Year: 2005

Harry Potter Books Go Digital

J.K. Rowling has made all six Potter novels available for audio downloads.

The digital audiobooks are being released by the Random House Audio Trade Group. They can be purchased through Apple’s iTunes store, for prices ranging from $32.95 for a single book to $249 for the whole series, which, according to Random House, includes a “full color digital booklet” and “previously unreleased readings” by Rowling.

Rowling’s fantasy series, most recently “Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince,” has sold more than 200 million copies worldwide in print editions and more than 5 million as audiobooks, narrated by Grammy winner Jim Dale. But up to now the author had only permitted paper and traditional audio releases.

I think the concept of audio books in an interesting one, although I don’t think I’d ever buy one. I’m more of a real book person; I love the touch, feel and smell of the paper. When I’m reading a book, it’s personal; It’s just me and the book, no one else.
I guess it just wouldn’t feel the same hearing it being read by someone else.

Blogmania in the Maghreb

Afrique Magazine has a feature article by the name “Blogmania Au Maghreb” talking about blogging in the Maghreb countries (Tunisia, Algeria, Morroco, Libya & Mauritania).

The article highlights the Tunisian bloggers as the pioneers in the region, which I think is really cool.

A number of blogs from across the region are mentioned, among them mine (Wow!), as well as Adib, Dasdous, Etta, Geronimo, Manal, Lady M, Alger Intime and more.
It’s a shame that some of the very important and pioneering blogs from the region were left out.

The article didn’t really go too deep into the world of blogs, it just touched on the main lines. Anyway, I think it’s great that we’re getting some coverage in the press and that now more and more people will learn about blogs and will start blogging too.
Hopefully for future articles writers will get more in touch with the bloggers and why not even attend blogger meetups.

I bought the magazine yesterday after I heard about the article from other bloggers, and it’s a real pleasure to see blogs and bloggers highlighted.

Karim has scanned the article and made it into a PDF file for everyone to read online here. It’s in French though.

My Traveller Wish

One of my ultimate wishes would be to get to work on something like those travel shows they put on TV; getting to travel to a new country every week, discovering new places, seeing new people, knowing new cultures, tasting new types of food, learning of different customs and traditions… and then reviewing them for the whole world.

That’s something I would totally love to do, something that would make me really really happy.

I’ve always loved travel and found it very enriching. I think I am a more understanding person because of all the travel I’ve done and the different people I’ve met.

Being able to do it all the time as a job would just be a magical dream come true.
For the time being though, all I can do is wish.
Unless someone out there is willing to finance me to travel around the world and blog about it. Anyone?

links for 2005-09-08

The Rockr iTunes Phone

rockrphone.jpgApple and Motorola today unveiled their long expected iPod phone, under the name Rockr. This phone was developed by Apple and Motorola, and Cingular Wireless will be the exclusive U.S. carrier of the telephone.

The Rokr, which will be available starting this weekend, can hold about 100 songs. It has a color display for viewing album art and features built-in dual-stereo speakers, as well as stereo headphones that also serve as a mobile headset with microphones.

The phone will automatically pause the song when you get a call and songs are transferred to the phone through a USB cable.

Apple also announced a tiny new iPod that can hold 1,000 songs and is thinner than a standard No. 2 pencil, under the name iPod Nano.

Both products look really cool, just like all Apple products.

Yahoo! Helped Jail Chinese Journalist

According to Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders), Information supplied by Yahoo! helped Chinese journalist Shi Tao get 10 years in prison.

Shi, a former journalist for the financial publication Contemporary Business News, was sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for illegally providing state secrets to foreigners.

It shows that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd provided China

The Da Vinci Code

I finished reading “The Da Vinci Code” a couple of nights ago, and well it was a really good read.

I’ve been wanting to read this book for over 2 years actually. I wanted to buy it from Jordan last year, but it was sold out, and when I found it in Tunisia it was in French, and this year when I went to Jordan it was banned!
So, I had to find a way to order it online and that’s what I did.

Back to the book. I really enjoyed reading it; it sucked me in and I found myself thinking and trying to solve riddles and clues with the characters as the events started racing and the plot thickened.

