Why "Why not?"

Why did I choose this name? Well, why not? OK, OK, I'll explain. Many people, when they are asked (for) something have a tendency to automatically respond in a negative way: "why should I do this?", "why do you want that from me?", "what's there for me to gain?", etc.
I want to propose a reversal pattern - when you're asked something and you want to say "no" or "why?", start by asking yourself "why not?". In most cases, you'll find out there are at least as many and as good reasons for a positive than for a negative approach.

A little about me

I promised, so now I'll try to fulfill my promise...
I am 30 years old, married to a wonderful wife (Shiri) and father to a not less wonderful girl (Gal) and a wonderfully crazy dog (Motek).
I've been in the software engineering business since '96 as a programmer, team leader and consultant, and enjoy it immensely. The major technologies and languages I've been using are C/C++, C#, MS SQL, COM, though I've touched others over the years. Currently I'm working primarily with C#, SQL and Matlab.
Two years ago I decided to start studying again. I'm now an MSc. student (in computer science, of course) at The Interdisciplinary Center Herzlia , working on my thesis under the supervision of Dr. Arik Shamir who'se pushing me hard to try and get our paper done. We are working on using Machine Learning techniques to improve the results of image search on the Internet.
On my first day of studies, two years ago, I had my first encounter with Machine Learning and I fell in love... There's really cool stuff out there. I've always felt that computers can and should do much more than they are doing and there's still a lot to do until they get better (in my opinion). It seems to me that Machine Learning is a good place to start.
Apart from that, I love cooking, baking bread, taking pictures (stills - I don't really fancy video) and I play the piano in my spare time, which sometimes helps relaxing my baby girl (though the television is becoming a tough competition).
So, what should you expect from this blog?

• First and foremost, software engineering stuff. I've already posted my MessageLoop object. My next technical post will be a completely dynamic class factory (something like the .NET Activator but with performance almost like the 'new' operator - no more "one second activation"). Since I want to clarify quite a few things in this article, it won't be as soon as I'd have liked, but I will do my best. After that, we'll see. I've got a few ideas already, but I don't want to promise anything yet.
• Remarks about interesting technical stuff I encounter, problems I had to solve/work around, links to other bloggers/articles, tools, etc.
• Since I'm currently learning a lot in the domain of Machine Learning, I'll probably post some stuff on that. Once we have our paper done, I promise to post a link to it, of course (don't hold your breath, we're several month away...). Also, I might have to code some ML algorithms, in which case you can expect to find a link to that as well.
• Cooking and food - When I find a good recipe, I'll let you know.
• Harry Potter - I'm a great HP fan (the books, not the movies), and especially after having read the Half-Blood Prince, I have some things to say (like most the people I know who've read it). Yet, since I know it hasn't yet been published in languages other than English, I might wait another 6 months before I start with that. I would hate to spoil it to others.
• The usual blogging stuff, you'll see.
• Last but not least - pictures, primarily but not exclusively of my family.

To wrap it up, let me just say this: "I sollemnly declare that I'm up to no good!" (J. K. Rowling)

RSS feed + a promise

Blogger.com have a really nice blogging system, but they don't provide a simple means of finding the RSS feed URL. So if you're interested, the feed for this blog is:
http://ilanas.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Also, I've been asked to give some more details about myself and what I'm going to blog here. I'm on it, just have to find the few minutes required for posting. I'll post some more stuff about myself soon, promise.

A picture with my baby-girl (Gal)

Thanks to my friend Itay Shuv-Ami (a.k.a. Itaish) for taking this picture.

A Message Loop object

I've posted a MessageLoop object implementation on CodeProject. Enjoy: http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/messageloop.asp

Hmm, where do we start?

Well, I'm all new to Blogging (as a Blogger). Since I've been enjoying various other Blogs very much laterly (Roy Osherove , Useless Inc. and others), I figured - let's give it a shot.
So here I am.
Well, if you're wondering what I plan to be posting, I guess it will be about the following:

• Some programming stuff. I've written some nice infrastructure components in C#, have some SQL thoughts etc. I'll post them when time permits as well as stuff I encounter on the way
• Academic stuff - especially related to Machine Learning
• Some personal stuff (mostly pictures of my little girl)
• Thoughts of all kinds

Well, that's it for a start. I guess I'll post some background about me in the near future. I don't promise I'll keep up blogging. I'm starting today, then we'll see.

Hell, Why not?