Month: August 2005

Blog Day 2005

Today is Blog Day 2005. But what is Blog Day?
Well Blog Day, the brain child of blogger Nir Ofir, was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.

With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. In this way, all Blog web surfers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

So, for the occasion, I’ve gone on and searched for 5 new blogs, from around the world, that I never visted before and that I liked, and here is my list:

– Zimbabwean Pundit: A blogger from Zimbabwe, writing about the political situation and news in Zimbabwe.

– ThaRum: A blogger from Cambodia, chronicling events from his life there and discussing various issues.

– Finland for Thought: A blog from Finland, by an American though, discussing politics, current events and culture in Finland and USA.

– Jarango: A blogger from Panama, who blogs in English and Spanish, and writes about lots of interesting stuff.

– Small Island Girl: A blogger from Trinidad & Tobago, writing about her life and dreams on a small island.

I wouldn’t feel fair without pimping some of the blogs I know too, so here are some links:
AquaCool, Haitham Sabbah, And Far Away, Saudi Jeans, Je Blog, 2:48AM, Savior Machine, Zizou from Djerba, Aron’s Israel Peace Blog, Mouse Hunter…etc.
Check my blogroll for more interesting links 😉

The Hobbit

Last night, I finally finished reading “The Hobbit” by J.R.R Tolkien, the tale of Bilbo Baggins and his greatest adventure. And what a read that was.

I have to thank my dear friend Saqf again for giving me this amazing book and encouraging me to read it right away. You rock man!

I totally enjoyed every bit of it. My imagination ran wild; middle earth was recreated in my brain with every tiny detail; I took the trip with Bilbo, the hobbit, Gandalf and their dwarve friends over and under hills, through forests, across rivers and all over middle earth.
At times I even was so sucked into the story, I felt like I was living the role of the hobbit.

The book is magnificently written, Tolkien’s style is just awesome, and at times it feels less like fantasy and more like myth or maybe even ancient history; it’s as if all this did happen a long time ago when the world was full of hobbits, elves, dwarves, goblins, dragons and more.

I totally wish Peter Jackson goes on to make a movie out of this book too.
It’d be one hell of a cinematic experience, I’m sure.

I totally recommend reading this book.
It’s simply beautifully amazing.

Show in Downtown Tunis

Show in downtown Tunis

Yesterday we went to downtown Tunis for a walk and to check out some books at Al Kitab bookstore.

We found Habib Bourguiba street closed to cars and lots of people were gathering in front of the Municipal Theatre there.
It turns out the Municipality of Tunis had organized a show by the students of the National School of Circus Arts (2 of whom appear in the photo above).
We stopped and watched for a while, it was really cool and nice. These guys are very talented and in really good shape.

After the show, there was a Rai concert, but we didn’t stay. We went on for a little walk, then sat down at a caf

10% Increase in Prices of School Books

For the new academic year, a rise of 10 per cent is expected in the prices of books in Tunisia.

La Presse, the daily Tunisian newspaper, reports that the increase in the prices of books is due to the improvement of quality of paper and layout. A team of pedagogues appointed by the Tunisian Ministry of Education revised the books and classes for the new academic year and have made some changes to make the books look “more attractive” for students.

Belgacem Lassouad, the director of the national teaching center, said that in order to improve the quality of the books, more colorful diagrams and graphs were added in particular to the science books.

Well I’m all for the Ministry of Education revising the books from time to time, updating them, making them richer pedagogically and making them more useful for the student.
I also do realize that using better quality paper, more attractive designs and having more graphics in the books does make their printing cost more.
But, I think a main concern should also be to keep the price accessible to everyone.

I know that the price of an individual book is only a few dinars and that adding 10% to the price of one book isn’t much of a difference. But multiplied by the number of books that students carry around on their backs to school, it becomes a significant increase, especially for the poorer families.

I guess what I’m saying is that of course changes need to be made from time to time, books have to be updated and their quality upgraded, and eventually this will mean a rise in their prices. But maybe this should be done gradually starting with the most important points first which are content and the way it’s presented.

Damn Find & Replace!

Today was a really shitty day!
I woke up, still in a good mood from yesterday’s meetup, and I thought I’d get online to check my emails and read the comments left on my blog.

