About two weeks ago I read about a small HTML presentation framework called impress.js. I did not take much notice of it since I am fairly knowledgeable of Keynote and did not see any practical value in coding my presentations.

Then a couple of days ago during my first week at college, I was given the task to rethink one of Germany’s leading newspapers - more specifically how it could attract more female readers without loosing its male audience.

In its current edition the newspaper measures 37,6 by 52,8 centimeters which is all but clutch-friendly. To solve this problem I came up with an idea that would let them keep their trademark title page the way it is, while shrinking everything else by 50 percent to save space and weight. That way the news paper does not loose its bold mass appeal. At the same time the new format would allow them to restructure the paper so that male and female readers can be guided according to their exaggerated stereotypical interests. You might ask yourself how this is possible – If I explained it in words it would most likely not make much sense.

Take a look at THIS instead.

The presentation you just saw is something that would have been impossible to realize with Keynote or PowerPoint. This is where the real strength of impress.js lies: It breaks boundaries that Keynote and PowerPoint impose on their users, it is non linear, multi-dimensional and it can be combined with all the new technologies we learned to love.

SO! If you are slightly familiar with three-dimensional coordinate systems, HTML and CSS you are ready to rock. Go ahead, build stellar presentations and make other people think you are a magician.

I get easily attached to places. Once I know my way around I develop an intimate relationship with my surroundings. A relationship composed of little rituals that are not so obvious to me at while I am there but put a smile on my face when I think back.

• Catching a cab to work or being taught a new Arabic word by the shopkeeper around the corner in Jordan.
• Endless hours on public transport between Nordeck-Winnen and Gießen in Germany combined with the ever-present search for purpose in life besides the regular school work.
• Ordering the same three items over and over again at Boulder Coffee as well as roaming up and down Monroe and Park Avenue day after day in Rochester, NY

Daily routine makes up a large part of our existence and most of the time we forget to appreciate its beauty. While everything else changes it is the one thing that stays the same until we move on.

Those forgotten rituals make me feel homesick for the places I have been to – homesick in a pleasant way as they bring along other memories. Writing about them will hopefully help me not to forget about my homes away from home.

There is one question I have been asked more than any other in the past fours months:

How come that a 19 year old German boy goes on internship to Jordan?

As a matter of fact: After 90 days in Amman it still surprises me that I ended up here. It seems so random to think that standing in line for the iPad could have altered my life in such a radical way. I would not be in Jordan were it not for a chain of unbelievable coincidences.

In late 2010 I had to wrap my head around the idea that I would have to pick colleges to apply too. I ended up with one private University and a choice of two or three public schools on my list. I got into Zeppelin University – the private research university I hoped to study at. Part of their enrollment requirements is that you have to do a six week internship to get out of the “school-mindset”.

The originaly plan was for me to start with college in fall. As summer drew closer it became clear that that would not work out because I had to do the internship and believe me it is not easy to find internship oppurtunities as an 18 year old highschool graduate without much of a portfolio.

In late March things were not going so well between me and my girlfriend (due to no fault of hers) mostly because it became more and more obvious that I would not be able to visit her during the summer and there were no fallback plans at that time. I had saved money for a flight but all of a sudden I found myself in a situation with no use for it. After all that trouble and whatnot – I had also just finished my written Abitur exams – I felt like I had to spend that money and do something nice just for me.

It happened to be the week in which Apple was releasing the iPad 2 in Germany. I deceided that that was what I wanted and embarked with nothing better to do on a trip to Frankfurt to wait in line for the product launch.

I arrived at Frankfurt Main Hauptbahnhof at nine o’clock in the morning. It was a beautiful day in March. Not a single cloud in the sky and warm enough for t-shirt and shorts. At first I felt a little dumb for being there so early. I expected to be the first person in front of the Apple Store but when I got there after a short walk from the train station there were at least 80 people patiently waiting in line already. I deceided to skip breakfast and got in line.

Everbody seemed happily excited besides some grim looking Russian guys (which turned out to be comcercially exporting the new iPad to Russia). It was pretty much an open air festival for nerds.

