Friday, April 30, 2010

Tumblr Replacing My Blogger

Hey, if you come upon this site for some reason and wanna keep reading what I write, checkout my tumblr visible at http://tumble.galbutnotgirl.com/

Hope you enjoy, Gal

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Funniest Music Video of the Week: Hot Chip's I Feel Better

So I think I definitely just found the funniest music video of the week with Jessica.  So we were watching MTV in Israel and this crazy twisted video came on.  We loved it.  I embedded it below for you to enjoy!




So apparently the video above doesn't work in the US.  Check out this link (thanks Tim) if you can't see the embedded video: http://gbng.mp/9xOHK

Monday, April 12, 2010

The Art of Stealing

So I read this crazy interesting article from Wired about how a guy stole a shit ton of money from multiple banks and such.  It's pretty insane: essentially a real Ocean's 11 type story.  You should read it here.  Tell me what you think in the comments.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

What I Learned In Class Today...

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So I've Been Really Bad With My Posts ... I'll Try To Change

So I know I've been really bad about posting consistently.  I'm sorry.  Sylvia already yelled at me, so I promised I would try to change my habits so that I post more often.  So anyways, here's my post for now with a short update on what's been going on in life and such.  I'll expand where I see fit (I guess).

So unfortunately, my academic life in Israel isn't nearly as interesting as Sylvia's.  We don't have excursions every day.  In fact, we've only had one excursion so far, but we have a bunch of fun trips and such that we organize ourselves.

A lot as happened since I moved into Jerusalem the week before last (ya, I really have been terrible about this posting thing).

Wednesday:  Moved in, orientation, unpacked(ish), went to central jerusalem, ate falafel, went clubbing/baring, and met the australians.

Thursday:  Had some dull lecture on the history of Israel or something (I believe I was asleep for about half of this), signed up for gym memberships, went to the shuk, had a potluck, went clubbing.

Friday:  Boring tour of David's Palace and Hezzekiah's Tunnel (sp?), saw the ancient city, got supposed armenian food which was overpriced, not that great, and strongly resembled Israeli food.  By strongly resembled I mean 1 thing was different.

Saturday:  Went to the arab quarter in the old city, got crappy shnitzel, most people got ripped off, got an ibrik (turkish coffee pot), went to the western wall, went out to dinner with my Aunt

Sunday:  First day of class

Monday: Class in the morning, then chilled and watched Shelter with Marisa and Deonna, went to my grandparents' for passover seder, came home, got felt up/molested/sexually violated by Deonna, surfed the web and chatted with people.

Tuesday:  Slept in / chilled, went to the Christian quarter in the old city and went to the church of the holy seplicre (sp?), bought a bigger ibrik, bought pita for hella cheap (about 2 for 25 cents), and chillaxed.

Wednesday:  Class in the afternoon, went to the shuk, got lost, went out for decent italian, went back to the dorms and chillaxed.

Thursday:  Class in the afternoon, bussed down to Tel Aviv, got great italian food, went clubbing with Sonia Hinson at TLV on the port.  There were hundreds of cute gay guys and they played basically every hit through 2006.  Stayed up all night, slept at my Aunt's from 7am-2pm when Uri sent me an SMS (I know this is technically friday).

Friday:  Slept until around 2.  Had some bread with great avocado and "black tomatoes" (those are really good and I strongly recommend them to everyone).  Went to my grandma's for dinner with the cousins.  Slept at my Gma's.

Saturday:  Went up north to Maagan Michael with my grandma and her child-hood friend Mika, and picked up some fun people named Bruriya and Fuza and went to an art village nearby.  Visited one of her old friends from Jerusalem who lives in an orchard and picked a bunch of avocados.  Came back to Tel Aviv and got even more italian with my aunt.  The desert was particularly noteworthy: Foccacia (sp?) filled with Nutella.  Stayed up late finishing up "The Invention of Lying" and "These Times Have Been Better" while chatting with Nathan.

Sunday:  Slept in and took the bus up to Mevaseret where my grandparents live.  Played soccer with my cousins (by played I mean destroyed two of them with my youngest cousin).  Had dinner and returned to the dorms where I chillaxed.

Monday:  Slept in and went to class.  Came back and made Mazzah Brie for Sonia and myself.  Went in search of the Memuzah (sp?) festivals.  Never found them, got pizza with green olives (SOOOOO GOOD) as well as a white chocolate nutella crepe with israeli chocolate bits (called mekupelet ... my friends may recognize this as chocolate bark).

Tuesday (now):  Went to the grocery store and got ingredients for a pasta sauce: Tomatoes, Parsley, and Pine Nuts (we'll see how this works out).  Sitting in class.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Quickly Notify Your Readers of Blog Posts Using dlvr.it

Through my daily blog perusal / morning procrastination, I came across this awesome new service called dlvr.it which is in public beta as of today.  Its goal is to solve the problem posed on RSS feeds by real-time services such Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin (does anyone actually know the official way to write linked in's name?).