I did that and all was cool.
And then I found this one blog spam comment in one of my old posts.
So, I did a search by the title of the post, which was about the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia. For some reason the search returned many results, so I wanted to search again and narrow it down, only instead of writing in the search field, I wrote in the replace field and I clicked enter.
I quickly realized what happened and clicked stop in the browser, but it was too late, every single post on my blog got screwed up and all the content was lost and turned into an endless stream of Adobe Macromedia shit.

I got in touch with my host in an attempt to find a recent backup to restore my database from, but they didn’t have any.

So, I had to re-import my data from a backup I had that was done in mid July, and I had to re-enter each and every post from then up to now, which is over 80 posts.

I’ve been working on it all day long and I just finished. I’m exhausted. And if I wasn’t as addicted to blogging as I am, I certainly would have quit the whole thing alltogether.

So, all the posts are here. But without the comments and trackbacks 🙁
I have the comments in emails that are sent to me, but I guess it’ll take me a longer time to restore those.

After the 6th Tunisian Blogger Meetup

We just came back from the sixth Tunisian blogger meetup in Sidi Bou Said.

This meetup was organized on a very short notice and barely 2 weeks after the last one in Kelibia, and as not many people confirmed their attendance, we were afraid there’d only be 3 or 4 people present.
Surprisingly and luckily, it was a great success and 12 people showed up.

We sat in a corner in the beautiful Sidi Chebaane Caf

International Amateur Film Festival in Tunisia

Tunisia will be hosting the second edition of the International Amateur Film Festival starting from August 27 until September 3.

Organized by the Tunisian Federation of the Amateur Scenario Writers in conjunction with the Ministry of the Culture and the Safeguard of Heritage, the Festival will include an international contest of amateur films as well as conferences and workshops.

The jury of the contest is formed of distinguished international personalities such as famous Egyptian director Charni Rached, Senegalese director Modibo Diawara, Tunisian producer Hassen Daldoul, Venezuelan director Litchy Athualpa and Belgian director Greta Van Beptein.

Sperm Donor Reality TV Show

Billionaire television producer John de Mol, behind the pioneer show Big Brother, will test the limits of reality TV with a program in which a woman searches for a potential sperm donor to conceive a child.

His new TV station Talpa, launched earlier this month, confirmed it will air a program called “I want your child … and nothing else!”.

“The plan is that we visit potential donors and — of course on camera — decide which man is most suitable,” the 30-year old woman who will feature in the program said in an interview with De Telegraaf newspaper.

“Afterwards there will be artificial insemination,” said the woman who was identified only as “Yessica” and who has bought a house with a room for a child.

The show is a one-off competing with four other reality TV programs, one of which follows five former prostitutes starting a cafe. The program receiving most votes from viewers Saturday, after all the shows have aired, will be turned into a series.

I wonder what mad idea they will think of next?

Whatever Happened to Arabia.com?!

Today, I thought I’d check out Arabia.com, the portal that once was regarded as the jewel of Arab portals.

So much money was thrown into it, with round after round of funding, and investment after investment, the biggest being from Prince Waleed Ibn Talal of Saudi Arabia.

They got into everything from news, to free email, to instant messaging, to mobile logos and ringtones, to forums, to marketplaces, to offering internet connections… the long list goes on.
And they recruited a huge team of people from all fields, both in Amman and Dubai, making them the biggets Arab internet company.

Each new version had a cooler design and released more features making the portal bigger and bigger.

They sponsored TV shows and events, aired a bunch of ads here and there and promoted themselves like there was no tomorrow.

And then, after the internet bust in the west, things started going not too well for Arabia too, as people realized that it was costing too much without making enough money, and so Arabia started falling faster than it rised.

New versions started losing the cool design touch they used to have, as they started working on the designs in-house. The content started to shrink, the services started to dissapear, layoffs started, and well you know how it goes.

The last time before today that I checked on Arabia was a few months ago, and it was still alive with a bit of news and some services.

Anyway today, instead of the orange Arabia homepage, I found the default Apache server page asking me: “Seeing this instead of the website you expected?”
Well, yes, but I can’t say I didn’t expect this day to come.
It’s a big shame.
R.I.P Arabia.

If it makes you feel any better, PlanetArabia.com who were one of Arabia’s main competitors have dissapeared as well.