Which company or individual can sponsor me on a summer trip to Europe?

Sat Jul 5 07:28:47 IDT 2014

Hi Geoffrey,

hope you had a great Shabbath by the time you're reading it.

You're raising some interesting points which I'd like to address, and I
apologise if I weren't clear and explicit before.

On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 10:35 AM, geoffrey mendelson <
geoffreymendelson at gmail.com> wrote:

>  On 7/4/2014 8:56 AM, Shlomi Fish wrote:
>
>      Hi all,
>
>  I wish to go on a Summer trip to Europe (flight to Istanbul and then
> taking trains) where I:
>
>
>
> ROTFL.
>
> Not only do I not think this belongs on this list, but it's ridiculous.
>

Why do you feel it does not belong on this list? Many people here offer
jobs or ask for jobs, and my offer can provide a lot of promotion and
publicity to a company/individual/organisation who wishes to sponsor me.

Regarding "ridiculous" there is
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/show.cgi?id=same-ideas-as-everybody-else
:

«

 If you have the same ideas as everybody else, but have them one week
earlier than everyone else - then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if
you have them five years earlier, you will be named a lunatic.

»

Some of the things I predicted and/or projected are:

* http://www.advogato.org/article/361.html - world-editable screenplays for
films back in 2001 - I was told it will likely not going to work, but now
there are many screenplay projects which use wiki-style interfaces, and
there quite a many successful world-editable-or-almost-world-editable wikis
out there (e.g: the Wikimedia project, the Wikias,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Tropes ).

* http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ - in this story I
describe FOSS (and to a lesser extent open content/culture) geeks, and
especially female geeks, as chic, intelligent, attractive, socially
capable, and sexually assertive, and not only are they mainstream, but they
are the alphas - the constant object of attraction and often jealousy of
their peers.

Back after I finished writing it in 2004 and publicised it for scrutiny on
the linux-elitists mailing list -
http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/conclusions/#review--modus-operandi
- I was criticised for making it look like being a FOSS/open-culture hacker
was a gateway to popularity, but now it is quite common all around the
world, as exemplified by the success of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory , and not only are almost
all attractive female attracted to geeks, but most of them are geeky[Geeky]
themselves, *and* yet they are not socially awkward or sexually inept.

[Geeky] - see http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=401 for
what is a geek , as well as what Paul Graham wrote about amateurs and
hackers.

>
> If I were in a position to sponsor anyone for more than a felafel at a
> stand up kiosk, I would consider this so unreasonable that it's just
> laughable. As I said, IF I were going to fund someone, I might consider a
> plan that includes 2 $1,000 airplane tickets, and about $1,000 a week for
> hotel, food, transportation within each country and train fare to the next
> country, for a week in a country to give 4-5 FOSS lectures, and then move
> on. You probably could start in the Irish Republic and bounce along to the
> Russian Republic which would take around 15-20 weeks.
>

My lectures are not only about FOSS - they are also about free/open
culture/content, and mix and match other topics such as
love/romance/relationships, action, humour, history, science, amateur
philosophy, etc. See:

http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/fortunes/

Anyway, you are right that I probably overestimated the cost and can
survive on much less.

Regarding Ireland -> Russia - I'm not interested only in software
development hubs, but in general - every centre of commerce is game for me:
Rome, Athens, Istanbul, Berlin, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris,
Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Vienna, Riga, Vilnius, Budapest,
Bucharest, etc. etc.

>
> Or you could the same thing for about 1.5 times the money in the US, which
> would take an entire year, one week per state.
>

I'm:

1. Not going to .us any time soon.

2. Not interested in being 100% comprehensive.

>
> But not just for a vacation, or for sponsorship opportunity, you would
> have to show off your operating system that lots of people use, or your
> office suite, Nobel Prize, or Olympic Medal.
>

I have many stories/screenplays, many aphorisms, quotes, Chuck Norris/etc.
factoids, bits, programs, etc. Many people told me that they recognise my
homepage and especially its EvilPHish emblem (See
http://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/#evilphish-emblem ) and someone told me
that I also look exactly like he though I would.

And part of the reason why I'm going on tour is to gain more recognition
and to practice my stand-up-philosophy.

