: Standard ML / O'Caml Tip : Two or More Functions that Call Each Other

In case you wish to to create two functions that call each other (or Mutually recursive functions as the proper terminology is) in Standard ML (SML), or O'Caml you can use the and keyword. In SML:

fun func1 (n:int) :int = if n=0 then 1 else func2 (n-1) * 2
and func2 (n:int): int = if n=0 then 0 else func1 (n-1) +1;

Or in O'Caml:

let rec func1 (n:int) :int = if n=0 then 1 else func2 (n-1) * 2
and func2 (n:int): int = if n=0 then 0 else func1 (n-1) +1;;

Printf.printf "func2(5) = %d\n" (func2 5);;

For more information refer to this O'Caml related resource and to this Standard ML related resource. I had problems finding this because I searched for "call each other" instead of "mutually recursive".

BTW, I was surprised to learn that Caml/O'Caml and SML are very incompatible. I thought that generally O'Caml was a superset of SML, but as it turns out O'Caml cannot compile a lot of SML code. Apparently they both diverged from an early "ML" proto-language and went on their own ways.

2007-01-01: Not "Curly" - Pearly!

On Saturday when I was visiting someone to fix his Linux installation, I heard on a radio a familiar song which I was looking for. I kept thinking it was "The Days of Curly Spencer", but after googling a bit for keywords out of it I found out it was "The Days of Pearly Spencer. "Pearly" - not "Curly".

Strangely enough I was able to find a story called "The Days of Curly Spencer" back in my original searches. Hmmppff...

2007-01-03: Problem with an AC'97 Soundcard and Windows XP

At work I received a recycled computer for my workstation. I installed Mandriva Linux 2007 (using the Mandriva One installation CD) on it and it detected all the hardware without a hitch. Windows XP (which I need to run a Windows-only VMWare admin client) was a completely different story. It reported three things that it could not detect: the Ethernet card, the soundcard, and the video adaptor.

We were able to install the drivers for the Ethernet card by connecting a co-worker's USB disk, and then we had networking, after consulting the Linux installation for its type. Linux said the soundcard is an AC'97 one, but installing these drivers from the Realtek site (first hit on Google for "AC97"), caused the computer to abruptly reboot in the middle of the installation. The second time it happened, I filed a report to the Microsoft site, but they gave me the same link with the drivers.

And I'm not the only one who have encountered this problem.. I wonder what I should do. I'll go mad if I can't listen to music while working on the computer, especially when working on a crappy OS like Windows.

2007-01-03: Review of bloglines (Web-based Feed Aggregators - Part 1)

Lately I've been looking for a web-based RSS/Atom reader. This is because I've started working and want to catch up on my feeds from work as well as from home. The first such service I tried (yesterday) is Bloglines. Registration was straightforward and worked. However, I then noticed several problems with it:

  1. It only has top-level categories to categorise the feeds, not sub-categories (and sub-sub-categories, etc.) like Akregator (the feed reader for KDE which I'm using at home) has.
  2. Possibly as a result of it, or due to a different bug, it failed to properly import the OPML file that akregator exported.
  3. Bloglines displays many recent messages (200 or so) from the archive of messages of the feed that it keeps in one huge page, that takes a lot of time to load, and overloads the memory.
  4. Some functions failed to work in Konqueror 3.5.x and I had to switch to Firefox.

In short, I didn't find it good enough for me to use. I think I'll try Google Reader next and then maybe try to install Gregarius and see if I like it. (even though I'd prefer a hosted solution).

2007-01-05: Book Review of "The Princess Bride" by William Goldman

As mentioned in a previous blog entry of mine someone had bought me two books out of my Amazon.com wishlist: "Perl Best Practices" and "The Princess Bride". I've already read "Perl Best Practices" and reviewed it. Recently I also finished reading "The Princess Bride", and would like to review it here for completeness sake.

As you may know, The movie "The Princess Bride" is my favourite movie, and someone on IRC told me the book was even better, so I looked forward to read it. The book is well-written and kept me captivated. It's funny and engaging. It's very different from the movie, and except for the necessary parts that were omitted from the movie, is written in a different style. I felt that some of the dialogues became sharper in the movie, but the dialogues in the book are also good.

Nevertheless, I'm not sure that I like it better than the movie, and feel a bit disappointed. However, I can still highly recommend it.

More information about the book can be found in this Wikipedia article. Happy reading!

2007-01-05: KMail Tip: Quick Search Bar

I recalled finding the KMail Quick Search bar very convenient, but it has disappeared from my KMail installation some time ago. Then I noticed it was present in my KMail installation at work, so I decided to investigate. Turns out one can switch it on and off using the "Settings → Show Quick Search" menu bar option.

The Quick Search bar is very useful: by setting the Status drop-down to "Unread", one can see only the threads which have unread messages. One can also filter based on other criteria. And naturally, one can also filter according to search keywords. If you're using KMail, make sure you check it out.

2007-01-05: Two Productive Days

Yesterday at work, I tried to configure the soundcard again, this time using the Windows "Add New Hardware" wizard, and it still rebooted the machine. Then my supervisor came and told me I can just use Linux for what I need to do. So I did. So I was able to finally write some code. At the end of the work day it compiled. Yay! I'm going to test it next week.

I left work early in order to go to the Israeli Perl Mongers meeting. Since I arrived at home early, I did some work on my old "Graham's Function" Perl code. Then I went to the meeting.

The meeting was very nice. Shmuel Fomberg gave an interesting talk about Perl/Tk. It didn't renew too much to me, but it was still fun. Then Gabor Szabo gave a talk about Perl 6, which from what I understood was a port of his Perl 5 course to Perl 6. Several things there sparked a lot of discussion, especially the junctions. For example, it turns out that in Perl 6 "if ((3|4) == 3) { ... }" will execute the condition, but so will "if ((3|4) != 3) { ... }". That's because the "|" means "any", and so it tests whether any of the operands is equal to 3 or whether any of them is not. Another interesting feature is the chained conditionals: "if (3 < 7 == 7 < 10 > 8)" will evaluate to true in Perl 6.

I left the meeting prematurely along with my ride (Shmuel), so I may have missed some more interesting stuff. The slides are online, however. I spent the rest of the evening reading the 2006 Perl Advent Calendar, which while I took part in preparing, did not have a chance of fully reading until then.

The whole work week was sunny and bright, but the weekend was and is going to be stormy, so I cannot go out a lot. In any case, today I woke up relatively early (before 9 AM), and decided to perform many outstanding tasks on the computer. As it turned out, I performed quite a lot of them, and felt I was very productive. Among the things I did were:

  1. Schedule two upcoming Tel Aviv Linux Club lectures, after talking with the future presenters.
  2. Wrote 4 blog entries (in three different blogs) and decided against writing on one topic I kept in my todo list.
  3. Researched how to get QClam to connect to clamd instead of using clamscan, which is very resource intensive - just tell it to use clamdscan instead of clamscan. I also hacked on QClam a bit in the process.
  4. Added a new link to my "Stop Using Internet Explorer" page.
  5. Read the latest "People behind KDE" feature"
  6. Added some books to my Amazon.com wishlist.
  7. Reported two bugs in perl-5.8.x.
  8. Continued porting my Graham's Function program (see above) to Common Lisp. This time I also dabbled a bit with creating new Lisp classes and methods.
  9. Right now, I've started the upgrade process to upgrade my system to Mandriva 2007.1 Alpha.

So I think I can give myself a positive mental feedback for all this. Some days I feel like I'm not doing anything, but that was certainly not the case for these last two days.

2007-01-05: IceWM Exile

Well, the upgrade to Mandriva 2007.1 Alpha went relatively flawlessly. urpmi was successful. However, then I ran into this KWin (KDE's window manager) bug, which made using KDE unusable for me. So I've switched to using IceWM and am now speaking from an IceWM exile. Nevertheless, I am still using all the nifty KDE applications that I'm used to using so it's not that bad. I still miss the KDE environment, though.

Today I've placed my QClam modifications online, and notified the author about it. I also installed the Inkscape trunk, found a bug, and confirmed or said I could not reproduce a few others. I read LWN, and added several links to the Vi Humour page on the Text Editors' Wiki (so no one should say that "Vi is serious.".).

I also tested bleadperl (The development version of perl5). I was able to install the CPANPLUS bundle, but installing Task::Sites::ShlomiFish was dead-on-arrival because of a Params::Validate compilation problem. I didn't feel I was as productive as yesterday, but today things tended to get in my way.

Well, I'm off to write a report about the recent Perl Mongers meeting.

2007-01-10: Gtk+ Apps Tip: Eliminating the AP_SPI_REGISTRY Warnings

After I upgraded to Mandriva 2007.1 Alpha, I got the following warnings whenever invoking gvim:

Bonobo accessibility support initialized
GTK Accessibility Module initialized

** (vim:23983): WARNING **: AT_SPI_REGISTRY was not started at session startup.

** (vim:23983): WARNING **: IOR not set.

** (vim:23983): WARNING **: Could not locate registry

They annoyed me because when running gvim from the command line, I want it to be as silent as possible according to the "Silence is Golden" principle. As I found it it happens with all other Gtk+ apps. So I looked for a way to eliminate them. There was nothing on the Mandriva bug tracker, but a quick Google search yielded this thread on the fedora-devel mailing list. This message there yielded the following workaround:

gconftool-2 -s "/desktop/gnome/interface/accessibility" false --type bool

Now I'm no longer getting these warnings. Note that I don't know what is the implication of the command, and it may cancel out accessibility altogether, which may be critical for some users. You have been warned.

2007-01-11: Shell Tip: Finding All Executable Files under a Directory

In order to calculate a list of all files (not directories) with any of the executable bits set in UNIX, one can use the following command:

find . -type f -perm /111

Note that a -perm argument that starts with "/" may be a GNU extension, and find2perl at least does not accept it. In any case, its meaning is to find files with any bit set.

2007-01-12: Tip: Possible Solution to an Ethernet LAN Throughput Drop

Recently, my home LAN experienced a sharp drop in the SMB throughput. I then checked it with an HTTP transfer, and it was also very low (~800 Kilo-Bytes-per-second, or less than 10 Mega-bits-per-second). However, we were able to resolve this by restarting our switch. Now our speeds are back to their normal high.

So this solution may work for you too in case something like that happens.

2007-01-12: Finding a Lion in the Desert (and Other Mandriva Bugs)

How do you find a lion in the desert? You build a fence around the half of the desert, the lion is found in and confine it to half of the desert. Then you build another fence in the half of where the lion is to confine it to a quarter of the desert, and another fence and another fence until you fully confine the lion.

I've used this technique (otherwise known as Binary Search) to isolate this Mandriva bug. I knew that when running my configurtion of the KDE environment, my windows jittered, while when not running the KDE windows manager, or in a new user's KDE setup, everything was OK. And when moving away ~/.kde it was also OK. So I had to find what in .kde causes that.

At first I guessed it was some file in ~/.kde/share/config. This was indeed the case, as a fresh .kde with my original config directory copied on top exhibited the problem. Then I incrementally copied files from the "bad" config directory to the "good one". I started with a-j, and l-z and they did not reproduce the problem, as most of the config files start with k. Then I used several ranges of letters that start with k. So I covered k[a-k]* (not reproduced), k[l-z]* (reproduced), k[l-s]* (not reproduced), k[t-z]* (reproduced), k[t-v]* (not reproduced), and k[w-z]* (reproduced). Then I guessed it was probably kwinrc and indeed it reproduced the problem alone.

Now, my kwinrc was long so I started deleting directives out of it to further isolate the problem. After a long time of deleting and keeping several "kwinrc.good" and "kwinrc.bad" files, I discovered that it happens only with the Keramik windows style, and the focus-follows-mouse option. So a workaround for that is to use a different windows' style. All of this took a long time.

Other bugs I discovered:

  1. a mikmod -n bug - this was an old bug in the libmikmod core code, which only surfaced on this update. It was fixed since it was reported.
  2. xine cannot play this MOD file, or this one, and probably many others. (As I discovered now, MOD Archive contains at least 7 different versions of the Airwolf theme, all of them different from what I have. ) This bug was not reported yet.
  3. mplayer -ao arts no logner works. This change was intentional and I spoke with the packager who did it about it via email. mplayer without the -ao flag or with -ao alsa works fine in KDE.
  4. The Mandriva Galaxy (Classic) Theme flickers when the text in the title decoration of the window changes. This is especially annoying with a new kmail message that updates the title according to the subject. This bug was not reported, either.

On a different note, I ran Mandriva One on a machine at home, with AIGLX enabled. The 3-D Windows' management effects are very cool!

2007-01-13: Windows 98 on a Computer with 2.5 GB of RAM

My current x86 computer originally had 512 MB of RAM and has a hard-disk dedicated to Windows 98. However, recently I've been running Linux exclusively on it, and also added another 2 GB of RAM. Today, my father needed to access his old email, and so we needed to boot from Windows. I arranged a grub boot configuration for it and booted it. I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.20-rc5 so it came at the right time. Windows came up the logo was displayed, but eventually a text message like "Insufficient memory to run Windows" was displayed.

I tried to eliminate some problem - I cleared some space out of drive D (normally used for data), set the BIOS to boot the Windows disk, and tried again. Same problem. After discussing it with a friend and googling a bit, I found this page that says that win98 will "freak" if there is more than 2 GB of memory.

If Windows 98 cannot handle more than 2 GB of memory that's fine, but why does it have to freak with an incorrect error message. Can't it utilise only a subset of this memory? Well, I guess that if we'd like to run Windows on this machine again, we'll need to upgrade to Windows XP or whatever. Oh well.

2007-01-13: Exaile - Gtk+-based Amarok Clone

As I read LWN today, I learned about Exaile, which is a Gtk+-based clone of Amarok. Amarok is the best Audio player I've ever used, and so people who are not using KDE and would rather not run Amarok which is KDE-based may wish to give Exaile a test drive. A caveat is that I haven't tried Exaile myself, nor intend to, because I am using Amarok on top of KDE and am pretty happy with this configuration.

The LWN report on the article where I found the link may also be of interest, but may still be subscribers-only content.

2007-01-16: Tip: Extracting the Files out of an .rpm Package without Installing it

In order to extract the files out of an .rpm package (a format for installable packages popular on Linux), without installing it, one can use the following command:

rpm2cpio apache-base-2.2.2-0.1.20060mdk.i586.rpm |
    (mkdir -p unpacked ; cd unpacked ; cpio -i --make-directories)

I've used the apache-base rpm as an example, so substitute its name. After this command all the files contained in the RPM will be under the "unpacked" directory. Enjoy!

2007-01-20: XML Tip: Namespaces

It is in fact possible to have an XML element of an undefined XML namespace inside a document with a default defined namespace. To do that one can use the attribute xmlns="" on an element inside. So one must be prepared to deal with this edge-case.

2007-01-20: Tip: Incremental Devel-Cover Update

Devel-Cover is a Perl module to test for tests' coverage. What you do is run your test scripts through it, and it gives you a report of which code was covered by them.

Now let's suppose you ran all your test scripts, and now modified one test file in order to get better coverage. In this case, you may not need to run everything again. Just do from the command line:

# Run the test script through Devel::Cover.
# You can also use prove instead of runprove

HARNESS_PERL_SWITCHES="-MDevel::Cover" runprove --blib t/0.9-strict.t

# Update the display.

cover

It worked for me several times, and it's a huge time-saver.

2007-01-22: Google Reader (Web-based Feed Aggregators - Part 2)

Having been looking for a good web-based feed aggregator, I decided to give Google Reader a try. Importing my feeds from akregator was done successfully and I was able to fully utilise the reader almost immediately. All in all, I found it extremely suitable to what I need, and therefore decided to stick with it. The only (minor) problems with it that I encountered so far are:

But like I said, I found what I'm looking for, and am going to stop now. So I'm happily using Google Reader to stay keep up with my feeds.

2007-01-22: Some Nice Songs and Videoclips

An online friend referred me to this unusal song and its accompanying videoclip on YouTube ("Starz in Their Eyes" by "Just Jack"), and to Voodoo Child by Rogue Traders (an Australian Band), which I liked better after hearing it for the first time. And its clip is also interesting.

coyoty reports on a new animated videoclip featuring a dancing she-fox (or a she-wolf) from the online comics "Freefall" on YouYube.

If you're interested in hearing some geek gangsta rap look no further than Leech Axss. So far I liked his "Hax That F**k" song. Another geek song is the song about the UPS debugger.

And finally, I found this video of the Bee Gees performing Tragedy using a Google search.

Enjoy!

2007-01-22: Bash History Problem (and its Workaround)

On my system, I have set bash to have 25,000 lines of bash history, instead of the usual default. Whether because of that or due to some other reason, I sometimes encounter a problem where the history gets reset to a very small number of lines, which makes it unusable. I decided to workaround the problem like this:

  1. I set up a local Subversion repository to hold the history of the history file. (Using svnadmin).
  2. I committed the initial copy of a good bash history file inside.
  3. I set up the following cronjob:

    22 * * * *   bash /home/shlomi/bin/backup-bash-history.bash
    

    That runs every hour and runs the following script:

    #!/bin/bash
    backup_base="$HOME/Backup/bash-history"
    trunk="$backup_base/trunk"
    # The \cp and -f is to overwrite the file
    \cp -f "$HOME/.bash_history" "$trunk/bash-history/bash_history"
    svn commit -q -m \
        "Commiting the bash_history as of $(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S)" \
        "$trunk"
    

    Which copies the bash history file over to the local copy and commits it into the repository.

Since I started using this setup 9 days ago, my bash history did not get reset. Maybe Satan knows he's being watched?

2007-01-27: Local host no longer 'localhost'

Well, until now I've been too lazy to change my Linux workstations' hostname to anything except localhost.localdomain. However, lately, as I went over the ssh public keys I left in the authrized_keys file of my remote servers, I realised that I could not tell which machine each key belonged to, because they all had the hostname "localhost.localdomain" on them.

A meaningful hostname identification may be advantageous in other similar contexts. Thus, I changed my home's hostname to telaviv1.shlomifish.org and my work's to shlomif1.tehutinetworks.co.il. This way, I can better manage my SSH keys, know where everything came from, and properly identify the machine on which scripts run. No localhost for you!

2007-01-27: Funny Video: Pachelbel's Rant

Check out Rob Paravonian's Pachelbel's Rant (about Pachelbel's Canon in D Major). An MSN Messenger buddy referred me to it, and as I watched it, I laughed so much that I disturbed my sister who sat at the other computer in the room. I watched it again yesterday along with my father, and still laughed a lot.

Highly recommended!

2007-01-27: Tip: Inner Functions in Common Lisp

A common paradigm in Scheme, and other functional programming languages is to have helper functions (or inner functions or closures) inside top-level functions:

(define (sum mylist)
  (define (helper rest result)
    (if (null? rest)
      result
      (helper (cdr rest) (+ result (car rest)))))
  (helper mylist 0))

(display (sum '(5 6 150)))
(newline)

Here, we have a sum function, which calls defines a recursive helper function inside and then calls it. I tried to do the same in Common Lisp using a nested (DEFUN) but instead got a warning from the compiler: STYLE-WARNING: redefining HELPER in DEFUN . As it turns out, (DEFUN) inside a function still defines a function on the outer scope. To achieve the same in Common Lisp, one has to use the FLET or LABELS forms. FLET defines several inner function that cannot refer to themselves (or can only refer to the previous ones), and LABELS allows self-reference. (Thanks for Riastradh from Freenode for pointing me to them.)

So the equivalent code in Common Lisp would be:

(defun sum (mylist)
  (labels
    (
     (helper (%rest result)
             (if (null %rest)
               result
               (helper (cdr %rest) (+ result (car %rest))))))
    (helper mylist 0)))

(format t "~A~%" (sum '(5 6 150)))

2007-01-28: Vim tip: Searching for the word under the cursor

A vim tip that I learned from my supervisor at work today is this: you can search for the next occurence of the word under the cursor using "*". There's also "#" which searches backwards, and there are other search commands which seem useful on the same page.

If you want to jump to a tag you generated using ctags you can use the "Ctrl+]" or the ":tag" commands (":tag" can be abbreviated to ":ta").

And I'll leave you with the following vim macro which I wrote. See if you can guess what it does. I inserted some linebreaks but there are none in the original version.

map <F2> i<CR><CR><div class="entry" title="<CR>
<ESC>!$date +\%Y-\%m-\%d<CR>k$Jx$a: <ESC>mda"><CR><CR><CR>
</div><CR><ESC>`da

2007-02-01: Vim Tip: Jumping to Positions in Other Files using Uppercase Marks

In Vim lowercase marks are specific to each file, while uppercase marks are global. Thus, one can type mA, mB, mC etc. to set such a mark in a certain position in a fileand then use `A or 'A to jump to it even from a different file. This is useful to keep several bookmarks in several files and jump from one to another.

Since one can use ` and ' as a motion command, I'm not sure how a jump to an uppercase mark from a different file is useful as an argument to a motion-accepting command such as y or d. However uppercase marks are still useful for what I demonstrated.

2007-02-01: Vim Tip: t/f/F/T

Third Vim tip in a row on this blog (must be a record for me) and this time a blast from the past. Well, at least something I learned a long time ago, but many people are not aware of.

By using the "f" command and then a character one can move to the next occurence of that character on the same line. So "ts" will move to the next occurence of the letter "s". "t" is the same except it moves to the character before that. "F" and "T" are for moving backwards. You can specify an optional count for jumping to the N'th occurence in the same line.

This for example is useful for quickly selecting tokens. If for example, you have a C-style string delimited by double-quotes, you can position your character to its start using the "f" command and then right (The right arrow key or "l"), and then select up to the end of the string using yt" , or alternatively replace it with something else using ct". Alternatively, one can select the string including the quotes, by positioning the cursor at the opening quote and typing yf".

For more information consult :help f.

2007-02-02: Rant: LiveJournal's Menus Don't Work with Konqueror

I've reported the fact that LiveJournal's new JavaScript drop-down menus no longer work properly in Konqueror (at least not versions 3.5.x), which is my browser of choice to the LJ support. They work perfectly fine in Mozilla Firefox 2.0, but I don't suppose they can afford to ignore such a popular and universal browser.

The problem still exists. I'm still not sure if it's a Konqueror limitation for which a workaround is in place, or a non-standard code on the part inside LiveJournal. The Post button still works (thanks god) and that's most of what I need, but it's still annoying that I cannot use the menus.

Now I'll try to ask on the IRC if anyone knows what causes the problem. And I wonder whether it affects Safari on Mac OS X.

2007-02-07: Vim Tip: Using Registers in the Command Line Mode

I have several vim tips in the pipe, so I think I'll start with one. If you're editing commands in the ex-like Command Line Mode of vim (the one that's displayed after you press ":" in Normal Mode), you can use the Ctrl+R family of keybindings to insert registers and other text there. So for example, if you wish to search for a word, you can do yaw in the buffer, and then type :grep -r <CTRL+R>" ..

Since this pattern is so common, the vim developers already thought of it, and you can simply position the cursor on the word and type :grep -r <CTRL+R><CTRL+W> .. Ctrl+R;Ctrl+A searches for WORDS.

Note that Ctrl+R by default executes the pasted expression as a mini vim program. If you want to insert the literal string, use Ctrl+R;Ctrl+R. Better safe than sorry.

2007-02-07: "Linux Genuine Advantage"

Whatsup reports (in Hebrew) on the parodical site Linux Genuine Advantage. Warning: do not install the source code that is available for download. Anyway, it's a pretty funny site.

2007-02-08: Vim Tip: Useful Buffers Commands

Vim supports the concept of buffers, which are basically separate files that you can edit simultaneously in the same editor instance. I normally used the commands :bn (next buffer), :bp (previous buffer) and :bd (delete buffer), but I discovered other useful ones a few days ago.

One can display a list of buffers using the :buffers command, which can also be abbreviated as :ls. Besides each buffer is a number. One can then use the :b $NUMBER command to switch to that buffer. Note that if you're using gvim then the Buffers drop-down menu (Alt+B) will display a list of buffers with their numbers and will allow you to select a buffer to switch.

I'm off to a friend's wedding. Happy vimming!

2007-02-10: PostNuke tip: Pruning/Filtering the Submitted Stories/Articles Queue

I have a PostNuke installation over at iglu.org.il, which receives many story submissions that contain nothing but spam. In order to help me get rid of all of them, I wrote a WWW-Mechanize script that deletes the submitted stories/articles from the queue one by one. However, it took it a long time to even delete one article, even when running on the localhost.

After looking at the PostNuke code, I realised that the table "pn_queue" (where "pn_" is the prefix of your PostNuke tables) contain these articles. So I tried running "DELETE FROM pn_queue" in the MySQL shell, and it indeed worked and pruned my queue. If you're interested in filtering only selected articles, you can use an SQL WHERE clause. This statement finishes in a shorter time than it takes my WWW-Mechanize script to delete one article.

That put aside, I'm looking for a better way to prevent spam from being submitted to the PostNuke queue in the first place.

On a slightly different note, I'd like to add that one should not copy binary executables that were compiled on a Mandriva Cooker system to a Debian Sarge system, because they are incompatible. I may have lost some of mail completely for several hours, because I did that with QClam, which caused it to segfault with a strange error.

2007-02-10: Which Pages Link to Your Site using the Google Webmaster Tools

I was always frustrated that the Google back-links list (using the link: operator) was very incomplete. Well, apparently Google listened and they now provide webmasters a complete list of backlinks to pages on their site, using the Google webmaster tools.

Using it, I found out that most pages that link to the top of my site are my own links at my signatures and stuff, and that someone quoted something I said about re-inventing wheels in his signature (in an Italian forum), and then someone wondered about the origin of this quote and someone found it on Google, and linked to the page on my site.

2007-02-12: Tip: Where to Find O'Reilly's Hacks Series

hacks.oreilly.com which used to point to O'Reilly's "Hacks" series, now points to hackszine instead. The original page can be found in http://www.oreilly.com/store/series/hacks.csp - the O'Reilly Hacks series instead.

Hope it helps.

2007-02-17: What to do when your Internet Connection is Down?

In the last two days there have been frequent Internet outages for ADSL subscribers in Central Israel. Today I've been stuck working on the computer with no Internet connection for a few hours after I woke up. At first it was maddening as I couldn't find anything worthy to do. But then I worked on my homesite by working on the Subversion working copy. I had added many descriptions to presentations, revamped existing pages, and converted my Hebrew and English bio to use the same source.

So it kept me busy and distracted when the Internet was down. Still, having no Internet connection feels like I'm missing a limb.

Note: as I was going to post this entry, I got disconnected again. <sigh />. After I wrote this entry I spent some time on my unified DocBook/XML building system, and was able to convert all my XML documents to use it. Another thing to keep me busy without an Internet connection.

2007-02-20: Vim Tip - Text Object Selection

The Vim text editor has a set of selection commands for selecting various parts of the text while being inside them. Some of them are very useful - here are some examples:

  1. To indent the inside of a block (after a copy and paste for example) use >i} or <i}. It beats writing >% and then doing <<%<<
  2. To change a string use ci".
  3. To delete a block use da}.
  4. To copy a paragraph use yap.

Etc. Oh and try typing :he holy-grail in Vim (this tip courtesy of LeoNerd from Freenode who found it).

2007-02-22: Typing Perl Code Using Vista's Voice Recognition

This video in which someone tries to write a Perl script using Vista's voice recognition made me lough very hard. A link to it was spotted on the perl5-porters mailing list. I think it's a huge step forward in Perl programmers' productivity.

2007-02-22: Who said Weblogs were not Useful?

Some people believe writing a weblog is useless. However, in the past week I've encountered a case which disproves it. A while ago, I ranted about my failed attempt to get the sound to work on my work's Windows system. Well, someone replied to it. It took me time to digest his message, but a few days ago when I followed its advice, I was able to get my sound to work.

So posting this rant on my blog benefitted me in helping me resolve the problem. And this is not including the times when I found answers to problems I had on people's blogs where they posted after resolving them and helped me as well (but probably not directly themselves).

So if you have a technical problem - blog about it (not before some due-diligence of course). Who knows, maybe someone who reads your blog will know the answer.

2007-02-24: Hacktivity Log

I've decided to make another weblog entry enumerating all the boring things I've been working on lately, based on items ticked off from my daily to-do lists. Feel free to skip this entry and read Reddit instead.

