The Fox Blog

Red Bull (the energy drink) is organizing a world wide paper plane competition in about 48 countries (including Lebanon). When I saw the poster ad for the first time, I though it was a joke too, but no… It’s all real. Flying paper planes is a passion shared by many, Paper planes associations even exist and that’s no joke either. Back to the competition: each country holds national qualifiers, opened to university students, and winners fly to Salzburg, Austria on the 5th and 6th of May 2006 to compete in the world wide Red Bull Paperwings event.

Three categories to compete for:
- Largest distance: awarded to plane that flies the largest distance between lift-off and landing point. World record is currently 58.82 m and held by American Toni Fletch.
- Longest airtime: awarded to plane that manages to stay in the air the longest. World record is currently 27.6 sec and held by American Ken Blackburn.
- Aerobatics: awarded to plane that achieves the most creative flight performance. A jury is responsible of grading the performance.

Taking part in the Lebanese qualifiers was fun: 50 participants, 3 hours of non-stop flying planes, 3 lucky winners (one in each category) and a certainly a good mood. Red Bull does indeed Give You Wings…

Nice Paper Planes Sites:
Worksman Fliers Club
Ken Blackburn’s Paper Airplanes

PokerSourceOnline is organizing a $25000 Bloggers Freeroll. Registration is totally free of charge, no promotion sign up, spam emails or anything similar. Any restrictions? Well yes… the freeroll is exclusively opened to bloggers. However, for the sake of marketing their web site, they require that you post a message like the one below on your blog. So here it is:

I am registered to play in the Online Poker Blogger Freeroll Win your share of $25,000 and a set of Nevada Jacks poker chips. Hosted By: Absolute Poker Sponsored By: Poker Source Online Registration Code: 71374267

Memoirs of a Geisha is based on the best selling novel by Arthur Golden, this movie, produced by Rob Marshall, is an excellent piece of work. Japan in the first part of the 20th century, with it’s houses, industries and everything that comes along… is very well portrayed. The music score by John Williams completes the visual elements, an issue that makes that movie an aesthetic piece of art.

You won’t find all star actors, but still you can recognize Ken Watanabe (in the role of the Chairman) from The Last Samurai, Michelle Yeoh (in the role of Mameha) from Tomorrow Never Dies and Zhang Ziyi (in the role of Chiyo/Sayuri) from Hero. Two-thumbs up for Suzuka Ohgo (in the role of young Chiyo), a Japanese actress with eyes so blue – just in the movie - you might get sea-sick just by looking at them.

The plot: Chiyo, a 7-year old girl from the fishing village of Yoroido, is sold and sent away, with her sister, by her penniless family to a geisha house in the city of Kyoto. At first, her sole goal is to find her sister, Satsu, from whom she has been separated during her travel to Kyoto. After an attempted escape, she resigns herself to become a Geisha, a “moving work of art” who sells her skills and not her body. Adopting the name of Sayuri, she faces ferocious competition from Hatsumoto, the house’s most prominent earner, and must frays her way to become the most prominent Geisha of Japan and attract the looks of The Chairman, the man she falls in love with.

Although the production and cast mixture is successful, something is missing in the movie. I would call it lack of emotional scenes, at some points the movie seems to be so mute. I was expecting more romance and heart-breaking parts; too bad, it could have hit the Oscars… Still, the movie is a very good alternative for the book. More information on the Official Memoirs of a Geisha Web Site.

Some people do associate terrorism with the Middle East and the Arab world. Obviously not directly, but still news and speeches do offer glimpses of that notion.
Google goes a step forward unintentionally probably, but whatever. Here’s something to laugh about.
Search “irhab” (the Arabic equivalent of terrorism) on Google and you’ll get a message saying “Did you mean: arab”.

This game has created a controversy in Lebanon ever since it was released a couple of months ago. You play the role of American Soldiers deployed in Beirut and combating enemy troops’ (Terrorists, Syrian Army…) occupation of the city during the Lebanese Civil War.

