urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite Shlomi Fish's Home Site shlomif@iglu.org.il Shlomi Fish's Home Site 2009-05-25T14:43:00Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:11232 2009-05-25T14:43:00Z 2009-05-25T14:43:00Z Celtic Woman - May it Be (YouTube) <p> The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/MathVentures/toggle-squares/">Toggle Squares game</a> whose link was broken, and non-functional, was restored and placed on the main site, as a pure-JavaScript game. A method for solving it <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/MathVentures/toggle_squares.html">is explained</a> in the MathVentures section. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/privacy-policy/">A privacy policy</a> has been added to the site. I'd like to thank a friend who is also a webmaster for allowing me to borrow and adapt his privacy policy. </p> <p> The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/">Anti-Apple Page</a> now contains 99 items with links. <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/">other pages against bad software</a> were also updated. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/">The page about the "Mastering Cat" book</a>, which proved to be very popular has been updated with "Thanks" and "Coverage" sections. </p> <p> There are new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">Fortune Cookies in the collection</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> Well, it's not a threat - it's a warning, and he won't be harmed much by acting against my advice. A threat is something like "Stop posting political posts or I will burn your house, rape your wife and daughters, banish you to the middle of Antarctica, convert all your Perl code to PHP, and then post it on thedailywtf.com." </p> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/resumes/">My Resumés</a> have been enhanced and updated. </p> <p> There is a new version <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/rwlock/">of the First-Come First-Served Readers/Writers Lock</a>. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:10799 2009-04-01T05:05:40Z 2009-04-01T05:05:40Z Brad Sucks - Dropping Out of School <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/"><img src="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/small-cover.png" alt="Mastering cat" /></a> </p> <p> It's official! I'm going to publish a new book soon, and I placed <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Mastering-Cat/">a new interview with me about it</a>. Read it so you'll understand why "Mastering cat" would be an essential addition to your collection of technical books. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:10573 2009-03-31T11:42:28Z 2009-03-31T11:42:28Z Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts III - 19 <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#wikipedia_has">a new aphorism was added to the humour collection:</a> </p> <blockquote> <p> Wikipedia has a page about everything including the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink</a> . </p> </blockquote> <p> Recommendations for <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#gdb">GDB</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#ack">Ack</a> and <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#windows-console">the improved windows console</a>, have been added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/">favourite open-source software page</a>. </p> <p> There are new fortunes in the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">fortunes' collection</a>. </p> <p> New links were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/">the page about Apple</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/">the one about MySQL</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/windows-vista/">to the page about Windows Vista</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/">and to the "Stop Using Internet Explorer!" page</a>. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/">My GnuPG Public Key</a> was updated , and I now link to my Plurk account on <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/contact-me/">my contact page</a> page. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:10401 2009-03-13T20:44:20Z 2009-03-13T20:44:20Z Limahl - Neverending Story <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/site-source/">The build instructions for the main www.shlomifish.org site</a> are now operational again after a long time when they were out-of-date. Part of the reason why they were not kept out of date was that the public sources of the site have grown out-of-date from those stored in my local copy. This <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/22272.html">was recently fixed</a> with some kind insights and guidance by <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~mstrout/">Matt S. Trout</a>. Since I promised 50 U.S. Dollars to the first person that will help me fix my source control problems, and Matt provided all the help I ended up needing, I will donate them on his behalf to <a href="http://www.enlightenedperl.org/">the Englightened Perl Organisation</a>. Many thanks! </p> <p> And here are the rest of the changes in the site's content that took place since the last update - for those who are not only interested in building it. </p> <p> There are <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#God_gave_us_two_eyes">two new bits in the collection of Aphorisms</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. </p> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/File-Find-Object/">The File-Find-Object homepage</a> was updated with more text. </p> <p> There are new links in <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/">the against bad software pages</a>. </p> <p> A lot of broken HTML and XHTML in the site was fixed, and all the pages were made to validate. </p> <p> New <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">Fortune Cookies were added</a> and existing ones were fixed (and there are some more in the pipe): </p> <blockquote> <table class="irc-conversation" border="1"> <tbody> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">Mel|work</td> <td class="text">Yaakov: icke==troll?</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">rindolf</td> <td class="text">Mel|work: no, he's not a troll.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">Yaakov</td> <td class="text">Mel|work: No, icke is just... enthusiastic about "channel purity"</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">Mel|work</td> <td class="text">k....</td> </tr> <tr class="me_is"> <td class="who">* rindolf</td> <td class="text">hates when people abuse the == operator in English for "contained in"</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">apeiron</td> <td class="text">rindolf, "icke contained in troll"? That's not what Mel|work meant.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">tarbo</td> <td class="text">sure he did, if you make troll a set of users</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">rindolf</td> <td class="text">apeiron: what he meant by icke == troll is that icke belongs to the set of trolls.