I’ve wanted to make this post a while ago. There is this show I got a little addicted to (though it doesn’t mean I manage to catch all episodes…). It’s a reality TV kind of show, from the UK. It’s called The Race. 8 people, sorted into 4 couples, are racing to go from Greenwich, UK, around the world and back to Greenwich in 13 weeks. They get missions every week and each have a camera crew with it to document everything. The point? They only got 200$ once at the begining of the week, plus $40 every week since, which should include everything – food, sleep, buses – everything! Another rule – they can’t travel after 19:00. The show tracks the couples to see how they get cheap tickets, hitch hike, try to outrun one another – and mainly – how they get along. (They don’t really get along that good from the 4th week on, at least for now). You get to see places and do really bizarre stuff – really exciting!
I watch the show on the Israeli Channel 8 (Science Channel) which is way behind the actual shows of the program in the UK (where the show have ended almost a year ago!). In here they have just aired week 5, so I do a effort to catch every episode (which isn’t practical cause I work late…)
Anyway, since I’m too tired now to code correctly, I’ll spend the next few minutes writing about the show so far.
Continue reading ‘iTV2′s THE RACE’
It’s elections day today (the 5th in the past 10 years… Kinda takes the importance out of it). I drove to Ashkelon, where I vote and were some of the extended family meets up for a Bar-B-Q! I need to get down to the garden now, to help making the meat, but you can enjoy the live pictures the webcam will broadcast of the event!! 
Later: Well, the day is over, elections over too. I thought at first to post some remarks about the elections themselves, but finding myself watching the science channel on TV instead of looking at the news reporting the results kinda tells you how much I cared. I’m surprised I even bothered going to vote. (I haven’t gone the last elections. Was in university and had better things to do then to catch a 2 hours bus back to Ashkelon and then spend another 2 hours returning to Jerusalem).
Anyway, Seems I wasn’t the only one who didn’t care. This was the Israeli elections with the lowest ever participation rate, standing on 68% (which means 32% went traveling, shopping or just relaxing, but didn’t even bothered to go and vote). Well.. That was MY saying about the elections. Who cares, anyway, all those politicians are the same and we all know it doesn’t matter. The only thing these elections caused was a waste a millions of shekels. For nothing. Buh. Atleast we had a BarBQ!
I’ve started recently to develop games for mobile phones. To assist me keep track on things I found helpful, I’m going to post links and downloads here. If you have nothing to do with programming MIDlets I find it hard to believe you’ll find this page interesting.
Continue reading ‘J2ME :: Developing MIDlets’
Done with another exam yesterday, and as the next is still (quite) far ahead, I’m begining the work on 2 projects. Thefirst is actually work. As I mentioned before I was hired by an Austrian company to develop 2 small-scale games for mobile phones. I’m starting to work on this one today, and I hope to be finished within a month (if nothing will turn out to be more complicated then I expect). The other project is much more fun, and is creating an artistic code for a contest by the interdiciplinary Center. You need to create a work of are which is based on code. They didn’t use this word (they probably don’t know is, being an academic institute) but it’s about making a Demo. And hey, I’m not going to turn my back to THIS kind of challange! More on this (and the mobile development) later.
Continue reading ‘Exams, Work.’
Just finished one exam and I got the next up in 4 days and I got HEAPS of stuff to go over, so I’m all other life activity will remain halted. Just came to the lab for a few minutes since everybody were yelling on me that my email filled up and no one could send me anything anymore. I’ve cleared about 130 emails (most of them junk-mail) and I’m off back to my flat. I’m going to eat a HUGE meal and watch how our first israeli astronout launched to space. Damn, it should have been ME!
Anyway, just a little plug – Florian ‘sirflo’ Landerl got his new personal site up and running. Lots of worthy stuff there, visit this dutch dude!
Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish the exams smoothly so I’ll have time to fix all the mess I left cause of these exams. Man, I hate these end-semester periods!
Today Gali is getting married and I have to change quickly and pick my mom from work, and drive all the way to Nezer-Sereni, where the wedding is. This cloth changing thing is annoying as I’m really ain’t the right guy for choosing formal clothing… In addition I don;t really know the distance I’m going to drive, which makes estimating the proper exit time harder. The ceremony (hupa) is at 20:30, I want to get ther by 20:00 or so. Damn. No time. I’ll update you when I’ll get back…
Continue reading ‘Gali’s Wedding!’
