Month: November 2005

Technology: Simplicity vs. Complication

“Technology is a way to simplify a person’s life by complicating it.”

Just a thought that crossed my mind about how we keep on creating new ways to simplify our lives and become lazier, yet these same things end up complicating our life more and adding our dependancy on a number of gadgets, services, resources, sources …etc.

We create ways to move around freely and do anything from anywhere, as a way to feel some freedom, but in the end of the day we’re tying ourselves to all these devices and inventions, and putting ourselves at the mercy of them, their manufacturers, their sources…etc.

We create an illusion of simplicity and freedom while we dive deeper into complexity and tech-slavery.

Hung Up On Madonna

Man, I can’t get Madonna’s new song Hung Up out of my head.
It’s one of those infectuous tunes and songs that just stick to you and keep going on constant rotation in your head.

It’s off her new album Confessions on a Dance Floor, which will be released tomorrow and is a really cool album with a disco / dance touch.
My favourite songs off the album are: Hung Up, Push, Sorry, Jump, Get Together. Even though the rest of the songs are cool too.

The thing I love about Madonna is how she re-invents herself with every album, setting new trends in the music business, raising the bar and always one step ahead of the pack.

She just rocks!

I totally recommend the single Hung Up and the album Confessions on a Dance Floor for all music lovers.

Crash

Last night we watched Crash, featuring a great cast with Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe and a number of other talented actors.

I first heard about this movie when Jason reviewed it, and I thought it sounded like a cool movie.
And well it didn’t let me down, it’s a really interesting and good movie, that I truly enjoyed. It’s one of those movies where Hollywood actually does things right.

The movie is about several characters of different racial backgrounds who collide in one incident, The different stereotypes society has created for those backgrounds affect their judgment, beliefs and actions, in turn causing problems for each of them.

It’s one of those movies that takes bits and pieces of different people’s lives and then ties them all up together at some point.
It reminds me of Magnolia, only I really liked this one better.

The casting was great and all the actors did a very good job. Talking of that, did I ever say that I really like Don Cheadle? He’s a really talented and great actor.

I really recommend this movie for people who enjoy a good, interesting and well-done movie.

My rating for this movie is: 8/10.

Internet Connection Problems…

The WSIS starts in a few days, and Tunisia has been preparing to show how successful it can and will be at hosting such big and important events.

But, unfortunately, big events like this come with a downside for the internet users of Tunisia.

2 years ago when Tunisia hosted the ICANN meetings; A big share of the national bandwidth was allocated to the hotel the meetings were being held at, as well as the hotels the guests were staying at. This at a time when those places weren’t even covered by broadband connections yet.

That left the rest of Tunisia with really bad internet connections. People at home found it impossible to surf the net, and companies who had leased lines or adsl felt like they were connected through a 56K modem.

It’s a shame that with the WSIS this year, the same problem is happening all over again.
For this past week, connecting through dialup has been near to impossible, and the supposedly higher speed connections have become a lot slower.

I know it’s important that we have high speed internet in the Kram Palexpo and in the hotels the guests are staying at, but we need the internet too, and those connections shouldn’t be provided at our expense.

In the end, this highlights one of the big problems poorer countries face, which is high bandwidth prices, limiting how much they can buy, and making them unable to provide wide-spread higher speed connections at good prices for their citizens.
I hope a solution will be found for this in the summit, for it is one of the main reasons behind the digital divide between countries.

[More (in French): Infinity]

Batman Begins

At last, I got to watch “Batman Begins”, a movie I’ve been wanting to see even before its release.

Before its release, I wasn’t expecting something really big, but then the reviews started coming in and they were positive, which made me want to see it even more.
And well, I wasn’t dissapointed at all, I have to say that I think this is one of the best Batman movies up to now.

As with all superhero movies, the part I love most is the beginning, so this movie hit that spot with me, and then went on developing the character in an interesting way.
The thing about Batman is that he’s unlike other superheroes who either come from another planet or go through a freak accident that gives them supernatural powers. Batman is like every one of us, he’s a normal human being, who is using an alter ego called “Batman” and a bunch of cool gadgets.
So, really Batman is closer to James Bond than he is to your regular superhero, and he’s easier to connect to.

Christian Bale is a good actor and he did a nice job as Batman. He was a good casting choice and I hope he goes on with the role in the future movies.

Something I found amusing in this movie is the name of Liam Neeson’s character “Ras Al Ghul”, which is in Arabic, and means “The head of the monster”.

My rating for this movie would be: 8/10.

Robots

Yesterday, we finally got to watch “Robots”, an animation from Fox studios, about a really cool robot world.

In this robot world, a young idealistic inventor travels to the big city to join his inspiration’s company, only to find himself opposing its evil new management and bringing hope back to the robots.

This is one of my favourite non-Pixar animations, putting Fox studios right behind them and ahead of Dreamworks.

It’s really well done, the story is a nice one, enjoyable by kids and grown-ups alike, the humor is good, and the characters are cute too.

I also like the message they’re trying to pass through the movie, that one should never lose hope, work hard and persevere, until they make their dreams come true.

I personally really enjoyed this movie and recommend it for everyone who’s into animation.

My rating for this movie would be: 8.5/10.

Organizing Tunisian Blogger Meetup 8

In the last blogger meetup, we talked about having the next Tunisian blogger meetup on November 18th, and well that’s next week already 🙂

The suggested place and time were Biwa in Les Berges du Lac at 8PM, anyway now after the announced traffic plans for the days of the summit, do you think it’ll still be possible to have it there?

If not, where do you suggest we have it?

Please leave a comment with your ideas.

Acting My Way Out Of School

When I was a kid, I remember how I used to fake being sick so that I could stay at home and not go to school. I’d fake everything, from the fever to the exhaustion to the cough or the throat-ache, to every single detail.
My mother would find me in that situation and after some inspection declare me sick, and my father would just go out to work without having to drop me at school on his way.

15 minutes after my dad’s departure, as if by a miracle, I’d be up and well again, running, jumping and doing all sorts of things all over the house; partly because that’s what children always do and mainly to announce my victory over my parents and how I was able to get my way.
Pretty evil for a kid, maybe, but weren’t we all little devils at that age.

After doing the same routine a number of times, with different variations to keep it working, it seems my mother got fed up of me winning, and so she decided that “even if I was dying, I’d go to school and then come back home to die!”

Of course she didn’t mean it, and of course I got away with a number of other acts, but well it’s one of those sweet funny memories that will remain engraved in my memory forever.
I love you mom 🙂

Official Language of the European Union

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the language is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with”z” and “w” with “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

looooool…
hilarious….

[Via: Evil Drako]