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">rindolf</td> <td class="text">apeiron: not that every troll in the world is icke.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">apeiron</td> <td class="text">rindolf, No, he was asking if icke is a troll.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">icke</td> <td class="text">$icke-&gt;isa('Troll');</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">icke</td> <td class="text">(false)</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">rindolf</td> <td class="text">apeiron: is-a means "contained in the set of objects with the property of"</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">rindolf</td> <td class="text">apeiron: mathematically speaking.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">apeiron</td> <td class="text">rindolf, Okay, so you're assigning the mathematical meaning of == to its usage in a *perl* channel?</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">apeiron</td> <td class="text">rindolf, Now who's fiddling with meanings, eh?</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">rindolf</td> <td class="text">apeiron: whatever.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">apeiron</td> <td class="text">'whatever' is what those who have lost their argument say.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">rindolf</td> <td class="text">apeiron: whatever.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">apeiron</td> <td class="text">^ QED</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">rindolf</td> <td class="text">apeiron: whatever.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">PerlJam</td> <td class="text">apeiron: I thought that's what people who don't care say.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">apeiron</td> <td class="text">PerlJam, If one doesn't care, they wouldn't respond.</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">PerlJam</td> <td class="text">apeiron: whatever</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">PerlJam</td> <td class="text">;-)</td> </tr> <tr class="saying"> <td class="who">rindolf</td> <td class="text">LOL.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/optimizing-code-for-speed/#coverage">A coverage and commentary section</a> was added to the recently published "Optimizing Code for Speed" essay. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:10224 2009-02-12T20:30:20Z 2009-02-12T20:30:20Z Meir Banay - Ubeneihem (= "And in between them") <p> A <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/optimizing-code-for-speed/">new essay about optimising code for speed</a> has been published: </p> <blockquote> <p>We've all seen the fact that while computers got faster, software has often become slower to run unless the hardware is upgraded. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates%27_Law">The so-called "Gates' Law"</a> claims that commercial programs decrease in speed by half every 18 months, due to various reasons. It is well known that the various versions of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS">DOS</a> operating system ran adequately on a PC XT's and 286's and that a Intel 386 was a "lean and mean DOS machine" as a certain journalist claimed back then. On the other hand, Microsoft Windows 3.0 and Microsoft Windows 3.1 already required a fast 486 computer to be ran comfortably, while Windows 95 was barely usable there and needed a Pentium computer. Windows XP already ran slowly on a Pentium machine and required a high end Pentium III or Pentium 4 computer. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista">Windows Vista</a> requires even more hardware resources than Windows XP, up to the point that many computers in use today cannot run it comfortably.</p> <p>Now, while software simulations that run directly against the CPU and memory (and possibly hard-disk) are still running much faster than before, the responsiveness of the system itself does not seem to improve much.</p> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/W2L/Mini-Intro/">The Mini-Intro "Welcome to Linux" lecture</a> was now integrated into the rest of the site. There are two versions of its slides available: one with a point-by-point display (useful for presenting interactively), and the other with all the text displayed at once (useful for browsing from the web). </p> <p> New Fortune Cookies have been added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">the fortune cookie collection</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> R is similar to other programming languages, like C, Java and Perl, in that it helps people perform a wide variety of computing tasks by giving them access to various commands. </p> </blockquote> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:9822 2009-01-23T10:30:40Z 2009-01-23T10:30:40Z Yehuda Poliker - Yom Shishi (Friday) <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits-and-bobs/greasemonkey/grease.html">The Greasemonkey Scripts page</a> was updated with a new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits-and-bobs/greasemonkey/grease.html#eliminate-from-rss">"Get Rid of 'from=rss' in the URL"</a> script (useful for people who are subscribed to the web feeds of Slashdot.org or similar), and two specialised scripts for helping in the transcription of <a href="http://www.ozyandmillie.org/">the "Ozy and Millie comics"</a> </p> <p> I added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/File-Find-Object/">a page about the File-Find-Object CPAN Module</a> (originally by <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~nanardon/">Olivier Thauvin</a>) which has been an ongoing project of mine recently. </p> <p> Open Text Summarizer was added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/israel/list-of-projects/">the List of Israeli Open Source Projects</a>. </p> <p> New links were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/">the anti-Apple page</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/">the anti-MySQL page</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/windows-vista/">the page about Windows Vista</a>, and the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/">"Stop Using Internet Explorer!" page</a> </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">The Fortune Cookies Page</a> was updated with new fortune cookies. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/closed-books-are-so-19th-century/">The Essay "Why Closed Books are So 19th-Century"</a> was updated. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:9714 2008-11-19T14:35:05Z 2008-11-19T14:35:05Z Peter Gabriel - Down to Earth <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">New Fortune Cookies Have Been added to the fortune cookie collection</a> </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#firefox_plugins">the list of Firefox plugins on the "Favourite Free Software of Mine"</a> was updated: deprecated plug-ins were removed, while some new useful plugins have been added. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/File-Dir-Dumper/">A New Open Source Software Project - File-Dir-Dumper</a> is now available. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/israel/list-of-projects/">The List of Israeli Open-Source Projects</a> was updated with new projects. </p> <p> A new page - <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/php/">"PHP Sucks" (originally by czth)</a> was added based on a one that went offline. </p> <p> New links were added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/">Against Apple Inc. page</a> (including many jokes), to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/">against MySQL page</a>, and to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/windows-vista/">"Links against Windows Vista" page</a> </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:9285 2008-10-13T17:48:18Z 2008-10-13T17:48:18Z Rob Paravonian - Pachelbel's Rant <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/MathVentures/two-angels-and-two-gates.html">A new riddle about two gates and two angels</a> was added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/MathVentures/">MathVentures</a> section: </p> <blockquote> <p>There's a famous riddle that goes like this:</p> <p> You are standing in front of two gates (a left one and a right one) - one leads to paradise and the other leads to hell. You don't know which gate leads where. Besides the gates, there are two angels: one of them always tells the truth and the other always lies, but you also don't know which one is which. </p> <p> You have one question to ask one of the angels, in order to find out which gate you should follow. What would that question be? </p> </blockquote> <p> I'm now <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/hitchhiker-guide-to-star-trek-tng.html">mirroring the "Hitchhiker's Guide to Star Trek - The Next Generation"</a>, which I highly enjoy. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits-and-bobs/greasemonkey/grease.html#svn-links-to-repos">A new Greasemonkey script to provide links back to the repository for Subversion repository browsers</a> is now available. </p> <p> The page of <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits-and-bobs/gringotts-patch/">the gringotts-shlomif patch</a> was updated to reflect the fact that development of Gringotts has now resumed elsewhere, incorporating the original patch. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#virtualbox">VirtualBox</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#hex-a-hop">Hex-a-hop</a>, and <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/#gringotts">Gringotts</a> were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/">favourite free software page</a>. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">The Fortune Cookie files</a> can now be compiled as an RPM. </p> <p> Added a <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/links.html#music-free-downloads">free musical downloads section</a> to my links page. </p> <p> New links were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/">the pages against bad software</a>. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:9072 2008-09-21T12:06:53Z 2008-09-21T12:06:53Z Cyndi Lauper - Time after Time <p> Here is the list of changes to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/">Shlomi Fish's Homepage</a> since the last update. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html#du-output-analyser">The du output analyser</a> has been added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html">the Bits-and-Bobs programs page</a>. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/source-files-list.html">a source files list</a> was added to the Unix fortunes collection for easy downloading of the source. </p> <p> New quotes/fortune cookies were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/shlomif.html">shlomif</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/paul-graham.html">paul-graham</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/shlomif-fav.html">shlomif-fav</a> </p> <p> New links were added to the following pages: </p> <ul> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/links.html">The Links Page</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/case-for-file-swapping/">The "Case for File Swapping" page</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/">The "Stop Using Internet Explorer" Page</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/">The Anti-Apple Inc. Page</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/">The Against MySQL Page</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/windows-vista/">The Against Windows Vista Page</a>. </li> </ul> <p> Many broken links and emails have been fixed, and there are many corrections to typos. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:8803 2008-08-05T13:28:12Z 2008-08-05T13:28:12Z Yehuda Poliker - Radio Ramallah <p> In 2004, <a href="http://www.advogato.org/person/lkcl/">lkcl</a> wrote <a href="http://www.advogato.org/article/814.html">an article on Advogato saying "Love is Golden: All Ideas Have and Always Will be"</a>. For a long time, I've been supplying the HTML material for <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/">my presentations</a> under permissive, free-content licences, but did not supply the source code and markup used to generate them. Inspired by the article, I set to remedy it, and now there are links from the individual presentations to the source tarballs. </p> <p> Note that some presentations were created using other tools, and so are not available with their source yet, but hopefully this will be remedied soon, too. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/interviews/">The two Interviews with open-source people</a> were now converted to XML-Grammar-Screenplay and their source is available on the page. </p> <p> The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/software-tools/">Software Contruction and Management Tools page</a> was heavily updated. </p> <p> New links have been added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/">the pages "Against Bad Software"</a>. </p> <p> New film recommendations have been added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/recommendations/films/">to the movie recommendations</a>. Moreover, two new book reviews have been added: <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/books-recommends/#pragmatic_programmer">about "The Pragmatic Programmer"</a> and <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/books-recommends/#extreme_programming_explained">about "Extreme Programming Explained"</a>. </p> <p> New links have been added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/links.html">to the links page</a>. </p> <p> New quotes have been added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">to the Fortune Cookie Collection</a>. More information is <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/#web-feed">in their web-feeds</a>. </p> <p> There were also internal improvements to the site's build system making the building of the DocBook/XML documents and other resources less error-prone and more powerful and customisable. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:8674 2008-07-22T04:02:40Z 2008-07-22T04:02:40Z John Denver - Grandma's Feather Bed <p> New text has been added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/">the screenplay "Star Trek: We, the Living Dead"</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> [ There's a cat lying on a table there content. He's half-white and half-grey. ] </p> <p><strong class="sayer">Katie:</strong> oh, look! A cat. <span class="inlinedesc">[She approaches the cat and starts petting it.]