Category personal

Jan 24 2011

Mount Hermon snow trip: Part 1, go forth north!

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

On Sunday I got up very early to meet with friends to get to the snow capped Mount Hermon.

This place is not so well known by non-Israelis, as its at the very extreme north east corner of country, where the borders are for Lebanon and Syria.

After a not so pleasant start of my phone waking me up at 4am, necessary given the time to get up there, after teetering around my flat to get things together and have breakfast without waking up other room mates, strangely probably because of the weather is quite cold also at this time, I decided to do a fast sprint for no real reason on my bike out of East Tapliyot all the way through central Jerusalem all the way up Jaffa Street to the main Jerusalem Bus Station only took just over 30 minutes, quite amazing consider how slow I normally pedal.

Once off the bus close to Rachel’s house, the sun was just coming up.   This trip came at a good time seeing I was disappointing in not seeing my dad up here and was also concerned about a lot of choices I have to make this year, so this excursion was a welcome change, one of a lot of blessings this week actually, getting over a stupid week-long cold another one, and also once at the bus station finding a coffee shop that was open there was another one.  I was just about to text my friend Dave to see if he was close and he was suddenly in the shop in front of me.

The drive up there is different from previous drives up north I have done.  It involved going back on ourselves to head down towards a bit of the Dead Sea, then up from the West Bank, on a main road that passes through some Palestinian towns, at times running parallel with the Jordanian border as this above picture shows.

As we overtake this Nissan Micra on the motorway, if you look really really carefully on the horizon you can see a faintly see Hermon.  Once you get as far as Tiberias, the white peaks on it start to become prominent.

This drive through a small but friendly Arab village up in the Galilee, we got some directions as we kept going higher and higher.  This town had a couple of interesting bronze statues that looked more like something from native American history I have seen in Arizona that from a Galilee Arab community.

This felt very different from any part of Israel I had been before…

1/ Go forth north! – 2/ Snow patrol – 3/ Sloping off – 4/ Nimrod’s Fortress – 5/ Badgers Rock

Jan 22 2011

Where is home

This week I have been thinking about living in two different places, and how there is a big change in emotions from exiting one and going to another.

Going back to Portsmouth felt very strange, I wasn’t used to colder temperatures, seeing snow, other odd things like seeing much newer cars (Israel has plenty of cars from 1990s and sometimes older)  a few people have left my church and a fair number of new people there.  It was nice to see various different friends, but I didn’t get to see everyone I hoped to see.  It was great to go to a Christmas Eve mass service in Portsmouth Cathedral, also nice to hang out at the legendary Chinese buffet ‘The Water Margin’ at Gunwharf keys with a few other single chaps from church including several gents who are in the navy and are back on shore, from being away in foreign lands.

Back in Israel, in the organisation I work for there are staff from all five continents, I also see Jewish people with almost every skin colour.

Where as in recent times we may have immigrants come in from Asia and East Europe in the southern UK where I am from, this had led to perceptions of British people often anxious about culture changing to suit foreigners at the expense of people born there.

One of my cousins was born in Iran and one in Cameroon, due to overseas work my uncle did, and now today three of my cousins live in Texas, New York and New Zealand.

I think you look back in history very few people live in the same place in their whole life, for instance:-

Charles Dickins: Born Portsmouth, died  Higham, Kent

Albert Einstein: Born in Württemberg, Germany, lived in Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany again, died in: New Jersey, USA

Arthur Conan Doyle: Born in Edinburgh, lived in Plymouth, Portsmouth and London, died in Crowborough, East Sussex

Jesus Christ:  Born Bethlehem, grew up Nazareth, died: Jerusalem

Jesus himself said he didn’t have an actual defined home: Matthew 8 : 20 – Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

Sometimes its hard to define where home is.  People often move because of seeking work, getting married, getting education, finding affordable housing or for other reasons.

I am in Israel currently until May when my visa runs out, where as I like volunteering here in Jerusalem, it isn’t home, but on the other hand I may not stay in Portsmouth after that.   Its really hard to figure out what happens when you donate your time to a charity organisation and what to do when your planned commitment comes to an end.   Its only by trusting in the Lord I can get peace of where I will be next.

Jan 16 2011

important anniversaries in 2011

This year marks some interesting anniversaries

10 years since the 9/11 attacks in New York, Washington.  Still a terrifying attack which seems so meticulously planned.  No conspiracies just radical Islam who masterminded it.

10th anniversary of Wikipedia the online encyclopedia

marks 10th years of Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system was released.  Still popular and its now Microsoft’s enemy to try and convert everyone to switch to Win7.   Many owners of Vista and 7 based PCs complain they wish they had the speed and simplicity of XP.  It took a while for XP to mature though, it was until several service packs later there was proper firewall, wireless support or use hard disks over 120Gb.  Still the most popular Windows ever, and the longest lived operating system ever I think.  Mac OS X came out a bit before but its changed quite a bit since when going from 10.1 to 10.2 then 10.3 etc, and now Macs have totally different CPU architecture now.

