Tuesday, 31 December 2013

I got up early this morning and got in a good walk and work-out.

After breakfast, I again went to the Maccabi nurses to get my finger re-bandaged. This time she put a very small one on it for minimal protection and told me to come back in 2 days. Now I can actually use that finger pretty normally except for washing my hands (or other things that might get it wet).

We went for the first time today to the weekly meeting of the local chapter of WIZO (the Women's International Zionist Organization). Despite the name, this is really more like the local Anglo community center, and we want to get more connected to the other English-speakers here in town. We really enjoyed the meeting, talking with several interesting people. As a result, I have decided to cancel my Tuesday morning availability for Berlitz so that we'll be able to attend regularly. It's social contact that we both really need.

Because there was food at this particular WIZO meeting (they were celebrating some birthdays), we ate lunch very late, at Café Café at Ice Park. Then we walked around the mall once, had frozen yogurt, walked around 2 more times, and watched the 6:00 show (the Xmas show again!).

I have started listening to the more than 130 recordings I made using "ChucK Makes More Variations" and sorting them into 3 categories: outstanding, OK, and defective. So far, I haven't found any that I put in that last category.

Monday, 30 December 2013

I was quite lazy this morning, so I didn't get up and go for a walk at all.

I went back to the nurses this morning so that they could check out my finger and put a new bandage on it. The nurse who saw me put some antibiotic cream on the wound and then bandaged it up with a lighter bandage than yesterday. In particular, I can bend the main joint of the finger in this one, which I couldn't do in yesterday's.

We ate lunch today at Buddha Burgers. David had a shwarma burrito, and I had the actual Buddha burger. Afterwards, we drove down to Ice Park to walk and to eat frozen yogurt.

I listened to all the pieces that I have arranged so far for orchestra. For some reason, they all seemed a bit dull to me today -- a little too quiet and too slow. Hmmm.....

I did a little work on organizing our closet today. I moved some things that we're not likely to use much if at all to a high shelf, and I rearranged David's t-shirts so that it will be much easier to see what we have and to choose a shirt.

We returned again to Ice Park in the evening, walked around it another time, and ate more frozen yogurt. We also chatted quite a bit with Diana, the pro skater and acrobat. She's also a very nice person to talk with.

I did a lot more recordings of pieces produced by running "ChucK Makes More Variations". I think I now have more than 100 different recordings, each of them different even though they have all been produced by the EXACT same program with no input changes, either. All the differences are due to the many random choices made by the software itself.

Sunday, 29 December 2013

I got up a little late this morning, but I still took the time to walk to the highway 12 kikar and back.

This morning my finger definitely looked infected, so I decided I had better go in and see what the nurses thought. Sure enough, it WAS infected, so they sent me up to see the surgeon. He cut it open and drained it. It hardly hurt at all, though, since the skin was dead (from the freezing last Tuesday that the skin doctor did). Then he sent me back down to the nurse, who had me soak it in an iodine solution for some time and then bandaged it up well. Tomorrow, I am supposed to take the bandage off, wash it well, and then return to the nurse to get it re-bandaged.

Today is David's 58th birthday, so of course we needed to celebrate. We decided to eat at Il Pentolino and even has desserts. Naturally, I told them it was his birthday, so they put a sparkler candle in his ice cream and sang "Happy Birthday" to him.

Later in the day, we went down to Ice Park for frozen yogurt and a walk around the mall a couple of times. I chatted a bit with Diana, the female professional skater, and found out that she also loves to sew and made most of her costumes (which are really nice!). She also told me that the male skater's name is Yifgenie, and he's from Ukraine.

Before returning home we took a short drive up highway 12, to the pass just before the checkpoint. The view of Hakl, Saudi Arabia, was quite clear as we headed back down.

Shabbat, 28 December 2013

I woke up early this morning and felt very good, so I went out for a nice walk to the gym and even worked out there a bit. I wore my warm Yellowstone coat but it was really a bit too much. By the time I started down our street on the way home, I had taken it off completely, leaving me just in jeans and a t-shirt. My new slogan: "Winter in Eilat? Yes, we do have it, but it usually doesn't last all day."

This morning we made another visit to Hai Bar, the wild animal park next to Yotvata. We've been there several times before, and it's always enjoyable. David said it was the perfect present for his birthday, which is tomorrow.

