Isam Bayazidi’s Blog

The last few weeks could be called “Busy”, “Crazy” or “shaping” for me. Many changes are happening to me when it comes to professional life, although things are as messy as they had always been for other sides of my life.

To start of, I resigned from my current work. Although I have a good relation with my manager, there are certain things that I strongly disagree with regarding how this business is being run, which made me a little miserable when it comes to work for the past months. Now, as I am moving on, I hope that I would get out of this mood, and get my spirits up again. Some of my friends said that I am crazy to leave work before signing-up for another job, but for me, I am better off.

I have a long task list when it comes to Jordan Planet. I have at least 5 new bloggers to add, a new layout to finalize and bring out, fixes to the current design, and creating a section for expat bloggers in Jordan. I am lucky that there is a team of Jordanian bloggers that greatly help with the day-to-day caring of the planet, so the site is almost unaffected with the lack of time from my side.

Add to that, I signed up for an RHCE exam at 1st Oct. I had prepared myself for this exam a number of times, as it had been on my TODO list for more than 18 months, but never took the step to actually do it, so now it is time.

When I am done with all that, I will switch to the job-hunting mode. I am not really worried about finding-a-job part of this mode, but what I am a little concerned about is finding a job that I love, and really passionate about. Some could say that this is impossible, or irrational to ask for, but that’s me.

About Me

As I didn’t find my dream car yet, I am still using taxis in the morning to get to work. One of the programs that I find most of the taxi drivers enjoying in the morning hours is the “Al Bath Al-Mobasher” (Direct Broadcast). It is a show that allows the public to call in, and report any complains or observations they have, and the people on the show tries to contact those complained at, or related, to get a reply, or directly give the complain to, all on the air. I remember this radio show as long as I remember the Arabic Service of Radio Jordan, as I remember my late grandmother listening to it every morning, until the 10am news, which they tell the names of new deaths in the kingdom after.

I’ve heard a number of unbelievable stories in this show, although I occasionally listen to it. Stories about corruption, bureaucracy, power abuse, and bad fortune and luck. Today, on the way to work, I was listening to a very similar program on Radio Fann presented by Mohammed Al-Wakeel (of Jordan Television). Now it seems that the need for people to complain was so overwhelming that having a similar show in a commercial FM station became feasible.

Jordan

I was reading about Google’s Latest Blog Search., and I am in love with it :) just because of the fact that when I search for “Jordan” it gives Jordan Planet as the First in the “Related Blogs” not some Michael Jordan or other female star fan site. As well when I searched for “Amman” one of the first results was Ahmad’s Post about GPSing Amman. Now this is a search that can give real relative results.

What’s cooler is that it provides a feed (RSS/ATOM) for the search results, making it possible to track posts about certains terms of interst to you. Although this is not the first blog searching service around, as there us Technorati, Feedster but both fail my exam of searching for “Jordan” as none of the results are related to any blogger in Jordan. So I guess that Google are doing a better job although they came late into blog searching game.

Internet & Technology, Jordan

Yesterday I got a Google Alert about a report presented to the World Bank by 13 nations, including Jordan. The news said that officials from those 13 nations met in February in Silicon Valley to discuss technology standards and economic development, and come up with the 33 pages report.

2 things strike me in this piece of news:
First, The piece of news which was in New York Times (and republished in Herald Tribune and Media Channel) said that

government officials from China, India, Thailand, Denmark, Jordan, Brazil and elsewhere gathered to discuss technology standards and economic development.

For some reason, Jordan was mentioned with countries like China and India, and was not dropped in the “Elsewhere” category. I am not sure if this really have any significance.

Second, is that those Jordanian officials seems to be detached from the on-ground IT infrastructure of the Jordanian Government and Education. The government has a strategic partnership with Microsoft, which is obviously one of the major forces against Open Standards and Technologies. Students in the schools and universities of Jordan are being taught to use Microsoft Products (Windows, Office, Visual Basic, etc..) as part of their curriculum. Teachers are required to take a Microsoft-Centric ICDL exam in order to get promoted, and more than 13 ministries are connected to a centralized Microsoft Exchange Server for email and groupware.. all this tells me that there is something wrong in the picture. Is it that we want to be everywhere in the same time ? ahead with Microsoft adoption, and ahead with Open technology standards embracement ? well this doesn’t work I am afraid.

Jordan didn’t have an Official stand for or against Open Source and Open Technology Standards, and it was thanks to “foreign power” that Jordan had it’s Open Source Workshops in 2002 and 2005 organized by INTAJ. As I was attendant in both events, it seemed to me that Open Source and Open Standards is being used for bargaining by the government and it’s agencies, rather than a real understanding of the benefits of it. This could be clear by having a look in the daily computer/IT related bids announcements in the newspaper, where it is specifically required to use certain closed source applications or systems, although there are alternative open source ones which could have a great advantage when it comes to security and cost (hint. Apache vs. IIS)

Although it aches me to see how things are going when it comes to IT in Jordan, I have high hopes that eyes will open soon to the benefits of Open Source and Open Standards embracement in a developing country like Jordan.

Internet & Technology, Jordan, OSS & Linux

I just returned from watching the movie Stealth and it was average, although I had an argument with my friend if it worth the 5 JDs we payed for the Cinema. Following may contain spoilers for the movie. The thing that I find to be silly about the movie is that it is a Pure American Hero movie, didn’t bring anything new, and it seems they they did not even bother. They did all the old tricks that are known to work:

1. Have a black guy who everyone like.
2. Have that black guy to be first to die.
3. have someone behind enemy lines.
4. so some top gun acrobat with airplanes
5. have a cool alien-like airplane (hint: Independence Day)
6. and of course a love story that was never meant to be

For those who are not sick with the above combination, or would like to see some nice graphic and sound effects, go and enjoy yourselves. For me, I think I had enough.

About Me, Movies & Entertainment