2010-03-07
Why does it seem that the more pixels on the camera's sensor, the less detail is apparent in the photos the camera takes? I thought "resolution" was once a measurement of the smallest detail that a device could resolve. My N86 has a whopping 8 megapixel camera, yet the filesize of the jpeg images it produces is just about 1 MiB at the highest quality setting. I'm starting to test my devices, and you can use the test subject as well. Print out my very own Digital Camera Eye Exam and let me know how your device does.
2009-08-27
I managed to get a great shot of the Moon and Mars. As many people know, on August 27 Mars was almost as big and bright as the full moon.
2009-08-23 Beyond Security has proven themselves not only security experts, but community-conscious as well. Give them a try, their website is one of the few in the field that does not seem obfuscated or deliberately confusing.
2009-04-07
Have you ever heard of Emusic? Steer clear away from them. I signed up last year, and very soon I began getting spam the address that I used to sign up with them. How do I know that the spam is related? Those who communicate with me by email know that everyone gets a unique email address for corrospondance with me. This method has two advantages: 1) I can disable email addresses that start getting spam, and 2) I know who leaked my address to the spammers. I should note that the tool which enables me to do this is the terrific Virtual Identity extension for Thunderbird.
2009-03-16
Today I found a tool that will make my life just a bit easier. Open Office now has an experimental Hybrid PDF-ODT extension. This lets the user save a document as a valid PDF file with the original ODT file embedded for editing. This is, in my opinion, the perfect document format: viewable in common software already installed on most desktop systems, and editable in an open source, cross-platform office suite. Furthermore, all the wonderful command-line PDF tools available for Linux work on these documents perfectly. The only thing missing from the extension is better save support, as the user currently must be careful to export (not save) as a Hybrid PDF file. For someone in the habit of hitting Ctrl-S after each sentence, this is quite a limitation.
2009-02-22
As the comment following it notes, every so often a post on Slashdot makes reading the one thousand preceding troll posts worth it. This post was one of them. If you are not into astrophysics, you can safely pass.
2009-02-17
We have a new phone number. Details on the Contact Info page.
2008-10-18
We have decided to celebrate our family holidays according to the Hebrew calendar. Here is a Hebrew-Gregorian conversion table for the important dates in our family.
2008-09-18
I have begun using the Zim personal wiki application. This is by far the best hierarchical note manager that I've found yet, and I've tested tens of applications across three operating systems for years. Even at the lowly 0.26 version number, it is fully usable and I have been unable to crash it. Many thanks to Jaap Karssenberg for his terrific creation.
2008-09-17
I am removing the Newest Comments RSS feed from the Photo Album. Please change your subscriptions to the Newest Photos feed only. Thanks.
2008-07-17
After coming close to losing some data today, I realized that I really should have some of my notes in a public place. So here are some Linux notes and tricks for me, but available for anybody to enjoy.
2008-07-13
I won a t-shirt! The crazy editor at Ghacks.net decided that I'd look good in this. Thanks, Martin!
2008-05-30
NASA has been really great about keeping the public informed and involved in the Phoenix mission. Here is a nice, detailed explanation of the lander's Robotic Arm End Effector. It looks a little too familiar to me.
2008-05-26
A big congratulations to the team at The University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. These guys took a bunch of spare parts and managed to land them safely on Mars! You guys had me up all night, and I swear I've never been so tense at hearing "2000 meters... 1800 meters... 1700 meters..." all the way down to "30 meters... 27 meters... 20 meters... 16 meters... Touchdown signal detected!" I recommend to all to visit the Phoenix program's websites here and here. I must admit that I honestly did not think that the Phoenix lander would get to it's destination in one piece.
2008-05-23
I am terribly busy with studies, but while researching Middle Eastern maps I happened across the United Nations Children's Fund website which has some nice maps. Then I noticed how Israel is represented in a slightly different fashion than the rest of the Middle Eastern nations. Read more about UNICEF's presentation of Israel.
2008-03-29
The Photo Album got a new feature today, thanks to the hard work of Jeroen Wijering and Ety. Jeroen wrote the Flash-based media player that's powering the new video, and Ety took care of Meirav and the whole house for the full day (and night!) that it took me to modify the photos infrastructure to accommodate video as well. Enjoy it!
2008-02-25
The US Library of Congress is employing Silverlight to power their website. I wrote to them with my concern, and this is what I get.
2008-02-24
As many site visitors still use Internet Explorer, which does not support XHTML, I have moved this site back to HTML 4.01 Strict. If you are still using Internet Explorer, please upgrade to either Firefox or Opera. You are holding back the development of the entire web by using that non-compliant browser, not to mention the security holes it opens up in your system.