For lunch, we ordered soyaburgers from Barbis delivered to our house, and they were delicious.

We talked to David's sister in Ohio, who is still in the hospital. She sounded MUCH better, though, and she's hoping they'll release her on Monday.

After watching the videos for week 3 of the Android class and looking at the first assignment, I decided to officially drop it. It's definitely not for me. I also noted that my next class will be beginning in a little more than a week. It's called "Write Like Mozart", and the professor's introductory video was quite interesting, too. I don't think I'd want to do 2 classes at once, and this one seems much more intriguing and even useful to me.

David has been listening to audio books. Yesterday, he finished the second one by Amy Tan (which he didn't like as well as "The Joy Luck Club" by the same author). Now, he's listening to his second book by Tom Clancy, and he's really enjoying it, as he also did the first one. The Bluetooth earphones that I got him last summer are really great, and so I'm really glad I spent the money.

Friday, 27 December 2013

I didn't go out for a walk this morning except for the short one to recycle cardboard and buy challah at the local bakery.

I finished watching the videos for the 2nd week of the Android class, and I came to a rather surprising conclusion: I don't actually want to take this class! Somehow, it's just not inspiring me. Perhaps it's because I can't think of anything really interesting to program on Android, or perhaps it's the professor's somewhat casual and disjointed style, or maybe it's something else or some combination of these. I haven't made a final decision, but I'm almost sure that I'll drop the class.

We had our traditional Friday lunch at Il Pentolino today.

Before sunset, we lit candles, drank a tiny bit of sweet red wine, and ate delicious whole-wheat challah to welcome Shabbat. Pascal (our big black cat with a bit of white on him) celebrated, too, by eating rolled oats and a few of the little black seeds they put on the challah.

A little later, David and I walked over to the green strip, sat there for a little while on the bench, and then walked back. Even though the distance is quite short, the slight amount of grade causes David to develop quite bad pain in his legs. I guess we're going to have to stick mostly to level walking, as at the mall.

The cyst that the doctor froze on Tuesday has gotten quite weird. About 2 days ago, it began leaking clear, odorless, tasteless drops of fluid, which it continues to do. It has also turned a rather ugly purple and is now slightly painful to the touch. I hope this is all simply part of the process of getting rid of it, but, so far, the cure is worse than the disease!

Thursday, 26 December 2013

I was lazy this morning and didn't go for a walk.

David felt a little sad this morning because he is beginning to confront the fact that his mental faculties are on the decline. Obviously, this isn't something that's easy for ANYONE to face. I wish I could give him better news, but I have to be honest and say that the general trend has been downward now for quite some time. Just how quickly it will proceed is anyone's guess, but, unfortunately, the future does NOT look so bright for him. Please keep him (and me, too, for that matter!) in your thoughts and prayers.

I spent most of the day working on my ChucK piece. I continued to balance the various solo instruments so that they all play near the same perceived loudness. I also set up a rather elaborate randomized scheme for choosing which instruments will play and how likely it is that various combinations will be chosen. I also worked on fine-tuning the fades at the end of phrases for the sustaining instruments. Another thing that I did was to randomly vary the tempo slightly to give the whole piece a more human, less mechanical feel. I'm pretty happy with it all now, so I think I'll try to take a little break from it and work on my neglected Android class.

We ate lunch today at Café Café at Ice Park. David had ravioli with tomato sauce, and I had pieces of toasted bread with various spreads.

In the late afternoon, we took a short drive up the Arava and then proceeded directly to Ice Park when we returned to town, where we ate frozen yogurt and watched the 6:00 p.m. show. There were two different student girls, but Santa and Diana did their same Xmas routines.

Wednesday, 25 December 2013

I managed to get myself out of bed and out for a good walk this morning. I went all the way to the gym and back but didn't work out there.

We ate lunch today at a place called "Sushi Mushi" at Ice Park, where we hadn't eaten before. We both had their vegetarian sushi combo, and it was very delicious but also somewhat expensive.

In the afternoon, I went to the Maccabi pharmacy to pick up out monthly supply of medicines.

We called David's sister in Ohio, but her husband answered and told us she was in the hospital again, alas!

We drove back over to Ice Park in the evening for frozen yogurt, a couple more walks around the mall, and the Xmas ice skating show. There were a couple of different kids this evening, but Santa did his same routine (to a pretty hyped up version of "Jingle Bells"), and Diana also did her lovely routine to "Santa Baby". This time, I went down to a spot right by the rink to watch the main parts of the show.

