Fun Related

Congradulations to me! Mia has arrived!

Moshe Eshel — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:00:00 GMT

It takes me time, but usualy I get to updating you guys about what is hapening with me in life. I guess I'm just not a real blogger :-) I get to it when I do, and not before...

Well the news is out, I am now a proud father! We now have a daughter. Was born on May 23rd Weighing 3,290 Grams (around 7 pounds for those in the US). I'm happy to say my wife Tili who did all the work is now feeling much better.

We are slowly getting to know her, and I guess the same goes for Mia (our daughters name) who is also developing nicely and is realy cute (I am being objective here :-)).

I don't realy know what to add, I hope we manage to be good parents to her and take good care of her. It is something we will probably be learning as we go - and we will do mistakes, I hope that not many.

You can see some pictures here: http://meshel.googlepages.com/mia (the page and site will continue to be updated as it goes)

Google Notebook - amazing!!!

Moshe Eshel — Wed, 17 May 2006 14:21:00 GMT

I'm sure this is all over the place by now - I'm probably not saying anything new here - but I just have to say it.

My Information Dream App has arrived. This is not to say that it is my perfect dream app yet - I need much more than what is there already but still this is the way to start.

Consider. The Browser is the main information gateway today - meaning that almost all the information I aquire is displayed there - the ability to easily save that information to my personal storage, and have it organized my way (not saying my way is that good :-)) and searchable. Any thing that you can cut and paste - you can put it there... + the floating notebook icon is cool!

There seem to be some limitations though, first, and this is not surprising, it seems like images and such are not stored in the notebook itself but on the original site - if that site goes, or is down - I lose some of my content... Saving pics on the server is a must for me - I can live without video and audio.

Now all they need to do, is fix that image storage thing, add tagging/labeling, add export functionality (so I can have this on my machine), add integration to google toolbar (note this! button), google desktop, google bookmarks, search history, calendar, email a note or notebook content to my friend (or send them a link to a notebook item), and the list goes on... I'm sure the google engineers are working on it as we speak.

Enjoy

Non Techie but still a little geeky Post

Moshe Eshel — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 20:56:00 GMT

I haven't posted in a long time, I can't really say why exactly, I've been blogging for a few years now (mostly in other places and on different subjects), and I noticed that it comes in waves.

There are no definite clues to when an additional wave will come. Suddenly I feel the urge to write to the world (even though not that many people read what I write), but it feels good to let it out even if it's not steam. So I'm back for now.

What I'm writing about today is my semi-new hobby, wood-working, and the more recent addition wood-turning. just last year I got interested in the subject and took a course with one of the leading turners in Israel - Eli Avisera (the site is about to go through an upgrade I hope). He was excellent at passing knowledge and sense of the art, and tought us all the basics. You would not believe how much there is to learn in this profesion. What I trully like about it is that it allows you to create without being overly creative. I can't explain that realy, you have to experience it. Since the work is mostly freehand, and not limited by any rigid constraints (you hold the chisel/gauge/... in your hands and it is not attached to any mechanical holder), the work does require some physical effort but not much since the actuall grunt work is done by the lathe (spining the wood for you) - you get to focus on the shape and character of what you are trying to do - obviously there is technique involved but it doesn't usualy inhibit you from doing what you want - and the sky is the limit for what you can do and achieve. I'm still begining at this so I won't claim to be anyting - just having a lot of fun in my little plastic shed.

One thing I can say, I did delay finding an active hobby (as opposed to passive hobbies such as reading and listening to music). I always knew what I wanted (wood, working with my hands) but never went ahead and actually did it. Now I'm happy that I finally did go and actively worked at it. I recommend to everyone to find yourself such a hobby - it is the best way to spend your money :-) but mostly it is a retreat from the absorbing life of software - something real that you can touch (unless you are in robotics). BTW turning can be an expensive or a very cheap hobby - depending on many factors of course, and your specific flavor.

The things you really need are a lathe, and some tools, a basic set of three will do for most needs - all the rest is optional but could come in very handy. Why is it for geeks? well like almost any not completly explored subject, there is a lot to improve on and to invent - and always learn something new. Not to mention that once you get into woodturning most people almost immediately start to dabble in metal-turning and metal-spining and other close areas.

If I interested you here are a few links, I hope you'll find usefull:
http://www.woodturner.org - the american association of woodturners
http://www.woodturningcenter.org/

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.crafts.woodturning

http://www.woodturnerscatalog.com - Craft Supplies - a big online store (Has the most stuff)

Back to my old profession

Moshe Eshel — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 20:04:00 GMT

In the last few days I've been working at my old profession - HTML monkey, and let me tell you I realise why I stopped (even though I never really stopped).

My wife performes with this music group, they play Rebetiko (greek blues, I guess) and she sings. Like all music groups they are trying hard to gain recognition - and as part of that they decided they want a Website. So we're starting small as the budget is low, and for started I started by designing a simple web site (I'll do the administrative side later, as it is much less important).

Let me tell you HTML is boring, and desiging it is hard, especially designing “good” HTML - since the “client” is never happy - especially when you do it for free (where he should be happier). The worst part of it is that the site is in hebrew - which makes it even harder to design, none of my favorite editors really support hebrew very well - and working in right to left mode is also hard for me... The main problem is, I'm no designer - I'm just a simple old HTML monkey - I know the technique and how to achieve almost any design thrown at me - but here it's my job :-(

I'm not publishing the URL of the site for two reasons:
1. It is not yet on air (I just purchased hosting services today - and the DNS is not updated)
2. There is nothing I feel proud about - it just doesn't look to good in my opinion...

