MRD: Education. Technology.

Completing Menachos

2026-05-01T00:00:00Z

It’s 1:30 in the morning on Friday, May 1, 2026 and I’m still awake, blogging. Why am I still awake? Because I stayed up to learn the final Daf of Menachos with Reb Eli Stefansky’s shiur with MDY.

109 days ago, I started to learn Daf Yomi, the daily cycle of Talmud Study in which one learns two pages of the Babylonian Talmud every single day. There are 2,711 folio in the Talmud, front and back, for a total of 5,422 pages; the full cycle takes about 7.5 years to complete.

The current Tractate, called Menachot, started on January 13, and I started just a couple of days later. I quickly caught up and, every single day since then, I either watched Reb Eli’s videos, listened to his podcast, or learned the page on my own. I missed days here and there, but I managed to make them up, doubling up when I had to, and tonight I stayed up to watch the live broadcast, which begins at 7:10 am each morning in Israel (12:10 am here).

The last time I completed an entire Tractate was the year after I graduated high school - I completed Tractate Kedushin over the course of the entire year. Kedushin is only 82 pages. The previous year, we completed Makkos in school (22 pages); that also took an entire year. Those are the only ones I’ve completed.

So, tonight, I completed a tractate of Talmud for the first time in 33 years. And, later today, we begin the next.

ClassBlur: a new web tool in minutes

2026-04-28T00:00:00Z

I’m in a WhatsApp group focused on Educational Technology and today, at about 1:40 in the afternoon, my friend Binyomin posted:

looking for a (pref free) easy to use tool to blur faces in a short video. i see a few tools come up on a google search, but anyone have any experience and specific recommendations? tia.

I jumped into iTerm, opened a new tab, created a directory, invoked Claude, and asked for help. I have a day job, so I only ever interacted with the AI while on hold or waiting for a meeting to start. So, while the actual development only took about 20 minutes, I didn’t push the repo and publish the tool online until about 5:40 pm.

The result is ClassBlur, a tool which will blur out faces in any video you give it. I presume there is a max length, but I don’t know what it is.

All I told Claude was:

"OK, here is the goal: I want to build a simple web app to blurr faces in video so that educators can share classroom video on the web. The tool should:

Accept uploads from common smartphone video formats

Identify faces of children

blur them in a new video file made available for download

UNBREAKABLE RULES:

no video is saved ever.

no data of any kind is saved ever.

these rules are made clear"

The rest of the time was spent testing, connecting to GitHub, and creating an account to host it at Netlify. I honestly spent more time granting Claude permission than I did troubleshooting.

I’m still having a blast with this stuff. :)

SefirahWatch gets its first press

2026-04-24T00:00:00Z

So it pays to have gone to college with someone who grew up to work in the media. :)

SefirahWatch got its first press this week: I sent a press release over to a buddy who works at the Jewish Link, and they ran it in this week’s issue. In related news, the app has been downloaded dozens of times already! Dozens!

SefirahWatch is out there

2026-04-22T00:00:00Z

So I'm an Apple Developer. 🙂

There's a phrase I've always liked: "scratch your own itch." The best projects start small and personal. You build something you actually need, and if you get it right, it turns out other people needed it too.

So I scratched my own itch.

I wanted the daily Sefirat HaOmer count on my Apple Watch. Simple. Visible. No friction. I assumed this already existed. It didn't, at least not in a way that was free and did what I wanted.

So, working with Claude Code, I built SefirahWatch.

I submitted it for review and spent almost a week waiting for Apple to bless it. It finally went live on Day 8 of the Omer. Since then, I've pushed a couple of updates, and with version 1.2.0, it feels… complete.

It shows the daily count right on your watch face. It calculates nightfall based on your location. And once it's time to count, it nudges you until you do.

It's simple. It works. It solved my problem.

If it solves yours too, it's now in the App Store. Give it a try.

It's a rite of passage

2026-04-16T11:00:00Z

I’ve been vibe coding a lot recently.

I decided to scratch my own itch and create an app using Xcode. It’s a tool to keep track of Sefirat HaOmer, which is not a new idea. The new part is the watchOS complication which, as far as I could tell, is not available for free from any other app.

I built the entire app, SefirahWatch, over Chol HaMoed Pesach and submitted it just to Apple before Yom Tov of the second days. They rejected it in 48 hours because I made a dumb error. I fixed that error and re-submitted this past Monday… and now it’s Thursday afternoon, and I still haven’t heard back from Apple.

All I did was fix the one issue they pointed out… and they still haven’t replied. At this point, I’m starting to wonder if I’ll be able to publicly release the app before the Sefirah is over!

So, getting rejected and being frustrated with Apple’s App Review process: I guess that’s two rites of passage.

