sami's pad

live writer

2006-08-17T16:32:00.000+05:00

MS has launched a new application called "live writer", a stand-alone app targetted at writing and publishing blogs (for now atleast)

There are several cool things about it is including support for blogger (and others) and a WYSIWYG version blog editor, which means you can see exactly what your blog post will end up with. There is even control for resizing and controlling embedded images! This is a far cry from Blogger's editor which makes formatting posts a real pain

One thing I can't get to work is the "Update weblog style" menu option, which should, in theory, let me update the CSS and layout of my page

live writer is definitely the first usable app to come out of MS's live effort - it is purported to be written by JJ Allaire, who wrote ColdFusion

It's a must try-out - link to app

khi on pot

2006-08-09T15:46:00.000+05:00

This poster is installed somewhere in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city. The poster shows a finger-pointing Amitabh in front of the national flag. And this is a really weird thing to print, put on a poster and install since Bachan is an Indian actor and the two countries are bitter and sworn enemies having fought many small and a couple of large wars. India still things the partition of British India into two countries was unjustifed and considers Pakistan as part of "Akhand (United) India"

To make the crazy matter even crazier, Bachan is pointing towards the people in the style of the US's Uncle Sam calling, "Your country needs you" - or maybe he is just saying something else like "I need your movie tickets" or "I want my Akhand Bharat" or .....

[Update: A friend informed me that this is a "Calling Card" company's billboard advert, but still....]

zidane song

2006-08-03T11:24:00.000+05:00

To most people, the most memorable moment from the Football World Cup of 06 was Zidane's beautiful :) headbutt - even the Italians may remember it longer than their Cup win

A day after the loss, a couple of French jingle recording artists made their own Carribean inspired song titled "Coup de Boule" or "the headbutt", recored in just half an hour and emailed to friends. A few hours later, it was a national hit and the producers received an offer from Warner Bros. for commercial rights to the song

The song goes something like:

The guido, he was hurt
Zidane hit [him]
The Italian's not doing well
Zidane slapped [him]
.....
Zidane, he hit [him], Zidane, he slapped [him] (Headbutt!) 4x

Links to offical site (in french) and full translation here (unofficial)

my house

2006-06-28T15:09:00.000+05:00

drawAhouse.com is a pretty cool web app where you can draw and paint a house of your own, answer a few questions and read up on your personality

It has been dugg and bbc'd and is pretty popular with quite a few houses being added every hour

I never thought drawing and painting a kiddie house on the PC would be so much fun

As far as the personality test, who does'nt like praiseworthy words like "you ought to be a leader. You are a freedom lover and a strong person" etc. but most of the comments *were* pretty close (Am I making the common blogger mistake of giving away too much about oneself?) - anyway here is the link to my house

banned!

2006-06-07T15:54:00.000+05:00

The Da Vinci Code, the movie has been banned in Pakistan. The ban follows similar bans in different states of neighboring India

The image states in Roman Punjabi "The Code of Vinci" (Roman means Punjabi written using Roman / English letters) - its funny in Punjabi, one of the most widely spoken languages in the subcontinent of Pakistan-India

googoosh

2006-05-31T22:28:00.000+05:00

Googoosh is one of Iran's most popular singers. Born in 1951, she started her career as a singer in the late 60's and appeared on TV and live until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. She currently lives in Iran

Here is a video clip of one of her most famous songs "Man Amade am" which means "I am coming" (I think). The video quality is pretty bad but you can see why she was (and still is) so popular

links to official site and wikipedia article

always look on the bright side of life....

2006-05-30T23:16:00.000+05:00

Did I mention I am a huge Monty Python fan? Monty Python is the name of a troupe of 6 guys who performed a weekly show on the BBC in the late 60's and early 70's. Many of today's comedians profess to derive their inspiration from MP including Trey and Matt, the creators of South Park (link to their tribute) and Shoaib Mansoor (not a comedian though) who created the iconic Fifty Fifty for Pakistan TV in the 80's

Following is a song played at the end from their 1979 film "Life of Brian" which is on many people's and polls' fave of all time lists. This is the end of the film and the protagonist, Brian Cohen (not the singer) is being crucifed, albeit softly by the Romans (link opens in new window/tab)

'Some things in life are bad,'
'They can really make you mad,'
'Other things just make you swear and curse,'
'When you're chewing on life's gristle,'
'Don't grumble, give a whistle,'
'And this'll help things turn out for the best, and...'

links to official site, wikipedia article and videos on youtube

the cult of the fox

2006-05-28T17:00:00.000+05:00

The Firefox logo resembles a nebula!!

