Right now I have 242 videos. The top 10 (most viewed) currently are:

1.	VHK: Hunok csatája	85,015
2.	Ray Manzarek @ The Rio - Light my Fire	70,458
3.	A Villa Negra - Budapest Bár - A38	49,285
4.	Európa Kiadó: Mocskos idok	40,521
5.	Európa Kiadó: Hello bebi @ Sziget 2004	36,381
6.	VHK: Oseimmel	32,583
7.	Európa Kiadó: Szabadits meg	24,454
8.	Mystery Gang @ Zöld pardon - Wiggle Baby	23,842
9.	Colorado - Budapest Bár - A38	21,507
10.	Cseh Tamás: Életem utolsó gesztusa	17,354

The next day the Governor signed the law and my 11 years old Amazon affiliate account suddenly ended. (See termination letter.) On the same day I got approved to become an affiliate for AbeBooks and BN. A few days later I got declined to become an affiliate for Google’s eBook program. I was disappointed as that’s the program I was the most interested in. But they probably looked at my sites and decided they are not professional enough. There was no real explanation given for the decline. I might try again later, after I made the sites beautiful, useful and successful.

So now I am learning how to create links for AbeBooks. On the one hand their terms say “Affiliates are NOT allowed to direct link. Any sales generated through direct linking are not commissionable.” On the other hand they have a page for creating direct links. Confusing and I don’t have the time right now to sort it out.

BN doesn’t seem to allow creating more than a few direct links and I would need hundreds. I still have to figure out how this system works and the help/FAQ fils I studied so far didn’t help. Have to invest more time into it if I want to make it work.

I am not going back to hundreds of pages and blog posts to remove the Amazon.com links. But from most of my sites where the links are generated in a more automatic fashion (eg. from a database or from Drupal) I already removed the links to Amazon.

This fiasco made me rethink why I am building these sites (SocRelig, KabbalahBooks, and FilmAndReligion). On the one hand these cover topics I am interested in and I thought I can provide a service to the online world, by making them. On the other hand I always hoped that one day they can generate some revenue for me. I never earned more than few dollars a month via my Amazon.com account, but at least that contributed towards the ISP fees. Now I have to ponder upon

• how important it is to make money from these ventures
• how much energy I can put into them if they don’t
• what other channels/methods should I explore for them to generate revenue.

I need a bit of time to figure these out…

• I spent the first few days of the month in Palo Alto at Stanford’s Drupalcamp and visiting with my cousin.
• The day after I got back Anya and Stella participated in the “Walk to End Genocide.” (Can you pick them out on the far right of this pic?)
• Some of us went and had fun at Sebastopol’s Apple Blossom Festival, while next day another subset of our family went to Windsor’s Earth Day and Wellness Festival.
• We celebrated Passover by going to the Seder of the Russian River Jewish Community.

Stella was sick for a couple days in the second half of the month. Despite that, a few days later, when we went for her first weigh-in since September she was found 2 inches taller and 2 pounds heavier than last time. This means that she is right on her growth curve. That’s good news. She is also potty training herself, knows more and more songs, speaks in full sentences in English, basic words in Hungarian, likes to climb, draw, paint and organize objects. She alo likes her day-care more and more. In short she is amazing.

Meanwhile Anya worked so much (both at her dayjob and with her teaching gigs) that I ended up not having much time to do extra work beyond my regular job. Furthermore I only had little time to play with my hobby sites. In the month of April I added 106 movies (831), 28 festivals (380), 69 links to reviews/blogs news (281) to the Jewish.FilmAndReligion.com site. I also added/associated the movies played at 18 festivals (161). The totals the site has now in these four categories are in parenthesis.

