Shlomi Fish’s Homepage

20-Aug-2016: D&D Cartoon and New Humour Resources

Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage.

1. A new D&D-themed cartoon of comparing horse lances is now available in the art section.

2. There is a new humour bit called “The song ‘Wide Awake’ by Katy Perry is Evil.

3. A new collection of factoids, about Windows Update is now available:

   • Windows Update doesn’t.

   • Aesop originally wanted to write his fable as “The Hare and Windows Update” instead of “The Hare and the Tortoise” but could not figure out how the hare will ever lose to Windows Update, even despite him not taking the race seriously.

4. I have now concentrated the tech tips from my blogs on one page on the site for easy lookup and searching.

5. There is a new technical tutorial called C and C++ Elements to Avoid.

6. There is a new list of database implementations.

7. We now mirror the humorous items “What if people bought cars like they bought computers?” and “What if drivers were hired like programmers?”.

8. There are new Chuck Norris factoids:

   • The Klingon warriors’ motto is “It’s a good day to die.” Chuck Norris’s motto is “It’s a good day to kill.”

   • Chuck Norris saved Paradise in order to destroy it.

9. The version control repository was moved to new location on GitHub and we run the build and tests using a Travis-CI continuous integration service. Part of the motivation for the switch to GitHub was because the continuous integration services offered for Bitbucket did not seem as comprehensive or easy as Travis-CI.

Hope you enjoy all that!

See comments and comment on this.

03-Sep-2015: “HTML 6” and a List of Graphics Applications

Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage.

1. A new bit “Announcing ‘HTML 6’, the New Version of the Web” was published on 1 April 2015:

   1 April, 2015, Tel Aviv, Israel: Today, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced the immediate availability of the new version of the web — HTML 6 — pronounced “HTML Sicks [sic]” with the motto “HTML 6 is sick!”. “We concluded that the previous version of the World Wide Web’s standards suite, HTML5, has exceeded its flexibility and usability, and we need to start over”, said Tim Berners-Lee, the director of the W3C.

2. There’s a new list of “Alternative” commercial models for Web-based commerce that do not involve intrusive advertising.

3. There’s a new list of graphics software applications.

4. We now mirror funroll-loops.info (“Gentoo is Rice”), and the old feature “How to Make Square Corners with CSS”, which disappeared from the Web.

5. There are new factoids in the collections of factoids about people and thing:

   A rose by a name picked by Chuck Norris, will smell sweeter.

   The reason the Messiah has not come yet, is because Chuck Norris keeps finding faults in God’s plan for his coming.

6. There are new quotes in the collection of Aphorisms:

   Some people grow older and wiser. Not I. I grow older and more foolish.

Hope you enjoy all that, and if you’re Jewish, I hope you enjoy the upcoming Rosh Hashanah and the rest of the Jewish Autumn holidays.

See comments and comment on this.

05-Oct-2014: Emma Watson’s Visit to Israel&Gaza ; “So, Who the Hell is Qoheleth?”

Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage.

1. “Emma Watson’s Visit to Israel and Gaza” is a work-in-progress Real Person fiction screenplay which aims to bring Shalom to the turbulent Gaza Strip/Israel border:

   Waitress: I hope you’re having a good time, ah…

   EmWatson: Emma… Emma Watson!

   Waitress: Oh! I heard about you, naturally. Are you gonna threaten me with a wand? Heh!

   EmWatson: A wand… yes, the bane of my existence. I’m thinking of collecting money for a public campaign to convert the weapon most associated with me to something more menacing.

   Waitress: Don’t you have enough money for that?

   EmWatson: No, not enough! Heh. And money isn’t everything.

   Waitress: So you’re not playing in films for money?

   EmWatson: Playing in films for money? Of course not! What a preposterous idea.

   Waitress: Ah, nice.

   EmWatson: I’m playing in films for a shitload of money!