Generally, RSS is the easiest way to get your posts to your readers.  If they like what you write, they follow you by subscribing to your RSS feed.  I currently use Google Reader for this.  But with social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (I know you're wondering who actually uses linked in as a social network, but people do), RSS feeds are not fast enough.  This is why services like twitterfeed and a feature of Google's FeedBurner have succeeded: they make it easier to spread the word about your posts to Twitter.  Some have added support to publish your feed to Facebook also, but from what I've seen, it doesn't work too well.

This is why I'm checking out dlvr.it.  It's currently in beta, but it hopes to solve the problems of publishing to your real-time social networks in real time.  Currently it sees to be working well, I just haven't gotten my custom Bit.ly Pro url's working yet.  Hopefully that will work on this post.

I also wish they had better ways to make links posted to facebook look more like items I posted with picture support.  We'll see if that works on this post since I am going to add a picture to it.

P.S.  This is my second post published using dlvr.it!

Moving Into the Dorms Today!

Hey everyone, so my plan is to be much better about updating my blog while I'm abroad then I do while I'm at school.  Here's a quick update on what's happened so far:

1)  Took off from O'Hare saturday night!
2)  Landed in Turkey
3)  Went out to dinner in Turkey (pics will come soon)
4)  Flew to Israel
5)  Slept till morning and did some errands
6)  Went to the Namal in Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv Port) and had dinner with my Aunt
7)  Hung out with Viva at the Mall in Tel Aviv: Azrieli (sp?) to be exact. (FYI, this was tuesday)
Update:  Jess would like me to remind you that I went to the mall with her and Milan.

Now it is 7:21 am on Wednesday morning and I should be asleep (but obviously I am not).  We move into the dorms in Jerusalem in a few hours!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Where Did My Posts Go?

So let me start this post by saying that I really wanted to title it something along the lines of "What Happens When d/dx(my postings) -> 0" but I realized that might be just a bit too nerdy for some of my readers.  You can just pretend that's the real title, because it's totally awesome.


But anyways, on to more pressing matters.  My few passionate followers (aka My sister, Jessica, Jesika (did I get it spelled right this time?), my old co-blogger Sylvia, and some more I may not know about (please comment if I forgot you)) may notice that I tend to post very infrequently during the academic year.  (Yes Sylvia, all of those parenthesis are really there just for you.)  This is because sadly hours_spent_on(school + work + social life + my nerdy activities + gym + sleep) is approximately equal to 24. This means I have very little time to devote to my loyal readers in new postings.


However, anyone who talks to me, or follows me on buzz, or on google reader, knows that I do keep up with all my blogs, and do share posts when they're interesting.  I tend to do it the Daring Fireball way: share a post with a short commentary if applicable.  I've promised myself that I would do this often with my blog.  Unfortunately though, I really get lazy / I say I'll do it later and never do.  What I tend to do is share an item with a short comment, and later make a full post about it when I get the chance.  Problem is, this is often way to late.


So I figured I would share with all my readers how to find my Google Buzz and Google Reader shares (and the corresponding RSS feed).  The Google Reader feed is everything I share from different RSS feeds (mostly blogs) I subscribe to.  The Google Buzz feed also includes random things I find on the web that I like, some of my tweets, and my blog (it's automatically imported in).  I am not 100% sure if everything I comment on also gets pulled in as I don't know all the small features of Google Buzz and it keeps being updated non-stop right now.  


You can find my feeds here (you can subscribe by RSS feed as well):
Google Buzz
Google Reader

To shamelessly promote myself, check me out my twitter. Most other services I am a member of I use fairly infrequently, so I'll leave those off for now.

Update:  It turns out that sharing and commenting on items as I had been doing in the past really isn't the way to go with the shares from Google Reader.  Therefore, I will do my best to share with a note in the future so that everyone can see my commentary.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Parisian Oops: the True Story

So earlier this week I wrote a post about Parisian Love, Google's Super Bowl Ad that aired with huge success.  Within a couple days, the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater created a response to Parisian Love with the real story.  They titled it Parisian Oops.

Check it out below and respond in the comments.


Monday, February 8, 2010

Parisian Love: The Google Story

So I saw this video a really long time ago (like 3 months actually) online somewhere.

After it aired during the super bowl this past sunday, it's become a classic (IMHO).  Therefore, for those of you who do not watch the super bowl, I present Parisian Love!

P.S.  It will make you go awww at the end.

Update:  Check out UCB's response to this video, Parisian Oops!


Sunday, January 24, 2010

Elephant Checks Luggage


For those of you who thought consumer reports was the best way to find out the quality of various brands and products, I bring you Consumer Elephant Ponya.  Ponya was given five luggage bags filled with food.  Checkout the video below.





It's quite clear, price was not a deciding factor in the success of preventing the elephant.


How would you protect your luggage?

