My Cool Links List

Table of Contents

Studies Related

The Technion Home Page

The university where I studied in.

Department of Electrical Engineering

My Department.

The Computer Networks Laboratory

A very cool laboratory where I did my projects and liked to hang out in.

Current Workplaces

Past Workplaces

Oleh

Oleh are a design studio and marketing firm. They are based in Jerusalem, Israel.

PTI - Perl Technology Israel

PTI is a small consulting and training firm that specialises in open source technologies such as Perl and the Subversion version control system. They are very supportive of open-source in Israel, and organise many important events and activities.

Smart Link develops software-based modems for Windows (and maybe Linux too by now). It has also now entered the ADSL market.

Elpas Electro-optic Systems Ltd.

Cortext Web Design

These are my previous workplaces. Check them out, if you'd like.

Philosophy and Politics

The Google Directory Objectivism Branch

I became very interested in Objectivism in the past few years, so I recommend you take a look. Objectivism is a school of philosophy that deals with politics, ethics, law, and art. It has a human and freedom centred philosophy, yet is very strong and uncompromising.

The Google Directory branch (based on dmoz.org's) is a good place to start looking for Objectivist resources on the web, and there is a lot of introductory material there.

The Neo-Tech Homepage

"Neo-Tech" is an extension of Objectivism that I also became familiar with. It has some substantial additions over Objectivism. For example, it integrates psychology and business advisory into the philosophy.

Neo-Tech is commercial, but the material on the web-site is quite good to get a thorough understanding. If you are more serious about it, you are recommended to order "The Neo-Tech Discovery", the main book of Neo-Tech by (snail) mail.

See my guide to Neo Tech for an explanation on how to use the material that can be found online.

Atheists of Silicon Valley

Many good resources about Atheism. Includes: Why Atheism, Over Three Hundreds Proofs of God's Existence (humorous), and Quotes from the Christian Bible.

Linux and Free Software

The Linux' Homepage

The Israeli Group of Linux Users

I'm very interested in computers. For a long time I knew DOS and Windows were bad, but could not tell why. When I started working on UNIX, I realised what a good computing system should be like, and have seen the light.

I am still keeping and experiencing with Linux on my home computer. Linux is a free UNIX-compatible operating system available for PCs and other architectures. I recommend it to anyone who wants to experiment with UNIX on his computer.

The Linux' homepage contains most of the information you'll need to know about the Linux operating system. I'm also a member of the Israeli Group of Linux User's Group, which is the local Linux mailing list, community server and users' "guild".

The Haifa Linux Club

The Haifa Linux Club (or Haifux for short) gives lectures on Linux-related topics every two weeks, and organises other events, such as "Welcome-to-Linux" sessions, and Installation Parties. I gave a few lectures on a myriad of topics there, and enjoy going to listen to the other people lecturing.

Tel Aviv Linux Club

The Tel Aviv Linux Club (or Telux for short) is a club in a similar format to Haifux. Right now, due to the fact that I'm living in Tel Aviv, I tend to attend its lectures and be more active there, instead of in Haifux.

Hackers-IL

Hackers-IL is a community of Israeli-oriented hackers (= technological enthusiasts, not computer intruders) focused on discussing philosophical computing issues and discussing other areas of science.

Advogato - Open-Source Advocacy

A web-site dedicated to open-source advocacy.

Software "Gurus"

Eric S. Raymond

Eric Raymond is the number one Open-Source Guru. On his homepage one can find the seminal The Cathedral and the Bazaar series (which I think any software engineer should read), and other truly enlightening articles.

Joel on Software

Joel Spolsky is an experienced information technology worker who maintains a site in which he expresses his bold opinions regarding software management and its distribution. I don't agree with everything he says there, but some of his articles are very enlightening. He also has a very funny and amusing style of writing and look on life.

Paul Graham

Paul Graham is an experienced programmer in LISP and other languages. His articles are insightful, interesting and thought-provoking.

David A. Wheeler

An open source engineer and consultant. His lines-of-code counter program (SLOCCount) is always good for a nice amusement, and his analysis based on it is much more awe-striking. Has other good articles.

Linas Vepstas

His web-site contains pages with a lot of information about RAID in Linux, CORBA, clusters, bug tracking. Also has some software he wrote, papers on software freedom and other oddities.

Rick Moen

Net-geek for hire and Linux Guru extra-ordinaire. Contains more philosophical than technical information about Linux, but still useful stuff. Includes: why forking does not happen a lot and is not a threat, and a guide to establishing a successful Linux User Group.

Michael David Crawford (GoingWare)

His web-site contains a large collection of articles for interest. Among them there is "Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads".

Jamie Zawinski

A very famous software developer, and his homepage that contains a lot of interesting information and links. See also the Wikipedia entry about him.

