Blog/February 2015/Feb 13th

February 13th (See this week's devar torah)

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Another quiet but eventful week for us. Esther started a vacation. We released a new version of 8th. Discovered another “social network” for publishing our stuff. And a major storm dumped dust and mud everywhere, winter returns…

The weather had been pleasant, almost balmy; but that was not to last! A couple days ago, the temperatures dropped radically. Where they had been some 10C above average the prior week, they dropped to almost 10C below average. I guess on average, that’s comfortable.

Along with the sudden drop in temperatures, we had massive sandstorms in the Eastern Mediterranean, which made the air unhealthy to breathe as well as reducing visibility to almost nothing. Then we got just enough rain to drop splatters of mud on everything. Eventually the sandstorm subsided and now it’s just cold. We’re hoping to get some rain to clear away the dusty debris left over from the storm, but it’s not looking like we’ll get too much precipitation where we are.

The work on 8th continues, with a new release made this week. Nothing earth-shattering, but plenty of new things and bug fixes to satisfy our users. We also found another avenue for advertising, a site called reddit, which simply lets you post a link to whatever you want, categorized as you see fit. So we posted links to some of our articles in the “programming” category, and saw an immediate influx of people at our web-site. We’ve been able to increase the number of downloads of 8th by some 200% this week; now we have to continue doing the “social-media” thing to keep bringing in people. We’re working on some strategies to convert “viewers” to “users”, and “users” to “paid-customers”. It’s a work-in-progress, and will probably stay that way.

I also spent some time making sure that I get informed of user-feedback from our site. That, and ensuring as much as possible that our site is as secure as possible. Of course, now that I said that, I’m sure someone will endeavor to show me how I failed at it. Well, such is life!

Surprisingly, I got a fairly strong response to my “Tale of Two Products” article, in that not a few people seem to want the product I originally wanted to develop. We need to take care of other things first, but it may well be that we put efforts into developing it (almost) as originally planned.

Esther is on a short trip to the US, to visit with Daniela and Jeremy. She couldn’t pass up a special offer from El-Al (apart from missing her daughter and son-in-law). I’m still here in the Holy Land, as is Sarah; we’re holding down the fort while our Most Outstanding Member is enduring the sub-zero (Celsius) temperatures in New York City. We hope she enjoys herself and has a great trip — and we already miss her!

This shabbat I’m fending for myself. To make up for that hole in my heart, I’m preparing a uniquely satisfying menu consisting of:
homemade ciabatta (here they are), herb-baked salmon, teriyaki pargiot, roasted potatoes, “swedish” meatballs, red-rice, cole-slaw, roasted peppers, Israeli salad, and apple-pear crisp.

(there will be leftovers…) I need to get cracking on the preparations!

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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