yonkeltron

My friend Lihi, in addition to being a talented singer and music educator, has severe visual impairment. She has a serious love of music and is always excited to share her findings. While she uses assistive magnification software to use her computer, there is no way that most portable electronic devices can display anything at the sizes she requires. With this in mind, I was very excited to discover that she bought a portable media device from the Israeli Center for the Blind (מרכז לעיוור בישראל) which will read her the names of songs so she can browse her music collection.

The kicker is that she bought a custom iAudio X5 which runs Rockbox! How cool is that? Eat your heart out, proprietary manufacturers! Free software sets everyone free, especially those who need freedom the most.

Had a great rest of the trip to Israel. I’ve flown back and am safely at home. Rather than doing something useful, I’ve taken to playing this cool real-time strategy game called Warzone 2100. It was released in 1999 and open-sourced in 2004.  Anyway, it’s 3D and loads of fun.

While the complaints of others had previously deterred me from trying it, I took a chance this trip and tried the delicious beverage known as סחלב (”sakhlab”). Outside of Israel, this is known as salep and it is made from the dried and pulverized root of the common orchid. Here, it is consumed with coconut, cinnamon and pulverized nuts of various types. It has a warm and deliciously creamy texture which plays very well with the seasonings and is perfect for breakfast and even better for late at night.

On sunday I traveled up to Haifa to visit with, Yoni Rabkin-Katznell (yrk) a colleague of mine. We had great fun cooking together and joyfully hacking until the wee hours of the morning. After a shot of ouzo and finger of scotch, the real programming language debates began and it was very nice to have such lively discussions.

Recently, I’ve been in and around Tel Aviv hanging out with various friends, gorging myself on sushi and generally having a bang-up time enjoying some vacation time. In between relaxation, I’ve been polishing up my most recent project and trying to document everything before I get down to heavy trials to make sure the damn thing works before I post it. It’s times like these where knowing something about unit testing might actually be useful. Yet another thing on the list of stuff to learn…

On thursday, we left for Eilat at about noon and took off a big stop at the
dead sea which was supposed to take 45 minutes. Benjy and Amit knew
about this bunch of hot springs and sulfur pools that show up on the
north beaches. Of course, Benjy knows exactly where it is and drives
us out to the middle of no where and tells us to hop out. So we strip
down to baithing gear and I remember that I’m an idiot and left the
flip flops you gave me at home! So I walk down in my naot and we go
looking for some springs. The beach is so hard to walk on and
eventually I pick up a rock only to realize that it’s a 4cm thick
chunk of salt! Anyway, we go looking and these Bedouins who were
picnicking pointed us toward a big one. So we walk in the other
direction because BENJY KNOWS EXACTLY WHERE HE’S GOING. We see a nice one but there are these guys naked in it so we try going the other
way.

At this point, Benjy screams at me for not leaving my watch in the
car. So I take it off before getting into a spring and it’s all good.
We brought water bottles to rinse of anyway and the watch survived the
whole trip without a scratch on it. Unfortunately, the rest of us are
a little worse for wear.

We start walking the other way and thank the Bedouins who were very
nice considering that their demographic is responsible for %50+ of the
crime in Israel. On the way, we see this red car parked and we walk by
to find this red faced boy and girl in the car. Benjy notices the
thick windows and reaons that they are a religious couple from a
settlement (afterall, we’re in the west bank) who are trying to get
some action. We get closer to some springs and then decide that they
suck and we should go into the sea. So we go in and the water is great
and, unlike the resort beaches, there is tons of mud that hasn’t been
carted away by the cosmetics and tourist industry. We have a grand old
time and decide to keep walking. About 100 meters down the way, we
start walking on these salt formations and they crack beneath our feet
and it’s great fun to have the mud make all the squishing sounds.

After another 5 meters, we start to sink a little bit. By this point,
my naot are totally ruined so we left them with some other stuff to
try and find a pool. This was the best decision ever because another 5
meters later and things get dangerous. They start sinking up to their
ankles and I take one step and sink up to my knee. I can’t get out so
Shmuel has to come help me up. Benjy reasons that the salt is thicker
closer to the water and the three of them have no trouble walking
right on the tide-line. So I go to follow them only to find that,
being a heavier than they are, I sink in much faster and deeper than
before.  By now, I’m up to my waste in mud and salt and I finally
stopped sinking about 5 seconds before they got to me and pulled me
out. This continued for about 10 minutes much to my panic and their
amusement. Eventually, Shmuel went back to get our stuff and we
started walking back. My naot were totally ruined even worse because I
had mud, salt and rock covering them inside and out. This was really
crappy because walking back meant walking with my feet in pockets of
abrasive mud.

I’m lagging way behind them and each step is harder and harder because
my feet are heavy and I can’t figure out why my feet and legs are
burning. I look down and see that my legs are all cut up from sinking
in the salt and climbing out has made me bleed in about 6 different
places. Anyway, we finally get to the car and Benjy has us all wash
off because the car can’t get dirty considering his ass is most
seriously on the line. We try to rinse off and as the mud leaves, my
skin is just raw as can be. So we stop at a public beach about 5km
down the road and we run down to shower. So I’m still walking in my
sand-paper-lined naot and boxer shorts and all these Arabs are staring
at us screaming and shouting because the water is freezing cold and
the wind has just begun to pick up. The water helped things a little
and I managed to sleep a bit before we stopped at a rest stop and got
coffee and sandwiches. From there, it was about 2.5 hours more driving
south. We finally got to the hotel and checked in. The shower never
felt so good to be in. Finally, we got moving and went walking around
Eilat.

