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11 o’clock, I arrive at Wild Peeta, the current venue for our book club gatherings.  The place is quiet on a Saturday morning, so it is the ideal location to host our sometimes loud and often bizarre discussions.  Nominally the meeting kicks off on the hour, but I only see @TDAllonsy, set up behind her mac.  “UAE time,” she says with a sigh.  I empty my pockets at my seat, a habit I display when my better half is not around to supply carrying capacity in the form of a handbag, and get a coffee.

We catch up, and the others start trickling in – @WajihaSaid, who charged herself with snapping some pictures of the meet. Which of course didn’t stop half of everybody else from later on snatching the camera to try their hand at it. @Theregos, who as always provides the extra incentive in the form of cupcakes.  Today it was coffee and walnut. Enough said. @Zooberry, @Shaahima, @Hamna_ (dubbed our resident Niqabi), @Aabo0 and @RupertBu, the man behind the twitter handle of the Sharjah International Book Fair (@ShjIntlBookFair / #shjibf).

Order is brought to the table and we settle down to the business of the day. First on the agenda is discussing the choices made two months back.  Previously titles used to be discussed one month after being selected, but people found it hard to find availability in the local stores, so the gap was widened to two months for this purpose.

Next up we discuss each person’s submission for next month’s selection, after which a vote is taken to choose three.  Other book clubs might choose just one per meeting, but in our case the idea is to have a wider selection to read from to further encourage reading.  Previously four books used to be chosen, but now, to keep true to the “Twit” element of the TwitBookClub, the last book is chosen via online submissions and voting.  Current selections can be seen here.

To see the full tweet-by-tweet update on the goings on, you can either lookup @TwitBookClub (the official twitter handle for the club), or search twitter using the hashtag #TwitBookClub to catch other people’s contributions to the conversation.  I would have liked to include a snippet here on the post, but I have on this occasion found myself to be technologically impaired.  Note to non-Twitter users: the “at” sign @ indicates the twitter handle, or nickname, a person uses on Twitter.  The “number” sign, properly known as a hashtag, is used to index certain terms so that one can search tweets containing said terms and keep track of such mentions.

Before closing Rupert briefed us on the upcoming Sharjah International Book Fair (26th Oct – 6th Nov), now in its 29th edition.  Previously this used to showcase literature in Arabic only,  whereas this year they opened up the scope to include English literature.  A number of authors and industry names will be making an appearance in talks or workshops, among them:

• Zohra Saed & Sahar Muradi (American Afghan lecturers and authors of “One Story, Thirty Stories”)
• Samar Jarrah (author of “Arab voices speak to American Hearts”)
• Yasmina Jraisatti (First European based Arabic Literary Agent)
• Shelina Janmohammed (Number 1 best selling author of “Love in a Headscarf”)
• Octavia Nasr (previously with CNN)

Other info, date and location details on the site.

People sometimes exclaim on twitter that they didn’t have the time to read any of the selections, usually on the eve of the meeting.  It is a misconception that reading the books is compulsory, when in fact it is not.  It is desirable of course, as that’s the point of the whole show, but anyone is welcome to come and join the discussion.  In the end it is just a gathering of like minded people discussing a common interest.

For a well-known (in his country at least) singer to take the effort to learn the phonetics and pronunciation of such a different language just for the song, is remarkable.  It’s quite a leap, we’re not talking Italian singing in Spanish.

Compare it to the original version sung in Maltese, with the added benefit of some local landscape visuals:

Peace, not just for the subject

One would think that by now, the cat, Paua, would have settled in.  Yet she surprises us with wildly shifting behaviours in a very short time.

From hovering at the brink of sleep at the foot of our bed one moment, to meowing mournfully, nose touching the front door, the next. Shortly thereafter playfully tossing around a tatter of cloth or bag, followed by a heightened sense of fear of everything that moves. That would be us. She’d dash from one room to the next, climbing on the furniture and fittings, or cower in a corner, back arched, tail huge.  As if nothing was amiss, she would then drop on the floor belly up, inviting attention.  All the above in the space of a few minutes, but of all the activities, the meowing would last the longest.  I fear for her mental health.

And ours.

You make my day.

I never actually handled an IL76 unfortunately (I did climb into one undergoing repairs in Libya though).  The awesomest aircraft I had to guide to a stop was one like this:

Antonov AN12 / Copyright Angara at Airliners.net

It may not look like much – old, what with the props and all.  But it was noisy, even through the ear defenders. And big. And coming towards me.  I sometimes used to have perverse thoughts on the lines of: what if the pilot didn’t see me? What if one of engines shot off it’s mounting and came towards me?