“I made a blogging engine”

2026-04-16T10:00:00Z

I asked Claude to write some shell scripts for me:

The first launches a new draft template in MarkEdit, the free, open-source Markdown editor I use to create files for Claude.
The second will publish a draft, which involves moving the md file from /drafts to /posts on my Mac. This command uses autocomplete, so I type publish then the start of a slug, and the script fills in the complete slug.
The next script is for creating a new post, which just creates the new md doc in /posts in one step instead of two.
The last script, golive, will push the new contents of /posts up to GitHub, from whence they are automatically pushed to the web server.

I then created a Macro Group in Keyboard Maestro and created four Macros inside it, one to run each of these scripts. When I invoke opt-cmd-b anywhere on my Mac, a Palette appears and I can click one of these Macros. It will ask me for the post title and then launch MarkEdit or publish.

That’s an entire blog engine, running locally on my Mac, using HTML, CSS, and Keyboard Maestro.

My intern built me a website!

2026-04-15T00:00:00Z

I have had a blog for a long, long time. I mean, I was writing updates using open-source CGI script called News-Pro to update the News section of my website because the word “blog” didn’t exist yet, so we just called it “News."

(Incidentally, “blog” is short for “weblog,” which is what they were called at first. Now get off my lawn.)

Anyway, I’ve had a personal website of one form or another since the late 90s. The last several have run in Wordpress, the venerable CMS that powers between 40% and 50% of the internet. It’s powerful and easy to learn to use, but it’s more than I ever really needed and, more importantly, it’s a target for hackers, script kiddies and other assorted bad actors, so my sites would get hacked at least twice a year, requiring cleanup, reinstallation from backups, etc. Big pain.

So, given my recent infatuation with AI, LLMs, and Claude Code, I’ve rebuilt the site. I asked Claude to rebuild my entire Wordpress-powered site using nothing but HTML and CSS and it did. No sweat. Hardly an inconvenience. Took about three hours total.

That’s what you’re reading now. The entire site is simple text files or varying formats, so it’s fast, secure, and easy to maintain. Even the blog is straight text: I write the posts in Markdown:

I’m using an open-source app called MarkEdit to write the md file and then saving it to a local directory. ClaudeCode will then push the files up to GitHub which will, in turn, publish the post. Simple, clean, nerdy fun.

We certainly live in interesting times.

How do you Outlook?

2024-10-14T00:00:00Z

My new gig has me working in Microsoft 365. I know this doesn't make me unique: a quick Google suggests that over 1.3 million US companies use the product, so I know that my discomforts are due to being used to something else, as opposed to serious deficiencies in the product. Still, I'm finding it a tough transition since I've been a MacOS and Google Workspace user for decades. And the toughest transition of all has been moving to Outlook.

I've heard many, many business users say that they hate Gmail and miss the features of Outlook. But my experience is the opposite: running my calendar and email in Outlook makes me feel like I'm wearing mittens: everything is just harder to do.

So, Outlook experts, can you please share your expertise?

Calendar in a Separate Window

This one sounds silly, but it's not. As a Google user, I'm used to having my mail open in one tab and my calendar in another. Outlook insists on putting them in the same application, which my fingers just can't remember. Every time I want to switch from email to calendar, my mouse hunts all over the system for five seconds before I remember that the calendar is accessed via a little icon on the left side on my email window.

Is there some way to open my calendar and email in two different windows?

Send and Archive

This one is huge.

A central part of my Inbox management workflow is Gmail's "send and archive" feature. When you turn it on, a single click will send the email draft you're writing and archive the thread so it's out of your Inbox. This is wonderful: once I hit that email over to your side of the net, I don't want to see it again until you reply.

I’d like to do this on Outlook… can I, please?

Shortcut to Paste Plain Text

On there Mac, a system-wide keyboard shortcut allows me to paste plain text into any application. The same keyboard shortcut exists on Windows and works in many apps but not, it seems, in Outlook. Why? How can I make CTRL-Shift-V work in Outlook?

Disable Emoji

I hate the Emojis that come with Windows. I think they look juvenile and much prefer the text equivalents, like ;). But whenever I type them, Outlook insists or replacing them with goofy icons. I can CTRL-Z to undo the replacement, but that's annoying. Can I disable the substitution anywhere?

Those are the most annoying issues I have so far. Can you please help?

Again, it's time to make a change

2023-08-28T00:00:00Z

My time at Hillel Yeshiva has come to an end. As of the new school year, I'll be joining the team at the Yeshivah of Flatbush's Joel Braverman High School.

The slightly longer version of the story is that, for reasons far too complicated to go into here, I'm leaving my position as Director of Technology at Hillel Yeshiva. My departure is on good terms and I've spent the last few months bringing my replacement up to speed.

I made great friends at Hillel, learned quite a bit, and–thanks to a cooperative and engaged faculty–accomplished a lot that I'm proud of. We grew the school significantly, expanded our toolkits, modernized hardware... and flourished during a global pandemic. Like I said, a lot that I'm proud of.

Last time I wrote one of these posts, I began by saying this:

This isn’t going to surprise you, but I believe in the power of technology to increase student success in schools. Technology tools — in the hands of caring, expert teachers — are the strongest lever we can pull to help students meet their potential.