  1. Installed Plagger on Mandriva from RPMs
  2. Worked on Test::Run
  3. Added Google AdSense to DocBook/XML-generated essays, and to the Quad-Pres-generated presentations. Hopefully it will both result in more AdSense revenue for my site as well as not be a deterrent.
  4. Prepared the slides for a presentation I'm giving to the Israeli Pythoneers about the Joel Test.
  5. Did some other work on my site.
  6. Pruned bugs from the XML::RSS queue.
  7. Blogged, and blogged and blogged some more. ("When in doubt - blog!")

Well that's it for now. Now to get some more work done.

2007-02-26: From the Big Software Flops Department

This post to the Joel on Software forum mentions the portal www.italia.it, which took 3 years and 45 million Euros (!) to develop. One of the later comments cites some sources for this.

Oh, and it was made by IBM...

2007-03-03: Israeli Internet Censorship Law Proposal

Gal Mor reports on YnetNews.com on a new proposal for an Israeli Internet censorship law, which will require ISPs to implement censorship at the ISP level, and the surfers to identify themselves using bio-metric means and passwords to prevent minors from viewing sites with unsuitable content. Also see a discussion on the Israeli Linux mailing list.

This law is very bad and should better be stopped so please help spread the word.

2007-03-03: Pal-Kal

A while ago the top story in Israel was about the floor of an events hall, that collapsed during a wedding causing many casualties. Now, this floor was built using an Israeli invented construction method called "Pal-Kal", and as a result Pal-Kal became a synonym for an inherently bad technology. For example tddpirate often says "MS-Windows is the Pal-Kal of the PC world." in his email signatures. (see for instance this message), and once during a conversation when we discussed developing programs in Visual Basic, someone said it results in "The Pal-Kal effect".

However, it is possible this entire phrase is mis-attributed. The floor of the hall probably collapsed because several columns were removed some time after the construction, and not because it was built using the Pal-Kal method. As further evidence, many other Israeli buildings have been constructed using it, and all these building have been fine since the accident has occurred.

So now we have to find an alternative to "Pal-Kal". This shirt says "MySQL is the WinME of Databases". However, "MS-Windows is the Windows ME of the PC World" makes little sense. I guess for better or for worse Pal-Kal is going to stick regardless of how much factual its origin is.

2007-03-05: I Know What You Did Last Weekend

Previously, I had contemplated taking a Thursday off so I'll have an extended weekend at home for concentrated hacktivity. However, because of Purim we were given this Sunday off, and we also have a 9-day vacation on Passover starting the 1 of April. So I guess I'll delay this plan.

So without further ado, here are some of the things I did this weekend:

  1. I went biking once on Friday and once on Sunday. It's been a few weeks since I last biked, and it felt good to do it again. On Sunday I crossed the Yarkon river to ride on the other side. This time I was able to cross it again, on the "Rosh Hatzipor" bridge.

  2. Chatted on the IRC and on Instant Messenging. I did too much IRC chat for my own good, but it was a lot of fun. Now I think I have IRC hangover.

  3. I prepared Mandriva RPMs for XML::Feed and its dependencies. My next plans are to prepare RPMs for rlwrap. I'd like to pack the dependencies of the pugs and then the CPAN dependencies of pugs' "make smoke" target but one of the modules there requires a newer version of "Test Harness" than the one that is present in perl-5.8.8 and is placed in the Mandriva "perl" distribution. If anyone has any good ideas on how to resolve this problem, please let me know.

  4. I backed up the hard-disk. New month, new backup.

  5. Blogged.

  6. Released a new version of the File-FTS module with better kwalitee.

  7. Publicised the next Tel Aviv Linux Club presentation.

  8. Read more chapters out of the "Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook" book I'm reading now on my Safari subscription (more about it later), and some other stuff.

  9. Reviewed an article an IRC correspondent wrote about Perl 6, and worked a bit on some of my own articles.

  10. Worked a bit on my personal web-site, on perl-begin and on the web-site of Hamakor.

  11. Made svn status for my home Subversion repository happy.

What didn't I do? I didn't do as much serious hacking as I hoped to, nor was satisfied with the amount of work I did on perl-begin or on the Hamakor's site. But otherwise, it was a productive weekend.

2007-03-06: Three Vim Tips

More silly Vim tips! In order to make your search case-insensitive use the \c modifier. In order to have vim display line numbers use :set nu. And speaking of the :set options, you can use :set nu! (with a trailing question-mark) to toggle the option between on and off, :set nu? to query its status, and :set nonu (with a leading "no") to set it off.

Happy vimming!

2007-03-09: What I Did Today

Today I spent the morning doing several small computer-related errands: sending emails, updating web-sites, and cleaning up my vipe home directory.

Then I updated the packages in my Mandriva Cooker system, and as I went to read the LWN.net feed, found out there's a new -rc kernel. So I decided to upgrade to it, while I was at it. After compiling it and running "make modules_install" and "make install" as root, I rebooted the machine. Trying the new kernel did not work and it complained about being unable to mount /dev/sda1, and before that about a bad initrd. My trusty Mandriva One CD to the rescue, and I found that there are .old initrd's files in the /boot directory, and moved one of them on top of the new initrd. Then I was able to boot it? But why did "make install" cause that.

I started debugging the bootloader scripts to see why the hanged, and found out the culprit was with a broken gunzip and zcat. As it turned out they broke on Mandriva Cooker. I talked about it with the guy who broke it on the IRC, and he told me he uploaded an update (which wasn't on the mirrors back then). So, per advice from someone else on the IRC, I downgraded to the 2007.0 gzip package, and used it to install the kernel properly (2.6.21-rc3-git4 this time, as I tried to see if it fixed the problem I was having.).

This took the other half of the day, and kept me busy. In any case, there's now an updated gzip package so if you're on Cooker/Mandriva 2007.1 and have the gzip-1.3.11-1mdv2007.1 package, then make sure you upgrade.

Today I was also able to catch up with my huge User Friendly backlog (of over a year), and to read (or otherwise mark as read) all the RSS feeds in Google Reader. So it wasn't completely wasted.

2007-03-13: Facts I Discovered in my Log Analyzer Report

As it turns out, Internet Explorer 5.0 accounts for 21.34% of the hits on my homesite in February. That's strange because I figure most people are using Internet Explorer 6.0 or 7.0 by now. Maybe it's caused by changing the browser identification. Firefox is second place with 19.11% of the hits. :-). The MSNBot spider generated 12.40% of the traffic, vs. Googlebot's 3.32%.

An even cooler fact is that I discovered my web site contains the first hit for a Google search on the query "about myself". I wonder how long it will last.

2007-03-23: "Those who can - do; those who can't - complain"

I always thought that "Those who can - do; those who can't - complain." was said or at least attributed to Linus Torvalds. However, I could not find any place in Google with this search. Then I looked for it in Google Groups and as the oldest found this post to comp.emacs by an obscure "Jonn Beudin" where he says it in 14 August 1989, three years before the Linux kernel effort started and Linus Torvalds became posted and started posting.

The post reads:

I think you owe the implementors of emacs an appology. You have very
clearly not made an attempt to read the documentation. Instead you
flame. Please be more considerate in the future. I feel bad when I read
about freeloaders (:-) like yourself cutting up something they didn't
contribute to. I use emacs and am damn glad some people had the generosity
and sense to post it. "Those who can, do; those who can't, complain."

So it wasn't Linux originally after all. I wonder if the quotes there are meant to quote another source, or are the "It's an aphorism" indicator. So it may possibly be a meme.

I found many other variations on the "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches" on Google, some of them Slashdot related. However, the Shaw original is not true, as teaching requires even more effort to do properly than doing something productive. The Talmud says "I learned a lot from my teachers, more from my friends, and from my students, the most of all." Teaching is the best way of learning, and I'm speaking from experience.

2007-03-26: Cool Cats

There's a tri-color (probably female) cat hanging around the Coffee to Go, at the main entrance to Tel Aviv University. What she does is pass through the people sitting there, eating and drinking, while possibly looking for leftovers to eat. She's pretty friendly.

There's a cat at the lawn outside the university right near the "Social Studies building". I can see him (or her) consistenly when biking through on Haim Levanon st. He's usually sitting on the edge of the stone fence, just resting.

When I passed through the other day, he was on the sidewalk, and acting strange, going around in circles. Maybe he was looking for something. I got off the bike and patted him (he let me), but he wasn't content with it either.

There's a female cat in Schreiber in TAU (where we hold the Tel Aviv Linux club presentations). People call her "Bruriyah" and she is considered the "Be'alim" (= owner) of Shcreiber. She's half-black half-white and not tri-color.

2007-03-28: Message from the Messiah to the Hizbullah

Dear members of the Hizbullah,

You are the party of God - you have declared yourself to be the chosen, the selected, the noble - the ones who've chosen to follow Allah out of their own free will, and for the betterment of all his followers. Yet, Nasarallah is nothing but a conduit - he follows the order of the Syrians and Iranians and transfers them to you. Who gives them these orders? The Syrians are led by the generals, who have nothing but a fake and diminishing ego (a.k.a self-esteem) to guide them. Iran is led by the Ayattulahs who believe they are guided by Allah, but are in fact guided by their own weak awarenesses and by the politics and control of their fellows. Hitler did not control the other Nazi leaders, as much as he was controlled by them. Neither is any single Ayatalluh.

Listen to me! I am Shlomi Fish. The man. The legend. The Eternal Jew. I am the Messiah, and I am the most Powerful man on Earth. I have studied and perfected the arts of applied Ethics, applied learning and applied logic. Follow me, and become a Messiah as well!

You were always told to follow God, and be a good person, because God can punish you. However, God will not punish you no matter what you do. Instead, you should follow God out of his love: it feels good to be good. It feels good to do good things. It feels good to be productive and independent. Then, and only then, it feels good to be alive. Your "leaders" do no good, so they are miserable and wish everyone else to be. Don't listen to them!

I accept only orders from God. By God, I mean, the absolute reality, logic, and ethics. I am fully in control of myself, and God is by my side. Nasarallah and friends, on the other hand, are completely out of control. They cannot control themselves, yet they believe they can control others.

I, the Messiah, orders you to immediately stop this nonsense, and ditch your "elite" for being the idiotic, incompetent, cowards they are. Throw them to the streets, but do not harm them in any way. Justice should be pursued at almost all costs. Revenge, on the other, should be avoided. I wouldn't kill someone who killed one man, or someone who killed a million people. They deserve to live forever like everyone else, and after having to act like benevolent people for enough time, they too will become ones, and will regret their past acts. This is real justice.

Your leaders tell you that after you die you will gain eternal life in paradise. But how can you know that this is the case? Your mind cannot survive without your body. So death means sleeping without ever waking up. It means the eternal termination of your consciousness. Nothing can be scarier.

With me, I suggest you a better idea: let's work together on having youth-rejuvanating biological immortality. This way you can be young forever, while not contradicting the laws of nature. It cannot be done by killing people, but it can be done by freedom, the joy of creation, happiness and, yes, Capitalism. Perhaps you'll die before achieving this. But at least you'll have a long, happy and productive life, instead of the short and unsatisfying life as a peon at the control of the stupid and weak.

Once Lebanon is liberated, Solving will move on to achieve bigger goals. First we'll take Tehran. Then we'll take Beijing. Vampires of the world, unite!

This message is under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (CC-by). Please share, distribute, translate, link to and help spread the world.

2007-03-28: I Got Fired

This news is a bit, but I've been fired on Monday. I'd not reveal the full details here, but can say that it was because it seems we were incompatible. I found it a bit shocking because I actually liked this job, learned many new things, the pay was good, the people were friendly and often amusing, and they were very professional as far as technical excellence were concerned. I wish them the best of luck.

My main problem (and the reason I got fired) was that they were relatively clueless as far as software management was concerned. In fact, they were not up to date with most of the contemporary advice I was familiar with, (most of which I found very good):

  1. Joel on Software
  2. The Cathedral and the Bazaar and other relevant writings by ESR.
  3. Extreme Programming
  4. Paul Graham
  5. Others

As usual, taking these things with a grain of salt is necessary. All of them together may be contradictory. However, taking some good advice is good because "you should always learn from other people's mistakes - you won't have time to do them all yourself". I gave my boss at the workplace this list, which I'll hope he'll read as much as possible from.

Right now, I'm not looking for another full time job, but rather want to work on a top-secret project, and catch up with my essay ideas and other blogging, as well as, hopefully, do some coding. If you can offer me short-term gigs doing something that hopefully will not take too much time to become good, I'm all ears. If you want to interest me with work for no payment, or for very low pay (like 50 NIS/hour), forget it - my time is far too precious.

I'm feeling a bit relieved and disappointed now at the same time. Hopefully, I'll get over the disappointed and lousy feeling part.

2007-03-29: Ubuntu and the "Not Invented Here Syndrome"

Maybe it's just me, but I believe Ubuntu and Canonical have a severe case of the Not Invented Here. Instead of building on one of the three most suitable distributions at the time (each with advantages, disadvantages and often trade-offs): Debian, and Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrake Linux) and MEPIS, they have forked Debian, and created an improved but incompatible version. Furthermore, they have their own proprietary web-based translation tool, their own proprietary bug-tracker (what's wrong with Bugzilla, Trac, or Request Tracker), they had two version control system ("Bazaar" and "Bazaar-NG"), which aimed to combine "the best advantages of all the rest", and wrote many system utilities from scratch.

The worst thing is that they are burning money fast. Mandriva used to be profitable for a while, and could have been more if it had a better management when it started. And Red Hat is very profitable. All the distributions I mentioned (including Ubuntu) are open source and may survive the going-away of their parent company, either by a new company being established, or by the community working on it. By open-source I don't mean the FSF-fanatical view in which every component must be free software, but rather the fact that it can be bootstrapped and usable using FOSS exclusively.

Ubuntu has done some things well: good hardware detection and integration, viral marketing, positive hype, etc. Debian has its own share of problems, but I still think it's more independent and economically-sound and less NIH-syndromed than Ubuntu is. So I guess from now on, I'll use Debian instead of Ubuntu when I do (i.e: when I'm not using Mandriva or Fedora or whatever), and recommend everyone to do the same.

Some people think Ubuntu is perfect. It may be very polished, but it has its share of problems. I think Debian is actually better in this regard with its rigid quality control. No one can deny Mandriva has bugs, but they have a public bug-tracker, and they fix these bugs. I guess fast-moving and bug-free are often trade-offs.

So stay cool, be independent, think for yourself but cooperate with others, and don't be "Ubuntu". Cheers.

2007-03-31: People Talking on the IRC: 'Hot Ugly Chicks'

Aharoni in Unicode has a series of "People Talking" series, so I'm starting a "People Talking on the IRC" series. Here's the first entry:

   <mofino>  yeah women are fantastic
   <mofino>  all of them
   <mofino>  even the uglies
  <rindolf>  mofino: I suppose.
  <rindolf>  I know some hot ugly chicks.
  <rindolf>  Or at least cool ones.
   <mofino>  hehe
 <jagerman>  "hot ugly chick"?
   <mofino>  women have special abilities
  <rindolf>  jagerman: I mean hot as in attractive.
   <mofino>  they are mom's at heart
  <rindolf>  JavaWoman: here?
 <jagerman>  rindolf: Yes, that is the usual definition.
 <jagerman>  How did you mean "ugly" then?
  <rindolf>  jagerman: physically, unappealing.
  <rindolf>  fat, ugly face, etc.
  <rindolf>  Unkempt perhaps.
 <jagerman>  So they are physically attractive, but physically
             unattractive?
  <rindolf>  jagerman: no.
  <rindolf>  They are sexually attractive, but physically unattractive.
   <mofino>  hehe
   <mofino>  cool
   <mofino>  digging a chick for her personality
  <rindolf>  jagerman: couldn't you figure it out?
 <jagerman>  I find this distinction odd.
   <mofino>  jagerman, this is why you are single
  <rindolf>  jagerman: I'm not saying I'd like to date them.
   <mofino>  nice girls are girls too
 <jagerman>  No, I'm single because I am a chickenshit.
   <mofino>  sluts need love too
   <mofino>  just much more
  <rindolf>  Some beautiful girls are complete bitches.
  <rindolf>  And some of them smoke. :-)

Cheers!

2007-04-01: New Essay: "My Opinion on Electrical Engineering Studies in the Technion"

I have written a new essay titled "My Opinion on Electrical Engineering Studies in the Technion". It's actually based on an old email I wrote to the Hackers-IL mailing list, but is heavily corrected, expanded, converted to an HTML format, and contains several hyperlinks. Comments and corrections are welcome.

No, it's not an April Fools' prank. If you're interested in those see this perl-qa post.

2007-04-05: New Essay: 'The Linus Torvalds Bus Factor'

There's a new email thread that was converted into an essay titled "The Linus Torvalds Bus Factor" available on my site. It touches on having multiple committers for the same repository, dismissal of a project's benevolent dictator, and then a little on applied logic and logical fallacies.

Comments are welcome.

2007-04-06: The Ultimate Cause of Human Life

We had the following discussion on IRC. Comments included:

  <rindolf>  jagerman: I think the ultimate cause for humans is
             happiness, not to procreate.
 <jagerman>  Cause?
  <rindolf>  jagerman: have you read Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics"?
  <rindolf>  At least the first part.
 <jagerman>  No
  <rindolf>  If I write now, it's to talk to you.
  <rindolf>  Why do I talk to you?
  <rindolf>  To have fun.
  <rindolf>  And why do I want to have fun?
  <rindolf>  To feel good about myself.
  <rindolf>  So what's the ultimate cause?
  <rindolf>  According to Aristotle it's happiness.
 <jagerman>  Because I might, in some small way, help you become more
             successful, thereby allowing you to better attract a female
             to have sex with.
  <rindolf>  jagerman: not everything we do has to do with sex.
  <rindolf>  It's a common fallacy.
  <rindolf>  Some people don't have sex at all.
  <rindolf>  Like priests, or monks.
 <jagerman>  Yes, and those people are removed from evolutionary
             contribution to the species.
  <rindolf>  And yet they are very happy and active.
  <rindolf>  jagerman: right.
  <rindolf>  jagerman: but look at Mother Theresa.
  <rindolf>  For example.
 <jagerman>  Whether or not the ideal species is concerned with sex, the
             point is that the successful part of the human race does
             not avoid having sex.
 <jagerman>  Mother Theresa did a great disservice to society by not
             having children who might have carried her genes and
             continued her work.

Have you noticed the non-sequitur here? We were talking about why people do what they do, not whether what they are doing is good. But let's go on:

  <rindolf>  jagerman: assuming Mother theresa indeed did such greater
             work, then I would say that:
  <rindolf>  1. It was OK for her not to have children. It's her choice.
  <rindolf>  2. I'm not sure her children would have been as good as
             her.

Some things are not inherited. Being noble is something a man develops. Furthermore, the human race being very intelligent and conscious, no longer applies to the same biology that applies to insects. Even mammals (which may not be conscious) do many things that have nothing to do with procreation, due to their intelligence. Humans do everything they do for self-esteem and being happy, not for procreating. This is despite what Sigmund Freud (which I heavily despise and which "Feeling Good" by David D. Burns (a wonderful pop-psychology book which is a self-help book for cognitive psychology) keeps deprecating.

2007-04-07: Ruby-Israel Meeting Impressions and Advice

Yesterday I attended the first Israeli Ruby enthusiasts meeting. Despite many problems in its organisation - it was very successful. It was in the format of a barbeque in a villa in Hertzliyah, an informal chat, an informal introduction and then a round of some future expectations and planning. Since the meeting is currently hosted at Google Groups (%-)), and I'm subscribed there from my gmail.com account which I also dislike, here are my impressions and pieces of advice.

There's a lot of good advice in Rick Moen's "Recipe for a Succesful Linux User Group" and I suggest that people go over it, because while the Rubyers seem enthusiastic, they've made some classical mistakes.

First of all, instead of saying "Israel.rb" in the email headers, which may be the conventional name, one should say "Ruby Israel" or "Ruby-IL" which more people understand what it is. While the Ruby mongers can refer to themselves as "Israel.rb", they should make sure people who encounter it somewhere immediately know what it is about.

Memo to self: try to get us hosting at Tel Aviv University (TAU). I can walk there from home. We agreed that the format of the villa was not good enough for presentations, for which we needed a screen, a projector and some seats. There are plenty of rooms like this in TAU, and we can try get one. TAU is also more accessible and in a better location than most other places, as Tel Aviv is the center of transportation in Israel and TAU is well connected.

I talked with someone there (forgot his name) who has read almost all of "Joel on Software", and Paul Graham. I found that I could discuss stuff like the Chicken and Egg problem or what Joel said in an interview about the fact that now Microsoft has an overhead of 90% (like in the Army where you have to clean the weapons, brush the shoes, etc. instead of actually training.) So it was refreshing finding someone whom I shared many metaphors with, which made communication much easier. On the way back my ride told me this thing was enabled by some popular online cultures (like Joel on Software) and as I said it previously happend with enthusiasts of various philosophers, authors, etc.

Someone (perhaps the same guy) also told me he got his job from an opening on Joel's job board, and that his company are using FogBUGZ, which is Joel's company's bug tracker. As we discussed, sometimes you can simply create a competitive product in a market with many competitors, and still make a lot of money, and add many innovative features. FogBUGZ has a lot of competition, including some excellent open-source packages, but people are still buying it. And no, I haven't used it yet, and my favourite bug tracking package so far is Bugzilla.

I mentioned the Perl Beginners' Site which I tried to orient arond a marketing approach. Comments are welcome.

I mentioned Garage Band which is a hub for music by unsigned or independent artists. My favourite artist there is Jenna Drey whose style is Rock, Pop and Dance. Garage Band allows artists to release tracks as mp3s, compete with other artists, maintain a weblog, etc. Drey for example signed with an Indie label after she became successful there.

The Klein Four Group are a group of five mathematics students from Northwestern University who perform math-oriented parodies. You should look at the video and/or lyrics for their "Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)" and "Just the Four of Us" songs, which are available on their site. Another very funny video is Rob Paravonian's Pachelbel's Rant. I know it almost by heart now.

I suggest that the Rubyers get their site up and running on a good domain - ruby.iglu.org.il would be fine, and can be arranged (not by me) and something like ruby-il.org will be preferable. (I'm not sure they would like a ruby.org.il domain because they tend to be very costy and difficult to manage.) Their site should be running as soon as possible even if it is lacking something, so people will see a presenence. We all know that Perl 6 really took off after Audrey Tang released a heavily incomplete, but still working interpreter for it called Pugs, which allowed people to start playing with it. The list of projects that had not been released until ready is long. But most successful projects nowadays were deployed as incomplete and often buggy versions, but enough to work with: the Linux kernel, Pugs, perl (perl 1 was absolute brain-damage), python, the GIMP, Vim, Emacs, etc.

The same applies to web-sites. How many sites have you seen with "This is going to be the best site since sliced bread", and it amounted to nothing?


I believe many "Web 2.0" social networks-based ideas are going to turn into a disaster. A social network is not enough to guarantee success. One should start with a good simple idea: sharing photos online - Flickr; finding where your friends are located - Frappr.com, etc. and then later on build more and more social-networky things, if at all. But, for example, a site based entirely on a social network with a small difference, is not going to work. I have my share of social networks I know of, and there's a limit to how much I can become involved and monitor them.

Live Journal is a social network, but I'm mostly here because it supplies a great blog hosting, which beats having to feed and care for my own blog on my domain. (I have enough trouble taking care of my static HTML site and of Eskimo - thank you.) I'm also using Flickr just to share my photos, or see other people's photos, and not too much to socialise. If I were an investor, I would invest in an idea that sounds good, or in very clueful people trying to create a better wheel in a good way.

When discussing what we wanted from future meeting there were a few people who gave "If X then a really bad Y will happen" forcast. They also talked a lot about "we should do X" where X was very general and vague. It is known that should statements like "I should be more careful" are very demotivating, and can also cause a clinical depression. The important thing is that Ruby meetings will be fun, and even if sometimes less people arrive than usual, make sure to persist them. All the clubs I've been involved to had some lulls and we survived.

Finally, as I noted Ruby needs better online documentation. It has only one decent book - the Pick-Axe book. And it goes into exhausting detail and is very comprehensive. I gave up on reading it cover to cover. A "Quick and Dirty Introduction to Ruby" for people already familiar with some or all of Perl, Python, PHP, Scheme, Tcl, Smalltalk, etc. I believe this will be a more beneficial project than yet another site. Plus, all the knowledge should be concentrated in a few places rather than spread across half a gazillion obscure blog entries, where Google is no help.

2007-04-08: Announcement: The shlomif-tech community

According to some input from my users, I've created the shlomif-tech community for my more technical (about software, computers, and possibly other realistic science) posts and ramblings. I, or a different future moderator, need to approve all posts, but everyone can comment.

From now on, this blog will be dedicated to less technical stuff. I hope to maintain a good signal-to-noise ratio here, by only blogging about events or thoughts I think may be of interest to the general readers, rather than only to me.

If you're interested in vim tips, software thoughts, solutions to software problems, etc. please subscribe to its RSS or Atom feeds. shlomif-tech will also be aggregated into my aggregated blog.

The old technical entries of this blog will remain here, though and will not be moved.

2007-04-13: The S.L.M./Sh.L.M Root in Semitic Languages

Some people believe that the Hebrew word "Shalom" (ืฉืœื•ื) means "peace". However this is not exactly the case. Some people also believe as a result that Islam means "religion of peace", but this is also certainly not the case. This is due to lack of understanding of the Semitic root S.L.M. or Sh.L.M.

In many Semitic languages there was a general duality between the "S" and "Sh" sounds. In the Hebrew alphabet, the same letter - ืฉ - is used for both sounds. So S.L.M can also be Sh.L.M in some cases. In Semitic languages there's a three-letter or four-letter root for verbs and other words, and there are several ways to transform them.

Now the verb S.L.M. is a Semitic root that has a general meaning of wholeness, fullness or completeness. In Hebrew, "Shalam" used to mean ended, but it is no longer really used. "Nishlam" means "ended" as well, and its use is more common, but a bit archaic. "Shilem" is paid for, "Shulam" is was paid for. "Hishtalem" (derived from "Hitshalem") is was worthwhile, or more recently got an extra education. "Hishlim" is completed, and "Huslam" is "was completed".

Now "Shalom" is essentially "well-being" - a state where nothing bad happens. In the political field, it means "peace", but in fact the early word for such peace in Hebrew was "Sheqet" which means "quiet". Judges 3 - "Wa'tishqot ha'aretz Shmonim Shanah" - "and the land was quiet for 80 years".

Shalom is not necessarily about peace between countries. For example one can say "The United States government will do everything to ensure the 'Shalom' of the passengers of the kidnapped plane". And then there was "Milhhemeth Shlom-Hagalil" ("ืžืœื—ืžืช ืฉืœื•ื-ื”ื’ืœื™ืœ") which was the "war for the Shalom [or well-being] of the Galilee".

Now about Islam - Islam is the noun form of the Arabic verb "Aslama", which means converted to Islam. Aslama, being S.L.M. was meant to mean a "Complete devotion to one's faith." Similarly "Muslim" (pronounced "Mooss-leem")is someone who is an Islam practictioner. Peace or even well-being have nothing to do with it.

2007-04-15: The Praise of Mysticism (or Neo-Tech in a nutshell)

Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote The Praise of Folly, where he gave the case for making foolishness (i.e decisions by intelligent people but very wrongheaded) an explanation for many problems. Today, I'll go a step further, and give "The Praise of Mysticism", where I claim that Mysticism - the irrational belief that mind-conjured realities can take the place of the common, absolute reality, and the ultimate cause of all evil - can often be used as the ultimate reason for many things.

People often look for natural motives: money, power, etc.. But in the case of evil people (including most politicians, most clergymen, many people in the media, etc.), there is another motive: mysticism or evil. They often do things because they are evil, not because they seek money or whatever. It may seem a bit presporous but carry on.

The Evil People

My mother once told me there are no evil people only evil actions. She couldn't have been more wrong. Hitler was obviously evil. So was Stalin, Mao and other people. The Nazis caused the death of over 20 million people in World-War-II. The Communists in the 20th century killed 100 million of their own people. Why would anyone kill so many people? It wasn't for survival - no. They were evil. Here's what the Neo-Tech orientation and definition has to say about it:

The meaning of moral in Neo-Tech is simple and direct: Whatever is consciously done to help fill human biological needs is good and moral (e.g., the productive actions of honest people). Whatever is consciously done to harm or prevent the filling of human biological needs is bad and immoral (e.g., the destructive actions of mystics and neocheaters).