It was fun registering the domain, and discovering that my Registrar Handle (for Israrl isoc.org.il) still exists from 1995, using it instead of re-entering all the info - and even finding out that it works!!! Sitting until late at night with my wife deciding on color schemes - turning it into a CSS style sheet, and making a site layout... Cropping and working with images, without any coding at all (for now) - that is yet to come.

My Own Google Desktop Plugin

Moshe Eshel — Mon, 23 May 2005 22:23:00 GMT

No it isn't available yet, read below to see why...I decided to write a small pet-project in C# just to not forget my meager skills on the .NET platform.

I decided to write a small application that will query the GDS index and allow me to work with the results. Why do I think such an application is needed, well, I like the web interface of the regular result set, but I think the options given to the user are limited, the main issue I have is the fact that I can't open a file with my application of choice.

When I locate a file - what I can do is:
a. Open the file using the default handler defined for the browser (often not what I want)
b. Open the folder containing that file, and doing what I want by right clicking in explorer on that file.

I decided to write an application that will allow me to do exactly that with one click. So since I'm not that much of a programmer I managed to do the following:
a. Invoke the GDS search through the internal URL
b. Send it a search query (currently filtered by search type - email,files,web,all)
c. Get the results in XML from the local server
d. make the XML legal - GDS returns XML with illegal characters for the Encoding. so this required doing some voodoo magic with the stream (save to file, delete bad chars, reload)
e. Load the results in a DataGrid (even an overridden one - subclassed?)
f. Manage to create some sort of custom right-click response...

The problem lies in f, I want to have the windows explorer right-click (context menu) for the items. I have two problem:
1. I have no idea, how to invoke the Explorer context menu (probably some Win32 API / .NET class I am not aware of)
2. How to load it for a specific cell in the data grid (I have part of the solution for this - by overriding the class I have better control of events - still this evades me - it seems that I need to subclass not only the datagrid, but the datarow, and datacell as well).

Once this is finished, I can polish it up, maybe even submit it to the Google Plugin page - although it still has a long way to go untill it gets there.

If anyone has any ideas of what other features this could have/need I would be glad to hear suggestions - the main idea is to improve the already superb google experience (Hard goal to reach - but one can always try).

BTW has anyone noticed that for certain searches Copernic performes much better than GDS - When I'm looking for a long lost email I always launch Copernic first to look for it. Does anyone know of a Copernic API?

Will I never cease to be amazed by Google?

Moshe Eshel — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 00:34:00 GMT

After google, google toolbar, gmail and countless more exciting pieces of software... Google comes along with Google Desktop - Just plain amazing, and wroks seamlessly with all the other stuff they offer...

What can I say, I'm so waiting for GoogleOS! I will buy it the minute it is available. I have never seen such cool things. It searches in your Email, IM chats, Cached web pages, and documents. The only thing I would like is more configuration options (were to search, run index again) but I guess that to make it really dummy proof they had to do it this way.

Run and download!

Books I just finished reading (Why not to start reading Dan Brown)

Moshe Eshel — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:15:00 GMT

Hi,

I'm back from the Jewish new year holiday, also known as Rosh-Hashana. During this long weekend (from wendsday untill sunday) I did a lot of praying and eating, that what we do :-)

I also managed to read a few books in the meantime, more to the point, I read all four books by Dan Brown:
Angels And Demons
The Da-Vinci Code
Deception Point
Digital Fortress

Why? well my mother wanted me to buy the Da Vinci code, and I admittedly drawn by the hype, decided to buy them all, and now I regret it.

What can I say, Dan brown can write a fast paced novel, I think all four happen in the span of 24 hours (each) give or take a few hours. The books hold you, I had a lot of fun reading. However, Brown uses a lot of “facts“ in his books, and claims them to be non-fiction - this caused some issues for me.

Also the plot, after reading one book, is not surprising anymore - with the exception of Da Vinci, it is always quite clear who the villain is (I won't put spoilers here), and you know exactly when that fact will be revealed to the reader (about one chapter before the end, if not less)

Clearly Mr. Brown does not know his technology, he is wrong about many small and larger details, actually the book I enjoyed the most - Deception Point, seems to me like mostly pure fantasy, although Brown claims the technologies are real - I hope they are!

Digital Fortress is by far the worst book - just show me a single inteligence agency in the world that does not work 24/7 - it is just plain dumb.

In each novel a single man with great ambtions, manages to pull together an elaborate scam planned for months, and it is thwarted at the last minute by some hero/heroine by soving a puzzle - go figure.

Even while reading I caught some very problematic claims by Brown, He claims that he invested a lot in reasearch, but it seems not be so (not tro mention the ton of websites and books that attack almost every word he wrote as a lie). For example he uses Jehova (the name of GOD) to claim that it symbolises Yen-Yang (Jah for male, Hava for female), however, this is not the hebrew name at all, it is a translation into english, of a totaly different name, which represents in hebrew the true name of GOD, and has nothing to do at all, with the meaning Brown is trying to give it. and by that trying to distort what the true belief of Judaism is, claiming it to be some paganic religion, that engages in sex rituals (where do I sign up :-).

I am not very fond of the Catholic Church, throughout history, it wasn't very nice to my people, and indeed was not nice to many others, also it is quite clear as with any organized religion - that the organization (i.e. the church) does many things on political grounds. But still Brown can't seem to decide if he wants to demonize or praise the church.

All in all, I guess these are fun books to read, if you make sure you don't take anything written there seriously, the problem is Brown does everything in his power to attempt to convince you that it is indeed real.

A pleasure for all you consipracy lovers - I'm waiting to see what secret cult really planned and executed 9/11