Found story here

NASA image here (rotated)

mcPhee

2006-05-18T18:27:00.000+05:00

Katherine McPhee is the 24 year old finalist of American Idol's Season 5 (ending May 2006) (links to idol and wikipedia pages)

On May 2, she sang what is now my fave performance from the show, "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" which was originally sung by some singer called KT Tunstall

Youtube and Google Video are very religious about DRM so they won't let people upload the video. I found it on a new site here. There is also an audio mp3 recording here - let me know if any of these links are broken.

bbc's messup

2006-05-17T11:11:00.000+05:00

Recently, the BBC decided to interview Gyu Kewney (link to his blog), a technology magazine editor to talk on a court case where Apple computers is the defendant

Unfortunately for the news channel, they ended up interviewing the wrong guy, Guy Goma, an IT guy belonging to the Congo. Newspapers mistakenly reported him as being a taxi driver who had driven up Kewney and was waiting for the fare

Mr Goma is a little confused at the start but when his name and profile is announced, his surprise is priceless - link to video

Karen Bowerman: Guy Kewney is editor of the technology website Newswireless.

Mr Goma: (face of horror)

KB: Hello, good morning to you.

Mr Goma: Good morning.

KB: Were you surprised by this verdict today.

Mr Goma: I am very surprised to see... this verdict to come on me because I was not expecting that. When I came they told me something else and I am coming. So a big surprise anyway.

KB: A big surprise, yeah, yes.

Mr Goma: Exactly.

(transcript source)

Kewney writes about the incident in his blog - only he shows his racist side in it - repeated references to Goma as being black and him being "pink" - Kewney writes that he lost his 2 minutes of fame by not appearing on the BBC's show but by writing in racist tones about the incident, he has damaged his own reputation irreparably - he has been throughly berated on the comment area of his blog

Goma, meanwhile, has turned into something of an internet celebrity, (like William Hung or Mahir Cagri) with people from USA to Russia to Japan linking to him. I wonder when we will see a website dedicated to him coming up? guygoma.com has already been registered on the 16th of May, '06 - the interview was conducted around the 9th - already we can see "remixes" of the interview doing the rounds, you can keep account of most of them by searching for the right tags at youtube

The BBC decided to interview both Guys again and ask them about the interview which has made unexpected celebrities from both

words usage

2006-05-13T20:10:00.000+05:00

George Orwell, the political & cultural commentator and accomplished novelist lived from 1903 to 1950. He wrote a very interesting article on how the language is used to mollify or glorify mundane or undesirable news.

"Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

link to full article, wikipedia summary

This is very relevent today too with the different language used by the mainstream media specially when they are reporting news w.r.t Israel vs Palestine or Iraq

George Orwell wrote many novels including the excellent 1984 and Animal Farm

another techie idea

2006-05-11T15:26:00.000+05:00

Someone has come up with this idea of linking buildings (and other physical locations) around the world with wikipedia articles describing them, with the help of an ISBN like machine readable tags

They have a pretty readable explanation at the site - it goes like this

1. 2. You are in Austria and you want to visit the Presidential Palace

Someone pastes the machine readable tag near the building, you read it off the page using your cell phone and voila, you get the URL on your cell phone's browser....

come to think of it, would'nt it be better just to have a tinyurl link to the wikipedia article on this piece of paper?

link

What if...

2006-05-10T18:01:00.000+05:00

This is one of those stories that newspapers keep printing just for the sake of filling up their pages - here they discuss some "moral dilemmas" which some so-called philosophers with too much time on their hands came up with

The best part of the article is the reader's comments - go through the article and then the comments - this is the first example I have seen a conventional story has been made readable through some witty comments

link

so true

2006-05-09T13:04:00.000+05:00

This makes so much sense now - only about 10-15 years ago, I would have thought "What is Calvin's dad talking about?"

freelove highway

2006-04-28T13:21:00.000+05:00

The Office ran on BBC from 2001 to 2003 - it was aired on a cable channel here in South Asia last year. Ricky Gervais(the guy who plays the obnoxious PHB, David Brent, the guy who sings the song in this video) created one of the funniest and most original comedy shows on TV.
[Note:There is some slight profanity in the audio]

mahna mahna

2006-04-26T16:04:00.000+05:00

Warning: This song will be going on in your head for many days to come

carla khan

2006-04-26T14:00:00.000+05:00

This is not Martina Hingis, she is Carla Khan, Pakistan's answer to, well, Martina Hingis I guess, only she plays the much tougher game of squash. Half-British, half-Pakistani and living in London, she holds a British passport but plays for Pakistan.