I also added some new content to my SocRelig.com site. I messed up there something though and currently cannot post there blog entries and don’t have time to fix it. Hence I will post here the list of recent additions to that site, including two books:

• Digital Dharma: A User’s Guide to Expanding Consciousness in the Infosphere by Steven Vedro
• Japanese Religions on the Internet: Innovation, Representation, and Authority edited by Birgit Staemmler, Erica Baffelli and Ian Reader

And 18 articles:

• Angels not souls: Popular religion in the online mourning for British celebrity Jade Goody – Tony Walter
• The anthropology of media and the question of ethnic and religious pluralism – Patrick Eisenlohr
• Cultural Studies and Matters of Faith: The Case of DhammaWheel.com – Edwin Ng
• Exploring the lived experiences of online worshipers – Matthew Broaddus
• A forum of their own: Views about the Internet among ultra–Orthodox Jewish women who browse designated closed fora – Azi Lev-On, Rivka Neriya–Ben Shahar
• Information Security in the Islamic Perspective: The Principles and Practices – Sonny Zulhuda
• IslamGRID: Knowledge Management at JAKIM – Abdul Rahman Ahmad Dahlan et al Al-Abrar b Abdul Wahid
• Japanese New Religions and the Internet: A Case Study – Erica Baffelli
• Mediation and immediacy: sensational forms, semiotic ideologies and the question of the medium – Birgit Meyer
• The Model of Online al-Dawah al-Fardiyyah – Muhamad Faisal Ashaar, Rozina Abd. Ghan
• A New Domain for Co-Workers of God: Accessing Khutbahs on the Internet – Steven Fink
• Om-line Hinduism: World Wide Gods on the Web – Heinz Scheifinger
• Online Christian Churches: Three Case Studies – Timothy Roger Benjamin Hutchings
• Online in the Evolution Wars: An Analysis of Young Earth Creationism Cyber-Propaganda – Thomas AechtnerReview 2011-03-04
• The political pluralisation of American evangelicals: how old media built a movement, and why the Internet is poised to change it – Chris Perkins, Christopher Wayne Frazier, Crawford Boerl
• Religions Online: Christian and Muslim (Re) presentations in the Moluccan Conflict – Birgit Brauchler
• Robots, Rights and Religion – James F. McGrath
• Virtually global: online evangelical cartography – Martijn Oosterbaan

I miss the times when I had time to write proper reviews. I have lots of ideas and reflections that now I can’t share. So the notes below are nothing more than pointers to the possible future time when I might have a time to write those ideas up. I managed to finish 34 movies and these 5 books.

• Barry Lyga: The Astonishing Adventures Of Fanboy And Goth Girl (2006) – Brought back my own high school angst and shyness and fascinations. Even though there were no jocks in my school/country, no graphic novels, no cell phones or internet. We had goth culture though of which I was a reluctant borderline admirer.
• Wladimir Kaminer: Russian Disco (2009): Vignettes from the life of Russian, Jewish and other immigrants in Berlin right before, around and after the fall of the communist system. Sprinkled with absurd, Russian humor and characters, so familiar to me from that era.
• Peter Godwin: When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa (2007): The tragic and disheartening story of Zimbabwe’s last 20 years through the eyes and family of a white expat journalist, who made the US his home.
• John Saul: The Devil’s Labyrinth (2007): A battle between young and old, good and evil and between Catholicism and Islam. Guess what religion the bad guys are of? Exciting pageturner, but I found it offensive that one kind of true faith can easily triumph over another kind.
• Milton Steinberg: The Prophet’s Wife (2010): Beautiful and authentic-feeling retelling the story of prophet Hoshea and his wife.

I watched 11 science-fiction movies, still a favorite genre, see the titles in italics. I also viewed movies from the “1000 films to see before you die” list, see the 18 boldfaced entries. This way I could ensure that I saw some quality movies too and beyond my comfort zone of favorite type of movies. In the last few months I mostly previewed movies for the local Jewish film festival. I still did a few of that, see the five non-italics and non-bold items  on the list below.