2. “So, who the Hell is Qoheleth?” - is a new illustrated screenplay that tells what I imagine to have happened to the author of the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes / Qoheleth shortly after he has written it. The timing is appropriate because Ecclesiastes is being read during the upcoming Sukkot Jewish holiday.

   Josephus: Anyway, can you share some details about your trip? I never ventured a long way past Damascus.

   Athena: Sure! It was very interesting. Most interesting.

   Athena: We travelled with our own people and some Greek merchants, all the way to Athens, and there we hitchhiked a ride with some Assyrian merchants, hoping it will get us closer to Alexandria. There were some guards escorting us, and at one point they disarmed us and threatened us at sword’s point to have sex with them or else they'll kill us and take all our possessions.

   Josephus: Wow! Rape. So what did you do?

   Athena: Well, we consulted between ourselves and after a long while of being really scared, we calmed down a little, and decided that if we are forced to have sex, we might as well cooperate and try to enjoy it. So we told them that we’ll do it willingly and they agreed.

   Josephus: How clever of you! And then what happened.

   Athena: Well, the three of us and her lover each found their own part of the woods, and we had sex. Then, after one or two times, the three men all lost stamina, while we were not completely satisfied and cried for more!

   [ Josephus laughs. ]

   Alexis: Yes! Then we heard each other’s cries and we gathered at one place together still naked with our clothes as cover, and we bitched about the whole situation - in Greek - and the men stood there ashamed.

   Athena: Yes! Anyway, we continued as couples throughout the trip and the men got better in love making as time went by, and they also taught us a little Aramaic. Then we arrived at the junction - they wanted to go to Assyria, and we wanted to head more south, and then all the 6 of us were completely emotional and offered each other to escort them on the way, so we won’t part, but we eventually cared enough about the others to let them go on their own way.

   Josephus: Wow! That sounds like love.

   Athena: Love! Yes! That’s the word. Eros in action.

3. A new essay A #SummerNSA’s Reading has been added for summarising the concentrated “#SummerNSA” / Summerschool at the NSA effort during the summer of 2014.

4. There are new factoids in the Facts Collection:

   “Talk Like a Pirate Day” is the only day of the year when Chuck Norris only talks like a pirate, and does not actually act like one.

   On Yom Kippur (= the Jewish Day of Atonement), Chuck Norris forgives God for his sins.

   Chuck Norris once refactored a 10 million lines C++ program and was done by lunch time. It then took Summer Glau 5 minutes to write the equivalent Perl 10-liner.

5. There are some new captioned images and aphorisms:

   

   Every Mighty Klingon warrior has watched Sesame Street!

6. The screenplay Buffy: A Few Good Slayers has some new scenes:

   [ Faith is teaching Becky and the rest of the class how to throw knives. ]

   Faith: Becky, it’s nice that you hit the mark three times in succession, but you’re not always holding the knife correctly.

   Becky: OK, Ms. Harris. Can you show me how to do that again? [She prepares her phone.]

   Faith: OK, here goes.

   [ Cut to the bullseye - three knives hit it quickly. ]

   Faith: How´s that?

   Becky: That’s very nice, but as my mobile‘s video demonstrates, you didn’t hold the knife “correctly” (in quotes) once.

   Faith: Let me see. [She watches the video.] Oh crap.

   Faith: Becky, Becky… you have a lot of potential. You’re more than a pretty face.

   Becky: Heh, I knew that I have potential, but do you really think I have a pretty face?

   Faith: If my opinion as a straight, married, woman, matters, I think you do.

   Becky: Thanks, Ms. Harris.

   Faith: OK, class dismissed. Please try to practise at your free time, we’re going to have a test soon.

   [ The students rise up and leave. ]

See comments and comment on this.

07-Sep-2014: Muppets ; Emma Watson Tech Interview ; New Aphorisms and Factoids

Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage.