At 24 years she is currently ranked #37. She belongs to Nawai Kalli, literally "New Village", a town near Peshawar, Pakistan. Most of Pakistan and also world champions in the world of men's squash belong to this small town. Carla's father and grandfather were champions and so was Jansher Khan, who along with Jahangir Khan ruled men's squash for over 20 years till the late '90s

She is a point of some controversy since she plays in the regulation short skirts in international tournaments and now in Pakistan too, thanks to the "moderately englightened" regime of Pakistan President Gen Musharraf. Carla belongs to the fiercely conservative area of N.W.F.P where women always wear long, looses sheets of cloth, called a "chador". Some even wear the "shuttlecock burqa". Supporters say that we should be proud of the fact that she plays for her father's country, Pakistan, inspite of the fact she can just as easily play for England

Links to Carla's homepage, an article from Dec 2005 and current world ranking - note she represents Pakistan and of course, photos :)

"fraggle rocks" rocks!

2006-04-25T23:03:00.000+05:00

Anyone remembers this from their childhood? This used to play on PTV back in the early 80's and was always a fave with all of us kids

dance your cares away (clap clap)
worries for another day
and let the music play (clap clap)
down at fraggle rock.....

aj int

2006-04-24T12:18:00.000+05:00

[Updated 20 Nov '06]
(Have added links related to AJI):

. Al-Jazeera was launched 15 Nov 2005 at 1200 hrs GMT - the main wesbite has been revamped and there is a live stream available - it's much better than the usual mainstream news channels but it seems to be a diluted form of what most people were expecting - a major news item was the "Darfur Crisis" without going into the power game being played there by the major world powers and they kept calling it the "seperation barrier", not "the wall" as any fair and balanced individual would call it.....

. Voohoo!! Aljazeera English is scheduled to start from 15 Nov 2006, two ads on their test video broadcast have been running for a few months - thanks Faz

. News related to Al-Jazeera International

. Control Room - documentary on the channel, the one that introduced John Rushing (more on him below)

. AJI may not be the independent news channel it touts and we want it to be - link

. Friends of AJI - Blog related to AJI news - updated regularly

Al Jazeera, the Arabic language channel is going international. And this time they are pulling put all the stops. They have attracted some of the best known faces in international news from BBC, CNN, ABC and others It is supposed to start in June 2006 and test transmissions have reportedly started in March 2006. It will also offer "simultaneous translations" in Urdu, as a result of which around 500 million people in India and Pakistan will also be able to see and understand the news channel. Al Jazeera International, as it will be called, is based in Malaysia and will have bureaus around the world. Some of the most famous people are listed below:

Sir David Frost is a well known British broadcaster with over 30 years of experience. He is best known for the "Breakfast with Frost" program, broadcast by the BBC. Links to: Profile of Frost on the BBC, and wikipedia - Interview with NYT on why Frost joined Al Jazeera

Stephen Cole is the well-known anchor of BBC's ClickOnline. In Aug 2005, he announced his move to Al-Jazeera as their lead male anchor person. He claimed earlier this year that the show's popularity had made him a star abroad. "When I go abroad, I get mobbed. It's a joke but in Bangalore I can't leave the hotel. Hong Kong and Tokyo are difficult, too." Link to Cole's profile on BBC and wikipedia, - on why he moved to Al Jazeera

John Rushing is a former US Marine Captain who was one of the spokesmen for Centcom during the Iraq war. links to why Rushing moved to Al-Jazeera, radio interview on NPR, personal homepage, Al-Jazeera's global mission, an article about Rushing

Veronica Pedrosa is a well known reporter on CNN. She won the "Best News Anchor" award at the Asian Television Awards in 2004 for her work on CNN International - link to profile on CNN

Rageh Omaar was the face of BBC during the US led invasion of Iraq and became a household name during that period. link to profile and article on Omaar at BBC and UK's Times

Riz Khan was a reporter for CNN during which time he also covered the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia. link to Riz Khan's homepage and an article and on why he decided to move to Al Jazeera (requires subscription), Excerpt: "Former CNN International anchor Riz Khan explains: "Al-Jazeera International provides the ideal vehicle to bridge gaps between communities in the East and West. ... I'm fully aware of the negative image of the Al Jazeera brand in the U.S., especially at the government level, but I think part of that comes from a misunderstanding of the strong cultural position the Arabic-language channel has among the average people of the Middle East. It is extremely popular for being outspoken not only about the West but also about Arab governments.""