1. Bad Boy Bubby (1993, Australia): Starts off as a scary incestuous psycho-drama, but ends up on a surprisingly positive tone. I really enjoyed the concert scenes and the slow social and cognitive development of “Bubby”. (DVD)
2. Bandit Queen (1994, India,UK): The harsh story of an Indian woman who was given away as a child to become a wife and whose husband abused her. Later she became a bandit and freedom fighter. Based on a true story, although the woman whose life the story it is based on sued the filmmakers for inaccuracies. (DVD)
3. Becket (1964, UK, USA): 12th century drama about a king and his friend turned priest with Richard Burton, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud. Good acting, good history lesson, good message. (DVD)
4. Big Chill, The (1983, USA): Last month I saw The Romantics (2010), which in retrospect seems like a remake of this movie, where affluent white friends chill out together in the countryside. (DVD)
5. Bride of Frankenstein (1935, USA): Boris Karloff is the real monster and by the end we see the hair of his bride too. Classic horror not as scary as it used to be. (DVD)
6. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958, USA): Saw it a few days after Liz Taylor passed away. She and Paul Newman made a great bickering couple, while the real conflict was between Newman’s character and his father. The latter dying of cancer, the former sinking into alcoholism after a fallen sports career. (DVD)
7. Class of 1999 (1990, USA): Low-budget high-school Terminator wannabe project. Campy special effect, but made me miss Seattle.  (DVD)
8. Day of the Triffids, The (2009, Canada, UK): I’ve never seen the previous versions of the movie or read the book, so the apocalyptic, sci-fi story of oil producing, man-eating plants were new to me. Eddie Izzard is still the best, although Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Priestly weren’t bad either. (DVD)
9. Days of Being Wild (A Fei jingjyuhn) (1990, Hong Kong): The second movie directed by Kar Wai Wong has his signature colors and colorful characters and offbeat romantic storyline. Not his best though. (DVD)
10. Devil in a Blue Dress (1995, USA): Denzel Washington as a private detective works out a political scandal in 1940′s LA. A bit slow start, but goes to the heart of racism later. (DVD)
11. Dig! (2004, USA): Documentary about the fight of two bands and their frontmen. I never cared for The Dandy Warhols and never heard of the Brian Jones Massacre, and after the movie I am even less interested in them. Thank god I avoided drug problems or becoming a rock star, or even being cursed with inflated ego. These people weren’t so lucky. (DVD)
12. Discovery of Heaven, The (2001, UK): Angels trying to get back the original tablets of the Ten Commandments for God, via interfering with humanity on Earth and creating an angelic youth to do their dirty work. Despite the Christian Kabbalistic concepts and Stephen Fry’s performance, it wans’t a great movie. (DVD)
13. Gantz (2011, Japan): Silly sci-fi, based on a video game, where a man in a black globe  assigns involuntarily drafted players the objective of killing aliens on Earth.
14. Infidel, The (2010, UK): Hilarious comedy about a British, almost secular Muslim guy, who finds out he was born Jewish and is adopted. This happens of course, while his son is trying to date the daughter of a Muslim extremist. Plus point for the Gary Numan references.  (DVD)
15. Inside Hana’s Suitcase (2009, Canada, Czech Republic): Documentary about the suitcase of a Holocaust victim (and their history) being used as an educational tool in Japan.
16. L’année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) (1961, France): Remember hearing about it when I was a kid but never saw it. I enjoyed the deconstructionist plot and editing but took a lot out of me to keep focusing on it. (DVD)
17. Lantana (2001, Australia): We only figure out by the end how all the people in this movie are connected to each other. There is a crime to solve, and lots of hearts to break and mend. Good twists, dramas and romances. (DVD)
