Personal

A new service I'm trying out - Jot Wiki

Moshe Eshel — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:51:00 GMT

In my effort to document / preserve / collect / take your choice the family information, I'm constantly on the lookout for new web sites/services that will allow me to do one or more of these activities, in hope of finding the ultimate application.

Up to today I have tried doing this with several different applications blog, web site, picture site, (my hard drive) - this is because I do not want to save this information for myself - I want to share it with the world/family...

These services are nice, but they are not meant for this, the order and usabilty of the information relies solely on the creator - they are general applications. I need something more.

There are also several offline utilities that allow to publish to the web. not good enough either:

They cost money
Though it is easier to backup the database that they run on, this is propriety format, and not easily shared (changes can only be made with the software and not on the website)

Now it's time for the next try, a supposedly designed Wiki to do this Jot Spot, allows you a free trial with no apparent limits.

I just started out, it's nice and geared for family, including a nice family tree, family calendar with birthday application, family directory, photos and more... AJAX based and pretty easy to use, still working it out for what is good for me.

It seems that I will eventualy have to build it, if I want to be completely happy with it. Can anyone recommend a web site that does what I need (even if it charges a moderate fee for it, as long as there is a trial version)?

(Disclaimer: The link above is a link that will give me something if you decide to join too, and especialy if you join as a paying customer. So I have some sort of interest in you trying them :-)

Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program

Moshe Eshel — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:05:00 GMT

My current rant... Skip if you're not interested in hearing me whine...

I just moved to the new machine, it took some time to set up but seems to have been worth it. I already saved the time instead of waiting for the previous machine to un-hang...

Anyway, I opened MS Outlook, and was greeted by this dialog asking me (and encouraging me) to join the MCEIP, and the recommended option is to join. Why is it recommended? I couldn't figure it out, so I went and read the information provided by MS, and it says many things “It isn't recording personal information” “It isn't spyware” (when you open your information to someone he isn't spying, he has gained authorized access...., “You can't see the information you are sending - trust us! we are part of this and that alliance” “We will not spam you” (as if this isn't a sort of spam)...

I looked and I looked and couldn't find a reason why to donate my computer resources for the benefit of Microsoft. You want user data? pay some users to give it. You want user feedback? ask for feedback.

When google tries the same trick, it at least offers some “advanced features” that will be enabled only if you agree... In this case we are talking about software that cost the user (or the company he works for - in this case) quite a lot of money. You got to give some benefit for the choice.

Anyway - I said no.

Really annoying - my work machine

Moshe Eshel — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:18:00 GMT

My machine has been a loyal servant for the few last years, got it new, and it was fine. last couple of months it is giving me hell. long hangs with no apparent reason (I run AV, and constantly scan my computer for evil beings - not spyware).

The only indication for anything is given by the wonderfull Process Explorer which points that “Hardware Interrupts” are the ones giving me the grief. However, I have no special hardware connected anywhere, and no change has been made to my configuration before this horrible behavior begun.

Today it took me over 15 minutes just to restart my machine (after trying to get windows to even show the restart dialog).

I'm switching machines! a slightly newer with more and faster memory.

P.S. if anyone has an idea on those hardware interrupts, I'll be glad to investigate, as I'm keeping the old one “as is” for now.

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)

Interesting Bug/Feature of VB6

Moshe Eshel — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 12:45:00 GMT

Hi,

I haven't blogged for the longest time, me and my wife have been settling in into married life and our rented apartment. Much has been going on in my life in the last couple of months. for example I have married my beatifull wife, I have also gotten in to a new hobby - woodturning, which I really love (ranting - again it is proven that leaving in the USA is much more cost effective for me - imagine the cost of importing a wood working Lathe and tools - it is huge!).

Anyway, back to the main topic, VB6 and it's quirks. I have been programming with VB6 for the last 4 years at least, and this is the first time that I encountered this feature/bug (you decide, in my case it was a bug). I had a case where I test two boolean varaiables against each other (x=y) and both where True, but the comparison returned false!!! the result of the statement is that True<>True - you can agree that this is wierd....

After a lot of debugging work and a lot of help from friends here, we found the reason. when printing the Cint() value of the Booleans, one of them equalled 1 and the other equalled -1 (-1 is the VB value for True, however VB considers anything not 0 to be true). Since VB apparently checks the Int value of the Boolean variables.

Why did this happen, well, it turns out that if you send a boolean to a function byref, and the function interface is declared as Variant. When assigning “1” to the boolean inside the function and exiting. the boolean value is set to True (as should be) but it's int is set to 1 instead of -1. Here is a code example

Function First()
     Dim a As Boolean
     Dim b As Boolean
     Dim c As Boolean
a = True
b = True
c = True

MsgBox (a=b) ' will print True
MsgBox (a=c) 'will print True

Call Second(c)

MsgBox (a=b) ' will print True
MsgBox (a=c) 'will print False
MsgBox(a) ' Will print True
MsgBox(c) ' Will print True

End Function

Function Second(ByRef par As Variant)
par = “1“
End Function

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.

Searching and Finding a new home

Moshe Eshel — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 22:41:00 GMT

Since our wedding (and before) my wife and I have been searching for a place to call home - for at least a year, maybe more. This made me think a lot about what kind of place I would like to live in, and I reached some conclusions - if I could I would like to live in the country - away from city life, not that I dislike the city, but that is what I prefer. I grew up in a small village and as a young boy, going to the city was a major hassle - in Israel nothing is far away, but the fact that there was close to no public transportation made it very hard to get there. So the city was always and still is facsinating for me. But I do prefer not to live there.

The trouble with moving out to the country-side is work, as sad as it may be, I still have to work, and my current line of work as a software engineer forces me to be close to the city, why? since the company I work in (and I believe most companies here) do not think so highly about Tele-Commuting. It is sad that the company I work for is that way - since our product is about Tele-Commuting (Remote-Collabortaion, Communication etc...) (check out http://www.interwise.com - disclaimer: I work for this company). Now that would be logical if the product wasn't that good, but the fact is it is really good (again, I work here, but I really like it and this is my opinion). Truth is I haven't pushed for this - but I think I know the answer I will get. I would love to be able to work most of the week from home and commute to the office 1/2 days a week (or maybe even less). The software we develop makes it possible to work with a team from home, and even join into meetings and be very productive. Even the network infrastructure here in Israel can already support high traffic easily (assuming I manage to reduce my downloading habbits :-)).

So eventually, after a lot of searching in the center of Israel area, we have come to settle on my home village, where we found a nice small house for a reasonable rent. This wasn't expected, we were looking in other directions when the offer came - and we were happy. The house comes with a nice garden, and we have to work on it to make it cozy - the house was built almost 50 years ago - and not in a high standard, so you can imagine - there is work to be done. However, it is not as bad as it sounds, and I expect to have a good time living there with my new wife and renovating a little in the house, gardening outside etc... Maybe even setting a small Wi-Fi network to use in the garden :-)

So we just finished ordering our new refigirator and oven and bedroom (my wife allowed no geekiness traits of mine to surface, and budget is limited :-( so currently I don't even have a place for my computer to stand... but we'll find something...). The trouble with a small apartment is that there is never enough space for everything you want.

I'm looking forward to moving in (in about two weeks when we finish cleaning the place up).

My Wedding pictures

Moshe Eshel — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 16:56:00 GMT

It has finally happened, I'm happily married to the loveliest girl on earth (I am biased - but that's how I feel)

I uploaded some of the wedding pictures to flickr, note that these are not from the official photographer that I had, but from my friends digital camera, also these photos went through no editing - I might do that later...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eshel/

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