David Marash is the well known and well respected co-presenter of Nightline on ABC, the US TV channel. He faced a lot of criticism for the switch since he is also Jewish. link to Marash's profile on ABC and on why he joined Al Jazeera

Barbara Serra is a former reporter with Sky News, Five News, CNN and the BBC. She is of Italian origin and lived most of her early life in Denmark. She is also a former Miss Italy, so that may help attracting many more viewers to her weekend newscast :) - link to wikipedia profile

Shahnaz Pakravan is a journalist who is a prominent figure in Middle Eastern and British media circles through her work with the BBC and ITN, including Arab World Direct and Tomorrow's World. She will be hosting "Everywoman", where "Shahnaz and her team will bring viewers around the world stories that have universal appeal with subjects as diverse and sensitive as religion, society, sex, education and arts, all from women's perspectives." - link to story

Richard Gizbert is a well-known face on ABC News where he is a correspondent in the London bureau since 1993. Since then Gizbert has reported abroad on many of the major international stories such as the conflicts in Iraq and the continuing unrest in the Middle East. Gizbert was dismissed by ABC for refusing to cover the war in Iraq; he fought the dismissal in court and won. link to profile on ABC, link to court story

Felicity Barr, a specialist sports journalist had been working with ITV before moving to AlJazeera - link to ITV profile and wikipedia article

Amanda Palmer, hottie/journalist :), presents the "48" show/programme for AJI. "Through the personal stories of local guides, intrepid reporter Amanda Palmer and the crew have just 48 hours to find the beating heart of their chosen city." Amanda Palmer has worked for CNN, APTV and others. Links to a news item on her announcement to join AJI, her profile on AJI and the programme 48

Meanwhile, suspected Al Jazeera reporters have repeatedly been beaten up by the "Allied forces" in Iraq, Tareq Ayyoub was killed by a missile in 2003 and Taseer Allouni was sentenced in Spain for "collaboration with the 9/11 hijackers" but their news was mostly ignored by the international media. Now with a roster of news stars like these, most news channels will have a hard time hiding the "other side of the story"

There is a Secret World.....

2006-04-21T18:37:00.000+05:00

not sure about the source, reminds of The Alchemist

"The lives we lead, and the lives we wish we led.

This world, the so-called “real world,” is just a front. Pull back the curtain and you’ll see the libraries are all filled with runaways writing novels, the highways are humming with escapees and sympathizers, all the receptionists and sensible mothers are straining at the leash for a chance to show how alive they still are. . . and all that talk of practicality and responsibility is just threats and bluffing to keep us from reaching out our hands to find that heaven lies in reach before us.

You can taste it in the shock and roar of a first, unexpected kiss, or in the blood in your mouth that instant after an accident when you realize you’re still alive. It blows in the wind you feel on the rooftops of a really reckless night of adventure. You hear it in the magic of your favorite songs, how they lift and transport you in ways that no science or psychology could ever account for. It might be you’ve seen evidence of it scratched into bathroom walls in a code without a key, or you’ve been able to make out a pale reflection of it in the movies they make to keep us entertained. It’s in between the words when we speak of our desires and aspirations, still lurking somewhere beneath the limitations of being “practical” and “realistic.”

When poets and radicals stay up until sunrise, wracking their brains for the perfect sequence of words or deeds to fill hearts (or cities) with fire, they’re trying to find a hidden entrance to it. When children escape out the window to go wandering late at night, or freedom fighters search for a weakness in government fortifications, they’re trying to sneak into it—for they know better than us where the doors are hidden. When teenagers vandalize a billboard to provoke all-night chases with the police, or anarchists interrupt an orderly demonstration to smash the windows of a corporate chain store, they’re trying to storm its gates.

When you’re making love and you discover a new sensation or region of your lover’s body, and the two of you feel like explorers discovering a new part of the world on a par with a desert oasis or the coast of an unknown continent, as if you are the first ones to reach the north pole or the moon, you are charting its frontiers.

