Shlomi Fish’s Homepage

17-Nov-2019: Taylor Swift Factoids; Relicensing Works Offer; New Essays

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

1. Terminator: Liberation is a new work-in-progress fanfic/crossover screenplay:

   A self-referential parody of the Terminator franchise, with Emma Watson as herself and as the evil terminator Hanna, with Arnold Schwarzenegger as himself and as the good terminator, that takes place in Tel Aviv during Passover (when Olamot Con takes place).

2. There are new questions and answers in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) List:

   Why does the site looks old?

   Well, the site's old fashioned look may be part of its charm, and kinda lets it stands 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.

3. I am offering to relicense all the cultural works I created and placed on my site under CC-by if I get 10 million Euro.

4. There is a new essay titled Putting Cards on the Table (2019-2020) which aims to provide a snapshot of Rindolfism, my personal philosophy:

   The Israeli military was small and as there was a lot of work to do to properly secure the Israeli civilians it coined the terms Rosh gadol ("big minded") and Rosh qatan ("small minded") to encourage the soldiers to take initiative and try to perform their jobs as well as possible, regardless of the fact they were paid little.

   This extends to non-military work, government work, and voluntary work or hobbies and endeavours: if you care about something, do it as well as possible and give it enough time as needed. It will get easier and faster in time.

   For instance, a vendor on a candy store or an icecream parlour, should try to greet the customers, be friendly to them, offer recommendations to them if they ask, accept business cards with their personal web sites or social media presence and visit them, and generally treat every customer like royalty.

   If you do this, you'll likely get more returning customers, bigger tips, bigger bonuses and raises, and you may be able to land a better job based on a warm recommendation from your superiors and coworkers.

   The opposite is just following orders blindly, "I just work here" attitude, which is no different from the Nazis' Superior orders - "I was only following orders" which leads to laziness, stagnation, vandalism and sadism, just like the German Nazis in World War II, or the Knights Templar in Saladin's time.

5. There is a new collection of factoids about Taylor Swift as well as new Chuck Norris factoids and new Emma Watson factoids:

   • If Apple ever tried to sue Taylor Swift for trademark violations of Apple Swift, they will spend all their money on litigation, and still lose. This will make many lawyers richer, and the world a better place.

   • Chuck Norris’s roundhouse kicks are licensed under the public domain because no one besides him can duplicate them.

   • Emma Watson played Hermione in the Harry Potter films, but she doesn’t need a wand to kick your ass and wipe it on the floor.

6. "Why I will continue to write my real person fan fiction (fanfic)" is an essay about why real person fiction appears to hurt Hollywood actors and why it cannot hurt singers or YouTubers.

7. "Why Openly Bipolar People Should Not Be Medicated" is a new essay.

8. The site's pages have been converted from Website Meta Language which is slow and errorprone to Template Toolkit which is faster and more predictable.

Hope you enjoy all that!

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18-Apr-2019: Conversion to (X)HTML5, Mobile-friendlier style, cleanups and new content

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

1. Most of the site's pages have been converted to XHTML5, which is the newest standard.

2. The site's style has been made more mobile-friendly (so-called responsive web design). There may be some issues left.

3. The site is now hosted with an https:// URL, for pleasing some browsers which prefer TLS / HTTPS.

4. An announcement of version 4 of Python was published on 1 April 2019.

5. There is a new list of sites I maintain.

6. I've mirrored the essay “Your Programming Language Must Suck”.

Hope you enjoy all that!

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27-Feb-2018: New Guides, fortune-mod maintenance, Project Euler, and Humour

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

1. On 1 April 2017, I published a feature: “The Atom Text Editor has been Able To Edit a 2,000,001 Bytes-Long File”.

2. I recently resumed maintenance of fortune-mod, an implementation of the Unix fortune program for Linux and other systems. Versions 2.0.0 and 2.2.1 were released with many improvements, and we welcome further contributions.

3. “How to share code online for getting help with it” is a new guide I am maintaining under the CC-by licence.

4. “Validate Your HTML” aims to educate the world about the importance of having valid web markup. It is also under CC-by.

5. I now have a page about my Project Euler solutions and progress. Project Euler is a site for mathematical problems which are allowed to be solved by programming.

6. There are new factoids, aphorisms and quotes in fortune format:

   Take your schedule estimates and multiply them by Pi. Take your expected profits and divide them by Pi.

   (My father’s mentor’s advice.)

Hope you enjoy all that!

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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!

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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.

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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. ]

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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.]

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