1. The set of screenplays “The Muppet Show: The Next Incarnation” is me taking the initiative for writing screenplays for a new incarnation of The Muppet Show. Currently, there’s a mostly complete episode with Chuck Norris and Summer Glau as two ruthless Grammar Nazis, another incomplete episode hosting some of the characters of Harry Potter, and a preliminary-stages episode with Jennifer Lawrence (crossing Silver Linings Playbook, The Hunger Games, and her personal life).

   “Meet Chuck”

   [ The Muppet Show Theatre backstage. Kermit and Fozzy are there.

   ChuckN enters through the door. ]

   Kermit: Oh hello, Mr. Norris. We’re so glad to have you here, and we would love to learn more about you.

   ChuckN: Thank you, Kermit. You can learn more about me from my 500-page autobiography, which took me an hour to write, and from the comprehensive book of Factoids about me, of which I wrote every one.

   Fozzy: Funny! Funny!

   ChuckN: Indeed. Anyway, I invited a friend of mine, who is even crazier than I am, to join us.

   Kermit: Really, who is this crazy guy?

   ChuckN: Actually, it’s a crazy girl.

   [ SGlau jumps from above the frame to the upper row and then down to where Kermit and Fozzy are standing. Applause. She is wearing a grey, military-style vest with a zipper at the front. ]

   Kermit: Oh, nice to see you here, Ms. Glau.

   SGlau: Shut up, Mr. Frog! I’m here on a mission from the Grammar God. Herr Norris and I are loyal servants of Grammar Nazism, which aims to unite Grammar Europe under the reign of the Third Grammar Reich.

   ChuckN and SGlau: [in unison] Hail Grammar!

   [ Miss Piggy is walking along the upper row with a fellow pig. ]

   Miss Piggy: Well, I don’t think that Miss Mousy is prettier than me.

   [ A shot sounds and Miss Piggy's hat is blown away. Cut to SGlau, who is holding a gun in her left hand. ]

   SGlau: That was a warning shot, Fräulein Piggy. For your information, it should be “is prettier than I”.

   ChuckN and SGlau: [in unison] Hail Grammar!

   SGlau: Let’s go.

   SGlau: By the way, herr Frog: it is not that hard to be green.

   [ They go out of the frame. ]

   Kermit: Meep. I have a bad feeling about all that.

2. “Emma Watson getting interviewed for a software developer job”: there is now an ongoing campaign to make that bit CC-by, so please pledge money if possible. Furthermore, I started adding a “What other people are saying” section:

   • «I would not hire Emma Watson. She’d be good for employee morale, but she’d also be too distracting.» - osoleve on Freenode’s ##programming.

   • «I think we would hire Emma Watson on looks alone. :)» — glange on Freenode’s #objectivism.

3. There are several new aphorisms (some along with captioned images) in the Aphorisms and Quotes page. One of them is «A woman is a lady even if she is or was a porn actress or a prostitute. Treat her with respect, be honest to her — be a gentleman.», which is relevant to the recent celebrity photo leak.

4. There are new humorous facts in the collection of factoids:

   • Emma Watson does not have 10 years of experience in developing Enterprise Java software. However, she has over 10 years of experience in getting shit done - well, on schedule, and at a reasonable cost.

   • Chuck Norris has 99 problems including a bitch. Summer Glau has exactly 98 problems.

   • Xena the Warrior Princess has not met Chuck Norris yet, or otherwise he would have been badly and permanently injured. (Inspired by ZadYree).

