Shlomi Fish’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) List
This document is a list of questions and answers to common questions I have been asked or have found myself answering or telling about. I don’t mind being asked the same question more than once (even by the same person) because I still enjoy answering it. (See also what Wil Wheaton says about it at the beginning of his FAQ.)
But this document is here just in case, you have a question, or at least so I can link to it.
Some related FAQs I co-maintain:
About Shlomi Fish
Node LinkWho are you?
Node LinkI am Shlomi Fish, a professional Israeli software developer, and author of articles, essays, presentations, and funny stories, aphorisms and bits. I have a Bachelor of Sciences (B.Sc.) from the Technion in Electrical Engineering, but it would be a stretch to call me an Electrical Engineer, at least with my current level of expertise in the field. I’m actually more of a programmer and a specialised mathematician.
At the moment, I’m a computer geek (= person who is enthusiastic about computers), and a former nerd (= a person without a social life), because I recently started to increasingly socialise more. I’m interested in many other fields, including linguistics, history, writing, children and non-children literature, and T.V. and movies.
I should note that I am only one person, and in fact am unaware of any other “Shlomi Fish”’es of significance (at least not according to Internet searches).
Are you a Guy or a Girl?
Node LinkI am very much a guy, despite what my first name’s suffix (the “i” of “Shlomi”) may imply to English speakers. I am also heterosexual, but I hate being a macho in real-life, and have some other qualities that are considered somewhat feminine. However, I do not think I’m a woman born in a man’s body. (Or a lesbian born in a man’s body, for that matter.)
Many Israeli masculine names end with an “i”: Avi, Ari, Meni, Beni, Ori, Uri, Udi, Eli, etc. An “i” suffix means “of me” or “mine” in Hebrew, or “having the property-of” (like “-ful” in English). There are also many Israeli Hebrew feminine names that end with “i”. One reason I’m using “Shlomi” instead of “Shlomy” is because “Shlomy” might be pronounced to rhyme with the word “my”.
What can you say about your name?
Node LinkWell, “Shlomi” or “שלומי” in Hebrew (see its wikipedia entry) means “my Shalom” in Hebrew, or perhaps “Shalom-ful” (= having the property of Shalom) or “the Shalom of Jehovah”. “Shalom” is an ancient Hebrew word, that is derived from proto-Semitic origins meaning something like “well-being”, “welfare”, "harmony", "wholeness", even "prosperity" - not only “peace”. It is an ambiguous noun as the nouns of some ancient Semitic languages were. See also what I wrote about it on my blog (and some of the comments I received).
True to my name, I often feel that I have "more luck than brains" (as hard as it is to believe given many smart people consider me very smart) and while enduring some hardships (including physical ones!) was often at the right place at the right time (including on a certain Internet/television/etc. forum or resource) and came up on top.
The reason why it is “Shlomi” or “Shelomi” instead of “Shalomi” is due to a certain pronunciation transformation in Hebrew, where certain vowels are shortened into a Schwa when they are distanced too much from the Stress of the word. Quite a few non-Hebrew speakers have issues with pronouncing Hebrew words that start with several Schwas in succession (as this scene from a screenplay I wrote indicates).
Now, most Israelis pronounce this name with the stress on the “lo”. I, however prefer it to be pronounced with the stress on the “mi”, albeit I also answer to people who pronounce it the other way around. My version is the correct Biblical pronunciation. You can hear me pronounce it in Hebrew (Ogg, mp3) and in English (Ogg, mp3).
Please spell the name as starting with “Sh”, similar to the common spelling in English — not with “Sch” (the German spelling).
My last name - Fish - naturally means the aquatic creatures in English or (with a different spelling) in German. It was the last name of my late grandfather who was a Polish-born Jew, and I’m still carrying it.
“Fish” is an uncommon name in Israel, but there are also some variations such as “Fisher”, “Fishman”, “Fischer”, “Fishlov”, “Fishelson”, etc.
Note that the last name “Fish” is not meaningful in Hebrew and in fact in Ancient Hebrew the only possible pronunciation would be “Pish” (which means “pee” or “urine” in Modern Israeli Hebrew slang) because it uses the same letter - פ for both the "P" and the "F" sounds, and it would be "P" in the beginning of the word.
Is Shlomi Fish Your Real Name?
Node LinkDespite what the name may imply to non-Israeli people, Shlomi Fish (written as “שלומי פיש” in the Hebrew alphabet) is my real, and legal, name. See the question above for more information about its etymology.
Where are you from? Where do you live currently?
Node LinkWell, I was born in Israel in 5 May 1977, and lived in Tel Aviv for a year. Then, when I was 1 year old, my parents moved to Dallas, Texas, USA for my father’s post-Doctorate and later on we moved to Rockville, Maryland, USA and stayed there until I was about 5. Then, we moved back to Tel Aviv and I lived in Ramat Aviv Gimmel ever since (with some relatively brief trips to other places in Israel, to Europe, to the United States and to Victoria in Canada).
Currently (January 2021), I live with my parents in Eliyahu Hakim St. No. 4, apartment no. 12 (on the Third floor) ( Google maps ), and I'm usually at home there, usually either using one of my computers, or sleeping. Note that if you wish to meet me, whoever you may be, you should contact me first because the video intercom is unreliable.
What did you study in university / college? Did you study computer science?
Node LinkI studied in the Technion, completed my Undergraduate studies and graduated with a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc) in Electrical Engineering ("Proper" rather than "Computer Engineering" or "Computer & Software Engineering") diploma. That put aside, my studies involved quite a lot of software development and engineering-related mathematics. I also have not done a lot of EE or electronics work, before or after my degree studies, while doing quite a lot of software development.
Given how I recall my academic studies as being frustrating, vexing and often not interesting, I am not planning on working on getting another academic degree (whether a B.Sc, an M.A/M.Sc, a Ph.D or similar) soon. However, I cannot promise that I won't change my mind about that in the future and enrol again.
The funny thing is that while my mother and I are the only ones in our family without a doctorate, I am considered the smartest one. That may have to do with me being more confident and "showy" and more likely to flaunt or utilise my skills.
What is your day job? What do you do for a living? What is your work about?
Node LinkCurrently (November 2019) I am happily unemployed, and trying to build esteem, success, recognition, fame, etc. as a writer/entertainer/amateur philosopher. My ultimate goal for now is to become the next big author — the next J. K. Rowling if you may. Even if I don’t achieve it that goal, it’s going to be a wonderful, exciting, and wonderous, journey, and I’m not going to give up. (“Never Give Up!!”)
You seem very knowledgeable and capable. How come you said you were unemployed?
Node LinkFirst of all, thanks for thinking highly of me. Otherwise, note that while I may be a competent software developer, I inhibit some issues that may make me unattractive to employers. See my critique to a post and some replies I received. I won't list my perceived problems here, just note that employers care about several aspects of an employee's suitability beside raw competency and knowledge, and often I feel they are right.
That put aside, if you are interested in hiring me, despite whatever limitations I may have, please contact me and we'll see about that.
How else are you known?
Node LinkI’m also known as “shlomif” or on the IRC as “rindolf”. A certain Englishwoman Internet friend of mine, who can be amusing at times, has nicknamed me "Slimy Fish", which I didn't find offensive (possibly because I was no longer underage, and because I liked her; she also nicknamed the blocky ("Print") Hebrew alphabet "Tetris").
What is the origin of your “rindolf” IRC nickname?
Node LinkFor more information about the name "rindolf", see the dedicated page about my Rindolf nickname.
Rindolf “Woman-hands” [Forgot the last name] was a Dwarven warrior I played on a series of AD&D 2nd edition sessions, and one of my favourite tabletop Role Playing Games characters of all times. I probably picked up the name by analogy with such Germanic-originating names as Randolph or Rudolph. I'm not sure if "Rin" or "Rind" means anything in Germanic languages, but it has a nice ring.
The first IRC nickname I used was “dori” after one of the dwarves in Tolkien’s the Hobbit. Later on, I decided it was a too common name, so I switched to “gloin”, the name of a different dwarf. Then I wanted something more original, so I picked up “rindolf” and the name stuck.
If I had been able to change it again, I would have picked “shlomif” for my IRC career, because it is my handle almost everywhere else, but now everyone on IRC know me as “rindolf” so I feel it's too late (not to mention that, in my impression, it is common and acceptable to use a pseudonym on IRC, to show some creativity).
The running joke we have on IRC, is that Rindolf is the evil twin brother of Santa Claus’s goody-two-shoes reindeer, Rudolph and Randolph, who are among his arch-enemies. Rindolf is also one of the cornerstones of the Evil Reindeer Evil World Domination Evil Conspiracy, with the evil aim to spread the Reindeer Evil all over the world. You can find some of the manifestations of this joke in the IRC conversations quoted on my fortune cookies.
How should I address you or refer to you?
Node LinkWhen writing a letter to me, you can start it with “Hi Shlomi!”, “Dear Shlomi,”, “Hello Shlomi,” etc. or with “Hi Mr. Fish”, “Dear Mr. Fish”, etc.
Not “Hello Fish”, please! I hate when people call me “Fish” to my face, albeit “Mr. Fish” is OK. You can also use my “Rindolf” nickname with or without a “Mr.” honorific.
Some letters begin with “Shlomi,” in a separate paragraph. I personally feel that the person is always trying to preach to me in this case, but I was told it is not considered bad form in English-speaking countries, so it may just be a cultural gap.
If you wish to refer to me in third person, you should start with “Shlomi Fish” and continue with “Shlomi”, “Fish”, “Mr. Fish”, etc. Alternatively you can start with “Shlomif”, “shlomif”, or “Rindolf”, which are my common Internet handles which I use everywhere I can.
On the IRC, I generally use the nickname “rindolf
”.
May I email you about X?
Node LinkWhile the amount of emails that I receive is not overwhelming (yet), I still find that people are sending me some emails that could be written better. Here are a few guidelines for when not to send me emails:
If the email to which you are replying was sent by me to a mailing list, please reply to the list. From my experience, most E-mails that are sent to me in private as replies to mailing list posts, were intended to be public, and were sent in private by mistake or due to a user-interface issue.
If you do want to send me a private E-mail to a mailing list post, please explicitly say that the E-mail is sent in private, and detail the reason for it, and whether or not I can reply in public.
Please don’t send me a “Can you teach me how to become a hacker?” emails. See my How Can I Start Contributing to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) essay instead. If you’re living in Tel Aviv and vicinity and are willing to pay for me giving you private lessons, then this is an option.