20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is quite a monument where I am, as this meant large numbers of Jews from Russia and ex-Soviet nations could move here. Currently around 15% of Israelis speak Russian.

20 years also since Ethiopian Jews were flown with El-Al airlines from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv, giving them a new home in Israel, following poverty and hardship for the African Jewish community.

Jan 16 2011

Jon’s IT predictions for 2011

In the old days you turned on the Telly and watched Tomorrow’s World for exciting new developments in technology. New gadgets, exciting products that would bring jobs and boost the economy, and revolutionary medicines and treatments for people in hospital.  Sadly a lot of things on TW never got anywhere, and it was a shame the BBC pulled the plug on this show in the 1990s. Pioneering British inventors like Sir Clive Sinclair, and Trevor Bayliss were often featured.

Heres my predictions for changes in the technology world this year:

Buying things online from a mobile device will start to take off, with extra versions of ecommerce sites available made for phones. I can see that you could go to a night club or live music events and buy songs from your mobile device and the venue could promote and take a percentage from buying songs.   Lots of people would be happy to spend on small impulse type purchased inspired by things they see on a billboard or whatever.

Location based mobile applications start to get much bigger.   Clocking in and out of work would be good by GPS.   How about a real life version of the ‘Tron’ lightcycle game (you may know this game as Snake on mobile phones from the 90s) where you can walk or drive around a location against a friend, hitting that invisible line made by your friend means you are dead. I think location based services have a lot of value for businesses to use a clock in type set up for seeing if employers have got in on time, and compliance with fire services. Because of this there are greater security problems with people being careless with keeping their day to day events online, just like there have been burglaries done after victim said they are away on Facebook.

Microsoft will gradually get businesses taking up Windows 7, but for most IT managers its a case of wait and see how someone else gets on, plus there are too many legacy apps that may not work correctly with XP emulation.

Tablet computers will quietly disappear again as they are just novelty devices for web browsing and little else, people will go back to using laptops, the means to use finger gestures to do actions is clever, but with no keyboard, and in the case of iPads with no USB or SD card slots for cheap flash storage, you can only ‘consume’ information and not create it.   Can you imagine people doing serious work that involve typing more than a few sentences?  Tablets would need to be set on a stand to angle them at comfotable angle.   Its really only half a laptop with no means to pivot the screen into a usable way that doesnt bring on neck or back ache.  I think interest in iPads from Apple fans but will start to wane as well.

Google and other search providers will promote statistics. I think people will want to more figures of what’s being searched for and current market trends. Go on Amazon and try and buy a book that out of print or a CD thats been deleted and you have options to buy a second hand one from a third party seller.   Information could be used to tell book publishers and record labels there is demand for certain things no longer available, and thus could justify a new print run.  In 2010 Google (I think) bought about 20-30 start up companies, they will continue to grow massively, they are already looking out for a bigger office for their Israel operations.

Google’s Chromium laptops get canned. There are not cheap enough, and there is too much competition, people are content with their current laptops, and not enough people are using cloud applications yet.   Its a good ideas but the public aren’t ready to give up using localised apps at the moment.  Dumb laptops for cloud only apps could make it in a few years though.

Mozilla, please market Firefox to grown ups like IT managers and persuade them to drop legacy browsers (Internet Explorer)  the current way Firefox is promoted is like a bunch of hippies in a VW bus selling organic soup or something.

Internet service providers should cut off people with severe malware or virus attacks, so should public hotspots, a feature to alert botnet activity or other activity I would expect could be built into enterprise grade wireless routers.

Digital watches with colour screens. Don’t know if they exist yet, but why not? Plug it into the PC and change the numbers fonts style, change the background, put a personal picture as a background screen, just like those LCD picture frames.  I think kids would love them.

Button MP3 players. Heard this on the radio the other day but also seen them online. A button type badge with a self contained MP3 player you pin on your jacket which you attach your headphones. You have a badge with the name of the band you can make a statement about and listen to the album of songs which are fixed on this simple music player. If these could be offered cheaply, they could be a nice way to buy and listen to music and lend them to friends without any legal problems, I think they would also become collectable as small run volumes of certain albums are produced.  Easy to lend them to friends also with no legal issues.  I think its a fab idea, something that would of been great in 1960s if mp3s where around then.

Jan 15 2011

Back in the holy land for 2011

After a 3 week break to see family for Christmas and New Year and see my home church and friends, I am back in my flat in East Talpiyot, south part of Jerusalem, having flown back on tuesday.