I spent most of the rest of the day working on getting the volumes of the various instruments right for soloing in my ChucK piece. Next, I planning to work on more interesting ways to randomly choose the instruments to play.

Tuesday, 24 December 2013

I couldn't quite get myself out for a walk this morning. I woke up with a bit of a sinus headache and just didn't feel quite up to it.

I'm on vacation now from Berlitz until the 6th of January, so I'm trying to get various things done.

This morning I did the weekly grocery shopping at Shufersal since I obviously did NOT have time to do it yesterday. I was very happy to see that they had 6-packs of 1.5 liter bottles of PespiMax, since last week they had none. I bought six of them!

For lunch, we went to Buddha Burgers. David had a vegan shwarma burrito, and I had hummus with vegan shwarma. We split a piece of their fabulous vegan cheesecake for dessert. It was ALL very delicious!

I've had a cyst (actually, TWO of them, right next to each other) on the last joint of my right index finger (finger number 2 for you keyboard players) for several months now. They didn't hurt, but they had become somewhat annoying, so I got an appointment with the dermatologist about them. Today was the day. He dipped a stick with cotton on the end of it into a thermos of something very cold, probably liquid nitrogen, and pressed it on the cysts. It hurt a little when he did it, and actually more afterwards. Now, they have merged together into one bigger bump, but I'm sure this is part of the process of finally eliminating them. The doctor said to come back to him in about 4-6 weeks.

After I came back from my appointment, David and I drove down to Ice Park, where we ate frozen yogurt and took a couple of walks around the mall. While we were eating, they had an ice skating show. About 3 local girls who are learning did solos first. Then, the professional male skater (I think he's from Bulgaria or Hungary, but he's had a gig here for months) came out in a full Santa costume, gave a present to the last girl, and then did his routine to some Xmas song (I don't remember which one now). After that, Diana, the female professional skater and acrobat from England (who has also been here for many months), did her routine in a red Xmassy costume to "Santa Baby". She was great, as always, especially her amazing acrobatics on a ring that she climbs onto and then they raise it high above the ice! At the end, all the skaters came out with Santa caps and skated around the rink a couple times to a version of "Jingle Bells". Who'd have thunk?

I spent much of the rest of the day making further changes to my ChucK piece. Now I'm working on setting up additional instruments which will be randomly chosen to play the melody. My main goal in all my work on this is to increase the variety of music the code will produce each time it is run without changing the code itself at all, and without changing any parameters, either.

Monday, 23 December 2013

I managed to get myself out of bed early enough to walk to the highway 12 kikar and back, so at least I got some exercise today.

I had only 4 units of Berlitz lessons today, and the first turned out to be a no-show: 11:15-12:45 and 3:30-5:00.

We ate lunch at Café Café at Ice Park today. David had Italian shakshuka, and I had an omelet sandwich.

Later, we drove back down to Ice Park for yogurt and a couple more walks around the mall. Although there are almost no holiday decorations, of course, there was a short message on the big video screen wishing everyone "Merry Christmas".

I spent most of the rest of the day trying to get my "ChucK Makes More Variations" piece to allow for different numbers of phrases to be randomly selected. I finally succeeded, but it was trickier to accomplish than I had originally thought.

Sunday, 22 December 2013

I was lazy and didn't go out for a walk this morning. I did take time to make yet another change to "ChucK Make More Variations" and then played it numerous times, recording about 15 or 16 of them. Now it randomly choose a base frequency within a specified octave range and plays in the "key" of that frequency, which need not be ANY actual key as we know it, and actually usually will NOT be.

Almost all of today was occupied by a trip to Tel Aviv for David's dental appointment. We left home before 7:30, got only snacks for breakfast, filled the car with gas, and headed north. We arrived at our destination, Asuta Hospital in Tel Aviv, at about 11:45. His appointment was at 1:00, but they had called us while we were on our way and asked if we could be there by 12:30. In the end, the dentist started work on him at about 12:45.

After the appointment, we ate lunch at the Arcaffe located there on the ground floor of the hospital and then headed home, arriving here just after 7:00 p.m.