Please don’t send me emails, trying to interest me in contributing to an open-source project for free, a pro-bono commission, or anything else that doesn’t involve payment. I follow my own interests and don’t work for free.Reconsidering this: you may opt to interest me in contributing to an open-source project, which you believe I may find of interest.If you have an online or offline publication, and can pay me for the trouble of writing an article, then feel free to inform me about it. Other possible commissions such as book reviews are also appropriate.
Please don’t send me emails with technical questions about open source projects or other general knowledge-and-experience questions that other people may be able to answer. I maintain a document explaining how to get help on the Internet and you should refer to it for general enlightenment.
An exception to this rule, may be questions about projects that I personally created or maintain.
What can you tell about your diet?
Node LinkI don’t drink alcoholic beverages, don’t consume caffeinated beverages, have never smoked (e.g.: cigarettes), and have never “done” any of the currently illegal narcotics (e.g.: Marijuana, Cocaine, Heroin). I believe that this way I’m less tired, more energetic, and less moody. I don’t need such negative bio-physical aphrodisiacs to be happy, and neither do you.
Most of the people I talk with on the IRC who consume caffeine have become dependent on it and cannot function without their morning/mid-morning/midday/etc. coffee. On the other hand, I’m energetic from the time I wake up until I go to sleep. As for alcohol, it has negative short-term and long-term effects. And I also don’t want to become drunk because it will cause me to lose control of myself, and do silly things and say silly stuff.
I have never smoked or taken drugs, and never intend to do so. People with a drug dependency reduce their happiness and self-esteem like this, and damage their health.
All that put aside, I still believe all these substances should be legal, and should not be regulated in any way.
Note that as of November 2019, I am still taking prescribed psychiatric drugs which I hate and think are harmful but am forced to take.
Regarding food, I eat an omnivorous diet that includes meat (chicken, beef, pork/bacon/ham/etc. and the occasional mutton) - sorry vegans/vegetarians but I feel like I need to eat meat. I used to avoid consuming sugary foods and beverages, but I now consume them again and am much happier.
So you avoid caffeine? You call yourself a geek?
Node LinkYes I do! Geeks comes in many shapes and sizes (also see One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish) and they don't always completely match the stigmatic "computer geek" archetype (e.g: A Portrait of J. Random Hacker). I am still a geek because I'm technologically inclined and enjoy contributing to FOSS and open content.
Also note my sentiments about attractive girls (and guys) increasingly being geeky.
Do you have any mental illnesses?
Node LinkAs a matter of fact, I do. I used to get into Clinical depressions, anxieties and Hypomanias and even a few Manias. The presence of the latter may indicate I have Bipolar Disorder (or “Mania-Depressia”).
I’m no longer getting into depressions or anxieties, which is good because when I’m in them, I feel that I am a bad person, think the whole world is bad and cannot concentrate on doing anything. I’m still getting some hypomanias, in which I feel quite elevated, while in fact knowing that I feel bad, and where I can still function, and still know that I’m a good person. Most of the time, I am OK.
Note that the opinions I express and what I say are not a consequence of my mental status, but rather of the many philosophical influences, I’ve been exposed to, which I feel made my thinking process straighter and more logical. Some people take many common “truisms” for granted, but I can often demonstrate they are wrong.
Here are a few jokes about it:
Shlomi Fish once defined himself as a “Programmer, Writer, Amateur Mathematician, Wannabe Philosopher, and someone who studied in the Technion in the vain hope of becoming an Electrical Engineer”. He does not consider himself a sane person, but is quite certain that only makes him more interesting.
Also this Freenode chat:
<tyler-> rindolf: you are seriously the craziest fucker I know <tyler-> and I know some crazy ass people <mofino> haha <rindolf> tyler-: I am crazy. And proud of it. <tyler-> rindolf: you should be <mofino> haha <mofino> Ahh man <rindolf> tyler-: being crazy is hard work. I worked all my life to be crazy. <mofino> Normal people aren’t fun. <rindolf> tyler-: “Craziness is not an action. It’s a process.” <mofino> heh <tyler-> rindolf: I see <rindolf> You need to tend to your insanity. <rindolf> tyler-: do you want to be crazy? <tyler-> rindolf: that’s why I feed my leprechaun at least once a day. <rindolf> tyler-: I can teach you everything I know.
(and “Ask not what your insanity can do for you - ask what you can do for your insanity.”)
My opinions are subject to change - they have changed in the past, and it’s likely they will change again. Furthermore, reality is dynamic, and Ethics, philosophy and opinions change with time, as technology, culture and education progresses.
What is the origin of your IRC part message (“Yay! I’m a Llama again!”)?
Node LinkIt’s a quote from the Disney Animated film The Emperor’s New Groove, which is otherwise highly recommended. Here is the clip on YouTube.
Note: for a while I converted to using «https://www.shlomifish.org/ ; It takes Summer Glau exactly a minute to write a rebuttal like in xkcd: “Venting”, and she would sign it as Chuck Norris. ( Summer Glau “Facts” )», which was part of my activism to promote the Summerschool at the NSA screenplay and Ms. Glau.
Why don’t you obscure/hide your email address? People can spam you.
Node LinkFirst of all, in this day and age, it’s unlikely that the spammers will not find my email address. That’s because they also install a lot of malware on vulnerable computers to harvest email addresses from. Since I can’t refrain from sending email to Windows users, and would rather not, I can never prevent spam entirely.
I deal with spam by filtering it on the client side. I’m using SpamAssassin to filter my email and so far it’s doing a very good job. Some spam still arrives at my inbox, but otherwise very little. There are several other open-source spam filters (and some non-open-source solutions), which you may wish to look at. GMail and other webmail services also do a good job in filtering spam (regardless of their other faults).
All of that put aside, I think that having a convenient “mailto:” link is recommended because people don’t need to go through inconvenient hoops to send you an email. I love receiving (good) email about my site, and I’d rather not throw away the baby along with the water, just because spammers may have an easier time harvesting my already public email address.
For more information, see my post to the “Joel on Software” forum about “Email at the bottom of every page”.
What can you tell about the fish emblem on the top-left corner?
Node LinkThis is EvilPHish from the comics’ strip UserFriendly.org by Iliad. I was a big fan of UserFriendly.org when EvilPHish was featured there, and it was so me, so I decided to make it my emblem. After downloading the big version of the comic, and tampering with it a little with GIMP (= the GNU Image Manipulation Program), I was able to produce a transparent PNG file that I could use.
After a while, I realised that most people recognised this emblem and associated it with me (in part because my last name is “Fish”) and decided to standardise on it as a user-pic or “avatar” everywhere, and so I did. Note that the image is still copyrighted by Mr. Iliad, but I hope its use by me is acceptable.
As a child and a teenager, I’ve been a bit frustrated by my last name being Fish, and was often teased for it. But I feel OK about it now, and it’s good that people can associate my last name with something they are familiar with, and with a memorable emblem such as EvilPHish.
You can also find various versions of the EvilPHish image for download and reuse.
Update: There is now a vector graphics SVG version courtesy of the amazing Marc Jeanmougin (Mc) and Inkscape. It is placed under CC0 but may be a derivative work of the original by Iliad.
Does the fish emblem allude to Christianity?
Node LinkNo, it does not - it is just inspired by my last name: “Fish”. I am in fact an Israeli and Jewish agnostic, and as Jewish Israelis go, we have some aversion towards Christianity.
Why are you revealing incriminating details about yourself? This makes you look bad for potential employers.
Node LinkA few people told me that I shouldn't mention the fact that I have been exempt from military service or that I used to get into clinical depressions and still get into hypomanias, because other people may think less of me. My response is that these are real and honest details about myself, that I would rather not keep to myself given the context, and the fact that I had to mention them many times.
While some employers may look down on me for mentioning that, I’d rather work for employers who appreciate honesty, sincerity, and openness, and eventually realise that keeping non personal details to yourself is a sure recipe to lose your mind.
For more information, see:
“‘Publish or Perish’ → ‘Life or Death’” - blog post.
“Honesty” section - from “Putting all the Cards on the Table (2013)”
I believe that honesty is the best policy, and trying to be who you are not, or keep important details about you not in the open will end up working against you, and cause you a lot of aggravations.
How did you learn English?
Node LinkWell, I am Israeli-born, but my parents moved to the United States when I was one year old until I was five years old (first to Dallas, Texas, and then to Rockville, Maryland), where I spoke English with the fellow children. However, after I returned to Israel at the age of five, the children there ridiculed me for my English. As a result, I did not want to speak it, and so forgot most of it, and just spoke Hebrew (which is my mother language). Possibly worse, I lost many of my earliest childhood memories, as I thought about them and remembered them in English.
After that, I had to regain English much more painfully as I learned it at school, and from other sources such as computerised Adventure games, books, films, Television shows, and the Internet.
Shortly after high school, I felt that my English has dramatically improved. Nonetheless, looking back at my English text from a few years back, I cringe at how bad it was, and some native speakers tell me that some of my writing is non-idiomatic.
I'm still trying to improve and not rest on my laurels (like I try with other skills and moral qualities I care about).
Note: I think my English improved after high school, despite the absence of a formal scholastic frame, due to a mixture of reading books, reading Internet texts in English, reading software documentation (I was employed as a software developer), watching some Television shows, and more practice at writing English texts (using computers' keyboards).
How can I improve my English?
Node LinkSome of the effective ways I found to improve one's English are:
Write. Write a lot. Start a blog. Write about interesting stories from your past. Ask your readers to point to the issues in your text (also your code). Maybe start specialised blogs for writing about a topic that interests you.
Read. Read a lot. Especially fine literature, though not too archaic. I really like reading original and quality Children and Young Adult's Literature in English (e.g: The Hobbit, The Treasure Island, E. Nesbit, Roald Dahl, Mary Poppins, Sherlock Holmes). There are many public domain and freely distributable fiction online in Project Gutenberg.
Pay attention to what you write and how you phrase yourself. Don't write too hastily.
Chat with English speakers on IRC - I like Freenode for that and they have an ##English channel, but other channels accept somewhat off-topicish discussion, especially some #not-channels or channels like #perlcafe , or #perl-cats, which are intended solely for off-topic discussion.
Watch/listen to some films to see how people use the English language in speech. There are many clips on YouTube and similar sites and you can learn a lot from them. There are some larger scale videos available online, offline and on torrents naturally.
