Month: July 2005

Deadly Rains In India

About 850 people have died from record-setting rains that caused extensive flooding in Mumbai and triggered landslides in the region.

Nearly half of those confirmed dead in Maharashtra state in western India died in the city of Mumbai — formerly called Bombay.

The city is used to heavy rain during the monsoon season, but Mumbai was deluged with 940 millimeters of rain in 24 hours — the most any Indian city ever has received in a day.

Our hearts reach out to the people of India in this hard time. Our deepest condolences to the families who lost their loved ones.
May they rest in peace, and God bless their souls.

[More: CNN]

US Muslim Scholars Issue Decree Against Terrorism

Leading US Muslim scholars issued a Fatwa (religious edict) to condemn terrorism and religious extremism last Thursday.

“Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives,” said the decree, or fatwa, released in Washington DC by the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA), a group of US Muslim scholars interpreting Islamic law.

The fatwa has been endorsed by major US Muslim groups.

In the edict, the 18-member FCNA said people who committed terrorism are “criminals,” not “martyrs.”

All acts of terrorism targeting civilians are haram (forbidden) in Islam,” and “it is haram for a Muslim to cooperate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence,” declared the fatwa.

We pray for the defeat of extremism and terrorism,” the scholars wrote.

I totally agree.
People who commit these horrible acts are criminals and do not speak in the name of Islam; Islam condemns and forbids such acts.

[Sources: Xinhua, Daily Herald]

After The 4th Tunisian Blogger Meetup

A photo on Flickr
A photo on Flickr
A photo on Flickr
A photo on Flickr
A photo on Flickr
A photo on Flickr

So, we just got home from the 4th Tunisian blogger meetup, which was another great success by all standards 🙂

This one was even longer than the previous ones; We started at 7PM and finally remembered to go home at 1:15AM, lol.

13 bloggers turned up for this meetup, more than I ever expected especially that it was held on such short notice.
The blogs represented today were: Infinity, Tom, Diana Magazine, Marouen, Zizou, Troubadour, La Guilde, 7ammadi, Blogeuse, Evil Drako, AquaCool and Subzero Blue.

We missed the people who couldn’t make it. Make sure you all come next time 🙂

We talked about a lot of stuff as usual; from blogging in general, to the Tunisian blogosphere, to organization of meetups, to suggestions to make things go smoother, to religion, to work, to internet connections…etc.
As usual, it was really a lot of fun and very interesting dicussing all these different issues with a bunch of great people with unique points of view.
It’s a very enriching experience.

We’re lucky the weather was nice; not too hot. We sat in Biwa’s garden overlooking the lake of Tunis. It did get a bit more humid towards the end of the meetup, but it was ok.

Adib, who couldn’t make it today, and who was missed a lot, is suggesting we have the next meetup in Kelibia.
Expect a post about it soon on his blog and maybe here too.

Update: I just remembered to mention that in this meetup we broke our record on the number of female bloggers present; we had five this time 🙂
Hopefully, in the future, more and more girls will come to the meetups.

links for 2005-07-29

Best Places To Swim In Tunisia

It’s summer-time in Tunisia, the heat is frying your brains out, the humidity is unbearable, your clothes are wet with sweat and sticking to your body, you’re disgusted even more with every passing second and you know it’ll only get worse as long as summer is here.

The only solution is to forget everything, head straight to the beach and cool down in the holy waters of the mediterranean.

But where exactly?
Tunisia has a 1300 Km coastline and beautiful beaches all over the country, so which places are the best to swim in?

Here are the best ones I know of:

La Grotte (Bizerte): This place is at the end of La Corniche in Bizerte. The mountains overlook the beach as the water eats away from them creating small caves, explaining the name La Grotte (The Cave). The water is crystal clear and ice cold, getting colder and colder as the weather gets hotter. You’ll certainly have the most refreshing swim of your life there.

Sidi Ali El Mekki (Ghar El Melh): This place lies at the end of Ghar El Melh. Another point where the mountain meets the sea in a beautiful harmony. Again, the water is crystal clear, at a beautifully cool temperature. Not too cold, not too warm, just perfect.
The beach is clean and even cleaner if you venture a bit further into places that are a bit disconnected from the rest of the beach by the mountain.

