Religion

Jewish Prayer Times While Flying

Ever since building the Zmanim (Jewish times) feature in the iPhone Siddur I have been intrigued by the algorithms that go into calculating these times. For those of you who are programmers, there is an open source project on this at KosherJava where you can dig into that code. I am flying to Israel soon

Daily Grind

Confession: I Was Rude To The Barber

I hate getting hair cuts, not cause I have a fear of getting stabbed with scissors but because I don’t care much about appearances (better yet, my appearance) and it takes time. When I go to get haircuts, they ask me, “How do you like it?” I typically say, “FAST, please.” Typically, I am in

Religion

Get Your Updated iPhone Megillah

Apple approved a semi-large update to our FREE iPhone App for Purim, the Megillas Esther iPhone App. We made some big improvements to this holiday app, just in time for Purim, which is just about a week away. First change we made was to add the brachos (blessings) before and after the reading. Here is

Computers

Yep, AIM Down For Many, Including Me

Yes, AIM is down for me. My primary mode of communication with everyone and anyone. AIM being down is much worse, to me, than Twitter being down. Not as bad as email or phone being down, though. At first, I thought it was just me. But I checked Twitter and it is many others.

RustyBrick

The Winning iTunes Song Will Be Next Tuesday

I am making a bold prediction that the winning iTunes song, where you can win a $10,000 iTunes gift card for downloading the 10 billionth song, will take place on February 23rd, Tuesday, in the morning. Why am I so confident? Well, the geeks at RustyBrick built an algorithm to predict when exactly the 10

Buddies

“My Friend” – Should It Be Used So Freely?

There are certain people and cultures that use the word “friend” too loosely, at least – I think they do. People who call or email you and say, “my friend.” Hey – I never met you. There are people I grew up with and people I spend a lot of time that I would not

Weather

It Snowed Here, Google Buzz Told Me

Normally, when I write about the weather here, I will show a picture of the forecast or my car buried in snow (got a garage now) or the snow covering my deck – but now, I can just show you guys, nearby people Buzzing about it. Yea, it snowed yesterday and how did I know

Rambling

I’m a Worrier

Not many people who follow me here and around the web know this about me, but I am a worrier. I blame my mother, who worries about everything and anything. I am not as bad as she is, but I do worry. Looking back at what you worry about is always somewhat comical. Oh, in

Just Interesting

How Often Do You Check Your Bank Account Online?

I check my bank accounts online almost every day. I check in more often then I use to, but mostly cause I go online to pay business bills and check deposits. In the old days, I mailed checks and I never received direct deposits from clients. Now, I pay virtually all my bills online and