5. There’s a new collection of fortune cookies with quotes from the sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

6. There are also new quotes in the Fortune Cookie/Quote collection:

   • rindolf: thecha: hi, what's up?
   • thecha: not much. I am running my trisquel gnu/linux from an usb now
   • thecha: and you?
   • rindolf: thecha: I've been redditting and twittering.
   • rindolf: thecha: and I went on a walk now.
   • pulse: hi rindolf
   • rindolf: thecha: I met a father with two children. he scolded them.
   • rindolf: thecha: I asked him for their names and he said "why does it matter?" :-(
   • rindolf: pulse: hi.
   • rindolf: I also saw a lady sitting on a bench with two Pekinese dogs - one male and one female.
   • rindolf: they barked at me.
   • rindolf: Maybe she was afraid of me (their owner I mean).
   • ezrios: dogs bark at everything
   • rindolf: I also saw some bird watchers in the park earlier in the morning.
   • rindolf: ezrios: some dogs are amazingly calm.
   • rindolf: ezrios: I once met a huge Caucasian Shepherd dog who was less than one years old and called "Rambo" who was super-calm.
   • rindolf: His owner was also very friendly.
   • ezrios: a super-calm Rambo eh
   • epitamizor: cool story bro
   • rindolf: They say the dog and its owner resemble each other.
   • rindolf: epitamizor: every story is cool with the right attitude.
   • rindolf: epitamizor: http://www.reddit.com/r/TMNT/comments/2d9fo7/postrelease_movie_discussion_thread_2/ck3khga - see this.
   • rindolf: ezrios: yes , amazing.
   • rindolf: ezrios: Rambo was the epitome of a tough all powerful super-muscular anti-geeky warrior/action-hero.
   • rindolf: ezrios: but the fact of the matter is that the best combat warriors in the world are: 1. Not very muscular. 2. Geeks.
   • rindolf: http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/philosophy/putting-all-cards-on-the-table-2013/DocBook5/putting-all-cards-on-the-table-2013/best_warriors.html
   • thecha: ok i will try
   • thecha: the dog probably ws being agressive because the owners mood was affecting him
   • thecha: the owner probably was being hostile so the dog followed suit
   • thecha: and the guy with the kids should have just said the names isntead of being a dick about it
   • thecha: you go for walks often?
   • rindolf: thecha: yes, I go for walks a lot.
   • rindolf: thecha: yes, this father should learn some things after fatherhood.
   • rindolf: thecha: the children were nice.
   • rindolf: Oh! and on the way upstairs there was a very young boy with a toy gun and I pretended to wage an imaginary war with him. He enjoyed it.
   • thecha: rindolf-> who won the imaginary shoot out?
   • rindolf: thecha: he did I think.
   • rindolf: thecha: I let him win.
   • rindolf: thecha: he seemed to have enjoyed it.
   • rindolf: thecha: children can be so smart.
   • pulse: i don't think age has anything to do with smartness
   • rindolf: thecha: and it helped brighten my day.
   • rindolf: pulse: yes.
   • rindolf: pulse: I have actually grown smarter with age.
   • pulse: i've grown wiser. not much smarter
   • rindolf: pulse: ah.
   • rindolf: pulse: what's your distinction?
   • rindolf: pulse: I've grown wiser too.
   • pulse: smart is the ability to calculate things fast
   • pulse: wise is the ability to live your life ;)
   • rindolf: pulse: there are more parameters to intelligence than doing fast calculations.
   • pulse: i guess there's certain correlation between the two
   • rindolf: pulse: yes.
   • pulse: i know. there's different types of intelligence
   • pulse: but most types boil down to two things. calculations and speed
   • rindolf: pulse: ah. IQ?
   • pulse: any kind of intelligence
   • pulse: IQ is a sort of generalization of all types
   • rindolf: pulse: see https://twitter.com/shlomif/status/495252148775436288 - «Forget #IQ! #Sloppy → #Confident → #Smart!! #TeamGrimmie #confidence #competence #PublishOrPerish»
   • pulse: but it's also stupid
   • pulse: rindolf, hmm
   • pulse: what am i supposed to see there :P
   • pulse: i still don't know how twitter works
   • pulse: what are those hashtags supposed to be
   • pyon: rindolf: Meh, sloppiness is just sloppiness.
   • pyon: rindolf: One can be flexible without lowering one's own standards.
   • thecha: rindolf you can't let the enemy win
   • rindolf: thecha: yes, bring the Delta Team with Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stalone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and.. Summer Glau (!♥:-)) against this boy.
   • rindolf: there shall be blood tonight!
   • ssta: you really are obsessed with this Summer Glau

7. Navigation blocks, similar to the ones on Wikipedia (e.g: “Template:Star Trek” have been added to some of the pages (like here.