I’m going to sleep in a little while, as I have to get up early tomorrow and drive to Jerusalem. Anyway, I just wanted to spill some words about a really shocking thing – a youth organization in the Palestinian territories which revolves around… suicide terror attacks! And we’re not talking 18 years old buys here, we’re talking 8-15 years old!!
Yesterday, 2 bothers, age 8 and 13, managed to slip through into one of the Israeli settlements in Gaza with knives, attempting to do a ‘terror attack’. They met an Israeli kid on one of the roads and started to beat him. The kid shouted and his mother came out and started throwing things on the Palestinian kids and called for help. His father came, and as he saw the kids attacking his son got knives, shot towards them.
Continue reading ’8 year old kid terrorist’
Yesterday night I went to see Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers with my friend Eyal. We also wanted our friend Ami to come as he’s just got a weekend at home from the hospital (he was badly injured in a motorcycle accident) but it turns out the cinema and the mall have no facilities for wheelchairs. I was so pissed on this I really yelled at the girl who answered the phone. I kinda regretted it after a while since she wasn’t the right address but I just got really pissed about this.
Anyway, to the movie. It was splendid – an epic proportion adventure! The scenes are breathtaking! As a Computer Graphics guy myself I must say that I was REALLY impressed by the CG – Which in most part were hard to detect! Beside the totally imaginative characters (Treeants (Treebeard), Gollum, Hellwolves (wargs)) all the rest looked practically as real as it could! Amazing! Just when I thought – here is a CGI character – it turned out to be (or look like) a man in a mask. I was totally immense in the movie. Even the CG characters themselves (Gollum / Smeagol specially) were really one level above anything I’ve seen till now. The interaction between the CG Gollum and the other “real” actors was amazing. I later found out that for some of the shots they had to totally model and digitised all the human actors up to the little details to create believable interaction scenes. I admit right now – I could not tell which scenes were these! Maybe if I’ll have the movie in the lab and watch it very closely – but it was totally believable in the theatre!
But I want to dedicate this post to one impressive system created for the movie – Weta’s MASSIVE Crowd system.
Continue reading ‘Lord Of the Rings – Weta’s MASSIVE Crowd’
Just added a new feature to the site – You can now send me an sms message right to my mobile phone! I don’t expect to get a lot of msgs, but if you see me on the cam and you want to drop me a note that you saw me – that’s a really fun way!
I’ll go watch the news on TV now. I’ll post some serious stuff here later.
Lots of time without update, and lots of things happen. Here’s a news flash: Semester is nearly over, I’m under pressure to submit the last exercises and learn for the exams, Gali is getting married on the 14th this month, I’ve got stuck in a middle of a junction in Jerusalem and had to get the car towed to the garage back in Ashkelon. Stayed the weekend in Jerusalem learning, with Yonit. Helped her with java. Took a bus to Ashkelon on Sunday. Went to the garage to take the car and see what was the problem. Turns out the gear went kaput. 7000 NIS ($1470). OUCH! Drove home. Big Terror attack in Tel Aviv, god damn it! Slept few hours that night, woke up at 4:30am to drive my mom to the air port. She’s on some sort of a EuroMed Education project, this time they meet in Barcelona. From the air port drove back to Jerusalem. Arrived at 7:00am, went to sleep. Woke up 11:00 all messed up. Solved an exercise. Went to the lab. Everything’s a mess since technicians are fixing the air-conditioning. Lab out of work for a couple of days. Bummer. Tuesday morning. Went to the lecture, submitted the exercise. Drove back home to stay with my father until Sunday.
That’s basically sums it up (happy yossi? You’re probably the only one reading this. Well, you and the other 80 guys that stumble here every day…) Anyway, good news – I was hired by an austrian company to develop midlets games (games for cell phones). Already played with the code a little, I’m going to start at Jan. 24th (after my last exam) and probably code a Xonix game and a Surfing game. I’ll post some screenshots and details once I’ll have some.
Continue reading ‘Tough.’
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