Category personal

Apr 17 2011

Back to Ramon Crater, camping in the Desert

Camping! I went and spent a weekend with some friends, two from the Netherlands, one South African and one Hispanic Jew who has been Israel for some years now.

Its funny in an age where we try to make our lives more complicated with technology and creature comforts we still want to escape to basics of living under a piece of canvas with just the bare minimum to enjoy being out in the open air.

The Dutch seem to be the most hardcore campers in Europe, and where as I have had a fair bit of experience in camping up in Yorkshire and the New Forest as a child, my friends from this part of Europe seem to be very savvy as using gas cookers and putting up tents.   In addition to that my friend from South Africa was brought in a farm so is very adept at outdoors living also.

I have been to this site before back in about August 2009.    This is inside the Ramon Crater in the middle of the Negev Desert.

Some people opt for a more sophisticated camping experience, needing proper showers.   We opted for a site just rocks and bushes to use the bog.

This site we passed on the way home, just being a bit cheeky using the toilets that were by the road.

Here you can park your tent on the ground or inside the bedouin style huts, which look nicely made.   There is a kids playground in the middle which stands out as a bit odd!

This picture I took out of the window of the car is not that great, but it was a small clip of a large shanty town style village, these are Druze, traveling Arab people who live Bedouin style today often by the side of busy roads.  They may have cars or camels or donkeys and often grow their own groups in their communities.

Apr 7 2011

Meet Teddy from Yerubilee

This week I got to meet up with my friend Teddy Chadwick.

He is a great musician who does Reggae worship songs often a Davidic harp.  I got to meet up with him at a cafe in the Mamila Mall, a district which uses bits of recycled on buildings to create a shopping place mixing old and new parts of Jerusalem together full of cafes, restaurants and clothing retailers.

Teddy goes to my church, and has his own blog on Israel and his music, he gets to travel an awful lot and has been to Singapore and Nigeria in recent times.

Check out his site at: www.yerubilee.com for his band, and also www.jtod.org for his Aramaic bibles he sells.

Also check out his great music (I just bought a signed CD) you can listen to some samples on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWIaJFYHoNc

Apr 7 2011

Seperation barrier and threats to peace

One thing the critics of Israel like to point out is the concrete separation barrier in between the main part of Israel and the West Bank.

A tour leader I spoke to told us that the concrete wall only accounts for less than 5% of the fence in between.

Not so easy to see in this picture perhaps but there is just a chain link fence in between the Jewish orchards and Palestinian towns in the background, the silver things is some rows of fruit trees with plastic sheeting over them.

Here we are passing in a quite narrow strip of land in Israel parallel with Tel Aviv.

I have done some more experimenting with Google Maps.

Note – please press the [ – ] button to zoom out on each of these maps to get a better understanding of where you are looking at.

This line drawn across is only 8.8 miles this show how narrow this section of Israel would be in parallel to a possible Palestinian state, further down a bit is Tel Aviv Ben Gurion airport, this especially needs to be carefully guarded with the flights arriving and departing each day.

This map here shows the Israeli cities of Ashdod and Beer Sheva, both of these cities have been hit in recent months by GRAD missiles, these have a radius of 25 miles /40 kilometres. The diagrams show these cities are just in proximity of attacks from Gaza, now I don’t know where these are launched from in the Gaza strip exactly, so this is approximate but you should be able to get the idea, these cities are just about reachable by GRADs, and there is fear that other weapons could reach further in.

For those of you who think the middle east crisis can be fixed with a two state solution, I would advise you to check out this site, it shows how Israel’s borders are defended, and how a new Palestinian state is impractical as well as wrong I believe from a Christian biblical point of view.

http://shomroncentral.blogspot.com/

I personally want to see safety and security of all people here, but I think its important know exactly the threats and practicalities involved here.

Apr 3 2011

Blogging with Google Maps

In the last few months, some of the more memorable places I have been to I have put on my Google Maps profile. I have added this on the “Blogs by location” link on the right hand side.

Please click the – and + buttons to see a full view, there isn’t an easy way of adjusting the way the zoom before pasting it into my blog.

This is a great way for traveling bloggers to list your favourite places. I will consider writing a how to, if anyone else needs it.