8. I have a new Résumé as a writer and entertainer, which is very short.

9. My essay “Putting all the Cards on the Table (2013)” has been updated and is now available in several different formats, including a one HTML-page-per-section document, an EPUB ebook, and a PDF file.

10. My personal ad (= “I’m looking for a girlfriend”) was heavily updated - it’s currently in English only.

11. Many new scenes have been added to the screenplay “Buffy - a Few Good Slayers”:

    With Buffy

    Becky: Of course, everyone knows that Buffy is better than Chuck [Buffy Facts]. He’s been secretly fighting against her, and so far has lost all of those battles.

    Cliff: Yeah, and her gaze can turn Medusa into stone!

    Chankey: Buffy Summers is not afraid of demons. Demons are afraid of her, and for a very good reason.

    Buffy’s voice: Buffy Summers is always there when people are spreading untrue hyperboles about her.

    Cliff: Oh, hello Ms. Summers.

    [ Buffy approaches them from a different aisle in the library. ]

    Buffy: Hello, kids.

    Cliff: By the way, what is your post-marriage name?

    Buffy: It’s “Summers”. Angel and I are both called that. He didn’t find his original family name usable in this day and age, so he adopted mine. His original name was very aristocratic, and he is actually a direct male descendent of Charlemagne.

    Becky: Ooh… so you are now Milady de Summers? Awesome!

    Buffy: Heh, well, it is Faith that has an unnatural obsession with Milady de Winter — not me.

    Buffy: In any case, for your information, I fought against Chuck Norris several times and lost all the battles. In fact, that was part of the catalyst that made us realise that slayers were only humans and that men can be equally as capable slayers as women. You will hopefully get a chance to meet and even fight against Mr. Norris sometime throughout the school year.

    Becky: I see. So, Ms. Summers, what are you doing here in the library?

    Buffy: I’m looking for a book I misplaced.

    Becky: About slaying?

    Buffy: No, about cooking. A cookbook from the late 60s with a nice spinach, Broccoli and cheese casserole.

    Becky: [Types a few things on the keyboard.] Ms. Summers, I was able to find a recipe for a casserole like that from that era.

    Buffy: Let me see. [Looks] Wow! Looks great. Becky, you've got a lot of potential as a slayer.

    Becky: Why, thank you!

    Cliff: Bleh! [He puts his head in his hands.]

See comments and comment on this.

09-Jul-2014: Buffy - a Few Good Slayers; Summer Glau and Emma Watson Facts; and More

Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage.

1. Buffy - a Few Good Slayers is a new Buffy fanfic screenplay based in a forked branch of the Buffyverse.

   [ Text on the screen: Sunnydale High School Orientation Day ; Sunnydale ; California

   First few chords of Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The U.S.A”. Rebecca “Becky” Shepherd is shown walking in the high school lobby listening to the song playing from her smartphone that is tucked on her belt. She is wearing a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic shirt, and has a name tag that reads "Rebecca Shepherd (Slayer)". ]

   Cliff: Yo, Brony girl, stop!

   Becky: Hey, sorry for not paying attention [she pauses the music]. What’s up?

   Cliff: Chankey here [points at Chankey] and I are looking for a slayer to complete our team. You don’t seem exactly like slayer-material, but since all the other slayers we talked with were taken, I guess we should settle on you.

   [ Becky smiles. ]

   Becky: Sure, I’d love to be team with you. Let’s register.

   [ She uses her smartphone to register. ]

   Becky: OK, done.

   Chankey: [in an English accent] Smashing!