2008-02-19
While trying to find Quicken on Linux I ran into quite a bit of frustration. Share the fun.
2007-12-07
The Photo Album's RSS feeds are being switched over to use Feedburner's services. Expect more reliable, standards-compliant feeds. Hey, if it's good enough for /. then it's good enough for me. Subscribe to the updated Newest Photos and Newest Comments RSS feeds.
2007-10-22
Why are the lights in microwave ovens inconsistent with the lights in refrigerators? The light in the refrigerator is on when the door is open, and supposedly off when the door is shut. The light in the microwave is on when the door is shut, and off when the door is open.
2007-08-15
As I've got readers all over the world, I've switched the dates into a more international format. Specifically, there's a small country between Canada and Mexico that teaches it's children to write their dates with the day and month transposed. I suppose that digital watches there have the minute shown before the hour, as well. So I've switched to YYYY-MM-DD date format. It's foreign to everybody, everybody can now suffer together.
2007-08-09
I'm putting together a tutorial for those who want to get into The Gimp. As I've been using simple MS Paint - like programs for years, I figured that was as good a place as any to start my tutorial. I hereby present Going from Paint to The Gimp. Note that the tutorial is so far incomplete: I'm publishing it in piecemeal as time permits.
2007-07-20
Think that you are receiving spam from DotanCohen.com? You are not. Some email providers with incorrectly or non-standard email configurations are delivering messages from a spammer that is forging the DotanCohen.com domain name. If you are receiving such spam, then tell your email provider to enable SPF authentication. SPF authentication checks to see whether or not the sender of an email is forging his return address. If so, then the message is almost certainly spam, and should be filtered out before it even gets to your mailbox. I know that Nextel, TMOmail, HiNet, and VText customers have been subject to these forgeries. Contact your providers and tell them to enable SPF. For more info, see the What-Is-What article on What is Spam?
2007-06-14
As I've been contacting companies and websites for years regarding Linux and Firefox support, I've decided to publish some of the responses that I've gotten. Here are the pages: Linux Compatibility and Firefox Compatibility.
2007-06-10
Added a Genealogy section. It's rather incomplete, but it's being pieced together. If you want to add something, write me a note in the Contact Page.
2007-05-04
Lots of new features have been added to the Picture Gallery. Tags are now searchable and you can leave comments on photos. Two RSS feeds have been added: one for Newest Photos and another for Newest Comments. As usual, if you find any bugs, please tell me about them.
2007-03-03
I've been writing my own Picture Gallery engine, take a look. It's PHP-driven with a MySQL backend. Lots of new features are in the works, and I plan on adding a photo every day or two, so check back often. I'm aware of some problems with it, but if you come across anything let me know.
2005-09-02
Today, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Ety and I dedicated ourselves to each other at Beth Sha'arim
National Park.
2005-09-01
Jarred performed his first rise to the Law today- that"s his Bar Mitzvah.
2005-08-14 Lyrics List has seen some major changes in the past week.
Check it out.
2005-06-05
I've been making a lot of changes to LyricsList.com lately.
Stop by, check out the Lyrics Forum and
tell me what you think.
2005-05-04
Good to be home. Pictures coming soon!
2005-04-21
I have been adding HowTo articles recently. You can see them here. I also updated
the pictures section today, before our flight. Flight? Stay tuned...
2005-03-11
We settled on a place, we settled on a date. Ety and I are marrying at Kerem Maharal
Beth Sha'arim in the beginning of September.
2005-01-13
The family grew a little today. Say hi to Gush Tzemer!
2005-01-01
I proposed and she accepted! Ety and I are organizing a wedding!
2004-12-14
TerribleFile v0.7 released today. Now it's really coming along nice. I'm also starting to get some
traffic from the Free Software Directory for it. Which I know because of my very own
TerribleReferrer, which also made it to v0.7 recently.
2004-11-26
TerribleReferrer v0.5 released today. Am I getting carried away?
2004-11-24
TerribleFile v0.5 released today.
2004-11-14
Started studies today. Which probably means less site updates.
2004-10-30
Ety and I moved into our new apartment in Haifa. That means another update to my
Contact Info!
2004-10-23
This site is now Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional! And you can check it yourself by clicking on the
W3C logo at the bottom of each page.
2004-10-06
Site update. Added pictures of Ety and me. Also lots of backend work and antiSPAM measures.
Thanks Broshi for the Hebrew logo!
2004-09-20
Started working today as a guard at the Baha'i World Center.
2004-09-08
Site update. I removed a lot of old content and reorganized. Replaced a lot of old tags
with XHTML.
2004-08-11
Moved to Haifa today.
2004-07-28
I left the army today. 27 months of service, finished.
2004-07-04
I met someone today. More details to come...