Just one problem I have found, the new Firefox 4.0 seems to have a bug in which I can’t edit and place pins on my maps. Firefox 3.6.15, Chrome and IE8/9 don’t have this problem, and the Firefox 4 issue happens on two different PCs with Windows XP and 7.

Also you can’t create or edit a Google Maps profile under a business Gmail account, I guess Google understands the businesses don’t want their employees to carelessly list their locations of the buildings and staff live on the internet which is sensible.

Apr 2 2011

Quick return to Akko…

On Wednesday after a tricky two days with me and my colleague having to work extra hard to fix IT equipment breaking down in several places, all the staff at Bridges for Peace got to get on a retreat away up north to a Kibbutz converted into a hotel for a relaxing mid week break.

On the way we got to stop off at Akko, an ancient city that I visited only a couple of months ago, there was no obvious toilet block in the main road next to the sea, so it was a case of take a frantic wander round the old walls of city for the loo.

I saw a few new interesting discoveries, last time the sea was fierce and was lashing onto the road.  The time the tide is out, and there is this wonderful mix of ancient ruins and green seaweed or moss out in the harbour.

This adventuorous chap is doing abseiling down the sea walls, and someone else is fishing on the ruins.   I hope they know the tide times!

This may be distressing to animal lovers, but not sure who leaves a box of very new looking tiny kittens on the side of a street?

I found an English speaking young Arab girl, who said they were there just waiting for their mother, but looks to me like they were left for someone to take maybe?  Anyway she put them somewhere a bit more sheltered away from the cold wind coming from the sea.

Next, I get to learn to be a shepherd and see biblical farming techniques!

 

Mar 28 2011

Tel Aviv – robotics competition Part 4 Competition

The competition is here!

Each round is only about two and half minutes, each robot has to scoop up a variety of coloured inflatables and place them on a peg, its a bit like basketball I guess.

The specification of each robot is roughly the same so the size of the chassis, and has a vertical section with some kind of arm, the movement can be with bicycle chain, wire pulleys or hydraulics.

An unusual part of the competition, is each robot has an extra mini-robot, looking like a rollerskate, this gets launched from an extra extending arm, put onto the these poles where it has to climb up and press the top activating a switch making a green light come on, for a massive bonus in points.   As you can expect this is a very difficult task to do in a short space of time, as well as implement into the design of the robot.

My job here was simply as a marshal to gather the shapes and put them on the side in between each game.  There are teams come out after each tournament to load their robot onto a trolley and take back to the pit.  These things look like giant bagels!   The glasses are necessary in case pieces break off a robot, theres a lot of sharp metal bits in the inner workings there.

A lot of the judges have some engineering background, some of the Israelis work for famous names in IT such as Google and Hewlett Packard.  It was good to chat about humorous connections to Futurama (looks like Tel Aviv at the beginning credits of this show!) and I-Robot as well 🙂

The winners!

This was absolutely superb event to be part of, and as Christian and an IT person to participate in this event, I think its humbling that the Lord God gives some of us Christian volunteers extra ways to serve him in doing different and exciting challenges.  I hope this event continues on to help young people with curiosity for technology in a sporting team event and helps this country’s reputation as a place fertile in highly skilled engineers and problem solvers.

Part 1: Setting up at the arena
Part 2: Meet the robots
Part 3: Robot inner workings
Part 4: Competition

Mar 28 2011

Windows 7 90 day trial activation FAIL

I played with some of the beta versions of Windows 7 back in 2009 when I worked in a hospital, and I also got the RC-1 version, I suppose I am late as a full on Windows 7 adopter, I am quite a satisfied user of XP and it hasn’t really showed that much sign of aging despite being around 10 years,mainly because when I am using a computer for personal use, I just want to chat to people, get news, listen to music or buy something online and not have to maintenance like at work.   I didn’t bother with Vista because of its poor performance and stability.

But this week I have decided to be daring and put Windows 7 trial version on my work PC and on my personal laptop.

This trial version is offered to IT managers to test it out for 90 days.  It requires no licence code, just install it and you are done, however you have to activate it.