</span> </p> <p> [ The cat purrs and then says: ] </p> <p><strong class="sayer">George the Cat:</strong> oh, yeah! </p> <p><strong class="sayer">Katie:</strong> <span class="inlinedesc">[Startled]</span> Bleh, you're a talking cat. </p> <p><strong class="sayer">George:</strong> yes, but why did you stop? </p> <p><strong class="sayer">Katie:</strong> I'm not used to cats talking to me. </p> <p><strong class="sayer">George:</strong> ah, well, yes, it takes some pre-vampires time to get used to that here. </p> <p><strong class="sayer">Katie:</strong> I suppose you're older than me. </p> <p><strong class="sayer">George:</strong> most probably. I'm about 5 milliard years old. </p> <p><strong class="sayer">Katie:</strong> bleh!! You're older than my planet! </p> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#met_a_guy_in_the_bar">Two of my newest aphorisms</a> were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html">the Aphorism collection</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> Two female dogs talking about modern-life: </p> <p> <b>Jasmine:</b> It's so cool! On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog! </p> <p> <b>Daisy:</b> Yeah, but everyone can tell right away that you're a bitch! </p> </blockquote> <p> The first revision of a new essay - <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/software-management/perfect-workplace/">"The Perfect IT Workplace"</a> was published. It was released pre-maturely due to someone redditing the article, but may still be of interest: </p> <blockquote> <p><b>The Best Tools that Money Can Buy</b></p> <p> This cannot stressed enough. As <a class="ulink" href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html">Joel Spolsky notes</a> (based on Steve McConnell) in item No. 9 of the Joel Test, you need to "use the best tools that money can buy". </p> <p> If you buy old, broken and/or barely functioning hardware, you'll spend a lot of time debugging the problems there, which will waste a lot of precious time. And you may lose a lot of reputation and customers due to down-time. <span class="bold"><strong>Relying on reliable, high-end hardware</strong></span> is a much better idea. </p><p> I've been to two workplaces that gave me an old computer with a 40 GB hard-disk. It wasn't enough at all. At one place, we've reached the limit of this hard-disk due to several large source code checkouts, and as a result needed a bigger hard-disk. And the only hard-disks the lab had were 80 GB ones, which were bought because they were the cheapest (per-disk, not per-capacity). Please, <span class="bold"><strong>buy large enough hard-disks</strong></span>. </p> <p> At the same workplace, I was given a computer with a read-only CD-ROM drive. It was not even a DVD reader. I brought a DVD of audio files from home, and could not read it. In this day and age, read/write DVD drives are the standard, and are ultra-cheap. </p> </blockquote> <p> The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/interviews/adrian-ettlinger.html">interview with Adrian Ettlinger</a> was converted into <a href="http://freshmeat.net/projects/screenplay-xml/">XML-Grammar-Screenplay</a> in a true fashion of "Eating one's own dog food". The proto-HTML source will be placed online soon. </p> <p> New links have been added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/israel/guide-to-israeli-foss-resources/">the Guide to Israeli Open-Source Resources</a>. </p> <p> New film recommendations have been added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/recommendations/films/">to the movie recommendations</a>. </p> <p> New quotes have been added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">to the Fortune Cookie Collection</a>. Chronological updaets can now be found for them <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/#web-feed">in their web-feeds</a>. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:8407 2008-06-19T19:55:57Z 2008-06-19T19:55:57Z Paul Simon - You can Call Me Al <p> The highlight of today's news item is that there's <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/closed-books-are-so-19th-century/">a new essay titled <b>"Why Closed Books are So 19th Century?"</b></a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> And despite all that, we can often see that books are getting published on paper, and either completely not available online, or their free re-distribution is restricted. They are often available on Peer-to-Peer networks or illegally, but their use is still restricted, and complicates things. </p> <p> In this article, I'd like to note why non-open books (or at least books that are not available online) are as pointless as <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/foss-other-beasts/">non-open-source software</a>. </p> </blockquote> <p> The other changes are more minor: </p> <ul> <li>Improvements to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/art/recommendations/music/">Recommended music page</a>. </li> <li> Added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/conf/vim/">my Vim configuration files</a> to the site. </li> <li> There's a <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/shlomif.html#monty-python-on-computer-interfaces">new fortune cookie</a>. </li> </ul> <p> Enjoy! </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:8133 2008-06-17T19:57:40Z 2008-06-17T19:57:40Z Republica - Ready to Go (Original Mix) <p> Happy <a href="http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23880365-5014239,00.html">Firefox 3 Release Day</a> everyone. Hope you enjoy the new browser, which I can <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/11712.html">highly recommend</a>. Here's a new edition of the "What's new in Shlomi Fish's home-site" log. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#pedantic_people">A new joke</a> has been added to the aphorisms page: (by a friend of mine) </p> <blockquote> <p> I often wonder why I hang out with so many people who are so pedantic. And then I remember - because they are so pedantic. </p> </blockquote> <p> The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/art/recommendations/music/">Music Recommendations page</a> was updated with more links (to the Wikipedia, etc.) and with a new CD (The Lion King). Moreover, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/books-recommends/">The Non-fiction books' recommendations page</a> was updated with new books. And lastly, I began working on <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/recommendations/films/">a page with recommendations of films</a>. </p> <p> More text has been added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/">"Star Trek: We, the Living Dead"</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> [Jadzia is walking towards Quark's bar and sees quark standing next to a terminal and mumbling.] </p> <p><strong class="sayer">Dax:</strong> Hi Quark! Why are you so happy?</p> <p><strong class="sayer">Quark:</strong> Remember the film I took? Rom helped me edit it, and I've been distributing and selling it online. I have made a fortune.