Happy 2nd birthday to our beautiful little weirdo, who loves cauliflower but hates berries, whose favorite car color is brown, who can seamlessly shift between three languages in the same breath and never mix them, who takes care to translate everything Papi says in Spanish into Hebrew for Mami and vice versa, who runs and plants huge kisses on us out of the blue, who suggests his cheek as a suitable alternative when Papi asks to eat his pulke, who is so insanely intelligent beyond his years that we often shake our heads in wonder at one another, who makes us laugh daily.
We love you so very much, little man. Happy second birthday!
The whole world tuned in to the Second US Presidential Debate and saw their faith in the human race decline steadily for two hours… until Kenneth Bone showed up to save the day.
But here’s my personal conspiracy theory: few realize that Ken Bone is actually a Mexican undercover agent with excellent fashion sense trying to steer the campaign away from crotch grabbing and towards taco trucks on every corner.
Specifically: Ken Bone is secretly Mexican tycoon El Señor Barriga.
Time flies… it feels like just yesterday it was 5710, barely a year after the founding of the State of Israel.
Ok, not really. But it will after you see these five Rosh Hashanah greeting cards (cartisei bracha) from 1949. My mom found them in a box that belonged to my great-grandfather zeide Elias Zack. For the most part, these are well known photos, but it’s still cool to see in this format.
Let’s see if I can track down who these Yaffa, Nili, and Baruch Sandomirsky were.
Here is a download link for all five as separate PDFs scanned at insanely high 600 dpi, in case you want them. If you do download, be nice and leave a comment? kartisei-bracha-1949
Also, it’s my movie acting debut, playing the part of Christopher Wayne Thomas: a rugged bar goer who mostly sits and cheers for the almost 10 seconds of on-screen time and has no talking lines. You may have briefly read about him here. Yes, I look amazing with that mustache. I used Stanislavsky’s system of acting and I think it shows. If only I were a member of the Academy, I might have a chance of an award. Most (all) of my scenes (the one) were shot last November.
In any case, I have no idea how you may watch it yet, so you will have to sit tight. I will update this post when I get more info.
Congratulations to the director and all the crew, and thank you for the opportunity.
The main difference between the Playstation VR and the Rift/Vive is that it works with the Playstation 4 gaming console instead of a high end (~$1500 and up) decked out gaming PC. The headset itself is cheaper too: $400 vs $800 for the Vive. So if you don’t have any pre-requisites, this is a much cheaper way to get into VR – and no, I don’t think of Google Cardboard as a viable alternative.
Playstation and Move controllers not included.
The VR headset itself is slick, as one would expect from Sony. The way it sits on your head feels comfortable. There’s no elastic bands nor cushions involved.
Flying a spaceship in VR.
They would let you play one out of five games, and that’s it. I chose to play Eve Valkyrie in which you get to fly a spaceship and have space dogfights. I had never played before, and the demo dude didn’t explain how to play, so I was on my own. This compares poorly to the Vive demos at Microsoft, where they guide you through a few very simple, very different games.
The headset is much lighter and much cooler, as in it doesn’t have plasticky cushions on you face making you sweat.
But whatever, I got to fly a spaceship. You see yourself sitting in the cockpit and it wasn’t too hard, although I had no idea who I was shooting at. You can do barrel rolls and those made me a little sick. Interestingly, I felt mildly sick for a few hours and it was those barrel rolls. YMMV.
The headset seemed to be of good quality and the immersion and tracking seemed to be on par with the other systems in spite of the cheaper price and specs. But the fact that you can walk around in the Vive still sets it apart, in my opinion.
Manuel (of the opposing team) recorded all their Volleyball matches using a little Geek Pro. They use them to analyze their matches, correct their mistakes, improve on their technique… or to make fun of each other. He sent me the video of last Thursday’s Championship match which was right around one hour long.
Because nobody wants to watch a one hour long video of mediocre amateur volleyball, I thought it’d be a good idea to edit out the significant dead time. But that’s a lot of tedious work, even for me.
Cleverly named after the 18th century fake chess playing machine; which I thought was a well known story but turns out I only know about it because of my odd childhood reading habits; Mechanical Turk is a service that allows you to set up jobs for someone else to do. It’s a great way for those who earn in US Dollars or Euros (but not British pounds!) to get people in China or India or some other low income country to do their menial tasks.
In any case, I uploaded the video to Dropbox and set up a gig, offering $5 to whoever does it.
After almost 15 years of living in the United States, following the law, paying taxes, not bringing drugs, and not killing nor raping anyone (I assume I am one of the good people) I have joined my wife — also a naturalized American — and son — true born Austinite — in being a citizen of this country.
Outside the Delco Center, where the ceremony was held.The stage is all set. A few hours later there were over 1000 new Americans from over 90 different countries.That’s me in the center, with the bad hair day.
Now I need to find something to do with this newfound status, like voting. I haven’t been keeping up… is that coming soon? Who’s running? Any suggestions?
Marcos’ Naturalization FAQ
Will you lose the accent? Yes, I will now stop faking the foreigner accent.
If Mexico plays against the US in a soccer match, who would you root for? Mexico.
Where did you get that lovely purple / pinkish shirt? Macy’s.
A quick note on the first three tragedies. Firstly, it was the working classes who voted us to leave because they were economically disregarded and it is they who will suffer the most in the short term from the dearth of jobs and investment. They have merely swapped one distant and unreachable elite for another one. Secondly, the younger generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries. We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors. Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, we now live in a post-factual democracy. When the facts met the myths they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of aliens in a HG Wells novel. When [British Conservative, pro-Brexit politician] Michael Gove said ‘the British people are sick of experts’ he was right. But can anybody tell me the last time a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism has lead to anything other than bigotry?
The Copa América Centenario is over. For me at least – no more stadium. I got to go to the stadium for all three matches held in Houston.
Game 1: Colombia 2-3 Costa Rica
Colombia’s coach Nestor Pekerman miscalculated and lost the match and the first place of the group. Still made it to quarterfinals. Costa Rica closed the tournament with dignity. Interestingly, this is the second time I see Costa Rica play, and they won both times.
Outside the stadium before Colombia vs Costa RicaNice view of the field. Underwhelming attendance.
Game 2: Mexico 1-1 Venezuela
Venezuela did well and was ahead for most of the game.
With my good buddy Alberto García Aspe.Donald Drumpf was not a popular guy among the crowd.Maduro was unpopular as well.Those jerseys are like $90!National anthemsGood looking fans.
A few days after the Orlando gay club shooting, the full stadium respectfully honors the victims with a moment of silence before the match starts. But only a few minutes later, the cultured Mexican fans go back to their famous gay slur:
I get it, people who are obviously straight think it’s funny and not offensive in this context. But it’s up to those who feel offended to decide whether it’s offensive. Also, the joke is kind of old by now.
Game 3: Argentina 4-0 USA
Oh boy, Argentina played at half capacity and completely humiliated the host team. USA had no ball possession and created no opportunities. In the second half, the American players would stay 3-6 feet away from Lionel Messi whenever he had the ball… they simply stopped trying. Due to happy circumstances and the generosity of some people, I sat really close to the field and was able to see the action up-close.
Nice view. I mean us. Get it?Field panorama. Messi’s free kick goal looked amazing from this angle.Posing with a few peasants who sat really far from the action.
This is my view – short video of Argentina’s 4th goal celebration:
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