   Becky: Chankey, is it? Are you British?

   Chankey: Yes, Miss Shepherd.

   Becky: “Becky” please.

   Chankey: Yes, well, I am of Indian descent and carry an Indian name. I have photographic memory, and did extremely well in my studies. I was supposed to start studying in Harrow School (the notorious public school, or what you Americans will call a “private school”) because I had many friends there, but then became aware of some demonic activity in Greater London, and was indoctrinated as a watcher-wannabe here.

   Chankey: I don’t have any friends here.

   Becky: [Grabbing his hand.] I’m sure you’ll make some.

   Chankey: Yes.

2. There are new pages with some factoids about Summer Glau and with factoids about Emma Watson:

   • Summer Glau does not have to hurt you if she doesn't want to. Chuck Norris kills everyone in sight.

   • Summer Glau can lead a horse to water, and then it will drink out of its own volition.

   Some photos were also added to the facts pages to spice them up.

3. There’s a new feature about “Emma Watson getting interviewed for a software developer job”.

4. How to Get Help Online is a new feature about where and how to get help online. It has a 2014 edition.

5. “Why I Do Not Trust Non-open-source Software”

6. Page about the new “Back to my Homepage” logo

7. The old page, “Stop Using Internet Explorer!” now has a note as being deprecated and a page with some essential updates

8. There are now EPUB versions of the screenplays for free and direct downloading or viewing. Share and enjoy!

9. I added the section about Rindolf “Aim Very High” Hitlower:

   Not only is Rindolf an evil Reindeer but he is the notorious insane tyrant and mass-murderer, Rindolf “Aim Very High” Hitlower. As you may have guessed, people said that my nickname “Rindolf” reminded them of “Adolf Hitler”, and even though I was offended by it for a long time, I eventually decided to take it to my advantage too. Recently (Late June, 2014) I’ve told people that I decided that in my personal and professional life, I will aim very high in the hope that I will hit the aim or perhaps a little lower, and so settled on this nickname.

See comments and comment on this.

11-Nov-2013: E-mail Netiquette Resources, New Software, and BertycoX’s Music

Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage.

1. There are some new factoids in the factoids pages, and many of them now have a Hebrew translation:

   • Chuck Norris does not keep any numbers on his mobile phone’s address book. Instead, he memorised the entire phone directory.

   • For all you know, you may not exist, and Chuck Norris convinced you that you do.

2. There’s a new section with some articles about E-mail netiquette.

3. The Hebrew version of “The Case for Drug Legalisation” is now at its third version, and was converted to DocBook 5/XML.

4. There are new software pages for sky - a convenient uploading interface, and Maniac Downloader, which is a download accelerator.

5. There are new pages with Links against Adobe Flash and Links against TIOBE - The Test Index of Programming Languages’ Popularity.

6. I have placed the music of BertycoX (originally from Jamendo) online.

7. There’s a new page about “In the Event of My Death”.

8. I’ve placed a very old snapshot of my home site (from 1998) online in a kind of Nostalgia.

See comments and comment on this.

26-Apr-2013: New Story: The Earth Angel; Soviet reversal jokes; new text in The Pope and in Selina Mandrake; “Put

Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage.

1. There is a new story titled The Earth Angel which I have started to write:

   Dr. Alan Stein (Attn.) had not seen that side of Samantha before. As they sat there in the Chinese restaurant, two days before Ari, their system administrator, left for a trip to Israel, Samantha was emitting a lot of profanity, and sharing her frustrations of her life and the world. Dr. Stein was beginning to regret the fact that he had agreed to comply with Ari’s wishes, and invite her to lunch with them.

   Samantha Rodriguez was the newest hire at Alan’s law firm - a brilliant attorney in her early thirties, who looked great, was always groomed, and got a lot of work done, despite the fact that she almost never stayed overtime, and also took many days off. One fly in the ointment was the fact that she was single, sexy, and kept asking her co-workers out on dates, or accepting their own invitations. As much as Dr. Stein agreed that she had been a good hire, he was desperately trying to avoid interacting with her.

