About Myself

My name is Shlomi Fish and I was born on May 5, 1977 in Israel. When I was about 1 year old, my parents moved to the United States for my Father's Post-Doctorate. I stayed there until I was 5, and my sister Michal was born while we stayed in Dallas, Texas.

My other sister, Noa, was born after we returned to Israel. Here, I went to kinder-garden, and to elementary school. Afterwards, I studied in Gimnasia Hertzelia in both junior high and high school, and I graduated from high school at the summer of 95'.

I spent some time working as a programmer and computer developer for several computer-related companies. I gained a lot of knowledge and experience in the process, and met some very supportive people in the industry. In October 97' I began studying Electrical Engineering in the Technion.

I enjoyed my studies as much as academic studies can be enjoyed. I feel that I deepend my understanding of computers and electronics because of them. The Technion gives his students a high level of studying, but my main problem with it is that its tests are sometimes completely out of sync with the material that is learned, too long and/or too hard, and so students receive low grades and are frustrated. This is especially demotivating considering the fact that studying there is a lot of work.

I graduated from the Technion in July 2004, and am now looking for a job.

I am particularily intersted in mathematics, computing, philosophy and writing. I've been programming since I was 10 years old, but it was not very serious until I started working as a programmer at 1997. As for math, it's been a favourite of mine since junior high. (I'm also interested in etymology and anicent history of the Near East and Europe, but in a rather unprofessional manner).

Other hobbies of mine include a small amount of sports, biking, hiking, and solving puzzles and riddles of all sorts.

I am very interested in the Linux and free software world. I initiated some of those open-source projects of my own. Namely, I ported a MOD player to Java, (where MODs are a type of Music files which contain notes and samples for instruments), wrote a program that solves various variants of Card Solitaire and coded a useful patch for the GIMP. (a cross-platform and platform Image Manipulation Program) You can find more information about them in the software section..

Recently, I also contributed more patches to GIMP; some cleanups and functionality extensions to the Subversion version-control system; and some documentation cleanups to Perl. I hope to contribute more.

Aside from all that there is my literatural creations. I wrote a funny story called "The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight it". It was originally written in Hebrew, but there is also an English translation.

There's also "The One with the Fountainhead", which is an episode of the T.V. Show Friends which parodies the book "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand. It is written in English, and you can also find it on my site.

Humanity is a parody about Humanity and modern life in particular that describes a day in the life of a Semitic city circa 500 B.C. There are other exploits like that in the humour section.

I recently started to consider myself as an open-source advocate and software "guru"-wannabe. You can check some of my writing in the Better SCM site, in the Hackers-IL Group, and on Advogato. Nothing quite like Eric Raymond yet, but it's a start.

My interest in philosophy is definitely not a fad. The philosophy which I found to make the most sense is Neo-Tech, which is an extension and re-organization of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. The so-called "Neo-Tech Discovery" is a mind-revolving and very insightful book. Another heavy source of influence is Eric S. Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", series, but there are many other lesser sources of influences. (and I have reached many philosophical conclusions on my own).

I hope you enjoy my web-site!

Shlomi Fish