We do a lot with technology at Hillel and, over the five years I served as Director of Technology, we made some significant strides...

When I arrived, the school employed a single technology professional who was primarily concerned with break-fix. The expanded department now comprises three full-time staff: a Coordinator, a Director of Educational Technology and Data Analytics, and a Support Specialist.
That team closed almost 1,100 helpdesk tickets over the last school year. The last five years show that half of our tickets were resolved upon first contact and 92% within SLA goals.
We tripled the size of our Chromebook fleet, and added iPads to the mix in our Early Learning Center. We scaled-up our our MDM efforts, streamlined our asset management system, and automated user- and device-management using Google Admin Manager.
We doubled our internet bandwidth and increased our WiFi capacity fivefold.
Every single laptop, desktop, Chromebook, and rack-mounted computer on our campus has been replaced.
Every printer has been replaced by state-of-the-art, high-capacity copiers and every printed page is automatically audited by user, leading to a steady decrease in print/paper use.
Every classroom projector has been replaced by a large-format Interactive Flat Panel managed via MDM.
All network runs have been certified, and fiber and ethernet cabling in all distribution frames has been cleaned up and optimized.
Report cards in all grade levels have been digitized, standardized assessments have been moved online, and our purchasing and procurement process is now entirely paperless.

Growth of this kind is never easy. It takes hard work to adopt new tools and methods and we were able to do so only thanks to the efforts of our faculty and staff. Their goodwill, resourcefulness and willingness to try new things have led Hillel's faculty to enormous growth in finding new ways to help every student achieve.

As I consider that partial list, it occurs to me that those accomplishments are all systemic as opposed to pedagogical. This makes sense, since my time here at Hillel was focused on technology administration; teacher support and growth was someone else's responsibility.

This is the main reason I'm so excited about my move to the Yeshivah of Flatbush: my time there each day will be spent interacting with students and teachers. I'll be teaching several sections of High School CompSci and STEM, and I'll be coaching teachers in the use of EdTech, both passions that I've been away from for many years. Additionally, I'll be supervising and supporting the students who run the school's A/V systems and working with the Yeshivah's impressive Performing Arts Program.

I know some people feel stress during times of transition, but I've always found change to be exciting. I'll miss the good friends I made here at Hillel, as well as the invigorating challenges I dealt with every day, but I know that the team in place is capable and the people and equipment I've been supporting are in good hands.

To everyone I've relied upon and worked with at Hillel: thank you. I'm proud of what we accomplished and I think you should be, too. I'm looking forward to meeting new people, and encountering new, exciting challenges in Brooklyn.

Statistical musings on LeBron and the rest of the universe

2023-02-13T00:00:00Z

I did some statistical analysis.

Using Basketball Reference, I pulled the top-ten all-time NBA/ABA leaders in each of the following categories:

Minutes Played
Games Played
Free Throws Made
Field Goals Made
3-Pointers Made
Offensive Rebounds
Defensive Rebounds
Steals
Points
Assists
Triple-Doubles

I then analyzed the number of times players appeared on each list. For example, this graph shows the total number of times each player appeared in any position (1-10) on more than one of those lists.

That isn't all of the names on all of those lists, of course, it's just the 26 players who appear on at least two lists.

One interesting fact that immediately jumps out: only four of those players are still active, LeBron James, James Harden, Chris Paul, and Russel Westbrook. (Dwight Howard is still active, but not in the NBA.) Does this suggest that these four players are the four most all-around talented, active individual players in the league? I'm not sure... but it might.

Second interesting fact is that LeBron heads the list, which isn't surprising. But note that the next active player is Harden, who only makes three lists (free throws made, 3-pointers made, and triple-doubles). CP3 and Russel make two apiece.

I then awarded points for each time a player appeared on a list, awarding 10 points for first place, 9 for second and so on. When you total these awards, and re-rank the players, the list looks different. Here are the first 25 names, with current players highlighted:

Rank	Player	Points
1	Karl Malone*	49
2	LeBron James	47
3	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar*	40
4	Moses Malone*	32
5	Jason Kidd*	30
6	Dirk Nowitzki	26
7	John Stockton*	26
8	Michael Jordan*	24
9	Robert Parish*	22
10	Kevin Garnett*	19
11	Artis Gilmore*	19
12	Oscar Robertson*	18
13	Wilt Chamberlain*	17
14	Kobe Bryant*	17
15	Chris Paul	15
16	James Harden	14
17	Julius Erving*	12
18	Magic Johnson*	12
19	Vince Carter	12
20	Russell Westbrook	11
21	Stephen Curry	10
22	Shaquille O'Neal*	9
23	Dwight Howard	9
24	Ray Allen*	9
25	Elvin Hayes*	7

Again, a couple of interesting things jump out:

First, LeBron doesn't head the list… the Mailman does. This shocked me. I mean, it's close, and all LBJ has to do is climb three spots overall to pass him, but still… Karl Malone?