Most importantly - remember that improving your language is hard work, but it's also fun, because hard work is often fun and rewarding and makes you happy. The opposite of fun and pleasure in general is not necessarily work. If people did not enjoy hard work for pleasure, then large scale operating systems that are completely free-and-open-source-software such as GNU/Linux or the *BSDs could not happen.
You can find some other recommended online resources for learning English and improving it in the “Awesome English” curated list of links on GitHub.
Note: please do not use a two way bridge from and to Google Translate or similar services exclusively, because you can improve your English, but cannot easily improve that of Google Translate, because it often emits non-functional translations, and because it will encourage you to learn less.
GTranslate has some legitimate use cases (such as trying to get the gist of a page in a foreign language) but like most tools, it has its limitations.
Do you have Asperger syndrome (Asperger’s)?
Node LinkSome people on the Internet told me that they believe I have Asperger syndrome or am otherwise on the Autistic spectrum. However, my psychotherapist (who has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and whom I met face to face many times), told me I most probably am not on the Autistic spectrum, after I asked him about that.
I do not wish to conclude whether or not that is the case for me, just to detail what I know.
Why are you obsessed with ten-sided dice? (d10) What do you do with them?
Node LinkI originally ran into Ten-sided dice (d10s) in tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, and I found it remarkable due to the fact that:
It corresponds with our decimal system (Base-10) and with the SI / International System of Units / Metric system.
It is the only role-playing-game-die that is not a platonic solid and instead has a man-invented shape.
As a result, it became a symbol of power of mine. Now what I do with them:
After I donated my role-playing gear to a local role-playing club that my friends ran, I was given a plain brown 1d10 die that my friends at the time (~1997ish) allowed me to take. I carried it in my pencil case, and it became a symbolic object and feel it brought me a lot of good luck and bad luck (which are often two sides of the same coin).
Now, however, I decided to give it to Ms. Summer Glau (who is a Hollywood actress, but much more than that for me), and it is now her property, which I intend to officially pass it along to her and see what she will decide to do with it.
I also buy d10s in large quantities (went up to 10 packs of 10 purple translucent d10 dice each from The Dice Shop) and offer to give them away to people I interact with in real life (IRL), such as vendors, clerks and sellers in shops. While not everyone accepts them, many people do.
Following the transition from Selina Mandrake to Summerschool at the NSA, I bought a complete set of Tabletop role-playing games' dice, and use it as a symbolic object. This is its photo after being placed on my NUC computer along with the 1d10 die that I have given to Summer Glau.
Why do you link/quote web pages, posts, etc. from originators I dislike?
Node LinkI normally link to such resources which I either agree with, partly agree, or are relevant to the discussion at hand. That does not mean I think everything these originators have published is true, but that does not mean that none of their posts are of merit (see ad hominem and similar fallacies.)
Do you play Chess?
Node LinkI do not play Chess a lot, mainly because I do not like it too much. I'm also not a very good Chess player, but hopefully one should preferably not avoid doing something because they are bad at it.
Some anecdotes regarding my experience with Chess enthusiasts are:
Someone on told us that he thinks everyone should be forced to play Chess (in a true authoritarian fashion in my opinion). This is while I recall reading that in South Africa during the Apartheid, people of Black descent were legally forbidden from playing Chess.
I once agreed to play Chess with an online friend online. After the game was over, he analysed my play, which I found annoying and made me reluctant to play again (and felt like beating a dead dog), but perhaps I should have told him that.
Why are you attracted to so many girls?
Node LinkAs I noted in an IRC conversation:
Hi all! I noticed many Hollywood marriages and other relationships have been stable ever since Sarah Michelle Gellar (♥!) was interviewed on "why my hollywood marriage works?". I'm not against divorces / breakups, but I want couples to be happy even if I'm attracted to their female partner (and frankly I'm attracted to a metric ton of celebs, friends, and fictional characters - 😊)
Do note that there is a difference between being attracted to someone, and being in love with them.
What is your financial status? Are you rich? Are you poor?
Node LinkCurrently (2021-02-19) I have some savings in my bank account and live with my parents and am supported by them and also receive national insurance . So while I'm not poor, I am not rich either.
I have some aspirations of becoming rich by individuals and organisations pooling enough money to relicense my works under permissive licences. There are other profits models and I welcome, e.g. people setting up merchandising shops for my works and (at their option) giving me parts of the profits.
Nevertheless, I work on my sites and other projects because I enjoy doing that, and find that I'm more productive this way than as a grunt software developer working on a project that I do not think is important.
Note that if you need some money, feel free to contact me and I can see about giving a one time payment (with no strings attached): SMG quote.
Questions about my philosophy / ideology / religion
Node LinkWhat is your Religious Belief or Inclination?
Node LinkFirst of all, I should note that one’s general classification of a religious inclination (e.g: Jewish, Atheist, Agnostic, Deist, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc.) is not always indicative of their idea system or philosophy. Also note that despite the fact that I am Jewish by ethnicity, and heritage, and studied (or was forced to study, although I often enjoyed it) some of the Jewish writings, and incorporated influences from it in my writing, I am not a religious or observant Jew.
All that put aside, I consider myself a self-sufficient, optimistic, idealistic and anti-cynical, pluralistic, anti-Fatalist, agnostic. Now let me explain what all those mean:
I’m agnostic because I’m not sure whether God — however he/she/they/it are manifested — exists or not. I suspect they do, but don’t take chances and don’t wish to risk dying - now or ever.
I’m self-sufficient because I believe that “The gods help those that help themselves”, that “reality to be conquered must be obeyed” and all that Jazz.
I am optimistic, idealistic and anti-cynical because I believe that people are inherently good, can be trusted and that humanity is going forward instead of backward. I feel like my life is gradually improving and that almost every day is the best day of my life so far, and that 2014 (when these lines were written) is the best year I can remember (and I’m 1977-born).
I’m pluralistic, because I constantly have derived and will derive inspiration from many sources and also try to not dismiss an insight based on its source - see Ad-hominem, and Reductio ad Hitlerum for more information about why this is fallacious.
Also see this quote by Larry Wall about
All Truth is God's Truth
.I am anti-Fatalistic because I believe that humans’ survival mechanism - reason - operates by choice, and not automatically, and that we have free will. This is as opposed to the new age crop of neo-Deterministic materialistic atheists who believe that the laws of physics dictate exactly what a person will think and do.
Note: I was told that Fatalism vs. free will is a much older debate than Ayn Rand (reason operates by choice) or Sam Harris (who reportedly used to advocate Fatalism).
What is your ethnicity? What is your lineage?
Node LinkI am a Jew by birth and almost all of my known ancestors were or are Jewish.
That put aside, my mother was born in Baghdad, Iraq and lived there for some years as a child before her parents and she made aliyah (or immigrated) to Israel. My father, on the other hand, was born in Israel to a mother from Vilnius (a.k.a “The Jerusalem of Lithuania”) who immigrated to the British mandate of Palestine, along with most of her family, during the 1930s, and to a father who was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland, and who escaped from the Nazis during World War II through the USSR, and Persia/Iran.
As such, I look (see photo) like a kind of a Iraqi/Persian version of my father, who looks East European.
A conversation I took part in the evening during a hiking trip, went something like that:
Girl to Shlomif: "which Jewry do you belong to?"
Shlomif: "I am half-Polish / half-Iraqi."
Girl to her male friend with me overhearing it: "You know what is the only thing that is worse than a Polish Jew? A half-Polish / half-Iraqi!"
I found it amusing, and kind-of have taken it to my advantage.
How come you say you are a secular Jew? Isn't Judaism a religion?
Node LinkJudaism is much more than just a religion, and it is also an ethnicity (or "peopleship" as I used to call it), a culture, a heritage, and possibly many other things. There are many secular Jews, who do not completely adhere to the Jewish religion, and are instead deist, agnostic or even atheist. This is the case for me, but note that I am still aware of Jewish holidays, and join the family feast or reflect upon them in a way. (I also commemorate April Fools' Day, International Talk Like a Pirate Day and some other secular holidays.)
Despite all that, my studies of the Jewish religious scripture, have a large influence on my personal philosophy "Rindolfism" and my works of fiction, but there are many other influences. As much as I like parts of the Hebrew Bible, I do not hold it as gospel, or as "The Word of God", and I think Sturgeon's law (= "90% of everything is crap") applies to it as well.
How do you define yourself? Are you a Jew, an Israeli, an agnostic, an Objectivist, a brony, a furry, a muppets' aficciando, a Perler, a Linuxer, a FOSS enthusiast, an optimist, a Pythoneer, …?
Node LinkI am currently many of these and more. As I noted in an essay, I define myself as "Shlomi Fish". I have my own philosophy titled "Rindolfism" and it changes almost every day.
Is the fact that you are/were an Objectivist (= an advocate of Ayn Rand’s philosophy) makes you selfish?
Node LinkThis quote from the Neo-Tech literature summarises the issues that led to this confusion:
Although the contents of her book, The Virtue of Selfishness, are precisely accurate and widely integrated, Ayn Rand committed an error by distorting the word "selfishness" in fashioning a dramatic statement. The word "selfishness" does have valuable, precise denotations of "an irrational, harmful disregard for others". Rand could have strengthened her work by selecting accurate wording such as rational self-growth. Instead, she unnecessarily bent and undermined the precise, valuable meaning of selfishness. …As with selflessness, selfishness is a form of immature, destructive, irrational behavior -- a form of stupid behavior.
( There are similar sentiments by others referenced on the book's Wikipedia page. )
While I’m no longer a Neo-Tech/Objectivism purist, I still agree with them that both selfish and selfless (= having an irrational disregard for one’s self) behaviours should be avoided as much as possible, and that one should strive for “Rational Self-Growth” and that often “selfish vs. selfless” is presented as a false dichotomy.
What makes you “The Messiah”? Why do you think everyone should be one?
Node LinkSee:
What I meant is that every adult or child, male or female, should believe they are the most powerful individual on Earth (and that the only ones who are not as powerful as they, are those who think someone else is). Furthermore, I recommend thinking that you can "save the world" or at least change or improve it. Moreover, you can enjoy the world, and improve yourself and everyone else at the same time.
Note that there are still real command structures: your family, your superiors or bosses, your military commanders, your government, your customers and/or users (or your service providers), your friends, etc. If what they request you to do seems reasonable and beneficial, you should dedicate time to perform it in the best, "Rosh Gadol"-manner.
