What's New

(top)

Here you are! And here is the update you've been waiting for. For goodness sake, sign my Guest Book, quick, before you forget!

I will post new information in this area. Check here to see if anything has changed. Recent stuff will be on top.

December 6, 2005 - All right, this time it's not your fault. I've been busy but I've also been remiss. Here is some of the news. Manth is almost three. If you're friend or family then get in touch with me, as there are many pictures here. Sorry to the rest of you curious web-heads. I just didn't want her baby-pics permanently populating the google cache.

I've started blogging a bit. Unlike this site which was intended for strictly biographical rambling, the blog stuff is a bit more crafted and considered. Give it a look-see. Comment if you have any.

Technologically, I've been looking into lisp, ruby, a little bit of Ajax. Just want to broaden my horizons.

Been reading a lot. Moved. Brother Andrew got married. I'm loving being a Dad.

December 30, 2002 - Once again, I apologize for the lag. I've been busy, busy, busy! Anyway, If you found out about any of this from my site you need to stay in closer touch.

August 14, 2002 - Sorry about the lag but I've had some pressing items that needed attention. Priorities have shifted away from this site. I'll fill in the blanks eventually. For now, if you want to know more, drop a note. I will say this, I got my grill cheese maker!!!

May 8, 2002 - Ahh me, been very busy. My web service application is almost done. Just have to find some beta testers and launch them on their way. If I can drag myself out of bed at 5:30 tomorrow I may know just the crowd. Some very big news in the books department.

I finished the accounting course and have to say I enjoyed it thoroughly. Who would have thought a regular person could calculate the time value of money? Only someone who learned it in school I suspect. Well, now I have. Look out Wall Street, here I come... again.

I want one of these. My Mom had one when I was a kid and I miss it. It's used to make grilled cheese sandwiches on gas stoves or campfires. Anybody seen one? I couldn't find it on E-bay. It's cast iron in my memory but it may have been (Eeewww) aluminum.

April 27, 2002 - I finally saw my friend and ex-roomate Eric Goodman's show. How come everyone around me has something to say and I'm the one with the fat website? Eric blends Guy Debord, Friedrich Nietzsche, Neil Postman and Marshall McLuhan. A heady smoke.

To music and pictures I watched Princess Di's life; created by the media and destroyed by the media. Cameras clicked and flashed as her coffin went by. Those who make the news show us what to think about it. Eric plays guitar masterfully and intones sharp points one after another. I hope to see it again soon.

April 8, 2002 - Looks like the Angel of Death passed over our home yet again. Anybody know a good cleaner to get lamb's blood out of a lintel? We had some friends out from the west coast. I got to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge at night for the first time. That was fun! Jill caught an earache. I'm fighting off some cold or other.

I'm counting my way through The Omer. This is the third time counting it. Last year I made it to the end.

I've been taking (auditing actually but I'm taking all the tests) an accounting course at Pace University. I started it a few months back and I'm enjoying it. It might actually come in useful some day.

March 22, 2002 - Been away for a while. Sorry, hope you missed me. I'm in the midst of creating the site for the Second Annual Brooklyn Jewish Film Festival. It should be good and I'm getting paid in tickets!

January 24, 2002 - Learning lots of new stuff. Perl, regular expressions, chords and scales. Jill's bookclub was here tonight. Their pictures are up in the secure area.

January 10, 2002 - So, let me catch you up. I've created a page for my brother Andrew. He's a Yoga teacher and Massage Therapist.

I also created a site for my Mom's Macrobiotic Pot Luck group. Got to do some slightly interesting stuff on this one. Visitors can submit Recipes. I jiggled a public domain Guestbook to make it happen.

January 3, 2002 - Back from our trip to Oregon (Boring if you must know) we have lots of pictures. My Mom's boyfriend Joseph took these. There'll be more soon.

December 17, 2001 - Persistent validation is in place. Log in once and provided you visit once every thirty days you won't have to login again to get to the secure area. On to the Macro Database.

December 13, 2001 - Well today is my niece Madison's birthday. I'm home with a cold. I've finished implementing the secure section. You can now post a private message in the guest book. It will not show in the public page but will be visible to people who can login to the secure section. Now as soon as I figure out PHP's cookies I'll be able to give users session security rather than page security.