Honestly using one's reasoning nature is always beneficial and moral; dishonestly using one's reasoning nature is always harmful and immoral. ...Volitionally harmful acts always arise from mysticism -- from dishonesty, rationalizations, evasions, defaults.

Yet, acting on fully integrated honesty (Neo-Tech), not reason itself, is the basic moral act. When Genghis Khan, for example, chose to use reasoning for a specific military move, then in an out-of-context sense, he chose to act morally by protecting himself and his troops (thus filling human biological needs). But in the larger sense of fully integrated honesty, Khan's total actions were grossly immoral in choosing to use aggressive force in becoming a mass murderer (thus negating human biological needs). The highly destructive, irrational immorality of Genghis Khan's overall dictatorial military actions far outweighed any narrow, out-of-context "moral" actions. ...Genghis Khan was enormously evil as were Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot.

OK, now if those people are so evil and destructive, what has made them able to destroy so much? Why do people listen to them? The answer lies in Neocheating. But first some historical background.

The Origins of Consciousness

A lot of people think that people once, while being fully conscious and sentient, wondered about the origins of life, and created the gods. In "Guns, Germs and Steel", Jared Diamond contemplates that religions and priests were created to justify wars. However, this is not the case.

Once upon a time, all humans were completely unconscious: they were fully capable of thinking, reasoning, and functioning, but were still automatons. They had no sense of self, and had the dual-chamber (= "bicameral") mind to guide them. They were super-intelligent and built complex societies, invented language, writing and trade, but were still all non-sentient.

It may seem fantastic. However, bees are fully functioning - but are they conscious? How about bacteria? Somewhere between a human being and a passive animal you have to draw the line and that line goes in humans of around 1500 BC. They weren't conscious. Very intelligent but not conscious.

These people had gods that guided them. Originally the voices of dead people and leaders, these gods became their guides. The leaders spoke to the gods and were often considered gods, and so there was an hierarchy. However, then societies became too complex to be managed by unconsciousness alone. And due to the geography of the Near East, the people had no place to spread to. Moreover, trade and other factors have weakend and proliferated the voices of the gods. So without much choice, people had to create a new layer of mental processes (a brain "software" if you may) - consciousness.

People became conscious, but they still recalled the gods that guided them. So they looked for ways to retrieve them. The people who could became known as "Nevi'im" to the Israelis, as "Oracles" to the greeks, etc. They are modern day Schizophrenics. They reverted to the original bicameral mind and spoke in rhythms, because rhythm, poetry and song was the language of the gods, the language of the right hemisphere. Julian Jaynes gives a lot of evidence to show that poetry is a right hemisphere function, while freeform speech is a left hemisphere function.

However, people still have vestiges of the pre-conscious mind. They still often seek external authority (even though they don't really need it) and many people seek to control others. How do they achieve that?

The Paradigm for Controlling People

The tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is an early echo for the fact that humans have lost their "innocence" by becoming conscious. People still seek an effortless paradise. Thus, evil people make use of the following paradigm as identified in Neo-Tech III:

  1. First man is made to feel guilty. He is condemned for having lost his "innocence" by inventing consciousness. He is condemned for assuming the responsibility to use his own mind to guide his life. He is condemned for exchanging his automatic, bicameral life for a volitional, conscious life...condemned for exchanging his nature-given bicameral mind for a superior, man-invented conscious mind.
  2. Then man is offered automatic solutions to problems and guidance through life -- is offered an "effortless" Garden of Eden or a utopian hereafter if he exchanges his own invented consciousness for faith in external "authority": bicameral faith in some leader, doctrine, or god. He is offered the "reward" of protection and the escape from the self-responsibility of making one's own decisions to guide one's own life. But for that "reward", he must renounce his own mind to follow someone else's mind or wishes disguised as "truths" promulgated by some external "authority" or higher power.

Makes sense, doesn't it? Christianity used it during the middle ages, and so did the Nazis, the Communists, and all theist religions and doctrines nowadays do in various variations. You can hear leaders speaking it in the news all the time.

Neocheating and Altruism

Neocheating is the technique of cheating people while appearing to be good, honest and direct. It usually oriented around "Altruism" - the belief that people should subject themselves to "higher causes" - anything except their own happiness. The Neo-Tech advantages dispel a large number of falsehoods that accumulated throughout the centuries. It also shows how words were contorted to mean different things, and with a contorted language came contorted thinking, as language is primarily and most importantly a tool of thought, not a tool of communication. I highly recommend reading it cover to cover, or at least going over some of the advantages there after reading the orientation and definition.

Altruism is unnatural for humans. I'm not claiming that humans should not contribute to others. I spend most of my waking hours contributing to the well-being of everybody by working on public artwork. But I'm doing it by choice and because it makes me happier. Everything people do is in order to increase their self-esteem, either directly or indirectly. But some people were led to believe they have to subject themselves to "higher causes": "the poor", "the country", "God", "the family", "the religion", etc. etc. But these causes are unnatural. They don't make you happier - they make you feel more guilty, more dependent and less happy.

All the religions of the world (including many "secular" religions) are religions of death and are meant to control people. They make them less integrated thinkers, cloud their mind, subject them to "higher causes" and improper care.

The Revolution has Started

The so-called "leaders" of the world are incompetent, impotent, dishonest, deceitful, liars, dishounarable, cheaters - in short mystical and evil. They are capable of doing anything that Tolkien ever depicted Sauron to do, but are completely not awe-inspiring. After reading this summary, they will lose their mind. Completely. And this message will spread like wildfire.

Tomorrow, the head guards of Nasarallah (a simple peon) will point their machine guns at him and tell him to leave his well-guarded office or be shot to death. He will leave, for he is too incompetent of losing his life. Tomorrow, the President of the United States (who supposedly heads the U.S. government, which is the most destructive entity in existence today) will be answered with "Go to hell, Mr. Bush", or "Fuck you, idiot!" for every command he utters. And every convention he goes to will immediately become a very loud booing and cursing and people disrespecting him and shouting the worst possible and often unprintable mess. He will end up crying, and having to quit.

I don't make the Neo-Tech mistake of following the "Eye for an Eye, Tooth for a Tooth" revenge. I believe in Justice - not in revenge. All the evil people (mystics and neocheaters) will become commoners and will eventually be trained to become good honest people. They will become a tail for the lions instead of the heads of the jackals. I'm not interested in killing them, because killing a Hitler is still killing a conscious being, however his past is. I would humiliate Hitler to tears, but would never harm a strand of his hair.

This is true justice. I may be compassionate and an idealist, but it is better than being a murderer.

If you're reading this message - join me now. Stop subjecting yourself to the old and deprecated bicameral mind. Stop believing that your consciousness can survive the absense of the body on which it depends. (A.k.a: the afterlife). The future is a future of youth-rejuvanating biological immortality for everyone, not of death for every conscious human being, whether a destructive mystic, a honest and happy factory worker or a supreme value-producer. (It doesn't make a difference - none of them should die).

Religion, doctrines dogma, prejudice and deceit bring you nothing but death. Don't subject yourself to death. Regain your Growth and experience more and more happiness and joy, more and more productivity, and less and less dependence on other people. Your body may age, but not your soul, your spirit, or your psyche. This way, you'll never want to die, and never find a need to.

The future is now!

(This blog entry is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence version 3.0 or at your option a greater version.) Share, relicense and enjoy as long as you give me credit. (And a link would be nice).

2007-04-19: Music Recommendation: David Arkenstone

Two Croatian Messenger friends of mine referred me to David Arkenstone. He's a composer of New Age/Atmospheric music. His MySpace page used to contain 4 samples, but I can no longer find them there. In any case, I couldn't figure out a way to download them to my computer.

However, G2P can find his "Atlantis" CD. I downloaded it using wget and can now listen to it. I like its final track: "Below the Ocean: The Spirit of Atlantis" the best, but the other tracks are very good too. I guess I'll have to buy it now.

Arkenstone seems like he's very talented, and creaed some great music, but unfortunately he seems to be relatively unknown. Well, I hope this entry will make him a bit more so.

2007-04-27: Common Fallacies No. 1: the Broken Window Fallacy

This is the first in a series of essays about common fallacy patterns in the computer world. The first is what I call the Broken Window Fallacy of computers. As you may know in the broken window fallacy, one says that if something is damaged then it generates more revenue to the economy, because one will have to fix the damage. However, as is demonstrated in the article, it might as well been done differently.

I talked with a few people on IRC about how I hated the fact that most people are still using Windows which is quickly getting inflicted with malware, or Internet Explorer, which is lagging behind Firefox and other browsers in its support for web standards, and makes the job of the web designer much harder. So they told me that it is actually a good thing because that way someone has to fight the malware (a very uphill battle), and they have more work as web developers.

In a podcast Interview with him Joel Spolsky said that Open Source Software will reduce the demand for programmers, because they make some tasks easier. And so programmers are happier, but they have to work less. He missed the point that a lot of proprietary software also does that, because it costs a fraction of the cost it would take to develop all this functionality from scratch. But that's not the main thing that is wrong in this argument.

The problem is that tech workers can never run out of things to do. In the time they have to adapt their web-sites for MSIE, they can better spend on things like having better functionality, more web-sites, more pages. The time people spend making sure their Windows systems are free of malware, is better spent happpily using Linux and getting some actual, productive work done.

So Windows and MSIE are a huge strain on society. I can never run out of things to do. At the moment, I have an idea for a commercial site, several essays I'm working on, tons of ideas for other essays, open source software to write, and lots of external open-source projects that would love to have me as a contributor. Trying to adapt my sites to broken proprietary software only slows me down. It also slows you down if you're a developer.

So don't fall into the "broken window" fallacy. Encourage everyone around you to switch away from MSIE and Windows.

2007-05-01: A World War II What If

Can you imagine how World War II would have been different if a subtantial percentage of the citizens in the European countries were armed? And no, they wouldn't have fought each other because they would have been afraid of their other armed neighbours, and as a general rule the Europeans then were peaceful.

I find it amazing how people think that gun-control makes one safer. To quote the old adage: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.". And it is one way to make sure the government has a monopoly on firearms, and can abuse it against the defenseless citizens.

2007-05-01: New Essay: The End of Info-Tech Slavery

This is Shlomi Fish, a good hacker, where hacker is a good enthusiastic programmer, not necessarily a computer intruder. And I have an announcement to make: I refuse to be an IT slave. Moreover: if you want to employ people like me (and you do), you should not give us only good conditions - you should give us exceptional ones [= conditions]. Otherwise, we'll probably leave, or be fired, much to your misfortune.

More about it in my new essay "The End of Info-Tech Slavery".

2007-05-05: First Day of my Thirties

I was born on 5 minutes past midnight on 5 May, 2007. Thus, I'm 30 today. I spent the last day of my twenties relaxing. Among other activities, I went to bike once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I took one of our cameras for the second bike ride, and took some photos. Some of them came out pretty well, but not all, and I'll upload them to Flickr soon.

Today my family is holding a certain informal party for me at home. I requested an Arabic-to-Hebrew dictionary for my birthday, so I can regain my Written Arabic. I was a bit depressed about turning 30, or at least thought I was, but I'm still happy in general. As time goes by, I feel I become wiser and more mature, but I could still appreciate staying young in body forever.

And I'm certainly going to make sure I'll stay young in spirit. For the past thirty years, I remained hopeful, idealistic, enthusiastic, and a Romanticist. While my opinions have changed, I feel that I only became more idealistic and excited as time went by. You can too, whether you're 18, 25, 30 or 80.

Happy 5 of May, everyone!

2007-05-09: I now have a 'Master' Status on Advogato

Thanks to lkcl who certified me as such, I now have a 'Master' status on Advogato.org. I appreciate it very much, lckl! I certified you as Master as well, now.

One good thing about it is that my colour is now a cool purple instead of the relatively lame Journeyer blue colour.

That's all I wanted to say. Thanks for all the fish.

2007-05-12: Dispelling some Israeli Myths - draft

Note: this is a draft of a document I'm writing to help combat some mis-conceptions people have on Israel. Please place your comments, suggestions and ommisions' reports as comments. I'm planning to later on convert it to a page on my site.

The document itself

There are many myths and mis-perceptions about Israel, that many people (often Americans) think. This document aims to dispel some of them.

Israel is all Desert

While the southern part of Israel (the Negev) is a desert, most of the northern part has growth, and supports a lot of trees, bushes, shrubs and fauna. There are many pictures over at the Israel Images site

Most Israelis live in the northern part of Israel, which is quite lively.

Israel is Civilised

Israel is a civilised country. It has stone buildings, roads, cars, trains, lower education and higher education, an industry, electricity and good Internet connectivity, and an abundant food supply.

Not all Israeli Jews are Orthodox (Haredi)

Most Israeli Jews are not Haredi Jews who dress almost completely in black. In fact a lot of them are secular Jews who mostly don't even wear a kippa, or religious Jews who still lead a normal life. Religious Jews can be distinguished by look by the fact that the males wear a Kippa, and the females dress in unfashionable dresses or skirts, instead of the usual pants or more fashionable dresses that women wear.

Israel has More Serious Problems than Terrorism

While most of the Israeli-related news is about terrorist acts (or acts of retaliation of the Israeli Defence Force against terrorist activity), Israel is in fact a very peaceful and safe country. Here are several more serious problems in Israel than terrorism:

  1. More Israelis were killed in road accidents, than all those killed in terrorism and wars.
  2. It has very high taxation (sometimes over 60% of the wage), many irrational welfare laws, and a very poor middle class.
  3. There are many irrational regulations.
  4. There is a lot of theft, and other crimes.

Most Jews don't Carry a Gun

Israeli soldiers (males and females) are required to carry a gun with them during their service. However, Israelis who are not serving, are not required to do that, and most of them do not make use of their gun-bearing rights to carry a gun daily.

Israel has a High Life Expectency

Despite everything according to the Wikipedia, Israel has the 21st largest life expectancy in the world.

2007-05-20: The Case for File Swapping - Third Revision

My essay "The Case for File Swapping" now has a third revision, which was heavily corrected and expanded. The Licence is still the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. Share and Enjoy.

2007-05-22: New Israeli "Big Brother" Law for Blocking the Internet for Minors

There's a new Israeli law proposal for a law that wants to prevent minors from accessing "questionable sites" on the Internet, and to require grown-ups to identify themselves using biometric identifaction to allow their unrestricted access to the Internet. This law faces objections from the Israeli Ministry of Treasury and the Israeli Ministry of Law, as well as the Israeli Internet Society. This law should better be stopped sooner than later. For more information consult:

  1. Coverage in Whatsup
  2. Coverage in Linmagazine.co.il
  3. Coverage in Ynet
  4. Coverage in Globes.co.il
  5. Old Coverage in Linux-IL (in English) - pointing to an English coverage in YnetNews

2007-06-03: Psyche Death / Growth Death

"Psyche Death" or "Growth Death" (the Neo-Tech terms) means that a person continues to live physically, but his mind is dying: he becomes more and more cynical and less excited and enthusiastic about life; less and less happy; becomes less and less proficient; and also is capable of feeling less and less love (romantic or otherwise) and other positive emotions.

It often occurs even before the body has fully matured. In the Technion, I've known someone who already had psyche death in his mid-twenties. On the other hand, I've been corresponding with an 80 years-old programmer, who still has a living psyche, and is otherwise very enthusiastic and excited about life. (He's still affected by his old age and old legacy practices, but is nonetheless still productive.)

So what are the implications of Psyche Death? Moshe Bar tells about it in this Slashdot interview:

I am studying law because at my age I already see how much faster younger programmers are than me. Back when I was in my early twenties nobody could beat me at programming. Nowadays, when I sit next to people like Andrea Arcangeli, I realize that programming, too, (even considering the advantage of experience) is for the young. Perhapes extreme programming, ie good quality, high speed programming, should be considered a sport and not an art or science or a skill. Since, I do not see myself being a programmer at 60 years (which is more than years from now), I deduced that I have to find a new job between then and now.

Again, while it is possible that one write code more slowly when one is younger, it does not mean that one should completely refrain from writing code when one is older. Plus, lately I've spent a weekend working on Test-Run, and ended up with about 3,000 added or removed lines, which I felt really good about. And moreover, even a former programmer can probably become a good manager or a team leader, for a software company, but without good experience in coding he probably won't be a good manager. And you don't need a law diploma for that.

I know a programmer who just turned 50 who I'm almost certain has a dying growth. He tends to be cynical, keeps finding (wrong-headed, IMO) faults in good ideas I have, and often tends to get his priorities wrong. Last year, he permanently and abruptly quit from helping with the organisation of August Penguin, because he felt that the movie that was prepared for the event, should have been subtitled before it was released to the public, instead of after the fact by volunteers. I tried to tell him that while accessibility for the disabled was important, it was relatively orthogonal to promoting Open Source software in Israel or elsewhere. Both causes were important, and having a feud (or "Brogez" in Hebrew) because of a silly (3-minutes length) movie, that is just a nice bonus, and not something integral to the conference.

It's very sad, and like I said, unnecessary. Now for a positive, non-Psyche Death example: the programmer in his 80's. We've been co-operating on a Freecell program he wrote, to which I wanted to integrate Freecell Solver. We exchanged dozens of emails, and at one point even had a virtual Instant-Messaging mode. It took us a lot of time to integrate FCS into his program due to some of their incompatibilities, but we were successful. Since then, he and I exchanged some bios, and then ended up discussing philosophy, politics and religion. He seems very lively, excited, and enthusiastic, despite his old age, and the fact he's already a grandfather.

He's been reading many books, which he has been ordering from Amazon.com. I recommended he read Julian Jaynes' "Bicameral Mind" book and he eventually did. ( He buys a lot of books about history, or history science. )

Interacting with him, has been very inspiring for me. He admitted to me that "his brain does not operate as fast as it used to", and I could tell his programming practices are sub-optimal in today's standards. He's been around, and old habits often die hard, and he is no longer really making a living off programming.

So Psyche death is unnecessary. And psyche death is also not permanent - one can easily reverse it by reading this entry and the Neo-Tech original. I'm not claiming Psyche Death people are necessarily evil. While all evil people have Psyche death, most people with a dying growth are still good people who are unnecessarily cynical about life.

I told my 50 years-old friend several times that he should really read the Neo-Tech article, and he told me that he did not have the time for that (even though it's not very long). And to quote Q2 from "We, the Living Dead":

Busy people are unproductive. We are very productive and so we're never busy.

Being too busy is another indication that you do not have a fully growing psyche. Gandhi said "Live as if you were going to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were going to live forever.". However, it seems too many people mis-understand this quote. From what I know of Gandhi, he was almost never too busy.

2007-06-07: Media Recommendation

Matisyahu is a very cool Jewish Reggae artist, with a Yiddish/Hassidic theme. Especially recommended is his "King without a Crown" song. Wikipedia has a lot of information about him.

I recently watched the end of "Fly Away Home", which is a fictional film, but loosely based on real-life experiments by Bill Lishman. The photoggraphy was breath-taking, and I almost cried from excitement. I didn't watch the start yet, but what I saw was very nice.

Finally there's this conspiracy theory based in the "Star Wars" world (freely available online), that I found extremely funny.

2007-06-21: Park Hayarkon Highlights

A while ago, when I biked in Park Hayarkon, and stopped as I usuallly do next to the bridge, I saw a young mother sitting on the grass with her baby. The mother took off her shoes and she was playing with the baby. The sight was so idyllic that I wished I had had my camera there.

Once as I went out from the Park into Hayim Levanon St. and stood at the junction of Rokahh and Haifa Road, I witnessed a motor-cyclist get injured after moving into a large concrete mixer truck. The truck stopped close by, and we helped the biker move into the sidewalk, and someone called an ambulance using his cell-phone. I ended up delaying there for a while to make sure everything was OK, and helped move the motorcycle into a useful place.

After the ambulance came, the ambulance people said the motor cyclist will probably be OK. I went to the policeman, and told him I saw the biker get thrown away by the hit, but not the moment of the hit itself. So he said it was still not good enough as an evidence.

Otherwise, I recall having often seen an attractive jogger in the Park, and while having not seen her in a while, recently saw another one who seemed very similar to her. I still don't know if they are the same girl. Once when I went out to the Park relatively early, I saw the mother who keeps jogging with her baby's cart. It took me some time to recognise her because she was wearing a different top.

I also saw some police horses standing by at a day when there was a festival of some sort in the Park. They were very nice horses as horses go, and very tamed.

2007-07-29: Media Recommendations

Another Round by Enter the Haggis is a nice song that I found on GarageBand.com. I also liked Crazy Love (Triumph Bonneville-77 MIX), which I found on ccmixter, as well as the Terror Zone M.U.S.T.A.N.G. remix.

I found the following excellent Weird Al Yankovic videos on YouTube:

  1. Yoda (Live)
  2. Ebay
  3. Hardware Store

2007-08-25: Neck Ache

On Monday's evening (IIRC), I got a neck ache. When I woke up it was very much severed. It lasted for a few days until Wednesday, when it became better. On Thursday, I went jogging, went to sleep, and when I woke up it worsened again. On Friday, I started doing some exercises to relieve the pain, and it seems to help a little. Now the ache is more under control, and I hope my condition will improve in the upcoming days.

Strangely enough, I think the pain has relocated to a different place in my back and neck.

2007-09-07: Bicycle-Lock Musing

My neck ache got much better, in case you were wondering. Yesterday, I went to the bicycle room to check the air on my bike's wheels. (I believed they had a flat tire, but it turned out not to be the case.) While I was there I noticed something interesting about the lock I'm using to protect the bike.

The lock is basically a loop with a pin at one end, and a shaft with 4 rotating digits at the other end. Now, you can only insert the pin to the shaft when the combination is right. However as I noticed, if the loop is open, then the pin can be partially inserted when the digits towards the edge of the shaft are right. Therefore, an attacker, can rotate the outermost digit until the pin is partially inserted and find the rest of the digits in a similar way, and that way discover what the combination is.

This reminded me of what Feynman told in "Surely you're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" about the safes in the Los Alamos facility. He discovered that one could determine the code of one type of safes, when they were open, and so suggested that they are kept closed all the time. So I guess that with such chains, they should also be kept tied at all time.

2007-09-14: Media Recommendations

I really liked the Mean Kitty Song ("Hey Little Sparta") by Cory "Mr. Safety" Williams. One response to it is the "Cats 300" which parodies the trailer of Sparta. Another response by the same producer is "The Mean Kitty Story", which tells the story of the cat in the video.

I also found some videos by "The Reduced Shakespeare Company" on YouTube. I especially like the Othello Rap, and "The Comedies".

Here are some MODs I found on modarchive.org and liked:

  1. Astaris (KK)
  2. a-000000.it
  3. Vertigo - Leviathan/Nemesis

"Goodnight Burbank" is a funny video blog that seems interesting. I liked this episode.

This "Red Dwarf" bit (called "The Trial") is very nice. There are other bits from Red Dwarf like that on YouTube.

And finally, some video-clips I found on YouTube and enjoyed:

Enjoy! And Shanah Tovah to everybody.

2007-09-23: Yom Kippur Summary

As has been the tradition for several years now, on Yom Kippur I've gone over my weblogs' entries since last Yom Kippur and today I'll write a summary of them.

Well, I've continued to write open-source code this year, mainly CPAN modules, but also this kernel patch. I also isolated and reported a few bugs and prepared some source RPMs. A lot of my work was on Test-Run, which I'm no longer sure is the right approach, and that perhaps I'll need to work on direct enhancements for TAP::Parser and TAP::Harness instead.

I've started publishing a series of Vim tips on my blog, and span off a technical blog to concentrate the Technical articles there.

I worked in one job this year, starting in January, and ending in March, when I got fired. Getting fired from there has proved to be the worst event of the year for me, but I got over it eventually. Close to that were some discussions on use.perl.org and on Perl mailing lists that I started.

This year I worked a lot on the Perl XML::RSS module and also successfully completed a Perl Foundation grant for cleaning it up. I also received another grant for working on a Perl-based MediaWiki parser, but I've seem to have little motivation to work on it since I've received it (part of my general lethargy lately), and it seems to me to be more difficult to get right than I first expected it to be, and less interesting. I still have some working code in the repository, but I don't feel very motivated to work on it.

I noticed that the amount of blogging, and activity in general has considerably slowed down since March. I hope to regain my interest in blogging and FOSS hacking, but I don't want to feel too bad about being somewhat lethargic now.

In any case, that's it for this summary. Happy Sukkoth, everyone, and enjoy the new Jewish Year.

2007-09-29: Mathematical Riddle

Here's a mathematical riddle that I was told on IRC (and was able to solve, after receiving a hint): find, without the aid of a computer, three natural numbers - x, y and z - so that x^2 + y^3 = z^5 (where "^" is power).

Feel free to post your solutions as comments below, just make sure you identify yourselves.

2007-10-02: What I Hate about GMail

Many people converted to use GMail as their primary mail client. I, however, having been used to KMail have found many GMail shortcomings. As a result, I'm still using KMail as my primary email client and try to avoid GMail as much as possible.

Here is what I find problematic in GMail:

  1. It doesn't work properly in Konqueror. I have to use Firefox to use it.
  2. It doesn't have a way to filter based on mailing list headers (such as "List-Id", "List-Post", etc.). Thus, often when mail is sent from a mailing list, it still arrives at the inbox.
  3. It's very hard to follow threads there. They are all on one page.
  4. The labels list (which double serve as folders) is flat and not a tree.
  5. It doesn't have KMail's Right-click-on-an-email-address+"Reply to..." feature, which is very safe and convenient.
  6. Furthermore, when the "Reply-To:" header is set, both "Reply" and "Reply-to-all" do the same thing.
  7. GMail has no "Send Again" feature to re-send a message that was already sent.
  8. There is no way to label or delete individual messages - only entire threads. As such, if you purge a mailing list archive you also lose all the mail you sent there.
  9. Changing the subject line of a replied-to message starts a new thread, not only in the user's GMail account, but for every recipient of the message.
  10. The GMail editor has a tendency not to put the quoting symbols (">") in the first line of a block.
  11. GMail disables the forward button in Mozilla. So if you press "Back" you cannot press forward again to go back there.
  12. GMail has no option to avoid adding the dash-dash-space prefix to the signature. It adds it automatically, without asking. Granted - it can be deleted, and KMail has the same problem too, even for signatures generated by a command line.
  13. There is no way to select all the unread messages in a label, or all the unread messages across labels.
  14. There is no indication that an email that was sent actually arrived at a mailing list (to which one is subscribed) after it arrived there.

GMail is not all bad. The search is very fast, which is a joy. But I still much prefer KMail, and refrain from using GMail as much as I can. Perhaps Google can fix most of these problems if they are motivated enough to do so, but from my general impression with the gmail.com QA, they don't seem to care at all.

2007-10-10: Media Recommendations

The Swedish Chef, Animal and Beaker sing "Danny Boy" in a hilarious bit from the Muppets. Also from the Muppets is the Swedish Chef preparing Chocolate Moose.

Two great songs by Faith Hill: "This Kiss" and "The Way You Love Me".

And finally there's Mom's Overture by Anita Renfroe, which is very funny.

2007-10-24: The Easiest Daily 9*9 Nurikabe Ever

Today's daily 9*9 Nurikabe was the easiest one ever: I solved it in only 4 minutes and 36 seconds. Try it!

Of course, it took me over an hour (over two different sessions as I had to leave for a job interview) to solve the Nurikabe of a couple of days ago, which caused the clock there to reset.

2007-10-27: Response to Dotan Kamber's "Making a Copyrights-Protected Work Public is a Violation" Post

I'm subscribed to Dotan Kamber's blog at blogli, where he usually blogs in Hebrew about Mandriva and other Linux-related topics, so it's interesting, at least to me.

This time, I'd like to comment on one of the exceptional entries there that deal with the topic of file swapping in light of recent news. I'll translate the entry here, and comment on it.

Making a Work whose Distribution is Limited by Copyrights Public is a Violation [of the Law]!

Well, obviously according to the present bylaws, it is a violation. That's stating the obvious. However, that's not the main question. The real question is whether it is ethical, moral and whether the law should be changed to accomodate for this. The law is not always right.