That put aside, blindly following superior orders is wrong, and you may wish to refuse an order, if it seems immoral or unethical. And like the film The Quick and the Dead notes one should not be "afraid to live": voice your opinion, whether approving or disapproving, offline or online. HR drones who try to find faults in your online presence are going to be unhappy anyway, and from my impression they are usually wilfully stupid and thus quite evil and misguided.
Questions Related to Me and to Israel
Node LinkDid you serve in the Israeli Military (the IDF)?
Node LinkNo, I did not. I’m exempt from service, due to the various depressions I got into during High School. Please don’t accuse me of being a “Mishtamet” (“משתמט”), who is a person who purposely avoided a military service, while being fully capable of it. That’s not the case for me, as back in the time, I wanted to join the army.
That put aside, I oppose the draft in Israel or wherever.
One of my facebook friends who is an Israeli citizen and was raised up there, told me she has been exempt from IDF service due to "excess of personnel". She is likely one of many, and so accusing people of purposely avoiding military service is becoming more and more anachronistic.
Are you a “Zionist”? Are you an “anti-Zionist”?
Node LinkSee this tweet which largely relies on an older essay titled “Define ‘Zionism’”. Reading from it:
Seems like "anti-Zionism" is broadly defined (see Anti-Zionism ) just as "Zionism" is poorly defined. I'm Jewish and live in Israel and oppose the by-laws discrimination against non-Jews/Jews/whatever. What does that make me?
Can speakers of Modern Hebrew understand Spoken Arabic and vice versa?
Node LinkWhile both Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages, they are relatively distant from one another and not mutually understandable. I am a Hebrew speaker and reader/writer, but cannot understand the spoken Arabic dialect spoken by some of the local Arab speakers, except for a few words. Note that there are many spoken Arabic dialects as well as Literary Arabic which is common but not normally used in speech. Many Arabic speakers in Israel also know Hebrew, but native Hebrew speakers (Jews/etc.) usually do not have the motivation to learn Arabic or retain their knowledge of it.
Some other notes:
I studied Literary Arabic for 6 years in junior high and high school and passed the 5 points matriculation exam in it. However, I lost most of my vocabulary due to lack of use, and also do not readily remember some of the grammar.
A few Arab Israelis I spoke with told me it was easier for them to learn to read and write Hebrew than it was to learn Literary Arabic, despite the fact that the local Palestinian Arabic was their mother language. This is due to the diglossia present there.
If you know both English and Arabic, I can highly recommend listening to Shaike Ophir’s "The English Teacher" skit.
Are you aware of any Jewish “Elders of Zion” / Illuminati / “Zionist” conspiracy?
Node LinkDespite being Jewish by blood and an Israeli resident and citizen, who received secular Israeli education, I can testify that I am unaware of such a sinister conspiracy that cannot be refuted by Occam’s Razor. Moreover, some of my teachers at high school criticised the book as deceitful anti-semitic material. You may, however, opt to believe I'm being kept out of the loop, or that I’m lying. (Fnord!. You didn't see that, right? 😉)
It is true that in some of my stories I featured a conspiracy of “vampires” (= "hackers" or "geeks"), which were in fact the good guys in history, and not limited to bona-fide Jews, which was inspired by this and other sources. Nonetheless, these stories are fictional, I do not take them at face value myself, and recommend others to not take them literally, either (even though they may have implications and convey some lessons about the real world).
Are you a Mossad / Shin Bet / Unit 8200 / NSA / Hizbullah / CIA / etc. agent?
Node LinkI can testify that I am just an unemployed Israeli and secular Jewish web-writer and software developer. Back at the time (when I was in the 11th grade), I was interviewed for whom I believe were Unit 8,200 who asked me some questions about software engineering and cryptological questions. I am a sloppy software developer and was far sloppier back then, but they still wanted to hire me. They could not at the time due to a policy of hiring only graduates of technical high schools, and I ended up being exempt from the IDF service anyway.
There is a tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theory that all Israeli citizens are Mossad agents, which is headed by a secret cabal headed by My Little Pony’s Fluttershy. Furthermore, it is commonly acknowledged that Natalie Portman is a quadruple Mossad→FBI→Shin Bet→CIA agent. This is while SMG, Summer Glau, and I are the NSA's agents no. 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Furthermore, I head the secret cabal of the Hizbullah.
(I am just kidding about all that!).
Seriously now, if you meet such an agent online, they will likely admit it. If they approach you in the outside world, they will likely admit it, and even invite you for a meal or a drink and are not going to torture you. If you're not paranoid or get into too much trouble (e.g: by being a grey hat net intruder), you likely won't ever be approached by them.
Is it true that Israel has been genociding the Palestinians?
Node LinkNot at all. As of February 2021, the number of Palestinian residents in the west bank and the Gaza strip, exceeds the number of Israeli citizens (including Arab Israelis who identify as Palestinian). While there have been some acts of murder by either side towards the other (sometimes as self-defence), they didn't exceed the natural population growth. Moreover, given the bad reputation that Superior orders (aka "The Nuremberg Defense") have received in the media, and popular art and education, I presume most Israeli soldiers and other government workers will refuse unethical orders (which likely won't be given in the first place).
Ironically, the worst Sadism I experienced was by "mental health" (read "Conformism") workers in a psychiatric ward, but being a hacker king (= "messiah") I used the opportunity to play the Fox in the Chickens Coop and make all patients and workers there hacker monarchs.
Questions About Art & Culture
Node LinkWhat kind of Music do you like to listen to?
Node LinkI mostly listen to Rock and Pop, but have some favourite songs of many genres including Dance, Rap/Hip Hop, Soft Music, Classical Music (especially Crossover Classic, which I find very fun), Instrumental Music, Country, Rhythm and Blues and Soul, Ethnic Rock, etc.
My favourite Israeli artist is Yehuda Poliker, and my favourite International artist are the Beatles. My favourite Israeli song is “Shlal Sharav” (or “Heat Booty” in English); it is sang by Gidi Gov, but it was composed by Poliker with words written by Meir Ariel. My favourite song in English is “You Gotta Be” by Des’ree.
What is the most freaky TV Show you ever saw?
Node LinkThe Prisoner is my epitome of freakiness. I watched it in the summer vacations on Israeli television during the 80s. It was still infested with 1960s pre- Sesame Street paranoia, but otherwise very cool.
What do you consider the funniest thing on TV?
Node LinkHatzi Hamenasheh (= the half of menasheh).
Who was your biggest celebrity crush?
Node LinkSarah Michelle Gellar. She played Buffy Summers on Buffy, and I was 20 at the time. She is about my age, and I recall that her reported avoidance of consuming caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, and harder drugs, partly convinced me to avoid them as well. That was along with a recommendation for that in Neo-Tech (which I can no longer recommend perusing).
After I became maniacal, I imagined her as a wild and polyamorous girl who duplicated herself several times using Star Trek transporters and "all of her duplicates came out more normal than her".
As this 1998 email exchange indicates we still held her in some contempt, which is not unusual historically for entertainers.
Who is your favourite painter?
Node LinkKeith Parkinson who drew fantasy art (see DuckDuckGo).
Fiction Books (Literature)
Node LinkWhat are your favourite fiction books?
Node LinkMy favourite children-oriented book is The Hobbit by Tolkien, which I read first in a translation to Hebrew and then several times in English. Aside from high adventure, I now realise it contained a lot of criticism of the contemporary English society.
My favourite adult-oriented book is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand which I bought and read once, and shortly afterwards my sister confiscated my copy because she too enjoyed reading it. Despite loving it, I found it necessary to parody and modernise it, and it is likely that I had had, even back then and at least sub-consciously, a lot of contempt for the original work.
What do you think about the other books/films by Tolkien?
Node LinkI read the book The Lord of the Rings in its Hebrew translation, and found it boring and not memorable. By some peer pressure, I tried reading it again in high school, and stopped in the middle of the first volume.
I strongly suspect that if it were written using fan fiction characters (e.g: Sauron → Ashurbanipal ; Gandalf → Moses ; Frodo → David ), it would be better in many ways: more memorable, shorter, funnier, more fun, and with a more effective message.
The Silmarillion - was OK but I do not remember most of the plot (and do not care enough to).
Farmer Giles of Ham was incredibly funny, succinct, and memorable. I may gladly read it again sometimes.
The film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring could have been more enjoyable if the cinema my father and I watched it on would have provided an intermission, because by the end of its 3 hours we really had to pee. (Re Alfred Hitchcock's quote.)
My father and other family (but not I) have watched the other two films on DVD at home, which was easily capable of being paused and sought. I do enjoy the "One does not simply" snowclone, however.
What do you think about Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment?
Node LinkI spent large parts of a high school summer vacation forcing myself to read a paper copy of a Hebrew translation of C&P. It was boring and I'd have stopped much earlier if I didn't want to prepare for the next year's literature classes.
For the record, I read and completed some long books in both Hebrew and English which I found more interesting and captivating, and which I wasn't forced to read for class. I also struggled less with some other assigned texts (e.g. Kafka’s The Metamorphosis).
That put aside - analysing it in class, after the summer vacation, was fun.
In retrospect, I could tell that Raskolnikov is described as having clinical depression.
At least one friend of mine did enjoy reading it, and found it captivating.
On a different page, I compare C&P to Little Red Riding Hood and conclude that the latter was far more influential, successful, and better written. (Even though I have some reservations about its message.)
I'm not going to read C&P again willingly, unless someone pays me a shitload of money.
So: should you read it? On one hand, this is the kind of book that every modern intellectual is expected to read. On the other hand, its Signal to noise ratio is extremely low and it is not compliant with TL;DR / TL;DW / TL;DL. It is possible that reading the wikipedia page or a different summary will be adequate (assuming you are not forced to read it in class).
And take my advice at your own risk. If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces. 😉
Have you read the Harry Potter books (by J. K. Rowling)? What do you think of them?
Node LinkI read the first four installments. My favourite was the first because it didn't take itself as seriously as the next three. I stopped after reading the fourth book, because I noticed that, except for the first one, they all ended up making me ecstatic (see "hypomania" (= "below-mania")), which I preferred to avoid.
The books I read were captivating enough for me to persist in (although they seemed to have a slow start), often funny, contained interesting supernatural elements, and appear to have been written in an English register that was accessible enough for a foreign speaker like me (with a few unrecognised words that I looked up) yet not too dumbed down to be annoying (e.g: Simple Wikipedia).