There’s nothing new about the gameplay which already exists on previous Close Combat releases and other several FPS games. The theme however is new: Beirut has been almost modeled exactly as a lot like and the game required the expertise of military personnel. Site’s description:

First to Fight is a tactical first-person shooter in which you lead a four-man fire team in close-quarters urban combat in the streets and buildings of Beirut. It was created with the help of more than 40 active-duty U.S. Marines fresh from firefights in the Middle East and will be used by the United States Marine Corps for training.

Nice screenshots and trailers, as a well as a very-complete fan kit are available to download on the Official First Fight Web Site. Too bad there’s no free demo to have a preview of the game, the only way to test it is to buy it.

Arabic Title: حياة المرأة السرية

Dealing with a women’s sexuality, this play in Arabic is some piece of work. Extraordinary by both its uniqueness and its full exposure of a subject for a long time considered taboo in Lebanon. Produced and directed by local theater figure and A.U.B. academic scholar Sherif Abdennour, the play features as actors and production none but high school and university students.

Five actresses actually, all women, who discuss 75 min long the secret sexual life they lead, with a humoristic tone, assessing a society governed by myths and religious prohibitions; where a woman’s decency is measured by silicon, botox and XXL bras and man’s virility by Armani clothing. Men, classified by stereotype models, have a big part of humiliation in the piece.

According to some information circulating around the theatre, the producer had to cancel a major part of the script, which included a scene featuring a woman masturbating – a word that turns out not to have an equivalent in the Arabic language - on stage, following censorship by the ministry of information. Still, women who started well dressed at first end up half naked just a moment later.

Against any predictions, the piece was very well welcomed by the public, the theatre showed full three successive nights. An issue that caused the production to add two additional representations in order to satisfy the people demand. The play obviously seems to be inspired by well-know French play “Les Monologues du Vagin” which faced a tremendous success in France and Europe in the past years.

A Women’s Secret Life marks the rise of Lebanese acting to a new level, a level where limits are pushed an inch forward in the face of censorship and taboo subjects, and a level where small productions with bright ideas can prove successful…

Lebanon is commemorating today the 1st anniversary of P.M. Rafic Hariri, targeted and killed with 22 others in a massive explosion in Beirut on Valentine’s Day of 2005. Lebanon’s political situation has lived several changes ever since.

One year later, half a million people – according to security forces – commemorate the assassination of the Lebanese self-made billionaire. Crowds from all over the country gathered on the Freedom Square in downtown Beirut, near the mosque where he was buried. Several political groups took part in the manifestation, what is known as the coalition of March 14th, an alliance regrouping the Future Movement (headed by Hariri’s son, Saad Hariri), the Social Party (headed by Walid Jumblat), the Lebanese Forces (headed by Samir Geagea)…

A major political faction missing was the Free Patriotic Movement (headed by Michel Aoun), who refused to participate, describing the commemoration as being “politicized”. Note that the FPM had participated in the March 14th 2005 Cedar Revolution.

Protesters demanded the demission of Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud, whose public appearances has particularly decreased in the last year. One of the posters stated in reference to President Lahoud and the four former Lebanese officials, accused to be involved in the assassination and currently imprisoned: “Four Down, One to Go”.

U.S. secretary general, Condoleezza Rice, stated earlier today that the United States stands united with the Lebanese people in finding the responsible of Hariri’s murder and bringing them to justice.

Photos (by AFP):

I haven’t really been wasting my time lately. As part of my animation course, I was required to create this short 3D animation which I called “The Silly Bee Story”. It’s my first 3D animation ever; I don’t intend it to be my last, this field of Computer Science is really amazing.
Software used in order to achieve it:
- Modeling and animating (the main thing): LightWave by NewTek, an excellent animation application suitable for beginners as well as professionals.
- Textures and image editing: Adobe PhotoShop; I don’t feel like I have to introduce that one.
- Video editing: Ulead Video Studio, a simple application, better than Windows Movie Maker by Microsoft.
Discovering how to manipulate the 3D application wasn’t a walk in the park. I first tried some tutorials offered on LightWave’s web site. But they didn’t really come in handy, so I had to make things work using the good old trial and error method. And here I am, a couple of days later, creating my first animation which I am very proud of. I might end up at Pixar someday, you never now!
The hardest - I should probably say the longest and tidiest - part was rendering, that is converting the content of the LightWave application to a movie in AVI/MPG/MOV format. It can take up to 10 hours for you to render a scene. Above it all, you sometimes find crucial flaws in your animation when rendering in complete, and there we go for another 10 hours!