Although it was a long day, driving in the desert is always interesting: the colors, the textures, the tree in the middle of the road (in Nakhal Tzikhor -- they split the 2-lane road for a brief section so as not to disturb a beautiful acacia tree!), the remoteness. On the way back, we could see a bright planet to the southwest, orion rising over the Jordanian mountains, and lights from the heights of Jordan.

Shabbat, 21 December 2013

I woke up slightly late and felt more than a little lazy, so I didn't go out for a walk this morning.

I spent much of my time today making a small improvement to my final project, even though it's already turned in and being evaluated by my peers. I'm calling the new version "ChucK Makes More Variations" because there is now even more that is left to chance. The results are really quite amazing: phrases that sound "right" and even seem to be in a logical order. It's really fun doing algorithmic composition!

We took a drive around the short loop this morning, going up the Arava to highway 40, up highway 40 past Ne'ot Smadar to the Shizzafon Junction, and then returning to Eilat on highway 12.

For lunch, we went to Barbis and both had soyaburgers.

We talked for a while this afternoon with David's sister in Ohio. She's out of the hospital but still feeling a little weak. They're having a big family party at their place today, so we didn't talk too long since they were quire busy preparing things.

In the early evening, we drove over to Ice Park and had frozen yogurt. David's legs weren't feeling very steady, so he stayed in the car in the parking building while I went in and got the yogurt. Then we sat together in the car and ate it.

Friday, 20 December 2013

I didn't sleep very well last night and so didn't get up early, either. I did walk down to recycle the cardboard and buy challah at the local bakery before breakfast, though.

I taught 4 units of Berlitz lessons today: 10:00-11:30 and 11:30-1:00.

We ate our traditional Friday lunch at Il Pentolino.

I evaluated the final projects of 5 of my classmates in Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists. Two of them were really, really interesting and took full advantage of some of the cool capabilities of ChucK.

Shortly before the sun went down, we lit candles, drank a bit of sweet red wine, and ate whole-wheat challah to welcome the Shabbat. Pascal, our Israeli cat, also joins us in making Shabbat. What HE likes, though, are the pieces of rolled oats and small black seeds that are on the outside of the challah. I also give him some additional rolled oats that I have. This makes him very happy!

This evening, I went back and listened to all the project that I submitted for the class. I also made a small change to allow more variations in the lengths of the melody notes in my final project, and I found, somewhat to my surprise, that it makes the results even MORE interesting. I think my next step will be to make the choices of beginning and ending notes and chords for phrases somewhat random and then setting it in an infinite loop of of 4-measure phrases. Maybe I can even figure out a way to make it stream on the web from some kind of host site. Wouldn't that be cool?

Thursday, 19 December 2013

I got up late this morning and so didn't go out for a walk.

I taught 10 units of Berlitz lessons today: 10:00-11:30, 12:00-1:30, 2:30-4:00, 4:00-5:30, and 7:00-8:30.

We ate lunch at home because I only had an hour between classes.

In the evening, though, we went down to Ice Park and had frozen yogurt.

Wednesday, 18 December 2013

I got up early this morning and walked for about an hour. I went up highway 12 to just before the large tanks, then turned left and followed the side roads (including one that is unpaved) back to town. It was a nice walk.

I had 8 units of Berlitz lessons scheduled today, but the second student was a no-show, and the last one left without warning about half an hour into the class: 10:30-12:00, 12:00-1:30 (the no-show), 4:30-6:00, and 6:00-7:30 (the one who left at about 6:30).

We ate lunch at Café Café at Ice Park today. David had shakshuka, and I had stuffed mushrooms.

Tuesday, 17 December 2013

I was tired (or lazy? or sick?) this morning and so didn't get up early and go out for a walk.

I taught only 6 units of Berlitz lessons today: 10:00-11:30, 11:45-1:15, and 7:00-8:30.

We ate lunch at the Aroma at Mercaz Big. Afterwards, we drove down to Ice Park and walked once around the mall. Next, we filled the car with gas at the station by the airport and got it washed.

I got a good start on the second week's materials for my Android programming class.

Before my evening class, we drove down to Ice Park again, walked around another time, and had frozen yogurt.

Monday, 16 December 2013

I didn't get up very early this morning, and I didn't feel like going out, either. I think I'm still fighting some kind of sinus infection or irritation. Oh well!

