Blog/January 2013/Jan 11th
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< Blog | January 2013
| Jan 11th (See this week's devar torah) | Comments or questions? Click here! |
Hi, again!
It was a dark and stormy night. So was the week. Took a day off work to tour with my nephew; work entered a new phase; weather, weather everywhere and just what's going on over here?
The weather stole the show this week. An apparently rare confluence of several storm systems brought Israel huge quantities of rain along with very cold temperatures. The mall in the largish city of Modi'in was flooded for the second year in a row. Many parts of the country were also flooded, and some enterprising individuals took to rafting in the Ayalon river. Then the weather cooled even further, and snow hit Jerusalem. Here's what it looked like from our patio. Jerusalem was basically shut down for two days, with accumulations of 5-10 cm of snow (depending on neighborhood). We in Maale Adummim were spared the white stuff, but we definitely got the cold temperatures.
I took Sunday off from work so we could do something "as a family" while my nephew is still here. Lucky for us I did, since the rest of the week the weather was too inclement! We took him to Gush Etzion, showing him the "Patriarch's Road" which was used by Jewish pilgrims from Hebron to Jerusalem during the Second-Temple era (and probably also before then). We also went to the winery/restaurant there and had a nice meal as well as a short tour and explanation of the wine-making process. After that, we cut across the Elah valley and past Beit-Shemesh to Latrun, to visit the Tank Corps Memorial museum, which Chris had wanted to see. After that, we headed home and prepared a "Thanksgiving in January" meal, which Sarah's good friends (from National Service two years ago) specifically came for. A very long but enjoyable day.
Daniela and Jeremy are doing fine, thank you. Jeremy's father is also doing fine, last I heard. Sarah is also doing fine; her school took off two snow-days so she got a mini-vacation to spend with her cousin.
At work we've started the "consolidation" phase of our project. Now that we're actually using our new software instead of the old software for production work, we are finding the hard bugs -- so the job now entails hunting down and eradicating those difficult defects. Sometimes that's fun, but often it's just frustrating.
In the political scene here in Israel, the "advert season" has started. By law, political parties cannot advertise on TV or radio earlier than two weeks before the elections. So now that the deadline has passed, all the gloves are off and the ads are playing. Here are some with subtitles in English so you can get a feel for the lunacy. And here is the one for my party, whose message that everyone in Israel needs to obey the laws was disqualified and deemed as racist by the Komittee for Goodthink. <sigh>
OK, now for the feature you've all been waiting for: "desktop environments" (DEs). Unlike Windows or Mac OS/X, on Linux one has a choice of DEs, which vary in their features, friendliness and stability. The one I had been using for a long time, KDE, has every feature under the sun. It is extremely customizable, which means that you can "tweak" it to suit your preferences. By default, it is similar to Windows, which makes it a good DE to use if you're coming from Windows. However, it is very "heavy" -- it uses a lot of memory and CPU, so it is not a good choice for a lower-power machine (like a laptop).
If you're using a newer version of Ubuntu, you will encounter the Unity DE. Originally designed for tablet devices, it works very differently from the "Windows" style of DE. I found it quite hard to get used-to on a desktop machine. It also is very "heavy", even more so than KDE. So in my opinion it's not a very suitable DE, though I know some people who really like it. The older versions of Ubuntu used the GNOME DE, which in the version 2 edition resembled the Mac more than Windows -- a menu bar across the top of the screen, etc. Besides that rather distinguishing feature, GNOME also keeps most settings out of the way of the user, so it is somewhat difficult to customize. However, it is lighter-weight than KDE, and is more suitable to less powerful machines.
XFCE is the lightest-weight DE of the four I've listed. It is designed to be fast and use few resources. It is also very customizable, though not without some pain. By default it looks pretty ugly, so some initial effort to make it nicer is warranted. However, once done with the customizations, you are left with a very responsive system (since XFCE doesn't do much "behind the scenes", unlike the others).
Other DE choices include Cinnamon, based on GNOME 3, Mate (like yerba maté, not like the Australian for 'friend'), based on GNOME 2 and Enlightenment, which is a totally independent creation. There are others, but this should whet your curiosity (if you have any about DEs, that is).
This shabbat we've got a full house once again. Oy! Besides my nephew, who's spending his last shabbat with us (for now), my childhood friend Vova's daughter will also be staying with us. The menu includes:
tuna patties,
tabouleh salad,
red cabbage salad,
corn salad,
radish salad,
barley soup,
deviled eggs,
roast chicken with red rice,
carrot kugel,
traditional cholent,
merguez,
marble cake,
and assorted cookies.
Until next week,
shabbat shalom and ḥodesh tov!
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