Category: Personal

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The Trip – Day 2 – NYC

Today I walked. And walked. And walked. I also had to do my shopping. In order of importance, I had to get:

  • A coat (I didn’t own a coat in Israel). I was walking around with many layers of clothing on me, looking a little bit like a hobo and getting funny looks from store clerks.
  • A GPS device – I will need it to navigate my way around the US.
  • A netbook

The order in which I got these things is:

  • An ASUS eee PC netbook
  • A coat

NYC stores like Best Buy and Circuit City (which is going out of business) were a big disappointment. They only have a small selection of the products they sell online and the staff mostly doesn’t understand the differences between products. Luckily I knew what I was looking for so I didn’t need any help. Only it took me a long time to find a Best Buy store that actually had the eee PC model I was looking for. I still haven’t found the GPS device I wanted.

As for the coat, I went to several stores that a friend recommended but couldn’t find anything I liked. So I just went to a “The North Face” store and got myself a very nice and warm coat that now saves me 2 layers of clothing. “The North Face” products are extremely popular here in NYC.

I went to Central Park today. It was mostly covered with snow and there were very few people (except for the ice skating rink.) A visit in the evening to Chinatown lacked anything exciting (the roads were covered with confetti, though, so I guess there were celebrations of the Chinese new year during the day.) Here are the pictures from Central Park:

Now I’m going to go to a place called Comedy Cellar, a place recommended by a coworker.

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Happy Birthday To Me. I’m 32

I can’t believe I’m 32 already. It seems like only yesterday I wrote the post about my 31st birthday. But no… I checked and it was one year ago. So what happened over the last year? Let’s recount…

On the personal level, well… friends have gone in and out of my life, specifically one new friend that I’m inclined not to talk about which is unfortunate because the last month or so has been pretty great thanks to her. I’ve also spent the last 2 months getting ready for and planning my trip. That was nice, too. The next three months are going to be even better, but this stuff will be included in my post one year from now.

On the professional level, Diligent Technologies was acquired by IBM and now I’m an IBM employee. And two days from now I’ll be an IBM employee on a 3 months vacation. Take that, suckers :) Seriously, though, working for IBM is still not too much different – we do the same work only we got many more big black IBM boxes in our lab than before, a new coffee machine, constant cereal supply and laptops. The switch from a startup to a huge company has been kind of exciting. To say the least it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

So it’s been a pretty eventful year. That’s a good thing. When I started writing I thought it was going to be another “nothing much happened” post, but it turned out to be more satisfying than that.

All 6 readers of this blog are welcome to leave their birthday wishes in the comments. Calling is even better :)

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The “Big Trip”

I wanted to post about my upcoming 3 months long trip for a while now, but I was just… well… lazy.

The trip starts January 25th, just 2 days after my 32nd birthday. I’ll be back in Israel April 19th. The general plan is:

  • 5 weeks in the US. Basically a coast-to-coast trip which includes visiting friends along the way. I still have to plan a course for this part of the trip
  • 3 weeks in Thailand, where I plan to lay around on some beach and do nothing.
  • 3 weeks in the UK. Meeting friends and going to 4 Prodigy shows is what I currently have in mind.

All 6 readers of this blog are welcome to call and say their goodbyes.

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The Prodigy – Invaders Must Die

Yesterday The Prodigy released their new single, Invaders Must Die, which will be the opening track of an album by the same name to be released March 2nd. Personally I love the new track. It’s fresh and fun to listen to. However, most “hardcore” fans are pretty disappointed.

You can download the track for free from the download page in the next 6 days or listen to it right here (quality and loud headphones/speakers recommended.)

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The Prodigy “Invaders Must Die” New Album And UK Tour

Yesterday night Liam Howlett, the mastermind behind The Prodigy, announced that the band’s 5th studio album will be named “Invaders Must Die” and will be released March 2nd. Additionally, an “Invaders Must Die” UK tour dates have been announced.

By pure magical coincidence, the tour dates overlap the dates I plan to be in the UK in my upcoming 3 months trip, which I haven’t mentioned so far on this blog, but I will.

The UK tour has 9 dates:
April
5th – Cardiff International Arena
6th – Newcastle Metro Radio Arena
7th – Glasgow SECC
9th – Birmingham NIA
10th – Manchester MEN Arena
11th – Nottingham Trent FM Arena
13th – Sheffield Arena
14th – Brighton Centre
17th – London Wembley Arena

If you’re interested, you can see the locations on this map.

I will attend the shows on the 5th, 9th, 14th and 17th. If you’re looking for tickets you can get them in the next 2 days before they are in major box offices in The Prodigy’s Tickets online store (the link was sent to fans registered to The Prodigy’s website.)