I taught 8 units of Berlitz lesson today: 9:30-11:00, 12:00-1:30, 5:00-6:30, and 6:30-8:00.

We ate lunch at Buddha Burgers and then headed down to Ice Park to exercise by walking around the mall a couple of times. We also got frozen yogurt while we were there.

I turned in my final project for my class, "Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists," and began looking at the videos for the second week of my new class, "Creative, Playful and Serious Science of Android Apps".

Sunday, 15 December 2013

I got up very early this morning and went for a good walk and work-out. It was cold, but I kept nice and warm with my green jacket that I bought in Yellowstone in 2002.

Today I put some finishing touches on my final project for my class, Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists, including inserting a lot of comments into the code. In doing so, I discovered a logic error that would produce some wrong notes. I hadn't noticed them particularly, but after I fixed it, I did notice that the music seemed better, so perhaps I just hadn't heard them directly before. Anyway, I'm very happy with how it is now. I'll listen again tomorrow, do any final tweaks, and turn it in. I'll also try to record a few runs of the program and post the MP3s somewhere so that anyone who in interested can check them out.

We ate lunch today at Aroma at the local Mercaz Big. We split an omelet sandwich, and so lunch was very inexpensive!

I did the weekly grocery shopping at Shufersal this afternoon.

In the early evening, we drove down to Ice Park for frozen yogurt and a couple of walks around the mall, one on each level.

Shabbat, 14 December 2013

I slept well last night and woke up reasonably early this morning, but I was lazy and didn't go out for a walk anyway.

This morning after breakfast, we drove around the short loop. In particular, it was nice to see the snow on the tops of the highest peaks across the Arava in Jordan.

I spent much of the day working on my final project for Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists. It was quite a bit harder than I had expected, but I've basically got it working now. Tomorrow I make some additional tweaks and add another thing or 2.

We ate lunch today at Barbis, where we both had soyaburgers with mushrooms and yellow cheese.

In the evening, we drove down to Ice Park for frozen yogurt and a walk around the mall for a bit of exercise.

Friday, 13 December 2013

I got up early enough this morning to walk to the gym and back, but I didn't work out there at all. A little later, but still before breakfast, I did my regular Friday walk to recycle the cardboard and buy challah.

I taught 6 units of Berlitz lessons today, my max for a Friday: 9:00-10:30, 10:30-12:00, and 12:00-1:30.

This morning (prompted by a report on Facebook from my friend, Liz) I looked out my window and saw SNOW on the mountains of Jordan just across the valley from us!

We ate our traditional Friday lunch at Il Pentolino today. We bundled up to go there, too, because it was cold out (okay, so it probably wasn't even under 10˚C = 50˚F, but it felt cold to us!).

Just before sundown, we lit candles, drank sweet red wine, and ate whole-wheat challah to welcome Shabbat.

I got some work done on my final project for my class, Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists. It's turning out to be surprisingly difficult, especially since it's based on the same idea I used last week. Mostly, it's the fact that I'm trying to write in a minor key (instead of last week's major) that's creating complications.

Thursday, 12 December 2013

I got up very early this morning and set out on my walk. When I got to the bridge over the nakhal, just after the highway 12 kikar, though, I began to feel a few small drops. There weren't any heavy clouds, so I was pretty sure it wouldn't rain much, but I also didn't want to get even further from home, just in case I might get quite wet trying to return. So I immediately turned around. However, the drops did NOT continue so I simply came back around a longer way and thus got in a walk of more than 45 minutes.

I taught 8 units of Berlitz lessons today: 10:00-11:30, 2:30-4:00, 5:00-6:30, and 7:00-8:30. We had lunch at Chooka at Ice Park today, but we also walked around the mall before eating and again afterwards (the 2nd time on the upper level). David is making an effort to improve his physical fitness, and I am more than happy to help.

Wednesday, 11 December 2013

I woke up early this morning and so got in a good walk and work-out.

I taught 10 units of Berlitz lessons today: 9:00-10:30, 10:30-12:00, 12:00-1:30, 4:30-6:00, and 7:00-8:30.

We ate lunch at Café Café at Ice Park. I had shakshuka, and David had ravioli with tomato sauce.

Tuesday, 10 December 2013

I slept well last night but woke up a little too late to go out for a walk this morning.

I made sure to take time to sweep the balcony this morning because I read that there is a chance of rain here tomorrow. There was quite a bit of cat litter that had been kicked out of their boxes, and, if it gets wet, it's a real mess! So, I prevented that possibility. Of course, I'll still have to protect the litter boxes themselves from the rain, but that's easy (and a smaller mess even if it doesn't succeed totally).

I taught 9 units of Berlitz lessons today: 10:00-11:30, 11:45-1:15, 2:30-3:15, 5:00-6:30, and 7:00-8:30.

We ate lunch at home today.

I finished watching all the videos for my online class that's finishing up this week, and I evaluated the projects of 5 of my fellow class members from last week, as is required each week.

Monday, 9 December 2013

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and had trouble getting back to sleep, so I didn't get up early this morning at all and had no time for a walk.

I taught 9 units of Berlitz lessons today: 9:30-11:00, 11:00-12:30, 4:00-6:15, and 6:30-8:00.

We ate lunch at Buddha Burgers today. David had a veggie shwarma burrito, and I had hummus with veggie shwarma.

On the way home, I stopped briefly at the pharmacy to pick up a few over-the-counter meds that we were running low on.

I watched several more lecture videos for my class, Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists. This is the last week of that class, and they are now teaching us about event processing, including keyboard events (key presses), mouse events, and MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) events. It's very interesting!

Thirty-four years ago today, I became a parent for the first time. What an exciting event that was! I can't believe it's been that many years!

Sunday, 8 December 2013

I got up a little late this morning and so didn't go out for an early-morning walk. After breakfast, though, I did walk down to the new local post office to pick up a package they had for me. It takes about 12 minutes to walk down there, but it's uphill on the way back, so it's a little slower, and I got some pretty good exercise from that.

I did my weekly trip to Shufersal for the grocery shopping this morning. On the way, I also stopped at the pet store and the health food store for some other items.

We ate lunch at Buddha Burgers today. David had their veggie weenies with sauerkraut on the side, and I tried a "pashtida" (like a quiche, but without a crust) that they recommended. Unfortunately, it was quite a bit saltier than it should have been, at least for my taste. We both also had dessert: a chocolate cake with ice cream for David, and their scrumptious cheesecake for me!

In the early evening, we went over to Ice Park for frozen yogurt.

Most of the rest of the time during the day I spent working on my two online classes. I made a few additional changes to my random melody project, including correcting an important logical error I had made, and now the melodies sound even less random. I spent more time, however, inserting comments into my code so that those assessing it will be able to tell what I did and how. I also, of course, highlighted places where I fulfilled particular requirements.

Finally, I completed this week's work for my new class on programming for Android. I successfully produced the obligatory "Hello world!" app and ran it on two emulated Android devices (both inside my computer, of course), and I took the quiz. On my first attempt, I only got 19.75 out of 20.00, so I attempted it again (some questions were the same, but not all) and managed to get 20.00 out of 20.00. Yay! I've always aimed for top grades when I've been a student, and so the tradition continues. What can I say? :-)

Shabbat, 7 December 2013

I woke up very early this morning and got out for a good walk to the gym and a good work-out there. It was chilly enough for me to put up the hood on my hoodie most of the time.

Right after breakfast, David and I took a drive around the short loop, starting by driving up highway 12. On the way back, we stopped at Yotvata to buy a couple more kilos of dates since we're currently on our last kilo.

We had a late lunch at Mike's Place this afternoon. I had nachos, and David had a veggie bean burrito. He also had a Bloody Mary, and I had a White Russian.

After returning from lunch, we talked a bit with David's sister in Ohio. She's back in the hospital, with pneumonia AND a blood infection, so she's not feeling very well, but she'll be okay.

Later in the evening, we drove over to Ice Park for frozen yogurt.

I spent most of the rest of the time during the day working on this week's project for my class, Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists. Each time the program is run, it creates a random melody but with a lot of constraints on how it can move up and down so that it doesn't actually sound so random. Then it generates appropriate chords and a bass line to accompany the melody. I had quite a bit of trouble getting it all debugged, but it seems to be working very nicely now. Of course, some of the melodies are better than others, but it's interesting to see what comes out.

Friday, 6 December 2013

I got up a little too late to go out for a regular walk this morning, but I did have time to go down and recycle the cardboard and buy challah before breakfast.

I had only one student today (for 2 units): 9:00-10:30.

We ate our traditional Friday lunch at Il Pentolino today.