The flight was a bit more eventful than I would of liked, once aboard the Easyjet flight in its usual orange livery in Luton, we were advised by the captain that the plane could not take off due to a warning light the advised of a part on the plane that needed to be replaced, at first it was thought that a part could be brought over from Heathrow, after a while we were told this was not possible and that a replacement plane would be here shortly.  However the other plane was smaller and not able to take all of us, so it was back to the lounge and told to wait for the screens to show an announcement.   A refreshment voucher was offered to the value of £3 ($5 or 18 Shekels)  which makes me think that the voucher scheme for delayed passengers appears to be a bit out of touch with inflation, this got me one coffee as another 20p was needed for a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

It was not until 4 hours later another flight was ready for us taking off at 3.30.   On the flight its quite interesting listening to British Jews speak in Hebrew with an English accent, I forgot my earplugs as I always seem to be sat near screaming children on flights but I did bring an inflatable neck cushion for a bit of a doze on the flight.   It left me some time to pray, as I also forgot where my iPod cable was and there was no chance of any tunes or TV shows as the battery was flat.  When exiting the airport I handed over my passport for examination which after being asked my purpose (volunteering) a couple of times there was a awkward long 2 minutes as the woman checked my details on her computer.

Once on the Sherut (a bright yellow Mercedes 12 seater minibus) it was just an hour or so to get to my flat, which I arrived at about 1.30am IL time.  I wasn’t feeling that tired by the time I got there.

Its freezing here, a different type of chill than the UK, but I am not used to it, I have not experienced Israel in early winter months.  It was cooler in December for sure and until mid-november I was wearing just one shirt.  The downside is my flat like most I see in Jerusalem is made of concrete (with the familiar white stone facade) with no curtains to insulate the windows, only roller blinds.

Yesterday we got some rain, it may of only been for 10 minutes or so before I went to bed yesterday but the metal rails of the balcony of my flat were still wet when I was up the next morning so this is a good thing this country is so desperately in need of.

More articles will be listed soon.

Dec 14 2010

Land of the bible room gets wireless

This week, one of many things I had been doing at work is put wireless internet connection in our teaching room to aid with presentations.

Here is the teaching room.   Its a place we have our devotions or worship in the morning and bible teaching and conferences happen here too.  The room has been modeled and furnished to look like something out of the time of Jesus.  The opposite side has a roll down screen to use with a projector.

Some of the awkward stuff is done, the chaps from the home repair team  (they fix houses of local Israelis who can’t afford to have repairs done themselves) did all the messy stuff of laying the cables under the floor of the flat above, we just needed to fasten the wiring to some sockets and configure the router 🙂

I got to learn a new skill, making network cables from scratch, using this special crimping tools to clamp on the connectors on the Cat5 network cables

In the top pictures I used this punchdown tool to fix wires the back on the network sockets which are carefully hidden behind some pillars.  My colleague Christopher used the laptop to configure the router, but had some similar problems to I had with getting IP address range correct, the router is hidden up above this bamboo ceiling, only visible up there by some faintly flickering lights.   All the technology runs transparently so our senior leadership can do presentations with a minimum of clutter.  Its not finished yet, we ran out of time to get the router settings correct.

Dec 14 2010

App store for free software?

General IT wishful thinking – skip this to next article if you are not an IT person.

Following Apple’s App store for the iPhone got rolled out also for the iPad and imitated for Android and Windows phones, it seems Apple want to adopt the same methods for people buying software for Macs as well.

I personally this is a great idea, some people will still want to buy software that arrives in a box with media and documentation that they can put on a shelf they can get to if support query or a reinstall becomes necessary, but I think it would good to give the customer a choice.   Just like music can be downloaded or its nice to have a tangible item, an actual CD with artists notes, lyrics etc.

Heres an idea, what would happen if the free/open source software movement could have a online software store?

Free software as alternative to popular commercial apps can be got from sites like www.alternativeto.net or www.osalt.com, but instead of downloading an executable file, you have an automated way of doing it using a simple browser plug in.  Why?

There is a quite a bit of usability aspect which is not always factored in on some software.  Some free software, the method of downloading the app can a bit confusing.  Anyone who has downloaded a Linux ISO image knows this, you get taken to an FTP site with a whole load of confusing files, which its not easy to tell which is the download that suits you.

A lot of consumer users don’t free software as they don’t know a lot of exists.  They use Internet Explorer as that was the browser that came with their computer, and they don’t want to change anything as they don’t feel confident to do it.   Joe Consumer may often not know how ZIP or RAR files are handled or what they are for.  As an IT pro I had never heard of Virtualbox, a free virtualisation client as an alternative to VMware and Microsoft’s Virtual PC until a work colleague told me about it.  I have yet to find a really good web site that announces new and exciting developments in free software thats not just geared to coders and developers.   So essentially a typical consumer goes out to a physical shop to buy software as its too confusing working out what software is free and what is a trial version and what comes bundles with spyware and other unwanted rubbish.