Second, again, look how far ahead of the other active players LeBron is. The next player on the list, Chris Paul, is 32 points behind, a margin which seems insurmountable to me. When you restrict the list to only active players, you get a graph which suggests that nobody currently playing will ever pass LeBron:

A couple more points:

The GOAT conversation is a pointless debate between LeBron and Michael Jordan. One the one hand, Jordan won six titles and LeBron has only won four. On the other hand, LeBron isn't finished yet. On the third hand, more titles don't seem likely for him. But, on the fourth hand, Michael only scores 24 points on this scale... over 15 seasons (1.6 points per season). LeBron has more than twice as many points in twenty seasons (2.45 pps). I know that I made this stat up but, still, perhaps this argues in favor of LeBron as the superior individual player?
If you ask ten fans in a sports bar to name the league's best individual player, you'll hear names like Steph, Giannis, Jokic and Doncic. Nobody will mention CP3, Harden, Russel, or Dame. But the front-runner names in this debate are all newcomers... and the name nobody wants to hear (LeBron James) has played more seasons than any other NBA player (tied with Udonis Haslem, the league's oldest active player, who is four years older). Maybe the reason people don't consider James to be the best player in the league is simply that people are tired of him?

A School Tech Director's Response to the WWDC 2022 Keynote

2022-06-07T00:00:00Z

I'm moving in order, using this summary at ZDNet as my guide, if you want to follow along.

TL;DR: Freeform, Continuity Camera and iCloud Share Photo Libraries are exciting additions to Apple's mature software platforms.

Apple Watch OS9

I don't care about new watch faces. More is better, but who really cares what they announced?
That being said, I'm excited about the Lunar face which will display the Hebrew/Jewish calendar. That's been part of iOS for a while (since v8) and it's nice to see it come to the watch.

iOS v16

Lock Screen widgets are going to be nice, as are all of the new customization schemes. This has been a long time coming and people are going to love it.
On top of that, more control over how Notifications hit the Lock Screen is a big plus. I have a photo of my kids as my Lock Screen image and it's often a hassle to dismiss all of the Notifications just to show someone how cute they are. (Pro Tip: this is a super-convenient way to feel safe handing your phone to someone so they can say nice things about your kids without having access to your phone.)
I've never used Shared with You, so I don't care about it. I've never used SharePlay either… do people really want to watch videos on their phones while talking to their friends? I don't get it.
The updates to Dictation will be helpful.

Apple Pay Later

I hate this idea.
Making it easier for people to borrow money they don't have is a bad idea. This is clearly Apple bowing to pressure from Goldman Sachs now that they are in the credit card business. I didn't think Apple Card was a good idea and I think this one's even worse. You can disagree with me… but you're wrong.

Maps

Multi-stop routing is another Google Maps feature Apple has caught up to. Finally.
15 stops is ridiculous.
The idea that you can plan a complex route on your Mac and then share it to Maps on your phone is very cool.

Apple Sports

Yawn.

iCloud Shared Photo Library

This is a show-stopper, worth the entire update all on its own. Giving a family the ability to have one shared photo library is long overdue.

Safety Check

This sounds like the kind of thing that will be very, very important to a small number of people. Good on Apple for putting it together.
I, thank God, have no need for this feature.

Matter Smart Home

Apple had me at "we've re-written the Home app from the ground up."
I've been bitten before, so I'll wait and see how it works (and if Apple really can get anyone else on board this time), but anything is better than the terrible Home app we have today.

CarPlay

Don't care.
I can't believe the stats that Apple quoted… who are all these people unwilling to buy a car without CarPlay?
The images they showed for their new "Car OS" were crazy cool… I'll believe it when I see it.

M2

Guess what: the M2 is faster than the M1. Surprise.
They made a MacBook Air with the M2, along with a new MacBook Pro. Good for them. When the time comes, I'm sure I'll upgrade.
The new Air looks cool, certainly thinner than anyone would think is reasonable. But that's Apple.
Can you believe the Pro still has a Touch Bar?
Can you believe Apple is bragging about a 1080p webcam in 2022?

MacOS

Another new window manager? StageManager looks like a different take on Mission Control with no more functionality. I'll probably use it… but really, it's a snoozer. (Except for the iPad part, which I'll cover later.)
Mail gains features (like Unsend and usable search) that Gmail has had in the browser for years. Maybe I'll start using Mail again… but probably not.
New features in Safari… but I don't care… except Passkey. It's a cool idea; again, let's see if anyone adopts it.

Gaming

Seriously? Does anyone take Apple seriously about this?

iPadOS

Collaboration is interesting… but does anyone use Pages and Numbers other than the people in those funny Apple at Work videos?
I think Freeform is the biggest news of the day, from an education standpoint. We don't use iPads here at my school but, if I ran an iPad program, I'd be doing cartwheels about this.
Stage Manager on iPad is no more exciting than it is on the Mac…except that it means that you can now run an iPad with an extended desktop on an external display. I don't understand why Craig didn't make a bigger deal of this during the demo. This is HUGE.