18. Last Picture Show, The (1971, USA): Desolate, isolated, cruel, bleak. Just some of the features of the village where a group of kids is getting through high school. Peter Bogdanovich made an ageless classic about the development and variety of interpersonal relationships. (DVD)
19. Life Is Sweet (1990, UK): Mike Leigh’s comedy about a family with 20something twins and their problems. Bulemia is just part of the issue. Communication, or lack of, is another. (DVD)
20. Long Good Friday, The (1980, UK): Watched it on Good Friday, although the story has almost nothing to do with that. Violent crimes, lots of swearing but an insight to a world I didn’t know. Not just that of the IRA’s (DVD)
21. Lost in La Mancha (2002, UK, USA): Documentary about poor Terry Gilliam’s failed project of turning Don Quixote into a feature film. Fascinating view, how things can go bad in the movie making business. Footage of the storm washing away the equipment is powerful description of an act-of-god, not necessarily covered by insurance. (DVD)
22. Matchmaker, The (2010, Israel): Take one part free love, one part 1960′s culture, one part carnival people, one part Shoah survivors, one part coming of age, and one part romanticism. Hint a good dash of humor, a sense of mensch, and place it in Israel. There, you have the recipe of this great movie.
23. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, USA): I still don’t like that Robert Altman likes to have more than one conversation edited at the same volume onto each other in a scene. Nevertheless this slow non-western with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie had a good story and Leonard Cohen’s music made it even better. (DVD)
24. Metropia (2009, Sweden): Animation from a depressive future of Europe, but with voices of Juliette Lewis, Udo Kier and Vincent Gallo. Depressive both in its look and its outlook. (DVD)
25. Monsters (2010, UK): The daughter of a rich man trying to get through the alien infested zone between the US and Mexico, with the help of a photo-journalist.  Not your typical sci-fi: more melodramatic, a bit more artistically shot and a lot more clearer about the aliens being a metaphor for Mexicans who try to enter the US. (DVD)
26. My Darling Clementine (1946, USA): Good olde western with Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp, who can kill bad guys. (DVD)
27. Rafle, La (The Roundup) (2010, France): I read a book about the ”Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup” recently (in 1942 French police rounded up Paris Jews and kept them in a  velodrome for several days), so the plot of movie didn’t give that much new to me. Still good sharing of a forgotten segment of history.
28. Scientist, The (2010, USA): Confusing, faux-philosophical sci-fi about a scientist mourning over his wife and creating a sort-of-time-machine. Didn’t care for it.
29. Second Arrival, The (1988, USA): I didn’t see (or don’t remember) the first Arrival, so on its own this “fight aliens already amongst us” type of made-for-tv movie was lackluster. (DVD)
30. Splice (2009, USA): Genetic manipulation–ooh scary and unethical. I wish somebody would give an honest treatment of the theme. This was an interesting move about creating a demon, but not the end of the genre. (DVD)
31. Split Second (1992, UK): Rutger Hauer avenges his ex-partner’s murder by a monster in a future London that is getting under water because of global warming. Good action movie with comic elements. (DVD)
32. Suchimuboi (Steamboy) (2004, Japan): Great animation set in the era of Victorian steam technology and a boy genius and his family who work with the tech well. (DVD)
33. Where I Stand: The Hank Greenspun Story (2008, USA): Documentary about a fascinating person, founder of the Las Vegas Sun, tangled up in Watergate and Israel’s War of Independence, fighting the IRS…
34. Wild Angels, The (1966, USA): 13 years after  The Wild One (with Marlon Brando) and two years before Easy Rider Peter Fonda is the leader of a Hells Angels motorcycle gang that busts out a dying, injured friend from a hospital. They turn the funeral into a party. But before that they run other kind of havoc. Mixed critique of both contemporary society and the Angels. (DVD)

