Author: Mohamed Marwen Meddah

Mohamed Marwen Meddah is a Tunisian-Canadian, web aficionado, software engineering leader, blogger, and amateur photographer.

Subzero Blue is Back

I don’t know what to say…
This past week was so frustrating for me…

The blog dissapeared all of a sudden, but then it turns out the hosting company is just relocating servers. Phew… But not for too long, as the relocation ends and the blog is still not there, Panic takes over…
I go insane and border on depression…

Every day the news gets worse, first all the files were lost, then all the data was lost too, and so there was nothing left of the blog but some files lying around here and there on my desktop which would at best serve as painful memories…

Anyway, I just logged on the net a while ago and WOW here’s the blog in all it’s glory back up again.

I don’t know who, how or where…
I just know it’s online…
Thank you to whoever saved it…

A big thank you to Houssein who has been hosting this blog and who put a lot of effort into this whole story over the past week…

I’d also like to thank my wife Eman for her support throughout the past days, Natasha for caring and asking about the blog, Haitham for offering to help in anyway that he could and to everyone who thought of Subzero Blue in this past week and missed it.

50 Free Gmail Invites

Ok so GMail accounts aren’t as hot a property as they once were, as almost everybody has one now. Anyway, I have 50 GMail Invites to give away.

So for those who still haven’t gotten their hands on some GMail, if you’re interested in a cool 1GB email account, just add this blog to your browser favourites and leave me a comment here 😉

Hi, Sexy… Let’s Do Your Taxes

Now, this is funny…

“Hi, sexy. Welcome to Intimate Encounters.”

Not exactly the kind of message you expect to hear in the middle of doing your taxes, but that’s just what some TurboTax customers are getting as they try to set up their state returns.

The message pops up when TurboTax Business users advance to their state tax return and decide they need to file for more than the single state return supported in the product. The message in the software tells them they can purchase software for additional states, at $30 each, online or by calling an 800 number.

That number goes straight to Intimate Encounters, which bills itself as “the exciting new way to go live, one-on-one, with hot…girls waiting to talk with you.” The pre-recorded message on the site makes no mention of tax preparation services, although you never know what you can get for 99 cents a minute.

[Via: CNet News]

LOL…
Now that’s a creative way to do taxes, don’t you think 😉
That way everyone would file their taxes and they’d actually be very happy about it, lol…

BABA 2004: Best Tunisian Blog

So, The 2004 Best Arab Blog Awards (BABA 2004) are over and the results are finally out.

Subzero Blue won the award for Best Tunisian Blog 🙂

Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote for this blog. I truly appreciate it.

These are the first BABA Awards and some difficulties and problems have occurred, but still I think it was a good effort by Haitham and Mahmood who deserve a big thank you for it.
Just the fact that this award has grouped a big number of Arab blogs and created some sort of directory for them makes it a success.

Hopefully next year, everything that happened this year will be taken into consideration and we’ll have a greater BABA Awards 🙂

Btw, voting for the Bloggies 2005 is still open until February 3rd, so if you haven’t voted for Subzero Blue yet in the Best African or Middle Eastern Blog category, please do now here 🙂
Thank you 🙂

Defending Islam

“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I couldn’t agree more.

Applying this to the case of Islam in the world, I think one of the things harming it these days is the number of clueless people who think they are qualified to defend it.

These people who go on and try to portray themselves as scholars of Islam when they basically don’t have the necessary background or knowledge for it are just making things worse everytime they open their mouths.

People should be really careful about the arguments they use, the sensitive points they touch upon and the details they try to get into because what started as them trying to defend a cause or a belief could turn into them doing the complete opposite.

It’s great that people are passionate about their religion and want to defend it, but standing up and talking for a religion is a great responsability and before they do that they should learn as much as they can about it and only talk about issues they have researched very well so they can be able to get into more detail, answer questions and deny false claims.

The same applies to every other cause or belief.
Believing isn’t enough. You have to know the history of it, the why, the when, the where, the circumstances, the details, everything to be able to strongly defend it and stand up for it.

Tunisia 2005 Handball World Championship

Handball World Championship 2005 - TunisiaThe Handball World Championship has been taking place in Tunisia ever since January 23rd.

Most of the matches are being held in the newly constructed Rades indoors stadium and in the Menzah indoors stadium.

The Tunisian team has been doing pretty great and tonight was their last match in the first round putting them first in their group after defeating Angola, Canada and Denmark, and tying with France and Greece.

I wish the Tunisian team the best of luck in the second round and hopefully they’ll go on doing a great job and improving their game more.
They’ve made us all very proud already.

I also love the logo they made for this championship. It’s really simple, straightforward and nice.

For more information on the championship, check out the official Tunisia 2005 Handball World Championship site.

Changing Stuff

For some time now I’ve been playing around with different elements in Subzero Blue, and I still plan to go on changing things (to the better, I hope).

Some of you have noticed the changes, some of you haven’t.
So just in case you’re among the people who haven’t, here’s what’s changed.

– I’ve added an About page with some info about me and the site. And for those who are interested, a picture of me.

– I’ve moved some main navigational elements to a new horizontal menu that I’ve created beneath the header.

– I’ve added the 5 most recent comments to the sidebar.

– I’ve added 4 random pictures pulled from my photolog to the sidebar.

– I’ve moved the Linklog to the sidebar and migrated it to a faster script.

– I’ve added a footer for the site and moved the information I feel belongs there to it.

– I’ve been playing around with some design elements here and there.

– I’ve been experimenting with some text ads and where to place them without annoying the readers. So, soon you’ll be seeing less ads in better places.

If you have any feedback or any suggestions, please do not hesitate to share them with me. I’d love to hear your ideas.

If I Were…

If I were a musical instrument, I’d be an acoustic guitar.
If I were a song, I’d be “Somewhere Over The Rainbow / What A Wonderful World” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.
If I were a word, I’d be “Friend”.
If I were a colour, I’d be blue.
If I were a home, I’d be a country house.
If I were a place, I’d be a tropical island.
If I were a car, I’d be a 4×4.
If I were an animal, I’d be an eagle.
If I were a fruit, I’d be an apple.
If I were a blog, I’d be Subzero Blue.

PalestineBlogs

It’s always a delight to see a new pro-Palestine blog being born, and this time it comes in the form of PalestineBlogs.

This new blog is an effort by our friend Sabbah, and it will provide users with a comprehensive overview of Palestine’s current and previous issues; news clippings; reblog news; a debate forum and a lot more.

It seems that some invitations will be sent to some pro-Palestine bloggers to join the editing team, which I think is a really great idea.

So, good luck to PalestineBlogs.
You can always count on me to help in anyway that I can.