So far, everything is been running, drivers were no trouble at all.   There is a bit confusion in control panel, finding things, like joining a domain, setting up file sharing and other things seem a bit alien.   The new control panel is like being in a kitchen at a party at a friend’s house, everything is not where you expect it to be, and you open 6 or 7 drawers to find a can opener or something. 🙂

Microsoft has a poor track record for the activation and anti-piracy methods on Windows, you have to jump through too many hoops in the past.   7 seems to be no exception, my relatively blissful new operating system experience has just come to halt.  So why won’t this activate properly on my 2006 model Toshiba laptop?   A brief Google search seems like a weird hardware compatibility problem with certain BIOSes on some PCs.

For instance with XP, try installing Windows Media Player 11 on a normal XP computer with no connection to internet.  I like to set up computers with as many patches and security software before I give it a live connection to the internet, so it doesn’t become a sitting duck for viruses and nasties.  In the case on WMP11 it accuses me of having an illegally licenced copy of Windows.   Its a how-the-heck-did-they-not-spot-that-one bug.   Install it again with a network cable attached you are fine.

Now as this Win7 90 day trial doesn’t have a licence key, I am assuming that I can put it in multiple computers?   Within 90 days I am planning to buy it for myself, and have a new Win7 roll out in progress at work.  So Microsoft, please, please put some proper thought into anti-piracy methods that don’t fail on legitimate users at the wrong time, you will just continuously stop people being early adopters at your software.

Otherwise Windows is stable, quick and very pleasant to use, and will be the next big success for Microsoft, probably with a life span of 10+ years like XP was.

I understand there should be copy protection systems should in place, but its should not be some maddening frustrating that the chances are the user will turn to a dark corner of the internet looking for a way to cheat the system.

Mar 27 2011

Purim antics around Jerusalem

I got to celebrate Purim three times this week!  At church, work and at a friend’s house.

Lots of dressing up!

What was funny, was the number of people dressed up Hispanic or Asian kind of themed things, and some of my friends, from Jewish and regular Christian backgrounds from Peru, Mexico, Japan, China, forgot to get a costume!   I didn’t have much, just a Hawaiian shirt and some flowers round my neck, but most people had some pretty awesome outfits!

I haven’t seen Arab chap with a Tina Turner wig before!

At work, this is a kind of a Jewish equivalent to a Christmas panto.

Got to watch a movie at church about the story of Esther, sadly the DVD seem to have a scratch on it, as it glitched and eventually froze before the end of the film 😦

Ironically as Purim celebrates Jewish people escaping death from the hands of a King of Persia, today the Jewish people face the same old story all over again, with the current leader of Persia (we call today Iran) and Ahmedinjad who has threatened to wipe Israel off the map, and is a top wholesale supplier of weapons to Hamas and Hezbullah.   Some things just don’t change.  Nowadays of course, Israel is threatened by hostile neighbours and the media rather condemns it for taking land that it had sovereign rights for it already, and recent events like rocket attacks, some with 40km radius reaching Ashdod and Beer Sheva, a family murdered in Judea, and a bomb in Jerusalem are only briefly mentioned. 😦

After church I went with some people out on the town as it was Purim and the streets are busy with people in costume.   We headed to this restaurant I have not seen before in Jaffa Street.  I forget the name now, its a soup kitchen with a mostly student and young adult clientele.   Its one of these places with odd pieces of bric-a-brac, ie: a Hebrew typewriter in the window, odd pieces of furniture that made it feel like an old school canteen.   All the cups used to serve coffee, tea or water are all different types seemingly acquired from a jumble sale.

Chandeleir made of spoons!  You can get Shushkar or soup with some nice crusty bread and a beer!

An interesting twist on “time at the bar please!” when the restaurant staff hinted that it was time (about 11pm) to shut, they just put away some of the chairs, and put on some loud techno music on and danced in the middle of the room!  I would like to find out how easy it is to write reviews for travel books as this place ought to be listed in Rough Guides or Lonely Planet books.

As a gentile Christian, I would like to say I like to join in with the Jewish festivals here, but at the same time I still celebrate Christmas and Easter, as maybe the timing may or may not be correct and they have been heavily exploited commercially, but all these events are good to spend time away from work, be with family, friends and personally seek the Lord and having a party and letting you hair down as well is always good.