>
> No use writing an editor, no one is interested in paying RMS to speak,
> especially since he, as president of the FSF, ex ex *officio*
> <https://www.google.co.il/search?es_sm=122&q=ex+officio&spell=1&sa=X&ei=yFi2U4mZIIK00wXM_IDQDg&ved=0CBkQvwUoAA>,
> announced he was supporting the Palestinian Boycott of Israel.
>
>
I didn't write an editor, but I wrote a lot of other useful software apps:

* http://www.shlomifish.org/open-source/

*
http://blogs.perl.org/users/shlomi_fish/2013/03/ann-my-transition-from-software-developer-to-writerentertaineramateur-philosopherinternet-celebrity.html

Quoting from it:

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
How to Achieve World Domination

A lot of people think that the proper way to achieve world domination is to
create an architecture that will solve the whole world's problems and then
some <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html>. We've
been seeing quite a few of them since *Joel on Software* wrote this
article: Ruby, Google Go, Node.js, Mozilla's Rust, Clojure, Scala, Perl 6,
etc. Some of them have or will mature to something truly nice, or have
inspired a lot of features in other languages, but it's hard for
plain-old-single-you to compete with them, and here is something
interesting: not too many people want them.

What do people want? Chuck Norris/etc. factoids, lolcats and other
captioned images, funny cat videos, parodies of *My Little Pony: Friendship
is Magic* (♥), photos of attractive (or even not too attractive) men and
women, screencasts of games or other programs (including many open source
programs), photos of scenery, new and improved recipes for preparing food
(and of course - tasty food itself), new, old or renovated jokes, and some
interesting tales and anecdotes from your life. And naturally - programs
that can will scratch an itch - however small.

Some people told me that my solver for Freecell and other solitaire games,
simply called Freecell Solver <http://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/> is useless,
but it's not - it's just a niche program. And I received hundreds of
E-mails about it. Furthermore, given that Freecell is (or used to be) a big
phenomenon in Israel, where many boys and girls starting from 18 found
themselves playing it on the Israeli military
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces> computers out of
boredom, then the fact that I have written a solver for it, has impressed
many people I talked with or met, including some attractive (both
physically and intellectually) young ladies (or what people may refer to as
"hot chicks"), and they ended up asking me about how it was written, and
which algorithms it employed.

So Freecell Solver was one of my most successful programs, not despite
being a niche program, but because of it. Niche programs own. Not only
that, but niche everything is great. Many people whom I referred to my
stories <http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/stories/> helped themselves to
the screenplay Star Trek: "We, the Living Dead"
<http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Star-Trek/We-the-Living-Dead/> *because*
it contained Star Trek in the name, and because there are quite a few fans
of the *Star Trek* franchise and worlds.

The more of a niche artwork you write, the more a large subset of those who
like it, are likely to pay attention to it, try it out, and enjoy it. For
more information, see Eric Sink's excellent and inspiring essay "How to get
people talking about your product"
<http://www.ericsink.com/articles/Buzz.html>. For example, DuckDuckGo
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo> was originally marketed as a
search engine by Perl geeks, and for Perl geeks, and it was a good
marketing decision because the Perl community is small, cohesive and is at
a good strategical position to influence other communities. Now, many
people who are not Perl programmers, are using it, as well as, or even in
preference to Google, but choosing Perl was a good strategical decision. We
can expect that with the future growth of DuckDuckGo, that it will use more
performant technologies than Perl more and more, but it will still owe some
of its initial success to be a Perl product.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Regarding RMS - I realise he became a persona non-grata in Israel and among
some pro-Israeli Jews or non-Jews, but:

1. He is still a great man and a talented speaker (even if he is a very
quirky fellow - or because of it).

2. His decision was acceptable given the circumstance.

3. I don't want to hold a grudge against him forever, because
vindictiveness is immature. "To err is human, to forgive divine." - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin .

4. Other people who wrote competing text editors can still be respected if
their editors are successful. As usual with most programs out there, most
programs fail to gain a critical mass, but a minority of them are
successful. Bram Moolenaar is very respected for writing Vim, which became
the Emacs of vi clones,  and I Respect the developers of Sublime Text even
though I dislike the fact that it is non-FOSS. Some software niches don't
have a visible dominant alternative, e.g: window managers/desktops.

================

Thanks again and I hope I clarified everything now.

Regards,

-- Shlomi Fish

-- 
------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/

Chuck Norris helps the gods that help themselves.

Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
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