It did not take long untill the people next to me in line and I were engaged in discussions about the latest technology and its impact on society. One of them was a a college student in his twenties, that took the day off and came all the way from Heidlberg. He gave me some advice on college in gerneral and what to look for in my classes. At some point in our conversation I must have mentioned that I was desperately looking for an internship.

About thrity minutes later into the chat a woman tipped on my shoulder and said:

I have been listening to you for the past 45 minutes. You seem like a smart young man and make a good impression on me. I overheard that you are looking for an internship. Here is the business cards of my son-in-law - He has a design agency in Amman, Jordan. If you mention my name to him you might get a chance to do your internship there.

I was stunned and did not really know what to say. Three months later I found myself in Amman, Jordan – just because I bought an iPad.

The one thing about Amman that strikes me most is the fact how quickly time is going by in this city. I have been here for 60 days though it almost feels as if I arrived yesterday. I cannot remember the last time I was so busy and so happy at once.

What I have done so far:

• Explored limits of Arabic typography on the web
• Helped to launch redesignarabia.com
• Saw Zaid and the Wings + Mashrou Leila in concert
• Made friends with the shop keeper around the corner (he teaches me a new Arabic word every time I go there)
• Learned to look at Israel in a different light
• Met the professor who revamped the German Eagle for Berlin
• Refined my understanding of the common roots of Judaism, Christianity and Islam
• Built timelinesystem.com for my friend Marian Misiak
• Developed a liking for running in the morning
• Conducted a photoshoot for a German Band at Jerash Festival
• Convinced a taxi driver that I speak Arabic, even though I don’t
• Found out that people in their mid-20s are a lot of fun
• Kind of recruited a new flatmate
• Reimagined loyalty cards
• Visited art exhibits of my super cool co-workers
• Gone to a party in the U.S. Embassy (it is a fortress!)
• Learned to appreciate Ramadan
• Became a city guide for our new Norwegian flatmate
• Converted Photoshop files into websites
• Understood the basic concepts behind Quartz Composer
• Had a barbecue in the northern forests
• Learned that California ≠ the brave new world
• Saw more big expensive cars in three months than my entire life
• Got a haircut without any communication between me and the hair dresser
• Endured 43° Celsius

This list could contain many more items – nonetheless I hope I made my point clear – Amman is unlike any other place I have been to, especially when it comes to my subjective impression of time.

Over the past 21 days it has been awfully quiet around here. I am almost three weeks behind on my writing schedule and plan to make up for that. It seems as if Ramadan did not only affect the people around me … In fact the change in daily routine was a welcome relief from the past 18 years of sameness in daily habit.

Let’s take a step back for those not so familiar with Ramadan itself. Ramadan is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar and marks a 29 or 30 day (depending on the moon cycle) fasting period in commemoration of the revelation of the first verses of Qur’an to Prophet Mohammed. During this time everyone practicing Islam refrains from food, drink, smoking and sexual activity between sunrise and sunset. The goal of Ramadan is to teach Moslims about spirituality, patience and sincerity.

A first-hand impression of Ramadan is one of the many unique experiences I have had during my stay in Jordan. For the first seven days I tried fasting with everybody else. To my surprise, it was not as challenging to abstain from food and drink during the daylight hours as I expected.Fighting off the urge to have a glass of water in the morning was probably the most difficult thing. On the first two days I had doubts whether or not I could make it past midday.It did not take long until I got to know the black hole forming in my stomach – everyday between 11am and 1pm – and learned to distract myself from it by doing some coding exercises or photoshop tasks. At some point during the day hunger and thirst disappear anyway.

Nonetheless, breaking the fasting - also known as Iftar - ended up being the highlight of every day. Unless you have fasted yourself, there probably is no way you can imagine how good the Iftar meal tastes – I got to try it in three different places.

First Ibrahim and I went to an Egyptian Pizzeria on Rainbow Street. We made the big mistake to take the first sip of Pepsi while they were still reciting some verses of Qur’an – before the actual prayer that ends fasting for the day. We earned some angry looks from the tables close by, but nobody said anything. The Pizza was good though.