[via CBS]

Thursday, January 21, 2010

11-Year-Old Causes Bomb Scare with Gatorade Bottle Based Science Project


Well the title pretty much says it all.

An un-named, fairly genius 11-year-old built a motion detector using gatorade bottles and some electronics.  Unfortunately, some idiotic VP flipped a shit and called the bomb squad to investigate the science project.  The bomb squad searched the entire school (and evacuated it), the kid's home, and x-rayed the science project.

In the end, when everyone calmed down and realized this really was only a genius science project, the principle didn't apologize.  He simply suggested the child and his family seek counseling.

Lesson of the day: If you're smarter than your principle and he's a jerk, you're fucked.

[via Gizmodo]

Monday, January 18, 2010

"Texting While Walking": The New Epidemic


So we've all heard of all the dangers associated with talking and texting on phones while driving.  Recently, they realized that banning texting while driving hasn't come close to solving the root of the problem: most people can't multi-task to save their life.

Even simple tasks such as walking without serious injury have proven too  complex when paired with the important task of texting someone on your phone.

In 2008, over 1000 people in the US went to the ER for injuries resulting from texting while walking.  This is double the rate of 2007, and 4 times as much many people as 2006.  While 1,000 people in a country of over $3 million may sound insignificant, it's increasing at an astronomical rate (doubling every year).

One must also realize that these 1000 people are a small subset of those injured or embarrassed for mishaps from texting while walking: all those people who walked into poles or parked cars, but were not injured enough to go to the ER.  All of this came from an Ohio State study (yes, they are now studying it) which found the injuries to include concussions, broken appendages, and sprained ankles.

Gizmodo adds that this is part of an increasing problem of multi-tasking and information overload in today's society.  Scientists are studying the effects of this "grey matter" on our activities.  Their current results are bad: talking or texting on cell phones takes up so much of our attention we lose our survival instincts.

It's sad that texting or talking to a friend is more important to us then staying alive.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Blog Changes Completed

Hey,

Just wanted to let you all know that the changes to my blog are now complete.  Sylvia and I decided that since she had barely been posting, and she wanted a separate blog for her trip to Greece, it was time to part our ways.

I also realized that www.lifeofthemindequalsdeathofthesoul.com was not the ideal home for my blog.  In fact, I didn't even come up with this title.  Jessica stole it from Rohan.  Therefore I have moved my blog to a new, more appropriate home: http://blog.galbutnotgirl.com/  All of the old links will continue to work through November of 2010, when my old domain expires.  I will likely let it expire, although I may choose to renew it later.

One might ask why I chose "blog" instead of "www" as my subdomain.  I realized that I really need to look to the future.  I began my blog on a whim one night with Sylvia and Jessica.  I guess you could say we broke up because of artistic differences: Jessica felt we were censoring her by telling her she can't write that all UChicago students are alcoholics, while Sylvia and I disagreed.  Our blog was located at http://lifeofthemindequalsdeathofthesoul.blogspot.com/ at the time.

Ultimately I realized we needed a better home for our blog: one without "blogspot" in the url.  Thus, http://www.lifeofthemindequalsdeathofthesoul.com/ was born.  This was both a triumph and a mistake: while it was great to have a new, stronger home for out blog, this name, and the "our" aspect of the blog was quickly losing meaning.  This blog had really become "my" blog, I was just still insisting that it was our blog.

This week, Sylvia and I really decided that we should finally part ways.  I now had my own blog.  The problem was, the blog's name really didn't make any sense: it was long, it wasn't mine, and I didn't really feel any connection to it.  I really needed to change it.  So I decided to fall back to my classic URL (which Jess actually created): GalbutnotGirl.  This brings us to my new domain: http://galbutnotgirl.com/.

This still leaves one question though: why did I choose the subdomain "blog" rather than continue with "www" as I had in the past?  I realized I really need to look towards the future: I had already made major changes to my blog twice in the past year, and I really didn't want to do it again.  While currently I only have a blog (hosted for free by blogger), it's fairly conceivable, and probable in fact, that I will want an actual website in the future.  By hosting my blog at http://blog.galbutnotgirl.com/, I solve this problem.

Until I have a need for an actual wesbite, http://www.galbutnotgirl.com/ will forward you to http://blog.galbutnotgirl.com/.  Visiting http://galbutnotgirl.com/ will also forward you to the same site at the moment.

I also want to change the title of my blog.  "Gal but not Girl" just sounds like a kind of stupid title.  As a URL though, it's pretty good.  For the time being, I'm keeping my old title: "Life of the Mind = Death of the Soul."  However, if you have any awesome suggestions for a new title, please post it in the comments or facebook me or whatever.

Hope you like my new blog,

Gal

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Changes To Blog

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm gonna be changing some stuff on the blog in the next few days, so if you're having problems accessing the blog during this time, I apologize, and I'll send you a new post when everything is fixed after.

Gal
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