My Friends' Home Pages

Haifa Linux Clubbers

Israeli Perl Mongers

Weblogs I like to read

Weblogs are the latest (as of late 2003) craze in the Internet and everybody and his mother have to have one (me included). I used to be quite a sporadic in my weblog and news-site reading, until I installed an RSS aggregator, which fetches RSS feeds for the new entries and allows me to view them. This has changed my life and now I can read much more news blog entries, etc. without visiting dozens of sites. Here's my OPML file which contains all the blogs I monitor. Here is a smaller list, which will probably go unmaintained eventually.

Netcasts

Netcasts (or Audiocasts/videocasts/vlogs/podcasts) are irregularly updated blogs with music or video attachment. These are the videos that I follow:

  • Perlcast - an audiocast about Perl. The first netcast that I started listening to regularly, and still one of my favourites.
  • FLOSS Weekly - an audiocast with interviews related to Free, Libre and Open Source Software (or FLOSS for short).
  • PC Load Letter: Two Guys, One Mic - an audiocast by Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick (of Subversion fame) where they discuss various open-source isssues. It has a very cool opening music.
  • Zulo Podcast - an Israeli and Hebrew podcast about Free Software and other Tech issues.

Here's a list of some of my favourite sites on the web that can direct you to other sites of interest:

Interesting Reference Sites

  • The Internet Movie Database - an on-line database with a lot of film-related information.
  • WWWebster - a useful on-line version of Webster's dictionary of the English language.
  • The Linux Documentation Project - documentation on all aspects of the Linux operating system.
  • The Jargon File - a dictionary of computer geeks' jargon.
  • Slashdot - a really cool computer-related news page.
  • The Wikipedia - a world-viewable, world-editable encyclopedia that is very comprehensive and getting better and better all the time. (feel free to contribute something of your own!).

Software

Open Source Software

Refer to this link, for a page about my favourite open source.

Non-open-source software

Who says all commercial software is bad? Here's some of the non-free-as-in-speech software I came to like.

  • Microsoft Excel - the best spreadsheet program I've worked with. Excel 95 was nice; Excel 97 and especially 2000 were buggy as hell and in general hideous. Excel XP was finally a new decent version. I haven't encountered an open-source product that's quite up to it, but I'm hopeful something up-to-par with it will be developed in the future.
  • Corel-Draw - an excellent vector graphics program for Windows (with a lesser Linux availability), which is very easy to use and yet very powerful. The only limitation I found in it was that it does not (or at least did not) support Alpha translucency well. (For a program with this capability, my favourite is the open-source Inkscape.)

MOD Files

MOD Files are music files that are based on recorded instruments, played at various frequencies to generate the various notes. MOD files can be played on every machine that has a digital audio channel, and generate music with up to 32 simultaneous channels.

Here are some links with software and information about MOD files:

Humour

Cartoon Strips

  • Garfield - a fat cat with an attitude. (and a stupid owner and some friends) Lots of slapstick and cheap humour.
  • Luann - a comic strip about adolescence. Very funny.
  • Ozy and Millie - a comic strip about two young foxes, along with their fellow company. Very funny humour, with a nice plot, and many Zen-like discussions.
  • User Friendly - a very funny comic strip about an unusual Internet service provider.
  • HelpDex - a funny strip about Linux.
  • Bob the Angry Flower - Jokes about Science, Philosophy, Fiction, etc. I don't always understand the punchline.
  • FoxTrot - a comic strip about a funny family. Lots of geek humour and stuff.
  • xkcd - "A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math and Language" - a geek webcomic which is published once every few days, and features thoughts about computers, culture, language, mathematics and other geeky subjects. Hint: there's a tooltip for every cartoon with an extra insight, if you hover above it with the mouse cursor.
  • Everybody loves Eric Raymond - another geek comic about the Linux world's celebrities and current events.
  • Mythtickle - a cartoon about various Mythological figures and their thoughts.
  • Working Daze - a comic strip about a crazy IT workplace. Lots of geek humour.
  • Grand Avenue - this is a comics strip about a grandma raising two grandchildren and their adventures.
  • Noise-to-Signal - a philosophical comic strip about the social web. Updated very irregularly so just subscribe to its RSS feed.
  • Us the Robots - an entertaining (and irregular) 3-D cartoon strip made using open-source software. Funny, surreal and philosophical.

Funny Stories

Funny Pictures

Funny Videos

Funny Music

Online Games and Puzzles

Wallpapers and Other Pictures

Music to Buy and Download

  • GarageBand.com - a site for Internet bands and their music. Many quality Music recordings for download.
  • Israeli Music - a site for International orders of CDs of Israeli artists.
  • Magnatune - a record label that publishes artists whose songs are under a freely redistributable licence.
  • Last.fm - a social music service, which learns what you like and allows you to listen to music based on tags, or related to a certain artist. A great way to discover new music.

Free Musical Downloads

Web Design and Programming

Various Sites of Interest

  • Presentation Helper - a great site dedicated to the various issues of giving and preparing a presentation.
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