MRD: Education. Technology.

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. :)