During the Prohibition of Alcohol, drinking Alocohol in the United States was illegal. Did it made drinking or selling alcohol any more wrong than it actually is? At the moment, drugs are illegal, but the law is the problem not the fact that people violate it. During the Nazi regime of Europe, it was illegal to give refuge to Jews, but it still didn't make it any less of a highly moral act.

So, I would argue that Dotan's statement is not indicative of the Morality of that action, and whether the law is right or wrong.

The American Jury has decided according to the spirit of the law, instead of the revolutionary spirits that various organisations are trying to spread, and accused Jammie Thomas in violation of Copyrights.

Again, this is in a way stating the obvious. Well, Dotan is trying to imply that because the opinion that file sharing should be legal is a "revolutionary spirit" it is inferior to "the spirit of the law". Well, wasn't the equality of rights for women once the domain of such "revolutionary spirits"? Wasn't it the case for democracy in general? Isn't liberalism in Communist China now the domain of "revolutionary spirits"? Isn't it the case for drug legalisation now?

So it doesn't necessarily mean it's inferior. The law can be wrong and often is.

And who are these organisations? For once, many of them are individuals - about 20% of Americans use file-sharing programs. Secondly, they include the Free Software Foundation, without its software Dotan would not be able to compose his post, post it on the Web, or publish it on his blog, as they are all based on the software of the FSF.

Jammie was sentenced to pay the copyrights owners damages of $9,250 for each of the 24 works (total of $220,000), which she legally purchased, and made available for download using the KaZaa file-sharing program.

Well, I don't suppose you think that damages of $220,000 dollars are a bit outrageous here? And don't you think extorting such an amount of money from a single-parent mother to be given to companies whose budget is tens of milliards of dollars per year (in a kind-of "take from the poor and give to the rich" scheme), a bit pointless?

Is $220,000 realistic? As mrwonton mentions here compared to the prices of songs on iTunes, it would mean she would have had to share nearly half a terabyte to be guilty of such damages.

So it's really all outrageous.

Here are some other links regarding the case:

  1. Slashdot Discussion of the original news item
  2. A Juror from the RIAA Trial Speaks.
  3. White House Lauds MN RIAA Win, Analysis of Victory - giving four reasons why the RIAA won, and other links like that.

And I should point you to my piece "The Case for File Swapping" which gives many good arguments for why file swapping is not bad, and why it should be legal. Dotan has yet to properly address all the arguments that I've given in its third edition.

2007-10-27: Live Journal Tip: Turning off the Snap Previews for Links

I've always been annoyed by Snap.com Previews for links in blogs, where one sees an annoying preview window of the link when hovering with the mouse cursor over an external link. Today I discovered that they were now present in my journal here on LJ, so I sought a way to remove them. It wasn't too hard.

In order to cancel them one should go to the viewing options (while logged in, of course), and uncheck the "Graphic previews" checkbox ("Enable graphic previews on external links within your journal"). Then your journal will be free of them.

Thanks for Live Journal for making this feature optional.

2007-10-31: Media Recommendations

Well my previous post about cancelling the Snap.com previews proved to be quite popular. Now it's time for more media recommendations.

"That's the World of Warcraft That You Play" is a mildly-amusing Machinima bit. And no, I haven't played any "World of WarCraft".

A nice song by Urban Trad, who are a European band I was not familiar with until this song was randomly suggested in YouTube. I also liked John Q. Lonely by Maia Sharp.

Here is a nice song by Nelly Furtado, and this is a nice R&B song.

For the lighter side, there's the Ballad of Magellan from the Animaniacs, and also their Macademia Nut video clip which is a Macarena parody.

Katie's Opinion has Trick or Treat Safety Tips, which is very funny.

Finally, here are some nice Computer-generated images of girls, which I found using a Google search.

2007-11-30: Politics: Canadian DMCA Law + Saddam Hussein's Support of Terror

Slashdot Reports that there's a very bad DMCA-like Candian Copyright Act brewing. Michael Geist has 30 things that Canadian can do to stop it.

That put aside, I'd like to quote something that a U.S. Soldier who had been serving in Iraq told us about Saddam Hussein's support of terrorish activity, which has changed a mistaken perception of mine:

Me: Yes, but Bush claimed that he needed to attack Iraq because it supported terrorism, which wasn't really true. Iraq was not a threat to worldwide well-being. As opposed to say, Iran.

Soldier: Shlomi, actually that's not true... i'm not a huge fan of bush either, but i will say that i have personally been involved in well over 5 dozen raids that involved terrorist training camps in major iraqi cities.

Me: I see. I believe you.

Soldier: Shlomi, the thing about Iraq is this, it was being used as staging ground for Iran and Syria terrorist units, also... a special unit was trained here called the Al Kud, that was specifically trained to attack Israel.

Someone else: Yeah, but did those terrist camps exist *before* the invasion?

Soldier: Someone else, yes they did. Someone else, there are few if any terrorist camps in Iraq at this time. Most are trained outside of Iraq. In fact the majority (and i say 90%) of all terrorist activity here in Iraq is from outside nations, not local Iraqi nationals.

2007-12-01: I Biked Today

I went out biking today, after not biking for a long time. The weather was nice, and I was able to were "training" clothes for most of the ride. At the beginning of the ride, I took a break and pushed the bike by foot. It's been a while since I needed to, which may indicate that I'm out of shape.

I saw many people in the park, including some good-looking girls. After the park, near the "Ha'aretz" Museum, I felt that my head, and upper body were on fire, so I took off my sweatshirt, and rode the rest of the cycle with only my T-shirt.

It feels good to having biked, and I now feel calmer and more focused. I should do it more often.

2007-12-04: Media Recommendations

I have a lot of individual media recommendations (mainly YouTube videos) in my queue, clogging my bookmarks menu. Thus, while I'm waiting for kernel 2.6.24-rc4 to compile, I'd like to start putting them here. If I feel this entry's too long, there may be some more with more recommendations shortly. I'll see.

I found a lovely set of screencasts from Final Fantasy X arranged to the music of "Paradisio, Bailando". It's much better and much less disturbing than what seems to be the original video-clip of the song.

Here's a Anime video clip of The Frey - In Over my head (Cable Car). Nice song and nice animation that goes with it.

It's kind-of-lame, but I still liked this video of GreenTeaGirlie dancing to the Lucky Star by Karma Club. There's a strange story behind GreenTeaGirlie, but I liked the video and the music irrespectively of it.

I can also recommend new single of the Spice Girls called "Headlines".

Finally, there's Babysitting Blues from the movie "Adventures in Babysitting". That was the best part of the film, and I found it as good as I remembered it. "Nobody leaves this place without singing the Blues!"

That's it for now. Now I got to reboot to the new kernel. I still have more recommendations in queue, and I'll enumerate them later.

2007-12-12: New Wallpapers

My home computer's KDE desktop has 8 virtual desktops, on which I can place windows. Every once in a while, I change their wallpapers. I recently changed them and in this post would like to list the wallpapers that I've chosen and where I found them.

  1. Desktop #1 - Natalie Portman with blond hair (and brown eyes) from skins.be. skins.be went offline for some time now, and now returned, and this delayed this post.
  2. Desktop #2 - bosco (Forest scene) from KDE-Look. One problem I have with this picture is that it doesn't fit the whole screen, and as a result, I have the light-coloured top of the photo at the bottom of the screen, which interferes with my transparent taskbar's minimised tasks.
  3. Desktop #3 - Photo of Anne Hathaway. I initially feared parts of this picture will be too blurry, but it turned out to be fine.
  4. Desktop #4 - A Photo of Two Eagles from hvhe1 from Flickr. Lots of other beautiful shots of animals in her photo stream.
  5. Desktop #5 - Portia by Joanna Konstantinea found at this computer art competition (which I blogged about before)
  6. Desktop #6 - "Purple Flowers" by Lisa Derfler found on digitalart.org.
  7. Desktop #7 - A photo of Charlize Theron, also from Skins.be.
  8. Desktop #8 - A "Red Stone" picture taken from Wallpaper Pimper, which is a new site I discovered for wallpapers. Red Stone is a game, which even has the first hit on Google for the query "Red Stone" but Wikipedia does not know about.

2007-12-21: More Media Recommendations

As promised, here are more media recommendations.

This video of building a Lego Star destroyer is amusing. David Cho sings "You Tube" (A Love Song), which he wrote. And here's the Rogue Traders performing "Voodoo Child" live, which I misplaced and then found again.

Here's an audition from Australian Idol by an acapella Virtuoso.

"All Saints - I know where it's at" - one of my favourite songs. And here is their song "If you want to party (I found lovin') which I discovered on YouTube.

"Big City Life" by Mattafix is a song I heard on the radio the other day, and found on YouTube. I don't seem to remember it from when it was a hit.

There's a series of "PC vs Mac" videos on YouTube as a counteraction to the Apple "I'm a PC, and I'm a Mac" videos.

This is what you do to type a document corrrectly.

Here's a nice Soul Music Video called "100 Days, 100 Nights". It was recorded and filmed recently, but is done in an old style.

By the way, I noticed that many YouTube videos I linked to in this blog, have disappeared from YouTube. That's a shame.

2008-01-04: Tip: Dedicated Last.fm Client

Last.fm is a music service that learns what you like and plays appropriate songs and lets you choose songs based on taxonomy. I used to listen to it using the KDE Amarok player which is otherwise excellent, but its Last.fm playback is often buggy.

A few days ago I decided to see if there's a better client out there, so I searched for "Last.fm Linux client" and ended up at this page for the official Last.fm client for Linux. It's open-source and free of malware, and works much better than Amarok. I installed it on Mandriva using the "urpmi lastfm-player" command, and there are probably packages for other distributions.

There are similar clients for Windows and Mac OS X. This client works much better than Amarok and I find Last.fm much more enjoyable now. But I guess I'll now have to debug the Last.fm support of Amarok on my machine to see where things go awry.

Happy listening!

2008-01-21: Personal Log: Report on the Last Days

I started working on Sunday, a week and a day ago. It's a (paid) one month trial so both sides can see if they are happy with the arrangement. I'm working as a Linux C++ server programmer for Emblaze. So far I'm mostly happy with the job.

On Saturday I met with and TDDPirate on the University Cafรฉ close to my home. Peach has been visiting Israel and wanted to meet us (we met online on IRC and MSN Messenger), and we decided to arrange a meeting. Since TDDPirate is deaf, I brought a laptop from home to facilitate communication with him, but I couldn't turn it on after we met. As it evidently turned out, its battery was dead. (I was worried that my back will hurt from carrying it, but thankfully it still doesn't.). So we had to do with a pad of paper.

We ate dinner there and had a nice conversation. Peach seemed different in real life, than her Instant Messaging persona, and I was happy to meet TDDPirate again.

Yesterday was an eventful day. In the morning, I was dismayed to discover that my cellphone had a low battery, because it wasn't charged properly. Then at lunch, I accidently ate some fava beans at lunch, which I might be allergic to due to G6PD. So far, I'm OK, though.

Then I left work early to go to a Tel Aviv Linux Club meeting. When I arrived at the final bus station, I noticed that I could not feel my watch. As I discovered, its chain broke, but I still have both pieces at home. I attended the talk which was about open-source Geographic Information Systems, and included many nifty and visual presentations.

That's it for real life. Otherwise, the Mandriva Cooker Linux distribution at home, recently upgraded perl to version 5.10.0, which caused many software packages there to become broken because they relied on it being the previous version (5.8.8). I had to fix some of the problems on my system myself, while submitting or reporting them to the distributor for inclusion. At work I'm now using Ubuntu Gutsy, which has its own share of bugs that are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the Mandriva ones.

One of the things that got broken was Website Meta Language, which is an HTML preprocessor I'm using for all my sites. I've hacked a quick patch to build it, but since now the GNU Autotools setup for it has also become broken, I've decided to ditch them in favour of CMake. So far, CMake seems nice, but I only really started with the conversion process.

2008-02-23: Dear Lazyweb, Where Can I Play Kakuro?

Dear Lazyweb,

can anyone recommend a good web-site where I can play Kakuro online with convenience? I wasn't able to find anything good yet in a Google Search, but will keep trying. Alternatively, an open-source program that I can run on Linux will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

2008-02-29: Best Reggae Song Ever?

I must have listened to this song (Link to YouTube video) over 30 times the past few days. It's very nice.

2008-02-29: Petition against Copyright Extension

open-dot-dot-dot reports about a petition against extending the Copyright term, that is open for anyone to sign. Please sign it and help spread the word.

2008-03-19: Rave about FIBI's Firefox Support

I reported earlier that I switched to the First International Bank of Israel (FIBI) because its site was designed and maintained with cross-browser compatibility in mind. Recently, I tested it by doing two monetary operations using the web-interface and using the Firefox browser on Linux. The first one was a money transfer to pay for the Israeli Perl Workshop. The second was transferring funds into savings.

I'm happy to say that they I was able to perform both smoothly and without a hitch. (I received a request for confirmation about the money transfer to my cellphone, but wasn't particularly bothered with it.) so I'd like to thank FIBI for maintaing such good web service and for being conscious with it, and would like to note that I'm happy I made the switch. The web service has saved me two trips to the bank branch during work hours, and will probably save more like that in the future.

I hope other web service providers will consider adopting cross-browser compatibility of their sites, and adherence to web-standards and to portable behaviour. Firefox has excellent web-development tools, and is much less buggy than Internet Explorer, and adding support to it should not be too hard with help from web resources and from web development forums.

2008-03-25: Daily Ride from Tel Aviv to the Ra'anana Industrial Zone

Hi all. Is anyone who is reading this can give me a ride from Northern Tel Aviv (the junction of Qeren Qayemeth Bvd. and Ayalon or Haifa Road would be fine), to the Ra'anana Industrial Zone on weekdays? Any pointers would be appreciated. Please contact me on my email or my cell (054-6232377) if you can help.

Thanks in advance - Shlomi Fish.

2008-04-18: Boring Personal Update

First of all happy Passover everyone! This year I'm getting this Sunday off, but not the rest of week (though some of my co-workers have taken a leave of absence).

I've been a bit stressed lately, probably due to work issue, but I think I'm happier and more focused now, and feel better. I went to bike today and took my usual To-Park-Hayarkon-and-Back route. It was not too hot and not too cold, and I enjoyed my ride, although felt I kinda drifted away in my thoughts, and didn't pay a lot of attention to my surroundings.

For a tech update: I've continuted to work on my homesite, on Perl Begin and on other projects, such as the Rethinking-CPAN effort. I was also able to overcome some GNU Autohell problems in Website Meta Language, in order to get some pending patches applied there. This is a temporary solution until I finish working on the more robust CMake-based configuration system, which would take a lot of time. I wasn't able to upload the archive yet, due to connectivity problems and some Berlios.de bugs, but I hope to resolve them soon enough.

I have several ideas for essays or mini-essays I'd like to work on - mostly technical. And I accumulated a backlog of 415 (now 387) entries on my web feed aggregator.

In any case, I hope you all are doing well. I have a few blog entries in the queue, and if all goes well, I'll post them soon. Bye!

"Free" and "Freedom" in Hebrew (and English)

By inspiration from Passover, which celebrates the end of the Egyptian Jewish slavery, and by some inspiration from what David A. Wheeler wrote about the meanings of free in English, I present to you some non-professional philological study of the meanings of "Free" and "Freedom" in Hebrew and English.

First of all, there are two ways to say "freedom" in Hebrew: "Hhofesh" (ื—ื•ืคืฉ) and "Hherouth" (ื—ืจื•ืช). The double-h is my way of indicating a "Hheth", which is similar to the "kh" in "Khan" or the Spanish "j", but even more throaty when pronounced correctly.

Now, "Hhofesh" means Freedom, while "Hherouth" is even stronger, and means something closer to "liberty" in English, but probably not exactly the same. A free person (or a thing) is "Hhofshi" (in Singular Masculine form, other forms differ slightly), while I didn't hear the word "Herouthi" used often. Instead one can say that someone is a "Ben-Horin" (i.e: "son [or belongs to a people of] of free people."), which is probably the etymology for "Ben-Hur".

While "Herouth" is mostly limited to the liberty of a people or inidividuals, and is considered high language, "Hhofshi" is more disputed. It can naturally mean "libre" or free-from-oppression. But "Hhofesh" or "Hhufshah" also means vacation in Hebrew (like "Hahhofesh hagadol" (the big "Hhofseh") - which is the Hebrew name for the Summer vacation.) And so Hhofshi is sometimes applied to a person who is relieved of work, education or other responsibilities (such as that of a spouse), even though it is understood that it is not an exact meaning.

More recently, "Hhofshi" also started to be applied to "gratis", "costless" or "on-the-house" commodities similar to the "free-as-in-free-beer" distinction. For example, in Falafel stands, one often hears that the extras are "Hhufshi" meaning one can take as much as they want to put in his Pitah-bread. This may have been an influence from English, but as I noted, "Hhofesh" in Hebrew has not been restricted to mean freedom from oppression ("free-as-in-free-speech") either.

One doesn't often hear people using "Hhofshi" for "lacking" as in "Caffeine-free", although that may also have become a bit more common lately. "Caffeine-free" is "Netol-caffeine" ("ื ื˜ื•ืœ-ืงืคืื™ืŸ") in Hebrew, and one can also say "lelo kaffeine" ("ืœืœื ืงืคืื™ืŸ" without Caffeine) or "She'eyn bo kaffeine" ("ืฉืื™ืŸ ื‘ื• ืงืคืื™ืŸ" "which doesn't have Caffeine" more or else) in certain contexts.

And I'd also like to stress the fact that "free" in English even in its more "libre" meaning, can be used either for freedom-from-oppression or freedom-from-responsibilities. If you value liberalism, you should try to use it only in the freedom-from-oppression sense.

Happy Passover (a.k.a the Festival of Liberty in Hebrew) everyone!

2008-04-28: Unattainable Goals that are Still Worth Pursuing

One thought that occurred to me lately was the fact that there are some goals in life that can never be fully attained, but are nevertheless worth pursuing and getting nearer and nearer to them. Like an asymptotic function in mathematics if you may.

One example that I thought for it is the case of objectivity. Human beings are subjective by nature and so can never be completely objective. However, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to be as objective as possible, or completely give up on being objective. (And by being objective I don't mean having a neutral Point-of-View). Other people can disagree with me that objectivity is a virtue but it's besides the point.

Now a co-worker of mine is a Hasidic Jew, and when I told him that I'm an Objectivist, he said that one cannot be completely Objective. He then gave the fact that the Bible says that God brought the great drought because "Yetzer Lev ha'adam Ra' Mine'urav" (= the desire of the Human's heart is bad from his youth.), and later on decided not to do it again for a similar reason. He brought that as an indication that the Bible indicated that a man is not Objective by nature.

I thought about it for a moment and understood that the same can be said about honesty (or "righteousness" in a more religious language). We can never be completely honest and never lie or do the right thing everytime. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't constantly try to be as honest as possible, or worse succumb to complete dishonesty.

(I was told Immanuel Kant said something along the lines that if one wished, for example, to be sincere, he must not lie even if threatened by death. However, this is silly, because ethical and moral ideals are supposed to help you lead a happier life (as identified by Aristotle in the first book of "Nicomachean Ethics"), not to terminate them prematurely under someone who employs force or threat of force against you, when you otherwise did not do anything wrong.)

After I told it to my co-worker in an MSN Messenger conversation he agreed with me that I was right on both the honesty aspect and, in accordance with the principle, also the Objectivity one.

This concept can be applied to many other values or capabilities we desire. For example, one can always improve as a programmer, which is evident by the fact that most good programmers who take a look at their old code are unhappy with it. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to always improve as programmers.

Likewise, if a particular computing technology is large (e.g: Perl, Java, PHP, .NET) and also has possibly spanned a large number of halo technologies (e.g: CPAN, Apache Jakarta, etc.), then mastering the core language would be hard, and time consuming. In the Perl world we constantly say that "no one knows all of Perl, not even Larry Wall". But it doesn't mean you shouldn't do your best to master as much as you can out of it, or need to.

One example that I'm especially sensitive about is politics in a software project (possibly an open-source one ). Obviously, there can never be zero politics, but the project leaders and members should always try to reduce its amount, because not keeping it at bay is a recipe for disaster. I constantly hear about important features that are not implemented or even bugs that are left unfixed in open-source projects due to political reasons.

I can give Subversion and to a lesser extent the perl5-core development tools as good examples of projects with very little politics and a value-maximising attitude.

One can think of many other examples.

My point is that while it is true that we are humans and can never be perfect, we should always aim for perfection in some aspects. And given enough willingness and by learning from our mistakes, we can remain close to perfection in those respects all the time.

2008-05-01: What Motivates People and How?

I feel obliged to write a special entry for the Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day which is today, so hopefully this will serve as such. It's probably not going to be what you expect.

My first question is the one in the title: what motivates people? Why do people do what they do? One of the most common myths about it is what I call "pseudo-Darvinism" - the belief that people ultimately do everything to have sex, or even to procreate. This was started by Sigmund Freud, and also popularised by the book The Selfish Gene (which I haven't read but seems very interesting). However, this makes many explanations for human behaviour very contrived ("You chat on instant messaging because you hope that one of the people in the conversation will give you a lead for a date with an attractive woman/man...") which don't make much sense. It also fails to explain why many people and even many mammals who were castarated or otherwise incapable of bringing offspring do not commit suicide. And also why many people marry and lead happy lives, but don't want to have children. (And sometimes also have abortions.) Or why some people become monks or nuns, etc. or other clergymen who are forbidden from having sex. And arguably, many people who have been virgins for a long time, or have wonderful significant-others (and sex partners) whom they'll never wish to hurt, are still chatting on the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and other IM services.

So it's not very satisfying. But there's a simpler explanation, and it actually heavily predates Darvin. In the first book of Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle claims that we perform certain actions for certain ends and that these ends are also sometimes means to an end. But there must be an ultimate end, because otherwise everything will be meaningless.

He then claims that "happiness" is the ultimate ends for most humans. Happiness can also be interpreted, or subtituted for "self-esteem", "pleasure", "joy", etc. depending on how you see it.

So what does it mean? We do what makes us feel good about ourselves. However, different people, and people at different times, have different actions that they deem as making them happier. This is often perfectly natural. I can sit at the computer most of the time and just write, chat, code software, etc. Other people don't seem to like it enough to do it all the time. Often, what makes us happy or our tastes is not a moral decision but an ammoral one (i.e: something that's neither moral nor immoral.).

As software developers, our job is to make sure people encounter as few frustrations as they can with our software. This means that the software will have good usability, that it will "just work", that it won't have bugs, and that if such problems are encountered they can easily be reported and dealt with.

If a software works according to our expectations, and does what we want - we'll feel happy. If it is too difficult to operate, lacks necessary features, has obscure and unhelpful documentation, or doesn't behave acccording to our expectations - we'll feel unhappy and helpless. As an example, I was searching CPAN for an IMAP module so I can get a list of all the From: addresses in my work's inbox. The first hits seemed overly complicated and required too much research. Then I found Email-Folder-IMAP whose synopsis had done something very similar to what I wanted. After pasting the code, changing it a bit and running it, I had got a list of all the from addresses. That has made me happy, and I was determined to use Email-Folder-IMAP from then on.

Back to the main subject - the main problem in the world is that some people derive pleasure from causing damage. For example, Genghis Khan has killed millions of people in his irrational and pointless conquests, just so he can feel good about himself. Adolf Hitler was similar too. The reason he decided to set the blame on the Jews and to kill over 20 million people in World-War-II was so he can feel good about himself. Also notice how he constantly shifted the blame to his and his people's problems from himself to members of other people, especially the Jews. Constantly blaming others or the world at large for one's own problems is a vestige of what Neo-Tech calls "The Criminal Mind".

Of course, even the Nazis were angels in comparison to 20th-century Communistic regimes who had been responsible for killing 100 million of their own countries' citizens. Why? Because the leaders felt that they were conspiring against them, and that these victims prevent "future growth", but in fact because they felt pleasure of doing this.

No reason for any human-induced mass-destruction have ever existed except for the fact that the Charismatic leader was a destructive and evil person (a "mystic" in Neo-Tech terminology) who wanted to feel good about himself.

But naturally saying "Would you kill a million people so I can feel good" would not motivate anybody, they needed a "higher cause": "God", "the Aryan Race", "the nation", "justice" (not real Justice - more like an egalitarian revenge), "the Proletariat", etc. (And more recently "the Environment", "our security", "fighting the drug abusers" and other causes like that). But these causes are unnatural because there is no good reason to follow them.

Ayn Rand has identified that any aim to an unnatural altruistic cause, instead of the real cause which is the well-being, freedom and prosperity of the conscious individual, is in fact a recipe for disaster. By altruism she didn't mean willingly and rationally contributing to the well-being of another you care about, but rather claiming that one's life is worthless without contributing or even sacrificing to an external cause, be it "The poor", "the weak", "the nation", "the faith" or whatever.

As we remember the victims of the Nazis we should realise two things:

  1. If the Germans would have cared about their own well-being, been logical and considered Hitler a stupid and irrational pip-squeak and nothing more, then World-War-II would not have happpened.

  2. If the Jews (and other Nazi-opposers) realised they were in danger, and would have marched into Germany and kill everyone that looked like a Nazi, the War would have turned out much different.

    ( While I am a peaceful man, I am not a pacifist. I believe that when someone is in danger, they are allowed to exercise force against their oppressors. And sometimes it is necesary. )

The issue is not the "strong-vs-the-weak" it is the "noble-vs-the-evil", and ironically some of the causes that seem the most noble to us are in fact very bad.

Now it is your mission to try to apply what I said here. Act for your own well-being and happiness. Oppose those people who tell you you should dedicate your life to them. Ridicule them. Insult them. Fight them. Laugh them out of existence.

Don't blame other people or the world at large for your own problems. Challenge every assumption. Make sure you have no prejudice or dogma. Understand that some people know more than you in some respects, and that even the most wise men can (and often do) learn from fools. Be fanatical for proper use of logic, which is the only valid tool that we have for judging what's correct and right and what's wrong and bad.

Don't be a slave to your emotions and feelings. A person who's behaving rationally will be happier in the long run than a person who's behaving irrationally, and will experience more feelings of joy, happiness, love, etc. Your feelings are not facts and only reflect our thoughts, and general condition. While we want to be happy, we shouldn't make pleasure our master, but rather our servant in the ends for a better life.

Regards -- Shlomi Fish, The Eternal Jew.

2008-05-05: Today is my Birthday

I was born on 5 May, 1977, so today is my 31st Birthday. peachuk has already congratulated me on her blog (with a nice cartoon), and other people have already congratulated me on IRC and IM. Someone I know also wrote me something on Facebook, which I tend to dislike. Next time, an Email or an IM will do, but thanks.

I felt a bit depressed towards my birthday, but today I'm feeling great. Today was productive for me as I worked on an XML grammar for Unix-like fortune cookies. I learned RELAX NG in the process (and can recommend it) and made some progress, but it's still not ready for prime time.

I also chatted on the IRC a lot, and spent a lot of time explaining the essence of Perl 5's references to someone who only knew Unix Shell and very minimal Python. I remember I had problems with C pointers back after I learnt BASIC, which didn't really have them, and still remember that I only truly understood references in Perl after learning some Java (and possibly also after reading SICP).

So I geeked out today. :-) For other events that had occured today see the Wikipedia.

Cheers! -- the 31-years old, Shlomi.

2008-05-07: ืจืฉื•ืžื” ืœื›ื‘ื•ื“ ื™ื•ื ื”ืขืฆืžืื•ืช: ืžืกืคื™ืง ืขื ื”ื”ืชืขืกืงื•ืช ื‘ื‘ื˜ื—ื•ืŸ!