It’s not a safer place than this one—on the contrary, it is the sensation of danger there that brings us back to life: the feeling that for once, for one moment that seems to eclipse the past and future, there is something real at stake.

Maybe you stumbled into it by accident, once, amazed at what you found. The old world splintered behind and inside you, and no physician or metaphysician could put it back together again. Everything before became trivial, irrelevant, ridiculous as the horizons suddenly telescoped out around you and undreamt-of new paths offered themselves. And perhaps you swore that you would never return, that you would live out the rest of your life electrified by that urgency, in the thrill of discovery and transformation—but return you did.

Common sense dictates that this world can only be experienced temporarily, that it is just the shock of transition, and no more; but the myths we share around our fires tell a different story: we hear of women and men who stayed there for weeks, years, who never returned, who lived and died there as heroes. We know, because we feel it in that atavistic chamber of our hearts that holds the memory of freedom from a time before time, that this secret world is near, waiting for us. You can see it in the flash in our eyes, in the abandon of our dances and love affairs, in the protest or party that gets out of hand.

You’re not the only one trying to find it. We’re out here, too . . . some of us are even waiting there for you. And you should know that anything you’ve ever done or considered doing to get there is not crazy, but beautiful, noble, necessary.

Revolution is simply the idea we could enter that secret world and never return; or, better, that we could burn away this one, to reveal the one beneath entirely."

link

nevashut

2006-04-18T22:14:00.000+05:00

This is a really interesting game - it was launched by Pringles, the chips makers for a promotion campaign but it's still very playable

(You need a high speed connection to play it though)

siachen story

2006-04-17T19:45:00.000+05:00

I heard this story a long time ago from my uncle who served as an SSG (Special Services Group) officer at Siachen Glacier in the '80s and '90s. The SSG is the equivalent of US's Navy Seals or Britan's SAS, commonly called Commandos. Siachen Glacier is the highest (~5400m high) and most inhospitable fighting ground in the world, located in North Pakistan & India. More soldiers have died there from frostbite than conflict since the battle for the Glacier erupted between Pakistan and India in 1984.

I was reminded today again by another ex-SSG soldier who had served in Siachen immediately after the incident occured in 1986. The story is of one of the greatest soldiers to fight and die in Siachen, remembered and honored by both sides, Lance Subedar Ata Mohammed, Shaheed. "Shaheed" means "martyred" and is commonly suffixed to the name of any man or woman who has died in the line of duty, usually while fighting. (The facts of the story may be slightly incorrect, if any reader spots any mistakes, please let me know)

In 1986, India launched an offensive to occupy a strategic post called controlled by Pakistan called Quaid post, named after the founder of the latter country. The massive offensive managed to dislodge all soldiers, leaving only Ata Mohammed and two other soldiers under his command to fight it out. Ata Mohammed managed to convey to the local commander, a General reportedly, the need for ammunation. The General declined, citing logistical problems. Ata Mohammed ordered the other two soldiers to leave. They refused initially but he ordered them to obey. Ata Mohammed was left to fend for himself and with a broken arm and leg, and inspite of an offer of surrender, decided to fight it to the last.

The Indian Army took his body and alongwith his few belongings, including rings etc. transported his body in a coffin to the Wagah border in South-East Pakistan. When handing over the body only, they insisted that Ata Mohammed be awarded the Nihsan-e-Haider, Pakistan's highest military gallantry award, in recognition of his tremendous bravery.

The Pakistan government, however, gave him a lower award, probably preferring not to politicize the defeat in Siachen.

sandra

2006-04-17T11:41:00.000+05:00

Photoblogger Sam Jevanrouh has posted another great pic, this time of a friend Sandra - click the pic to see a bigger image

"the subject of this photo is Sandra, and this is a surprise birthday present for her best frined Masa who lives in Italy and is a daily visitor of ddoi. Sandra contacted me with this idea and I found it very unusual and unique so I accepeted. The day we went shooting it started raining and I was lucky to have a plastic bag on me to protect my camera while shooting. so this is what I came up with. She's inside the bus shelter and I'm shooting from outside." - link

maya nurbs modeling tutorial

2006-04-12T20:20:00.000+05:00

My google video on 3D modeling a wine glass in Maya is FINALLY online. Tip: Follow the rules, render the video in the format google specifies in the upload page

fastest century

2006-04-11T20:05:00.000+05:00

Afridi does Pakistan proud by scoring the fastest one-day cricket century in history in just 37 balls, beating Sri Lanka's Jayasuriya's 48 ball record and that too in his maiden innings. This is 1996 and Afridi is 16 years old

pirates of the valley

2006-04-03T19:38:00.000+05:00

If you are a techie and you watch one film, make it Pirates of Silicon Valley, a "made for TV film"

