There is a ring on my finger. It feels good. It feels great in fact. I married a great, great woman, and I feel lucky. The knowledge that Yamit has a twin ring on her finger, linking her to myself in an emotional and faith sharing way is a magical, mystical wonder to me.

I’m so very happy to have finally started the second stage of my life as an adult (the first being a self sustaining adult). And soon, to the third stage where I give of myself entirely, to raise children (ETA: 3.5 years).

The wedding itself was nice. We took a strategic decision to be there with our guests, as opposed to simply “appearing” for the religious ceremony. This proved the right thing to do because the wedding came and went fast enough as it is, and if we had decided to only show up for the ceremony, we would have even less time to be with the guests, and the wedding would seem even shorter.

The PsychoMu Project, like a few others probably, shows the very first practical steps humanity is making to reach a place where humans can communicate with each other directly, brain to brain.

The experiment shows one subject guiding another subject through an obstacle field, whether through thought or by moving the head is not entirely clear. Perhaps the electrodes applied to the neck muscles have something to do with it, rather than using thought reading, but this is still quite advanced already.

Practical applications are infinite, from remote commanding of troops to teledildonics to virtual experiences for the disabled, the applications are only limited by our imagination.

Today I was accepted as a Beta Tester of Gmail for Domains. This means that all mail for my domain (for example: TradeZone.co.il) will now be handled by Google. I get up to 1000 mailboxes of 2gb each. That’s 2TB potentially!

That’s quite awesome. I have already changed MX records for the domain, and it actually works. I sent a test mail to a mailbox on tradezone.co.il and it was received immediately.

Here are some screen shots. First the Dashboard:

And the Domain Settings:

So the next question most people I know asked me was: How do I automate the creation of Mailboxes for my domain users?

There is no API for this as far as I know. You can either create them manually one by one, or you can upload a CSV file using the “Advanced Tools” section. Google shows you how to create a CSV file with Microsoft Excel however you can easily generate this CSV file yourself in Java/PHP/Perl/etc.

On the other hand you would have to create a script that logs in, and then posts the CSV file to the same URL in the “Advanced Tools” form. A bit hacky but should work!

Here’s what the “Advanced Tools” section looks like:

Today I realized how neandartal some services in Israel still are. I tried to modify a domain I own, and change the domain owner since it is now being managed by a company and not a person. I have been modifying .com, .org, .co.uk, .de and many other TLDs for years now.

Right now, the registrar for .il domains is isoc.org.il and I suspect that like most things in Israel they received the “license” to operate this registrar as a result of some political connection. It used to be handled by a university sponsored body called “Machba”.

What bothers me is that these guys have the worse possible registrar system, and like a monopoly they don’t really care their system sucks big time. Undisturbed, They inflict their strange and nefarious schemes upon us Israelis. For example you have to pay for 2 years in advance. Renewal is also for 2 years at a time. Strange? Wait! For it does not end here… Perhaps you want to modify some detail in your domain? You have to FAX your signature (yes! you heard me right). Perhaps they should change their name to isuck.org.il.

Anyway today I tried to modify the owner, and hear this: Fax is not enough. They want money for it as if I am registering a new domain! This means 280nis AGAIN (that’s $60 USD). They treat the name change as a transfer. In the US or in many european registrars, this is a free operation. My American registrar is namecheap.com and they have an even better system - all a user has to do is create an account on their system (free) and then I can “push” the domain to his account, again - free!
So never mind that I pay for com/net/org domains $8.80 USD/year which is $21.20 less per year, and never mind that the guys at isoc charge for a minimum of 2 years, I also have to throw away my investment when I want to change the domain holder (free anywhere else!). I spoke with one of their guys on the phone, and instead of agreeing with me that things should improve he started finding all kinds of excuses for the mediocrity of the system (1. look at other countries they charge the same or more, 2. the system is not that bad [yes it is!!], 3. how can you compare a “generic” .com domain to .co.il domains? 4. etc, etc…).
Oh - I also have a “NIC” (Yes for those of you who remember the horror that was internic.net many years ago when the US registration system was held by little green trolls). A feeble attempt to assign some kind of “ID” to my persona. It would have been a good idea if executed properly - in theory I would have the same NIC forever, and I would keep updating the details for my NIC as I change phone numbers of move to another house, and all domains related to that NIC would automatically have the new NIC. Except it doesn’t work!!! My NIC is AF6442-IL and it contains outdated details. If I change the details of my NIC in one domain, they will not change for other domains. At least in the old internic.net days it did work and you could change the NIC details and they would update for all domains using that NIC, but I guess the blue trolls in Israel are even worse than the little green trolls that used to roam internic.net!

The case of the woman who’s face was savaged by her own dog got me thinking about the whole pet thing.

A good friend once told me that dogs have no soul, no feelings, and the “love” we humans think they feel towards us is an illusion. At the time I found that hard to accept - the love I seemed to be receiving from my own dog, a golden cocker spaniel seemed quite real to me (she died when I was 20, poisoned by an angry neighbour who didn’t like the dog roaming in the shared garden).

So what is the truth, then? If a cat or a dog live with you, what certainty do they have that they will be fed when they are hungry? Is it faith? Is it total stupidity (they can’t be sure, and can’t even think about what ’sure’ is or what certainty is) and they just take it in strides - they will complain when hungry and until then they will not think about it, kinda like small children, they can not and will not plan in advance for food - it is the job of the parents to think about such things… AHA! Parents!

So do we get pets because we like to care for living things? It is more about having a creature that is willing to receive our inflictions, rather than having a creature initiate some kind of giving (for some, the only thing dogs or cats give willingly is poop).

If we look at early humanity, having animals had a practical aspect - we get milk, fat and meat from cattle, sheep, goats, etc. and dogs were used as early warning, or attack/protection, or herding sheep, etc. It is not difficult, then, to understand how human and animal have bonded. It is certainly interesting however to think about the leap dogs have made from being a practical “tool”, to a fashion, something people do on a whim. Perhaps the popularity of pets was born in france during the early stages of aristocracy? Maybe.