First observations of the 3rd world

As I mentioned earlier, I had to go abroad for my company to a 3rd world country. Today we arrived and I already have some observations. I don't know if they will hold for any 3rd world country, to this specific one, or even not that. Here they are:

1. The roads are chaos by definition. Everyone is yelling, honking their horns, and cutting lanes at all times in all directions. It is a miracle that most of them do not get killed in the first day of driving. I think that the difference between Calgary and Tel Aviv with respect to driving is as big as the difference between Tel Aviv and this place.
   
2. Time is relative. Just like Einstein said in his theory of relativity. When someone tells you it is going to take 5 minutes better ask him at what speed he is traveling, because 5 minutes can most easily turn into 45. Maybe he is traveling so fast that he is at nearly the speed of light.
   
3. The richer getting richer while the poorer getting poorer. I have two examples from the same luxurious hotel we are staying in. An hour of internet access costs 25NIS (never mind the original currency) , a day gets it to 75 NIS. You can get a car, with a driver and tourist guide for 3 hours, for 50 NIS.
4. People here have uniform fetish! Everywhere you look there is someone in uniforms. It may be that he is a policeman, a soldier, a driver or a janitor. They all wear uniforms. Most of them have some kind of medals and ranks. It is hard to tell who is a super-janitor and who is the police chief.
   

Well, tomorrow the meetings start. We have tomorrow and the day after for meetings and then Thursday starts with meetings and end with us getting home-sweet-home.

Abroad on work

This is the first time that I travel abroad on work. Somehow, never before have I been asked to go abroad, although there was one time that the big boss (Mr Z) asked me how come I'm not going to the Paris Air-show.

This week I'm flying to an Asian country. The people, who know me, know my dislike of 3rd world countries. Specifically the one I'm traveling to on Sunday night. I had no choice, no-one else could fly. I took the required vaccines, the hotel is supposed to be a very expensive and western one, and the meetings will be held in the company's offices, which are supposed to be great. So why am I so anxious?

Anyway, I'll be back on Friday morning. D will be missing me, and I will miss her. We will talk on Skype, hopefully everyday.

Wish me luck.

Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

As mentioned earlier, we are thinking about studies abroad. This means that we are required to prove our skills in English (only me, D is a graduate from a London university), and other fields. D has been studying for her GMAT for a couple of weeks now, and it consumes almost all her free time. I set my date for TOEFL to 14 December. After that I will probably have to take the GRE. Good night and good luck.

Favorite Add-Ons for Mozilla

One of the best things about Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are their ability to incorporate more and more features, functionality and looks. This blog will detail my favorites in both applications.

Mozilla Firefox
Firefox is, by my point of view, the best browser. Even when working in MS-Windows I prefer it to Internet Explorer, and though I have a KDE based Linux, I prefer it to the default Konqueror, which is a relative of Apple's browser.
My favorite add-ons to Firefox are:

1. Vista-aero theme. This theme gives the Firefox, which I think is quite not pretty, a look which resembles Internet Explorer, which is probably the best thing about IE. Requires Java plug-in to run the install.
   
2. Adblock Plus. This excellent add-on simply blocks most of the adds in a web page. It supports a variety of sites which provide data for the blocker. Let me just say that although there is no Israeli site, it still stopped Ynet from displaying most of its numerous adds. Impressive.
3. Google Notebook. This add-on is distributed by Google and allows saving notes, web pages and comments. It is excellent for reminding yourself of things you see and want to come back to. It is offered also for IE.
   
4. Faster Fox. This add-on helps configure Firefox to be an even faster browser. It has several presets, but also allows the advanced user to customize it. The options are almost limitless, and include caching, downloading of "future links", rendering, number of pipelines, etc, etc. Sure, everything may be configured from the about:config in Firefox (another great feature in Firefox), but why not do it with a nice graphic interface?
5. Google Preview. This add on does a simple thing. It shows a thumbnail of the web page that Google returns. Why do you need it? Try it for some time, and you'll be hooked.
   