The second time it was Marian and I at a traditional restaurant in Downtown Amman. We were served a real fancy Iftar dinner based on the recommendations of a Syrian man at the table next to us. All dishes were exquisite – as a matter of fact they were more than we could eat. I felt kind of guilty afterwards.

The third time I had the Iftar meal was at a small diner on Jabal Hussein. While nothing fancy, the food was great. We ordered falafel, hummus, minced chicken liver and some kind of tomato stew all of which was delicious. Marian and I were the only people there because many consider they food they make too plain for Iftar – which is hard to understand for me, because it was so good.

Eventually I returned to a normal eating schedule – with a little help from my lunch-mates at the office. It turned out that all the nice little food places that we ordered from before, were now closed during the day – which left only bigger fast-food chains as an option. For two weeks it was fine – but right now I am very full of anything that looks even remotely like a Big Mac or a Whopper.

Time is flying by and I cannot believe that Ramadan is over already and that there are just four weeks left before I have to go back to Germany.

I had a couple of really nice days of Eid ul-Fitr (the celebration of the end of Ramadan) – it has certain advantages to be able to eat on the street before sunset, do barbecues in the northern forests and so on … However, I did enjoy Ramadan quite a bit.

3500 kilometers South of where I am, people are starving to death. 2000 kilometers to the East Sheikhs are errecting skyscrapers that span beyond anyone’s imagination – cooled down to a freezing 15° Celsius while the desert sun is blazing outside. 2000 kilometers westward the United Nations are bombing the crap out of Libya in the name of “Human Rights”. 250 kilometers to the North, a President is killing his own people.

Eleven years into the 21st century, and I am not quite sure if we are on the right track.

It feels strange to be in Jordan right now, for these are difficult times. I can see it the peoples’ faces. They are glad that everything stayed so calm in the Hashemite Kingdom but worried about what is happening in Syria, in Egypt, in Libya and how it will affect their country in the near future. Nobody knows where the Middle East is headed. Some dream of free Arab nations, others predict chaos followed by religious radicalization.

After one month in Jordan the world around me is starting to make sense. Although I enjoyed my stay here from the beginning, it has taken until now to discover what it is that makes this place so special. Everything feels more real. People are down-to-earth, honest and true to themselves - at least those I have met. And most importantly: They mean what they say. It is a new – a different kind of hospitality that I am experiencing here – it comes from inside. Something that most of the modern world seems to be lacking. And by the way, the food here is delicious …

On this note I urge each and everyone of you to step out of your comfort zone once in a while. Go explore the world! Not everything you will see will make you smile. Not everything you hear will make you laugh. Not everything you do will make you happy. Nevertheless, everything you experience should make you a more open-minded person. It is crucial that we develop a mutual understanding between the people of the world. The only way to accomplish this is by promoting dialog. We have to regain our ability to listen, to comprehend. We have to be mindful of the world as a whole and shape our awareness accordingly.

Right now globalization is mainly present in the form of cheap goods manufactured in low-wage countries – it should, however, be an exchange rather than a zero-sum game with one party taking away from another.

1. Growth Modern Day Amman is barely 100 years old. The city first flourished when the Ottoman Empire built a railroad connecting Istanbul and Medina in 1908. A century later, between 2.8 and 3.5 million people call Amman their home. With an estimated 6.5 million citizens in 2025, it is one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the world.

2. Traffic It takes a lot of confidence to cross the street in Amman. Your best bet for making it to the other side alive is to simply cross – never ever stop. Lanes virtually do not exist. The right of way is dispensed on a first-come, first-served basis. Seat belts are under-appreciated by the majority of people. Expensive cars from Saudi Arabia are everywhere, and most surprisingly, the Jordanian Police drive around in Audi A8s – what a strange world.

3. Footwear A pair of Birkenstock sandals should quickly become the most essential item of attire in my possession. Wearing closed footwear severely lowers the quality of living in a 35+° Celsius environment.