So, we landed at Ben Gurion Airport yesterday evening and I’ve been de-jetlagging since then. This morning we had to make a Shiva call in Netivot to a friend who’s parent had just recently passed. Afterwards, we took my mother shopping at the two premier (and only) gluten free food sources in Israel. The first is this gourmet chef whose food is delicious (glutenous or not!) and the second is a market with an excellent selection of products and other goods.

Anyway, then we ran around doing some errands before going out to dinner and having the most delicious meat ever. It’s impossible to get kosher meat like this in the states without paying an absolute fortune.

Tomorrow my brother Benjy and I are taking a trip down to Eilat for shabbos with some friends, so I’ll keep track of as many details as I can.

Back when David Ben-Gurion was the Prime Minister of Israel, one of his major areas of policy was the development of the Negev desert. Covering almost 60% of Israel’s geography, the Negev is home to some of Israel’s most wonderful archaeological sites and natural resources. From the cliffs of the world’s largest natural crater to the glistening ruins of the citadel at Masada, the beauty is boundless.

Even with all of this sun-toasted goodness scattered throughout the sands, the overwhelming majority of the desert is, after thirty years after the death of Ben-Gurion, completely undeveloped. With every year that passes the untapped resources of the Negev are wasted. As the late Prime Minister emphasized, the potential is just too good to pass up.

For ages, I have been day dreaming ways to utilize this tremendous asset. When one thinks about it, trying to build up such a harsh environment is a both an interesting and difficult problem. In light of recent advances in the area of solar energy, I believe that there now exists a feasible way to work towards the critical mass needed to create an incentive for desert expansion. Such an approach is one of the most robust because it turns the most oppressive barrier to development into the primary resource of the space. By harnessing the power of the sun, Israel would be able to dramatically increase the national power production without damaging the environment.

The first technology, a solar cell with a 40% efficiency, was announced just this week. The cell utilizes special glass and circuitry to become the most efficient solar cell in existence. While these may be expensive, other types of plastic cells can help to offset the cost. The tops of buildings should be covered by cheap, flexible cells to optimize the sun-exposed surface area. As for everything else, paint it all. Use a photo voltaic paint to cover every rock, sidewalk and car within reach. Even if it’s not the most efficient, we can still maximize power production by exploiting every exposed centimeter.

Once there is enough industry and general activity in the area, it should be enough to attract new immigrants and ignite the chain-reaction of growth. It’s time to make the Negev bloom.

I have not had a great deal of time recently. That being said, I have accrued a list of subjects I desire to learn and technologies I wish to become familiar with. Some of them are neat and others are less captivating. If anyone sees something on this list that they find interesting, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.

• PyKDE/PyQT - I would really like to get a hang of GUI programming in order to further my programming horizons. Given my love of KDE in general and the immenent release of KDE4, I feel like now is an excellent time to get aquainted with this seemingly excellent development platform. I have already found a few good tutorials to help a Python programmer like myself get a decent start.
• Parallel Python - While my professors tend to be more into the high performance computing stuff like OpenMP and MPI, I find the idea of a 1700 line quicksort algorithm to be a little intimidating. While the whole concept of a lighter weight language (like NESL) is not new, I fancy the idea of using Python to do interesting things.
• OpenLaszlo - I like the web. I wish I had a better understanding of how to make neat things for the web. As such, the OpenLaszlo concept of writing an application once and then being able to have it served up as either Flash or DHTML/AJAX seems very promising and flexible. There are some cool demos where the exact same application can be launched served up in either form.
• Unit Testing - Even after the launch of the Google Testing Blog, there really isn’t enough out there for people to dive into unit testing for software components. I really do wish that the Google folks, who seem to be awful keen on testing, would put out some good introductory material. That being said, I am eyeing the O’Reilly book…
• Jabber - I just like Jabber in general. Ever since I really got into the concepts during last year’s brief project, I’ve been craving a portable Jabber-enabled device so that I can keep in touch from any WiFi hotspot. Really, I just want to do something interesting and fun with it.
• Talmudic Logic - With the recent developments in the Conservative Movement, I have been reminded of just how rich the body of Jewish Law can be. It seems like, with my newfound exposure to discrete mathematics, I might be in a position to explore some of these concepts in a more comprehensive fashion.
• Wavelets - One of my development partners (the delightfully Turkish one) is quite fascinated with wavelets. His enthusiasm has spread to me after I saw how powerful they can be when analyzing data.

I feel like there is more but I just can’t remember at the moment.

According to multiple - sources, former US President Jimmy Carter has agreed to a public debate with Alan Dershowitz. This event will be streamed live from Brandeis where Carter’s tush-whooping will take place.
Here’s to many a “Dersho-wizz-bang” and “Dersho-what-now” as Alan the Annihilator takes Jimbo to school.

After my last blog entry, I got a comment from someone who had apparently been reading my blog for awhile now (through #lugradio) and saw I was in Israel. I immediately got an invite from him to come to the Haifa LUG in order to meet everyone. Although I was not able to make it as I was in the dead sea (details forthcoming in future posts), this is most certainly indicative of what community should be. In the words of Yoni Rabkin-Katznell, referring to the building of bridges between software communities, “It’s what needs to happen”. Ya know what? I agree with him. Furthermore, it’s people like Yoni who make the virtual connections of the internet just as meaningful as those we forge in real life.

Next time I am in Israel, it would be my pleasure to accept his invitation and give a talk at Technion to the committed free software community of Haifa.