April 27, 2007
A really cool idea by flickr... What happens around the world in one day? In a word – life. Here on Flickr, our members are sharing the world that they see: snapping daily moments, recording history, telling stories, capturing beauty. To celebrate this global community, we invite you to join us in 24 Hours of Flickr, a day-long global photo project. On May 5 2007, grab your camera and whatever else you need, and chronicle your day in pictures. Join the 24 Hours of Flickr group to get ready for the big day. After the big day, post your best...
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Posted on April 27, 2007 10:24 AM under:
Music
One of the CDs I've been listening to a lot in the car recently is "Undiscovered" by English singer/songwriter James Morrison. I came to know James Morrison through his song "You Give Me Something" which is a really cool song, and then after hearing another of his songs called "Wonderful World", I just had to buy the album. I wasn't let down, the whole album is a magnificent ride through a set of great tunes and lyrics. James' style reminds me a lot of James Blunt and KT Tunstall with evident influences by greats like Cat Stevens, Otis Redding and...
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April 26, 2007
It's incredible how much companies love meetings. So much time is spent in meetings, you can't but think that it's sometimes a waste of time, and that is often true if these meetings are not productive enough and give no results. Seth Godin identifies 6 different types of meetings: - Just so everyone knows - What are you up to - What does everyone think? - We need a decision right now. - Hanging out meetings. - To hear myself talk meetings. He goes on into further detail on each type and gives some tips on how to make meetings...
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Last weekend I bought "Bully", a game for Playstation 2 that I had seen advertised a number of times and which I thought looked cool; I've been playing it ever since. The game is by Rockstar Games (Take 2), the people behind the famous Grand Theft Auto games. Bully opens with 15-year-old troublemaker Jimmy Hopkins, getting dumped off at Bullworth Academy, a boarding school full of trouble-makers, by his newly remarried mother and her rich husband. It's up to him (you, the player) to stand up to the bullies of the school, go to class, do different missions and along...
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April 25, 2007
An interesting article by Naomi Wolf in The Guardian: ... If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. [...] 1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy 2. Create...
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I was just surfing around Scribd when I came across a really interesting post by Joe Mazzella, called "A Better Life". I've been thinking about the issue of happiness and what a person can do to have a better life quite often lately, and I think Joe sums it up really well and in a beautiful way. ...the only way to have a better life is to live a better life, and only way to give your children a better life is to show them how to live a better life as well. How do you live a better life?...
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April 23, 2007
Posted on April 23, 2007 06:17 PM under:
Tunisia
Interesting news... AIESEC, an international platform for young people to discover and develop their potential, announced that the Arab Firms project will be launched soon in Tunisia. Including the economic, international cooperation, high education ministries as well as Arab embassies in Tunisia, the project will attempt at creating possibilities of cooperation between Arab firms and offering opportunities to Arab students to get a training in one of the different countries in which AIESEC is operating (Morocco, Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan). The concept of "Arab Firms" is centered on the idea that there should be a mutual interaction between the...
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April 20, 2007
Google has just announced the launch of Web History, a new feature for Google Account users that makes it easy to view and search across the pages they previously visited. This will help users find things they remember seeing online a lot faster from anywhere. To use this new feature, all that's needed is a Google Account and the Google Toolbar with PageRank enabled. Search History users will notice that it has been renamed to Web History to reflect this new functionality, where they will find both their search history and their browsing history. Of course a number of people...
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1. Do not discuss your salary/wage with your coworkers. 2. Perception is reality. 3. Be honest with your coworkers, but not too honest. 4. Choose your battles wisely. 5. Nobody likes a whiner. 6. Don’t get shitfaced at happy hour or the holiday party. 7. Get it in writing. 8. No need for arbitrary debating. 9. Don't go over the top. 10. Smile, today’s the first day of the rest of your career! [More details: 10 Tips for Being a Better Office Professional]...
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April 19, 2007
1) If you spend half the day in the café, smoking chicha and playing "Rami" (a popular card game) 2) If you've gone through this situation at least once " You go to an office to ask for an important paper, and they tell you: Arja' ghodwa!!! (come back tomorrow)" 3) If you tease every hot girl you see in the street. 4) If cursing is like breathing for you. You can't stop it. 5) If you give a beep to the person you wanna talk to, and then wait for him to call you back. 6) If "sahfa lablabi...
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10. Eating carbohydrates makes you fat. 9. Drink eight, 8-oz. glasses of water per day. 8. Brown grain products are whole grain products. 7. Eating eggs will raise your cholesterol. 6. All alcohol is bad for you. 5. Vitamin supplements are necessary for everyone. 4. Consuming extra protein is necessary to build muscle mass. 3. Eating fiber causes problems if you have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). 2. Eating immediately after a workout will improve recovery. 1. Type 2 diabetes can be prevented by eating foods low on the glycemic index. For more details, read the article: Dispelling The Top 10...
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April 18, 2007
... And it was at that time that I thought about Thomas Jefferson writing that Declaration of Independence. Him saying that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I thought about how he knew to put the 'pursuit' in there, like no one can actually have happiness. We can only pursue it. -- Christopher Gardner (The Pursuit Of Happyness) Do you really think that no matter what we do, we can never really attain happiness; we can only pursue it?...
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IN PRISON: You spend the majority of your time in a 10X10 cell. AT WORK: You spend the majority of your time in an 8X8 cubicle. IN PRISON: You get three meals a day. AT WORK: You get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it. IN PRISON: You get time off for good behavior. AT WORK: You get more work for good behavior. IN PRISON: The guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you. AT WORK: You must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself. IN PRISON: You can...
