Camerit On The Wall

I can't skip and not announce it here
Pink Floyd's famous "The Wall" show this weekend in Haifa Congress Center !

The Israel Chamber Orchestra "Camerit On The Wall"
29.12.2008, 20:30
Haifa Congress Center

Changing my e-mail address

Hi All,

Starting 1st Jan 2008 my e-mail stl_intel at domain: bezeqint.net
will be disconnected and not available anymore.

My second mail for now is:

user: stl at domain: fidonet.org.il

Unfortunately I plan to abandon it sometime as well but currently this is the best way to contact me through an e-mail.

Israel Go Congress

Israel Go Congress is finished.

Thanks to Shlomo for very good organization !

Israeli Go Congress

I got the 4 wins and will receive a book prize when the package with books finially will arrive to Israel.

Totally 50 players participated an my final rating after 6 games is 29th. With my KGS 5k rating I started almost at the end of the list with only few players below me. But one win after another I even manadged to win against 2k KGS ranked opponent. Actually the congress again proved that I can play way better if I think :)

The championship results table could be found on the webpage of Israeli Go Association: http://www.freed.net/gowiki/index.php/Championships

Israel Go Championship

BTW, forgot to publish it here :)

Israel Go Congress and Championship will take place on October 25-27 in Ramat Ha'Sharon.

Subscription to the championship is at first day of the congress, 25 October, between 17:00 and 18:00. The championship includes six games, first game at Thursday evening, games 2-4 at Friday and last 2 games at Saturday 27 October.

The prizes will be awarded to any player which has 4 wins or more.

For more details (hebrew): http://israel.european-go.org/

For questions please contact Shlomo Raikin 050-2446807 or

me 054-4481073

My cat

Hi, I want to introduce you mycat Kuzya, just for the case will you see him on posters being sold in nearest book store :)

A few weeks ago my mother took a few pictures of our cat and ordered a wall calendar with one of pictures. She received the calendar just in the beginning of the year and recently we figured out that several russian book stores in Haifa selling posters with these pictures !

Parachute jumping

Finally I received last pictures from my Moscow first parachute jumping attempt. Yes, last day I was in Moscow I went to parachute jumping course. Those of you who read russian could more about the place and the course itself at http://www.kukuruznik.com/.

Future skydivers

Basically the course contains about 9 hours of ground training and when single parachute jump from 800 m with dome-shaped parachute next day.

Ground training includes everything you need to survive your first jump :

• Explanation about the parachute (army parachute Д1-5y)
• Controlling the parachute, landing direction and speed
• Leaving the aircraft
• Landing
• Safety features (emergency parachute, the system which automatically opens emergency parachute at certain height and etc)

Ok, all the equipment used in the dropzone was extremely old, the parachutes were at least 30 years old and aircraft probably even older. We had army-style living conditions and slept almost under canvas. This is probably explains extremely low prices, the course + jump + video of you leaving aircraft costs less than 1800 RUB which is about $70.

Training in progress

So we had a two days fun of learning, jumping from landing training stand, playing 'Mafia' game a night and ... may be god was with me because finally we didn't jump due to high winds and rain suddenly started at the second day. We waited till afternoon for only 30 minutes of quiet but with no success ...

Postings

Hi Everybody!

For last few weeks I almost had no time to publish into the blog and now I have a bunch of things waiting to be posted. Something already forgotten but not all !

So expect for set of old and recent news soon :)

Bochs 2.3.5 released!

The Bochs project, I am contributing to, released new Bochs 2.3.5 release !

Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS. Currently, Bochs can be compiled to emulate a 386, 486, Pentium/PentiumII/PentiumIII/Pentium4 or x86-64 CPU, including optional MMX, SSEx and 3DNow! instructions. Bochs is capable of running most Operating Systems inside the emulation, for example Linux, DOS, Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP or Windows Vista.

