Month: March 2006

Wise Words By A Wise Man

Here are a few quotes by Mahatma Gandhi, a very wise man…

– An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.

– What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

– You should be the change that you want to see in the world.

– I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

– First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

– I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

More Random Thoughts From Paris

I’m starting to like Paris more and more each day as I discover new places in it and get used to moving around. I don’t really feel like it’s the kind of city I could live in, but still it’s a really nice place to visit.

It’s amazing how many churches and cathedrals this city has; almost every road has a great big beautiful one sitting at its end.
It’s almost as if there was a law that was passed in the old ages saying: “Every street gets its own church, every boulevard its own cathedral, and if there isn’t enough space for one, at least throw in a nice arch!”

Last night, after work, I took Drako’s advice and went for a walk by the St. Martin Canal. Very nice place; maybe if I had more time, I’d take a book and go back to relax and read there. But time is short, and there are still many things to discover.

Why the hell do fast food restaurants here have a big scary black guy in a suit standing there staring at you? It’s quite freaky…
By the way, just to make things clear, this is not a racist comment, he’s not scary because he’s black, he’s scary because he’s a big hunk who looks like he’s so hungry from having to smell food all day long, that he’s going to eat you next.
Maybe it’s for security reasons or maybe it’s to scare people into eating quickly and leaving, I don’t know, but it’s a bit weird.

What is it with bicycle lanes here?
One moment you’re walking on the pavement in peace, and the second after, all of a sudden, that part of the pavement has turned into a bicycle lane and some guy or girl is ringing their bell at you.
It’s either there’s a bicycle lane throughout the whole length of the pavement or there isn’t. Make up your minds.

I came across a KFC yesterday. Shame I can’t eat there, though. I had to just turn around and go find somewhere else with Halal meat to eat.
Why can’t these big chains in countries that have a big number of Muslims or Jews at least have a few restaurants that provide Halal or Kosher food?

As there is no TV in the appartment I’m staying in, I’d get really bored once I got home. So a couple of days ago, as I was wandering around, I found a used CD and DVD shop, and I bought the first season of “The 4400“, which is a really cool series a friend in Tunis told me about. So every night, before going to sleep, I’ve been enjoying an episode or two of it. Very cool stuff.

Real Life Ad And Popup Blocker

You’re walking down a street in your favourite part of town, whistling or humming a cool tune, trying to enjoy the nice weather and the really good mood you’re in.

But wait, it’s not working; there’s something annoying you, distracting you, bugging you… Something is not the same about this street, it’s no longer what it used to be, it has somehow lost its charm; what is it?

It’s those huge billboards, those ugly posters stuck everywhere, those flashing fluorescent lights, those ads all around you that have transformed your nice street into a brainwash walk-through.
No wonder you’re distracted, every colour in the world is used with no harmony in these ads around you; of course you’re annoyed, the chaos of how these ads are set is incredible.

And then, just as you start to adjust to not looking at the ads and try to focus on whatever green or untouched buildings are left, someone pops up out of nowhere, bringing you close to a heart attack, presenting you with a flyer for this, a paper ad for that, a visit card for whatever…

It’s a nightmare…
Don’t you just wish we had real life ad and popup blockers to get rid of all that? Something that would just strip all those ads from the places we go to and hold back those popup advertisers from us while we have our nice stroll wherever we want to?
Ah, I’d really like to have that…

Google Mars

After Google Earth and then Google Moon, now we’ve also got Google Mars.

Google Mars allows users to view the surface of the Red Planet either by a colour-coded altitude map, black and white photographs, or an infra-red map.

The maps used on Google Mars were made from images captured by Nasa probes Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor, both currently orbiting the planet.

The service was launched to mark the 151st anniversary of the birth of Percival Lowell, an astronomer who mapped and studied Mars in the 19th century.

Up next in the news: Martians sue Google over Mars mapping service, claiming it’s a threat to planet security!

Random Thoughts From Paris

Don’t they have Burger King in France?!
Shit, they don’t have Burger King in France!
It turns out there was, but this Belgian group Quick, yeah it turned out to be from Belgium, bought the whole French chain of Burger Kings some years ago.
I had dinner at a Quick last night, and it was nothing close to the Burger King experience or taste. What a shame!