A turboprop is slow to accelerate, so I used to play these mind games that if something happened, I could duck out of the way, or between the landing gear. Or something.  It was a completely different story with one of these beauties, the private jets:

Bombardier Global Express / Copyright Luc Van Belleghem at Airliners.net

The high pitched whine of the turbine engines gives these aircraft a restless air.  They were built for speed, not for crawling around.  I felt as if the engineering feat was not putting them in the air, but keeping them in check, restrained and obeying the pilot’s commands on the ground.  Which is why, when marshalling one in, I felt like I had the barrel of a (quite large) cannon being slowly pointed towards me, with a shell that was crying and begging to be fired.

I was not scared, I would not have done the job otherwise.  Those thoughts were merely fleeting products of my imagination, which I would shrug off, and get back to there and then.

It was a job I performed with mixed emotions – on one hand I absolutely loved the idea of being close to these high tech machines, climbing on board $50 million VIP aircraft, or being involved in some tricky cargo loading operation.  On the other hand there were the odd timings, the associated running around and the whatever-the-weather requirement.  It could get quite cold in Malta when raining on a February pre-dawn morning.  The office job wouldn’t look so drab then.

1.  Use it like any normal phone. Make calls, download apps, show it off, brag about it, spar with ifanboys, and/or

2.  Open the metaphorical lid, thus invalidating the warranty, and customise the hell out of the thing.  More correctly known as rooting the device and flashing a custom ROM.

Guess which one I did?

But first, a disclaimer.  I am no phone hacker, nor will I ever claim to be one.  I just scoured the interwebs for how-tos and tutorials, which are not that difficult to find. The task is finding the one that is applicable for your situation.

It is actually funny in retrospect because about a month ago I had commented to a friend that I wasn’t the type to mess with the phone, as it was “outside my comfort zone”.

So what happened?  In my expanding thirst for Android gadgets I decided that I was going to get my hands on one of the tablets coming out in September / October.  I was particularly ogling the Samsung Galaxy S Tab (take a look here).  This would make my Nexus One semi-redundant (since I don’t use it for phone calls anyway), so I decided to step outside the comfort zone, unleash the wannabe geek in me and experiment with the thing.

Ironical side note: after I took the plunge, the pricing info for the Samsung tablet was released, and I decided it was out of budget.  Since I intended to use it mainly to buy and read ebooks I settled for the Amazon Kindle, so I went ahead and ordered the 6″ wifi Kindle 3.  It is currently out of stock, but if all goes well I’ll describe that process in a separate post.  Actually even if it doesn’t go well, as I’d need to vent.

Back to the thread, what I did was very roughly as follows:

1. Backed up all my important stuff and downloaded apps.
2. Accessed the bootloader and unlocked the device.
3. Installed a recovery image, to be able to load the original software in case the device bricks (becomes as useful as a brick, maybe less so as you wouldn’t be able to stack them and end up with a solid structure).
4. Through the recovery make a backup of the entire current OS. You know, just in case.
5. Installed a custom ROM – in my case Cyanogenmod v6-point-something.  Not that I knew exactly what I was going into, but it seemed to be the most talked-about and praised ROM.

Oh there were many in-betweens.  One had to find the right site to install the Android SDK on the PC and hook it up via USB, download the recovery and the ROM, find the latest stable version, get blocked off the main Cyanogen site and thus having to find a costly roundabout way, find the right instructions / guidelines, none of which assumed my very basic level of knowledge so a lot of guessing was involved.

So why go through all this hassle?  One thing is that the custom ROM takes the device and puts every setting at your disposal.  This is not done out of the box to protect the owners of the devices by ensuring that it is stable and works well.  After all tampering isn’t for everyone.

Performance is also greatly increased.  Out of the box the software somehow limits the hardware’s performance, for whichever reasons (battery life, compliance with carrier restrictions, alien interference).  After installing the custom ROM even the basic handling on the phone noticeably improved.  One can also overclock the device, that is make the CPU run at faster speeds, but I haven’t tried that out yet.  Actually at this point there I many things I have to try out, it is wide open: tweaks, themes, apps, whole new ROMs, etc.

I will probably not bore you with the details.

(Image credit n/a - it's open source demmit)

Where to start? From the unpacking of course. You can use an android straight out of the box without any itunes nonesense.  Syncing it with my Google account and I immediately have access to all my contacts, no need to start from scratch or import.

Next, the software.  Over the air, hassle free system updates – you don’t need to wait for the next phone model for the latest OS version. Greater choice of free apps, which now can also be automatically updated instead of going through them one by one.   The app market isn’t as restrictive as Apple’s.  There isn’t the fear of having your submitted app rejected by some mysterious review board.  For those living in the states there’s also GPS guided turn-by-turn voice directions to drivers. Take that Garmin.  A budding voice-to-text capability – any text input field can be filled in by voice, although the success rate isn’t very high and you still have to review the transcription.  Then there’s Google Goggles, the awesome image recognition beta app.  It allows you to shoot something and then returns search results based on what it recognises.  Applications of this include: taking pictures of products in shops and then searching for information or other prices, shooting landmarks and having relevant information returned on the search, business cards can be scanned and entered directly into contacts.