We lit candles, drank a bit of sweet wine, and ate challah to welcome the Shabbat this evening.

I began working on this week's project for my class, Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists. I got the code written that will enable the computer to produce a random melody using the given scale and observing certain constraints. I tested it, and it seems to generate reasonably interesting melodies. Now I'm getting ready to write code that will pick chords to go with the melody generated, chords that will fit with the melody notes and that will follow constrained chord progressions. Hopefully, it will all sound good when I get it together!

Thursday, 5 December 2013

I woke up very tired this morning and so didn't get up early at all and got no exercise.

I taught 8 units of Berlitz lessons today: 10:00-11:30, 3:00-4:30, 5:00-6:30, and 7:00-8:30.

We ate lunch at Café Café at Ice Park today. David had ravioli with tomato sauce, and I had their omelet sandwich.

Wednesday, 4 December 2013

I got up a little late this morning, but I still had time to walk to the highway 12 kikar and back, which I did. It was so warm out that I wore only sandals, jeans, and a t-shirt.

I taught 10 units of Berlitz lessons today: 9:00-10:30, 10:30-12:00, 12:00-1:30 (but this student had to leave for a meeting at 1:00), 3:00-4:30, and 4:30-6:00.

We decided to order pizza to eat at home for lunch today, since David wasn't feeling like walking very much.

After my last class, he felt a little better, so we drove down to Ice Park and ate our regular frozen yogurt there.

I took the time to assess my peers' work for my class, Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists, and most of them were quite nice. I also watch another video lecture for my new class on programming for Android.

Tuesday, 3 December 2013

Last night a little after 1:00 a.m. I was awakened from a deep sleep by the sound of David falling in the bathroom. Of course, I quickly grabbed my glasses (I don't do ANYWHERE without them!) and headed for the bathroom. David was lying on the floor with his head right next to the door frame, but he was conscious and not bleeding anywhere. I kept checking his pupils, but detected no difference between them, so I was quite sure he didn't have a concussion. Of course, he was tired and did have some pain. In the end, it was about 2 hours before he was able to get it together enough to get up and get back to the bedroom and to bed. Needless to say, we both got up very late this morning. Luckily, I had no classes scheduled in the morning at all today.

Today I started a new online class even though my current one won't be over for a couple more weeks. The new class is called "Creative, Serious and Playful Science of Android Apps", and it looks like it's going to be an interesting programming class. I already was nearly bumping up against the limits of my 2009 Mac, so I made the decision to switch to doing this class on my newer (2011) Mac, which I also upgraded a year ago to 16 MG of RAM. I actually use it for a lot LESS things, too, since my older one is still my main one. Actually, the newer one was David's, but I took it over after he lost his vision and really couldn't use it anymore.

We ate lunch again at Buddha Burgers. David had hummus with vegan shwarma again, and I had their vegan frankfurters. Both were, of course, delicious!

I taught 5 units of Berlitz lessons today: 2:30-3:15, 5:00-6:30, and 7:00-8:30.

Monday, 2 December 2013

I got up early this morning and so got some good exercise.

I taught 6 units of Berlitz lessons today: 9:30-11:00, 12:00-1:30, and 6:30-8:00.

I watched most of the videos for the new week of my class, Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists. This week we're getting into object-oriented programming, and it will give us a lot of power, especially in setting up musical compositions.

We ate lunch today at Il Pentolino, but we had different dishes. David had cheese ravioli with Palermo sauce, and I had their special Il Pentolino salad.

Yesterday, I had planned to do the grocery shopping in the late afternoon, but I completely forgot about it, so I did it today.

Sunday, 1 December 2013

I slept in this morning for some unknown reason, so I didn't go out an walk at all.

Today I put the finishing touches on my project for this week, added lots of comments in the code, and then submitted it, even though it's not due until tomorrow night.

We ate lunch today at Buddha Burgers. David had hummus with vegan shwarma, and I had a vegan shwarma burrito. Both were very delicious!

In the evening we went over to Ice Park for frozen yogurt. While we were eating it, I chatted a bit, almost entirely in Hebrew, with Daniel, the owner of the business, who was sitting near us working out a schedule for his workers. The business is called סחוט (skhut), which means "squeezed" (as in fresh-squeezed juice). In the handwriting font that they use, though, it looks almost like "Gino".