New on Shlomi Fish’s Homepage: Selina Mandrake, NSA/Buffy/Chuck Norris facts, Yachar's Music

Here are the recent updates for Shlomi Fish’s Homepage. This time, the highlight is a lot of interesting new content.

1. I have started writing a comprehensive essay titled “Putting all the Cards on the Table (2013)”, which is also syndicated as a blog post on my Unarmed but Still Dangerous blog. Here is the abstract for it:

   What is the problem with the Technion and why is it graver in M.I.T., and why you should watch the film Silver Linings Playbook to realise why it's not a problem? Why was the David who fought Goliath a hacker, and what is the difference between a tragic hero and an action hero? What was the second major battle that Chuck Norris lost? What are the machines that can give us questions (and lots of them)? Why not exerting a mental effort will make matters go from bad to worse? Who was the Jennifer Lawrence of Web 1.0? And what were my two greatest mistakes, which you should not duplicate?

   I got tired of truly intellectual people like me speaking in riddles all the time and kinda lying to themselves and to others in their artworks, and hiding a lot of what they know, so I decided to put all the cards I have now on the table in a big tour-de-force. It's not finished yet, but still usable, and there's more to come. Not a perfect essay, and not for everyone, but imperfect and sweet.

2. There is an ongoing English translation of my old and incomplete story “The Pope Died on Sunday”.

3. Much more text has been added to Selina Mandrake - The Slayer (a Buffy parody) and it is now in a usable condition:

   [ There are three young men dressed as Klingons who fight with Bat’leth in the park. Selina is passing by and shakes her head in disapproval. The three notice Selina, and quickly run to her. ]

   Warrior #1: Hail The Slayer, we are but your humble slaves!

   Selina: [Shocked] And who might you be?

   Warrior #1: We are The Three - three vampire brother warriors, who have been fighting since the dawn of time.

   Selina: And you are Klingons…

   Warrior #2: We can assume any form.

   Warrior #1: Yes, we can fight using any weapon, and we are masters of them all.

   Selina: so you can fight with something that’s not a Bat’leth?

   Warrior #1: Of course, for example, we could fight using the Huge Sword!

   Warrior #2 and Warrior #3: Yeah, the Huge Sword!

   The Three: [in unison] Huge Sword!

   [ Warrior #1 snaps his fingers, and some of these ridiculously large swords from World of Warcraft appear on the ground. ]

   Selina: Wow, can you fight using them?

   The Three: [non-dramatically] Eh, eh, we cannot lift them.

   Selina: Guess not. [Puts her palm on her eyes.] Maybe try something smaller and not as heavy.

4. In addition, there are many enhancements to the section of the page, including a page about who I think should play the characters in the screenplay, and an Ebook available for purchase.

5. There are two new pages with facts about people and things:

   1. NSA Facts - about the United States’ National Security Agency:

      • The NSA knows what you did last summer. But no one, in the NSA or outside it, knows why they should.

      • The more the NSA think, the less they want to be able to think. So they think less and less.

      • First the NSA ignores “silly” Internet memes, then they laugh at them, then they are unable to fight them, and then they lose.

   2. Facts about Buffy Summers from the Television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

      • Buffy will always find a wooden stake to slay vampires, even if it means she will have travelled 100 years back in time, to plant a tree nearby.

   Extra additions to these or other collections of facts would be welcome.

6. There's a mirrored bit Freecell Solver™ Goes Webscale.

7. I have placed Yachar’s old music from Jamendo.com on my homepage, because they appear to have been removed from Jamendo.

8. There’s a new page with a partial list of some of my favourite online musicians.

9. The Chuck Norris Facts page contains more facts and translations of some of the facts to Hebrew:

   • Chuck Norris helps the gods that help themselves.

   • Chuck Norris can make East and West meet.

10. There's a section of reception on the front page of the essay The Eternal Jew with a combined captioned image/meme.

11. I have placed the sources for the stories and screenplays in self-contained distributed version control repositories (DVCS) - mostly on my GitHub account, and they contain mostly self-contained build systems. You can find links to their repositories on their appropriate pages.

Syndicated 2013-03-23 19:28:58 from shlomif