(Bochs running Windows Vista on emulated platform)

Brief summary for Bochs 2.3.5 release:

• Critical problems fixed for x86-64 support in CPU and internal debugger
• Added ACPI support
• The release compiled with x86-64 and ACPI
• Hard disk emulation supports ATA-6 (LBA48, UDMA modes)
• Added emulation of Intel SSE4.1 instruction set

(Bochs running Windows XP on emulated dual core CPU with hyperthreading support)

Bochs currently maintained by only two active developers: Volker Vruppert and your humble servant :) The closest relatives of Bochs are QEMU, commerical products Vmware and Microsoft Virtual PC.

I back!

Already a few days since I back from Russia but in my mind I like still there. May be I lost my father but there in Voronezh I found the family. The family I only heard about before but never knew or didn't rememeber. My father had sisters, the sisters had children, and they all came, so I've got a chance to meet again relatives I have not seen since I've been a small child. And I finally met my brother Valera and even more, a sister in law!

My father always wanted to invite all us to his home and finally it happened ...

On the picture - me, the sister of my father, her dother and my brother Valera near famous monument to the "Котенок с улицы Лизюкова" in Voronezh.

What else interesting ?

I bought in the Duty Free a book of J.R.R Tolkien "Lord of the Rings" and reading it during my free time. I think it will help me to improve my english even more !

Yesterday we received a guests from Novgorod, Russia. Two cousins of my mother came to visit us for next 10 days. Yesterday I picked them up from the airport and today they already vising holy places in Jerusalem. They already really excited but even don't know that coming Monday they going to Eilat for 3 days with my mom. And I will have some silence here :)

Actually a lot more things happened, let's see if I will find some time to seat and write all the news here.

Hopefully I will !

"No news is good news" - once I published my last "no news" posting the news suddenly came :(

My father died in the hospital this Sabbath after road accident happened him this Friday. In instant all the plans just gone and tomorrow I am flying Russia to the funeral.

This is one of the last pictures of my father I have, taken last year spring when I met with him in Moscow. He wanted to come here for my 30th birthday and I even would not imagine that it is the last time I see him ...

He was only 60 and it was not his time to go :(

I am still alive !

Hi everybody !

If somebody was curious about me I am obliged to upset you - everything is all right with me, just nothing interesting has happen last month :)

Everything going as usual, I continue to train to the Tiberias Marathon for coming winter according to the training program I got from Jarred. Oops, I forgot to tell you it before ?

Yeah, each time I had finished the Haifa-Atlit-Haifa run along the beach I was thinking about myself able to do a real thing and run complete marathon distance ... and with the time the wishes transformed to something more realizable. Hopefully everything will go smoothly and you will be invited 10 January, 2008 to Kinneret to support me !

But now, when the marathon dream already realized itself, its place was taken by another dream, much crazier than previous one! Actually I am still in doubt but looks like it is only matter of time :)

What do you think about a sky diving ?

Actually I already decided that I don't like tandem jump only idea and now the question only if I will be able to find single jump course or will go for full AFF program. All the sky diving clubs I found here, in Israel, not allowing single jump courses for some reason. It looks like the services provided by all the clubs are pretty similar, the difference is only in club's location and course prices. For example you could look on one of the clubs at http://www.skykef.co.il/.

You are welcome to leave some comments (or sky diving experiences of you had some) to help me with my decision !

Department Event

Finally I managed to collect a pictures from Department event we had last week. So better later than never, here is a photo account of Intel MG Architecture Department event, July 29, 2007 !

Reminds some old good school days, isn't ?

We started the day with a track on Banias river, walking along the stream under the sun and looking for the best place to jump in.

Banias stream

Time to get wet !

After the track we continued to Kayaking. Kayaking of Kfar Blum is very well known route and for most of us it wasn't the first time doing it. I did exactly the same route about 4 years ago with army but it still was fun. Actually this time I even understood how to control the boat and make it sail in right direction :)

Unfortunatelly this time also nobody took pictures during the Kayaking (probably because of nobody wanted to stay on the shore with the camera instead of having fun).

You could find more pictures from Banias here.

Happy Tu B'Av !

Today Israel is celebrating the Tu B'Av day.