Continue reading Best Places To Swim In Tunisia

Sin City

I finally got to see “Sin City” today, featuring Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro and a bunch of other good actors.

I heard a lot about the movie, but didn’t really know what to expect, especially with comic based movies not always turning out good. But well, I really liked it.

It’s a pretty violent movie, even more than Kill Bill, although it sort of follows the same style of action and violence. Not much of a surprise when you know that Quentin Tarantino was a guest director on it.

It’s really interesting visually, well directed, and has really cool special effects.
It’s not an acting movie really, so the actors just played out the roles and that’s it. The power of the movie is more in its visuals and story.

It seems a sequel is already in production and due for release next year. So that’s cool.

If you liked Kill Bill, make sure you check this out. It’ll be your cup of tea.

My score for it: 7.5/10.

Humanlike Female Robot

Female Robot

Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised – a “female” android called Repliee Q1.

She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.

She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.

Repliee Q1 is not like any robot you will have seen before, at least outside of science-fiction movies.

She is designed to look human and although she can only sit at present, she has 31 actuators in her upper body, powered by a nearby air compressor, programmed to allow her to move like a human.

Now this is cool, yet a bit freaky. I mean it’s cool to see how science and robotics have advanced but a bit freaky when you think that soon we could be living those scary science-fiction movies we see in cinema.

[Source: BBC News]
[Via: Sabbah]

New Stuff On The Blog

Since moving the blog to its own hosting account, I’ve been playing around with a number of things that you might have noticed the results to or maybe not.
Anyway here is the new stuff I’ve added.

Related Entries: In every post’s individual page, you’ll now find a list of related entries on the right side bar. I think this should be very interesting for people who want to explore the subject further and what I think about it.

Events: On the right side bar of the home page, I’ve added a new section called “Events” that pulls events that will be taking place in Tunis from Upcomin.org. For example, the event displayed now is the next Tunisian Blogger Meetup.

Ayah Of The Day: On the right side bar of the home page, I’ve added a section that pulls a different verse from the Quran each day.

Discussions: In the top menu, I’ve added a link “Discussions” that points to a page where you can find the 30 latest comments on different posts I’ve written. I think this is interesting to keep discussions going on.

Tags: Every post is now being tagged by the different keywords that describe it. These tags appear below the post, and each keyword links to the Technorati page for that keyword.

Email to a friend: This isn’t really that new as it’s been on for a while, but I never mentioned it. This enables you to email a link to the post to a friend if you think it’s interesting enough.

I’m still working on some other things, so keep looking out for new cool stuff popping up 🙂

Tunisian Blogger Meetup 4 on July 29th

After yesterday’s post, it seems more people are for having a meetup this Friday than next Saturday.

Again, I know this is on a very short notice, and I hate that. I know some of you won’t be able to come, and I hate that even more. I’m really sorry.

We’ll be having this meetup on Friday, July 29th at 7PM in Biwa (Les Berges du Lac) (More Details), and right after it I think we should start organizing for the next meetup to be sometime in the middle of August.
This way these 2 summer meetups are close and whoever can’t make it to one can make it to the other 🙂

Adib is suggesting we have a meetup in Kelibia soon, which I think is a really cool idea. Anyway, I know that not all bloggers have cars, so if you guys are interested we can try and organize it so that we can meet in one place and then all go together in the available cars.
We’ll talk about this more in this Friday’s meetup and when organizing the next one.

Another suggestion I have is to set a certain day in the month to be the default meetup date, so that it’s known in advance when the meetup will be and we don’t have to go through this whole date choosing thing time and again. For example, something like the 4th Sunday of the month at 7PM.
What do you guys think?

Anyway, as this meetup is on really short notice, I’d truly appreciate it if you could help promote it through your blogs, through telling the bloggers you know directly, or anyway that you can.

Thank you all. I can’t wait to see you all this Friday 🙂

Tunisian Astrologist Predicts Next Terror Target

Following the recent London attacks, which stunned the UK as well as the entire world, the next major attack, will take place in Paris, according to a Tunisian astrologist.

Tunisian Hassan al-Charni, deputy president of the World Union of Astrologers, who had reportedly “predicted” the deaths of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Pope John Paul II and Princess Diana – and the recent attacks in London – has put France on the target line, saying Paris would be the next major European city to suffer a major