December 9, 2001 - Waaahoo! I'm an uncle again. This time it's my brother David's fault. His and his lovely wife Kathy's. You can see pictures of them all at his site. This is Jill's first official wedded aunting.

December 6, 2001 - I've added a password mechanism and the facility for keeping private stuff private. To get a password for yourself or just to see how it works click here.

December 3, 2001 - I've added a Guest Book. Give it a look. Send me a message. Tell me, and everyone else what's on your mind.

November 29 , 2001 - George Harrison died. My Guitar ensemble played out tonight in Manhattan. We played Harrison's Something and van Morrison's Moondance. We dedicated the show to George Harrison.

November 26, 2001 - Updated the book section.

November 21, 2001 - Read some more books. Job hunt continues. Guitar ensemble is playing out next Thursday but I'm not telling anybody where. Not ready yet.

November 9, 2001 - Updated Personal Web Page. New look and feel.

November 8, 2001 - Updated Professional Web Page.

September 22, 2001 - Here is a D'var Torah (a talk on the weekly bible reading) I gave the weekend after our wedding re: September 11th..

September 16, 2001 - Jill and I got married! They say the week of the wedding is exciting. Now I know what they mean.

September 11, 2001 - Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center towers killing thousands of people.

Books

(top)

I've decided to rate the books. Five stars is best. Three still has something to recommend it. I'm not sure I could finish reading a One.

Been reading a fair amount (two forty minute commutes a day). Here is a sampling. Reviews to come.I'm going to move this section to the Blog in the future. You may get a first peek here, or not.

Sarah Flannery - In Code (****)

Keith Devlin - The Language of Mathematics (****)

Jeff Hawkins - On Intelligence (***)

Tyler Mitchell - Web Mapping Illustrated (***)

Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner (**)

Edward O. Wilson - Consilience (****)

Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate (****)

G. Polya - How to solve it (*****)

John Brockman - Curious Minds (****)

Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, Patricia K. Kuhl - The Scientist in the Crib (****)

Paul de Kruif - Microbe Hunters (***)

Back in March I committed to going cold turkey. I had a $100 a week habit and that is only OK if money is coming in faster than it's going out. No more until I find gainful employ. I can't say it's been easy but I've been clean since day one. I've had to get a few special dispensations for technical books that I felt I needed. As for the fiction and general nonfiction. That's why I have bookshelves full of books and libraries in the neighborhood.

Paul Graham - ANSI Common LISP(****)

Got a special dispensation to grab this too. I've been looking for it for a while. I received two independent recommendations that I learn Lisp. One as a general developer's discipline and the other in support of my XML studies. Lisp is a different language. It looks different and it feels different. I can't say I've wrapped my head around it completely as of yet but I'm working through the exercises. It will come.

Wrox Press - Professional XML(***)

Got a special dispensation to grab this one. XML is where it's gonna be at. I'm going to have to be there.

Christopher Priest - Infinite Summer(***)

I probably wouldn't have gotten around to this one if not for my new discipline. This is a short story collection, dreams and the edges thereof. I have a recurring image, Matrix-like or something out of David Lynch's warp. It comes as I'm falling asleep or getting too much nitrus at the dentist. As if there was a hidden dream world that can only be seen from within. When I'm there I'm reminded of the other times I've been there,when I'm not its hard to recall, and impossible to describe with anything better than generalities. Sorry. It's connected to time travel. Maybe too much SF when I should have been watching Dukes of Hazard and Gilligan's Island. Priest knows about this place. He calls it the Dream Archipelago. Or at least I say he does.

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of The Rings Trilogy(*****)

In my youth, misspent though it may have been, I drew a firm line between fantasy and SF. I didn't read fantasy. (Well, I loved the first book of the Earthsea Trilogy but being by LeGuin it didn't count) I wanted to see the Fellowship movie and I didn't want to risk ruining a great read so I broke down and cracked the spine of the second edition Tolkien on my shelf. As I anticipated, the characters were familiar, my having grown up in the 20th Century. Still, the adventure was fresh and the tension was real. Speed reading has it's downside and missing poetry is part of it. I was encouraged when a friend, frowning over my temerity, suggested that the Tom Bombadil section was poetry. True, I didn't remember the language particularly but I was very fond of the character and missed him later in the books. Sadly, he didn't make it to the movie.

