Published on
May 31, 2006 in
Geek.
This past weekend, I started working on the program that Kenny and I are going to distribute to our guests at the wedding ceremony. The program will have short blurbs on the Jewish traditions that we are incorporating into the ceremony, and the full English and Hebrew text of the Sheva B’rachot, or “Seven Blessings”, that are the central part of the Jewish wedding liturgy.
When I started, however, I found that the text of the Sheva B’rachot was nowhere to be found on the internet, either in image form or (as I preferred) text form. Unwilling to give up, I finally decided I was going to have to type them up myself. I downloaded a free Hebrew font, got out my tattered printed copy of the blessings, and set to work. This was no easy task, because the English-Hebrew keyboard mappings are not at all intuitive. And because Hebrew has a lot of complexities with the placement of vowels and dots and things all over the place, I had to spend a lot of time playing just to figure out the magic incantations to type in order to form the letters and words that I needed. For example, alef, the first letter in the alphabet, was mapped to the close paren (shift-0). Who knew?!
But after much pecking away, I finally figured out all of the mappings I needed and within a couple of hours I had my perfect rendering of the Sheva B’rachot. In my attempt to save some poor unsuspecting engaged Jewish couple from the same pain, I’m posting the MS Word doc containing the Hebrew text here. Enjoy! You’ll need the SPTiberian font, which is free and available for both Mac and Windows.
As a side note, I realized today that I would have been much happier on Saturday if I’d done a quick MSN Search for “SPTiberian” and found this convenient key mapping chart. Oy.
Published on
May 23, 2006 in
Avalon.
We released Beta 2 for WinFX, Windows Vista, and the Windows SDK this morning. Go get ‘em!
Update 05/24/2006 10:20am: I also should have mentioned that the Expression CTPs shipped as well. Check out Interactive Designer and Graphic Designer, both sync’ed to the Beta 2 release.
Published on
May 19, 2006 in
Avalon.
The WPF SDK team is now blogging!
Published on
May 15, 2006 in
Seattle.
Have you ever heard me complain about Seattle weather? Whatever I said, I take it back. Seattle is the best city ever.
Published on
May 7, 2006 in
Music.
I love the White Album, but I really need to burn myself a special version of Disc 2 without Revolution #9. Don’t you think John and Yoko could have spared us their 9 minutes of weird studio noodling?
Published on
May 5, 2006 in
Seattle.
The Apartment Bistro is a slightly ritzy bar in Belltown with an outdoor deck. The Patron margaritas cost $11, but that’s okay because you are clearly paying for the atmosphere — they have a tree.
Published on
May 2, 2006 in
Geek.
I’m still moderating all comments as I try to get the spam problem under control, and I’ve only been getting around to wading through the piles of comments once every couple of days. So if you post a comment and don’t see it show up for a few days, I apologize. You are welcome to ping me if you don’t see your comment after a reasonable period of time, especially if you have a WPF question for me that you need answered.
Published on
May 1, 2006 in
Geek.
The ketubah came today! It is crazy and very exciting to see our names printed in Hebrew and English interspersed throughout the text. Apparently the trendy new thing to do is to get the ketubah framed before the wedding, but leave the glass out until after it is signed. I think it’s a neat idea — better than putting it on an easel with a chintzy cellophane protective covering during the ceremony and reception.
And the other thing that came in the mail today was a letter from the IRS — apparently I forgot to send them my W2 with my taxes. Oops. That’s what happens when you don’t e-file. I have to admit, I was pretty freaked out when I saw the IRS on the return address at first, so I was rather relieved when I opened up the envelope and saw the note. Phew!
Published on
May 1, 2006 in
Avalon.
Jeff has a series of blog posts describing his experience working on the New York Times reader application, which was announced by Bill Gates on Friday to much press excitement.
Check it out!