I use and recommend Infrarecorder to burn CDs and DVDs on Windows PC rather than the more common commercial Nero burning suite which has got so over complicated and comes with many annoying unwanted extras which have caused crashes and stability problems in previous places I have worked for.   Infrarecorder is great as it does everything you want burning discs easily without any fuss.

You could:

1/ Have a simple way to deploy top quality free software for all type of people, via a portal which makes installing onto your computer in a standard uniform way (Windows/Mac/Linux)

2/ An option to pay some money for software thats normally free but get a support package, ie: printed manuals or training or X number of tickets or hours or professional telephone or email support with a specialist who know a lot about this app.    Or, sell extra tools to deploy apps in a large network environment, like with SMS that rolll out apps silently to each workstation.

A check box would be default only search the free software store for fullly completed release apps, unchecking the box would should beta test versions of software with a usual disclaimer that this software is not production ready yet.

More and more free software is multiple languages as well, a search engine could be customised for all languages or English only.

The software store would only have applications that follow the GNU general public licence for free software,  ie: this means nothing with spyware, bundled toolbars or other tat.   No trial versions commercial applications either.

I think this would give the open source software movement more audience from all kinds of PC users of all platforms, all abilities, consumers and businesses alike.

Dec 12 2010

Winter in the holyland with fog and wind

This strange fog seems to happen during colder times here, I suspect this the not the whole country that has this, probably just the more mountainous places like Jerusalem, Dead Sea, Golan Heights, etc.

There was some very strong winds this weekend so all of saturday I stayed indoors and did writing, reading or watched films.  Its not nice out there as the wind brings over sand and dust from Egypt.   Today the wind is strong you can see this cafe has tied a parasol to some traffic lights.

I didn’t get a picture of the view of my house although a lot of the Arab district closeby is mostly invisible.

After church on sunday night you can see the walls of the old city looking kind of fuzzy.  Me and my friend braved the cold chill before head to the house of prayer building next to the Zion Gate hotel then back to my flat to watch a bit of telly.

Today, I woke up with rain outside, this time lots of it, this made the sand that had settled on the balcony turn into a weird type of mud.   All cars looked grubby, although to be honest no one seems to bother washing their car here in Israel as all cars seem to have a layer of dust on them anyway.

I am wondering what sand storms does to your health.   In other middle east cities such as Cairo or Tehran this is a massive problem with pollution and there is a layer of smog over the city, and lots of people die each year not from smoking but from respiratory related diseases from pollution.

Forest fire, sand storm followed by at last some decent rain, it does seem like the winter season suddenly came in a week.  I was still wearing just one shirt only a week ago when out, oh well, at least it will be a bit easier to get used to the UK climate when I fly back next week.  I have yet to see a thunderstorm here though.

Dec 11 2010

Turkish massacare of Armenian people remembered

Back earlier this year there was the convoy of protestors from Turkey.

At the same time, around the Christian Armenian community in Jerusalem’s old city put up lots of posters around the city warning what happened just under 100 years ago.  Click to zoom.

This was a reminder of the men and women killed in a genocide against the Armenian people.   With so called peace ships that fooled the media supposedly trying to help Gaza but had terrorists with weapons, its a warning that extremist Islam affects everyone.

Dec 11 2010

St Peter’s church in Gallicantu

After visiting the possible location of the last supper, me and my friend Dave took a look around this section of the old city.

This is the famous French Catholic church St Peter of Gallicantu, its at the south west section of the old city, close to the walls.   Like most of Jerusalem, this place has been destroyed and rebuild many  times over, so the building you are seeing now was built in the 1920s and repaired quite a few times since then.

The images set into the walls of the inside of the church are certainly striking and beautiful as well as the outside and pictures set into the windows.  There is Jesus at the last supper and there is Peter and Jesus on the other picture, if you look closely you can see Roman soldiers warming themselves around a fire.  The text is in French.

There is three main floors to the church, you can get to another hall below, and a basement underneath that.

This plaque hints at that visions have been seen in the natural pattern on the stone here, I didn’t go looking around to see if this claims have any truth to them though.

There is large amounts of archeological remains in the yard outside.

Left: under this canopy there is a complete model of the old city you can see.  Right: St Peter’s from a distance with an interesting block of flats overlooking it and the Arab part of the city and the Mount of Olives.

Atop of the church is a symbol of a cock, a sign of when Peter denied Jesus three times, because of the cock that crowed, as told in Matthew 26.