</p> <p>[Camera zooms to reveal Brunt in the background.]</p> <p><strong class="sayer">Brunt:</strong> Brunt, FCA.</p> <p><strong class="sayer">Quark:</strong> I made a fortune.</p> <p><strong class="sayer">Dax:</strong> You <strong class="bold">had</strong> made a fortune.</p> <p><strong class="sayer">Quark:</strong> Yep.</p> </blockquote> <p> The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">quotations in the fortune cookies collection</a> were greatly enhanced: new quotes were added, the plaintext files are now synchronised from the new XML sources, and more meta-data and styles have been added. </p> <p> Added the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/Vim/telux-tips-and-tricks/">summary page of the recent Tel Aviv Linux club Vim Tips+Tricks meeting</a>. </p> <p> I placed <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/by-others/mashhoor--10-reasons--hebrew.html">the Hebrew translation</a> I prepared of <a href="http://www.webinmind.net/2006/06/16/10-reasons-for-companies-to-consider-web-standards/">Mashhoor Al Dubayan's "10 Reasons for Companies to Consider Web Standards"</a> on my homepage. </p> <p> The specification for the old <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/rindolf/">"Rindolf - a Perl Dialect"</a> was integrated into the flow of the site. </p> <p> I made sure the Hebrew on the pages will be recognised as Hebrew by Firefox and other browsers (added the lang="" attribute, etc.). </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:7891 2008-05-24T21:19:36Z 2008-05-24T21:19:36Z Offspring - Why Don't You Get a Job <p> The <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">fortune cookies collection</a> was completely revamped: the fortunes were converted to a richer XML grammar, and I added a lot of formatting and meta-information to them. They can now be individually linked to. Right now, there is no converter from the XML grammar back to plaintext (only to XHTML), so the plaintext versions are less up-to-date. </p> <p> There's now <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/high-quality-software/rev2/">a second revision of the essay "What Makes Software High-Quality?"</a> with many corrections and additions: </p> <blockquote> <p> Why is high quality in software important? Low-quality software applications will require the users or end-developers to work around their bugs and limitations, write a lot of extra functionality themselves, and as a result, duplicate a lot of effort and cause a lot of frustration and unhappiness. This is assuming they don't give up on it soon or right away, and end up looking for something else. </p> </blockquote> <p> New text has been added to the work-in-progress screenplay <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/">Star Trek: "We, the Living Dead"</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Worf:</strong> so Mr. Abramovich... I mean, Prof. Abramovich... I mean - Your Majesty! </p> <p><strong>Shlomo:</strong> Mister, Doctor, Professor, General, Admiral, Duke, Baron, Count, Earl... </p> <p><strong>Mosheh:</strong> Fellow of the Royal Society! </p> <p><strong>Shlomo:</strong> indeed. Nasi, Rabbi, Rav, Emir... you name it - I had it. Just call me Shlomo. </p> <p><strong>Worf:</strong> I see. Mr. Shlomo. </p> <p><strong>Dvorah:</strong> men, I tell you - overachievers, and always need to travel. I stayed most of the time here. </p> </blockquote> <p> Added <a href="http://digg.com/">Digg</a> and <a href="http://reddit.org/">Reddit</a> buttons to the top of all the pages, to facilitate submitting and ranking using them. </p> <p> The individual HTMLs generated from DocBook/XML are now styled better and link to the main site. Furthermore, the DocBook/XML <tt>.xml</tt> sources now have a CSS stylesheet attached to them to enhance viewing them directly. (Thanks to the <a href="http://www.badgers-in-foil.co.uk/projects/docbook-css/">docbook-css project</a>.) </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/#xhtml_11">A question to the FAQ about why I'm using XHTML 1.1</a> has been added. </p> <p> Some links have been added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/">"Anti-MySQL" page</a>. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:7506 2008-05-10T18:47:52Z 2008-05-10T18:47:52Z Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas is You <p> The first revision of a new essay, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/high-quality-software/">"What Makes Software High-Quality?"</a> (with a focus on open-source software) was added to the essays section: </p> <blockquote> <p> <b>The Program is Available for Downloading or Buying</b> </p> <p> That may seem like a silly thing to say, but you'll be surprised how many times people get it wrong. How many times have you seen web-sites of software that claim that the new version of the software (or even the first) is currently under work, will change the world, but is not available yet? How many times have you heard of web-sites that are not live yet, and refuse to tell people exactly what they are about? </p> </blockquote> <p> More text has been added to the screenplay <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/">"Star Trek, We the Living Dead"</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> <b>Katie:</b> Professor Shlomo Abramovich? You're King Solomo... Errr... I'm not talking with you again. [Goes to sit on the Swing, frustrated.] </p> <p> <b>Shlomo:</b> Mosheh, remember I told you about Katie? </p> <p> <b>Mosheh:</b> oh yeah! She looks cute when she's angry. </p> <p> <b>Katie:</b> Moses, right? </p> <p> <b>Mosheh:</b> that's right. </p> <p> <b>Katie:</b> well, in case you've had any interest in me, I should note that I have a policy against getting involved with people who are 4 times my senior or more. </p> <p> <b>Mosheh:</b> relax! I have married girls who were 15 times my junior or more and my own descendants, and retrospectively I can tell that many of them were more mature and rational than I was in most respects. </p> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/#obscure_email_addr">a new question and answer</a> has been added to the FAQ about why I don't obscure my email address. </p> <p> Added a <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/hosting/">note about the site's hosting provider</a>, and a link to this page from the front page. </p> <p> Added a "Slashdot this" badge to the bottom of the text of all the pages, next to the "Bookmark This" button. </p> <p> I'd like to thank <a href="http://alanhaggai.org/">Alan Haggai</a> (<a href="mailto:alanhaggai@gmail.com">alanhaggai@gmail.com</a>) for finding a problem in the site, which allowed me to correct it. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:7289 2008-04-25T04:37:10Z 2008-04-26T08:09:40Z The Offspring - Why Don't You Get a Job <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/Park-Lisp/">The documentation for the Park Lisp</a> dialect has been added into the open-source section: </p> <blockquote> <p> Why am I doing it? For several reasons: </p> <ol> <li> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0066620724/103-5528911-1875020">Because it's fun</a>. This is by itself a good reason. </li> <li> Because I found that designing your own language is one of the best ways to learn more about the original languages it is based on. When I designed <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/rindolf/">the Perl dialect "Rindolf"</a>, I learned that some features I suggested for it were already doable in Perl 5. </li> </ol> </blockquote> <p> Added the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/hebrew.html">Hebrew translation of the "Case for Drug Legalisation"</a> essay: </p> <blockquote> <p> מכיוון שהסמים אינם חוקיים, הם מופצים על-ידי עוברי-חוק, שדורשים מחיר מופקע תמורתם. מחיר מופקע בהרבה מזה שדרוש לגדל, לזקק ולהפיץ אותם. כתוצאה מכך, יש שוק שחור גדול להפצה של סמים והמשתמשים בסמים נאלצים לבסוף לבצע פשעים כמו גניבה או שוד כדי לממן את הרגלי הסמים שלהם. </p> <p> אחוז הפשיעה בארצות-הברית גדל פי שניים בשל האיסור על האלכוהול ("חוק היובש"). כאשר האיסור הוסר, הוא קטן חזרה למצבו המקורי. צפוי שפשעים הנובעים מסמים גורמים לריבוי דומה, בשל האופי הדומה של האיסור </p> </blockquote> <p> The second revision of <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/education/introductory-language/">"Thoughts about the Best Introductory Language"</a> is now available with many corrections and clarifications. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/linux-kernel/xconfig-search/">A Linux Kernel Patch to enhance the search dialog of the GUI configuration applet</a> is now available there, as it has not been integrated into the mainline yet. </p> <p> New <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">fortune cookies</a> have been added. </p> <p> Added a note to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/linking-policy/">the linking policy</a> about requesting to remove mis-appropriate links. </p> <p> <a href="http://kflickr.sourceforge.net/">KFlickr</a> and the Firefox <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/869">Uppity extension</a> were added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/favourite/">favourite open software page</a>. </p> <p> A "Bookmark me" button was added to the bottom of the main text of all the pages to facilitate bookmarking using online bookmarking and news services. Below it there are now some more text ads, which shouldn't be too intrusive. Finally, a <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/shlomif_tech/10327.html">JavaScript script</a> that adds self-referential links to headings with anchors was added, which makes use of the <a href="http://jquery.com/">jQuery library</a>. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:7025 2008-03-29T10:23:36Z 2008-03-29T10:23:36Z Klein Four Group - Finite Simple Group (of Order Two) <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/israel/guide-to-israeli-foss-resources/">A guide to Israeli Free and Open Source Software Resources on the Internet</a> was added to the site. Please let me know if you have any additions to it. </p> <p> New <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">fortune cookies</a> have been added to the "shlomif", "shlomif-fav" and "joel-on-software" collections: </p> <blockquote> <p> I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true - I no longer know how to use my telephone. </p> <p>Bjarne Stroustrup quoted in <a href="http://dangillmor.typepad.com/dan_gillmor_on_grassroots/2005/04/my_other_new_co.html">http://xrl.us/bgzi4</a></p> </blockquote> <p> New affiliations have been added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/contact-me/">to my contact page</a>. </p> <p> The HTML markup of some of the pages was cleaned up, and several bandwidth optimisations were made, so it should load a little faster. </p> <p> New links were added to many pages. </p> <p> The breadcrumbs trails in several pages were fixed. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:6859 2008-03-01T09:59:47Z 2008-03-01T09:59:47Z popcorn99.xm <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#what_do_you_mean">Two new bits</a> were added to the humour collection: </p> <blockquote> <p> What do you mean by "WDYM"? </p> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/resources/israel/list-of-projects/">A list of Israeli open-source projects</a> has been resurrected from a wiki that went offline. Since it was set up, several new projects have been added there. </p> <p> My essay, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/drug-legalisation/">"The Case for Drug Legalisation"</a> has been updated with new sections and some typos were corrected. </p> <p> New <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">fortune cookies</a> have been added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/shlomif">shlomif collection</a>, the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/joel-on-software">Joel on Software collection</a>, and the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/shlomif-fav">shlomif-fav (Shlomi Fish Favourties)</a> collection, </p> <p> New links were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/">the against Apple page</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/">the links against MySQL page</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/windows-vista/">the page with links against Windows Vista</a>, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/">the Stop Using Internet Explorer page</a>, and to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/case-for-file-swapping/">the "Case for File Swapping" page</a>. </p> <p> Happy Reading! </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:6498 2008-02-09T11:43:48Z 2008-02-09T11:43:48Z John Denver - Sunshine on my Shoulders <p> Since the last update, the following changes took place: </p> <ol> <li> <p> Three small-scale humorous creations of mine are now available on the site: <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/GPL-is-not-Compatible-with-Itself/">"The GPL is not Compatible with Itself"</a> (formerly published on iglu.org.il), <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/RMS-Lint/">"Introducing RMS-Lint"</a> (also formerly published there), and the new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Crackas-Paradise/">"Cracka's Paradise"</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> A recent press conference of the Free Software Foundation confirmed the rumours that the GNU General Public License was found to be incompatible with itself. This newly discovered fact may actually cause a lot of disorder in the free software world in which most programs and libraries are licensed under this licence. </p> </blockquote> </li> <li> <p> New fortunes were added to the "shlomif", "shlomif-fav" and "subversion" collections in the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">Fortune Cookies Files</a>. </p> </li> <li> <p> New links were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/">the various Against-bad-software pages</a> and to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/links.html">the links page</a>. </p> </li> <li> <p> There were several underlying changes to the content managemeng system and build system of the site. In many pages, breadcrumbs' trails are now better and more encompassing, and more pages were added to the section navigation menus. </p> </li> </ol> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:6278 2008-01-26T10:02:23Z 2008-02-09T20:03:55Z Yehuda Poliker - They were Dancing Barefoot <p> Welcome to another edition of the Shlomi Fish's homepage news. </p> <p> I added <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/#irc_part_message">another question and answer to my FAQ</a>, this time about my IRC parting message. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/technion-bit-1.html">A funny Technion-originated and related bit (not by me and in Hebrew)</a> was added to the humour section. </p> <p> There are <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">new fortune cookies in the fortune collection</a>. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits-and-bobs/square-waves-decomposition/">Two programs to perform a decomposition of a sine wave into square waves</a> are now available in the open-source bits-and-bobs section. </p> <p> New links have been added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/">the against Bad software pages</a>, and <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/no-ie/">the Stop Using Internet Explorer</a> page was especially revamped: </p> <blockquote> <p> <b>Internet Explorer does not have a public, accessible bug tracker</b>, similar to Mozilla's Bugzilla or what other similar browsers have. This makes bugs harder to report, reproduce, check and track and undermines the users and web developers. </p> </blockquote> <p> There's <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/interviews/">a new page containing links to interviews with me</a> and <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/blogs/">the weblogs page</a> was updated. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:6059 2007-12-22T18:46:32Z 2007-12-22T18:46:32Z The Tornados - Telstar <p> Here's what is new on www.shlomifish.org since the last update. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#we_dont_know_his_cellphone_numer">Two new bits</a> were added to the humour collection: </p> <blockquote> <p> We don't know his cellphone number, and even if we did, we would tell you that we didn't know it. </p> </blockquote> <p> Moreover and not-unusually, some new fortune cookies were added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">the fortune cookies collection</a>. </p> <p> The new <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/projects/yjobs-on-mozilla/">yjobs.co.il workaround for Mozilla-based browsers</a> (such as Firefox) workaround may be of interest to Israeli-based job seekers. </p> <p> Also on the software front, the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html#xchat_xmms_nowplay">XChat /nowplay script</a> was updated to have <a href="http://amarok.kde.org/">Amarok</a> support. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/">The anti-bad-software pages</a> were updated with new links and with other updates. </p> <p> There are new links in <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/links.html">the links page</a>. </p> <p> Many non-validating pages (according to the <a href="http://www.w3.org/">W3C standards</a>) were made to validate, and so most of the site should now be fully valid. </p> <p> Have fun, everybody, and in case it's relevant - happy holidays! </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:5843 2007-10-02T11:04:46Z 2007-10-02T11:04:46Z Shania Twain - You Win My Love <p> Here are the new additions on <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/">Shlomi Fish's homesite</a> since the last update. </p> <p> Three new pages enumerating problems with bad software are now live: </p> <ol> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/csh/">Stop Using (and Teaching) C-Shell and Tcsh</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/windows-vista/">Links against Windows Vista</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/mysql/">Against MySQL</a> </li> </ol> <p> I'll appreciate any new additions to these pages. </p> <p> New links have been added to <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/links.html">the links page</a>, and there are also <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">new fortune cookies</a>. </p> <p> Finally, <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html#slidy_shlomif">the "Slidy-Shlomif" JavaScript helper script</a> has been added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html">bits-and-bobs page</a>. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:5477 2007-08-20T16:18:45Z 2007-08-20T16:18:45Z Black Eyed Peas - Hey Mama <p> It's been several months since the last update, and there are some new or updated resources on my homepage. </p> <p> There's <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/bits/Spam-for-Everyone/">a new funny bit - "'Spam for Everyone' - The International Campaign for Accessible Spam"</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> Mike "The Mouse" House (a.k.a "D.J. Sallinger") was a minor rap artist, and a computer geek when he decided to start selling CDs of open-source software. He turned to spamming to publicise his business, but found out that the spam he sent was trapped by most spam traps. He decided to use the notorious obscured image spam, but since he had a few blind friends, decided to also include an audio recording of a rap song with the spam message. </p> <p> House received a few offers from his spam campaign, but his real break came when a few enthusiasts of the spam song shared it on the Internet, where it became an instant hit. The song eventually hit the charts and MTV, and made D.J. Sallinger famous, who quickly released his first successful album called "Rap to the spam, Man!", with such highly acclaimed hits as "Rap to not get trapped" and "He ain't Nigerian. He's a Spammer!". </p> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/humanity/ongoing-text.html">The Ongoing text of the "Humanity" screenplay</a>, is now online in HTML format. </p> <p> There's some new text in my <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/">Star Trek: "We, the Living Dead"</a> work. </p> <p> There's <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#chuck_norris_2">a new joke on the Aphorisms' page</a>, and new fortune cookies <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">on the Fortune Cookies page</a>. </p> <p> I also started <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/">a new sub-section of my Humour section</a> where I collect humorous creations which disappeared from the Net. Currently available are <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/GNU-Visual-Basic/GNU-Visual-Basic.html">GNU Visual Basic</a> and <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/by-others/darien--everybody-is-free.html">Everybody's Free (to Ping Timeout) by Darien</a>. </p> <p> There are new links on the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/links.html">links page</a> </p> <p> There are a few new questions and answers <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/">in my Frequently Asked Questions list</a>. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/case-for-file-swapping/revision-3/">The Third revision of my essay "The Case for File Swapping"</a> is now available. </p> <p> I've also started <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/by-others/">an essays by other people section</a>, with currently one restored essay - <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/by-others/james-carr--completely-overrated.html">"Completely Overrated" by James Carr</a>. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/resumes/">My Resumés were updated with new information.</a>. </p> <p> Enjoy! </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:5297 2007-05-16T23:40:33Z 2007-12-14T18:08:57Z Queen - I Want to Break Free <p> The fourth revision of the story <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/TheEnemy/">"The Enemy and How I Helped to Fight it"</a> is now available in both <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/TheEnemy/The-Enemy-rev4.html">Hebrew</a> and <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/TheEnemy/The-Enemy-English-rev4.html">English</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> "Yes, but as they say: when it rains it pours. Well, just sign here and I’ll take care of all the other paperwork." </p> <p> After I started filling it, I said to him: “about the salary you gave me...” </p> <p> “Forget it!” the commander said and continued “during your service in the Organisation, you've done a great service to your people and your country. You've earned your pay, even if not honestly, and we thank you that you've joined our ranks at all in the first place. I just hope that during your civil life, you'll continue to maintain the spirit of the organisation and its philosophy.” </p> <p> “I'll do my best, sir.” I told him with a snap while I signed it. Then I rose up and we shook hands. I thought a little about what the commander just said, and then recalled something and sat down. "Look, it may no longer be so relevant" I said to him "but I’ve been a member of the Organisation for two years and nobody ever told me what the philosophy of the Organisation was. What is it, really?" </p> </blockquote> <p> The screenplay <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/">Star Trek: "We, the Living Dead"</a> now has <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/ongoing-text.html">an ongoing HTML display of the screenplay</a>. </p> <p> There's <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/politics/dispelling-myths-about-israel/">a new essay titled "Dispelling Some Myths about Israel</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> <b>Israel is not all Desert</b> </p> <p> While the southern part of Israel (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negev">the Negev</a>) is a desert, most of the northern part has growth, and supports a lot of trees, bushes, shrubs and fauna. There are <a href="http://www.israelimages.com/result2.asp?sql=%28Category%3D3+AND+Sub_cat%3D2%29&amp;keywords=&amp;cat=&amp;subcat=Flowers+%26+Plants&amp;r1=c2">many pictures</a> over at the <a href="http://www.israelimages.com/">Israel Images site</a>. </p> </blockquote> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/recommendations/">The recommendations' pages</a> now have more comprehensive tables-of-contents. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/me/blogs/">The Weblogs' Page</a> was revamped with a table of contents and more aggregated feeds. </p> urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:shlomif_hsite:4994 2007-05-03T04:06:44Z 2007-05-03T04:06:44Z Enya - Carribean Blue <p> Welcome to a new edition of the news feed of Shlomi Fish' Homepage. In this edition, there are some new essays, a couple of updates on stories and aphorisms, and a new "anti-bad-software" page. Read below for the details. </p> <a name="cutid1"></a> <p> There are several new articles: </p> <ol> <li> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/software-management/end-of-it-slavery/">The End of IT Slavery"</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> Furthermore, <b>actual code writing is not the most productive activity</b>, as surprising as it sounds. That's because if one writes code exclusively for too long, his mind will run in circles and he'll lose his edge. And there's something that is even more productive than actually producing output. </p> </blockquote> </li> <li> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/education/introductory-language/">"Thoughts about the Best Introductory (Programming) Language"</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> I talked with a few people on the IRC about it and some of them told me something along the lines of "What makes you think that you know better than all the universities and colleges (and other schools) that are now teaching Java?". Well, this is the "majority must be right" fallacy: </p> <ol> <li> Everybody thinks that the Earth is flat (or the Sun revolves around it) so it must be true </li> </ol> </blockquote> </li> <li> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/web/homepage-vs-blog/">Homepage vs. Blog</a>: about the difference between a homepage and a blog, and why my homesite is not a blog. </li> </ol> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#not_an_actor">More aphorisms</a> were added to the <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html">Aphorisms Collection</a>: </p> <blockquote> <p> It does not mean what I think it means but it means what <b>you</b> think it means. </p> </blockquote> <p> The work-in-progress <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/">"Star Trek: We the Living Dead"</a> was updated with new text and links: </p> <blockquote> <p> <b>Q</b>: in any case, there was this relatively mature man in our time called Noahh who had three sons. </p> <p> <b>Katie</b>: Shem, Hham and Yepheth? [in Modern Hebrew pronouncation] </p> <p> <b>Q</b>: you guessed it. He was a quirky, paranoid fellow. At one paint he sensed a storm coming, and believed that the world was coming to an end. So he, his wife, his sons, and all of his livestock travelled up a nearby mountain, and waited for the storm to end. </p> <p> When the storm ended, he went down to the nearby village, and saw that while there was a lot of damage, it was perfectly fine. However, he claimed that it was high time to put an end to such problems, to end having to depend on natural whims, that our society will flourish. </p> <p> I was there: my name was indeed "Que" and I was considered a strange nomad, who just happened to be there. I decided to take upon myself the establishment of the [in Énglish] "civilisation" instead of the many different [in Énglish] "cultures". </p> </blockquote> <p> The HTML versions of <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/TheEnemy/">"The Enemy and How I Helped to Fight it"</a> were heavily simplified, reformatted; plus, a table of contents was added to them. </p> <p> <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/bits.html#fluttering_flag">The Fluttering Flag SDL demo</a> was added to the open-source "Bits and Bobs" page. </p> <p> There's a <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/anti/apple/">new page against Apple Inc.</a>, its products and its practices. </p> <p> Some <a href="http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/">new fortune cookies were added</a>. </p>