How to talk to GAM

2022-05-25T00:00:00Z

An introduction to working with Google Admin Manager, a command-line interface to the Google Admin Console

There is a basic syntax for how to build a GAM command. Basically, get GAM’s attention (by calling its name) and then tell it what you want it to do.

So, for example, let’s say we want to tell GAM to create a new user in our domain. Let’s say we want give an account to Clark Kent, a new teacher in our High School. The simple command would be:

gam create user clark.kent@school.org

That’s it. Let’s examine it, even though it’s simple. The command has four parts:

gam: this initiates the GAM command; we are saying, “Hey, GAM, listen up! I’m about to tell you something.”
create: this is an imperative verb; we are actually telling GAM to do something (in this case, we are telling it to create a new entity).
user: grammatically speaking, this is the object of the verb. So far, we said “GAM, create!” With this additional word, we are telling GAM exactly what we want it to create, a new User.
clark.kent@school.org: finally, we give this new entity a name. In the world of Google Workspace, every user has an email address to make them unique.

Now, there is a lot more involved with creating Users. If you visit the official online reference of GAM commands, a complete command for creating a User can look something like this:

gam create user <firstname> <lastname> <password> [suspended on|off] [changepassword on|off] [gal on|off] [sha] [md5] [crypt] [nohash] [org <org>] [recoveryemail <email>] [recoveryphone <phone>]

Relax. There’s a lot of options there, but it’s really not that scary. :)

First, let’s talk about how you read it. When looking at GAM reference materials and example commands, there are lots of options and possibilities. As we saw above, creating an account for Clark Kent was a simple, four-work command. But, as you might imagine, account creation could be more complex, and that big, scary block of code includes every single option you could set for a new User.

When you read example GAM commands (which you’re going to do more and more often and you feel out what you can use GAM to do), remember these rules:

Parts of a command enclosed in are mandatory.
Parts of a command enclosed in [square brackets] are optional.
Parts of a command separated by a vertical | line are choices you make. (That vertical line is called a “pipe” by nerds and is usually located on the key just above the Return/Enter key on your keyboard.)
In most cases, multiple optional fields may be included in a single command.

So, let’s return to Clark Kent, our heroic new teacher. We created a User account for him, but we didn’t set up his name, so when he sends out mail, it’s going to come from clark.kent@school.org instead of being from Clark Kent. We could have used some of those other optional commands to do it right.

Before, we told GAM: gam create user clark.kent@school.org

But, looking back at the full set of options, you have probably already figured out that we could have specified values for his first and last name, too. If we did, the full command would look like this: gam create user clark.kent@school.org firstname Clark lastname Kent

See what we did there? We took some optional code and added it in to our create user command. The list of options says, firstname <First Name> lastname <Last Name> and remember, things in are mandatory.

In English, our new command says, “Hey, GAM, I want you to create a new user for me, with the email address clark.kent@school.org. His first name is Clark and his last name is Kent.”

See? Not so complicated. Now that you’ve seen that, let’s take another look at the command, as we sent it to GAM: gam create user clark.kent@school.org firstname Clark lastname Kent

You can probably read and understand that yourself, now. And, if we wanted to set some other options, we could just tack on more of the optional parts of the Create command. See if you can figure out what’s going on here: gam create user clark.kent@school.org firstname Clark lastname Kent password '#1SonOfKrypton' changepassword on org Faculty/Highschool recoveryemail ckent974@aol.com Did you get it? “Hey, GAM, create a new User with the email clark.kent@school.org. His full name is Clark Kent and his password is #1SonOfKrypton but force him to change it when he first logs in. Create his account in the Highschool Org Unit inside the Faculty Org Unit and use his lame AOL email account for recovery if he ever forgets his password.” A couple of details:

See how his password is wrapped in single quotes? We do that because passwords often contain special characters (L!k3 the$e) and we don’t want GAM to misinterpret those are commands.
Also, if you’re ever using two English words as the second part of a command, like firstname "Mary Jane" lastname Watson, you have to wrap those in double quotes to avoid confusion. (You could even wrap the single-word stuff in quotes if you want, but nobody does and GAM is OK with that.)

Automating the sharing of Google Sheets data

2021-10-29T00:00:00Z

We all know that we can share Google Sheets with people but, at least in my life, those people are often not regular spreadsheet users, so they aren't comfortable opening a Google Sheet to look for updated data. For example, when we set up online forms (for event registration, lunch signup, etc), the parent volunteers or business office staff don't interact with Google Sheets every day, so I end up fielding regular requests for updates.

What I usually do is add a sheet to the Sheet (heh) which summarizes the data into a simple table and then use the Email Collaborators command in Sheets to send them an update. But, today, I found a cool Add-On called Email Spreadsheets which makes it super-easy to automate this regular sharing.

We are currently collecting payment and registration for an upcoming ice skating social event. The form feeds the data into a Sheet. I added a Summary worksheet that calculates the total number of families who registered, the total number of skaters and the total funds collected so far.