About this Site
Node LinkWhy did you get the www.shlomifish.org domain?
Node LinkWell, I originally set up my home-site on shlomif.il.eu.org, which is a free DNS service, but it had a lot of DNS problems. Thus, I set up https://www.shlomifish.org/. I didn’t take shlomifish.org.il because .il domains used to cost a lot of money, and also required co-ordination by a fax message (how low-tech) upon every change. I also didn’t want a .com domain because I feel I’m a private individual rather than a company.
http://shlomifish.org/ used to be a parked hostname of my DNS registrar, but now redirects to www.shlomifish.org. This is also the case for shlomifish.com, which I bought later.
How should I refer to this site?
Node LinkYou can call it “Shlomi Fish’s Homepage”, “Shlomi Fish’s Homesite”, “Shlomi Fish’s personal web site”, or “shlomifish.org”. Some wrong ways to refer to it are:
“Your blog” - it is not a blog and I have more than one blog and site.
“shlomifish” or “ShlomiFish” - Shlomi Fish (with capital letters and a space) happens to be my name as written in Latin letters, and I’m a flesh-and-blood individual and more than just this site. It just happens that I picked the appropriate domain for that.
Why is this website in English? Why not Hebrew?
Node LinkFor several reasons:
- There are many more English speakers (either as their mother tongue or as a secondary language) than Hebrew speakers. So I’m reaching a bigger target audience by writing in English.
- Most native Hebrew speakers (i.e: Israelis) can read English well enough to understand my English writing. So most of the target audience for writing stuff in Hebrew will benefit from it very little.
- I find it more comfortable and faster to type in English and express myself in writing using English for most types of writing (some stories I’m writing being an exception).
- I often use a lot of tech jargon or slang, which is more difficult to translate to Hebrew.
That put aside, if you wish to translate a piece I wrote to any other language (including Hebrew), feel free to do so. I contributed some Hebrew translations to some English articles that other people originated, and also translated some things I wrote in Hebrew to English.
Note that I’m using Commonwealth English on this site. Partly because I think that’s what Israelis are supposed to use, partly because I have been somewhat British-oriented, and partly because it feels nicer to use an uncommon spelling. I am still using US English spelling for source code and for technical documents, though.
My thoughts are that both the British spelling and the American spelling (and their common subset), are inconsistent and confusing, but I have to make a choice of some sort.
How much time do you spend on this site?
Node LinkA lot. I spent several hundreds of hours on the site, possibly several thousands. While the pages of this site were originally just a collection of hand-maintained HTML pages, they were then converted to use Website Meta Language, and converted to have a common look and feel, a style that’s hopefully semantic, converted to use valid XHTML markup (XHTML 1.1 for the while); some navigation aids were added, etc.
All of the source code for the site is available online in various places. I’ve prepared a top-to-bottom document on how to compile the site from scratch). Some of the hand-crafted code was released as the Latemp static site generator or various assisting CPAN modules under an open-source license.
I am still working on the site, both by adding new content and attractions, by revising or correcting existing ones, by making it more usable, or by trying to publicise new attractions in various online resources.
Recently (November 2019) I converted the main pages of the site from wml to Template Toolkit, which is faster and less quirky, and also implemented better caching for the talks' slides.
What can you tell me about this site’s history?
Node LinkWell, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step and continues with many subsequent small steps.
My homesite started from a small number of static HTML pages kept on the server of my workplace back then (Smart Link - smlink.com). It had the address http://www.smlink.com/~shlomif/, now inactive, where shlomif was my username on ibm.net back then (which ended up becoming my general unofficial ID). We hosted the server behind our Point-to-Point connection (not such a smart idea retrospectively) and we had to create the alias in IIS specifically for me to put stuff there.
I recall that I had the Aphorisms collection with a few jokes I originated, as well as the report about the algorithmic solution to the Toggle Squares puzzle I sent to its originator (with whom I was corresponding at the time). And it also had a rudimentary pageful of links, and a bio.
When I became a student in the Technion, I moved my site to its undergraduate server at the address http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/ . There I added more and more resources to the site. Here is the site as of 1998. I had a limited quota there, and when I got an account on “vipe”, a server managed by the students, I hosted part of my home site there as well, as http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/ . The two parts of the site had cross-links to one another.
Eventually, I was about to graduate and so moved the t2.technion.ac.il part of my homesite, first to shlomif.il.eu.org (a free hostname, which ended up causing too many DNS problems), and then to www.shlomifish.org which is where it has been residing until now. In the process, I converted all of the main pages to use Website Meta Language and what would eventually become Latemp. This has enabled the site to have a common look and feel, a nice CSS stylesheet, a navigation menu and other navigation aids and other nice features.
Eventually I realised that the vipe server has too much down time (due to problems at the Technion’s network) and moved all of its content over to the www.shlomifish.org domain.
Throughout all this time, many resources were added to the homesite: software, essays, stories, artwork, presentations, puzzles, and more information about myself. I also now maintain a large number of blogs and sites for my projects, as well as sites I volunteered to maintain. I really like the way the web allows me to express myself, and to communicate using text, hypertext, and other types of media.
Even more recently, I've been writing more and more on social media outlets. There’s a list of my accounts for many social media and user-generated-content sites on every page of my home site.
In case you’re interested in setting up a personal web site of your own, I wrote an article about it, which you can read.
Is www.shlomifish.org a blog?
Node LinkThe short answer is that www.shlomifish.org is a good, old-fashioned, Web 1.0-style home site - not a weblog/blog/online journal. Despite all that, my web site is fairly modern in its client-side technology and its look-and-feel should be usable and attractive enough. I have several blogs and am not opposed to the concept, but a classic web site has many advantages. For more information, see:
Update: (February 2021) I recently decided that it is not a worthwhile battle to insist that it is not a blog.
Why are you using XHTML 1.1 for many pages on your site while serving them as “text/html”?
Node LinkUpdate: (November 2019) I am now serving mostly XHTML5 and also serving it as application/xml+xhtml
.
I feel that validating against an XHTML schema makes my code cleaner and less buggy, because I need to have closing tags, as well as use a trailing “/” for standalone tags, etc. I also find the additional XHTML 1.1 restrictions to be a good idea.
Therefore I decided to make XHTML 1.1 the default doctype for the pages on my site. The reason I’m serving them as text/html
is because Microsoft Internet Explorer does not handle application/xml+xhtml
properly, and I’d rather not needlessly discriminate against people who still use it (possibly against their will).
I realise that it stands against the XHTML standard, but I’m not a standards purist, and want to be a bit pragmatic in still supporting Explorer. Note that some pages in the Math-Ventures section end with the .xhtml
suffix and are served as XHTML because they contain MathML.
Is everything you say here true? Should I take it seriously?
Node LinkThe answer is that not everything that I wrote, quoted and/or placed on my homepage and on other kinds of Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) mediums is still something I agree with (i.e: I changed my mind since then), or should be taken too seriously (i.e: may be amusing or thought provoking but isn’t really something I agree with), or that should be taken as an unbreakable rule (i.e: because such works are usually guidelines rather than something that should be taken as gospel). So please take them with a grain of salt, and apply your judgement.
Naturally, it does not help that I often omit the dates of creation and last update from a resource, and that I sometimes neglect to add a “Recent Update” note at the top of the page when it becomes irrelevant. If you have the necessary technical skills, you can peruse the pages’ history in the version control repository.
Are the historical descriptions accurate?
Node LinkFirst of all note that I often base my conclusions on limited data and gut feeling. Furthermore, I often find it necessary to modernise and idealise the historical or imaginary (or real-life) people or events, due to our world's values and mine progressing.
Otherwise, note that per the classic film Rashomon and my own experience, different people remember past events differently.
How many visitors/hits/uniques/etc. does this site get per month?
Node LinkPlease don't ask me that, and that's not because I can't tell you that - it's because I don't think it matters too much. This is the same kind of penis envy (= “my $THINGY is bigger than yours”) and false machoflops/etc. competitions) and I care little for stuff like that. I'm now trying to work on creating more and more good content, enhancing the site usability better, and working on better publicity - both using Internet-based media and using real-world networking - and don't have the energy to spend time on silly statistics.
Why isn’t this site hosted using HTTPS/SSL?
Node LinkUpdate: (November 2019) This site now uses HTTPS.
For several reasons:
The site does not require registration, and nothing here can be modified using a web interface. As a result, HTTPS is unnecessary.
HTTPS incurs some bandwidth and roundtrip overhead.
HTTPS prevents pages from being cached.
HTTPS requires a more capable hosting account than what I need or can afford to actively maintain.
You can mirror the site using
wget --mirror
if you care about "privacy".
Can you please delete offensive/blasphemous/derogatory stuff that appears on your site?
Node LinkThe simple answer to that question is: no. I speak my mind and express myself using the words in the English language that I find appropriate and find that deliberately removing text and other content from web sites is the modern day equivalent to burning books, which as Heinrich Heine predicted eventually leads to burning people (which in modern times usually only amounts to blocking them from speaking on an Internet subforum). So I'm not going to do it unless absolutely necessary.
As noted elsewhere on this F.A.Q., I have a strong stance against political correctness fanaticism. Furthermore, as the old tale of “The miller, his son, and the donkey” demonstrates, trying to comply with everyone's whims regarding what they disapprove of in this site, is a slippery slope, that will lead to a lot of content removed.
For more information, see:
Note that I’m open to adding visible notes at the tops of individual pages with updates, corrections, or saying that I no longer approve of their content. But this is assuming I agree with them.
Do you link to your site to drive in traffic?
Node LinkMany people whom I gave links to the various resources on my site, accused me of linking to them in order to drive in traffic for my site. First of all, I should note that it sounds like what I call a “conspiracy theory” where one tries to formulate an ulterior motive explanation instead of assuming purity of intents.
That put aside - what will driving traffic to my site, buy me exactly? I don't get paid for each visitor or "unique hit" or whatever, and the Project Wonderful ads that used to be on my site were not pay-per-click, but rather pay-per-time (and now are no longer present after Project Wonderful announced that they will stop operating). While I admit I’d like my site to be as popular as possible, the real reason why I link to pages there is because they are relevant to the discussion at hand. If you’re too envious of me linking to my site, then please stop and get your own site which you can start populating with interesting content to your heart’s content.
