I’ve been listening to two artists I hadn’t come across until recently. The first artist who’s new to me is an Israeli artist/band called Narkis. I head their song ״ממה אתה בורח״ (“What are you running from?”) in a Spotify playlist titled ״בדרך״ yesterday, and I’m obsessed:
I went looking for a music video for this song, and this video is the closest I’ve come to seeing this song performed live – what a presence!
Another artist I started listening to, and enjoy, is Claire Guerreso, whose track “Ashes” was featured in a powerful scene on the TV show, Lucifer, that my wife and I have been binging for the last month or so:
This track is wonderful, and a powerful theme for that particular scene in the show. Another terrific track is “Skipping Stones”:
We celebrated 71 years of Israel’s independence earlier this month. We joined thousands of Modiin’s residents to watch a fireworks display in the park.
It was a spectacular display, as usual, and we enjoyed all three parts of the show. I took my tripod with me to attempt some longer exposure photography of the fireworks. I switched to my 18-55mm kit lens, and I think the photos came out fairly nicely.
Yom HaAtzmaut starts at the end of Yom HaZikaron, a memorial day for soldiers and Israelis who died in terror attacks. This year, I decided to learn our national anthem, HaTikva, so I could participate when the anthem was sung at memorial events.
I learned it a few years ago, and then forgot most of the words since then. Having a better understanding of the words in this short anthem made a real difference (as you’d expect). It’s a beautiful anthem, and represents us as Israelis in so many ways.
I recently wrote about my day trip to Jerusalem with my friend during a short vacation. On the next day we took a day trip to see the sights in Tel Aviv and Jaffa. We started off in Jaffa, with a late breakfast at Doctor Shakshuka, generally a great place to enjoy, well, shakshuka.
From there, we made our way towards the Old City of Jaffa. In many respects, this Old City is similar to the Old City of Jerusalem, and well worth visiting.
The walk to the Old City of Jaffa isn’t particularly long, and includes a stroll along the beachfront.
Old City of Jaffa
The view from this walkway is pretty spectacular. On the one side, you see Tel Aviv, and on the other, you see part of the Old City peeking out from behind some trees.
We took a casual walk through the Old City, had ice-cream, and took in the view of Tel Aviv from a hill in the middle of the Old City.
From there, we caught a bus to the Tel Aviv Port, one of my favourite places in Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv Port
There are a couple really nice beaches along the waterfront here, along with a number of restaurants and coffee shops.
The tide was pretty high, so there weren’t many bathers in the water. We were also treated to foam splashing over the railings along the boardwalk.
We had some coffee at one of the coffee shops, and then made our way to Ben Gurion House. Now a museum, Ben Gurion House was formerly Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s house.
What impressed me most about the house is its simplicity. It’s the sort of house your grandparents may have lived in, with perfectly ordinary furnishings, and decorations. The one exception is Ben Gurion’s really impressive library that takes up most of the upstairs section of the house.
Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how seemingly routine photographs of daily life decades ago have taken on an almost magical quality when we look at them now. This has prompted me to look around at scenes of daily life around me, and take a more active interest in photographing it.
If anything, perhaps these photographs will show younger generations more of what life was like in the early 21st century in the not too distant future.
We spent a little time in Sarona Market with its fish ponds before making our way down to the Tel Aviv HaShalom train station, and heading home to Modiin. It was a really nice day out.
My daughter and I watched this Vox video about Stonehenge over lunch today, and it reminded me of my visit to the UK and Ireland in April 2004:
I found my photos from way back then (in full 640 x 480 resolution⭐️), and was able to impress my daughter by showing her my photos of some of the places we saw in the video. I thought I’d dig out my photos, and reminisce a little …
Collage from my UK and Ireland trip in 2004
⭐️ Albums like this remind me that it pays to store archived images in the highest resolution you can manage at the time.
We started off by taking a relatively new train to Jerusalem from the Ben Gurion Airport. This train takes about half an hour to reach Jerusalem, and shaves an hour (or more) off the previous train route that left from Tel Aviv.