Then, using the Add-On, I was able to use standard "dynamic cell values" notation to reference the cells which contain the summary data and add it to an email template that will be automatically sent to the people I want, on the schedule I send. So, every weekday morning, all of the people involved will get an email that looks like this:

The data in the table is pulled out of my summary sheet in real-time using this reference:

{{Summary!B2:C4}}

... and I added that link at the bottom using standard HTML.

The Add-On lets you specify who receives the email (both CC and BCC) and has the standard scheduling options (daily, weekdays, weekly, etc.).

You can also choose to attach your spreadsheet in various formats, but that's not really useful for my use-case. It's a pretty powerful tool and feel like it's probably going to become something I use pretty often. I'd love to see functionality that allows me to trigger the email based on values in the spreadsheet, like every ten submission or when a certain cell contains a certain value, but it's pretty useful as is.

Check it out and let me know what you think. :)

Bibber

2019-09-19T00:00:00Z

A long time ago, I took a writing class. One of those in-a-church-basement things that the Gotham Writer’s Workshop puts on in midtown. About a month ago I was going through old teaching materials and found my notebook from the class.

This was the first in-class exercise. Our directions were to write a story about a character named Bibber.

During college I often got lost in Manhattan.

Whenever we all went out to dinner or a show, I had to just follow the crowd — they always seemed to know which way to turn when they came out of the subway or from which sidewalk to hail the taxi — I often took the uptown train instead of the down and always had to ask for directions. Since graduation it’s gotten worse and I never thought I would meet anyone with a worse sense of direction than I was cursed with.

Then, about a year ago, I met Bibber.

He was on the stairs in front of me leaving the 181st Street station and, at the top, he asked me which way it was to Amsterdam. I smiled and pointed then watched him run off… in the opposite direction. I called after him, but he didn’t hear me and hurried around a corner. I followed him and, when I turned the end of the block, there was… with a knife.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Bibber. And you’re going to give me your wallet.”

You were all right: Mom, Ryan, the Young Republicans… here I was, my first, sudden experience in The Real World and — already — my degree in English wasn’t helping at all.

Now I’ve dropped English Literature as a career. Now I’m a beat cop. And you know what I do most of the day?

I give directions.

Hoosiers Fun Facts

2019-02-28T00:00:00Z

I fell down a well…

I got involved in a WhatsApp discussion yesterday about unusual sports trivia and that led to me to Googling some interesting things and, long story short, I fell down a deep, deep internet well of interesting stuff about Hoosiers, one of my favorite movies.

Enjoy.

Hoosiers is based on “the Milan Miracle,” the story of the 1954 Milan High School Indians who won the Indiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament championship. With an enrollment of only 161, Milan was the smallest school ever to win a single-class state basketball title in Indiana, beating the team from the much larger Muncie Central High School. In the movie’s final game, the Hickory Hoosiers defeat South Bend Central, whose coach is played by a man named Ray Crowe.

In real life, Crowe was a basketball coach, educator, school administrator, and public official in Indianapolis and is best known as the head basketball coach of Crispus Attucks High School from 1950 to 1957. Following the Milan Miracle, his teams won the Indiana state basketball championship (in both 1955 and 1956) and, were the first all-black school to win a state championship in the country. He coached numerous Indiana All-Star players, including Oscar Robertson. It’s to the film-makers’ credit that he is given a role in the movie.

Hoosiers is widely regarded as the best basketball movie ever made and, in many people’s minds, the best sports movie, period. It is ranked #13 on the AFI’s list of the 100 most inspiring movies. I think it’s great — and the shot of Dennis Hopper jumping on the bed usually makes me tear up — but the movie is not without flaws.

This guy makes some excellent points about how awful Hoosiers really is and, after rewatching Chitwood’s final shot, I find myself wondering why the hell South Bend’s coach didn’t double-team Jimmy on the last play.

More about Chitwood: Maris Valainis, the actor who played the role, was an unknown who came to the rural Indiana casting call the film had to hold because it was made on a shoestring $6M budget. He had given up on waiting in the 600-person line and was walking to his car when a casting director saw him and asked him to show off his skills. He got the part.

Nobody knew it at the time, but Valainis had been cut from his high school team three times… nonetheless he evidently had skills: in filming the movie, they had to take two cuts of the game winning shot, and he made the shot both times.

The real player was named Bobby Plump and, while most of the movie has very little in common with actual events, Plump did sink the game-winner on a play that started with 18 seconds left… and he hit it from the same spot on the floor that Chitwood does in the movie.

Lots of ink has been spilled on this movie… some of the best (and most nerdy) is this statistical analysis of every play Chitwood makes in the movie.

Finally, this is amazing. Over the course of the entire movie, Chitwood has four lines:

“I got something to say.”
“I don’t know if it’ll make any change, but I figured it’s time for me to start playing ball.”
“I play, coach stays. He goes, I go.”
“I’ll make it.”