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4 Years Of Working Out

4 years ago I went for the first time into the gym. I almost never missed a workout, which means that for the first 18 months I was at the gym 6 days a week and then I switched to 4 days a week – a more maintainable schedule, considering that I had a girlfriend at the time and also my body was developing some pains that wouldn’t go away and I associated them with over-stressing it.

Over the past year my weight stayed about the same (~89 Kg) with some minor fluctuations up and down. I look pretty much the same – sturdy with some extra fat around the stomach. I wish I didn’t have that extra fat, but I’ve learned to accept my appearance, as much as a former “fatso” like me can accept his looks.

Aerobics-wise I still do 2 days HIIT and 2 days moderate-level running. The difference is that now I run 11.5K in one hour instead of just 10K. I guess this is a nice improvement from last year… I kind of feel proud of myself now :) I intend to go further and make it a 12K run in the following year.

My muscles have stopped growing. Obviously I don’t invest the required time and effort to grow in this sense, but even though I like to see myself improve, I don’t want to become extremely muscular – I don’t think it’s a look that will be good for me.

Over the past year I switched 2 gyms – one time because the place I used to go to went bankrupt and another because I didn’t like the new gym provided as a replacement for the bankrupt gym. I don’t like changes in that sense – different equipment requires the body to adjust and the HIIT workouts need recalibration, but I think I managed it well and I’m very happy with the current gym.

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Enabling Public Wireless Access With ZoneAlarm Z100G

A while ago I got as a gift a wireless router – a ZoneAlarm Z100G. When I got it at first I defaulted to securing the wireless network from public access (by following this article). Then I thought about it a little and decided to be nice to my neighbors who want to access a wireless network. I mean – why not? Sometimes I try to find a wireless connection with my laptop and it’s very frustrating when I realize that all networks are secured.

Still, I only wanted to enable web access to outsiders using my connection. I don’t want them to use file-sharing on the account of my very limited upload bandwidth.

The “trick” to configuring such a setup is using the rules system (select the “Rules” tab under the “Security” main menu item.) On my network I have a desktop connected to the router with a network cable and a laptop that I occasionally connect through WiFi. Both computers are defined as known network objects and are named “desktop” and “laptop”. See how that is done in the documentation on how to add a network object in the Z100G (hopefully the link is still valid when you’re reading this) or simply click “Help” in your router’s main menu.

The rules I use are as follows (the order of the rules matters):

  1. Allow, source WLAN, destination WAN (Internet):Web Server
    This allows the public web access to all.
  2. Allow, source desktop, destination ANY:Any Service
    This allows my desktop computer access anything.
  3. Allow, source laptop, destination ANY:Any Service
    This allows my laptop computer access anything.
  4. Now there are a bunch of forwarding rules I use for file-sharing and SSH access to the desktop. They are not related to this topic, but it’s important that they will come before the next rule.
  5. Block, source ANY, destination ANY:Any Service
    This blocks all other traffic.

Note that this configuration is very restrictive – with my current rule configuration, if I try to connect another computer with a network cable to the router it will not get any access and I will have to define it as a network object and specifically add a rule for it like I did for my desktop (rule #2). You can be less restrictive with the rules, for example by replacing the last rule with 2 less strict rules just for WLAN (blocking all access to and from the WLAN) and an additional rule to allow anyone who is connected with a cable to access the internet (after all, you probably trust that computer if it’s physically connected to your router.)

A nice feature in the Z100G router is that the wired and wireless LAN are separate. You have to bridge them to allow them to access one another. For security reasons, I bridge the networks only when I have to. When I’m done with the bridge I remove it.

Another important setting is to not allow different wireless stations access one another. Unfortunately here the default is to allow such access. The setting to disable this is in Network->My Network->Click Edit next to WLAN->Click “Show Advanced Settings”->Change “Station-to-Station traffic” from “Allow” to “Block”.

Hopefully I correctly configured my router to allow public web access only. If you think I made a mistake, please let me know in the comments.

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Cypress Hill In Israel: 10 Years Too Late. Still Rock

Yesterday I went to see Cypress Hill, the rap band I really liked 10 years ago and the one that is responsible for my Internet nickname. While rap is not the kind of music I listen to anymore, the show itself was great – these guys can really make a crowd jump up and down with their selection of hits from the 17 years they’ve been around.

I’m glad I went to see Cypress Hill live. I’m only sorry they didn’t come 10 years ago. Considering that I didn’t know the new songs and that I forgot most of the lyrics of the old songs, I probably would have enjoyed the show much more. Going to see them yesterday was like going to see really really good live rap. It was loads of fun.