ื™ื•ื ืขืฆืžืื•ืช ืฉืžื— ืœื›ื•ืœื! ื”ื—ืœื˜ืชื™ ืœื›ืชื•ื‘ ืจืฉื•ืžื” ื–ืืช ืœื›ื‘ื•ื“ ื™ื•ื ื”ืขืฆืžืื•ืช, ืื‘ืœ ืงืจื•ื‘ ืœื•ื“ืื™ ืฉื—ืœืงื›ื ืœื ืชื”ื™ื• ืžืจื•ืฆื™ื ืžืžื ื”. ื”ืจืฉื•ืžื” ื›ืชื•ื‘ื” ื‘ืขื‘ืจื™ืช, ืžืชื•ืš ืจื’ืฉื•ืช ืคื˜ืจื™ื•ื˜ื™ื•ืช, ืื‘ืœ ืงืจื•ื‘ ืœื•ื“ืื™ ืฉืืชืจื’ื ืื•ืชื” ืื—ืจ-ื›ืš ืœืื ื’ืœื™ืช ื•ืื“ื‘ื™ืง ืื•ืชื” ื›ืจืฉื•ืžื” ื ืคืจื“ืช.

ืžืขืฉื” ืฉื”ื™ื” ื›ืš ื”ื™ื”: ื“ื™ื‘ืจืชื™ ืขื ืคื˜ืจื™ืก ืงืจื•ืžื™ื ืก ื‘ืคืจื™ื ื•ื“, ื•ื”ื•ื ืกื™ืคืจ ืœื™ ืฉื”ื•ื ืขืชื™ื“ ื‘ืงืจื•ื‘ ืœืกื™ื™ื ืืช ื”ืชื•ืืจ ื”ืจืืฉื•ืŸ ืฉืœื• ื‘ืคื™ื–ื™ืงื”. (ื‘ื”ืฆืœื—ื” ื•ืžื–ืœ ื˜ื•ื‘!) ื‘ื›ืœ ืžืงืจื”, ื“ื™ื‘ืจื ื• ืขืœ ื˜ืงืกื™ ืกื™ื•ื ื‘ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื•ื‘ืœื˜ื‘ื™ื” (ืฉื”ื™ื ืืจืฅ ืžื•ืฉื‘ื• ืฉืœ ืคื˜ืจื™ืก) ื•ื”ื•ื ื”ืจืื” ืœื™ ืžืกืคืจ ืชืžื•ื ื•ืช ืฉืœ ื˜ืงืก ืกื™ื•ื ืžืœื˜ื‘ื™ื”.

ื”ืชืžื•ื ื” ื”ืจืืฉื•ื ื” ืฉืœื›ื“ื” ืืช ืขื™ื ื™ื™ ื”ื™ื™ืชื” ืชืžื•ื ื” ื–ืืช ืฉืœ ืžืกืคืจ ื‘ื ื•ืช ืฉื›ื›ืœ ื”ื ืจืื” ืขืžื“ื• ืœืงื‘ืœ ืืช ื”ืชืขื•ื“ื”. ื›ืคื™ ืฉื ื™ืชืŸ ืœืจืื•ืช ื”ืŸ ื—ืžื•ื“ื•ืช ืœืืœืœื”, ืื‘ืœ ืื ื™ ืžืฆืืชื™ ืืช ื”ืชืœื‘ื•ืฉื•ืช ืฉืœื”ืŸ ืžืฆื—ื™ืงื•ืช ืœืžื“ื™ ื‘ื™ื—ืก ืœืžื” ืฉืื ื™ ืžื›ื™ืจ. ืคื˜ืจื™ืก ืกื™ืคืจ ืœื™ ืฉืืœื” ืชืœื‘ื•ืฉื•ืช ืคื•ืจืžืœื™ื•ืช ืจื’ื™ืœื•ืช ืฉืœ ื‘ื—ื•ืจื•ืช ืฉื, ื•ื”ื•ื ืฉืืœ ืื•ืชื™ ืื ืื•ื›ืœ ืœืžืฆื•ื ืœื• ืชืžื•ื ื•ืช ืฉืœ ื‘ื—ื•ืจื•ืช ื™ืฉืจืืœื™ื•ืช ื‘ืชืœื‘ื•ืฉื•ืช ืคื•ืจืžืœื™ื•ืช.

ื˜ื•ื‘, ื ื™ื’ืฉืชื™ ืœืคืœื™ืงืจ ื•ื—ื™ืคืฉืชื™ "israeli girls" ื•ืžื” ืื ื™ ืจื•ืื”? ืžื“ื™ื ืขืœ ื’ื‘ื™ ืžื“ื™ื. ืžืจื•ื‘ ื—ืืงื™ ื ื”ื™ื” ืœื™ ืฉื—ื•ืจ ื‘ืขื™ื ื™ื™ื. ืชืžื•ื ื•ืช ื‘ืื™ื›ื•ืช ื˜ื•ื‘ื” ืฉืœ ื—ื™ื™ืœื•ืช ื ืื•ืช, ืื‘ืœ ื–ื”ื• - ืืš ื•ืจืง ื—ื™ื™ืœื•ืช. ืคื˜ืจื™ืก ืกื™ืคืจ ืœื™ ืฉืื•ืชืŸ ืชืžื•ื ื•ืช ื”ื™ื• ืคื•ืคื•ืœืจื™ื•ืช ื‘-digg, ื‘-reddit ื•ื‘ื›ืœ ืฉืืจ ืืชืจื™ ื”ืงื™ืฉื•ืจื™ื ื”ื—ื‘ืจืชื™ื™ื, ื•ืื•ืœื™ ื–ืืช ื”ืกื™ื‘ื” ืžื“ื•ืข ืคืœื™ืงืจ ืžื™ื™ื—ืก ืœื”ืŸ ื—ืฉื™ื‘ื•ืช ืจื‘ื” ื›ืœ ื›ืš.

ื˜ื•ื‘, ื—ื™ื™ืœืช ื‘ืžื“ื™ื (ืื• ื—ื™ื™ืœ ื–ื›ืจ ื‘ืžื“ื™ื) ืื™ื ื• ืžืจืื” ื›ืœ-ื›ืš ื ื“ื™ืจ ื‘ืืจืฅ ื‘ื”ืชื—ืฉื‘ ื‘ืขื•ื‘ื“ื” ืฉืžืจื‘ื™ืช ื”ื‘ื ื•ืช ืžืฉืจืชื•ืช ื‘ืฆื‘ื ืฉื ืชื™ื™ื ื”ื—ืœ ืžื’ื™ืœ 18, ื•ื›ืŸ ื—ืœืงืŸ ื‘ื•ื—ืจื•ืช ืœืขืฉื•ืช ื’ื ืงืฆื•ื ื” ืื• ืฉื™ืจื•ืช ืงื‘ืข. ืื‘ืœ ืžืจื‘ื™ืช ื”ื ืฉื™ื ืฉืจื•ืื™ื ื‘ืืจืฅ ืื™ื ืŸ ืœื‘ื•ืฉื•ืช ื‘ืžื“ื™ื. ื›ืš ืฉื”ื—ื™ืคื•ืฉ ื”ื–ื” ื‘ืคืœื™ืงืจ ื ื•ืชืŸ ืจื•ืฉื ืžื˜ืขื” ื•ืคื•ืœื™ื˜ื™.

ื”ื—ื™ืคื•ืฉ "israeli woman" ืื™ื ื• ืžืฆื™ื’ ืจืง ื—ื™ื™ืœื•ืช ืื‘ืœ ื”ื“ืฃ ื”ืจืืฉื•ืŸ ื’ื ื”ื•ื ืคื•ืœื™ื˜ื™ ืžืฉื”ื•.

ืขื›ืฉื™ื• ืžื’ื™ืข ืชื•ื›ืŸ ื”ื”ืชืœื•ื ื ื•ืช ืฉืœื™: ืœื“ืขืชื™ ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื ืชืคืกืช ื›ืžื“ื™ื ื” ื”ื™ืคืจ-ืคื•ืœื™ื˜ื™ืช ื•ื”ื™ืคืจ-ื‘ื˜ื—ื•ื ื™ืช ื”ืŸ ื‘ืขื™ื ื™ ืชื•ืฉื‘ื™ ื”ืขื•ืœื ื•ื”ืŸ ื‘ืขื™ื ื™ ืื–ืจื—ื™ื” ืขืฆืžื”. ืื ื™ ืืชืŸ ืžืกืคืจ ื“ื•ื’ืžืื•ืช:

  1. ื›ืืฉืจ ืœืžื“ืชื™ ืื–ืจื—ื•ืช ื‘ื›ื™ืชื” ื™โ€Ž"ื ื”ืžื•ืจื” ืœืื–ืจื—ื•ืช (ืฉืื ื™ ื–ื•ื›ืจ ื“ื™ ืœื˜ื•ื‘ื”) ืฉืืœื” ืืช ื”ื›ื™ืชื” ืœืื™ื–ื• ื•ืขื“ื” ืฉืœ ื”ื›ื ืกืช, ืจืืฉ ื”ืžืžืฉืœื” ืžื—ื•ื™ื‘ ืœื”ืชื™ื™ืฆื‘, ื•ื”ืชืœืžื™ื“ื™ื ืขื ื• "ื•ืขื“ืช ื”ื—ื•ืฅ ื•ื”ื‘ื˜ื—ื•ืŸ". ืื•ืœื, ื”ื•ืขื“ื” ื”ื ื›ื•ื ื” ื”ื™ื™ืชื” "ื”ื•ืขื“ื” ืœื‘ื™ืงื•ืจืช ื”ืžื“ื™ื ื”" ื•ื”ืžื•ืจื” ื”ืขื™ืจื” ืฉื–ืืช ื”ื™ื™ืชื” ืื™ื ื“ื™ืงืฆื™ื” ืฉืื ื• ืชื•ืคืกื™ื ืืช ื”ื‘ื˜ื—ื•ืŸ ื›ื—ืฉื•ื‘ ื™ืชืจ ืขืœ ื”ืžื™ื“ื” (ื•ื”ื™ื ื”ืขื™ืจื” ืขืœ ื›ืš ื’ื ืœืคื ื™ ื›ืŸ.)

  2. ื‘ืžืืžืจ ื”ื–ื” ืคื•ืœ ื’ืจื”ื ื”ื•ื›ื™ื— "ืžื“ืขื™ืช", ืฉื–ืืช ืชื”ื™ื” ืžืฉื™ืžื” ื—ืกืจืช-ื˜ืขื ืœื”ืงื™ื "ืขืžืง ืกื™ืœื™ืงื•ืŸ" ื‘ื™ืฉืจืืœ - ื›ืœื•ืžืจ ืžืจื›ื– ืฉืœ ืกื˜ืืจื˜-ืืคื™ื. ื”ื•ื ื›ื ืจืื” ืœื ืฉืžืข ืขืœ ื—ื‘ืจื•ืช ื›ืžื• ืžื™ืจื‘ื™ืœื™ืก, ืฆ'ืง ืคื•ื™ื ื˜, ื–ื ื“ ื•ืขื•ื“ ืกื˜ืืจื˜-ืืคื™ื ื™ืฉืจืืœื™ื™ื ืจื‘ื™ื ื•ื˜ื•ื‘ื™ื ืœืฉืขื‘ืจ. ืžืจื‘ื™ืช ื”ื—ื‘ืจื•ืช ืฉืขื‘ื“ืชื™ ื‘ื”ืŸ ื‘ืชื•ืจ ืžืชื›ื ืช ื”ื™ื• ืกื˜ืืจื˜-ืืคื™ื, ื•ืœื ื—ืกืจื•ืช ื›ืืœืŸ, ื•ื’ื ื”ื™ื• ืจื‘ื•ืช ื›ืืœื• ื’ื ื‘ื–ืžืŸ ื”ืžื™ืชื•ืŸ.

  3. ื›ืืฉืจ ื›ืชื‘ืชื™ ืืช ื”ืจืฉื•ืžื” ื”ืกื˜ื•ืจื™ื” ืžืงื•ืฆืจืช ืฉืœ ืœื™ื ื•ืงืก ื‘ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื‘ื•ื™ืงื™ ืฉืœ Hackers-IL, ื›ืชื‘ืชื™ ื‘ืžืงื•ืจ ืฉืœื™ืฉืจืืœ ื”ื™ื• ื‘ืขื™ื•ืช ืจื‘ื•ืช ื•ื‘ื™ื ื™ื”ืŸ "ืžื™ืกื•ื™ ืžืจื•ื‘ื”, ืจื’ื•ืœืฆื™ื” ืžืจื•ื‘ื” ื•ืœื ืจืฆื™ื•ื ืœื™ืช, ื›ืžื•ืช ืจื‘ื” ืฉืœ ืคืขื™ืœื•ืช ื˜ืจื•ืจื™ืกื˜ื™ืช ื•ื›ื•". ืžื™ืฉื”ื• (ืฉืื ื™ ื—ื•ืฉื‘ ืฉื”ื™ื” ื™ืฉืจืืœื™) ืžื—ืง ืืช ืžื” ืฉื›ืชื‘ืชื™ ื•ื”ืฉืื™ืจ ืจืง ืืช "ื”ื›ืžื•ืช ื”ืจื‘ื” ืฉืœ ืคืขื™ืœื•ืช ื˜ืจื•ืจื™ืกื˜ื™ืช".

    ืขื ื›ืœ ื”ื›ื‘ื•ื“, ื”ืคืขื™ืœื•ืช ื”ื˜ืจื•ืจื™ืกื˜ื™ืช ื”ืจื‘ื” ื”ื™ื ืœื ื”ื‘ืขื™ื™ื” ื”ื—ืžื•ืจื” ื‘ื™ื•ืชืจ ืฉืคื•ื’ืขืช ื‘ื™ืฉืจืืœ. ื™ืฉืจืืœื™ื ืจื‘ื™ื ื™ื•ืชืจ ืžืชื• ืžืชืื•ื ื•ืช ื“ืจื›ื™ื ื•ืžืขื™ืฉื•ืŸ ืžืืฉืจ ืžืคืขื™ืœื•ืช ื˜ืจื•ืจ. ื•ื›ืืžื•ืจ, ืœื“ืขืชื™, ื›ืžื•ืช ื”ืžื™ืกื•ื™ ื”ืื“ื™ืจื” ืคื•ื’ืขืช ื‘ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื‘ืื•ืคืŸ ื ื™ื›ืจ ื”ืจื‘ื” ืžืคืขื™ืœื•ืช ื”ื˜ืจื•ืจ, ื•ื™ืฉืจืืœ ืœื ืชืคืกื™ื“ ื“ื‘ืจ (ื•ืืฃ ืชืจื•ื•ื™ื—) ื›ื›ืœ ืฉื”ื™ื ืชืฆืžืฆื ืื•ืชื”.

    ื›ืš ืฉื”ืขืจื™ื›ื” ื”ื™ื™ืชื” ืžื˜ืขื”.

  4. ืžืกืคืจ ืจื‘ ืžื“ื™ ืฉืœ ืื ืฉื™ื ื–ืจื™ื ืฉื“ื™ื‘ืจืชื™ ืื™ืชื ืžื—ื•"ืœ ื‘ืฆ'ืื˜ื™ื ื‘ืื™ื ื˜ืจื ื˜ ืฉืืœื• ืื•ืชื™ ืื ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื‘ื˜ื•ื—ื” ืžืกืคื™ืง. ื›ื›ืœ ื”ื ืจืื” ื”ืจื•ืฉื ืฉืœื”ื ื”ื•ื ืฉื™ืฉ ื™ืจื™ ื‘ืจื—ื•ื‘ื•ืช, ื•ื˜ื™ืœื™ื ื‘ื›ืœ ืžืงื•ื, ื•ื™ืฉืจืืœ ืื™ื ื ื” ื‘ื˜ื•ื—ื”. ืื•ืœื ื”ืžืฆื™ืื•ืช ื”ื™ื ืฉืžืจื‘ื™ืช ืชื•ืฉื‘ื™ ื™ืฉืจืืœ ืžืจื’ื™ืฉื™ื ื‘ื˜ื•ื—ื™ื ืžืื•ื“.

ื›ืžื•ื‘ืŸ, ื’ื ืื ื™ ืื™ื ื ื™ ื˜ืœื™ืช ืฉื›ื•ืœื” ืชื›ืœืช ื‘ื ื•ืฉื ื”ื–ื”. ื”ืกื™ืคื•ืจ ื”ืจืฆื™ื ื™ ื”ืจืืฉื•ืŸ ืฉื›ืชื‘ืชื™ ื”ื™ื” ืžื‘ื•ืกืก ืขืœ ื”ืžืฆื‘ ื”ืคื•ืœื™ื˜ื™ ื‘ื’ื‘ื•ืœ ื‘ื™ืŸ ื™ืฉืจืืœ ื•ืœื‘ื ื•ืŸ, ืื ื›ื™ ื™ืืžืจ ืœื”ื’ื ืชื™ ืฉื™ืฉ ืœื• ืžืกืจ ื”ืจื‘ื” ื™ื•ืชืจ ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกืœื™. ื›ืžื•-ื›ืŸ ื›ืชื‘ืชื™ ืžืืžืจื™ื ืขืœ ืคื•ืœื™ื˜ื™ืงื” ื•ื›ืŸ ืจืฉื•ืžื•ืช ืคื•ืœื™ื˜ื™ื•ืช ืจื‘ื•ืช ื‘ื‘ืœื•ื’ ืฉืœื™, ืื ื›ื™ ืœื ื›ื•ืœืŸ ืขืœ ื”ืžืฆื‘ ื”ืคื•ืœื™ื˜ื™-ื‘ื˜ื—ื•ื ื™ ื‘ื™ืฉืจืืœ.

ืื‘ืœ ืื ื™ ื—ื•ืฉื‘ ืฉื™ืฉ ืœื ื• ื›ืขื ืื•ื‘ืกืกื™ื” ืจื‘ื” ืžื“ื™ ืขื ื”ืฆื‘ื, ื•ื”ื‘ื˜ื—ื•ืŸ ืฉืœ ื™ืฉืจืืœ. ืื ืืชื ืฉื•ืืœื™ื ืœื“ืขืชื™, ื”ื’ื•ืจื ื”ืขื™ืงืจื™ ืฉืžืฆื‘ื ื• ื”ื‘ื˜ื—ื•ื ื™ ืžืขื•ืจืขืจ ื›ืœ-ื›ืš ื”ื™ื ื”ืขื•ื‘ื“ื” ืฉืงื™ื™ืžืช ื‘ื™ืฉืจืืœ ืืคืœื™ื” ื—ื•ืงืชื™ืช. ืขื“ ืฉืœื ื ืžื’ืจ ืื•ืชื” ืœื—ืœื•ื˜ื™ืŸ, ื”ื™ื ืชื‘ื™ื ืœืืคืœื™ื” ื•ืœื’ื–ืขื ื•ืช ืจื’ื™ืœื”, ื•ื›ืŸ ืœื™ื—ืกื™ื ืœื ืื•ื”ื“ื™ื ื’ื ื‘ืงืจื‘ ื”ืขืจื‘ื™ื ื•ืฉืืจ ืชื•ืฉื‘ื™-ื”ืขื•ืœื ื”ื›ื™ ืœื™ื‘ืจืœื™ื™ื. ื•ืื ื™ ืื•ืžืจ ื–ืืช ื›ื™ืฉืจืืœื™ ื™ื”ื•ื“ื™. ืื ืœืขื•ื•ืช ืืช ืžื” ืฉื™ื•ื“ื” ืืžืจ: "ืขืฉื” ืื• ืืœ ืชืขืฉื”. ืื‘ืœ ืืœ ืชืขืฉื” ืœื™ื”ื•ื“ื™ ื•ืœื ืชืขืฉื” ืœื’ื•ื™, ืื• ืœื”ืคืš."

ื‘ื›ืœ ืžืงืจื”, ื‘ืชื•ืจ ื™ืฉืจืืœื™ื ื‘ื™ื•ื ื”ืขืฆืžืื•ืช, ืื ื—ื ื• ืฆืจื™ื›ื™ื ืœื–ื›ื•ืจ ืฉื”ืฆื‘ื ื•ื”ื‘ื˜ื—ื•ืŸ ื”ื ื›ืœื™ ื•ืœื ืžื˜ืจื”. ื”ืžื˜ืจื” ื”ื™ื ืฉืื–ืจื—ื™ื” ื™ื•ื›ืœื• ืœื—ื™ื•ืช ื—ื™ื™ื ื‘ืฉืœื•ื, ืฉืœื•ื”, ืื•ืฉืจ ื•ืฉื’ืฉื•ื’. ื™ื•ื ืขืฆืžืื•ืช ืฉืžื— ืœื›ืœ ืชื•ืฉื‘ื™ ื™ืฉืจืืœ!

2008-05-11: Israeli Independence Day Special: Enough with the Obsession With National Security! (English Translation)

Note: this is an English translation of a previous entry which was written in Hebrew especially for the Israeli Independence Day.

Happy Independence Day Everybody! I decided to write this entry for the Israeli Independence Day, but it is probable some of you will be pleased by it. The entry is written in Hebrew, due to patriotic feelings, but I'll probably translate it into English later and post it as a separate entry.

The story went like this: I talked with Peteris Krumins on Freenode, and he told me that he is about to graduate with his Bachelor Degree in Physics. (Good Luck and Mazal Tov!) In any case, we discussed graduation ceremonies in Israel and Latvia (which is Peteris's home-land), and he referred me to a few photos of a graduation ceremony in Latvia.

The first picture that caught my eye was this picture of several girls who were apparently about to receive their diploma. As one can see they are incredibly cute, but I found their costumes very funny in comparison to what I am familiar with. Peteris told me that these are standard formal costumes of girls there, and he asked me if I could find him photos of Israeli females in formal dresses.

So I went to Flickr and searched for "israeli girls", and what do I find? Uniforms upon uniforms. My eyes became black from all the Khaki. High-quality photos of good-looking female soldiers, but that's it - only soldiers. Peteris told me that these photos were a hit on Digg, Reddit and the rest of the social bookmarking sites, which may be the reason why Flickr ranks them so highly.

OK, a female solider in uniform (or a male soldier in uniform) is not such an uncommon sight in Israel, given that most girls serve in the military for two years starting from the age 18, and some of them also choose to become officers or serve permanently. But most of the women we see in Israel are not wearing uniforms. So this search in Flickr gives a false and political impression.

The search "israeli woman" does not display only soldiers, but it too has a very political orientation.

Now here's the substance of my complaint: I think Israel is perceived as a hyper-political and hyper-security-obsessed country, both by the citizens of the world and by its own. I'll give a few examples:

  1. When I studied civics in the 11th grade, the Civics teacher (whom I remember quite fondly) asked the class to which committee of the Knesseth, the prime minister was obliged to be summoned, and the students said "The Committee of External Affairs and National Security". But, the correct committee was "The Committee for the Critique of the State", and the teacher noted that it was an indication that we perceive the national security as too important (and she noted that beforehand as well).

  2. In this essay Paul Graham proved "scientifically" that it would be a pointless mission to establish a "Silicon Valley" (i.e: a hub of startups) in Israel. He probably didn't hear of companies such as Mirabilis, Check Point, Zend and many other examples of numerous, high-quality former Israeli startups. Most of the companies I have worked for as a programmer in Israel have been startups. There isn't a shortage of them, and there were many like that even during the recession.

  3. When I wrote the entry "A Brief History of Linux in Israel" on the Hackers-IL wiki, I originally wrote that Israel had many problems including "heavy taxation, irrational and abundant regulations, quite a lot of terrorist activity, etc.". Someone (who I think was an Israeli) deleted what I wrote and left only the "large amount of terrorist activity".

    With all due respect, the terrorist activity is not the worst problem that hurts Israel. More Israelis have died from road accidents and from smoking than from terrorist activity. And, as I noted, the high tax liability harms Israel much worse than the terrorist activity, and Israel won't lose anything (and will even greatly benefit) the more it will lower it.

    Thus, the editing was misleading.

  4. Too many foreign people I have talked with from outside Israel in Internet chats have asked me if Israel was safe. Apparently, their impression is that there is shooting in the streets, missiles falling everywhere and that Israel is not safe. But the reality is that most Israeli residents feel perfectly safe.

Naturally, I, too, am not a Tallith that's entirely azure. My first serious story was based on the political situation on the Israeli-Lebanese border, although in my defense I must say that it has a much more universal message. I have also written some essays about politics as well as many political posts on my blog, albeit not all of them are about the political-defensive state of Israel.

But I think that as a people, we Israelis are too obsessed with the military and the national security of Israel. If you ask me, the main reason our security status is so terrible is the fact that Israel has constitutional discrimination. Until we completely eliminate it, it will beget institutionalized and private discrimination and racism, as well as non-supportive treatment from even amongst the most liberal of the Arabs and the rest of the world's citizenry. And I'm saying this as a Jewish Israeli. If I may contort what Yoda said: "Do or do not. But don't do for a Jew and don't do for a Gentile, or vice versa."

As Israelis in Independence Day, we should remember that the IDF and the National Security are a means, not an end. The end is that the citizens of Israel would be able to live good, peaceful, happy and prosperous lives. Happy Independence Day to all Israeli Residents!

IRC Conversation: "Bunny" (Maybe Somewhat Offensive)

This conversation took place on Freenode's #perl the other day. It's funny, so I wanted to share it here. Note that it may be somewhat offensive to some sensitive females (or sensitive males), but I think it's pretty harmless

-->	B-rabbit has joined #perl
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit? I know a B-rat on #linguistics.
 <B-rabbit>  rindolf, cool =]
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit: ok.
 <B-rabbit>  my full name is bunny rabbit bt w :)
 <B-rabbit>  hehe
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit: ah.
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit: "bunny" is a female name.
 <B-rabbit>  lol
  <pippijn>  rindolf: correct
  <pippijn>  I know a bunny
  <rindolf>  Or a Playboy bunny.
       <ik>  rindolf: bunny is a stripper name
  <pippijn>  friends call her bun
       <ik>  pippijn: is she a stripper?
 <B-rabbit>  rindolf, i am a male lol x sorry to disappoint u
  <rindolf>  "IRC: Where men are men, women are men, and the kids are
             FBI agents."
  <rindolf>  B-rabbit: ok, no problem.
       <ik>  pippijn: she should change her name
  <pippijn>  ik: it doesn't hurt her
       <ik>  pippijn: right, but she's violating a fundamental law
       <ik>  pippijn: she either needs to change her name or become a
             stripper
  <rindolf>  ik: I think the other option is better.
  <pippijn>  ik: she'd probably become a stripper rather than changing
             her name
  <rindolf>  pippijn: LOL.
       <ik>  rindolf: yeah, but you're creepy
  <rindolf>  I think I'll make a fortune out of it.

Cheers!

2008-06-04: The Grammar Nazis Conspiracy

Back in 2005, I wrote a message in Hebrew to the Hamakor discussions, noting that illegal copying of software, as undesirable as it may be, is not "stealing" or "theft". I signed my message "(The Semantics Nazi)" (in English).

Someone was offended, and after a brief discussion decided to publish this article on the front page of linmagazine.co.il (=an Israeli Linux news, blogs and forums site). The discussion is very amusing. Someone asks "What does it have to do with anything? Did Hitler use Linux?". Another one has misapplied Psalms 34, there, while I had to correct him. In any case, I haven't stopped calling myself and others "nazis".

Now it seems that Millie is a "Grammar nazi" and proud of it:

Ozy and
Millie: 'Grammar Nazi'

Since I am often correcting people's grammar, syntax, etc. (mostly in Hebrew), I also consider myself a Grammar nazi. So I've decided to form a conspiracy of:

  1. Spelling nazis
  2. Grammar nazis
  3. Syntax nazis
  4. Punctuation nazis
  5. Idiomatic talk nazis
  6. Semantics nazis
  7. Netiquette nazis
  8. Applied logic nazis (e.g: logical fallacies)

And may all "Anti-'nazi' nazis" be damned!

Here's for a better, clearer, and more correct human-to-human communication (in all languages). Note that I always appreciate reports on errors in my own text, which is especially problematic in English.

2008-06-08: Cognitive Behavioural Therapists' Summary

I previously wrote to Linux-IL about me seeking a Cognitive-Behavioural Therpist in the Tel-Aviv area. I received several replies in private. Here is a summary of them:

  1. I was referred to Mekhon Psagot, which has a clinique in Tel-Aviv, in the Rabin Square area. I went to a meeting with a therapist there on Thursday, and it went very well. Note that it was an ad-hoc meeting, until my usual therapist returns from abroad, and not the beginning of a permanent commitment.

  2. Someone referred me to Mifne which are located in Haifa, so it was a bit too far.

  3. Someone thanked me for my contributions to FOSS, and said he wished I'd be well. Such encouragement is always appreciated. Thanks.

  4. I got some other emails.

Thanks to all the people who replied!

