Month: November 2007

SBA Airlines, A New Tunisian Low Cost Airline Carrier

SBA Airlines is a new low cost carrier airline of Tunisia, based in Tunis. It will operates a hub and spoke network, linking several European and African international destinations.

SBA airlines plans to start scheduled operations by the end of 2007 to Lagos, Nice, Manchester, Warsaw, Bremen and Amsterdam from Tunis using A320s.
And when the new airport in Enfidha opens, it will eventually launch more destinations like New York, Montreal, Johannesburg, Bombay, Shanghai, St Petersburg, Nairobi, and Stockholm..

SBA Tunisia was created jointly by Tunisian Sami El Aouini, CEO, and Swedish Bejae Taylor, Chairman.
The airline company has already obtained an agreement for its creation and has formally applied for a “Principal Accord” with the Tunisian Office of Civil Aviation and Airports. The company is currently awaiting acquiescence from the governmental agency.

Personally, by default, I always encourage such new projects and businesses. I think it’s a great idea, something that’s missing from the Tunisian airline scene up to now. I wish them all the best of luck.

SBA Airlines

[Official Website: SBA Airlines]

The Top Ten Worst Phobias To Have

So it seems that if there are any ten phobias that you wouldn’t want to get, especially if you’re a man, they are the following:

10. Papaphobia: The Fear of the Pope
9. Xylophobia: The Fear of Wooden Objects
8. Hellenologophobia: The Fear of Complex Scientific Terms and Greek Terminology
7. Porphyrophobia: The Fear of the color “Purple”
6. Gymnophobia: The Fear of Nudity
5. Ostraconophobia: The Fear of Shellfish
4. Stasiphobia: The Fear of Walking
3. Pantiphobia: The Fear of Everything
2. Venustraphobia: The Fear of Beautiful Women
1. Eurotophobia: The Fear of Female Genitalia

I can’t believe some of these things really have names. Some place, somewhere, someone in the word creation department had a lot of time to waste.

[Source: The Top Ten Best and Worst Phobias to Have ]

Another Arab Journalist Jailed For Doing Their Job

First there was Taysir Alluni, the Al-Jazeera reporter, who was sentenced to jail for 7 years in 2005 because of an interview he did with Osama Bin Laden in 2001, accused of collaborating with Al-Qaeda.

Then there was Sami Al Haj, the Al-Jazeera cameraman, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 while he was going for a journalistic assignment in Afghanistan, and has been held in Guantanamo Bay ever since.

And now, there is Pulitzer prize-winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been imprisoned by the U.S. military in Iraq since April 2006 without a trial or even being charged. The military claimed then that he had suspicious links to insurgents, but now they’re saying that he is a “terrorist” who had “infiltrated the AP.”
In the 19 months since he was picked up, Bilal has not been charged with any crime, with the military sending out a mix of ever-changing, false or overblown claims.
And now even though the military says they’ll be taking him to court in an Iraqi court, there’s still nothing about the date, what charges will be brought against him, what evidence they have or anything.
The common belief is that Bilal’s crime was taking photographs the U.S. government did not want its citizens to see.

Who’s next on the list of journalists, simply doing their job, to be thrown in jail under the claim they’re terrorists, just because they’re Arabs and covering something the US and its allies don’t want covered?

Halal Pork

So what do you know?

halal pork

Very interesting. Some Australians have managed to find a way to make pork halal for Muslims.

Really great job; given that pork is one of the ultimate non-halal items on earth.

Kind of makes you wonder how halal the other labeled stuff is…

[Update: Just to clarify something, this post was meant as sarcasm from my part, because Pork is not Halal, and never will be. There’s just no way around it.]

[Via: 2:48AM]

The Zahir (Paulo Coelho)

I just finished reading “The Zahir” by Paulo Coelho. The first book I read by him was “The Alchemist“, which I found to be a very inspiring book that I really enjoyed; after that I’ve been going back to read one of his books every now and then.

