Well, I admit that I am not into football (that is soccer for you Americans), but I had to watch the game between Jordan and Japan today. I did not watch the first half of it, I expected that Japan will have an easy win. But at the end of the first half, I visited the Asian Cup site and discovered that the result was 1 – 1 !! that made me jump to the nearest TV, and watch the second half and rest of the game. The result was not a happy one, but I think that Jordan did suprisingly great !
I can not pretend to be an expert and so, but they were close to beating Japan. Now the good thing out of Jordan’s loss is that I don’t have to bring Knafeh to my co-workers in here :)
About Me, Jordan
Recently I get involved again in Arabeyes in the KDE Translation project. So far I didn’t do much more than syncing files between the Arabeyes CVS and KDE CVS. I tried to open some files, and look into the translation in it. To be frank I was very unhappy. It is not KDE only, but as well other translation projects. And part of what I was unhappy about is strings I translated 2 years ago. Now, I know that the translators are doing their best, but the whole process and Quality checking and assurance is not working. So, all the time and effort spent into translating programs and user interfaces in Linux may be a waste of everyones time without proper QA. Read more…
OSS & Linux
It is around 4:30 am now, I have work tomorrow, but I don’t even feel sleepy. My brain can’t stop thinking, I wish there is an off-button.
Today I looked around for a Keyboard-Mouse combo for Digitalui. I found some Wireless stuff, but then I discovered that he is looking for Wired things. I will look around tomorrow, hoping to find that he is looking for.
Insomnia is the name of a DVD store in Amman, that is for a friend of mine. I was asking around today in Khobar if there is a DVD Rental store, that have Original DVDs for rental. After looking around, and asking around, I discovered that it is better not to look for Original ones. It seems that for censorship reasons they re-record some DVDs in Dubai (Re-Master) to cut some parts. of it. And the bad thing is that mostly, the movie looses sound and picture quality in that process. So the original DVDs around here are not something to look up to it seems.
About Me, Movies & Entertainment
Well, I heard a lot about Riyadh, most of what I heard about negative. Last weekend I had the chance to test those claims. I was in Riyadh for the past 3 days, and all I can say is that I really look forward going there again. Probably what made this weekend so great is time spent with AH and Kamal, and the generosity and welcoming of both.
To start with, AH had arranged for my stay in a very special hotel. I can’t deny that I really enjoyed staying there. And my stay there had a great impact on my general feeling for Riyadh (that’s wrong I know).
Another great thing, is having lunch in “Al-Mansaf” restaurant. Yes, you guessed it, it is a restaurant that serve cuisines that are very similar to the home-made food we are used to in Jordan.
For a moment there, as almost everyone in that restaurant is Jordanian or Palestinian, I felt I am in Amman. People shouting “Ya Zalameh” and so :) I also remembered a somehow old cartoon for Hajjaj.
About Me
A really funny cartoon that I relate to is this cartoon (in Arabic). I am not sure how effective those methods are in Dammam. I doubt they work. Anyhow, another cartoon that I find smart, but I really dislike is this one about Saddam. I am not sure how people can feel sorry for a person like Saddam. Granted that forign occupation is refused, but that does not mean that Saddam is a hero. This is how I look at this whole Saddam-thing.
About Me
Either my english and arabic sucks, or those Asians that work here do not talk any of those when they talk to me. I really try to understand what they are saying, with really high lexical and logical analysis for what they say to understand what exactly they are talking about. And in most cases, I fail.
Really it is a mixture of at least 3 languages. Arabic, English, and their own language what ever that is. what makes me even more crazy, is that people around me, Saudi’s and Arabs are communicating easily with them. That made me really question my language skills. Now the disaster is that when I do not understand what they are saying, and they repeat it for 2 or 3 times, at the end I answer “Yes” without exactly knowing what I said “Yes” to. So far, no harm is done, and I hope that non will.
About Me
Now, although the concept had been around for a while, but I did not see it really spreading as it had for the past year. At some point, blogs were for fun, now, they are a resource, and sometimes referred to for information and news. One of the interesting blogs is GoogleBlog that sometime contains interesting news about Google. Other interesting blogs that I visit often is about IT and e-Gov in the middle east. I find some interesting news there most of the time.
Now, why do I blog in the first place ? well, I started because I wanted to keep family and friends updated on what is happening with me, and what is in my mind. But the purpose changed I think to be a way of expressing myself freely. I think this is why most bloggers blog.
An interesting new site is Arabeyes Planet which contains posts from Arabeyes members in their personal blogs.
OSS & Linux
I admit that I hadn’t been a real loyal user of any Linux Distro. I had been loyal to Linux in general. I had been using Linux for 7 years now I think.. and the distros that I used for more than 6 months include (RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo, Corel, Fedora, Slack, I-can’t-remember-if-there-is-more ). Of course because I always have /home in a separate partition (in fact in a separate drive) changing distros was like changing underwear, do it was mostly transparent for a GUI user. Read more…
OSS & Linux
WOW ! I just discovered that it had been more than a week since I wrote here.. I wrote during last week in the Arabic section, and in the Linux Category, but I did not for the main page. Well, mainly, Skype allowed me to be in daily voice contact with family. This somehow made me write here less often. I will try not to have it effect it.
Meeting my school friend yesterday, Kamal, was really something great. As hadn’t seen him for more than 16 months, and he was working in Riyadh, and I was lucky to meet him in a business trip that he had to khobar. We were in a cafe in khobar, and for few moments there I had a flashback to the cafe gatherings we had at school time in some coffee shops.
About Me