Why do you advertise/“spam” pages from your sites?
Node LinkFirst of all note that it is "ableism" as I tend to link to my sites/blogs/domain a lot due to a combination of hypomania and slow typing due to hand paralysis. A lot of people think of blindness or deafness as the only disabilities, but there are many more, including bipolar disorder, Schizophrenia, and even lacking or non-native knowledge of English and other languages. Some Haredi Jews locally block YouTube, due to a Jewish Law prohibition on hearing female vocalists.
I believe "anti-self-promotion" is a moral fashion popularised by reddit that was not present on Slashdot, Freecode / Freshmeat, (and still isn't) and which I'll do as much as I can to kill: Chuck Norris was challenged to fight the world, and accepted. He bet on himself, won, and collected the bet money.
.
Furthermore, like Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead I believe in karma, and that being nasty and unkind to people can bite you further down the road (while being kind and generous returns seven folds). buu almost got himself killed due to frequent online chat hostility and use of IRC force (kicks, devoices, or bans). In addition, a former boss of mine who used to walk in the middle of the roads (hubris) in Gush Dan, got badly injured in a car accident.
How is this site generated? Which CMS (Content Management System) are you using?
Node LinkMost of the site is comprised of static HTML web pages, which are uploaded to the web-site as they are, after being generated using templates, data, and programs. The site’s sources are public and kept in a public version control repository, which also contains some automated tests and makes use of a continuous integration service.
While I am not ashamed of the site’s sources, they went through a long history and legacy, and while I remain a big fan of static site generation, there are probably some better approaches out there for that, and often it is simpler to just write something of your own using a good preprocessor or a template system, a good build system and some code glue. However, for me, converting to something else would be too time-consuming, and I've already found some faults in one existing popular static site generator that I tried.
Is this site written in Perl?
Node LinkSee above - most of the site is generated using code and data and is served as static content on the server. There are about three CGI scripts written in Perl 5 using CGI-Minimal but they do not serve most of the content.
It is true that I make use of a lot of Perl code to generate the site's content, but the site's source code is not limited to Perl, and it does not run on the web server, nor is required to run most of it.
I found some broken links on one of your sites. Should I report them to you?
Node LinkI guess I'd be interested to hear reports about them as long as one provides the text of the link and their URL. Note that it is the nature of the web that links get broken and it is part of what makes it work. Moreover, I've had this site for many years, and it is natural that some of the links have become stale. As a result, dealing with these reports have become quite frustrating due to their frequency
This site loads so quickly. What is your secret?
Node LinkFirst of all note that I do not consider myself an expert on load time optimisations, and you may be able to find better advice elsewhere using a web search.
That put aside, here are some factors that may contribute to this:
Some of it has to do with my web hosting, currently HostGator. While not perfect, I am quite happy with them, and can recommend them for shared hosting.
It is possible the site does not receive a lot of traffic for a variety of reasons (not sure).
I enabled server-side gzip/deflate/etc. compression.
XHTML/HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are all minimised. See HTML minifier for HTML, Go minifiers for SVG, and UglifyJS for JavaScript.
I use common external stylesheets, script files, and images instead of embedding them on every page.
The website is mostly static and served from the server's hard disk directly without potentially costly server-side scripting.
I avoid loading unnecessary JavaScript codes and other resources from other sites (with some possible exceptions.).
PNG images are compressed using OptiPNG ; SVG images are used as well.
Moreover, I recently started to increasingly make use of WebP, whose files tends to be smaller than PNG and JPEG ones, and look better than JPEG.
I sometimes remove various embellishments of the site, that while seemed a good idea or were one at a time, are no longer needed.
The navigation menu is partly populated after the page load by using an XMLHttpRequest (or so-called "AJAX") call to a static JSON file.
Some factors may play against the site's responsiveness (e.g: use of XHTML instead of HTML, or use of valid markup).
Also see:
Why does the site looks old?
Node LinkWell, the site's old fashioned look may be part of its charm, and kind-of lets it stand out from every Bootstrap Website ever. That put aside, feel free to submit pull-requests, patches, or CSS fragments if you think they will improve matters.
Why is the site’s markup not formatted nicely?
Node LinkSome web developers told me they like to keep the markup they emit properly formatted and indented. I dislike doing that because:
It may harm Its load time.
May provide users who look at it the illusion that it is the ultimate, editable/patch-able source code (and I already received a patch directly against the generated page of one of my sites, which was not directly usable for me).
People are unlikely to use my site's markup to learn web technologies. For this, I recommend other resources.
The ultimate sources used to generate the markups are kept properly formatted, and are human-readable and editable, in public version-control repositories, so it's not as if I keep my code non-indented.
Keeping the served markup properly formatted may be harder than simply minifying it, and the proper formatting may vary according to taste.
Just like we often compile and link source codes to binary executables and libraries, (even if the source code is publicly available), so we can think of minifying web markups as compiling them in order to improve the user experience. That does not imply I do that in order to obscure the inner mechanisms of the software.
Also see:
"Perfectionism" post on Joel on Software - cites formatted HTML as an example.
Does this site have a public Git repository (on GitHub / GitLab / etc.)?
Node LinkYes, it does. See:
The main GitHub repository (the build process clones some sub-repositories).
About my works of fiction.
Node LinkWhy do you write mostly fan-fiction and crossovers?
Node LinkLawrence Lessig gives many good reasons for remixing in his book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy which I have read and enjoyed. Writing fan-fiction and crossovers, whether in fiction or in non-fiction (see some of my crossover essays) is the writing equivalent of what he describes being primarily done with music and videos.
Our aversion towards fan fiction and an insistence on "originality" is mostly a 20th century fad, that is slowly (for some values of "slowly") diminishing.
Anyway, the various fiction franchises and idea systems that influenced me are a large part of me, and I cannot throw them away when writing my own works. I don’t have a lot of control of the ideas I come up with, but I know I must materialise them eventually.
What about your real person fiction?
Node LinkI feature or reference several celebrities in my stories (whether past or present) as a way of Real person fiction. According to the wikipedia page, such fiction is likely to be legal if it is done in mostly good taste, which I believe and hope is the case for me.
The general consensus is that a celebrity generally allows himself or herself to be a subject of reuse in literature, and that includes me, Shlomi Fish.
Update (2 November 2019): I have now written a more comprehensive essay about why writing real person fan fiction is good.
Update (26 November 2019): I now realise that fan fiction and especially real person fiction can be used to help combat the flood of new characters and names that plagues many more "original" stories. People generally have a rough concept of what characters such as Chuck Norris, Emma Watson, Richard Stallman, Moses, or Miss Piggy, are like and generally can better remember them because they thought about them a lot.
You feature sexy women and girls in your works. Are you a pervert?
Node LinkWell, I don’t know about you, but I feel that a man who is attracted to women displaying sexiness, strength, competence, etc. - however interpreted - has a healthy libido (or “sex drive”) rather than is a pervert, whose sexual preferences prevent him from functioning.
Anyway, do you really believe that when Taylor Swift depicted her friends and herself laying waste to a whole city in the videoclip for "Bad Blood" (and Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger and similar likely showed it more than once) that they actually are indeed so violent in real life? While sometimes I felt like doing that when there was a lot of commotion outside when I was trying to sleep or concentrate, I didn't actually do that, and at most ranted about it online or called the police. I believe no great action hero will ever deliberately kick a friendly cat or dog.
Furthermore, just because I write about stuff like that, does not mean I do not have enough self-control, or that I have sex with, sexually assault, or sexually harass everything that moves.
Moreover, if you think my fiction is bad, you should try the Hebrew Bible or, to a lesser extent, some of the modern slash fiction and other incest fiction that exist, and which: 1. Many gay, lesbian, bisexual, and even trans people dislike; 2. Its authors are often otherwise sexually healthy functioning adults.
Now regarding their age: yes, I'm aware that some of them are underage. But it may seem farfetched, but I think that underage girls and boys can still be competent, both in their tangible endeavours, but also in their sexual/romantic orientation. Back at the time, Macaulay Culkin, who was the “alpha male” of a large part of the 1990s (despite his youth), raised a few eyebrows, when marrying at the age of 18 shortly after high school graduation. However, I recently heard of a Jewish couple of a husband and wife who were 15 then (with the girl pregnant), and as scary as it sounded, it didn’t seem too horrid of a thought. Some people learn faster than others.
Just another note about Culkin: some people also criticised him for possessing Marijuana and for its use, but many young and not-so-young people I talked with have had a history of Marijuana use, or even Marijuana addiction, so I do not hold it against him. See my “The Case for Drug Legalisation” for why Marijuana, and all other illegal narcotics, should be made legal globally.
Finally, note that E Nesbit, and JK Rowling both featured underage children in their books.
When PETA's twitter criticised the sexualisation of catgirls in Anime, it was criticised for not going against Sesame Street, or My Little Pony, or Disney and being bullies. (Note that PETA's Twitter may have become less so since.) So please pick on someone your size, or just admit you were wrong, and choose a more worthwhile battle.
Do you idolise the celebrities or fictional characters that you feature in your fan fiction?
Node LinkAs a matter of fact, it may be considered this way. My fan fiction may be thought of as a modern age way of having polytheistic gods or otherwise heroes, that can be used for guidance and for shifting the blame from you, similar to the way that Plato used dialogues with Socrates for that, or the Greek used Aesop.
Note that even if I idolise (or perhaps just idealise) a person or a fictional character like that, it does not mean I actively worship them using pagan rituals. Nor do I believe they have supernatural superpowers, or see them as a supreme authority of telling me what to do. So I believe it does not go against the Jewish ethos. Moreover, the Jewish canon, sported some similar idols/"gods"/heroes besides "Jehovah" / God / the "King of the kings of the kings" / haqadosh barukh hu however they/he/she/it are manifested. For example: Moses, [King] David, and Deborah, are all such heroic figures, and I featured my own takes on some of them in some of my screenplays and stories.
Why are the source works or franchises too old? Why are they more recent than the Jewish canonical Torah? Why do you reference software world / computer geek / open source details?
Node LinkWell, as you can tell, it is futile to try to please everyone and some people are bound to complain, and to opposite extremes. I try to take the advice to "make your own kind of music" and use my own cultural background and interests as inspiration for my creative works. Also note that I tend to agree with Larry Wall that “All Truth is God’s Truth” and have recently concluded that "Truth" is a function of time and with Niels Bohr's note that: The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Often, people enjoy my works without being intimately familiar with all the sources of inspiration.
