Sleep

Isn’t it beautiful when you’re lying in bed early in the morning, in the perfect and most comfortable position, with the bed at the perfect warmth, with the pillow at the perfect softness, with the air in the room at the perfect temperature, and the weather outside is cold and the wind is humming you lullaby after lullaby sending you to this magical place.
You feel you wanna stay like that forever and just sleep like there’s no tomorrow.

But then that damn alarm goes off, pissing you off, and telling you to leave all that comfort and beauty, leave that warmth, leave that soft bed, get up, get dressed and go out into the cold world outside to go work !!

I hate alarms !!!

Weblogs: A History and Perspective

I just came across this piece called Weblogs: A History and Perspective which, as it’s title suggests, talks about the history of weblogs and how the whole phenomenon started, how it developed and what it’s become.

The article is really interesting and worth reading.

I personally love blogging, and i would certainly love to see more and more people i know starting blogs of their own.

I feel that blogs really complement the web and put a more human touch to it by offering a wide collection of personal experiences and views.

Get The Facts on Windows and Linux

Microsoft has launched a direct attack on Linux through a new ad campaign they’ve started in the US that aims at companies considering Linux on servers.

The campaign directs information technology managers to “get the facts” about Linux before buying anything but Windows and points them to a website called Get The Facts on Windows and Linux that contains research on the cost benefits of licensing Microsoft’s Windows Server System instead of a Linux-based solution.
Of course, most of that research has been commissioned by Microsoft.

I’ve gone through some previously published research on this issue before, and i do agree that the claim that Linux is cheaper is false.
I also think the claims that Linux is more secure are false too. If Linux ever becomes as widely spread as Windows, you’d see how many bugs and security issues would come up.
I also think that the question of Product support is a very important one.
If you’re running critical business on your servers, you should be at least sure you’ll find someone to call when things go wrong, and that there’ll always be someone there working on that product guaranteeing continuity for you.
Anyway, Microsoft make more claims on their campaign’s site, and i think it’s worth reading.

I’m not pro-Microsoft or pro-Linux, i just believe in choosing the best solution for the case and the problem at hand.
Depending on the situation and the different parameters we have, the best choice could be Windows or Linux or why not even MacOS 😛

Anyway, this campaign, i think, is a bigger sign of how Linux is eating more and more into Microsoft’s share of Server systems, and how desperate Microsoft are becoming on shooting Linux down.

iPod mini

So Apple has finally gone on and released the iPod mini, which as you can see looks mostly like the iPod but smaller.

I have to hand it to them that Apple are great at designing their products and making the coolest looking gadgets and machines.
I’m not so keen on the hardware or software, but the looks are great.

This new iPod mini comes in a number of colours and costs $249.
The white and metalic colours are the best in my opinion.

One of the gadgets i’m certainly looking forward to getting is a portable mp3 player, but i still haven’t made up my mind on what product it will be exactly.
An iPod or iPod mini could be an option though 😉

I’m also interested in seeing the stuff that will get released by other manufacturers and that will be based on Microsoft’s Portable Media Player platform, previously called Media2Go.

Software Piracy

On his blog, Nick Bradbury, the Man behind TopStyle, HomeSite and FeedDemon tells his story of software piracy and how the little independent developer is affected.

It is very interesting and counters the claims by most people that they’re only stealing from rich mega-corporations that screw their customers, and shows that the people who are hurt the most by piracy are the small independent shareware developers.

Being a developer myself, i’ve often thought about this issue and about the effects it could have. And i totally agree that the people who really get hit hard are the small companies and independent developers who can’t afford to keep going in and out of courts filing lawsuits against wrong-doers.
A consequence of this is that more and more companies and developers will end up losing financially and will quit developing altogether, and so we’ll have both less innovation and creative programs as well as more and more jobless developers pulling down our wages and the economy alltogether.

World Around Us

Each and every one of us lives his life feeling that the world revolves around him, and that others are just rotating parts in his existence.
I think it’s due to the way we look at things and analyze them; we only care about things that are directly related to us or that affect our lives. We see things through our eyes only, and so the world to us is what those eyes see, what we build in our minds from our experiences and the images we collect.
That’s the world around us.

Of course, the world doesn’t revolve around any one of us, and the proof to that is that no one’s death ever stopped the world.
But, by someone’s death the world around that person, the world that person created in his mind, the world as he saw it, the world he believed to revolve around him does stop and end.

So ??
Well, my point is, of course we all live in this one same big world in the end of the day, but for all it matters we all live in our small little custom made worlds, we all have these tiny circles we move in.
So, basically, if we were to take anyone and their small little world and put them on Mars, there wouldn’t be any difference at all for them.
But then again, if there were any change, it wouldn’t matter because the main component in that world, which is the person, is still there and he would go on and create a new world around him again.

So, in a sense the world does revolve around each and everyone of us, not the big world, but our own custom world.
So, as long as we are the main player in our world, we might as well try and make it a good one and do our best to enjoy it. Maybe then, the big world that all our little worlds are a subset of can become a better place for us to live in.