I’ve always been a fan of detective style books. When I was younger, I used to fly through Sherlock Holmes books and then I’d go out trying to apply his ways of noticing every little thing on people.

What’s really cool about this book is that it combines the detective style with some history and art. It discusses a number of beliefs, theories and philosophies that I knew little or nothing about, which was very interesting.
I don’t think I could’ve taken one more reference to the sacred feminine and the symbology around her though, there was definitely too much of that.
Of course, this is a work of fiction and just like there is some truth to some of it, there are things that were added for dramatic effect.

It has a lot of riddles, clues and twists; those are always cool in a book like this. Although half way through the book I started prediciting some of the future twists.

In short, it was a really good and fun read, which was pretty well written.
Now I can’t wait for the movie to come out next year. I’m sure Tom Hanks will be doing a great job as Robert Landgon.

I recommend this book to everyone.
My score for it: 8.5/10

Flying & Rambling

I love flying…
Ever since I can remember, I’ve always loved flying…
I love that sensation of soaring above the world…

As a kid, I dreamt of growing up to become a pilot, and if not for the fact that I have a combination of short-sightedness and astigmatism, I’d certainly have ended up as one. (Thank you family for passing me your screwed up genes!)

Anyway, I’ve always loved air travel, sometimes even more than actually going to other places, especially when I already know the place I’m visiting.

I’ve never panicked on a plane or thought dark thoughts about it crashing or anything, in fact I’m totally convinced planes are the safest way to travel. Period. (Hmm, maybe trains are the only things safer.)
And I guess the crap they tell us at the beginning of the flight, and that was engraved in my memory from my early childhood, somehow makes me unconsciencly sure everything is cool and under control.

These days though, every couple of days, we hear about a new plane falling out of the sky, and people get scared out of their heads from ever flying again.
A plane crash is a tragedy by all means and it’s scary as hell.
I can only try to imagine how the people who lost their loved ones in plane crashes feel, and would get nowhere close to imagining how people who went through a plane crash themselves felt.

Personally, I do get afraid of flying for a split second, but then I remember that every time I get on a plane, I know the risk exists, and that I do it anyways.
Just like going out of your home in the morning is a risk, driving your car is a risk, eating something is a risk…etc.
I guess life is but a series of calculated risks; We only do what is within our acceptable risk range.

I’ll never give up flying…
I love the feeling too much…

The Upside of Anger

Yesterday, I watched this movie called “The Upside of Anger” featuring Kevin Costner, Joan Allen, Keri Russell and Erika Christensen.

It’s a drama about a woman and her 4 daughters and how their lives go after the father dissapears unexpectedly.

Looking for the IMDB page for this movie, I found that it was actually well rated and that the last review of it was very good, but personally, I didn’t like it and thought it was really boring.
I lost interest from the beginning of the movie, and nothing pulled me back in throughout it all.

The idea is a good one, that Anger paralyzes our emotional outlook and alters our perception of reality and works to destroy us and those around us.

But, the movie just didn’t portray it well enough and it felt like it went on for too long, and lots of stuff just felt like they were thrown in there to fill up the time.
I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t in the mood for this kind of movie yesterday, but to me this movie pretty much sucked.

There’s a twist at the end that is interesting, although Eman guessed it from the very beginning, but they let it just pass slowly, losing it’s taste and effect.

It’s a shame to see a great actor like Kevin Costner in a movie like this, but well it’s his choice after all.

My score for this movie: 1/10.

History

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books — books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe.
As Napoleon once said, ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?’
By Its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.”

From the book: The Da Vinci Code

I couldn’t agree more.
I’ve been wanting to write about this for a long time, but never came around to doing it. This quote in The Da Vinci Code said it wonderfully and rekindled that thought in my mind.

This also brings me back to my previous post about Truth, where I talk about how relative truth is, and how there is no such thing as absolute truth.

There are different versions of the truth, just like there are different versions of history. It’s just that the winners get to force their version on everyone else.
But that doesn’t make it any more true.

I guess what I’m saying is that people shouldn’t always believe what they hear or read in history books, because that’s only one side of the story.
The only way is to try and look at the different sides of the story and try to put it all together to create a personal understanding of it.