4. Ramadan People are fleeing the country for Ramadan. Apparently, the traditional Islamic fasting period is not the best time for foreigners to be in the city. Restaurants are closed during the day and you cannot eat, drink or smoke on the street (it actually is forbidden by civil law). The entire public life is affected. Daytime activities now all take place after sunset. To me it is a cultural experience.

5. Climate Even though the temperature can easily reach 40+° Celsius (not to mention the 13 hours of sunshine in addition to zero precipitation) during the summer, there is a realistic chance to experience frost in Amman during the winter. On average the temperature falls below the freezing point six times a year.

6. Water At our apartment we only get running water once a week. Jordan is one of the most water scarce countries in the world – therefore showers must not take long, we only turn on the washing machine on Wednesdays, and doing the dishes with the least amount of water possible has turned into a personal challenge for me. This definitely taught me a lot about how restrained natural resources can impact daily life. I also discovered that carbonated water makes me feel a little homesick.

7. Language Skills To my surprise almost everyone in Jordan speaks English – very well actually. There is virtually no language barrier.

8. Blocks Amman is divided into East and West. Not surprisingly, this divide reflects upon society. The western part of Amman is much more Westernized – McDonaldization is ever present here. Whereas the eastern side is more traditional – it has maintained its strong Middle Eastern identity.

9. Globalization Oreos, Mountain Dew, KFC – I did not expect to find them in the Middle East. As a matter, of fact they put me in a melancholic state of mind. It has been a while since I was in the States and had all these things.

10. Call to Prayer Five times a day Adhān – the Muezzin’s call to prayer – echoes over the rooftops. This is certainly something you have to experience yourself. For a couple of minutes city life seems to slow down. It gave me the feeling that I have arrived in a different world.

Companies like TypeKit and FontShop offer their customers painless integration of these new webfonts into their websites. There are hundreds of typefaces available but till today there is no real Arabic webfont.

Over the last two weeks I have been trying to create an Arabic webfont. What started as a little task Ibrahim had given me on the first day of my internship at SYNTAX, quickly became an ambitious side project of Hussein Alazaat and me.

First of all, we had to find a typeface that works well on screen. There are not actually that many fonts designed for this purpose and there are even less Arabic fonts of that kind. In addition to that I cannot read Arabic characters nor do I know the rules of Arabic script – this was Husseins job. In the end it came down to two fonts: One named Marwan and another called Al Kharashi.

That next and supposably final step should have been to have these fonts automatically converted into the four different webfont formats. There is this handy utility called FontSquirrel and it did exactly that. However, there is one major problem with their type of conversion: The individual characters are disconnected. Arabic script is caseless but cursive: Therefore each character has to be availaible in three versions depending on whether it is in the beginning, middle or end of a word.

The second attempt lead us to various online forums in which we found detailed descriptions and multiple tools for the semi-manual conversion of TrueType fonts to WebFonts. Yet again it did not give us the desired results: Most characters were connected but some of them were missing completely for reasons still unknown.

In a third and desparate attempt we began to look at the encoding of the individual fonts. For those of you who do not know what this means: Each character has a unique code that tells the computer when to use it. We tried to change the encoding by hand to get different results, but again, it did not prove succesful.

Only then did we try one of the most complete font families in the world, Nimbus Sans by URW++, and voila it worked – the issue here: the result does not make sense at all …

I have to admit that I am a little disappointed with the outcome: It looks like there is no way to create a fully functional Arabic webfont (without the help of black magic as it seems to be practiced by the creators of Nimbus) as of today.

Update: Ibrahim found a solution! TypeFront is service that helps you convert regular fonts to web fonts and provides hosting for them as well. So far it has been working with all Arabic fonts that we tried. Even though, it is not clear how they convert the fonts – must be a different tool/algorithm – it is good to see that somebody cares about non-latin stuff. They have a free offer (1 font + 500 requests/day) and payed plans that allow for more. Give it a try! It might be just what you are looking for.