From the many celebrations this video is my favorite: Ian Anderson (from Jethro Tull)+ Cady Coleman flute duet in space

And here is my contribution to the commemorations: pictures of three badges from my old collection. I thought I have one related to Baikonur or any part of the Soviet space program, but I don’t. So here are the closest I got:

Stella keeps growing in knowledge, skills, language, spirit, size and experiences. The big news is that she started going to daycare. Twice a week she spends there 3-4 hours, giving us/me more time to catch up on aforementioned tasks. The first week Anya stayed with her at daycare so she could get used to it. She always seems to have a good time, even thought sometimes she doesn’t want us to leave. She is picking up new words and habits real fast. Finally spring  arrived so we’re spending more time on the playground too. Here are some things she did for the first time this month:

• Climb up on a climbing wall
• Eat nori
• Paint with a brush
• Read numbers
• Say more than ten Hungarian words
• Rake leaves
• Pick flowers and put them in her hair
• Pet a rabbit
• Attend a friend’s birthday party from the playground

Anya is busier than ever. She has three new bnei-mitzvah students. She has successfully migrated the accounting system of a business from a really antiquated one to the most modern one. Most importantly the weather allowed her to do gardening, so she cleared more of our garden and planted lots of veggies and some flowers too. She is also back on track of her fitness plan and doing well with the couch-to-5k program.

My own work is also going well. I made major steps with the eCommerce site I’ve been building and it will hopefully launch in April. I learned a lot of Drupal and even some more PHP in the process.

From my many hobby sites I spent time only with adding data to Jewish.FilmAndReligion.com. In the month of March I added 249 movies (725), 131 festivals (352), 141 links to reviews/blogs news (212). Furthermore I added/associated the movies played at 62 festivals (143). The totals the site has now in these four categories are in parenthesis. I added 30+ books to my SocRelig.com site, and collected 20+ items I wanted to blog about, but didn’t yet. I will add them in April, even though I will not enjoy one of the advantages of blog entries: their timeliness.

I managed to read a few books this month too:

I’ve seen 35 movies in March, 18 of them as a previewer for the local Jewish Film Festival.

1. 100 Voices: A Journey Home (2010, USA): Documentary about cantors visiting Poland and reliving and reviving Jewish culture there.
2. Ahead of Time (2009, USA): Documentary about Ruth Gruber, who was the world’s youngest PhD at age 20, then a  reporter  and member of Roosevelt Administration.
3. Amen. (2002, France, Germany, Romania): Story of how an SS officer tried to inform the Pope about Jews being killed off in concentration camps. (DVD)
4. Arthur 3: The War of the Two Worlds (Arthur et la guerre des deux mondes) (2010, France): Third installment of Luc Besson’s animation, mostly set in our world and not down below.
5. The Assassin Next Door (Kirot) (2009, Israel): Two very different women (an assassin and a battered wife) in Israel combine their powers against violent men. (DVD)
6. At the Green Line (2005, Israel, USA): Documentary about the conscientious objectors Israeli soldiers.
7. Baghdad Twist (2008, Canada): Visual memoir of a Jewish family’s life in Iraq before 1970.
8. Battle: Los Angeles (2011, USA): Big budget, shoot-the-aliens action movie set in LA. (DVD)
9. Be Fruitful and Multiply (2005, Israel): Documentary about orthodox Jewish women with lots of children. (DVD)
10. Berlin 36 (2009, Germany): Feature film about a Jewish athlete and how she was prevented from competing at the 1936 Olympics.
11. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010, USA): Family friendly adaptation of the adventure book. (DVD)
12. Dear Wendy (2005, USA, Denmark, Germany): A boy in a nameless, timeless towns leads his friends into a cult of guns. (DVD)
13. A Film Unfinished (Shtikat Haarchion) (2010, Germany, Israel): Documentary about people behind and before the camera in the Warsaw Ghetto.
14. The Green Hornet (2011, USA): An adult son revenges his father’s death as a masked hero, with the help of his assistant. (DVD)
15. How Do You Know (2010, USA): Love triangle story as a romantic comedy (DVD)
16. Hugo Pool (1997, USA): Robert Downey Sr. directing/following Alyssa Milano as a pool cleaner. (DVD)
17. I Saw Giraffes In India (2009, Israel): Documentary about an Israeli rock band’s tour in India, during and after the Mumbai terror attack
18. The Investigator (A Nyomozo) (2008, Hungary): Thriller about a guy who is trying to figure out who hired him to kill his unknown brother.
19. The Lost Future (2010, USA): Survivors in a post-apocalyptic world struggle with genetically mutating beasts and mysterious diseases.
20. Love During Wartime (2010, Sweden): Documentary about the hardships of an Israeli/Palestinian couple.
21. Mah-Jongg: The Tiles That Bind (1998, USA): Documentary about the mah-jongg game and its role in the life of  American-Jewish women. (DVD)
22. My So-Called Enemy (2010, USA):  Documentary about teenagers who participated in a women’s leadership program called Building Bridges for Peace.
23. Precious Life (2010, Israel): Documentary about how an Israeli pediatrician and a journalist is trying to save the life of a Palestinian baby who suffers from an incurable genetic disease.
24. The Romantics (2010, USA): Seven close friends reunite for the wedding of two of their friends. (DVD)
25. Round Ireland with a Fridge (2010, UK): A comedian travels around Ireland with a fridge and has appropriate adventures.
26. Serving Sara (2002, USA): A process server tries to serve an elusive female target. (DVD)
27. Tamara Drewe (2010, UK): A young newspaper writer returns to her hometown in the English countryside, where her childhood home is being prepped for sale. (DVD)
28. This is Sodom (Zohi Sdom) (2010, Israel): Monthy Python still reenactment of the Biblical Sodom story, by an Israel comedy group.
29. The Tourist (2010, USAFrance): Johnny Depp  Angelina Jolie. The rest you can forget. (DVD)
30. The Town (2010, USA): A bank robber falls in love with his hostage. (DVD)
31. The Trotsky (2009, Canda): A high school student in Canada thinks he is a the reincarnation of Trotsky and acts accordingly. (DVD)
32. The Way Up (2009, Israel): Follows the life of a young woman on the streets of Tel Aviv for three years, who is from Romania, a drug user and a lesbian.
33. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (2009, USA): Biopic about the famous lawyer and civil rights activist. (DVD)
34. The Yankles (2009, USA): Comedy about a baseball team formed at an orthodox yeshiva.
35. Z for Zachariah (1984, UK): Depicts two people’s lives in a Welsh valley after a nuclear holocaust.