The Zahir feels a bit different from his other books, maybe because it feels closer to reality, takes place in a modern day setting and all, but it still has the same inspiring style that makes you take a step back to look at your life, certain aspects of it, evaluate yourself and think of where you’ve gone wrong and where you’ve been right.

This book handles the issues of love, belonging, obsession, relationships and understanding; taking the reader on a pretty incredible ride with the story of a couple in love who grow apart leaving the husband in a sea of loss, obsession, heartbreak and misunderstanding, on a journey to understand himself, his wife, relationships and life.
Throughout this journey with the main character, the reader finds himself looking at his relationship with his loved one, analyzing it, connecting with the character on some points, understanding it, knowing where he might be going wrong and how he might correct certain things.

I’ve read many blog posts by people who think Paulo Coelho’s books are overrated, uninspiring and even mediocre; but maybe it’s just that they didn’t relate to the topic or that they didn’t pick up on the small ideas he presents for further thinking and development.

Personally, what I enjoy about his books, more than the story, the characters, the places and everything else, are the lines of thought that I go on on my own at different points of the book.

I do recommend this book, especially for people who are in a relationship, because even if their relationship with their loved one is going perfectly, this book and the thoughts in it could help them understand it better and avoid certain mistakes as it goes along.

Bills & Us

Between yesterday and today, I basically received every possible bill in our letter box. From the water bill to the telephone bill to the electricity bill and what not. Each one greeting you with a number even bigger than the other amidst the rising global prices for everything.

It’s the same case with everyone, and it is really a big hit to anyone’s budget to have all these bills fall upon them at once, draining their budget enormously.

What I can’t understand is why all these services don’t try to be more considerate of the citizens and try to have their bills sent out in different months so as to not put any additional strain on their budgets.

I remember I heard talk about this some years ago and I thought it was a good idea, but over the years I’ve continued to receive all my bills together, so maybe it was another project or idea that never saw the light of day, maybe it wasn’t well implemented or even well thought out. All I know is that every time the flood of bills starts I know my budget and bank account are going to take a big hit. It’s really frustrating and throws any saving plans out the window.

Anyway, hoping that things will get better in this area, I’ll just have to balance my budget once again to cover these bills as usual.

Code Generators And Automatic Gear Cars

The other day at work, I don’t know what re-opened the whole code generation tools discussion.

Personally, I have a strong conviction that no code generator, no matter how advanced or good it is, can match the quality of code well written by a good developer, full stop.
I’ve believed in that for years and years, and will believe in it for years to come. And I’m not talking theoretically, I’ve been in the field long enough to see the results of different code generation tools, varying from the disastrous to the quite good and pretty clean.

But the thing is that it’s a code generator after all, so it’s pretty much generic, which could be good enough if you’re just working on some simple form that won’t do much more than insert some contact info into a database or something of the sorts, but once you get a bit deeper, its generic solutions just aren’t enough, you need someone good to work out the logic and to optimize the code, …etc etc etc.

One thing to keep in mind though is the importance of having a good developer who can write good code.

Anyway, this morning while driving to work, the issue popped up in my head again, with a rather interesting analogy that I think really explains the difference between generated code and human written code.
The analogy is with cars; human written code is pretty much a stick shift car, and generated code is an automatic.

If you were to enter a race, you’d actually have more control over the car with a stick shift, over when you change gears, how much power it gives you and when, thereby giving you an edge that would help you win the race.
Automatic gear doesn’t give you all that flexibility, it just lets you drive, with different levels of control, according to how advanced the automatic gear is, but never equaling that of a manual gear.

The driver and how good he is is also a factor here, because it takes a good one to know how to control a car well and get the most out of it to win the race.

To me, this analogy perfectly illustrates the difference between developer-written code and generated code, and shows why the first is superior to the latter; it all lies in the results: quality, flexibility, optimization and robustness.