I had planned to wait until the other movies to read the other books but life is short and unemployment checks don't come forever.

Neil Stephenson - Zodiac(****)

I always feel like I learned something after I read Stephenson. Linguistics in Snow Crash(*****), the future of children's books in Diamond Age(***), Cryptography in Cryptonomicon(***). Now I feel like I know something about covert ecological response. Unlike the fella in the New York Times Magazine this week the hero is most avowedly NOT an eco-terrorist. After watching the fictional character achieve so much with brains and strategy I wondered why blowing up an RV in a car lot merits news. I suppose comparing fictional characters with the other kind is totally unfair but then, it's my web site.

Philip K. Dick - The Divine Invasion(****)

I learned on the last page that this was one of a trilogy. I'm glad to say, it stands by itself. I'm also glad to know there's more coming. I'll be hitting the library for the other two post haste. Basic premise: God's been hiding out from Satan for a while and he's trying now to make his way back in the body and mind of a kid with amnesia. Can't say I understood it all but what I got I liked.

Ted Heller - Funnymen(****)

I've got a connection (Jill) who provided a copy of this. Now that the book is officially out, I figure I can say what I like. Fortunately, I only have good things to say. I read Ted Heller's last book, Slab Rat(***) and enjoyed it, though I have to say fashion publishing is not an area that holds any interest for me. The venue (I mean milieu but that's a terribly pretentious word) for Funny Men is more up my ally and the book isn't disappointing. There are a bunch of interesting characters some of whom become more likable as you get to know them. Even the obnoxious ones are obnoxious in a fun way. It reads like a chunk of history. It wasn't, but it might as well have been.

Arthur Conan Doyle - The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes(****)

Fun subway reading. I don't think I ever read much of this stuff before. Funny, I was inspired to read this when I wrote the Harry Potter review below.

Jonathan Spence - The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci(***)

I'm enjoying this one! It's part biography, part travelogue. It reads very smoothly and I feel like I'm in the hands of a talented artist. It's re-inspiring me to build a memory palace of my own. Some of you know that I was playing with one based on the Periodic Table of Elements. This would be an example of throwing the first one away. I'm going to try again with a less ambitious architecture. 22 buildings rather than 110+.

J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone(**)

I finally broke down and read this. As I anticipated I was disappointed. Having graduated from Hugh Lofting and John Christopher to Ursula Le Guin and Piers Anthony, I expect more from juvenile Fantasy/SF. I was annoyed at the shortcuts taken by Rowling; for example, a character is presented with a logic puzzle. She exclaims "Oh, it's LOGIC!" and proceeds to solve it without offering the reader any of the fun. It's as if Sherlock Holmes said. "Elementary Watson, it's the gardener!" and left it at that. Check out this analysis if you're interested. I read the book so that the movie wouldn't ruin anything for me. Looks like I needn't have bothered.

Rebecca Goldstein- Mazel(***)

She's a good writer. Very smart. It mostly focuses on the oldest of three generations of women in and around Warsaw just prior to the Nazi invasion. The younger generations are less vivid in and around Princeton New Jersey. As stories in this period go it's uplifting and affirmative. Not as intellectually stimulating as her earlier Mind Body Problem(****).

Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius(**)

Tough going slogging through this narcissistic descent into ever-deepening irresponsibility. Friends say it's good so I keep picking it back up but it seems to be spinning out of control. This read has officially stalled.

Burton G. Malkiel - A Random Walk on Wall Street(****)

Now I get it. To make money in the stock market, you have to work in the stock market. I put it down but I'm going to pick it up again shortly.

 

 

 

Music

(top)

Recently bought the latest David Gray - Life In Slow Motion and Tori Amos - The Beekeeper albums. Both exceptional. I'm on a Sony boycott at the moment. It's translating into not buying any music at all. My policy has been to buy CDs, if I like them I burn them onto my PC and then burn large MP3 disks to play in my (now antiquated) Rio Volt. The two listed above are the first to qualify in quite a while. I might finally break down and check out this whole on-line music industry. I hear it's a big thing and Manth needs to hear the Stones singing "You Can't Always Get What You Want" although the lyrics will probably bug her.

