Blog/June 2024/Jun 14th
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We exited this past shabbat to hear the amazing news that four of our hostages had been rescued in a dangerous and daring operation. My friend’s take on it was more subdued. The responses to it and reporting about it from “the world” were absolutely shocking; at least, they would be if you hadn’t been paying attention these past months.
As for us, this week’s travails were interrupted by the holiday of shavuot, a welcome respite from “things”. We did an all-dairy holiday this time. Esther made two kinds of ice-cream: her usual “dulce-de-leche” and a new one, “cheese-cake” — which tasted exactly like cheese-cake (less the crust). In addition, we had pan-fried fish for dinner, and lasagna (and guests!) for lunch. A most satisfying holiday, all told.
We worked, occasionally, the rest of the week; though probably not as effectively as we do on non-interrupted weeks.
Think on these, if you will:
- The repair cost of the US-built “Gaza pier” is north of $22M. The US truly has pierless leadership.
- The Perfidious President: US considers deal with Hamas, without Israeli involvement.
- A thread: things Mahmoud Abbas has said about Jews, Zionism, and the Holocaust. He’s “the moderate”, you’ll recall.
- In Portland, the intifada begins in kindergarten. And it used to be such a pleasant city.
- Mallen on the end of the hydrogen moment.
- My medieval weapons-master gives sound advice: don’t get shot by fire-arrows!
- And all about that Mad Lad (well, Lady): Boudica.
You’ll recall from last week that I had successfully digitized VHS tapes. However, I was quite dissatisfied with the quality: they were “jumpy” and a bit fuzzy as well. Eventually, I did figure out a fix for this, and now I have very nice clear and non-jumpy videos, but the file size is huge. So, a question for my techie audience: what options should I give to “ffmpeg” in order to produce a small video (with decent quality)? My current setup is using the libx284 video codec and crf 23, on a 720p input stream. Should I be post-processing somehow?
Regarding zemanim: well, Android is causing me some difficulties, which I hope to rectify this coming week.
The weather was even more toasty this week, which is not happy-making. The main problem is that it’s not been cooling overnight, so the house doesn’t get a chance to cool: it was 31C this morning! Eventually the heat wave will subside, we’ve been assured…
Our menu this shabbat includes:
homemade ḥalla,
baked chicken,
rice,
various salatim,
and banana cake.
Until next time,
shabbat shalom!
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