   “Anyway, I ended up telling my friend, Jasmine, who can be a real bitch sometimes, to fuck off, and deal with her troubled life herself. I simply ran out of patience.” she said.

   “Bravo!” Ari said while clapping his hands. “By the way, Samantha, how did you become a lawyer?”

   “Oh, that's a long story.” she said while playing with her fork.

   “And we’ve got time to hear it, right Mr. Stein?”

   “Yes, I guess we do.” Dr. Stein answered.

   “Well, I studied Linguistics as my B.A.,” Samantha said “and by the time I graduated, my head was filled with vocabulary, and to a lesser extent - grammatical rules, my heart was broken from many heartbreaks, and I didn’t know what to do with the rest of my life. I ended up narrowing it to three options: 1. Find a paying job - as a programmer or whatever else I could land. 2. Stay in the academia, studying for a Masters and/or a Ph.D. and — 3. Go to law school. I figured out fucking Med School was never my thing.”

   “Anyway, after consulting it with my friends, I became even less capable of knowing what to do. So I did the logical thing - I rolled a die.”

   “A die?” Ari said.

   “Yes, a ten-sided die or a 1d10 in role-playing game parlance. That’s usually what I use. It landed on the law school option, so that’s what I decided to pursue.” Samantha said.

   “So, you placed your fate in the hand of chance?” Ari asked

   “Yes, I did. Nothing wrong with doing that, if you ask me.”

   “Well, everyone say you are an excellent attorney.” Ari noted.

   “So they do.” Samantha said, “Maybe they are right.”

2. The translation of the already written part of my story, The Pope Died on Sunday is now complete:

   Rachel contemplated how to start the conversation.

   “So how did you become an infrastructures engineer?” Rachel asked.

   “Well, ever since I was young, I wanted to be a plumber.” Greg replied.

   “A plumber? Seriously?” Rachel said with astonishment.

   “Yes. Very strange, but what can I do — that is what I wanted to be.” Greg said, “I spent a large part of the summer vacations being an apprentice for plumbers and enjoyed every moment. Anyway, after I graduated from high school, I was planning to go through a plumbing training course and to get my qualification. But my father approached me and told me: ‘Greg, my son, I have, thank God, enough money so you study what you want in university. So why not exploit that? If you want, you can become a plumber who graduated from university.’”

   And he went on: “So I agreed with him, but decided to study the closest thing to plumbing: civil engineering with a specialisation in the engineering of water and sewerage infrastructures. And surprisingly I realised that a large part of it was quite interesting.”

   “So did you become a qualified plumber eventually?” Rachel queried.

   “Yes, I passed the course. But I still got a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and that’s what I prefer to do.”

   “Hmmm…” Rachel said “Finding a good plumber in this day and age, to say nothing of one who is a university graduate, is hard.”

   “Well, I cannot testify that I’m a good plumber. A person cannot testify for his own qualities.” Greg replied.

   “Well, even a bad plumber is good enough for certain needs.” said Rachel and witnessed Greg bursting into laughter.

3. There are some new or extended scenes in Selina Mandrake - The Slayer:

   [ Selina is sitting next to her computer at home with Firefox browsing the Hebrew Wikipedia. She keeps highlighting words and hovering over them to find translations using a Firefox extension.

   There is a signal, and the Pidgin icon in the status bar starts blinking. Selina clicks it. ]

   Mosheh Ben-Amram: [on IM] Hello, Selina! How are you doing, today?

   Selina: I’m fine. Trying to contribute to the Hebrew Wikipedia. These Affixes are driving me crazy.

   Mosheh Ben-Amram: Heh, עברית קשה שפה, but there are worse.

   Mosheh Ben-Amram: האם את מדברת עברית? [= “Do you speak Hebrew?”]

