Month: November 2003

Moments Next to You

It came to me in a dream once, inspired by Supergrass’ “Late in the Day”, then re-inspired by Mike Watt’s “Intense Song for Madonna to Sing” and zombo.com.

C              Ab7
Keep me, these moments next to you,
Fm9      Ab-maj     G
Drip me, i am never through,
C       Ab7
How can you be so intense,
Fm9      Ab-maj     G7
Keep me strumming as we dance
Advertisement

A letter to tourism minister MK R. Benny Elon

מאת: אמיר אהרוני
דואר אלקטרוני: אמיר_א_א@נטוויז’ן.נט.איל
מוסד/גוף: אני אזרח פרטי
כתובת למשלוח מכתבים: רח’ הצבעוני 7, נשר 36831

הנושא: מצדה או מסדה?

כבוד השר,
שלום רב
כיצד יש לומר את שמו של אחד האתרים ההיסטוריים והתיירותיים החשובים ביותר בארץ-ישראל – מצדה או מסדה? Metzada או Massada? בפרסומים שונים, בעברית ובלועזית, מופיע השם בצורות שונות והדבר מבלבל אנשים רבים, ישראלים ותיירים כאחד. מן הראוי הוא שתהיה מדיניות אחידה בנושא – שהשם יופיע בצורה זהה בכל השלטים, הספרים, הנאומים, וכן – שכל מדריכי התיירים יתורגלו לומר אותו בצורה אחידה. ניתן לסמוך על האקדמיה ללשון להמליץ על הצורה המחייבת, ורק שתהיה ברורה ומוכרת לכל.

לטיפולך בנושא אודה,
אמיר אהרוני.

Translation: Metzada or Massada?

Hello,
What is the correct way to say the name of one of the most important historical and touristic locations in Israel — Metzada or Massada? In various publications, Hebrew and foreign, the name appears in different spellings and confuses many people — both Israelis and tourists. There should be a consistent policy — the name should appear in the same spelling upon signs and books and in speeches, and all tourist guides should be trained to pronounce it consistently. You can count on the Hebrew Academy to recommend the compulsory spelling — one that should be known to everyone.

Thank you for your attention,
Amir Aharoni.

A lot of technical work

It is XHTML 1.1 now, although still not 100% valid, but again — only blogger code is to blame. Mostly under-the-hood improvements.

  • Removed all style attributes into the <style> element.
  • Changed #xxxxxx color specs to rgb(x, x, x).
  • Removed unnecessary tables, <br>’s and nbsp’s.
  • Layed the groundwork for transforming <td>’s into <div>’s
  • Hidden the mysterious <hr> at the bottom.

TODO:

  • Dump the utility <hr> completely.
  • Replace <td>’s with <div>’s and <iframe>’s.
  • More CSS cleanup.
  • Quit my job.
  • Find a way for a better main page display. It’s not very good that the whole blog is displayed completely.
  • Permanent easy-to-access link to nevIoth and other friends.
  • Improve the color of hyperlinks (the hardest part).

More blog template improvements

You really don’t have to read this entry unless you are interested in XML and HTML.

Now i’m strict XHTML 1.0. Not yet 100% valid, but that’s only because of the auto-generated blogger advertisement code. I complained to them about it. XML “validification” included:

  • Converting all tags to lowercase.
  • Closing unclosed tags like <br/>.
  • Dropping all <font> tags (thank God, finally).
  • Quoting all unquoted attributes’ values.
  • Converting the deprecated <td height> and <td bgcolor> into style attributes.
  • Converting all &’s in dynamic URL’s into &amp;’s. Apparently the links still work.
  • Also — the dates are written on a little different background now.

TODO: CSS validification. Currently it is very messy. And also — XHTML 1.1…

You go girl, you show him

On Wednesday i filed a request to check my resignation options.

On Thursday there was a team evening at Almog’s place, which was surprisingly relaxing, considering that Rakhamim was there. Almog’s mother is a classical pianist and she begged me to play something on her new 50,000 NIS Kawai. I was terribly shy at first, for i am very far from being a classical pianist, and i see myself as a shitty amateur. I started with “Imagine”, which proved as a winner and went on with “Avshalom”, and surprised myself with how great it came out. She was so happy. She told that it’s her dream to play pop-muzik and not classical. Chicks luv me.

At the end of the evening i decided to give Rakhamim another chance.

Do they speak English in What?

I have a problem.

When i talk to an English-speaking person, and can’t hear a word or a sentence he says, i ask him: “What?”

It’s terribly impolite. It sounds very “Israeli”. In English one should say “Excuse me?” or “I beg your pardon?..”, even when talking to friends — and i say “What?” when talking to people i don’t know. Every time i do it, i regret it the moment after, but just can’t rid myself of it. I should try to do better when i’m in London Town.