2008-06-16: Linux Computer Was Dead

In case you're wondering what happened to me the past few days (since about Thursday), I have the following news. The Power Supply and some of the ventilators of My Linux computer died, rendering it inoperational. So this heavily disrupted my work.

Today my father and I replaced the dysfunctional parts, and restored the computer. After we were able to turn it on, the network card was not recognised, but moving it to another slot got it working again. No damage was done to the hard-disks or any of the data.

That's all I wanted to say. Now, I have my Linux system back, and can work in comfort again.

2008-06-19: Inflation of Singers from Reality Shows

As you may know, many countries hold reality shows / talent shows like American Idol or Fame Academy, in which singers compete to win a contract, and the top selections usually release singles or albums or otherwise become famous.

As a result there's now a huge inflation of such singers. For example, I have the following photo of Katharine McPhee, who was the runner-up on the fifth season of American Idol on virtual desktop #1. Moreover, I once asked Last.fm to play me one of her songs, and it wasn't too bad.

And finally, a Dutch friend of mine recommended this song called "Silencio" by David Bisbal, who was the finalist on the Operaciรณn Triunfo reality show, and went on a solo career. And it's a really good song.

Talking with a friend about the fact that Last.fm played me some Paris Hilton songs, of which I was fond of a few, he told me that he read somewhere that such celebrities-turned-singers have become the last amateurs because all the people from the reality shows have a lot of experience on their record after they become famous.

Oh well.

Hebrew Words to Describe People

This entry is dedicated to peachuk and to the memory of her late husband - John Stephen Hearn, who passed away recently. Thanks to Altreus from IRC who copy-edited this entry.

Before I start with the regular entry, I'd like to note that I went biking through Park Hayarkon (a variation on my usual ride) recently, took many photos and Flickr'ed the good ones. They are all Public Domain, but if you like them or use them, then an attribution or a donation would be appreciated. Well, on we go.

This time in "A Moment of Hebrew" I will cover the various words used to describe people (= men and women) in Hebrew. I decided that from now on, I will also link to the English Wiktionary entries of the words I'm discussing and possibly create an entry or complement the existing one.

I should note that as opposed to English, Hebrew is fully gender-aware: all nouns, including objects are either male or female, whether in singular or in plural. So let's go.

Male - Zakhar (ื–ื›ืจ) and Female - Neqevah (ื ืงื‘ื”)

Zakhar and Neqevah are the names of the genders. So we can say that a "Hatulah hi Hatul mimin neqevah" which means that "A Catess (;-)) is a cat of the gender 'female'". Some animals are actually primarily female like "Anafah" (= Heron), or "Dayah" (= Milvus), in which case you need "Anafah mimin Zakhar" (= a male Heron).

"Zakhar" comes from "Remembered", which may be because the ancient Semites recalled who their male ancestors were (as is apparent in the "X Begot Y" sections of the Old Testament), and didn't care too much about most of their female ancestors. I was told "Neqevah" comes from "Niqbah" which means a "hole", a "cave" or a "shaft" in Hebrew. (Why it is the case, is left as an exercise to the reader.)

Note that the semantics and connotations of "male" and "female" are very different from English. In "Scent of a Woman" the boy describes a beautiful young woman sitting by (played by Gabrielle Anwar) as "a female". Al Pacino understands that he used it on purpose instead of saying "a girl" or "a woman". However, if you call a girl a "neqevah" in Hebrew, she will be heavily it's offended. It's something like "doll" in English, or even more offensive. It's something Israelis of low culture use to describe women, while knowing it is derogatory.

I didn't hear the word "Zakhar" used for "a man" in a similar fashion to the English "a male".

Ish (ืื™ืฉ) - Man/Person, Ishah (ืื™ืฉื”) - Woman, Gever (ื’ื‘ืจ) - Man

"Ish" means more like Person, and Gever is more like man as in manly or male-like. Like "Akhlah Gever" - "one hell of of a man". Or "Eizeh Gever!" - "What a man!". Ishah means "a woman", but again, it may be a bit derogatory in certain contexts. Once on a scouting group tour, a kid who joined us called one of my female peers an "Ishah" and she said that while she technically was one, it was still derogatory to call her that. A male teenager will also object to being called "Ish" or "Gever".

Son, Boy, Guy - Ben - (ื‘ืŸ) and Daughter, Girl, Gal - Bath (ื‘ืช)

While Ben and Bath essentially mean "Son" and "Daughter", they have become to also mean "Boy" (as in Boyfriend, "or I'm going to the beach to catch some boys".) and "Girl" as in "The girls went to work." - "Habanoth [= the girls] halkho la3avodah" (where the "3" is an Ayin). The meaning is a bit derogatory, but not enough for it to matter in everyday speech.

Note that there's a slang term for "Banoth" (= girls) called "Bananoth" which means "Bananas" in Hebrew. My female cousin once used "Bananim" (a play on "Banim") too. This is considered rather old-fashioned in Hebrew, but may become retro.

ื™ืœื“ - Yeled - a male child and ื™ืœื“ื” - Yaldah - a female child

Here we start deviating from English. In Hebrew, "boy"/"guy" and "girl" have many different translations. Yeled means a male child or a boy, and Yaldah means a female child. Note that children and adolscents up to high school still call their peers like this. If a 16-18 years-old will say "Pagashti Bahurah Babar" (= I met a "bahurah" (see below), a female guy in the Bar) he is likely to be boasting to his fellows about meeting an older woman. (Similarly, when swapping genders.) On the other hand saying "Pagashti Yaldah Babar" - I met a girl in the Bar would imply he met someone of his age.

ื ืขืจ - Na3ar and ื ืขืจื” - Na3arah

This also means boy and girl but this time older, normally an adolescent or teenager. Note that adolescents are likely to refer to themselves and their peers as "Yeled" and "Yaldah". It also means a young lover (male or female), or a young underling (for the masculine form) or a maid (for the feminine form). In 2nd Samuel 2, they say "Yaqumo Na Ha'ne3arim we'Yesahaqu Lefaneino", which means "May the boys rise and play (= fight games) in front of us". This is like a corporate manager, or an army officer is likely to refer to his underlings as "my boys", or like in the movie Speed, where the Lutenant refers to one of his officers as "my boy, Jack".

ืขืœื - 3elem - "he-damsel" and ืขืœืžื” - 3almah - damsel

3elem (with an Ayin) means a young man in Hebrew, and 3almah (which is its feminine form) means a young woman - a damsel, a maiden, etc. I'm not aware of a good English translation to 3elem, which is unique in Hebrew.

In modern Hebrew these words are considered a little high, but still OK for most everyday use. An 3elem or 3almah are somewhat older than a Na3ar or Na3arah, already mature, but stil young. Some anecdotes:

ื‘ื—ื•ืจ - Bahur - "guy" and ื‘ื—ื•ืจื” - Bahurah - "girl" or "gal"

ื‘ื—ื•ืจ originally meant a Yeshivah student (comes from "chosen" or "selected"), but it came to mean a "guy" in more recent Hebrew. Like "Bahur ehad me'ha'avudah sheli" - "this guy from (my) work.". "Behurah" is its feminine form ("girl", "gal", "bird", etc.), and as opposed to the English "girl", which may be considered derogatory (at least according to some Feminazis) - it's not derogatory in Hebrew.

Like I said previously, it's a term mostly used by people above high-school. Note that in Hebrew in order to say "my co-worker told me about her parents", you'll often say "Mishehi me'havodah sheli sipra li al Hahorim shelah", which means "someone from Work told me about her parents.". Or "A Bahorah from work". That's because saying "Haverthi la'3avodah"/"Haveri La'3avodah" (my co-worker) is more unweildy and less natural for a Hebrew speaker.

Conclusion

I think the entry is getting very long as it is, and I've covered most of the important words. As can be seen, there are many words to describe people in Hebrew, and to me it seems it is much more rich in this regard than English is.

P.S: some more photos, this time from two days ago - not all of them have been uploaded yet.

What Meital is Doing in the IDF

(in Hebrew, this time.)

ื‘ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ื”ืคืขื - ืžื” ื”ืคืงืืฆื” ืขื•ืฉื” ื‘ืืžืช ื‘ืฆื‘ื. ืฉื™ื—ื” ื‘ื™ื ื™ ืœื‘ื™ืŸ ืฉืœื•ืžื™ ื™ืฉืจืืœ:

ืฉืœื•ืžื™ืฃ: ืื– ืžื” ืืชื” ืขื•ืฉื” ื‘ืฆื‘ื? ืžื™ื˜ืœ ืžืื•ื“ ืฉื•ืžืจืช ืขืœ ืกื•ื“ื™ื•ืช ืœื’ื‘ื™ ืžื” ืฉื”ื™ื ืขื•ืฉื” ืฉื.

ืฉื™ื’'ืค: ืื ื™ ืขื•ืฉื” ื“ื‘ืจื™ื ื‘ื›ืœ ืื•ืคืŸ... ืžืฆื˜ืขืจ... ืื ื™ ื›ืžื• ืžื™ื˜ืœ ืคื”... ื‘ืฉืืœื•ืช ื›ืืœื”.

ืฉืœื•ืžื™ืฃ: ืื”.

ืฉื™ื’'ืค: ืจืง ืฉืžื™ื˜ืœ ืกืชื ืžืฉืงืจืช. ื”ืชืคืงื™ื“ ืฉืœื” ื–ื” ืžืฉ"ืงื™ืช ื•ืจื•ื“. ื”ื™ื ืื—ืจืื™ืช ืขืœ ื”ืฆื‘ืข ื”ื•ืจื•ื“ ื‘ืฆื‘ื.

ืฉืœื•ืžื™ืฃ: ื”ื. ื”ื. ืœื ืžืฉืงื™ืช ืคืงืฆื™ื•ืช? ืื– ืื™ืš ื”ืžื“ื™ื ืฉืœื” ืื™ื ื ื•ืจื•ื“ื™ื?

ืฉื™ื’'ืค: ืœื, ื‘ืฉื‘ื™ืœ ื–ื” ืฆืจื™ืš ืœื”ื™ื•ืช ืงืฆื™ื ื”. ื”ื™ื ืชืงื‘ืœ ื“ืจื’ื•ืช ื•ืจื•ื“ื•ืช.

2008-08-15: Song Recommendation: Gomenasai

It's been a while since there was a soft song that I really liked, but now my wait is over. Having discovered it on last.fm, I fell in love with t.A.T.u's Gomenasai (link to YouTube clip). Gomenasai means "I'm sorry" in Japanese. Wikipedia has more information on this single.

I hope you'll find it as enjoyable as much as I do.

2008-10-09: Yom Kippur Summary - 2008

This is this year's Yom Kippur summary. As has been the tradition for several years, on every Yom Kippur, I'm going over the blog entries from the previous year and try to draw some conclusions.

Well, I'm going to be brief today. This year, I quit a job that I didn't like (that had me writing email processing code in PHP with Sendmail and MySQL running on the computer), and worked for 4 months in another job, which I first liked, but then I found of its ugly side, which caused me to stress out completely. I eventually got fired from it.

The second part of the year starting from April was characterised by many periods of stress and anger. Part of it was due to me losing the job, part of it was due to me trying to get involved in the August Penguin conference, which was mis-managed, mis-organised, and where there was too little essential communication, and part of it was due to my decision to run to the Hamakor (the Israeli FOSS NPO) board (which I since cancelled).

This year, my Mandriva Linux Cooker system has caused me a lot of problems, with a lot of elements of my computer working-environment that used to work before, stopping to work for a time. I was able to fix most of them, but it still caused a lot of aggravations. I should note that Cooker is the Mandriva bleeding edge and is supposed to break. At the end of the year though I was able to fix many bugs: with fonts, with the broken router I had that blocked the Internet for my Linux machine, and now everything is mostly back to normal.

I continued to contribute to open-source software this year, including many things to scratch my itches, which I decided to release to the world. Often the programs caused problems, or the co-developers were not communicative, but as a general rule, I'm happy using Linux and other free software.

I worked on some stories and essays this year, which feels good.

So, that's it, I guess. Gmar Hatimah Tovah, everybody, and happy Sukkoth.

2008-10-19: Personal Update + Flash Game Recommendation + Music Recommendations

Here's another personal update. It's the Autumn Jewish holidays period now in Israel, we spent Rosh Hashanah in my Aunt's house in a Kibbutz near the Sea of Galillee. We had the holiday feast in the back yard, with the family, which was tasty and lovely. My aunt's daughter's son (my second nephew) was there, and he can already talk, and could tell us what each animal in his large collection of toy animals was (in Hebrew).

I initially feared that I won't have a lot to do there, so I brought a lot of puzzles from the newspapers to solve. But I found it, my aunt and her husband had an Interconnected computer, which I could use and so did a lot. It ran Windows XP, still had only Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (can you say no tabs?) and pressing the Windows Update menu-item did not appear to do anything. I guess it was likely already pwned by Malware, so I didn't use it to login into sites.

While I was there I discovered this Flash game called "Dig It", which I've been playing since, on and off. I think writing an LM-Solve backend for it wouldn't be too hard and will probably yield good results.

I've been biking lately, about once every two days, and been taking walks in the neighbourhood. I'd like to do some photo-taking-tours sometimes, and upload the photos to my Flickr account, but I keep forgetting to take a camera.

Otherwise, I discovered a bag of instant Majadra (a rice with lentils dish) in the closet, which was slightly overdue, so I decided to prepare it. Then when I tasted it, it had a strong leftover flavour, so I had to throw what I prepared away.

Now for some musical recommendations. In case you've missed it on my homesite's blog, I now have a free (and legal) musical downloads section in the links page of my homepage. It's still incomplete, but I intend to work on it.

Here are some YouTube videos I've liked recently:

  1. My Boyfriend's Back from American Dreams
  2. Ghostbusters' Theme Song
  3. Neil Sedaka - Oh Carol!
  4. Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls
  5. And the Obligatory song from the Muppet Show: Hugga Wugga

2008-11-09: Personal Update: Lethargy

I'm still unemployed, and lately I've been feeling like I don't want to do anything productive. So I spend most of my time chatting on IRC, browsing the web aimlessly, editing wikis, etc. I recall having such periods before, so I think it's just a mood.

I spent some time working on my "Optimising Code for Speed" article, and when I mentioned it to a MSN correspondent, he read what I have now, and keeps encouraging me to finish it. As a result, I've made even more progress.

I also had a long period where I felt shivers in the upper part of body. This made me unable to bike or jog, which may have made my lethargy worse.

I released a new module on CPAN, which wasn't too much of a technical challenge, but still scratches an important personal itch, so I'm glad I completed it. The documentation is still very scarce. I also worked on Config-IniFiles, and closed many of its SourceForge.net bugs.

So that's it for now. Hope you are feeling better.

2008-11-29: Site Recommendation: Brain Bashers

BrainBashers.com is a great site I found with many addictive puzzle games. So far I liked tents, Fillomino, and Rectangles, and there are some puzzles there that I was already familiar with. One thing annoying about it is that the order of switching the states of a square in its Nurikabe puzzle is the opposite from Logic Games Online's. Is it time for another small Greasemonkey script to fix it? ;-)

And some YouTube links:

2009-01-21: YouTube Recommendation: Ronald Jenkins

My Internet friend referred me to Ronald Jenkees, who is an indie musician featured on YouTube, who plays on the electronic keyboard. He has recorded many melodies he composed and performed, and it's a great listening. Highly recommended.

Last time I blogged, I mentioned Kina Grannis, and after the post, I discovered her original sing and performance called "Gotta Digg" (about Digg.com) which I can also recommend.

In case, you've been wondering why I didn't update this blog much, then it is because I've been mostly updating my technical (= computers-related) blog. I didn't have many ideas for interesting non-technical entries, so I didn't blog here much.

2009-02-19: Music

I've been to an Israeli Python-Web meeting on Tuesday, and it took place in the Google Israel offices. They had a piano there, and I tried playing "I Will Follow Him", which I used to be able to play right-away on the electrical organ. However, no matter which tone-distances I tried, it did not sound exactly right. Maybe I've become rusty.

Today when I slept, I had a dream where I heard some wonderful pop/rock music to a melody I wasn't familiar with (at least not in the dream). Now I cannot remember what it was. Oh well.

2009-03-10: I Can't Haz Internet

Among my many sins, I am subscribed to "I Can Has Cheezburger?" (the Lolcats photo-blog), and noticed this photo. It featured a photo of a cat that someone I'm talking with on MSN Messenger sports as his user-pic.

I bookmarked it, and after I saw him on MSN, I gave him the link. However, he told me he cannot open the web-site. Now, he happens to live in mainland China, and I asked him if he suspected that it was the Great Firewall of China's doing and he suspected that that was indeed the case.

And indeed it is - the Chinese government has blocked access to the LOLcats site. How funny! (And sad.) Blocking Wikipedia was bad enough, but I don't know how the Chinese can survive without LOLCats.

2009-04-08: Alphabets

First of all, happy Passover to everybody. If you're Jewish - have a happy Seder today.

We once showed writing in the Hebrew alphabet to an English IM-friend of ours, and she called it "Tetris". As a result, the nickname stuck and our circle of friends keeps referring to the Hebrew alphabet as "Tetris".

One day we were discussing Jackals, and someone linked to the page about them on the Tamil wikipedia. Then she said that Tamil "looked like a drunk spider walked across the page!". Then I asked her to nicname it in a similar manner to "Tetris" and she said she would call it "curly wurly".

And the obligatory media recommendations: I really enjoyed listening to Rob Costlow's "Woods of Chaos" album on Magnatune.com. Costlow plays the piano, and he has very moving and original melodies, with excellent quality. Magnatune is a music publisher that publishes freely distributable music, and you can listen to the album online.

And I also recently became addicted to this song by Rihanna (which isn't free), so you may enjoy it too.

Happy Passover!

2009-05-15: New Coldplay Record Available for Download Today

Coldplay have a new record called "Left Right Left Right Left" available for download on their site only today. So head over, and download it. I'm not sure if this record is legally freely redistributable in the Creative Commons-sense.

I downloaded it and listened to it and like it very much. The "Viva La Vida" track is especially good.

2009-05-21: Meeting your Blog Readers' Expectations

Recently, a prominent use.perl.org blogger (and a Perl contributor) started posting many political posts to his blog, which I found annoying and disturbing. After commenting to him about it, it started a conversation and I ended up writing a comment about the importance of meeting your blog reader's expectations. I'd like to copy it here:

You say you only want to have one blog where you'll post about everything, including political posts. In that case, let me tell you a story from my own experience.

I used to have only one blog - first at Advogato and then at LiveJournal. I posted everything I wanted there whether technical or non-technical. At one point I received some important input in which that particular reader said that they were not interested in my technical posts (like vim tips, Linux bugs, etc.), and would rather have them separated. I commented (later in the link) that I agreed, and so started a separate blog for technical matters. I also mention (in the previous link) the fact that a blog I used to read and enjoy deteriorated after its owner became a mother, and started posting exclusively about her motherhood experiences. As a result, I unsubscribed from that blog's feed.

This separation of my blogs proved fruitful afterwards, because several planets have opted to syndicate only the technical blogs (or in the case of Perlsphere, only the Perl subset of them).

Moreover, when I discussed blogging with a certain famous blogger, he said that he reached the conclusion that specialisation of blogs was the key to success, and that people will only subscribe to blogs that concentrate on topics that interest them.

My point is that in blogging, you need to meet your readers' expectations. I am subscribed to the feed of all of use.perl.org's blog entries, because I'm interested in reading what Perl enthusiasts say. I don't mind the personal posts (or otherwise posts that are tangential to Perl) but I find political posts disturbing and annoying and would rather not read them.

So far your blog has received no special treatment as I read it along with all the rest of the posts. But if you don't guarantee that you're not going to post political posts here anymore, I will filter it out, and stop reading everything you have to say, including the Perl-related, and other non-political posts. So you'll lose me as a reader and possibly some other people who will opt not to read your blog.

It's your blog and you can post what you want to it, but I hope you understand that your subscribers may opt out of it, if they feel your blog no longer meets their expectations.

I received quite a lot of heat in that discussion, in what seemed to me like an innocent intention on my part to warn someone of an unpleasant trend in their blog, before I unsubscribe. Eventually, he didn't take my advice, and as a result, I wrote a script to filter posts from use.perl.org based on the author and am now filtering out his posts from the feed I'm reading.

I unsubscribed from some blogs that started not to meet my expectations before, but this was the first time I tried to warn the blog owner about a bad trend.

I should note that once, before blogs became popular, I was subscribed to a mailing list, where I've written many posts. At one point, I had written many posts of a similar theme, only to have learned later from someone else, that many people disliked them, and as a result decided to filter out all of my posts to the list, while receiving the posts of anyone else (using mail filters). I felt offended by this fact, and wished they would have told me (or the list in general) how they felt.

Unsubscribing from a blog is probably less of an issue due to the technological nature of web feeds, but I still think that if a blog that you used to like has deteriorated in some respect, you should let the blog owner know, and I hope to continue in doing this.

2009-05-31: An eventful day.

Two days ago I had an eventful day. During the second walk I took that day (in the afternoon), there was a car that passed through the roundabout at a big speed, shortly after I crossed the road there. Then, at the park with the many cats in it, there was this woman who found a lost kitten. She held him in her hand and said he had many fleas. Nearby, there was also the corpse of a dead cat, which I had seen in earlier days, and we also discused it. This woman was not from the neighbourhood and was looking for the lady who was feeding the cats.

Anyway, there was little I could do and so I walked away, and on the way back, in a different park I saw a pretty girl walking in the opposite direction from me.

Later that day, I decided to go biking, and this time took my longer ride through "Park Hayarkon". There were many people on the streets which was expected of a holiday. When I passed through the southern end of Tel Aviv university, I saw the grey-and-white cat (which I told this blog about earlier) sitting on the fence, and stopped by. It was in a friendly mood and I was able to pet it, and it even rubbed my foot.

When I returned home, I bathed and ate and was in a good mood, then I decided to finally get to the task of forward-porting my Amarok per-song-volume script to Amarok 2.x. This took a lot of trial and error and took me the rest of the evening, but I now have it written and it works nicely. Hopefully, I'll tell more about it in my tech-blog.

2009-07-10: Buying "Things Will Grow"

I spotted the song "Things Will Grow" by the Sweethearts of the Rodeo (which I really like) on Amazon.com. The price was reasonable and it was an MP3 that was promised to be "playable on iPod and all MP3 players". I decided to buy it, but after I pressed the "Buy MP3" link, I got to this "We are sorryโ€ฆ" page informing me that:

We could not process your order. The sale of MP3 Downloads is currently available only to US customers located in the 48 contiguous states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

WTF? Do they really not want my money? And the ironic thing is that I can watch (and listen) to the video of the track without limits on Yahoo Music.

Do I really have to ask an American resident to buy this song for me, and upload it to a server where I can download it from, and then compensate them? Why can't I, as a non-American resident buy mp3s from Amazon right away?

buu from Freenode's #perl had this explanation: "Silly copyright cartels being silly." Silly indeed.

2009-08-23: New Photos on Flickr (with High-Rez)

I finally uploaded all the photos from a walk I took in March to a field near my neighbourhood to my Flickr account. They include high-resolution, 3072*2304 versions for your downloading pleasure. Best of all, they are public domain. Share , re-use and enjoy!

The reason I delayed so much was because KFlickr broke, and I didn't have the tuits to fix it and couldn't find anything usable enough. I even started working on my own alternative Flickr uploading (which I wanted to call UperLoadr). Eventually, however, the most criticial Flickr bug has been fixed, and I was able to use it to upload it there.

Black and White Cat Sitting on a Bench

I now suspect that part of the reason why I'm not receiving too many comments is because I haven't send them to too many Flickr groups. So I'll probably join more and submit some of my relevant photos there.

I'm also sorry for neglecting this blog in a while. Hopefully, I'll have interesting things to blog about in the future. If all else fails you can try my Plurk account.

2009-09-04: Letter to the Government: Drug Legalisation

(English translation follows)

ื”ื™ื•ื ืฉืœื—ืชื™ ืืช ื”ืžื›ืชื‘ ื”ื–ื” ืœืจืืฉ ื”ืžืžืฉืœื” ื•ืœืฉืจ ืœื‘ื˜ื—ื•ืŸ ืคื ื™ื:

ื‘ ื–ื” ืžื™ื•ืขื“ ืœืจืืฉ ื”ืžืžืฉืœื”, ืžืจ ื‘ื ื™ืžื™ืŸ ื ืชื ื™ื”ื• ื•ืœืฉืจ ืœื‘ื˜ื—ื•ืŸ-ื”ืคื ื™ื, ืžืจ ื™ืฆื—ืง ืื”ืจื•ื ื•ื‘ื™ืฅ')

ืœื›ื‘ื•ื“ ื”ืื“ื•ื ื™ื ื”ื ื›ื‘ื“ื™ื,

ืฉืžื™ ื”ื•ื ืฉืœื•ืžื™ ืคื™ืฉ ื•ืื ื™ ืžืคืชื— ืชื•ื›ื ื”, ืคืขื™ืœ ืงื•ื“ ืžืงื•ืจ ื•ืชื•ื›ืŸ ืคืชื•ื—ื™ื, ื•ื›ื•ืชื‘ ืฉืœ ืžืืžืจื™ื, ืžืกื•ืช, ื•ืกื™ืคื•ืจื™ื ื”ื•ืžื•ืจื™ืกื˜ื™ื™ื. ืžื–ื” ื–ืžืŸ ืจื‘ ืื ื™ ื‘ื˜ื•ื— ืฉืžื“ื™ื ืช ื™ืฉืจืืœ (ื›ืฉืืจ ืžื“ื™ื ื•ืช ื”ืขื•ืœื) ืขื•ืฉื” ื˜ืขื•ืช ื‘ื›ืš ืฉื™ืฉ ื‘ื” ืื™ืกื•ืจ ืขืœ ื”ืกืžื™ื ื”ืœื ื—ื•ืงื™ื™ื (ื›ืžื• ืžืจื™ื—ื•ืื ื”, ื—ืฉื™ืฉ, ืงื•ืงืื™ืŸ, ื”ืจื•ืื™ืŸ). ื‘ืขื•ื“ ืฉืžืขื•ืœื ืœื ื ื’ืขืชื™ ื‘ืกืžื™ื ื”ืืœื”, ื•ืื™ื ื ื™ ืžืขื•ื“ื“ ืืช ืฆืจื™ื›ืชื, ื”ืจื™ ืฉืื ื™ ืžืืžื™ืŸ ืฉื”ืื™ืกื•ืจ ืขืœ ื”ืกืžื™ื ื”ื•ื ื’ืจื•ืข ืฉื‘ืขืชื™ื™ื ืž"ื‘ืขื™ื™ื™ืช ื”ืฉื™ืžื•ืฉ ื‘ืกืžื™ื" ืขืฆืžื”, ื•ืืฃ ืžื—ืžื™ืจ ืื•ืชื”.

ืขืœ ืžื ืช ืœืฉื›ื ืข ืืชื›ื, ืื ื™ ืžืฆืจืฃ ื‘ื–ืืช ืžืืžืจ ืฉื›ืชื‘ืชื™ ื‘ืฉื "ื ื’ื“ ื”ืื™ืกื•ืจ ืขืœ ื”ืกืžื™ื" ื‘ืคื•ืจืžื˜ื™ื ืฉืœ HTML, ื•-PDF. (ื›ื“ื™ ืœืžื ื•ืข ื‘ื–ื‘ื•ื– ื ื™ื™ืจ, ื‘ื‘ืงืฉื” ืืœ ืชื“ืคื™ืกื• ืื•ืชื.) ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœืžืฆื•ื ืืช ื”ืžืืžืจ ื”ื–ื” ื‘ืื ื’ืœื™ืช, ื•ื‘ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ื‘ืืชืจ-ื”ื‘ื™ืช ืฉืœื™ ื‘ืื™ื ื˜ืจื ื˜ ื‘ื›ืชื•ื‘ืช:

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/

ืืฉืžื— ืœืฉืžื•ืข ื›ืœ ื”ืขืจื•ืช ืฉื™ืฉ ืœื›ื ืขืœ ื”ืžืืžืจ. ืื ื ื—ื–ืจื• ืืœื™ื™ ืขื ื“ืขืชื›ื ืขืœ ื”ื”ืฆืขื” ืฉืœื™ ืœื”ืคื™ื›ืช ื”ืกืžื™ื ื‘ื™ืฉืจืืœ ืœื—ื•ืงื™ื™ื. ืืฉืžื— ื’ื ืœืฉืžื•ืข

ื‘ื›ื‘ื•ื“ ืจื‘,

ืฉืœื•ืžื™ ืคื™ืฉ

Now in English:

(This letter is intended to the Prime Minister, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Minister of Internal Security, Mr. Yitzhak Aharovich)

Dear Sirs,

My name is Shlomi Fish, and I am a software developer, open source and content activist, and writer of articles, essays and humorous stories. For a long time, I am sure that Israel (like the other countries of the world) is making a mistake in the fact that it enforces a prohibition on illegal narcotics (such as Marijuana, Hash, Cocaine, and Heroin). While I never touched these drugs, and I do not encourage their consumption, I believe that the prohibition on drugs is much worse than the "Drug Abuse Problem" itself, and even amplifies it.