The Silly Bee Story is a “silly” story as the title mentions it about a character who kills a bee and finds himself tracked down by the giant Honey Inc. Zeppelin balloon… There’s no deep point in this story, it’s just a funny animation.

Download The Silly Bee Story (also available in Files Dump):
Hi Version – 640 x 480 / WMV Format / 5.25 Mb
Lo Version – 320 x 240 / WMV Format / 2.42 Mb

You can also find some screenshots below

Sunday 5th of February, thousands of angry Muslims launch a violent attack against the Danish Consulate in Beirut armed with wielding sticks and stones. What originally started as a “protest” – according to the organizers - rapidly “got out of hands”: the building holding the consulate was completely burnt down.

Object of the protest: the recent publication by a Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten of ironical cartoons illustrating Mohammed - a matter forbidden the religion of Islam. Earlier this week, the Danish government resolved not to prosecute the publishers of the newspaper invoking the freedom of the press.

Back to Beirut: the location of the consulate in Achrafieh, an almost exclusive Christian suburb of the Lebanese capital, seems to be at the origin of even more trouble: civilian property measured in Millions of dollars was destroyed. Cars including ambulances and police vehicles, shops, administration building and even a church were hit. Most importantly, the inhabitants remembered the days of the Lebanese civil war which opposed Muslim and Christian militias for nearly 20 years.

The security forces didn’t seem to be in control of the situation at first. However, after the deployment of hundred of Army personnel, the situation progressively got back in order. Several Lebanese politicians condemned the act – as they usually do – and appealed to a return of order. Others mentioned that this act was “dangerous” and that the responsible should be prosecuted. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora stated that “We do not accept any act that affects the security of others”.

Danish citizens residing in Lebanon were advised to leave the country as soon as possible since the situation got out of control. This was not the first time the Danish Foreign Ministry issues such a decision. Ever since the publication of the cartoons, numerous violent attacks were launched on Danish consulates and embassies worldwide: Damascus, Islamabad, Baghdad, Khartoum, Jakarta…

Photos (by AP)

Update 06/02/2006
- Interior Minister resigned.
- More than 200 suspects were arrested. More than 2/3 are not Lebanese nationals; foreign nationalities include Syrians, Palestinians and Bedouins.

You may have noticed that the look of the page changed recently, this was part of a series of modifications and upgrades:
- Changed the blog’s name from The Fox Hole to The Fox Blog
- Got www.thefoxblog.com domain
- Upgraded to Wordpress 2.0.1, which seems pretty cool after you try a trick or two on it.
- Changed the theme. I got the original version from a site called SubNixus.

Anyway, let me get to the point of the Vegas issue.
The owner of SubNixus, Eric Reynolds, is holding a Vegas Giveaway, a competition for marketing his blog, as he mentions it. The winner will receive the following prize package (quoted):

1- A four-day, three-night trip for two to Las Vegas. Leaving on 3/30/06 and returning 4/2/06. The trip will include round trip airfare for two and a stay at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino […]
2- [..] Control of Subnixus.com for a full 24 hour period (starting 4/5/06 at midnight CST) [..]

There are two ways to participate in the competition, which are fully detailed on the web site. Neither involves signing up to some free or paid offer, or referring people or anything related to MLM (Multi Level Marketing)!
First, I though this giveaway was just another message like those you get by thousands in your Junk Mail folder. But after checking up the web site – which doesn’t seem at all to be some kind of dump site – I changed my mind and decided to give it a shot in the Vegas Giveaway…
After all, I did get a quality Wordpress theme from there!

Check the SubNixus web site for more information

Photos of the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas (from MorgueFile.com), I couldn’t resist posting: