The last week had been a very special and busy week for me. Lots of things happened, and I don’t know where to start. In fact I do :) Well to list the events quickly: I met Mohamed Sameer for the first time while I knew him through Arabeyes for more than 3 years, there was an Open Source Seminar in Amman, and I got to be in the discussion panel for it thanks to Ahmed Humeid, I met Ethan Zuckerman again in the Seminar, Tawjihi results for my sis, and she did fine, and last but not least, we had a Global Voices/Jordan Planet gathering last night.
Now what’s really cool, is that those events are very much covered in blog posts by others all over the place. So to know what kind of week I had, all you have to do is to read blog posts for OTHERS.
Mohammed Sameer was in Amman to be part of the Open Source Seminar organized by Intaj. I met him and it was really nice. Day 1 and Day 2 of the OSS Seminar was below expectations, but yet it was great to meet some new interesting people, and meet others again.
Wednesday was the Tawjihi night, stress, cheers and celebration, fireworks and more fireworks.. it was one great night.
As for yesterday, Jordan Bloggers had a meetup with Global Voices through Ethan. It was great meeting some of the bloggers for the first time, namingly Haitham and the ONE (Iyas). Many pictures were taken for the event, check them out at Jad’s, Ahmed’s, and Roba’s.
Now I managed to tell about my last week through post blogs from others.. is this scary ? or isn’t it ?
Internet & Technology, Jordan
Most of blog writers do not state how they wish the text they write to be used. And as the writers copyright wishes is never published, violations to the writers wish is to happen. I’ve known about Creative Commons for some time, but I didn’t see it come handy until the beginning of blogmania, where the amount of text content that isn’t licensed increased dramatically. Creative commons have a set of very flexible licenses that suit different needs, and licensing wishes. As they describe it “Creative Commons helps you publish your work on line while letting others know exactly what they can and can’t do with your work.”
I came across a page that help you choose your license and choose mine. They even have a page decribing how you can do it for different blogging services and software. The easiness of having every blog writer determine with details how others can deal with their work is very appealing, after all, I’ve seem some of the most creative content in blogs, and I hate to see it’s author’s writes and wishes violated. License your blog NOW :)
Internet & Technology
It was around midnight, a couple of days ago, when I was having coffee with my friends at Cups & Kilos. While thinking about how good the coffee is, and enjoying it, an old lady was hit by a very speedy car in front of us, while she was crossing the street in front of the Radisson SAS. I won’t detail more about what happened, as I don’t want to recall it, but basically, the old lady was smashed, and probably dead. Two of my friends who think they have a strong heart and stomach crossed the street, to check if they can be of any help, as for me, and another friend, we preferred to stay away. Obviously, we spent the rest of the evening talking about about cars, accidents, and hits.
Recent statistics show that a person dies every 11 hours in Jordan from Car accidents, another one says that 80% of the people hit by a car are either children or old people. Now if this is not scary I don’t know what is. We blame everyone for the bad driving experiences in the streets of Jordan but ourselves. What’s worse, is that we need a tragedy to hit near us to learn from it. That is if we ever learned.
I am not sure I will drive in the same way I did before after what I saw. I hope that I will never forget it, because I shouldn’t. As for you, please drive safely.
About Me, Jordan
My parents had been in Syria for the last couple of days, visiting relatives and so. Last time my parents were there was about 6 or 8 years ago, at time time I was still studying. But now, it is a different story. Basically news had arrived to me that they are pushing and asking my parents: “emta bedkom tjawzo 3isam, ma 7allo yejawaz” (When are you planing to get Isam Married, isn’t it about time?). Now my hope is that my mother will be able to resist temptations and pushing from my relatives in Syria, and that she won’t return and tell me “Lagainalak 3aroos” (We found you a bride)
About Me
I just realized that there was a problem in my Blog that prevented people from posting thier comments.. I think that the problem is gone now.. I am sorry for those who couldn’t comment in the last week, and I hope that it is fixed now.
About Me
This morning when I read Ammar’s Six Minutes and watched the video he referred to, I was in shock and shame , although I had some laugh. Basically the piece, for those who do not understand Arabic, is about interviewing random people from Jordan, who are mostly university/collage students and asking them general knowledge questions. “Who is Berlusconi?” gave answers such as “A Romance Actor” and “where is Bulgaria?” resulted to “a planet in the solar system”. What could be considered a basic knowledge such as “What are the major 2 parties in USA”, “Who wrote War and Peace” and “Name 3 novel writers from Jordan” was a complete failure. A question that 100% of the interviewees answered properly is “Who Sings Ah o Nos?” where no one failed to remember Nancy Ajram. At the end, the director shares with us a painful fact. An Arabic student reads in average 6 minutes a year outside curriculum books. Ouch.. Read more…
Jordan, News & Politics