In order to convince you, I', attaching an essay I wrote called "The Case for Drug Legalisation", in HTML and PDF formats. (In order to prevent the waste of paper, please don't print it.) One can find this essay in English and in Hebrew on my Internet home-site in the address:

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/

I will be happy to hear any comments you have on the essay. Please return to me with your opinion on my suggestion to make drugs in Israel, legal.

Best regards,

-- Shlomi Fish

In this open letter I'm trying to make a humble start for some political activism. I'll blog about any responses I get.

2009-09-05: Why Verbosity Can Be Good Sometimes

I once skimmed through a blog post by a Ruby enthusiast, where I thought he meant that popular art was somehow inferior to more obscure one. I told him that writing good popular music was probably more difficult because it had to appeal to a larger audience, and he said that he realised that. Then I suggested that he should clarify it in the article, and that he should "be a bit more verbose". He said he didn't like it and said that "I don't think being more verbose is ever the solution in essay writing".

I'm not sure I had a ready answer then, but I think I do now. What I'm trying to say is that verbosity is not necessarily bad, but that it can be good sometimes.

As technical writers, we probably have been trained to believe that verbosity is inherently evil. I still recall Pascal's famous quote that said "I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.". While it is true that it takes some effort to write essays concisely, I still think one should still make sure to cover all points, and sometimes be a little verbose, so the readers won't get the wrong idea.

While we can summarise many long essays in very little text, we would still find it impossible to summarise something like the English Wikipedia in say, 1,000 words. Our world is complex, and we often need a lot of data to accurately describe it. So if we want to accurately convey a given set of facts or opinions, we will require a certain minimum amount of words to convey it.

Furthermore, sometimes, as writers we will sometimes need to spend some words in conveying relatively extraneous things so our readers won't reach the wrong conclusions.

There is a word for brevity that is bad: "terseness" (as opposed to "conciseness" or "succinctness" which are generally consider to be virtuous). I think there should also be a word for good verbosity - maybe "comprehensiveness", "clarity" or "completeness").

Is it also true for source code? Definitely. For example, Joel Spolsky says in "Seven steps to remarkable customer service" that "Sometimes that means adding more intelligence to the software or the SETUP program; by now, our SETUP program is loaded with special case checks.". All these "special case checks" require more code, but they are needed to make the user experience better. A program that does a lot will require more code (given a certain implementation programming language and its accessible APIs), than a program that does very little. So we can expect that if we want our code to be functional and user-friendly, that it will need to be longer and take more time to write than a program that does very little such as the "Hello, World!" program.

So to sum up, sometimes one needs to write more, and there is no need to be afraid of writing more. Sometimes these extra words will be beneficial, and you would not need to remove them.

2009-09-28: Yom Kippur Summary - 2009

As has been the tradition on this blog for a few years, I'm spending part of Yom Kippur reading my blog posts from the past year. Yesterday's evening I read the blog entries since last year's summary and tried to draw some conclusion. This year, I didn't blog a lot on my non-technical blog (this one), and on the other hand blogged a lot on technical blog. I also published quite a lot of photos on Flickr.

I mostly worked on Perl packages this year, but also on Perl-Begin, where I collaborated with Alan Haggai Alavi. Moreover, I continued to work on Freecell Solver and related sites.

I published several new essays this year, and also worked on my homepage's humour section. Two of my web-site's features hit Slashdot this year - the "Mastering cat" April Fool's feature (which some people thought was serious), and Open Source Licences Wars. The web-site and server survived both of them. :-) Several other features were featured on OSNews.com and other news sites.

This year I accepted a for-pay project for an Israeli project, but had to cancel it because I got into a Hypomania (below-mania). This was of no fault of the people I worked with, who were great, or the project I worked which was very interesting, but rather of my psycho-medical condition. I should note that in order to maintain good faith, I did not demand any money for the project, gave them all the code and documentation I worked on up to then, and agreed to provide support for it to those who will replace me.

In any case, I decided that I should take some time-off to do some Cognitive behavioural therapy work on myself, to try and make a living (possibly small at first) from software development and from writing, and to relax.

This year, I sometimes got irritated at the computer for not working. I eventually was able to resolve most of these problems, but I should expect that, due to the fact that I'm working on Mandriva Cooker which is a development distribution. I hope to avoid it this year.

I got into several Internet-related disputes this year, but as a general rule, I've been doing OK. I also feel that I've matured in the sense that many things that once scared me or irritated me, no longer do.

So it's been a pretty good year for me. Gmar Hatimah Tovah, everybody.

2009-10-03: New Photos on Flickr (with High-Rez) and Some Graphic Designs

I took a walk in the neigbourhood on 3 September, 2009 with a camera, and took some photos and uploaded them to Flickr. The good ones are available with high-resolution, 4000*3000 images under the CC0/public domain

Palm Trees near the Supermarket Ginger Cat

Aside from that, I've started working on a section of my homepage containing some graphic designs for slogans I've came up with, which are under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) licence

Enjoy!

2009-10-23: UK Girl Bands + Film Recommendation

This is transcript of an MSN Messenger talk between peachuk and me.

Shlomi Fish: I did buy Shania Twain's Greatest Hits CD and liked most of the songs there.

Shlomi Fish: I also like many songs by Atomic Kitten.

Peach: now that's the sort of thing my mother would like !

Shlomi Fish: Including some that I discovered on YT.

Peach: Atomic Kitten - they have been and gone !

Shlomi Fish: Yes.

Shlomi Fish: Don't know what happened to their pieces.

Shlomi Fish: The Spice Girls are also mostly gone.

Shlomi Fish: Though they sometimes merge to produce another song.

Shlomi Fish: We have some temporary unites in Israel too.

Shlomi Fish: Kaverth keeps making performances.

Shlomi Fish: They were known in Europe as Poggy [actually Poogy] or something.

Peach: I've not heard of them

Shlomi Fish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaveret

Peach: I know the ex Kittens all have solo careers now

Peach: mid 1970s ! No wonder I don't know them !

Shlomi Fish: Ah.

Peach: Girls Aloud are the new Spice Girls

Shlomi Fish: Yes.

Shlomi Fish: They're pretty good.

Shlomi Fish: What about the Saturdays?

Shlomi Fish: I don't like the Saturdays too much.

Peach: yes, they are the new Girls Aloud!

Shlomi Fish: Heh.

Shlomi Fish: Can I quote you on that?

Peach: of course !

Peach: Cheryl (from Girls Aloud) has a new song out (link to YouTube) - it's very catchy and played all the time here - sexy video too

Shlomi Fish: Seems nice.

And a recommendation for a film - the other day my mum and I saw Hearts in Atlantis on T.V. (also see its Wikipedia page). It is a drama with some fantastical elements, and an unexpected plot. My mother and I greatly enjoyed it, and we can recommend it.

2009-11-02: Open Letter to the Government (Resend): Drug Legalisation

(English translation follows)

(ืžื›ืชื‘ ื–ื” ืžื™ื•ืขื“ ืœืจืืฉ ื”ืžืžืฉืœื”, ืžืจ ื‘ื ื™ืžื™ืŸ ื ืชื ื™ื”ื• ื•ืœืฉืจ ืœื‘ื˜ื—ื•ืŸ-ื”ืคื ื™ื, ืžืจ ื™ืฆื—ืง ืื”ืจื•ื ื•ื‘ื™ืฅ')

ืœื›ื‘ื•ื“ ื”ืื“ื•ื ื™ื ื”ื ื›ื‘ื“ื™ื,

ืฉืœื—ืชื™ ืžื›ืชื‘ ื–ื” ืืœื™ื›ื ื‘ืืจื‘ืขื” ื‘ื“ืฆืžื‘ืจ [ืฆืจื™ืš ืœื”ื™ื•ืช ืกืคื˜ืžื‘ืจ], ื•ืœื ืงื™ื‘ืœืชื™ ืฉื•ื ืชืฉื•ื‘ื” - ืืคื™ืœื• ืœื ืื•ื˜ื•ืžื˜ื™ืช. ืžื›ื™ื•ื•ืŸ ืฉื–ื” ื”ื™ื” ืงืจื•ื‘ ืœืชืงื•ืคืช ื”ื—ื’ื™ื ื”ืขื‘ืจื™ื™ื, ื”ืจื™ ืฉืื ื™ ืืชืŸ ืœื›ื ืœื”ื ื•ืช ืžื”ืกืคืง, ื•ืžืงื•ื•ื” ืฉืชืขื ื• ืœื™ ื”ืคืขื. ืื•ื“ื” ืื ืชื•ื›ืœื• ืœื”ืฉื™ื‘ ืœื™ ื‘ืžื™ื“ื” ืฉืงื™ื‘ืœืชื ื”ื•ื“ืขื” ื–ืืช.

ื‘ื ื•ืกืฃ, ืจืื•ื™ ืœืฆื™ื™ืŸ ืฉื–ื”ื• ืžื›ืชื‘ ืคืชื•ื— ืฉืขื•ืžื“ ืœื”ืชืคืจืกื ื‘ื™ื•ืžืŸ-ื”ืจืฉืช (ื‘ืœื•ื’) ืฉืœื™

ืฉืžื™ ื”ื•ื ืฉืœื•ืžื™ ืคื™ืฉ ื•ืื ื™ ืžืคืชื— ืชื•ื›ื ื”, ืคืขื™ืœ ืงื•ื“ ืžืงื•ืจ ื•ืชื•ื›ืŸ ืคืชื•ื—ื™ื, ื•ื›ื•ืชื‘ ืฉืœ ืžืืžืจื™ื, ืžืกื•ืช, ื•ืกื™ืคื•ืจื™ื ื”ื•ืžื•ืจื™ืกื˜ื™ื™ื. ืžื–ื” ื–ืžืŸ ืจื‘ ืื ื™ ื‘ื˜ื•ื— ืฉืžื“ื™ื ืช ื™ืฉืจืืœ (ื›ืฉืืจ ืžื“ื™ื ื•ืช ื”ืขื•ืœื) ืขื•ืฉื” ื˜ืขื•ืช ื‘ื›ืš ืฉื™ืฉ ื‘ื” ืื™ืกื•ืจ ืขืœ ื”ืกืžื™ื ื”ืœื ื—ื•ืงื™ื™ื (ื›ืžื• ืžืจื™ื—ื•ืื ื”, ื—ืฉื™ืฉ, ืงื•ืงืื™ืŸ, ื”ืจื•ืื™ืŸ). ื‘ืขื•ื“ ืฉืžืขื•ืœื ืœื ื ื’ืขืชื™ ื‘ืกืžื™ื ื”ืืœื”, ื•ืื™ื ื ื™ ืžืขื•ื“ื“ ืืช ืฆืจื™ื›ืชื, ื”ืจื™ ืฉืื ื™ ืžืืžื™ืŸ ืฉื”ืื™ืกื•ืจ ืขืœ ื”ืกืžื™ื ื”ื•ื ื’ืจื•ืข ืฉื‘ืขืชื™ื™ื ืž"ื‘ืขื™ื™ื™ืช ื”ืฉื™ืžื•ืฉ ืกืžื™ื" ืขืฆืžื”, ื•ืืฃ ืžื—ืžื™ืจ ืื•ืชื”.

ืขืœ ืžื ืช ืœืฉื›ื ืข ืืชื›ื, ืื ื™ ืžืฆืจืฃ ื‘ื–ืืช ืžืืžืจ ืฉื›ืชื‘ืชื™ ื‘ืฉื "ื ื’ื“ ื”ืื™ืกื•ืจ ืขืœ ื”ืกืžื™ื" ื‘ืคื•ืจืžื˜ื™ื ืฉืœ HTML, ื•-PDF. (ื›ื“ื™ ืœืžื ื•ืข ื‘ื–ื‘ื•ื– ื ื™ื™ืจ, ื‘ื‘ืงืฉื” ืืœ ืชื“ืคื™ืกื• ืื•ืชื.) ื ื™ืชืŸ ืœืžืฆื•ื ืืช ื”ืžืืžืจ ื”ื–ื” ื‘ืื ื’ืœื™ืช, ื•ื‘ืขื‘ืจื™ืช ื‘ืืชืจ-ื”ื‘ื™ืช ืฉืœื™ ื‘ืื™ื ื˜ืจื ื˜ ื‘ื›ืชื•ื‘ืช:

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/

ืืฉืžื— ืœืฉืžื•ืข ื›ืœ ื”ืขืจื•ืช ืฉื™ืฉ ืœื›ื ืขืœ ื”ืžืืžืจ. ืื ื ื—ื–ืจื• ืืœื™ื™ ืขื ื“ืขืชื›ื ืขืœ ื”ื”ืฆืขื” ืฉืœื™ ืœื”ืคื™ื›ืช ื”ืกืžื™ื ื‘ื™ืฉืจืืœ ืœื—ื•ืงื™ื™ื.

ื‘ื›ื‘ื•ื“ ืจื‘,

-- ืฉืœื•ืžื™ ืคื™ืฉ

And here is the English translation:

(This letter is intended to the Prime Minister, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu and to the Minister of Internal Security, Mr. Yitzhak Aharonovich).

Dear Sirs,

I sent this letter to you on the 4th of December [should be September], and I did not get a reply - not even an automated one. Since it was close to the Jewish holidays season, then I shall give you the benefit of the doubt, and hope you will reply to me this time. I whould be thankful if you can acknowledge that you have received this message.

Moreover, one should note that it is an open letter that is going to be publicised on my weblog.

My name is Shlomi Fish, and I am a software developer, open source and content activist, and writer of articles, essays and humorous stories. For a long time, I am sure that Israel (like the other countries of the world) is making a mistake in the fact that it enforces a prohibition on illegal narcotics (such as Marijuana, Hash, Cocaine, and Heroin). While I never touched these drugs, and I do not encourage their consumption, I believe that the prohibition on drugs is much worse than the "Drug Abuse Problem" itself, and even amplifies it.

In order to convince you, I am attaching an essay I wrote called "The Case for Drug Legalisation", in HTML and PDF formats. (In order to prevent the waste of paper, please don't print it.) One can find this essay in English and in Hebrew on my Internet home-site in the address:

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/

I will be happy to hear any comments you have on the essay. Please return to me with your opinion on my suggestion to make drugs in Israel, legal.

Best regards,

-- Shlomi Fish


I sent this message on 18-October-2009 (two weeks ago), and did not get a reply, an acknowledgement or a automated response. It is very unlikely that it would have been discarded as spam. How much longer do you think I should wait?

2009-11-09: Why Chinese May Not Become the Next International Language?

A lot of people I've talked about have been thinking that if and when China becomes the next superpower, then Chinese will displace English as the next international language (or Lingue Franca, which is a common second, non-mother language). People say: "before English, there was French, and before that, people used Latin", so it's possible English will be displaced too.

This is all well and sound, but there is some historical evidence that shows that often the local (or in our case - global) superpower has displaced another while the lingua franca has not changed. As a result, it is not certain that English will be displaced by Chinese even if China becomes more dominant.

For example, Aramaic was used as the lingua franca in the Near East during the reign of several empires:

  1. The Assyrian empire - in the Old Testament, the Jewish diplomats ask the Assyrian diplomat who came to Jerusalem to speak "Aramaic" instead of "Jehudan", so the rest of the Jeudans won't understand.
  2. The Chaldean Empire (also known as the Neo-Babylonian Empire). After being exiled to Mesophotomia, the Judeans interacted with their non-Judean peers in Aramaic, which they retained after some of them returned to Judea.
  3. The Persian Empire.
  4. The Hellenistic Period
  5. Aramaic was also spoken at the simultaneous times of The Roman Empire, the Parthian empire and the Persian empires. Jesus and his disciples used Aramaic as their native tongue, and it was also extensively used for writing the Talmud.

Greek was similarly extensively used after the end of the Hellenistic Period, well into the middle ages.

I can also think of some reasons which will make it difficult for Chinese to displace English:

  1. Chinese does not have an alphabet, but instead is using a complex logogram which contains thousands of glyphs that are hard to learn and memorise, especially for adults.

    Furthermore, from what someone once told me, that still does not make Chinese books shorter, as they tend to be roughly the same length as their English originals.

  2. Chinese has a poor selection of grammatical tenses. Whereas English has "to go", "went", "is going", "was going", "going", "go!" and also distinguishes between singular, plural and first, second and third person, Chinese only has one form for all of these. While, they have some optional modifiers, they tend not to use them. That may make Chinese poorly expressive for today's needs.

    A Chinese correspondent told me that Chinese people tend not to think of time a lot, in a classic Sapir-Whorf sense.

  3. China has many English speakers, though their English often tends to not be very good. I was told it is the country with the largest number of English speakers in the world (by volume), but naturally, this will require a citation.

So I think that for better or for worse, Chinese will not displace English as the international language, regardless of how much some people think it is likely to happen.

2009-12-09: Human Rights March in Tel Aviv

There will be a human rights march in Tel Aviv this Friday (11-December-2009) (here's some information in English). I was asked to publicise it, and I may attend too.

2009-12-31: Conclusion of the Open Letter to the Israeli Government about Drug Legalisation

I announced that I sent an E-mail to the Israeli Prime Minister and the Minister of Internal Defence about drug legalisation earlier on this blog. The E-mail was sent in 18 October, 2009 and I didn't receive a reply, including not an acknowledgement, an automated response or a bounce. It was obviously ignored.

As a result, I have to conclude that the respected gentlemen have failed to respond to me (a citizen and resident of Israel) on such an important issue and are not fulfilling their duties as government officials.

Don't re-elect them - they don't care about you.

Happy new civil year, everybody!

2010-01-16: Personal Log

On Friday, I went to the Hebrew Wikipedia meeting that commemorated it having 100,000 entries now. I enjoyed the food there, but left after the first round of lectures. Still, it was a nice refreshment from what I usually did and I had to wake up early to come there on time.

Later on that day I worked on Freecell Solver and today I wrote a report about it to the mailing list. I also spent a lot of time cleaning up my hard-disk and removing a lot of cruft, both from my home-directory and the main partition.

Today was less intensive for me and I mostly rested. However, one of the connectors on my glasses became faulty and as a result the right handle does not hold up properly, and I need to replace it tomorrow. Very annoying.

Finally, here are some albums I enjoyed from Jamendo:

  1. Justin Sound - Justin Sound
  2. LadyLau - Sense
  3. Yachar - Tรบ y solo tรบ

2010-02-23: Etymology of the Word "Cat"

According to the Wiktionary entry of the English word "Cat" (for domestic felines, etc.) it is originally derived from the Late Egyptian "ฤaute", feminine of "ฤaus 'jungle cat". I guess the Hebrew word for Cat, "Chatul" has a similar origin, and I never noticed the similarity between the two words until I've read the etymology in the Wiktionary. There are similar words in other European languages: the French chat, and the German "Katze", and the Arabic word for Cat is Qitt.

Make sure you avoid a useless use of "cat"โ€ฆ

2010-02-27: Purim Special: The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory Behind the Story of the Scroll of Esther

It's Purim today, and here is my own conspiracy theory for the events detailed in the Scroll of Esther on which the holiday is based.

In my conspiracy theory, Mordechai was very interested in the politics of the Persian empire, and sought ways to influence it. He got in contact with Haman, a close childhood friend of the King, and gave him a lot of advice for how to run the empire, which Haman delivered to the king by proxy. The king was so impressed by Haman's good advice that he appointed him as prime minister (or in Hebrew "second/vice to the king."). Mordechai also had proposed his cousin, Hadasah (afterwards renamed Esther) as the wife of the king as a way to further influence the king (or it is possible that Esther delivered Mordechai's advice to Haman).

However, Mordechai, Esther and Haman got tired of all the proxying and so sought a way to make Mordechai second to the king instead of Haman. So they staged the rest of what happened. Then, after the night the king could not sleep and requested that the royal records be read to him and then told Haman that Mordechai should be honoured, was indicative that he also came to understand what was going on and agreed to play along.

Meir Shalev in ืชื "ืš ืขื›ืฉื™ื• (= "the Bible Now" in Hebrew) presents Mordechai as the master mind behind the scenes of the plot, but acknowledged that there are many remaining co-incidences. On the other hand, I go a step further, and make Esther and Haman his co-conspirators, and so get rid of most of the remaining co-incidences there.

Happy Purim, though it seems like it's a particularly rainy one this year.

2010-07-01: No one knows about Persian Cats

This post originated from a mailing list post by Chris Green to the writers-at-MIT.edu mailing list.

No-one knows about Persian Cats.

Filmed in Iran, the recently released film No-one Knows About Persian Cats, now doing the film festival circuit, tells the story of a group of young, underground musicians who want to do nothing more than play music.

In Iran there's a situation reminiscent of the sign posted above the door of The Parliament Of Owls, featured either in The Once And Future King, or at least in The Book of Merlin, which was deleted from the first title because its satirical attitude was frowned upon during the Cold War.

The sign says something to the effect of โ€œEverything Which Isn't Banned is Mandatory.โ€

In Iran, a musician either plays Iranian Classical music, or they don't play at all.

At least not publiclyโ€ฆ :-)

The young musicians in the film want to play contemporary pop, heavy metal, or World Music, and even jazz. To play any of this in such a way that it comes to the attention of the authorities is quite dangerous, and so clubs and recording studios are underground and hidden away.

My understanding is that in a country where more than 50% of the people are under 30, there are a lot of clubs like this. Some people have filmed sets in these clubs and put videos up on YouTube, and elsewhere, where I have seen them over the years.

There are some hot musicians over there, but I don't know any of their names, except for one band which has relocated to the UK, one named Radio Tehran. There are other expatriate Iranian bands and performers, and there now is at least one record label (in the UK) set up by some of the musicians to record and distribute their music.

While writing this, I realized the excellent word play in the title, No-one Knows About Persian Cats.... musicians used to call themselves cats, especially the hep jazz and rockabilly cats... so, no-one knows (much) about the Persian cats, daddy-o, and the hep music they play...

Also, cats are banned in Iran, formerly called Persia.

I noticed many years back that the young people who have access to the internet, cds, and old-fashioned cassette tapes, want to experience and enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that their counterparts have elsewhere.

The underground in Iran is something of a pressure cooker, and one of these days the older generation ( the ones behind the Iranian revolution) and oppressive elements will start to lose control of the oppressive political and social powers they currently have.

Things will boil over. Again.

The younger generations will want to have control over their own future, as will the Cubans when things start to change there: in both instances, the direction of the 'further revolution' (to coin a term) will (hopefully) be dictated by the people who participate in it.

They want to change their societies and the lives they live, but on their own terms: this is as it should be.

The best thing for outsiders to do is to not interfere (actively), other than to occasionally offer encouragement and support, but to generally stay out of their way.

Here's the Wikipedia page about this film.

Cheers,

Chris Green

2010-09-22: Yom Kippur Summary - 2010

As has been the tradition on this blog for a few years already, I'm going over my blog posts for the past year, and writing a summary of what the past year has been for me. This is since last year's summary. I should note that I have indeed gone over the blogs on Yom Kippur, but did not get to write this summary until today which is Erev Sukkoth.

Well, the trend of neglecting the non-technical blog continued, and on the other hand I wrote many posts to my technical blog, including essays, tips, thoughts, invitations to open source software-related events, reports on them and rants. Nevertheless, I worked on my homepage quite a bit, although possibly also with a technical focus.

Another somewhat worrying trend was the fact that I neglected to post a lot of photos to my Flickr account. I hope to grab a camera and take more photos soon, but I keep forgetting that.

Some of the posts to my technical blog have caused me a little grief this year, but I've dealt with them pretty well. Starting from somewhere in July, I started working for a Tel Aviv-based start-up, and so far it's been going pretty well, despite some obvious technical difficulties. I also did two projects for an American start-up for a payment.

There weren't too many severe stressful periods, but on the other hand, I've been neglecting doing my Cognitive therapy exercises lately, so I'd like to get back to them.

I've continued to work on open-source projects this year, especially on Freecell Solver, on the Black Hole Solitaire Solver, on various Perl 5 CPAN modules, and on KDE. I've also probably spent too much time on IRC for my own good.

This year I discovered a lot of great music on Jamendo, the MOD archive and YouTube.

So, to sum up, a good year for me. Next year, I hope to write more stuff on the non-technical blog, work on some essays and stories, and hopefully to contribute to some open-source projects with many participants such as GIMP which I've been missing lately.

So long everyone, and happy Sukkoth.

2010-10-23: Web Comics I Discovered

Today was an active day for me: I took two walks in the neighbourhood, sorted the dishwasher, announced a new version of XML-Grammar-Fortune on Freshmeat.net, revisited my patchset to mozbot, the Mozilla IRC bot, washed my hair, and worked on my home-site. So what better way to continue this trend than to blog here on my non-tech blog, which I wanted to do in my Yom Kippur resolutions?

The topic for today is some web-comics I discovered recently and would like to recommend. The first one is A Softer World, which combines some atmospheric pictures with words of funny dialogues. I don't usually remember the contents afterwards and sometimes have trouble understanding them, but it's still amusing.

The second one is "Spiked Math" which is about mathematics, and very geeky. Here's a sample comic:

Spiked Math Chuck Norris Fact

For more about Chuck Norris see my Chuck Norris facts page.

Another fine web comics, that I have less trouble understanding, is Calamities of Nature. It combines dialogues of cartoon characters (very nicely drawn) with philosophical thoughts. Here is a sample comic:

Calamities of Nature: Going Dutch

Here's the transcript:

[[ Harold and Aaron sitting at a table, each reading a newspaper. ]]

Harold: California will be voting on a measure to legalize and tax marijuana
this fall.

Aaron: It's about time.

Aaron: Legalization will result in a major reduction of law enforcement costs,
open up space in overcrowded prisons, and raise billions of dollars for a fiscally
crippled state.

Harold: But what about the moral decay of society?

Aaron: Don't worry, we still have alcohol for that.

For more about drug legalisation see my essay "The Case for Drug Legalisation" and its referenced pages.

Another comic that I've come to enjoy recently is "Just 1 Random Guy". It combines the cartoon boxes drawn with crude computer graphics with text. Here is a sample:

Just 1 Random Guy - What I learned Today

Here's the transcript:

It seems that staring at the comptuer
all day may be a bit less healthy than
previously assumed.

(1 Random Guy saying it with bleeding eyes.)

(I can related to that, because lately I've been having some headaches which we suspect is due to heavy computer use.)

The final comic I'm going to recommend is Geek Hero Comic, which appears to have been discontinued about a year ago, but seems to have been pretty entertaining. Here is a sample:

Geek Hero Comics: Disconnectophobia

Here's the transcript:

A: Alright Now that we know where they are, we have to get there!

B: Wo-wo-wou hold it! Perhaps you mean we've got to reroute our packets?

A: No, I mean we've got to physically go there.

B: Like, change the physical address of our network cards?

A: No! Get out-side, get on a bus and go there!

B: A serial bus or a parallel one?

A: God, you go out even less than I do!

B: I Rent a little studio in this buildingโ€ฆ

Happy web-comicsing!

2010-12-20: New Essay: "Dealing with Hypomanias"

Recently, I've published a new essay I've written titled "Dealing with Hypomanias" on my homepage. I've been suffering from periods of bad pyschological moods since I was 14 years old, including clinical depressions, clincial anxities, hypomanias (= "below-manias") and even some manias. As a result, I believe I have Bipolar disorder, but the psychotherapist I go to said he didn't diagnose me as such, because doing so will have no implication on my therapy.