Jill took me to a Martin Sexton concert for my birthday. WOW! He has an unbelievable vocal range, he's not a bad guitar player, he's an interesting songwriter. The only flaws were the venue and the woman standing next to Jill who decided to loudly accompany MS whenever she wasn't loudly gathering the beer order from her cohorts. Perhaps you know the type, she was actually standing with her back to the stage, singing and gesturing to us! I was forced to be somewhat rude when she started slapping Jill in the head.

How does one describe Martin Sexton's music? That's easy! Funky Gospel Yodel Rock. Jill wants to know if we can get scat in there? How do you describe someone who can make Sachmo's sound with his mouth? There are a number of samples on his site.

I'm in a guitar ensemble. Trying to learn to play well with the other children. We played at Dillons on Thanksgiving. It went pretty well. We dedicated the show to George Harrison

I've also been playing with creating a CD ROM guitar instruction tool. It might happen. If it does I'll let you know.

Here is a link to a tool I made to teach ear training. It's kind-of fun if somewhat out of style architecturally with the rest of the site.

Coming Soon

(top)

A help file with THINGS I really needed to know but never learned in kindergarten - Well I found the file, now all I have to do is make it into HTML

More links through "Stuff I'm Into".

The wedding thank you cards are out. If you haven't gotten one we lost your present. Thank you for coming if you came. The Oregon party thank yous are sent as well. Or at least they should have been..

Stuff/Links

(top)

TYZ's own not so private Guest Book. Give it a look. Send me a message. Tell me, and everyone else what's on your mind.

The Scrunchy Page is here - Give it a squeeze, especially if you have, kids, stress, a party to plan for, stress, weak hands, stress...

Stuff I'm Into:

Toys: Craft Projects, Sculpy, Wedgits

Games: Go, Chess, Scrabble, Set, Royalty

Music: Guitar, Harmonica, Writing Songs, The Blues

Competitive Yoga - Ha Ha only serious.

Books: Daniel Dennett, S.J.Gould, A.S.Byatt, Dianne Ackerman, Brenda Laurel, Shakespeare

Coding: Perl, Design Patterns, Java, Games, Utilities

General Fun: Philosophy (and other BS), Invention, Stop Motion Video, Singing, Dancing, Kite Flying, Mocking the Hopelessly Uptight.

These are some of the sites I frequent:

Slashdot/Digg/reddit - Aggregators galore

wikipedia - Warts and all

Project Gutenberg - Public Domain books available for downloading. Almost heaven.

OLGA (On Line Guitar Archive): It's back!!! It looks like they got around the lawsuit by removing most of the lyrics. It wasn't about lyrics anyway. You can find them elsewhere. It's those chord charts and TAB files. Yay!!!!

Here are some other interesting links:

The Internet Oracle - This classic site will answer your deepest questions. Put "TELL ME" in the subject line. Beware, you will be called upon to pay in kind.

Things I used to be into:

Magic - I still can't figure out where my money disappears to.

Theatre - Yes, I have a fine arts degree in Acting and Directing. If programming ever dries up I can fall back on waiting tables.

TV - Dead! Killed it good. I am proud to say it has hardly been on in my new home. I don't even know what kind of reception I get. Jelly doesn't watch much either. Now, Netflix, That's a horse of a different color.

Me Buds 'n Bras

Tom the Blues Wizard Casey... Looks like his site is down at the moment.

My bra' Dave's marvelous Camp Leah Page is here. Dave is currently the only Kahn boy without an active web page.

My brother Alan has a company AKA Enterprise Solutions.

My brother Andrew now has a site for clients of his Yoga Teaching and Massage Therapy.

Daniel Radosh, a friend and a bright light, formerly of ModernHumorist. He keeps a blog. Check it out. He is also a new father. He and his wife Gina have both hands full.

Galleries

(top)

Manth:

• This one requires a password. When she's older maybe she'll decide that she wants a web presence.

The Wedding:

• The Wedding - We have a whole mess more pictures but they're not in digital format... Yet.
• The Honeymoon - I have some more of these too. Panoramic and Sus Marine. I'll post when I get a chance.
• A recent party in Oregon - A party for those who didn't make it to New York. Pictures for those who didn't make it to Oregon.

The Jelly Pages:

• Original - I think I posted these in our first month together.
• Jelly 2 - These came a little later.

Travels:

• Steve and Marnie's Wedding

Some old headshots of me - Back in the day.