short takes (pretty random)

[cellio]

Erik (the orange cat) bites his nails, but he won't let me clip them without a fight. That can't be efficient; consider the cross-section of a cat's tooth and the shape of a nail, versus the parameters of a tool designed for the job. Silly cat. He looks so industrious when he decides to shorten his nails, and I could solve that problem for him in just a few seconds.

When you save a web page in Mozilla, by default it creates a directory and collects in it all the associated graphics and stuff, rather than just dumping the HTML for the page. Handy!

The provider of my shell account and web space will host (and register) a vanity domain name for very small amounts of extra money. Just small enough that I'd go for it, if I could come up with something interesting. But I lack creativity. I've occasionally considered grabbing "cellio.org" (we're an Italian family; of course it's .org :-) ), but it doesn't really excite me. I don't want to use something so hobby-centric that I'd be embarrassed to use it professionally, but since I'm not currently planning to use it for business, I don't really want to build a business domain into it. I assume that all singleton English words are taken by either real people or squatters by now.

The morning minyan started using a new siddur a couple weeks ago (new daily version of Sim Shalom). I noticed that it uses a very handy typesetting convention that the Reform siddur (Gates of Prayer) adopted a few years back: writing a certain vowel (qametz) differently when its pronunciation changes. I approve.

(Hebrew is mostly a regular language when it comes to pronunciation, but there is one vowel that is sometimes "ah" and sometimes "oh", depending on rules that are only partially articulated. You just have to know, in some cases. So now there are two siddurim that are using the same minor variation in typesetting to signal this. I find it extremely helpful, and I'll be very disappointed if the new Reform siddur (due out in 2005) doesn't continue it.)

Comments

I am such a Prayer book geek...

[goljerp]

I am such a prayer book geek that I got really excited about the news of the new daily Sim Shalom. Last shabbat Joy and I used the shabbat one (and I've used it on a few other occasions, including the 'beta' version), but I haven't seen the daily one.

I admit that I'm a bit torn. I remember thinking that the Sim Shalom was just too big when I first saw it. And I'll be the first to admit that there are features that are annoying about it - prayers with non-obvious page breaks, translation problems, lack of transliteration... but I've become used to it, warts and all. And it is kind of nice knowing that I can toss it into my suitcase and have pretty much everything I could want - including pirke avot. (Joy and I actually looked at pirke avot a bit last shabbat actually). And the "Baby Sim Shalom" shrinks it down to a reasonable size, as long as one's eyes are good.

I wonder if they'll print a small version which has both volumes included?

I wonder if they'll keep the old version in print?

I'm also excited about Or Hadash, a new commentary on the (Shabbat/festival) Slim Shalom by Reuven Hammer. It sounds pretty cool - with commentary arond the Slim Shalom pages.

Re: I am such a Prayer book geek...

[cellio]

I'm a siddur geek, too. I may end up buying this one; not sure yet. Thanks for the pointer to Or Hadash; I'd like to take a look.