When I signed up on February 17 I was happy and surprised that in the process the site found 22 papers I wrote at various stages of my academic career. Considering that I posted all of them on my site and they were findable via Google it wasn’t an impossible task. But still, it was good for my ego. What’s even more interesting is that every time my paper shows up in somebody’s Google search I get a notification. For example I know that on March 25 somebody from Belgium searched for “japans watersystem” and my related undergrad research paper showed up as #1 on the results page. It may not mean much, e.g. the person may not even started to read my paper, but it still reminds me of my past and connection to academia. An incentive to return to it, when I can.

My public webpage on the site starts with “independent”, because I am not associated with any academic institution: http://independent.academia.edu/GaborPor

I know that I am not using the site to its full potential. I have a basic profile with the essentials of my CV on it and not much more. I am not active in any circles there. If I’d be more mobile or more interested n the job market I would be more active there. When I start doing something more professional (either developing my own business clientele and/or activate my academic interests) that will eb the time to take advantage of the networks and tools offered by LinkedIn. Till then here is the aforementioned letter.

Dear Gabor,

I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn’s first million members (member number 625874 in fact!*). In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are the early adopters, those who help lead the way. That was you.

We hit a big milestone at LinkedIn this week when our 100 millionth member joined the site.

When we founded LinkedIn, our vision was to help the world’s professionals be more successful and productive. Today, with your help, LinkedIn is changing the lives of millions of members by helping them connect with others, find jobs, get insights, start a business, and much more.

We are grateful for your support and look forward to helping you accomplish much more in the years to come. I hope that you are having a great year.

Sincerely,

Reid Hoffman
Co-founder and Chairman
LinkedIn