Next, the hardware. Changeable battery, SD card support (on which you can now store apps, not just media), arguably faster processor, wifi tethering, noise canceling dual microphones, oh and no need for a rubber band around it to keep from dropping calls.

The only thing I’ll concede is that apple products and apps (i.e. the UI) are sexier design wise. But that’s what captivates the audience.

I’d say that the argument between apple and android is ultimately one of impulse/desire vs logic. And in the end, the fan bases on both sides are not easily convinced to switch. It’s like the point of contention is so close to heart that to concede any ground would be akin to admitting a deep personal flaw.  Of course there are those well funded enough to be able to “try out” the other systems, only to to say that they prefer their previous phone and revert back to it (or the latest version thereof).

Update: this webcomic sums up nicely the apps possibilities of the two OS. If you don’t know what a custom ROM is, see my next post.

It’s currently Ramadan here in the UAE and in the rest of the Muslim world.  This is the second time I’m experiencing it, but it’s a bit easier this time round since we’ve moved to larger premises at work and I no longer share the same space with my Muslim colleagues.  So I can munch away in wholehearted content without disturbing their fasting.

Until next time.

I booked us a couple of nights at the Atlantis on Palm Jumeirah to satisfy our desperate need for a short holiday, without the hassle of going abroad.  Having heard of many people who used it I decided to try booking.com for the reservations, and indeed found very good discounts.

We set off Thursday afternoon, after work, and after the inevitable last-minute packing.  In order not to lose time both my wife and I decided to skip the shower at home, so the first thing we did after settling in our room was enjoy a long hot shower each.  Later we pondered our dinner options and chose the Kaleidoscope (international buffet), not really knowing what to expect.

It turned out to be a really well-stocked and laid out buffet, and the selection boasted a Maltese dish (which was rabbit stew – no, we didn’t try it).  I will not bother to go into lengthy descriptions, I would not do it justice.  As is required in such occasions, we decided to take our time and take the small-portion-from-each-course-route.

Half way through the third course I received the fateful phone call from Guest Services.  Apparently the leak was originating from our room, but affecting the service areas.  Our room was still dry.  The lady went on to explain that the whole floor’s water supply had to be shut down until they could fix the leak, and could we please come asap to our room to move our stuff to another room.  Before I had time to explain that I had methodically unpacked and used every storage space available in the room, I was politely interrupted and told that we were going to be upgraded to a suite.

The weight of that immediately sank in, but I still didn’t want to let it go without a fight.  I thanked her and assured her we would have our things ready within the next 20 minutes.  Next I called for the restaurant manager, making a fuss about how we couldn’t continue our meal due to something that was beyond our control.  Without raising any protest or trying to sleaze out of it, the man made me pay only for the bottle of wine, and instructed me to call once in the new room to order items for room service delivery (together with our still-unfinished wine) at no extra cost whatsoever – I ended up not paying for any food at all.

We scrambled back to our room, half expecting to find an army of workers waiting by our door, with their arms crossed, tapping their tools impatiently. Relieved that it wasn’t so, we threw everything in our cases in record speed and waited. Ten minutes passed, nothing. I called, they would be there shortly. Another twenty minutes.  By this point I’m already putting together another complaint, about how we could have easily finished the meal and what was the rush. Then the porter came, took our bags and grinning said, “you’ll like your new room.”

And was he right.  Big living room, big bedroom, 2 TVs (one in each of the mentioned rooms), huge bath, shower, walk in closet, smaller closet, 2 toilets, big balcony, wonderful views.  I had to play the video-camera-tourist this time, so you can see for yourself:

From our balcony we could see the big aquarium, and it’s a truly memorable sight, at night seeing those fish and rays swimming in the back-lit water.

Atlantis aquarium

The aquarium doesn’t look too big from above, but to have an idea here’s the aquarium from the Ambassador Lagoon viewing gallery (which now costs AED 25 to access):

Ambassador Lagoon

View down the Palm

It had finally happened, we could no longer pout that the we were always unlucky in these sorts of events. We spent the following day at the Aquaventure water park, and still flush with the excitement of “it happened to us” we decided to take it a step further and booked a slot to swim with the dolphins.

My god what an experience! It felt like the fulfillment of a dream I didn’t know I had.  Together with a another group of 3 we spent 30 minutes swimming, hugging, kissing, stroking, dancing, and being pulled through the water (with the dolphin of course – her name was Alice).  It is highly recommended.  Forget the cost, where / when will such an opportunity present itself again?