Lately, I've mostly only had hypomanias, and this essay gives some advice from my experience on how to effectively handle them. I'd appreciate any feedback.

2011-02-24: Please Help Copy Edit a Hebrew Version of "The Enemy"

This is a call for people to help copy edit the Hebrew draft of the 6th Hebrew revision of my story "The Enemy and How I Helped to Fight it" which one can find on a temporary location on my homepage. The .xhtml is viewable in a web-browser (not Internet Explorer by default, though because it does not support .xhtml files then - you can use Firefox, Google Chromium/Chrome, Opera, Safari and most other standard-compliant browsers), while the file ending with ".fiction-text.txt" is a well-formed plain-text based source file that is ultimately used to generate it. As a result, if one sends UNIX-style patches, they should be for that version.

Here is the abstract for the story, taken from my homepage:

A member of the terrorist organisation "The Organisation" gets up in the morning, goes to his post and quits. But before he leaves he makes a suggestion that causes his former comrades to fight each other to the death. Join the now ex-Member of the Organisation as he embarks on an ego-trip, where he tries to prove that A can in fact be non-A, regardless of what Aristotle could differ.

It's a political satire, but one that is universal in its message, and touches on many aspects of politics, logic and Objectivist philosophy.

The story is made available under the Creative Commons CC-by-sa open content licence and I automatically assume that all the fixes to the story will be licenced the same, while assigning me as the copyright (though naturally you may request that I credit you on the cover page of the story, with which I'll be happy to comply. If you're unhappy with that, feel free to "fork" the story (in the open-source sense - not the Github sense).

I've also set up a MediaWiki page for the story on a wiki on Wikia which you can edit directly inside the browser, and I will integrate the stuff from it there (if you wish to be credited there, please leave a comment on the talk page.)

I hope you'll enjoy reading the Hebrew version (or the English one on my homepage if you can't read Hebrew) even if you don't detect any problems. I apologise that this entry is not in Hebrew, but I did not want the non-Hebrew readers of this blog to feel left out.

2011-02-24: ืžืฉืœ ื™ื•ืชื ื•"ื”ื™ืคื” ื•ื”ื—ื ื•ืŸ"

ื›ื‘ืจ ื”ืฆื™ืขื• ืœื™ ืžืกืคืจ ืคืขืžื™ื ืœื”ืฉืชืชืฃ ื‘"ื”ื™ืคื” ื•ื”ื—ื ื•ืŸ" ื•ืกืจื‘ืชื™. ืœืžื™ ืฉืฉื›ื—, ื–ื” ืžื” ืฉื ืืžืจ ื‘ืชื "ืš ื‘ืžืฉืœ ื™ื•ืชื:

ื•ึทื™ึทึผื’ึดึผื“ื•ึผ ืœึฐื™ื•ึนืชึธื, ื•ึทื™ึตึผืœึถืšึฐ ื•ึทื™ึทึผืขึฒืžึนื“ ื‘ึฐึผืจึนืืฉื ื”ึทืจึพื’ึฐึผืจึดื–ึดื™ื, ื•ึทื™ึดึผืฉึธึผื‚ื ืงื•ึนืœื•ึน ื•ึทื™ึดึผืงึฐืจึธื;
ื•ึทื™ึนึผืืžึถืจ ืœึธื”ึถื - ืฉึดืืžึฐืขื•ึผ ืึตืœึทื™ ื‘ึทึผืขึฒืœึตื™ ืฉึฐืื›ึถื, ื•ึฐื™ึดืฉึฐืืžึทืข ืึฒืœึตื™ื›ึถื ืึฑืœึนื”ึดื™ื:

ื”ึธืœื•ึนืšึฐ ื”ึธืœึฐื›ื•ึผ ื”ึธืขึตืฆึดื™ื, ืœึดืžึฐืฉึนืื—ึท ืขึฒืœึตื™ื”ึถื ืžึถืœึถืšึฐ.
ื•ึทื™ึนึผืืžึฐืจื•ึผ ืœึทื–ึทึผื™ึดืช: ืžึธืœึฐื›ึธื” ืขึธืœึตื™ื ื•ึผ!
ื•ึทื™ึนึผืืžึถืจ ืœึธื”ึถื ื”ึทื–ึทึผื™ึดืช: ื”ึถื—ึณื“ึทืœึฐืชึดึผื™ ืึถืชึพื“ึดึผืฉึฐืื ึดื™, ืึฒืฉึถืืจึพื‘ึดึผื™ ื™ึฐื›ึทื‘ึฐึผื“ื•ึผ ืึฑืœึนื”ึดื™ื ื•ึทืึฒื ึธืฉึดืื™ื -
ื•ึฐื”ึธืœึทื›ึฐืชึดึผื™ ืœึธื ื•ึผืขึท ืขึทืœึพื”ึธืขึตืฆึดื™ื?!
ื•ึทื™ึนึผืืžึฐืจื•ึผ ื”ึธืขึตืฆึดื™ื ืœึทืชึฐึผืึตื ึธื”: ืœึฐื›ึดื™ึพืึทืชึฐึผ ืžึธืœึฐื›ึดื™ ืขึธืœึตื™ื ื•ึผ!
ื•ึทืชึนึผืืžึถืจ ืœึธื”ึถื ื”ึทืชึฐึผืึตื ึธื”: ื”ึถื—ึณื“ึทืœึฐืชึดึผื™ ืึถืชึพืžึธืชึฐืงึดื™, ื•ึฐืึถืชึพืชึฐึผื ื•ึผื‘ึธืชึดื™ ื”ึทื˜ึผื•ึนื‘ึธื” -
ื•ึฐื”ึธืœึทื›ึฐืชึดึผื™ ืœึธื ื•ึผืขึท ืขึทืœึพื”ึธืขึตืฆึดื™ื?!
ื•ึทื™ึนึผืืžึฐืจื•ึผ ื”ึธืขึตืฆึดื™ื ืœึทื’ึธึผืคึถืŸ: ืœึฐื›ึดื™ึพืึทืชึฐึผ ืžึธืœึฐื›ึดื™ ืขึธืœึตื™ื ื•ึผ!
ื•ึทืชึนึผืืžึถืจ ืœึธื”ึถื ื”ึทื’ึถึผืคึถืŸ: ื”ึถื—ึณื“ึทืœึฐืชึดึผื™ ืึถืชึพืชึดึผื™ืจื•ึนืฉึดืื™, ื”ึทืžึฐืฉึทื‚ืžึตึผื—ึท ืึฑืœึนื”ึดื™ื ื•ึทืึฒื ึธืฉึดืื™ื -
ื•ึฐื”ึธืœึทื›ึฐืชึดึผื™ ืœึธื ื•ึผืขึท ืขึทืœึพื”ึธืขึตืฆึดื™ื?!
ื•ึทื™ึนึผืืžึฐืจื•ึผ ื›ึธืœึพื”ึธืขึตืฆึดื™ื ืึถืœึพื”ึธืึธื˜ึธื“: ืœึตืšึฐ ืึทืชึธึผื” ืžึฐืœึธืšึฐึพืขึธืœึตื™ื ื•ึผ!
ื•ึทื™ึนึผืืžึถืจ ื”ึธืึธื˜ึธื“ ืึถืœึพื”ึธืขึตืฆึดื™ื: ืึดื ื‘ึถึผืึฑืžึถืช ืึทืชึถึผื ืžึนืฉึฐืื—ึดื™ื ืึนืชึดื™ ืœึฐืžึถืœึถืšึฐ ืขึฒืœึตื™ื›ึถื - ื‘ึนึผืื•ึผ ื—ึฒืกื•ึผ ื‘ึฐืฆึดืœึดึผื™;
ื•ึฐืึดืึพืึทื™ึดืŸ - ืชึตึผืฆึตื ืึตืฉื ืžึดืŸึพื”ึธืึธื˜ึธื“, ื•ึฐืชึนืื›ึทืœ ืึถืชึพืึทืจึฐื–ึตื™ ื”ึทืœึฐึผื‘ึธื ื•ึนืŸ!

ืืฃ ืขืœ ืคื™ ืžื” ืฉื ืืžืจ ืฉื, ืœื™ ื‘ืชื•ืจ ืื“ื ื™ืฆืจื ื™, ืื™ืŸ ืžื ื™ืขื” ืœื”ืชื ื“ื‘ ืžืœืฉืืช ื‘ืžืฉืจื” ืฆื™ื‘ื•ืจื™ืช. ืื ื™ืฆื™ืขื• ืœื™ ืœื”ื™ื•ืช ืจืืฉ ืžืžืฉืœื”, ื”ืจื™ ืฉืืฉืžื—. ืื‘ืœ ืื™ืŸ ืœื™ ื›ื•ื•ื ื” ื‘ืชื•ืจ ื‘ื—ื•ืจ ื’ื™ืงื™ ืฉืžื›ื‘ื“ ืืช ืขืฆืžื• ืœืขืฉื•ืช ืžืขืฆืžื™ ืฆื—ื•ืง ื‘ืชื•ื›ื ื™ืช ืจื™ืืœื™ื˜ื™ ื›ืžื• "ื”ื™ืคื” ื•ื”ื—ื ื•ืŸ", ืจืง ื›ื“ื™ ืœื”ืฉื™ื’ ืืช ืžื” ืฉืืจื™ืง ืจื™ื™ืžื•ื ื“ ืžืชืืจ ื›"ืคืจืกื•ื ื–ื•ืœ" ื•ื›"ืื ืฉื™ ืคืจืฆื•ืคื™ื", ืฉืžืคื•ืจืกืžื™ื ืจืง ื‘ืฉืœ ื”ื™ื•ืชื ืžืคื•ืจืกืžื™ื ื•ืคืขืžื™ื ืจื‘ื•ืช ืื™ืŸ ืื™ืฉ ืžืื—ื•ืจื™ ื”ืคืจืฆื•ืฃ. ืื ื•ื›ืืฉืจ ืืชืคืจืกื, ื”ืจื™ ืฉื–ื” ื™ื”ื™ื” ื‘ืฉืœ ืคื•ืขืœื™ ื•ื™ื›ื•ืœื•ืชื™ื™, ืœื ื‘ื’ืœืœ ืฉื”ื•ืคืขืชื™ ื‘ืขื•ื“ ืกื™ื“ืจืช ืจื™ืืœื™ื˜ื™ ื“ื‘ื™ืœื™ืช ืฉืžื”ื•ื•ื” ืื•ืคื™ื•ื ืจืข ื‘ื™ื•ืชืจ ืœื”ืžื•ื ื™ื. ืื ื™ ื‘ื˜ื•ื— ืฉื’ื ื”ื‘ื—ื•ืจื•ืช ื”ืžื•ืฉื›ื•ืช ืฉื™ืฉ ืœื”ืŸ ืงืฆืช ืื•ืคื™ ื•ื—ื•ื›ืžื”, ืžืกืคื™ืง ืžืฉื›ื™ืœื•ืช ืžื›ื“ื™ ืœื’ืฉืช ืœืžื‘ื—ื ื™ ื”ืงื‘ืœื” ืฉืœ "ื”ื™ืคื” ื•ื”ื—ื ื•ืŸ" ืžืจืืฉ.

ืื– ื‘ื‘ืงืฉื” ืืœ ืชื˜ืจื™ื“ื• ืื•ืชื™ ืขื ื–ื” ื™ื•ืชืจ, ื•ืื ื›ืŸ ืื ื ื—ืคืฉื• ื‘ืื™ื ื˜ืจื ื˜ ืืช "ืฉืœื•ืžื™ ืคื™ืฉ ื•ื”ื™ืคื” ื•ื”ื—ื ื•ืŸ ื•ืžื™ืฆืื• ืจืฉื•ืžื” ื–ืืช.". ื™ืฉ ืœื™ ื”ืจื‘ื” ืคื—ื•ืช ื‘ืขื™ื™ื” ืขื ืกื“ืจื•ืช ืจื™ืืœื™ื˜ื™ ื›ื“ื•ื’ืžืช "ื›ื•ื›ื‘ ื ื•ืœื“" (ื‘ืืจืฅ ื•ื‘ืขื•ืœื) ืฉื ื”ืžืชืžื•ื“ื“ื™ื ืžืชื—ืจื™ื ืขืœ ื›ื™ืฉื•ืจื™ื”ื ื›ื–ืžืจื™ื, ื•ื–ื” ืžื”ื ื” ืœืจืื•ืช ืืช ื–ื” (ืื ื›ื™ ืื ื™ ื‘ื—ืจืชื™ ืฉืœื ืœืฆืคื•ืช ื‘ืชื•ื›ื ื™ื•ืช ืืœื” ื‘ืื•ืคืŸ ืขืงื‘ื™.). ืจืื• ื’ื ืžื” ืฉื›ืชื‘ืชื™ ืขืœ ื”ืื™ื ืคืœืฆื™ื” ื‘ื–ืžืจื™ื ืžืชื•ื›ื ื™ื•ืช ืจื™ืืœื™ื˜ื™ ื‘ืขื‘ืจ.

2011-04-01: One Thing You Cannot Say in the United States

In the essay What you can't say, Paul Graham said that there are many things one cannot say in modern societies, and that saying them will likely get you in trouble (sued against, fired from your job or even get killed), despite the existence and general acceptance of the Freedom of speech. I felt Mr. Graham was right, but had a problem coming up with such an example, and felt that "The Matrix had me." and I could not think outside the box.

However, I recently came up with an example, and it was right below my nose, and I'd like to share it with you. If you ask someone about his cultural, religious, ideological, ethnic, etc. background while interviewing a candidate for a job, you are likely going to be fired, press charges against, or worse, due to the so-called American "anti-discrimination" laws, which have taken precedence over the First Amendment, which among other things secures the freedom of speech. If you don't believe me read what Joel Spolsky wrote about it in his (otherwise excellent article) "The Guerilla Guide to Interviewing":

First of all, avoid the illegal questions. Anything related to race, religion, gender, national origin, age, military service eligibility, veteran status, sexual orientation, or physical handicap is just illegal. If their resume says they were in the Army in 1990, don't ask them, even to make pleasant conversation, if they were in the Gulf war. It's against the law. If their resume says that they attended the Technion in Haifa, don't ask them, even conversationally, if they are Israeli. It's against the law. There's a pretty good discussion of what's illegal here. (But the rest of the interview questions at that site are pretty stupid).

There are similar things about giving "insider information" about your company is doing (a complete non-crime), and about the post-Rabin- assassination Israel of saying that "I'd like to kill the Israeli prime minister". Note: I'm not serious about saying that Mr. Netanyahu, the current Israeli Prime Minister should be killed, as much as I distaste him. To quote the film "The Princess Bride" "I want him to live a long life alone with his cowardice". All I'm trying to convey is that saying something like that will likely get you in trouble.

I can rant about how anti-discrimination laws are not a good idea, and how an employer can often discriminate against a job candidate, and how the fact that you can only discriminate contracts based on money have made sites such as "rentacoder" and "getafreelancer" into a joke, but I think I'll stop.

This was not an April Fools' Day joke (but see the freshly announced Webscaleโ„ข version of Freecell Solverโ„ข ), but it does seem appropriate. Comments are welcome.

2011-05-28: ืฉื‘ื•ืข ื”ืกืคืจ ื”ืืœื˜ืจื ื˜ื™ื‘ื™ ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ืช ืชืœ-ืื‘ื™ื‘

ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ืช ืชืœ ืื‘ื™ื‘ ื”ื•ืœืš ืœื”ืชืงื™ื™ื ื‘ื™ื•ื ืฉืœื™ืฉื™, ื”-31 ื‘ืžืื™ (ื”ืฉื‘ื•ืข) ืฉื‘ื•ืข ื”ืกืคืจ ื”ืืœื˜ืจื ื˜ื™ื‘ื™ (ืจืื• ืืช ื”ื“ืฃ ืฉืœ ื”ืื™ืจื•ืข ื‘ืคื™ื™ืกื‘ื•ืง ) ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ืช ืชืœ ืื‘ื™ื‘, ืžืžื•ืœ ืœื‘ื ื™ื™ืŸ ื’ื™ืœืžืŸ, ื”ืคืงื•ืœื˜ื” ืœืžื“ืขื™ ื”ืจื•ื—, ื‘ื™ืŸ ื”ืฉืขื•ืช 09:30 ื‘ื‘ื•ืงืจ ืœ-16:30 ืื—ื”"ืฆ.

ืื ืœืงืจื•ื ืžื”ืชื™ืื•ืจ:

ื‘ื™ื•ื ืฉืœื™ืฉื™ ื”31/5 ืื ื—ื ื• ืขื•ืจื›ื™ื ื™ื•ื ืืœื˜ืจื ื˜ื™ื‘ื™ ืœืงืจืืช ืฉื‘ื•ืข ื”ืกืคืจ ื‘ืฉื™ืชื•ืฃ ื”ืื’ื•ื“ื” ื•ื”ื—ื•ื’ ืœืกืคืจื•ืช ื‘ืื•ื ื™ื‘ืจืกื™ื˜ื” ืž10:00 ื‘ื•ืงืจ ื•ืขื“ ืื—ืจ ื”ืฆื”ืจื™ื™ื ื™ื•ืฆื‘ื• ื“ื•ื›ื ื™ ืกืคืจื™ื ืฉืœ ื™ื•ืฆืจื™ื ืขืฆืžืื™ื ื•ื™ื•ืฆืจื™ื ื—ื“ืฉื™ื, "ืกืคืจ ืชืžื•ืจืช ืกืคืจ" ื”ื‘ื™ืื• ืกืคืจ ืฉืขืฉื” ืืช ืฉืœื• ื•ื”ื—ืœื™ืคื• ืื•ืชื• ื‘ืื—ืจ ืื• ืœื—ืœื•ืคื™ืŸ ืœืชืจื•ืžื” ืขืœ ื”ื“ืฉื ืžื•ืœ ื’ื™ืœืžืŸ ืชืขืžื•ื“ ื‘ืžื” ืคืชื•ื—ื” ืœืงืจื™ืืช ืฉื™ืจื” ื•ืคืจื•ื–ื” ืงืฆืจื” ืฉืชืคืขืœ ื‘ื”ืคืกืงื•ืช ื”ืœื™ืžื•ื“ื™ื ื‘ื•ืื• ืœืงืจื•ื ื•ืœื”ืงืจื™ื, ืœืฉืžื•ืข ื•ืœื”ืฉืžื™ืข, ืœื“ืคื“ืฃ ื•ืœื™ื”ื ื•ืช ืžื—ื•ื•ื™ืช ืกืคืจื•ืช ืฉืœื ืชืžืฆืื• ื‘ื“ื•ื›ื ื™ ืฉื‘ื•ืข ืกืคืจ ืจื’ื™ืœื™ื ื•ืชื”ื™ื” ื‘ื™ืจื” ื‘ื–ื•ืœ

ืจืฉื™ืžื” ื—ืœืงื™ืช ืฉืœ ืžืฉืชืชืคื•ืช ื•ืžืฉืชืชืคื™ื: ื›ืชื‘ ื”ืขืช ืžืขื™ืŸ, ืžืชื™ ืฉืžื•ืืœื•ืฃ, ื‘ืกื˜ืจื‘ื•ืช, ื›ืชื‘ ื”ืขืช ืืœืช ื”ืžืกื˜ื™ืง, ืกืžื˜ืื•ืช ืกืคืจื™ื, ื”ืžืฉื•ืจืจ ืขื™ื“ื• ื”ืจืืœ, ื›ืชื‘ ื”ืขืช ืืœืžื ืš, ืžื’ื–ื™ืŸ ืื™ื™-5, ืื‘ื™ื’ื™ืœ ืคืงืœืžืŸ, ื’ื•ืœื“ืžื•ื ื“ ืกืคืจื™ื.

ืžื‘ื˜ื™ื—ื™ื ื”ืคืชืขื•ืช ื ื•ืกืคื•ืช!

ื’ื ืื ื™ ืžืชื›ื•ื•ืŸ ืœื‘ื•ื ืœืฉื ื›ื“ื™ ืœื”ืงืจื™ื ืžื”ืกื™ืคื•ืจื™ื ืฉืœื™ (ื•ื‘ื›ืœืœื ื ื•ื‘ื™ืœื•ืช, ืชืกืจื™ื˜ื™ื, ืืžืจื•ืช ืฉืคืจ, ื•ืžื•ื‘ืื•ืช), ืฉื—ืœืงื ื”ืชื—ืœืชื™ ืœืชืจื’ื ืœืขื‘ืจื™ืช ืœืงืจืืช ื”ืื™ืจื•ืข. ืื ื™ ืžืงื•ื•ื” ืœืจืื•ืช ื’ื ืืชื›ื ืฉื.

ืงืจื™ืื” ื ืขื™ืžื”!

2011-08-07: Review of the Book Forrest Gump

I received the book Forrest Gump, as a present of gratitude after I tried to help someone with a problem he encountered with Freecell Solver. I finished reading it a while ago, and would like to review it here, as a token for being given it.

The book is great, and I liked it better than the film (which was based on it). In the film, it is implied that Forrest Gump is a retard, but in the book, he is an idiot-savant, who excels in mathematics, music, and some other mental activities. In the book, Forrest stumbles upon life, one weird happening after another, in a very lovable way, and the story is captivating, funny and entertaining.

I can recommend this book, and I also recommend its sequel, which I had read before reading the first book.

Humble Indie Bundle 3

I suggest you look at the Humble Indie Bundle 3, which allows you to pay how much you want for seven indie games, and split the proceeds between charity and the developers of the games. I've bought the bundle (as I did the previous one) and am now enjoying the game Crayon Physics Deluxe, which is great.

Personal Log

I've felt under the weather a while ago, but hopefully, this is mostly behind me. In the past few days, I've kept myself busy by studying Group theory, watching episodes of The Muppet Show, translating some code from Perl to JavaScript (which has given me a lot of fodder for my JavaScript page), and playing various games.

I've been feeling guilty about not having been following my RSS feeds for a long while. I've started to become not very fond of Akregator (the KDE feeds' aggregator), due to its lack of RSS service support, and I feel that the developers' plan to port it to Akonadi will make it even worse. I've found two other feeds' aggregators (one for Firefox and the other one for GNOME/gtk+) either slow or annoying, and so am left without an aggregator.

2011-10-10: Yom Kippur 2011 Summary

This Yom Kippur, I again went over my blogs from the last year. I mostly blogged in my technical blog about tips and events and stuff like that. I did not mention some of the significant good and bad things that happened to me on my blogs, but I guess I have a right for privacy and/or they were of no interest to the world at large.

The past year was good for me, but could have been better, and I drew some conclusions from looking back.

2011-11-06: Joke: The Believer Rabbi

This is a joke my father told us the other day:

A Rabbi lived in a remote shack, and the weather forecast said there will be a large flood. So two people arrived there in a Jeep and told the Rabbi: โ€œRabbi, there will be a flood, come with us so you'll be saved.โ€ and the Rabbi said: โ€œNo, that's OK - God will save me.โ€.

And indeed it started to rain, and there was a lot of water, and so a boat arrived at the Rabbi's house and the people there told the Rabbi: โ€œRabbi, there's a flood, come with us and you'll be saved.โ€ and the Rabbi told them: โ€œNo, that's OK - God will save me.โ€ and he remained there.

And it continued to rain, and the water level went up and the Rabbi had to climb to the roof of his shack. A helicopter arrived at his shack, and the people inside told the Rabbi: โ€œRabbi, there's a big flood. Come with us to safety.โ€, and the Rabbi said: โ€œNo, that's OK - God will save me.โ€. And the Helicopter left.

The water levels rose even more, and the Rabbi drowned, and his soul went to heaven. There he confronted God and asked him: โ€œDear God, why didn't you save me?โ€, and God replied โ€œWell, I tried. I sent you a Jeep, a boat - even a helicopter - but you wouldn't accept any of them. What more could I have done?โ€


The moral of this story is: God helps them that help God help them.

2011-11-24: Interesting Thought + Music Recommendation

I noticed that if I say to myself โ€œNow Iโ€™m self-aware.โ€ a few times and try to follow this advice, I acheive a certain state of self-awareness. Eventually, I get distracted, but while I do, itโ€™s interesting. Try it, if you didnโ€™t already.

And for the music recommendations: Green Sun music is an Israeli producer and composer who produces nice chill-out, new age electronic music. The first three albums are available for free download, and I also bought the mp3 version of his Dream Elements album, and can recommend it.

After I bought it, I mentioned Green Sun to my friend (on IM), and he said that his friend had a band and that they released audio files on their site and eventually got a record deal. I asked him for their site and he referred me to Machinae Supremacy. My friend thought I wouldnโ€™t like them, but apparently I did - itโ€™s a Metalish-music mixing many genres, with a rich sound, which I found likable (even if sometimes itโ€™s a bit weird.). There are many free downloads there, but the site does not look properly with JavaScript disabled.

2012-09-26: Yom Kippur 2012 Summary

This Yom Kippur, I again went over my blogs from the last year, and tried to draw some conclusions. Most of my blog posts were in my technical blogs: shlomif-tech, and my blogs.perl.org blog. Nevertheless, I did not blog too much. Instead, I worked a lot on code, wrote E-mails, chatted on IRC, and helped maintain such projects as the Mageia Linux distribution. So I guess it's not so bad, because writing and publishing essays has a tendency to make me nervous.

I was employed for about 7 months this year in a part-time job, which I expected to be more permanent and turned out to be more temporary. I also did not have substantial hypomanias, though I had some periods of stress or anger, and annoyingly, I got into a short period of hypomania yesterday, but luckily was quickly able to recover from it.

I still maintained some sites such as my home-site or the Perl Beginnersโ€™s site, and it often kept me busy.

So overall a good year.

Cheers!

2012-10-04: โ€œLike A Bad White Guy Party Gangnam Styleโ€ Mirrored

The YouTube video โ€œLike A Bad White Guy Party Gangnam Style - PSY, LMFAO, Dev, Offspring, Bloodhound Gang (Mashup)โ€, which I have been greatly enjoying has now been mirrored on my personal web site. Follow the link to download it and view it.

The YouTube original is no longer available due to a copyright claim by YG Entertainment Inc. (whoever they may be). I wish all copyright cartels will be banished to the tenth level of hell (which was created especially for them because the first nine levels were too mild).

For related reading, see:

2012-10-04: โ€œLike A Bad White Guy Party Gangnam Styleโ€ Mirrored

The YouTube video โ€œLike A Bad White Guy Party Gangnam Style - PSY, LMFAO, Dev, Offspring, Bloodhound Gang (Mashup)โ€, which I have been greatly enjoying has now been mirrored on my personal web site. Follow the link to download it and view it.

The YouTube original is no longer available due to a copyright claim by YG Entertainment Inc. (whoever they may be). I wish all copyright cartels will be banished to the tenth level of hell (which was created especially for them because the first nine levels were too mild).

For related reading, see:

2012-10-15: Book Report: Catch 22

The book Catch-22 by Joseph Heller has a reputation as one of the greatest books of the 20th century. One of my family members bought it, and I recently finished reading it, and would like to state my opinion.

While the book is well-written, I didn't really find it enjoyable. On the other hand, there wasn't any particular obstacle to stop me from finishing to read it (unlike some books I recently tried to read by Tom Wolfe), so I guess it could have been worse. The humour in the book is sarcastic and dry, and I usually did not find it funny.

At least now I can boast that I have read Catch-22, and other people may find it more enjoyable. Bye for now.

2012-09-26: Yom Kippur 2013 Summary

This Yom Kippur, I again went over my blogs from the last year, and tried to draw some conclusions. (It's already Sukkoth and Talk Like a Pirate Day, so I decided to blog about this already.). I again noticed that I didn't blog a lot most of the time, but I guess no real disaster occured due to that.

This year I had a lengthy hypomania, which was followed by a period of working a lot on code, and then a period of tiredness and feeling of lethargy (though I was almost always constantly doing something), and now I've started working as a software developer, which keeps me busy. The Hypomania made me realise several things that I have done or thought wrong, so it was not too bad.

This year I finished some books, watched some films, added a lot of content to my home site, and made some new friends online and offline, so I can be proud of myself.

There were a few times, when I got into some trouble or made people angry, especially during the hypomania, but I hope I have drawn the right conclusions.

Shanah Tovah, Gmar Hatimah Tovah, Happy Sukkoth, and Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day to everybody.