Enough.

For Sale: Unlocked iPhone 7 Plus in Excellent Condition with New Battery, Case and Original, Unused…

2019-01-01T00:00:00Z

I am selling a used, Black 128 GB iPhone 7 Plus (MN5G2LL/A).

The Good: Unlocked, 128 GB, new battery, scratch-free screen and back, case and accessories included.
The Bad: It’s a 7 Plus… there are cooler, faster phones available.
The Ugly: Blemishes on the top and bottom edges.

I bought this phone on Oct 5, 2016. It was always kept in Spigen’s Thin Fit Case, which gave it the glossy, Jet Black look and some protection without feeling bulky. (I’m including the case with the phone.) The case is great, but doesn’t protect the top and bottom edge of the phone. As such, this phone has two blemishes (drop damage) on the bottom edge (near the speakers) and one on the top edge. None of these blemishes can be seen when you are looking at the screen.

The face and back of the phone are both free of visible scratches (there are some of what Apple calls “micro-abrasions” on the screen).

The phone has a brand-new battery, replaced in mid-December and is covered by a 90-day service warranty from that date, good until mid-March, 2019.The phone has a brand-new battery, replaced in mid-December and is covered by a 90-day service warranty from that date, good until mid-March, 2019.

The phone is being sold in its original box, including the original, unused Lightning EarPods, USB Wall Adapter and Lightning Cable. Also included is the Spigen case, which shows some signs of wear but is undamaged.

Apple sells this phone new for $669; I am asking $500.

Time to make a change...

2018-05-16T00:00:00Z

It was recently Teacher Appreciation Week. I’m not a huge believer in these kinds of celebrations (are there any days when we shouldn’t appreciate teachers?), but I took advantage of the timing anyway to send the following **thank you **to the faculty and staff at North Shore Hebrew Academy for the work they did this year with technology.

This isn’t going to surprise you, but I believe in the power of technology to increase student success in schools. Online tools — in the hands of caring, expert teachers — are the strongest lever we can pull to help students meet their potential. And we’ve done quite a bit with technology this year. For example…

Early Childhood teachers are now using a blended learning platform to supplement their literacy curriculum.
Elementary School faculty are building more advanced SMART notebook lesson materials; using blended learning software for **enrichment **and whole-class instruction in both literacy and math; doing innovative, project-based learning using Google Maps; helping students create augmented-reality presentations about Yerushalayim; and using Google Classroom and FlipGrid so students can generate audio responses to Ivrit assignments.
In the Middle School, several teachers are using online tools to create project rubrics with improved clarity; others have adopted screenshot and screencasting tools to generate videos for flipped lessons; many are now more comfortable using Google Slides to create class presentations; and there is widespread adoption of Sefaria and similar online Judaics resources for sourcesheet creation.

We grew this year in other ways, too. For the first time, we now deliver reliable high-speed internet access in every NSHA classroom. We tripled the size of our mobile fleet: students now have access to over 250 mobile devices (40 iPads and 215 Chromebooks). Our entire elementary faculty now has access to state-of-the-art laser printing and scanning services and we have implemented our second administration of the NWEA MAP assessment, giving actionable student growth and achievement data directly to our teachers in hours rather than weeks.

Change of this magnitude is never easy. It takes hard work to adopt new tools and methods and we were able to do so only thanks to the efforts of our faculty and staff. Their goodwill, resourcefulness and willingness to try new things have led NSHA to **enormous growth **in finding new ways to help every student achieve.

I’m thankful for that effort… and I am going to miss it.

I have enjoyed my year here on Long Island, but the commute has been difficult and another opportunity has become available closer to home. I will be here through the summer transition before heading south to serve as Director of Technology at the Hillel Yeshiva in Deal, NJ.

Thanks again to my colleagues at North Shore Hebrew Academy. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished together, and I think you should be, too.

My Thoughts on Being in the Room Where It Happens

2018-01-11T00:00:00Z

My wife and I got to see Hamilton last night.

I’ve been thinking about the show for a while, both in anticipation of going and ever since the final blackout last night. I mentioned to a few people that we saw it and they had questions… so I figured I would put the answers down in a post.

How was it?

Spoiler alert: I loved it. It’s a powerful show about important things. It’s written well, performed well and staged well. I’ve seen shows with problems… Hamilton has none.

How did you get tickets?

Simple. I jumped online as soon as they were available and paid face value. Then waited 10 months.

The show is popular; there is no getting around that. The theater is full for every single performance and people buy tickets well in advance. I just checked the website and, as of today, there is a block of available tickets for performances between April 10 and August 19. Of course, that’s a lot of dates and the one you want may be sold out… and the ticket-purchase process is awful… and you have to spend a long time clicking on dates to see if any seats are available… and the tickets start at $220. But there are there if you want them.