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April 17, 2007
According to a post on GigaOm, FTTH Council is pushing the US government to adopt a 100 Megabit Nation policy with the goal of extending, through both private and public sector initiatives, affordable next-generation broadband (100-megabit-per-second connection) to a majority of Americans by 2010, with universal US availability by 2015. Hmmm... On the other hand, over here in Tunisia: I had to wait for over 3 months for Tunisie Telecom to give me a crappy phone line... During the first two years, my phone line worked only a quarter of the time... I've been waiting for over 7 months to...
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Posted on April 17, 2007 12:19 PM under:
Books
A couple of days ago, I finished reading Chris Anderson's book "The Long Tail", which explains and advocates why the future of business is selling less of more. Chris Anderson, who is editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, wrote an article called "The Long Tail" in Wired that became so popular and famous, he started a blog about it and then expanded it into a book. In short the phrase "The Long Tail" is to describe certain business and economic models where products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals...
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I flew back to Tunisia yesterday... Alone; Eman and Adam will be staying another week in Jordan... And the same group of old people that were going to Omra on my flight to Jordan came back to Tunisia with me, what luck! I'm back at work this morning with a ton of emails to go through, a bunch of stuff to do and some necessary meetings to get back on track and rolling again... The last day of a vacation and the first day at work after it have to be the hardest and yuckiest days that can ever be......
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April 13, 2007
Posted on April 13, 2007 09:12 PM under:
Books
I finally got around to reading John Battelle's book "The Search", which is about how Google and its rivals rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture. I heard a lot about this book, it's a really interesting topic, and I also enjoy reading John's searchblog quite often, so obviously it's been on my reading list for quite a while. I really enjoyed reading this book, and I went through it so quickly; It's very well written and it handles the topic of search, its history, its players (mainly revolving around Google and its history though), how much it...
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Posted on April 13, 2007 07:37 PM under:
Cinema
A friend of mine and I went to see 300 at the cinema yesterday. I've heard many mixed reviews about this movie, a lot of people loved it, and many others said it was a waste of time, void of meaning or purpose. Curiosity pushed me to go and see it for myself and then build my own opinion on whether it's a good or bad movie. I didn't go in expecting much, which is good, because I generally get a good surprise with the movie turning out better than I expected; The same held in this case. I have...
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April 10, 2007
I just came across one of the most absurd articles I've read in a while, by a certain Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, a commentator on Israeli politics and an author of a book I'm sure is full of more nonsense called "The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege". The article lists some so-called seven pillars of Middle East reality that he thinks stand in the way of peace with Israel. Here are the seven points and what I think of each one: Arab leaders have no interest in...
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Posted on April 10, 2007 06:03 PM under:
Books
As usual, I'm using the extra free time I get on vacation to catch up on some reading. I just finished the book "One Hundred Years Of Solutide" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the winner of the Nobel Prize of Literature. The book tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family and its unforgettable men and women, their times, their struggles, their curse and damnation - the solitude that would finally destroy them and the universe that they created and inhabited. This is one of...
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Madonna will be heading the star-studded line up for the Live Earth concert at the new Wembley Stadium to highlight the threat of climate change. Other star performers for the London leg of the global gig are: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Razorlight, Keane, Snow Patrol, Genesis, Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys and the Black Eyes Peas. Headliners for the U.S. concert at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., include Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews Band, Kanye West, Rihanna, John Mayer, Smashing Pumpkins and Fall Out Boy. Other shows will take place in Shanghai, China; Johannesburg, South Africa; Sydney, Australia; Tokyo; and Rio...
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April 05, 2007
Posted on April 5, 2007 01:55 PM under:
Books
I finished reading "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold last night. I came across this book a number of times throughout the past years, and I thought it would be an interesting read, so it's been on my to-read list for a while, the only thing that made me get around to reading it faster is that Peter Jackson is currently working on making a movie based on this book, and so I wanted to read the book before the movie was released. The novel tells the story of Susie, a murdered 14 year old girl who recalls what happened...
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April 03, 2007
"We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one - progressive, liberal - in Israel; and the other - cruel, injurious - in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day." -- Michael Ben-Yair (Israeli's Attorney-General 1993-1996), The War's Seventh Day; Ha'aretz, 3 March 2002. [Via: Lawrence...
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April 02, 2007
An international team of academic and industry scientists has come up with a feasible way of making universal red blood cells that are stripped of their blood type. The hope is that it can be developed into a viable way of relieving blood bank shortages. Compatibility of blood group is a bit complicated and depends on who is giving and who is receiving. If a person receives blood of a type that is not compatible with their own, there is a risk their immune system will attack it, destroying the red blood cells, producing kidney failure, and the person could...
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April 01, 2007
Posted on April 1, 2007 11:58 AM under:
Books
Yesterday I finished reading "The Secret Life Of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd. I'd picked the book up from the Waterstone's in Manchester's Trafford Centre a few months ago while I was shopping for books there, and I remembered hearing about it being a good read somewhere, most probably on a friend's blog. The book follows the story of 14-year-old Lily Owens, neglected by her father, isolated on their Georgia peach farm, and the trip she takes with her nanny Rosaleen in search of the truth about her mother, ending up in Tiburon South Carolina with three black beekeeping sisters....
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