Blog/December 2016/Dec 23rd

December 23rd

We had a productive week. Esther’s been on vacation, and producing ever more articles of woven fabrics. Her most recent was a scarf for Sarah, a birthday-present. Sarah’s been working and is getting more proficient and knowledgable day by day. And I’ve been cranking away on several projects.

First, my main (paying) project. This is for an Israeli company, and I’m very pleased with them — and they seem to be pleased with me. I took over a project of theirs, and am the sole developer right now. I’m giving them about half of my available time, but it’s pretty intense time. Seems this is a long-term project (at least, if they can get the funding to continue).

Then, my second (paying) project. It’s a small project, making changes and improvements to a website. I’m not really a web-developer, but I can do the work. It’s a bit frustrating because I often have to research how to do something simple (or research why something that should be simple doesn’t work). I’m working on finishing this project up shortly.

Finally, my main (sometimes-paying) project, 8th. A new (non-paying) customer asked about how to accomplish something very technical, and I worked through a number of bugs (in 8th and in a support-library we use) to add support for what he was asking for. His response: “I'm absolutely astonished that you help me so much for my hobbiest project, since I'm not (yet) a paying user”. I’ve gotten that kind of response from a number of other people as well. One said, “With the level of your reaction and an excellent support, you have terribly surprised. I am very impressed”. Hopefully, these happy customers will recommend us to others, and will themselves become paying customers!

Some items of note:

• Encrypted communications application Signal is using Google to bypass censorship in Egypt and the UAE. Very interesting!
• Employee monitoring, 24/7.
• Linux isn’t immune to 0day attacks.
• The future of faking audio and video.
• A Marxist-Vegan restaurant (how’s that for fusion cuisine?) went out of business because customers complained that they could no longer tolerate the bizarre hours, high prices and long lines. Up the Revolution!
• Trump inserted into Calvin and Hobbes... it works!

I’ve mentioned before that I like to get my news from a wide variety of sources, in an attempt to reduce the overall bias, and to try to get facts (rather than editorials) on which to base my own opinions. Unfortunately, the main news outlets have been getting worse and worse; this past year has shown just how unreliable and slanted they are. I can’t bear to read FOX or CNN any more, it’s just too painful.

Instead, what I’ve started doing over the past couple months is to view some video podcasts (in addition to the usual perusing of articles from standard sources). There are two in particular which I enjoy viewing: “The Rubin Report”, whose host is left-of-center; and “Louder with Crowder”, whose host is right-of-center. The two are quite different on many issues, but they have in common that they bring on guests whose opinions differ from theirs, and they actually discuss and engage rather than rant and rave. Pleasant and logical discourse: what a concept!

This shabbat, the weather is supposed to be relatively pleasant. That’s good, because we have to light the first candles of ḥanukka when shabbat ends! Hopefully there won’t be too much wind or rain.

This shabbat we’ve been invited out for dinner. For the rest, we’ll do:
slow-cooked roast beef, potato kugel, noodle stir-fry, steamed broccoli, various salatim, and no dessert for you!

Until next time,
shabbat shalom and ḥanukka sameaḥ!

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