It seems that you can somehow subscribe to text alerts for when new seats are available. A friend is on that list and told me, back in March, when that happened. I jumped online and found some seats. It took almost 30 minutes of trying before I found a date I could go that had available seats and the purchase process failed twice before it succeeded… but we got seats. They were a little more than $210 each and I would not describe them as the best seats in the house:

If you look closely, you can see that there are, in fact, two seats that are worse then ours… but only two. That being said, there really are no bad seats at the Richard Rodgers Theatre and, as you can see in the selfie, we had a great, unobstructed view of the stage:

Anyway, that’s how to get tickets: buy them as soon as they’re available.

Could you understand what the actors were saying?

The show is wordy.

According to a fantastic analysis by Leah Libresco at FiveThirtyEight, Hamilton has “twice as many words per minute as its closest competitor” and “nearly an order of magnitude more words than 1776” (20,520 vs 2,735). There are a lot of lyrics and they come at you fast… for almost three hours. Understanding what they are saying is a legitimate concern.

We prepared, I guess. I’ve been listening to the cast recording since before I bought the tickets (not constantly, of course, just now and then) and I was certainly familiar with everything the actors say in the show. However, I have been to many Broadway shows where I couldn’t make out the lyrics because of too much other music and noise, or mealy-mouthed performances.

I am pleased to report that this wasn’t really an issue at Hamilton. There were a few spots where someone swallowed a word or two — and, to be honest, James Monroe Inglehart’s performance of “Guns and Ships” is simply incomprehensible, especially compared to that of Daveed Diggs on the album — but those moments are few and far between.

It was clear to me that comprehensibility was important to the company and, furthermore, the theatre’s amplification did a great job of carrying the lyrics all the way back to the cheap seats.

This brings up a related question:

Did you really enjoy a whole show performed in rap?

This is an unfortunate misunderstanding.

It is true that many of the show’s songs are performed in hip-hop… but certainly not all of them. There are a number of different musical styles in the show, ranging from Beatle-esqe 60’s pop to R&B and classical ballads. A number of my favorite numbers (“Satisfied,” “That Would Be Enough,” “One Last Time” and “It’s Quiet Uptown”) are big, beautiful, classic Broadway showtunes. The show doesn’t deserve to be pigeon-holed into a single musical style.

Who did you see?

The show opened on Broadway back in August 2015. It’s been running for over two years now and most of the leads from the original cast have turned over. We didn’t see Lin-Manuel Miranda, or even Javier Muñoz, the current actor playing the title role. We didn’t see Daveed Diggs as Lafayette/Jefferson, or Leslie Odom Jr. as Burr, or Christopher Jackson as Washington or Brian d’Arcy James as King George. That being said, none of those people (except Miranda) were household names before they launched Hamilton; it was the play that made their careers, not the other way around. The current players are certainly competent — excellent, even — and I didn’t suffer s single moment of “how the hell did they get this part?”

The company is small for such a huge story — there’s quite a bit of doubling — and the show gets a ton of mileage out of every person on stage. There are also a number of moments when the entire company performs at once… and they are powerful.

So? Is it really as good as people say?

In a word, yes. It’s a brilliant piece of theatre.

As I said at the outset, I loved it. It’s a powerful show about important things. It’s written well, performed well and staged well. Let me flesh that out a little bit:

The story is huge. It begins with Hamilton’s birth and moves straight through his move to New York and then the entire Revolutionary War. Once that’s over, the show moves to Hamilton’s time as Secretary of the Treasury… and that’s just the first act. Act II deals with Jefferson’s opposition, the Adams administration, political infighting, the tragedies in Hamilton’s personal life, his eventual death at Burr’s hand and his legacy. It’s a humongous story and Miranda’s script is tight all the way through.
The play’s pacing is, in a word, relentless. Even the applause breaks feel quick… there is always more action, more intrigue, more story about to happen.
As I’ve said, I was familiar with the cast recording long before I saw the show. As you may have heard, the recording includes every minute of the performance; there is nothing to the show except for those songs. That being said, there’s a lot more to see:
The play’s staging and choreography are what impressed me the most. There isn’t much dancing — not in the traditional Broadway sense — but a small chorus is used to great effect in a series of short, modern dances that underscore the play’s action and themes.
The show is lit like a rock concert. The lights open, close, move, appear and disappear… they create mood and setting, hide things you aren’t supposed to see and force you to see (and feel) the things you are supposed to. Speaking as an experienced lighting designer, it’s the most innovative lighting design I’ve ever seen.
The set includes two concentric turntables which are used brilliantly: they are practically characters in the show. The play’s action is virtually constant — there are very few blackouts — and the cast and set pieces move on and off in an almost never-ending ballet. There is one moment in particular — when Hamilton is caught “in the eye of the hurricane” — which made me gasp out-loud.

In short, the show does virtually nothing wrong and is so ambitious, so ground-breaking and so innovative that, in my opinion, it really does deserve the accolades its been getting. It’s almost trite these days to call a show “brilliant” and “a must-see” but, in the case of Hamilton, it’s justified.

See it, if you can. I can’t imagine you being disappointed.