We arrived at Yad Vashem at a pretty busy time. There were easily half a dozen tour buses there already.
Yad Vashem
We picked up two audio guides for a self-guided tour (although the guided tours are apparently really good too).
The main museum was pretty crowded, although the tour groups eventually moved past us as we walked through the exhibits describing the events leading up to, and the Holocaust itself in visceral detail.
Walking through the museum takes time, and I almost always felt like I was moments away from tears as I listened to the narrative describing how European Jews were first marginalised, dehumanised, and then eradicated in the many death camps they were shipped to like cattle.
It took us three hours to make our way through the exhibits, and each step reinforced why Israel is so important. Having our own country with an effective military means that Jews are no longer subject to the whims of other nations who repeatedly return to old stereotypes, and prejudices.
Last week on Holocaust Memorial Day, we remembered the cost of not having a state.
Today, on Memorial Day for our Fallen Soldiers, we remember the price we pay to have one. pic.twitter.com/dWZV2Clnbu
What still alarms me (even though I know better), is that we see the same rhetoric being repeated in various countries as the Nazis used in the 1930s, and other groups used in the centuries that preceded them. It seems that some things never change. Some people seem to drift back to anti-Semitism when they need someone to blame.
From Yad Vashem, we made our way to the Old City, towards the Western Wall.
Western Wall
We arrived at the Wall after lunch at a nearby schwarma place, and during preparations for Yom HaZikaron (our memorial day for soldiers and victims of terror attacks) two days later.
This photo of these three men sitting, facing the Wall reminded me of a previous visit where I saw three monks leaning over the railing, looking at the Wall and it’s visitors.
I love this photo of these monks watching visitors to the Wall.
From here, we made our way back out of the Old City towards the train station, and home.
I’ve been an Evernote user for well over a decade, and I used it daily until a couple years ago. I have almost 29,000 notes (a fair number of these notes are automatically captured using IFTTT workflows).
In recent years, Evernote has been pretty quiet on its blog, and while it’s released updates to the app, I haven’t felt like this is a dynamic company, constantly working to evolve it’s product. This has been a little disconcerting, as I have a lot of data in Evernote that I have been storing there intentionally.
At the moment, there isn’t another service like Evernote that uses this notes and notebook model to capture different content types into a pretty flexible reference system. I use Google Drive to store a lot of my stuff too, but it doesn’t feel as fluid to me.
I’ve also been experimenting with a private WordPress.com site too. I think this option is pretty close to Evernote, and even has some benefits that Evernote lacks because WordPress uses web technology (it is a publishing platform after all), so it opens the door to much richer content embeds, and formatting.
Still, short of an importer from Evernote to WordPress, or another suitable alternative, I’ve stuck with Evernote. It’s the simplest solution, even if Evernote becomes a historical reference service for me.
That being said, it was encouraging to see this video from Evernote’s current CEO about how they’ll be giving us insights into what’s happening behind the scenes, and what they’re working on:
I don’t know what lies ahead for Evernote. My Premium subscription is up for renewal next month, and I’m pretty sure I’ll renew, at least for another year. For now, though, I’m looking forward to see what they have in the pipeline. It might just tempt me back into more regular use.
One of my colleagues, Álvaro, runs the site Gutenberg Plugin Review that’s worth bookmarking, and following, if you’re interested in the growing category of Gutenberg plugins.
Update (2019-05-22): Gutenberg Times recently published a post covering almost 100 plugins for the block editor that you may find really helpful too:
We have a curious structure in one of our city parks that’s a little controversial. Some people really don’t like it, most aren’t sure what it’s supposed to represent. It appeals to me, although I can’t quite work out how to photograph it.
I took advantage of a couple evening walks past the park to take a few photos with my phone. Ideally, I’d like to head there one night with my DSLR and my tripod, and try out a few angles and exposures.
I particularly like the shadows at night. Definitely worth exploring when I have some time on one evening.