Why are you so obsessed with “facts”/factoids about Chuck Norris/etc.?
Node LinkI note the significance of the factoids trend in this section about them and continued in 2019 here. One should also note that there has been mutual influence on the facts, and by them, with my longer stories / screenplays. Often such facts are being made up about celebrities or fictional characters on social media without being officially considered as such.
Note that if you do not find these facts funny, that is OK - I still love you! 💟 😉! But "live and let live and do and let do" and like my psychotherapist advised me: please don't be domineering/"pushy". Different people are different.
Why do you say that Atheism can be a religion? Atheism is the lack of religion!
Node LinkFirst of all, note that in this tweet, I commented that Following on a reply I wrote to a mailing list post, I decided that I'll try avoiding the "X is a religion" argument. Many useful or insightful products/trends/movements have some zealots, including atheism, but they are still useful.
.
For the scope of this section I shall restrict the discussion of Atheists to those who believe or have a strong suspicion that God/the gods, however he/she/they/it are manifested do not exist. There may be other kinds of belief categories that fall under the umbrella of atheism or irreligion, but this subset of atheists does exist.
Anyway, from my experience, some Atheists can be overzealous and even very pushy about it, fanatical, or even have a cult of followers and sycophants. The original Nazis and Communists were ostensibly atheists but were destructive, and had their share of dogma, which other people and I find irrational. Note however that by the time of Samantha Smith many communist regimes were far more relaxed and rational in practice, and I suspect that following the popularity of The Colbert Report, most of the best "AltRight" neonazi bloggers are parody ones.
I do not wish to imply all fanatics, whether atheists or otherwise, were as destructive as them, just to note that believing or suspecting God does not exist does not automatically make you free of faith or pseudo-faith.
Note that currently I am an agnostic, and try not to be overzealous and pushy about it, but I do not rule out that there were or are or can be religious agnostics. Furthermore, I do not rule out that I may have my share of irrationalities, fanaticism or stubbornness in other realms of my life.
Just for the record, I recall reading on an Internet site, an excerpt from an interview with one of the creators of South Park (which I admit I have not watched substantially) which was known for ridiculing various religions, saying that they thought that despite all that, they found atheism the funniest religion, because the contemporary astronomical/astrophysical model excepts time to run out and end. This proved as one of my catalysts from my transition from a dogmatic atheist, to an open-minded and pluralistic agnostic.
Why don't you cut out contact with the outside world for several years and release a perfect screenplay?
Node LinkThis was popularised by Hollywood, but from my experience is detrimental in this day and age (~January 2021). I find that releasing screenplays (or essays or software) in an "imperfect" or even incomplete state, helps getting input from readers, reviewers, and collaborators, which even if negative and "destructive", helps in the thought process.
For example, after writing the first three stanzas of "Terminator: Liberation", it took me close to a year to think of a better (and shorter) plot.
Also note that in a true "open" fashion, I encourage people to fork, or (licence-permitting) even change the licence of derivatives. I can never please everyone but feel free to take my work in your own direction.
Cookie Monster agrees with me.
May I prepare a derivative of a screenplay, bit, aphorism, or other work (or works) of yours? (E.g: a computer game, a tabletop game, a parody, a video, an animation, an audio file, a picture?)
Node LinkSure! Go ahead as I believe most of my works are under licences that allow derivatives given respecting certain conditions. Even if you violate the conditions, I may likely lack the time and energy to start a law suit and instead just gently "shame" you on Internet social media or other sites.
Also see some relicensing options.
About computing and software development
Node LinkAre you a programmer?
Node LinkYes, I am. For some of the publicly available source code I wrote (usually FOSS) see:
(I'm answering this question here, because I got asked that a lot.)
Note that software development involves other activities than programming (e.g: QA, writing documentation or system administration). Moreover, I believe that, despite common belief, writing HTML, or many other non Turing complete languages, is programming because it requires similar discipline.
What are your Computers’ Specifications?
Node LinkMy primary machine is a desktop machine with a:
- An Intel Core i3 CPU (x86-64).
- 8 GB of RAM.
- Intel Corporation Sandy Bridge Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
- A 2 TB hard-disk.
- A 21″ Wide LCD Screen by LG.
- Intel Corporation Cougar Point High Definition Audio Controller.
- Intel Corporation 82579V Gigabit Network Connection.
I’m running Mageia Linux on it. This desktop computer replaced my older computer which was a:
- Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz CPU.
- 2.5 GB of RAM.
- An ATI Radeon HD 2600 card.
- One 160 GB Hard-disk and two smaller ones of 80 GB or so.
- A 19″ LCD Screen by ViewSonic.
- A standard built-in AC’97 sound-card.
I’m using mostly Free and Open Source Software (= FOSS) on it, and try not to depend on non-FOSS software. I documented the reason why I no longer trust non-FOSS software on my technical weblog.
I also have an Intel NUC computer, with the following specs:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8259U CPU @ 2.30GHz
Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655
AOC 22E1W monitor
Intel Cannon Point-LP High Definition Audio Controller
One SSD and one HDD drives.
It replaces an Acer Aspire 5738DZG laptop with the following specs:
- Intel Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU T4300 @ 2.10GHz. (x86-64).
- ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4570 (r700)
- 15.6″ 3D HD LCD Screen.
- 3 GB Memory
- 320 GB Hard Disk Drive.
- “DVD Super Multi DL drive”
- Acer Nplify™ 802.11b/g/n.
This dual-boots between Windows 7 Home something and Fedora Linux (which is what I’m using most of the time.).
Which Programming Language did you start with? Which programming languages do you know now?
Node LinkWhen I was in the 4th grade (back around 1987), my father bought my family a PC XT machine, with 640 KB of memory, and a colour CGA screen. Using this, my friends and I started learning how to program, first using the BASIC interpreter that was installed on the BIOS and was invoked if you didn’t put a diskette inside, and then using some of the BASIC variants that ran on DOS such as BASIC.COM, GWBASIC and BASICA. So for better or for worse, BASIC was my first language.
I’ve neglected programming for a long while and just played games on the computer, and possibly did some work on it. However, I returned to programming when I was in the 9th grade, this time on a 386 SX with QBasic which came with some later versions of DOS, and later on with Borland Turbo C++ 3.0 (which sported a much more primitive variant of C++ compared to today’s flavours). Despite knowing C and C/C++, I still found QBasic of use, due to my ability to rapidly develop code in it (what Larry Wall later called “whipuptitude” in some of his talks.). I also may have dabbled with Excel’s Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) before I graduated from high school, and during my 10th grade, I learned some Pascal using Microsoft QuickPascal on DOS.
After I graduated from high school, I worked at three firms. In some of them I've done C or C++ development on Windows, but I also studied some SQL, and became familiar with some UNIX flavours and with Perl 5 and the UNIX shells. UNIX has been an epiphany for me: until then I used DOS and Windows, and considered them bad, but did not know what a good system is. UNIX was the first genuinely good system that I have encountered. I also fell in love with Perl, and it became my favourite language.
By the time I started studying the Technion, I had a relatively early distribution of Linux installed on my computer, and started playing with various languages available there.
You can find a list of languages that I currently know on my résumé.
Which text editors are you using? What is your favourite text editor?
Node LinkWell, I'm usually using gvim (the Gtk+/GUI version of the Vim programmer’s editor) for coding and for writing purely-Latin texts. For bidirectional (mixed Hebrew+Latin / etc.) texts, I sometimes use Kate instead, with a fallback on gedit. Sometimes, I use Vim (the console version) for quick edits or when I cannot or would prefer not to use a GUI editor.
The reason I am using gvim instead of vim, is because many terminal emulators on Linux (including Konsole which is my preferred one) mess up with the Hebrew/Latin bidirectionality too much (enough to confuse vim), because the syntax highlighting looks nicer there, because the mouse support is better, and because it does not start much slower than Vim. If the console-based Vim works for you, feel free to use it.
Regarding Emacs: from what I know, it should be a fine text editor, but I could never get used to it, so that’s not what I’m using. I was told about the Evil mode which provides partial Vim compatibility, but I didn’t try it, in part because I’m now using quite a lot of Vim extensions written in vimscript and in Vim’s extension languages, which are not supported by Evil.
Why are you using your choice of an operating system (= Mageia Linux)?
Node LinkThe short answer is that Mageia is what I’m used to, what I like, and what I’m most comfortable with, and that I find the community of contributors and users friendly and helpful, so that is what I’m staying with for now.
My original motivation for trying out Mandrake Linux (which later was renamed as “Mandriva Linux” and was even later forked into Mageia), was that I bought a 40 GB hard-disk (which was a large capacity for its time) and sought a distribution to install on it, that supported ReiserFS which was a file system that had journaling, so I won't have to spend a lot of time in running “ext2.fsck”. Eventually, it turned out that ReiserFS caused my hard disk to become faulty (and had no way to gracefully handle bad blocks) but in the meanwhile I grew to like Mandriva and used it and later its Mageia fork since.
That put aside, I still willingly try to help people, who are using other Linux distributions, or even non-Linux operating systems, with their technical problems. Part of my motivation is this quote from “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”.
What were your B.Sc.'s Final Projects?
Node LinkThey were:
The IP Noise Simulator. The user-land version should still work and may be of interest.
Zavitan - a web-based seminars manager written in Perl 5.
Why are you using DuckDuckGo? (Instead of Google?)
Node LinkTo prevent Filter bubble.
I like their keyboard navigation (left/right/up/down keys).
Their search URLs have less junk than Google's.
I like the bang commands ("!g" for a Google search; "!gh" for a GitHub search; etc.).
Also note that DuckDuckGo claims to avoid tracking the users, but I personally do not care too much about that.
Why are you still using XML?
Node LinkWith the advent of JSON, and similar formats such as YAML, some hipster geeks have proclaimed that XML-based grammars no longer have any legitimate use. However, while I use JSON and YAML for many tasks, I still find XML (and related technologies such as DocBook 5, XPath, RELAX NG, and XSLT ) of use. Part of the reason is that XML can be used to add markup to a substring of the text (like the <a> element).
I recall that some Lisp fans argued that XML is syntactic sugar for S-expressions, but I think it is a moot point, because we can encode and decode them both to/from a binary stream of 0s and 1s, JSON, or most other syntaxes. Syntax is, while often considered marginal, is nevertheless important, and I don't think I'll enjoy writing text documents completely using S-expressions. I also recall reading about a new language that allows mixing and matching both lisp-like code and XML code.
About Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
Node LinkHow can I become an open-source contributor?
Node LinkSee what I wrote about it on my homepage. I’m giving instructions there. You may also wish to read my “Advice for the Young” essay.
Can you help me intrude into/exploit (so-called “crack” or “hack”) someone’s server/instagram account/IRC account/Twitter/Facebook/etc.?
Node LinkNo, and that is because I am not a computer intruder or a “cracker”, and even if I were versed in that, I wouldn't try to get myself and other people in trouble by trying to exploit vulnerabilities on useful, ethical, services.
There are better ways to handle your online problems than to try to do cracking. For more insights, see:
“Master Foo and the Script Kiddie” - a modern UNIX koan by Eric Raymond.
Q: Would you help me to crack a system, or teach me how to crack?
A: No. Anyone who can still ask such a question after reading this FAQ is too stupid to be educable even if I had the time for tutoring. Any emailed requests of this kind that I get will be ignored or answered with extreme rudeness.
Q: How can I get the password for someone else's account?
A: This is cracking. Go away, idiot.
Q: How can I break into/read/monitor someone else's email?
A: This is cracking. Get lost, moron.
Q: How can I steal channel op privileges on IRC?
A: This is cracking. Begone, cretin.
Are you a hacker?
Node LinkThe word "Hacker" can mean several things. It can mean a computer intruder, in which case, see the question above - I am certainly not one. Otherwise, it can mean a clever and competent enthusiast of a certain field of endeavour, primarily used by and for computer workers, but not exclusive to them. As I note, by inspiration from other sources, hacking is at least several millennia old.
Anyway, a "hacker" is something that normally other people call you rather than something you call yourself. I aspire for excellence and continuous improvement in several fields of endeavour (including software development), but only other people can judge whether I am indeed a hacker of them. And my policy is to encourage criticism rather than fanboy/fangirl-ism.
You’re using Mercurial (on Bitbucket.org/etc.) for some of your projects. How can I learn how to use it?
Node LinkThere are some links to tutorials on the Mercurial page of the Better-SCM site. More can be found in a web search for “mercurial tutorial”. Mercurial is not too hard to learn.
When building some of your CMake-based projects, I am getting an error for a missing “Shlomif_Common.cmake” file
Node LinkYes, you can find it in this repository. Just put it in the source directory. Such a problem should not be encountered when building a source release from the source archive downloads.
How many Projects are you Working on?
Node LinkI have originated, maintain, or contribute to more than one project and keep switch-tasking between them. Some of them have sub-projects or individual tasks. You can find some lists and activity logs on this page.
Do you have a GitHub account?
Node LinkYes, see this link for more information.
Why are you working on this non-Perl 5/6 project? I thought you were a Perl guy!
Node LinkWhile I have written a lot of Perl 5 code, and often still maintain it because it cannot be all reimplemented in something else overnight, Perl is not the only language I know and use. Perl is not exactly a religion that requires full devotion to its belief, and I actually met a woman who considers herself both a Christian as well as a Buddhist so…
For more information, see:
Why I Hate Advocacy - by Mark-Jason Dominus.
Why did you publicly share your solutions to Project Euler problems despite their request to avoid doing that?
Node LinkFor several reasons:
Making the GitHub project public allows me to use Travis-CI and other CI services free of charge.
I enjoy sharing my work with others.
I think that Linus Torvalds’ quote that
Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on FTP, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)
has a grain of truth in it.It may be useful as evidence of the fact I solved these for prospective employers and other interested parties.
Do you solve the Project Euler problems in their order?
Node LinkNo, I don't. I often skip problems which I find too difficult or not interesting enough. I did solve 149 out of the first 150 problems (excluding No. 143).
How do you keep organised? What do you use for To-Do lists?
Node LinkFirst of all, see this post I wrote about why E-mail is not only a to-do list and other resources that serve as virtual to-do lists. For my proper to-do lists, I use gvim/vim, either using plaintext or using the vim-quicktask plugin.
Why do you mention that a certain work or post is copyrighted by you and under a certain licence?
Node LinkFirst of all note that IANAL/etc. Anyway, I try to give explicit and more permissive licences (e.g: Creative Commons ones) to all my posts and works because otherwise they are All Rights Reserved by default and so under much more restrictive implicit licensing conditions. I know that Ashleigh Brilliant got copyright to apply to relatively short sentences (which most of my posts are longer than them), and that there was a court decision that made it a violation to sample and reuse even a single chord of a copyrighted song. So there may not be a minimal limit to how substantial a copyrightable work can be.
Most of the licences I use permit some use that will be normally be forbidden by default so you are better off and it is better to be safe than sorry.
Also see:
What is the “Expat License”?
Node LinkIt is what the FSF calls the so-called MIT License (or SPDX: MIT ). The original X11 licence has an extra clause.
Why do you have so many GitHub repositories?
Node LinkMany of my GitHub repositories were one-off clones for correcting some typos, or fixing a bug followed by a pull request. Deleting them all will require some time, and also requires entering the password again.
Another factor that makes my repositories more numerous is the fact that I use individual repositories for image macros, for stories and screenplays, and for some essays. I am not a big fan of the "monorepo" strategy.
Why are you still using Perl? Can't you rewrite all your Perl code in Python / JavaScript / TypeScript / Erlang / Intercal / etc.?
Node LinkIt is true that Perl 5 has somewhat fallen out of favour, but as much as I like Python (and I do), I still like Perl. One cannot rewrite their entire codebase in [insert hyped language/stack/framework/technology of the present] every 6 months or so. Back when I was interested in learning Ruby some of its enthusiasts implied I should use Rails for my sites. And guess what? The Rails and Ruby craze and hype are gone and Rails has its share of issues and I'm glad my site was not converted to a Rails application. It can also happen to node.js, Python, PHP, or WordPress.
Currently perl5 is quite actively developed with annual major releases, and with as little backward compatibility broken as possible. The CPAN ecosystem is not quite as active as PyPI or npm, but still proves useful often, and also avoids breaking backward compatibility as much as possible. Moreover, I can make use of modules and libraries in other languages using the Inline::* family and other FFIs.
Note that I also write some new code in Python, Julia, bash, C, C++ and other languages.
Political Correctness (or Lack of it)
Node LinkWhat is the Approximate Maturity Rating of this Site?
Node LinkMost of it should be either U (Universal) or PG-Something (Parent Guidance). I’m not a blatantly pornographic person.
Why are you using the terms “girl”, “chick”, etc.?
Node LinkI’m using the term “girl” for lack of a better term for “a female guy”. I was told that some overly strict feminists consider it derogatory, but until a better word emerges, that’s what I’m going to use. (And I don’t find it particularly derogatory).
Are you a sexist? Are you a Feminist?
Node LinkIn general, I support gender equality, lack of double standards, equal opportunities, and liberation of both genders, and both men and women (of any age) exhibiting confidence, sexual assertiveness, while being "excellent to each other", and not being a jerk ("Wheaton's Law").
I do admit I have a sexist side: either pro-female ( The trio of Celtic girls' story; Chun Li vs. Tifa ) or pro-male ( "Too girly for me" ; "The Human Hacking Field Guide" ), but this kind of humour is hopefully in good taste and is appreciated by both genders.
I have many other conflicting sides, including a sadistic side, which Taylor Swift has one too, and a parodying Judaism side.
I use these elements in my writing because they are entertaining and good for business. I do not encourage being destructive in real life, and anticipate that both children and adults will know better.
Do note that I could have been too sexualised or otherwise tactless in my online communications in the past. Even though I was honest, I often lacked delivery, which brought me some bad reputation and trouble.
I've been trying to improve though. mst joked that every time I level, I put all my XP (= experience points) into "being right" rather than boring things like "tact"
, but he has been increasingly more tactful lately, and hopefully so have I.
Why are you using the term “nazi” to refer to people who are “needlessly strict”?
Node LinkBecause it is an acceptable use for such a word. You can find the fallout from one of my uses of it on this linmagazine.co.il page (in Hebrew) (“And what does it have to do with anything? Did Hitler use Linux?”). I didn’t stop using the word “nazi” afterwards, and also see the post “The Grammar Nazis Conspiracy” on my personal/philosophical blog.
Many people treat the Nazis/Hitler/Holocaust/World War II issue with too much “holiness”.
Another recent use of this in my works is in featuring Chuck Norris and Summer Glau on The Muppet Show as Grammar Nazis (with a capital “N”) who undergo a gradual Catharsis and become benevolent people.
Furthermore I should note that using "nazi" like that actually underlines the main reason which caused the deterioration of the Nazis in Nazi Germany due the fact that they were too insistent on being strict and avoid breaking or bending the rules, or voicing any antagonism towards Nazism there. This made them into tragic victims who accepted their fate of death and stagnation instead of being action heroes or “hackers” who constantly bend the rules, challenge norms, and don’t accept their fate:
Reflection on the David and Goliath myth and why David there was an action hero and a hacker (and — no! Samson was far from being the only action hero in the Jewish Bible).
Also see "just following orders" or the Nuremberg defence, with which the "I just work here" attitude is not different.
Why do you mention Hitler, Nazis, etc. in some of Your Writings?
Node LinkI found it suitable to use it for them, so I did. For the record, my grandfather lost most of his family during the Holocaust, and so I cannot be accused of misusing such facts. Steven Spielberg whose parents are Jewish Holocaust survivors, also featured the Nazis or Hitler in many films (notably the Indiana Jones trilogy), so if a fire has caught the Firs…
What do you think about Porn?
Node LinkEvery person has an inalienable right to expose his or her body in private, and to allow people to photograph it, paint it, describe it, etc. Sexual activity is also similarly acceptable. Claiming that porn should be illegal or illegitimate undermines both the right of free speech, and the right of a man or a woman to their body.
Furthermore, the artwork that a person decides to enjoy in his free time, is of no concern to the Peace and Justice in a Liberal country, and should not be enforced. Only when a person is influenced from such artwork in his everyday actions, then he may be prosecuted.
Nevertheless, I find most porn disgusting and disturbing, but still think one should be allowed to produce it, distribute it, and experience it. Some of the greatest artists in history produced pornographic or erotic artworks.
Are there any Links to Porn on your Site?
Node LinkThere may be some links to soft porn, etc. Or to individual pornographic pages that illustrate a certain point.