Blog/July 2018/Jul 13th

July 13th

This week was our first “normal” one in quite some time. So there’s not a lot to report, thankfully.

Esther’s boss and co-workers were extremely relieved to have her return to the office. Apparently, things “get done” when she’s there, and not so much, otherwise. So she was very busy working on a month-plus backlog. She deserves a raise!

Sarah started a studio-photography course, which will run for about three months. At the least, she’ll hone skills she wants to have to pursue her ultimate goal (no, I won’t tell you what that is just yet).

Daniela and Jeremy have been working at being good parents. The twins are growing at an astonishing rate!

I had a successful week, bringing my active client’s project to a good conclusion. Now I’m in the interstices between paid projects: this client is having internal discussions how to proceed, while another one is waiting for funding. A third one made unreasonable demands of my time, so they’ve been dropped.

All of which is to the benefit of 8th: I made very substantial progress this week, towards the next version. Working on supporting “Wear OS”, which is what Android’s “wearable devices OS” is called (yes, it’s basically the same as Android, but not exactly). Fixed a number of bugs found by my diligent users, and added some things. All good.

Esther and I made an effort to get the house more organized. Once Mom’s shipment arrived, it was apparent that the house is much smaller than Mom had thought (my warnings to the contrary notwithstanding). So my Better Half and I rearranged a number of things and got a bit more room. It’s like one of those Chinese puzzles.

In other news:

• One of the better headlines: US puts fierce squeeze on breastfeeding…
• The history of “gender theory”. Down with the Patriarchy!
• Amazingly, in an entire article entitled Can the Middle East solve its water problem?, the world-class technological strides made by Israel are not mentioned (though it shows up in the graphs). Curious…
• An interesting (and civil) talk between a famous atheist and an orthodox Jew
• The knife police are coming (in Britain).
• The Japanese have apparently found a near infinite trove of “rare-earth elements”. China is concerned: it’s one of the few things they have a near-monopoly on. “Rare-earths” are used in a lot of high-tech devices, so yeah

It’s one thing for the social-media giants to be censorious. They’re private companies, after all; they can do whatever they want, within the boundaries of the law. But it’s another thing entirely for them to interpose their views in your private conversations. Since Facebook acquired WhatsApp, there have been a number of disturbing developments — all to do with substantial weakening of WhatsApp’s security and privacy. This is not good.

I’ve said before, but it bears repeating: use Signal instead of WhatsApp, if you actually care about privacy. Stay away from Facebook (I’ve stopped using it on a regular basis, so please just send me email if you want to message me. Or use Signal (or WhatsApp) to +972 52 652 5543. Since I don’t check Facebook regularly any more, your messages to me there may go unanswered for a long time.

“Happy birthday” wishes are in order for Mom: she celebrated eight shy of a century this week! Her Hebrew birthday was the day after her Gregorian one, and Sarah was able to come celebrate with us. According to Mom, she “only feels like she’s 60”. May she continue to feel that way, “until 120” as we say!

This week, we are joined by my nephew, his wife, and child! The six of us will enjoy:
homemade ḥalla, chicken soup, baked chicken, roasted butternut squash, Tunisian fish tagine, meaty cholent, veggie “lasagna”, various salatim, watermelon, and some pastries.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

---

Top: Blog

Prev: Jul 6th

Next: Jul 20th

---