Mar 26 2011

Jerusalem marathon and dealing with security threats

Whats the best way of getting over a terrorist attack?   Wearing cute rubber wrist bands, twee looking ribbons to put on your jacket, being a Twitter drama queen?   No, none of this nonsense!

As friday was Jerusalem Marathon day, it is a case of just get on with life, no need to cancel anything needlessly.   This meant it was a bit difficult to get to work as the bus services were going to be hugely different with roads blocked off.The day before I saw barriers being put up and large palette loads of bottles of water.

I went to my church for a worship event, the main hall is in the basement of Clal centre in between Agrippas Street and Jaffa Street, but the meeting is on the 14th floor right at the very top, known as the prayer tower, I could open this huge sliding window and get some air and see an amazing view that you can see a large portion of the city, including the new King David harp bridge.   Here I can see right over Jaffa Street in the distance where the bombing was.

Bad luck to anti-Zionist losers 🙂 the event was sponsored by Adidas and the boycotters of Israel who complained the sporting  brand didn’t succeed in ruining the event for anyone! 🙂

As per every event like this, there are police and security to keep the event safe, although it did rain a little (which is a good thing, its is still really needed!)  this was a nice day.   I was at work as normal but I got some things done in our food bank again.   Actually I thank the Lord I was in this place that day due a power cut due to a fault in our building, which I meant I had to manually shut some servers down, there was some equiment damaged by this but is all under control.

This race shows the determination and character of the Jewish people well I think.

Mar 25 2011

Jerusalem bus station terrorist attack

Lunch time two days ago I learned with horror about a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, which has left one dead and 39 injured.

Here, in Jerusalem, a lot Christians and Messianic Jews I know here all know each other, partly down to Facebook I guess, but also as I know numerous different Christian organisations here, and today I hear stories from people who were nearby just a short time before it happened.

Jerusalem’s large central bus station has been targeted before by deadly attacks but not in a long time.  When I have visited it requires turning out your pockets of metal things before going through a metal detector, as well as having your bag put through an X-ray, but not only that, when I have waited to meet a friend outside there, if you are stood still directly outside, then a security guard will challenge you are ask you what you are doing loitering,  I attempted to lock my bike on some railings about 10 metres away from the bus station only to be shouted at that this wasn’t allowed.

Whilst working in IT before I came here I had the chance to see IT solutions, processes and other things that Israel has invented and sold to police, military and government agencies around the world to help other nations fight against terrorist threats.

For me and many of the people I work with, we still haven’t got over the huge tragedy in Japan especially as I have worked several Japanese people, their families were not harmed, but seeing their home countries under danger from a worryingly unstable nuclear power plant and images of massive destruction has to be heartbreaking.  I enjoying working with the Japanese staff, I suppose you don’t see that many Japanese people come to the UK to visit, but I admire that they are so hardworking, resilient, and pleasant to be with.

For me that day, I was at the other end of Jerusalem, in Talpiyot at Bridges for Peace’s Outreach centre, a warehouse building that supplies food to the needy, either directly to people or put on palettes that go out to third party organisations that distribute it, so I didn’t know anything about this until a colleague got a phone call.  Our main building is about 2 miles from where the bomb happened.

I have lived in Portsmouth’s Somerstown district which has a high crime rate, often walked past Guildhall walk, a strip of bars and clubs in the same city so popular for fights and trouble, and ambulance team hovers over this area most weekend nights ready.   I have also been to ghetto parts of Los Angeles (just after 9/11) and Las Vegas which really made me uncomfortable, especially LA’s bus station, especially when you feel like you are being followed.   These things are all relative.   My cousin lives in Christchurch, New Zealand and he has had to deal with the devastating earthquake there, that has happened twice now.

Some people that visit Israel are surprised at how much security is here when you go through the airport and how metal detector doorways are in shopping malls and restaurants, its not a big inconvenience when go out and about town.

I do feel normally very safe here.   I would urge anyone who is thinking of visiting the holyland not to be deterred by current events as long as you are sensible and stick to known areas.