For the time being, my world and the whole big world will continue to revolve around me and me only 😛

Corneille

As i mentioned before, the biggest discovery for me from the M6 Music Live concert last month was Corneille, a French RNB / Soul artist, who has a great voice and really beautiful music.

I bought his album “Parce Qu’On Vient De Loin” a few days ago, and i’ve been listening to it in the car these days, and it’s really cool.

He reminds me a lot of the kind of music that got me so into RNB & Soul back in the 90’s. It’s as if you put Silk, Shai, Blackstreet and Boyz II Men in a blender, mixed them, and then created one man with what you got out of that, and then switched the language to French instead of English, lol…

He’s actually the first true French RNB / Soul artist i’ve heard and liked.

In the concert he sang his hit song “Parce Qu’On Vient De Loin” and then a duet with Cheb Mami called “Du nord au Sud”, which is a very nice reggae like song.
And like all great artists, he’s so much better live than on recording.

I think he has a great future ahead of him and wish him a lot of luck 🙂
I hope he keeps coming out with great music for my ears to enjoy 🙂

Web creator Tim Berners-Lee knighted

This must have been blogged on other blogs, i’m sure, but well i’m gonna blog it too anyways because i find it very interesting.

Tim Berners-Lee, who combined HTML with URLs and came up with the World Wide Web, has been knighted.

Sir Tim said the honor, announced Tuesday by Buckingham Palace as part of the New Year honours list, is an acknowledgement that the Net is becoming globally powerful and isn’t just a passing trend.

The article i read about this on cnet’s news.com is really cool and offers an insight into the history of the creation of the World Wide Web.
So, check it out here.

Something i didn’t know before is how Apple could have leaded the way into this whole thing, but were stupid enough to not know what to do with it…

I also liked what Tim said about the dream behind the web:

“The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information,” wrote Berners-Lee. “Its universality is essential: The fact that a hypertext link can point to anything; be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished.”

But there was a second part of the dream, too, Berners-Lee said, and this was dependent on the Web being so generally used “that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize.” Once the state of our interactions was online, Berners-Lee said, we could then use computers to help us analyze it, and help us make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together.

I totally agree with Tim and i think that not only is the web becoming a mirror of how we work, play and socialize but also a mirror of what we think about, know, do and live.
So, the web is more and more like a snapshot of the world at any given time including the smallest details of the individual mindset, and i think that is totally awesome.

Change of Eyeglasses

Well, i’m planning to change my glasses very soon, and i’m already wondering how the change will affect my life this time around.

Now, maybe most people’s lifes don’t really change a lot when they change their glasses, but well my life did the last time i changed mine.
I’ll tell you the story 😉

When i went to Jordan back in 1996 to study at the University of Jordan, i was really happy that i would be living alone and free to do whatever i wanted with my looks, life, home, …etc.
It was all the freedom i could ever ask for, and i got it all at once.

When it comes to looks, i used the fact that almost no one knew me, and took the freedom and pleasure of changing my look as often as i wished for, going from normal short hair to long hair to bald to spiky hair to all the weird hairstyles i wanted to try. And in clothes, i tried all sorts of weird combinations and looks.
And well, nobody noticed, because nobody knew me.

Some other background info: I always thought i was quite good looking, but then again who doesn’t think that of themselves ? But i was a bit of a nerd. Yep, always among the top 3 students in the class, not so good with girls, and so into computers, i was always in the computer lab writing some new program. So you can imagine how i’d pass totally unnoticed 😛
In fact, throughout my whole life before that, i only knew of 2 or 3 girls who ever had a crush on me, lol. Pretty good for a nerd like me 😛 (Although i was later shocked to know there were more.)

Anyways, in the summer of 1998, i went home to Tunisia for the vacations (after the summer course), and while i was at it, i changed my glasses, and finally chose a certain MMM look 😉

When i went back to Jordan with my new look, suddenly everything changed and i was no longer that invisible nerd no one knew. All of a sudden, everyone knew me, everyone noticed me, and everyone wanted to be friends with me. Yep, i was the new hot thing on campus, loool…
To add to that, i was introduced to some girls from the faculty of arts then others from the faculty of business (known to have the best looking girls in the university) and started hanging out with them, giving me an even cooler reputation 😉
And so, from being someone who was a total disaster with girls, i became known as the ladies’ man 😛 And from being a complete unknown, almost everybody knew me 😉

But being the nice guy i am, i didn’t abuse my newly found popularity, and just went on as usual with my life.

Anyway, thanks to that popularity and the people i got to know, i was able to get introduced to the greatest and most beautiful girl in all of Jordan, who is now my lovely wife 🙂

So, i think that now it’s obvious why i’m wondering what my next change of glasses will bring along 😉
And, hey, you too, be careful when you’re out there choosing your next pair of glasses, they could flip your whole world around 😛

Are You A Blogaholic?

I just took this little quiz called Are You A Blogaholic ?.

And well, my score was 64/100.

They say:
64 points is in the 51 through 80 percent
You are a dedicated weblogger. You post frequently because you enjoy weblogging a lot, yet you still manage to have a social life. You’re the best kind of weblogger. Way to go!

Cool 😉