The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other. They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called “what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.”
These are the steps in the experiment: Imprison (since 1991); remove the prisoners
The team at KEN (Khadra Environmental News) have launched a web design contest for Tunisian youth who are web design amateurs or professionals with less than two years of experience.
The idea is to get these web designers in touch with Tunisian NGOs in order to help them create official websites and successful online presences to promote their services and projects.
The resulting websites will be evaluated by an evaluation committee (50%) and voted upon by the public (50%); the winner will receive a 500TD Award, and the first runner up a 250TD award.
For more information on how to participate in the contest, the conditions and the participation form go to KEN’s detail page (FR).
Candidates have to get their participation forms sent in before October 16th.
I think this is a brilliant idea and a great way to help Tunisian NGOs, that don’t have big budgets to spend on communication, to build an online presence for themselves and promote their activities and projects, and also a way to encourage amateur and junior web designers to take their passion one step further.
It’s a very exciting project and I’m happy to be involved with it as a member of the evaluation committee.
Please spread the word and tell anyone you think might be interested in participating in this contest.
[More details: KEN (Khadra Environmental News) (FR)]
Google is trying out a new search service designed to make it easier for computer programmers to find bits of code online.
Google Code Search will make it easier for software developers to find programming code directly, without having to trawl through groups, forums, and discussions to find it.
The search engine is aimed at both professional programmers and students or IT enthusiasts who want to improve their coding and software development.
The search also allows programmers to look for specific coding terms, restrict the search to certain computer languages, or look for bits of code that fall under a specified licensing agreement.
I think this is really cool. I personally use Google a lot to find bits of code in certain programming languages as examples to learn from, and this should make it a lot easier and effective.
I think a lot of developers will be happy with this new tool; Another great product idea by Google.
[Source: Pocket-lint]
Last night, I finally got to watch the third installment of X-Men movies; X-Men: The Last Stand (X3).
This movie was directed by Brett Ratner after Bryan Singer, who directed the first two movies, left the franchise and moved on to the Superman movie franchise.
I wasn’t expecting much from the movie, especially that the feedback I got from some people I know who saw the movie before me wasn’t that positive, but well it turned out a lot better than I thought, and I ended up really enjoying it.
In fact I think this is the X-Men movie I enjoyed most of the series, with all due respect and admiration for Bryan Singer’s work.
This installment is supposed to be the last one in the series, but the ending leaves the options open for taking it further.
The story of the movie is that a “cure” is found for mutations, and mutants are left with one of two choices: retain their uniqueness, though it isolates and alienates them, or give up their powers and become human.
Of course Charles Xavier’s camp is always on the side of tolerance and all, while Magneto’s camp want to start a war against the government; In the end, it turns into a war beween the two camps in what is portrayed as the mother of all wars.
This movie is certainly the darkest of the series, the one with the greatest special effects, some of the coolest action sequences and the most mutants with a range of cool and different powers.
I personally recommend this movie to all fans of comic book based action hero movies, it’s a light fun movie that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.
My score for this movie is: 7.5/10.
And so The Church of Google has come to be, grouping members who believe Google is the closest thing to an actual God.
The Google Trinity consists of the Internet, Google Search Engine and the Web Browser (Such as Firefox, Opera & Safari but NEVER Internet Explorer)
The church’s site even has a page where they state the proofs that Google is God.
Not to forget the 10 Commandments of Google.
Google being God, the church’s FAQ page says it’s only obvious that Microsoft is Satan.
There’s even a Google afterlife, as by uploading our thoughts and opinions onto the internet, we live on in Google’s cache even after our death.
[Via: Sandmonkey]
After a while of blogging, many bloggers start thinking about what opportunities they have to make money with their blogs.
Many people draw a very rosy picture of it and say that there is a lot of money to be made off a blog, but in the end of the day, that’s not fully true. How much any person can make from his blog depends on the blog, the topics he discusses, how many visitors he gets daily, how much effort he puts into it, how well he sets up his money-making options and a bunch of other things.
In this post, what I’ll be trying to do is to list the most popular money-making opportunities for bloggers and what it takes to make money out of them.
“Trying to make everyone happy makes no one happy”
I’m not sure who originally said that, but I couldn’t agree with it more.
If you spend your life trying to please and make everyone around you happy, you’ll end up leading a miserable life, plus no one will be happy because it’s impossible to make everyone happy.
But why do we sometimes go down that path and attempt to make everyone around us happy?
Is it fueled by insecurity, an intense spiritual passion or compassion?
Is it because we believe we’ll only be happy if everyone around us is?
Is it this certain need we have to feel that we are a source of happiness for those around us?
Is it because we don’t want anyone to be angry at us or dislike us?
Is it because we care so much?
Whatever the reason is, it’s unrealistic and will only backfire on us; we’ll end up over-thinking every single thing, having to act and be unnatural, putting ourselves in sticky situations, stressing ourselves out…etc.
And what’s for sure is that we’ll never be happy because instead of focusing on what we can do to make our lives better and be happier, we’re focusing on a bigger impossible job of making other people happy.
In the end of the day, every one of us leads one life, and that is already too short to spend ignoring ourselves and trying to make others happy instead.
Of course focusing on ourselves and putting our happiness as our first priority doesn’t mean we should be selfish and mean, in fact whenever we can make someone happy we should, but we just shouldn’t put it before our own happiness.
Well, that’s what I think…
I read about this a couple of days ago and have been wanting to write about it ever since.
Microsoft has sealed a deal with director Peter Jackson, of “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong” fame, that calls for him to create two new interactive entertainment series for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live.
Jackson will be working with longtime collaborator and screenwriter Fran Walsh and Microsoft Game Studios to develop these series.
The first series will be a collaborative effort with Bungie Studios to co-create the next chapter in the “Halo” universe (Halo 3). The second series will be an entirely original property aimed at bringing new audiences into gaming. In addition, Microsoft Game Studios will partner with Jackson and Walsh to establish Wingnut Interactive, a studio focused on developing interactive entertainment.
This is really good and exciting news; I think Peter Jackson will bring fresh blood, ideas and visions to the gaming industry, which should result in some really cool projects.
As he also said, video games on today’s gaming consoles are but another medium where storytellers can bring their stories to life, and games are becoming more and more like movies everyday, in fact they are more or less interactive movies.
I think we’ll see more and more movie directors coming into the gaming market and leveraging the abilities of game consoles to tell more stories.
I personally can’t wait to see the results of Peter Jackson’s collaboration with Microsoft. If he brings even a bit of his cinema making wizardry to the Xbox, it should be worth seeing and playing.
Just came across this on Flickr:
The flickr group asks people to post photos with a Six Word Story in the title section of the photo, with those few words telling the whole tale, and the picture being its visual interpretation.
First of all, I’m still amazed at how much Hemingway was able to tell using just six words, simply brilliant.
Secondly, I think this is a really cool idea. I’ll be going through some of my photos and thinking of some story I could tell in a few words and a photo.
If you come up with anything, even without a photo, please do share in the comments.
[Via: Caterina]
