A Peek into a Mind

Well, I’m not a political type of person. But what happens lately in Israel isn’t politics. It’s my life. Lets say the situation is hard and looks like it’s going to be more violent. I’m not going to exapnd on this issue in this weblog. I do so on the Global Affairs Forum. It’s a serious forum, with interesting, intelligent, mature people discussing world issues. My comments are mostly found in the Hot Spot: Israel forum, so you are welcome to go there now and read what ever you want. If you feel you’re mature enough to join in and share your opinion, please do. We do, however, prefer a smaller forum with rational people over a bigeer, popular forum with idiots and fight-pickers like the rest of the forums on the net are. So behave.

For my friends – No, I was not yet called for reserve duty, I hope there won’t be a need for that.
And may this whole madness end soon. Amen.

It’s friday evening and there is a bloody storm outside. I’ve covered Leonardo’s doghouse with naylons to make sure no water will leak in. We’re about to sit and eat the Friday dinner and Ive placed the camera ina way you could watch us. Have fun. I hope the storm won’t cause electicity shortcuts, as it did yesterday night. Be with your right after…

Well, Pesach is here again, like every year, and we’re going to Ashdod to hold the eve with the extended family. What I like in passovers is that we’re all sitting together and have fun while reading the Hagada (yea, some still read it to the end!). My mom’s family is very big so we usually split to 2 parts this evening. Half doing the Seder at my aunt Ester and the other half at my aunt Odet. Some of the family members which are not religious also drive between the families to have a chance to be with everybody. We usually sing songs after the big dinner and my cousins start to fool around until my uncle Arie gets enough and tell them to shut up.

Well. gotta go.. See you friday!!

DAST exercise is progressing slowly. The exercises are meant to be done in pairs (thinking together, each coding half the work) but I’m doing it alone, which makes it more time consuming compared to other students. On the other hand, I have more experience then the avg. 1st year student so I guess that makes it even.

Yonit and me are back in Jerusalem, btw, after a weekend at my home. We’re here until tomorrow, when she’ll go back to Natanya and I’ll go back to Ashkelon, for the Passover. I got endless work to do and I know I’m not going to complete all of it. Damn.

Gali came to National Library today, to read/copy some stuff from a book. And since the National Library is in the middle of Givat Ram campus it made meeting conveniently easy (specially since my lab is right behind the library). She couldn’t stay for long, since she had to be back at Tel Aviv by 17:30, but it was nice seeing her, anyway.

I’ve once wrote an entry expressing my opinion regarding the behavior of international behemoth companies. Seems more and more America is turning to the paradise of commercial cartels and the hell of civilians. Just to point out the direction the biggest (and only) superpower is heading, check out these articles: When elephents dance and Anti-Copy Bill Slams Coders. I thought the DMCA was extremely bad, but apparently I was too naive… When it comes to civil rights against huge companies with copyrighted stuff, civil rights are to be stepped upon. Ho well, at least I’m not living in the US…

Some other interesting news: Thumbs are the new fingers for the GameBoy generation, Flo Control (or how computer vision can help you with your cat!) and the very cute “Rabbit Want Pointer”

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which is the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty’s Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of the “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with the “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the newspelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e”in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”. During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and After ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza.

Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Continue reading ‘Made me smile: New EU Language’

First, we had the 3rd IGDA Chapter meeting on Thursday, and it went extremely well. I’m about to write the report in a few minutes so you’ll be able to read all about it on our page. Anyway, I took the lab’s digital camera to take pictures of the meeting, and since I only return it tomorrow, on sunday, I spent the weekend taking pictures of everything and everybody…

So, here are the new albums you’d like to check out:

I still work on the DAST exercise. Bloody lots of work. I still have to submit the 2nd exercise from last semester’s GM & AO 3DO (then again, no one of the 8 students submitted it yet…) And I got IGDA Chapter Meeting tomorrow. Damn lots of things.

Some articles for later read:
Gravity-mapping satellite duo activated – Intuitive people worse at detecting lies – Bloodsucking flies may have begun HIV epidemic – Asteroid buzzes Earth from “blind spot” – Space tourist vehicle unveiled in Russia – Iceman’s final battle – Here come the smartphones – Sony reveals singing robot

I’m too lazy to make a full enhanced feedback / Guestbook. So here you have a cheap alternative.

Just before leaving… Seems people likes my cam pictures so much I’m actually being taken to model for websites… Here I am, modeling for the Cellular Forum in the known israeli site Tapuz. Hmmm… I wonder who’s going to be next to put my face on his front page…
Continue reading ‘I’m a model, what can I say…’

Yea, the WebCam is back on. It’s currently placed in our lab, the Computer Graphics Lab in the Hebrew University (Jerusalem), but during weekends that I’ll be home (Ashkelon) it will be taken with me. If you’re here now and there is nothing really interesting on the cam at the moment, you can check out the pictures gallery (for example: lab or home)

I’m dead tired. Satyed till now (1:54am) in the lab to work on the exercise for the Data Structure course, but I’m too tired to think right. I’ll be off. I suppose to come to a lecture tomorrow at 8:00am (which is 6 hours from now) but I think I’ll skip it and sleep till later. Yonit isn’t coming with me tonight, she got an exam tomorrow in the Organic Chemistry lab and she gotta study. Ho well, I’ll have more place ont he bed then I ever needed… Gotta go… sleep… aaaaaa….

As you see, I grew tierd of my previous site look. So, here is a new, nice, simple and clean homepage. You can also add comments this time and give a thumbs up/down to some of the entries. All thanks to GreyMatter, a free script by Noah Grey.

My webcam was offline for quite a while but I’ll get it up and broadcasting this evening – live from the Computer Graphics Lab in the Hebrew University!

Second Semester had started 2 weeks ago and I’m already up to my neck in the stuff. Data Structures course proves to be a lot of work, the others are more or less ok. I still have to submit my final project from Modeling Geometry & Appearance of 3D Objects course. Bhaa. Like I have the time to complete this impossible exercise, anyway.

I’ll spend some time this evening to see what I want to port from my previous news database. I’ll be back later…

Here is my opinion about what should be legal (opposed to Huge American Companies opinion)

Jon Johansen, now 18 years old from norway, have coded in 1999 the known DeCSS, a program that overrides the DVD protection. Norway now brings him to trial under the pressure of the notorious MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). Jon, with 2 other programmers merely found a way to bypass the protection on a DVD he has BOUGHT to watch it under linux (no dvd player was available back then on linux). You can read the story yourself, I just want to express my own opinion.
Continue reading ‘My bit on what should be legal’