The Tu B'Av is the 15th day of month 'Av' and it is namely israeli 'Hag Ha'Ahava' or an israeli version of Valentines Day. Haifa celebrated Tu B'Av earlier this Thusday, the Moria st. between Kikar Sefer and Merkaz Horev was blocked, all the bars and restaurants were opened till midnight, it was rock concert till 22:00 and after disco club Luna organized dances.

So I am joining to the celebration and wish all of you Happy Tu B'Av !

Live, love and enjoy your love !

On the picture: Tu B'Av at Intel

Prepare to your pension !

Summer ... heavy sun ... hard work ... but Intel is a great place to work, even if it great place to work hard :)

Last Wednesday it was team event time for the Core Architecture team. The options were "Team building activities + Paintball Game" vs "Playing golf at Keysariya Golf Club". Unfortunatelly paintball lost in the voting so we will have to organize it sometimes on our own :)

At the beginning we had a short lecture about the game and a tour over the court which we used to have some fun racing the golf cars.

According to the guide you need not wait for the pension to begin playing golf, you have to prepare yourself to the pension and learn playing Golf now !

Because we are beginners we weren't allowed to play at the court and went to the training ground. And it turned out that playing golf is not so easy as you could imagine. It might take you a hour or two until you actually will be able to hit a ball correctly. So we had a lot of fun playing field hockey with golf balls and joking who is winning a competition of deepest hole on the ground :)

You could look for more pictures and comments from the event at my Zenfolio Gallery: http://nightman.zenfolio.com/

My Zenfolio Picture Gallery

Finally I managed to open Zenfolio gallery and currently work on selecting and uploading pictures from Jordan and Monfort.

You are welcome to visit: http://nightman.zenfolio.com/ and enjoy fine selection of hundreds of pictures we took !

Haifa Go Club Meetings

Haifa Go Club Meetings continue at usual place. The location is Mandarin in Moria st, every 1st and 3rd monday at 19:30. The average players ranks are between 10k and 3d.

The next meeting is tomorrow, 15th July.

Monfort Castle

Hi everybody, thank you for reading the weekly travelling newsletter again !

Today we went to the Monfort Castle located on the north of Nahariya a few kilometers from the Lebanon border. We were almost the same friends again - Julien, Michele, me and Leeor with his girlfriend Lilah. It is really great to have such a young company which is not afraid of climbing or hicking under heavy sun just to see some beautiful landscape :)

The Monfort Castle view from the valley:

And inside:

As you could see I really enjoyed the trip. So where are the pictures you would ask ?

Tomorrow hopefully I'll open a Zenfolio account and will upload there the best pictures I took today and last week in Jordan.

Stay in touch !

Jordan trip

Last weeked we went to Petra, Jordan with three friends from my work - Julien, Michele and Eugene. And occasionally we choosed probably the best date in the century to visit Petra, the 07/07/07, the day when new 7 wonders of the world election had happen. Petra was one of the candidates and fairly took second place in the list immediatelly after the Great Wall in China. So we were very excited about fireworks and the celebration happeing around.

Julien took fantastic picture of the celebration event at end of the day:

The Petra is awesome and if I would not miss the voting I definitelly would vote for Petra in new world's wonders election! So we woke up early morning 6 AM and went to the site. We took english speaking guide for first half of the day and the guy took us over non usual way through Petra. We had to climb a bit and not used any of roads but it was really worth it, we managed to see Petra from a way most of the touirists don't see.

So here we are:

From right to left (remember, Israel): Julien, Michele, me and Eugene.

We entered through the main gate, climbed on the rock instead of walking on the road and seen the city from some altitude. After the guide left us we climbed all the way to the Monastery and seen a views toward the dead sea. Michele, as a beautiful girl, drove continuous attention of local male population (even got a Petra T-shirt as a gift) so we also enjoyed some part of it. The jordanians were very friendly although they probably knew we are israelis. Ok, Julien is a French and Michele is American and we with Eugene were Russians and spoke each other only english, but come on ... it is written on my face where I actually came from :)