Other add-ons that have great potential but require more time to get used to:

• Fast Dial, which generates a page with many small pages, like in Opera browser.
• Mouse Gestures, which allows to control many frequently used operations by mouse gestures, as in Maxthon browser. unfortunately, this is not too useful when using a touch-pad instead of a mouse.
• iMacros, which allows to record sequences of operations and then execute them as a single macro. Yes, just like what Apple OS-X Leopard does.

Thunderbird
Thunderbird is an excellent e-mail client. It beats Outlook Express used in MS-Windows. I may agree that Outlook is a better personal organizer, but hey - that's a whole different league. If you want to compete at this level, try Evolution or Kontact. I prefer Evolution in Linux, but Outlook is - for me - a better application.
Nevertheless, Thunderbird is very light-weight, which makes it comfortable, and just as configurable as Firefox. Here are my favorites:

1. Nautipolis. This theme applies icons from art.gnome.com. It is offered in two versions for different versions of Thunderbird: 1.0, and 1.5 to 2.0. As any theme in Mozilla, this too requires Java.
   
2. The most important add-on, as I see it, is Lightning, which adds a calendar support to Thunderbird. After adding this add-on Thunderbird becomes a light-weight personal organizer. Isn't that nice?
3. Provider for Google Calendar. After adding Lightning, why not add your Google Calendar to it? If you don't have one, well, maybe this blog isn't for you. But if you do have one, then this is undoubtedly what you need - a two way synchronization between Google Calendar and Lightning. Did anyone say MS-Exchange server and Outlook?
4. WebMail. With Gmail supported by Thunderbird as a built in, you may wonder what to do with Yahoo mail or Hotmail. Use WebMail as a proxy and then add the extension for your email provider.
   
5. Update Notifier. When you have so many extensions, you want someone to keep track of their updates. This extension does that and notifies you when updates are ready.
6. BiDi Mail UI. If you write emails in Hebrew or Arabic, or other languages which are written from right to left, this Bi-Directional extension will allow you to control the paragraph direction.
   

Conclusions
As mentioned earlier, there are virtually endless optional add-ons. If you find add-ons you like, please add them in the comments so I can check them out. Thanks!

Feeling Down

Sometimes it happens that I feel down. No reason to blame, just the blues.
Today it came down on me. I hate the feeling that I am always trying to keep up with my life instead of enjoying them. Between too much work, plans to study abroad, parents, gym, and, most importantly love, there is simply not enough time in my life. Always something is missing. I'm always late for something, or missing something. Today I felt the effect of not going to the gym for the last two weeks, because of being overworked.

I guess the reason I'm tired of it is because I always feel that I'm letting someone down, not doing everything to the full, slacking. I know that it is me. I'm always disappointed of myself. Even when other people are looking up to me, I feel that they are not seeing the real deal: the fuck-ups, the rounding corners.

The only solution in such cases is to wait for the bad feeling to go away.

Why Apple Hates Us?

Last week Apple shipped their latest upgrade to their world-class operating system: OSX 10.5 Leopard. I guess many of you have heard that already. I guess you already know that OSX now supports Mac computers based on Intel's x86 chip architecture. The same one that runs under the hood of almost every personal computer in the world.
So, the question is: Why not modify OSX to run on any PC and not just Mac? If you wonder about the feasibility of this idea, note that a hacker succeeded in doing it already with OSX 10.4.8. If Apple do that, I guess that many MS-Windows users will shift their preferences to Mac's OSX for various reasons.

1. First, this is a fine looking OS. And it does that without being memory and CPU greedy relative to MS-Windows.
2. Second, it is more stable than Windows, due to its internal kernel which is based on Unix/Linux basis.
3. Third, most (maybe all) of the important software is running on OSX just as well as on MS-Windows. Including some must-haves like MS-Office. This will solve many of current Linux users, who have to settle for less popular software substitutes, like Open-Office.

So, if so many people are likely to leave their Windows in favor of Mac OSX, why not do it? I guess that a move like this may sell millions, maybe hundreds of millions, of licenses, each worth around $129. Why not?

There are only three explanations: One, Apple is afraid of MS. Maybe they are afraid that MS will stop developing for Mac OSX and cut the branch of the tree on which Mac users are sitting. The second Apple are too short sighted and they prefer to sell hardware (iMacs, iBooks, iEtcs.) instead of software. The last one is that they simply hate us, the simple users. Why?