Went to the nearby Virgin Megastore last night; it’s pretty unorganized compared to the ones in London. I browsed through some DVDs but got fed up of it because whenever I thought of a specific movie, I wouldn’t be able to find it because it had a totally different name in French.
What is it with the French and their totally unrelated movie title translations? They really suck!

On my way to Virgin Megastore I passed through a small alley which was full of African restaurants, especially Senegali cuisine. The smell was spread throughout the alley and it reminded me of my childhood in Zimbabwe and the smell of the food there.
It didn’t make me want to eat there, in fact, it nearly made me not want to eat anywhere, but well it was nice unearthing a few memories.

Ah, last night…
It’s either that my upstairs neighbours are a couple of horny energizer bunnies or that there’s a very friendly woman living up there, because last night there was certainly a lot of action going on with 5.1 surround sound effects and all.
Very interesting…
Note to self: Your studio is on the second floor, definitely not the third!

Paris, Paris…

So, here I am in Paris…
Yes, you read it right, I’m in Paris, France; The city of lights, romance, fashion and whatever else they came up with…

But wait a second, the last time I wrote I was mumbling about how the world has more billionaires now and us getting peanuts, now all of a sudden, I’m in Paris??! How did that happen?
Well, let me do a quick rewind then fast forward through the weekend.

Saturday was my birthday, yeah no big post about that this year, phone line is screwed at home, so no connection, so of course no post, plus I’m not sure I’d have posted about it anyway, I mean enough about that already. So, birthday; small gathering at our place with Eman’s parents and mine; gifts were mostly clothes.
Note to self: This is certainly a good solution to get rid of shopping, I have to either have more birthdays or more people at my birthdays.

Sunday: I woke up early, well relatively early for a weekend, got myself ready and headed to the airport in time for my flight to Paris.
I had a bad experience at the airport that I’d rather not get into now, but I made it to Paris in the end, where I’ll be spending two weeks training for my new job. So no, it’s no tourism travel, but I’ll be trying to wander around a bit and take some photos after work and on weekends.

I haven’t been to Paris for such a long time; last time I was like 10 years old or something, so yeah very long time.
This time I’m all alone, staying in a small studio the company rented in Barb

The World Gets 102 More Billionaires

As some of us have barely been breaking even since last year, 102 more people around the world have become billionaires. And I’m not one of them, yet!

Microsoft founder Bill Gates is still perched atop the Forbes list with a net worth of 50 billion dollars. That’s up three and a-half billion or so from last year. He’s been the world’s richest person for the past 12 years.

Forbes says there are now 793 billionaires, thanks in part to emerging stock markets overseas, including Russia, India and Brazil. The Czech Republic has its first billionaire ever. China now has eight, up from just two last year.

And what are we? Peanut-aires…
Oh well, I guess we should always thank God for whatever he gives us, even if it’s just peanuts.

[Source: Forbes, MSN Money]

Google Buys Writely

Confirming what I read on GigaOM a couple of days ago, it has been officially announced that Google has now bought Upstartle, the company behind the cool online word processor Writely, taking the search giant even deeper into Microsoft’s turf.

Writely is a web based, ajax enhanced application that lets users compose documents directly on the Web, collaborate on them with others and share them either privately or publicly. So with Google acquiring them, Google is going into direct competition with Microsoft Office Word, making it unnecessary to have an installed Word processor.

I’ve used Writely before, and in fact the blogging presentation we held in Zaghouan was mostly worked out through our collaboration on the document online through the site.
I personally think it’s a very neat tool and really well done.

It’s interesting how it seems that Google’s strategy, to strip away Microsoft’s stronghold on office productivity software, is by taking all these functionalities and making them available online.
We’re also hearing about new products like a calendar (CL2) and online drive (G:Drive) coming up soon.

But how successful would these really be?
I mean, other then the privacy concerns that everyone should have, especially after the US government subpoena to Google and the other search engines for their users’ search information, there is also the issue of having to always be connected, with a good connection too, to use and access all this stuff. This brings us to the issue of internet and broadband penetration and who the user base will mainly consist of.

Personally, I see this as being the way to go, as we become more and more connected, it’ll become more and more easy for our information to be accessible for us from anywhere we go, and at any time of the day.

links for 2006-03-09