On November

On November 30, 2014

Sheez. It’s the final stretch of 2014 already.

I’ve always wanted to try the famous Circassian dish chebsobasta. Alas, it is traditionally made with chicken, and since I don’t eat chicken, I’ve never had it. Until my friend Sharif’s mom made me shibsobasta without chicken. Goodness me it’s SO DELICIOUS!

November was for reading. Trying to close my target of 50 books a year.

Sucks being musically-challenged in a musical life

My calendar is psychic

4 more books in 2014 for my target to be complete!

Baby bro

Peppermint bark from Toffimelt

Can you guess?

Ribbontex

Been waiting for this book for 15 years

Never date an astronaut

Psychotic November Weather — Take 1

Psychotic November Weather — Take 2

Psychotic November Weather — Take 3

Yay.

Pictorial Archive of Life

Europa, Revisited

By Roba

On November 29, 2014

In Geek Culture & Tech

A NASA remastered image of Europa

The high-resolution color image, which shows the largest portion of the moon’s surface, was made from images taken by NASA’s Galileo probe. Using the Solid-State Imaging (SSI) experiment, the craft captured these images during it’s first and fourteenth orbit through the Jupiter system, in 1995 and 1998 respectively.

The view was previously released as a mosaic with lower resolution and strongly enhanced color (as seen on the JPL’s website). To create this new version, the images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye.

Via io9

How to say “Daewoo” in Korean

By Roba

On November 27, 2014

In Roba

Sometimes, it only occurs to me to google things I’m curious about years after I’ve been wondering about them. Usually, it’s only with the stuff that I’ve been curious about since before there was google. It’s like parts of my brain never got past 1996.

Case in point: Daewoo.

When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with reading roadside store signs whenever I was in the car. I always read them out loud, with my parents helping me pronounce things correctly, or explaining what unfamiliar words meant.

The sign that gave me the biggest headache was “Daewoo”. I was a child who just learned her letters, and I read it the way I was taught to read: “Dey-woooo”. I was told that it wasn’t English though, and that the best way to pronounce it in this part of the world is “Dha-yo”. To this day, more than 20 years later, I still can’t get myself to say “Dha-yo”, opting to go with the more literal “Dey-woh”.

Suddenly last week, it occurred to me that dude… you can just google it. And I did.

Ladies and gents, here’s the correct way to pronounce “Daewoo”:

In this case,

Lego Genius from the 1970’s

By Roba

On November 25, 2014

In Geek Culture & Tech

Via BoingBoin

Help Jordanian filmmakers to write, produce and direct feature films

By Roba

On November 17, 2014

In Amman, Arab Culture, Art, Music

Filmmaking is a new industry in Jordan, and there aren’t enough educational institutions teaching this discipline. The RFC has been playing a major role in searching for and training talents that would be capable of narrating/expressing Jordanian stories, in addition to granting these talented filmmakers hands on experience that would enable them to work on any international film production. Subsequently, the RFC has designed a new program – the Educational Feature Film (EFF) program – that gives emerging Jordanian filmmakers a chance to tell their stories, under the supervision of mentors. The program was started in 2010 and helped produce five films, but was unfortunately suspended in 2013 due to shortage of funding.

You can support this great program by donating on Indiegogo or spreading the word around.

Support the EFF

Why you really, really should watch “Interstellar”

By Roba

On November 16, 2014

In Pop Culture

No spoilers.

1. In the past ten years of this blog’s existence, I’ve reviewed less than a dozen movies.

2. More often than not, the movies I’ve reviewed are based on books I love that were adapted into Hollywood blockbusters.

3. Most readers would tell you that movie adaptations almost never compare to the books. I say “almost” because of only one movie: The Lord of the Rings. That one did indeed compare to the book, thank you, Peter Jackson.

4. Yesterday, we watched “Interstellar”. I went because my friends were going. They were going because they like Christoper Nolan and Matthew McConaughey. I had no idea who either of these two people were, and I wasn’t excited. After all, the movie wasn’t based on a book I know.

5. To my super-pleasant surprise, it was a science-fiction movie with some really good sci-fi. The plot is so Arthur C. Clarke, excluding necessary Hollywood-style bullshit about love and betrayal.

6. I’ve been obsessed with NASA imagery for years. Seeing it “in action” is just breathtaking. Just that shot of Saturn makes me want to go to the IMAX theatre again today.

7. Watch it. Space is an amazing, beautiful thing.

8. The science in it is science FICTION, but the plot is clever. Take it from someone who has read hundreds of sci-fi books.

9. I love how they explained tesseracts in the same way that Madeleine L’Engle did in “A Wrinkle in Time”.

I will proceed to bombard you with beautiful GIFs from the movie:

Saturn from Cassini:

MENA ICT Forum is Today!

By Roba

On November 12, 2014

In Amman

Don’t miss out on the MENA ICT Forum happening today. You can follow the hashtag on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hashtag/menaict?f=realtime&src=hash

You can take a look at the agenda here: http://www.menaictforum.com/agenda/

Some images from Twitter:

From: https://twitter.com/anoudabuhassan

From: https://twitter.com/husseinabdulah

Swissra: An Arabic Typeface Inspired by Swiss Graphic Design

By Roba

On November 9, 2014

In Arab Culture, Art, Music, Art, Design

Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Swissra, an Arabic typeface that was inspired by Swiss graphic design.

Ali AlMasri, the designer behind the typeface, says that the motivation behind the typeface was to create a neutral and carefully crafted Arabic font family that can be used on many different applications and work in multilingual situations with Swiss fonts such as Akzidenz-grotesk and Helvetica. Swissra is also a tribute to Swiss graphic design.

Technical stuff: Swissra features sharply cut terminals, which are either horizontal or vertical. It also features closed apertures and a high x-height.

Swissra is available in eight weights that range from ultralight to black.

You can buy Swissra from MyFonts.

View complete project on Behance.