Shelef.

Israeli Young Scientists and Developers

2009-03-17T23:06:00.007+02:00

The Israeli Scientists and Developers competition is a fun and impressive event, with teams of high-school students with new and innovative ideas and products that could in the very near future be at the cutting edge of hi-tech, biology, chemistry, physics, history and more.

Here are my favorite concepts/products from the competition:

A study of what makes a person chose to be a 'furry' creature in an Internet based Role-playing game. This student used the example of the game 'Second Life' to present his idea that choosing a Furry character allows the user to express his inner self in a different way.

Chemical microchip nets that identify contamination in a subject water. This chip allows scientists to check subject water reservoirs for contamination without using lab checks of the water every few hours. Saving money and time.
Again with water contamination, this time with Lead Ion contamination. Here the students found a way of using a plant that will absorb all the ions whilst under microwave energy.

A GPS system for sensory handicapped people. Blind, deaf and mute people have a hard time finding their way through cities. These students created a system that interfaces between these sensorially handicapped people and a computer oprated GPS system.

Designing and creating computer networks can be a diffecult thing. these 3 students created a matrix algorithem program that simulates network trafic and statistics and thus designing a better system.

There were lots of other works which I just didn't understand at all. we'll see what's the results tomorrow - wonder who's the winner :)

The rockshow... MY rockshow

2009-03-15T17:59:00.003+02:00

Well it's a tradition in our school that each year the seniors host a concert with rock and classical - but mostly rock. This being my senior year, I decided to take this task on myself and create this year's 'Spring Concert'.
So I organized around 25 artists from our school (15 or so of which actually came to the sessions) and we got around 25 songs to do:

Knocking on heaven's door -Axel Rose style
Hotel California
Rockin' in the free world
Where is my mind
Mr. Jones
Wish you were here
Smells like teen spirit
Jumper

and other cool songs and classical stuff and songs in Hebrew... yes some people might say we're doing all the simple overdone rock classics and that we're not innovative enough.
Well, last years seniors thought about that, and ended up making a horrible concert. Where none of the songs were actually *chosen*, but more like the songs happened to suite their frame of mind at the time. Bottom line, I was asked to sing "Wind of change" which was a total bust - yet somehow it was one of the more decent pieces. But srsly... It was horrible :|
Bottom line for this year we got simple, easy songs cuz they rule... It's like doing karaoke, only with live music :D
Every other day or so we have a practice session to see that everything's actually getting along fine, and I come home @ like 8PM totally wasted XD but things are looking good for this year.
I hope I'll be able to get some recordings online...

a general discution about...

2009-03-14T18:17:00.000+02:00

It allways seems like I'm torn between my love of design and art and my wire and machine head personalities. Sure I can talk about music and art and be all fancy and pop... but I love the actual stuff - the science of things, machines and people.

Well, I'll just start I guess...