   Selina: Qtsath, or as new speakers will say Qetsath. Heh.

   Mosheh Ben-Amram: Yes, one of the first words you have to learn to say, and it’s already a Shibboleth.

   Selina: Emeth. [= "True."]

   Selina: BTW, are you actually Mosheh Ben-Amram (= Moses) the Hebrew prophet?

   Mosheh Ben-Amram: I won’t deny that I am.

   Selina: Hah!

4. I added a page of “In Soviet Russia” factoids:

   • In Soviet Russia, cats own you. No, wait! Cats own you everywhere.

   • In Soviet Russia, superstition believe in you. (Sawyer X)

   • In Soviet Russia, food tastes YOU! (Leuthihi)

5. “Freecell Solver Enterprises™ Acquires Google Inc.” - a breaking news story published on 1 April 2013:

   1 April, 2013, Tel Aviv, Israel: Due to the spectacular commercial success of Freecell Solver Enterprises™’s Enterprise Edition and its Webscale™ edition, we have amassed quite a bit of cash in the bank, so we decided to make a small but important strategical acquisition. As a result, Freecell Solver Enterprises™ is proud to announce its upcoming acquisition of Google Inc., which will result in an exciting synergic merger.

   Some of the upcoming changes would be replacing Google’s tech support (which is notoriously bad) by Freecell Solver Enterprises™’s world-famous and superb tech support (as detailed in the essay “Seven steps to remarkable customer service” by Joel on Software), as well as integrating Google search into Freecell Solver™ for an enhanced experience in solving Freecell. We are also planning on creating a separate YouTube top-level category for card Solitaire-related videos (including screencasts and presentations).

   Another one is “Announcing New Israeli Usergroups”.

6. There are some new sections in my essay “Putting all the Cards on the Table (2013)”:

   During the Middle Ages, the apprentices of craftsmen graduated to become masters, and started their own shops, at a much younger age than 18. Today, most people graduate from high school at that age, and are expected to remain disadvantaged until then. There isn’t a good reason why the youth of today should not be able to make useful contributions to arts, sciences, philosophy, and entertainment, despite their young age and inexperience.

   Here are some examples:

   1. Dmitri Gaskin is a core developer of both jQuery and Drupal and gave a talk about jQuery on Google Tech Talks, while being 12 years old.

   2. Maria Aragon was 10 years old when she was recorded performing a cover of Lady Gaga’s song “Born This Way”, which has received over 50 million views on YouTube as of April 2013 (and which I like better than the original).

   3. Much previously, Samantha Smith changed the fate of the cold war, when being 10 years old, by the simple act of writing a letter.

   4. In the 18th century, Carl Friedrich Gauss started making important contributions to mathematics from a very early age.

   Our contemporary culture sort of expects kids (what Americans refer to as children, “pre-teens”, and “teenagers”) to remain “innocent”, naïve and inexperienced, and immature, and, as a result, most of them behave accordingly.

7. The abstract to my yet unwritten novella “The Road to Heaven is Paved With Bad Attentions” is now partly translated to English.

8. There are new quotes in the collection of Unix-like fortune cookies:

   An engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says, “Ah, you’re an engineer. You are in the wrong place.”

   So, the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they’ve got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy.

   One day, God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer, “So, how’s it going down there in hell?”

   Satan replies, “Hey, things are going great. We’ve got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there’s no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next.”

   God replies, “What? You’ve got an engineer? That’s a mistake. He should never have gotten down there; send him up here.”

   Satan says, “No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I’m keeping him.”

   God says, “Send him back up here or I’ll sue.”

   Satan laughs uproariously and answers, “Yeah, right. And just where are you going to get a lawyer?”

9. Many meaningful <meta name="description" /> tags were added to the pages to help with the descriptions in search engine results.

10. I added a set of links to all the pages referring to my online presence elsewhere on the web, such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Reddit.

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