Here is a clip near the end of the movie when Steve Jobs confronts Bill Gates, accusing him of stealing his ideas....

the buddhabrot

2006-04-03T11:11:00.000+05:00

The Buddhabrot is a special rendering of the Mandelbrot set, which, when "traditionally" oriented, resembles to some extent certain depictions of the Buddha. When viewed "upside-down," it vaguely resembles a human face with large, triangular glasses or goggles over its eyes

link to article and many more pretty renderings

ch ch (tsk tsk)

2006-03-28T17:04:00.001+05:00

The website of FAST NU, an university based in Islamabad was hacked and a not-too-rude message left - this is what the site looked like at 1200 GMT on 28 Mar '06

a kiss on the cheek

2006-03-28T17:04:00.000+05:00

"A Kiss on the Cheek" was penned by a fellow giki alumnus

"I was no different. Having despised arranged marriages with all my body and soul, I was now all set to go home and get married to this I-know-nothing-about girl. Is this where it all ends?"

"'Hey, my wife-to-be is beautiful. OK!!. So is Catherine Zeta Jones and so is that lady who reads the financial news on CNN. Does this mean that now I have to spend the rest of my life with one of them? A big emphatic NO!!!!'"
link

On a related note... (the guy on the left is Asok, an Indian programmer living in USA)

sweet victory

2006-03-17T19:39:00.000+05:00

I am a huge fan of spongebob squarepants, the fantastic "sponge who lives under the sea"

This is my fave moment from the show. It is the last scene from the episode "Band Geeks"

"Squidward gets a call from his high school classmate, Squilliam Fancyson. He's very successful and succeeded in everything that Squidward failed in. He says that Squidward's band has to play instead of his own at the Bubble Bowl, but Squidward doesn't have a band. So he makes one! On the first day of practice, a fight breaks out. On day two, the flag corps twirl the flags around so fast that they propell themselves into the air and crash into a blimp, which explodes. A trumpeter then plays "Taps." On the day of the concert, Squilliam insults the band. Squidward turns his head away from the band before they begin, assuming that the performance will be a disaster, but the band is successful. Amazingly, both Mr. Krabs and Plankton play in the same band during the course of this episode."

they fight crime

2006-03-13T19:24:00.000+05:00

Auto-crime-fighter-duo-punchline generator

"He's a war-weary drug-addicted barbarian on a mission from God. She's a violent kleptomaniac politician in the wrong place at the wrong time. They fight crime!"

"He's an impetuous crooked cat burglar for the 21st century. She's a plucky belly-dancing femme fatale from Mars. They fight crime!"

He's an obese flyboy cyborg on the hunt for the last specimen of a great and near-mythical creature. She's an enchanted motormouth queen of the dead from out of town. They fight crime!

a first

2006-03-13T16:08:00.000+05:00

The rest of the world is constructing tall buildings, Pakistan has decided that it would rather destroy the heavens....
click the image to see the enterprise behind such this ignobile scheme

muslim scientists

2006-03-13T14:15:00.000+05:00

The science textbooks in Pakistan always start off with a chapter on science in Islam and the contribution of Muslim scientists to our understanding of the world and the universe. But like all government approved textbooks, the information is presented in such a droll and boring manner that you don't feel like reading the next paragraph.

The Independent has run a very interesting article on the contribution of Muslim to science. The article is supplements an exhibition, "1001 Inventions" about science in the ancient Muslim world in Manchester, UK.

"The calculations of Muslim astronomers were so accurate that in the 9th century they reckoned the Earth's circumference to be 40,253.4km - less than 200km out. The scholar al-Idrisi took a globe depicting the world to the court of King Roger of Sicily in 1139." The image is of Al-Idrisi's world map from 1154. Note that south is at the top of the map

"In 875, aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles' feathers Abbas ibn Firnas tried again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed aloft for ten minutes". One of the craters on the moon is named after Abbas Ibn Firnas The image is from a US navy site of the Ibn Firnas Crater... yeah, I have no idea either what the Navy has to do with the moon

dubya in pk

2006-03-11T22:02:00.000+05:00

Jon Stewart, host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, which also runs on CNN, joked about Bush's visit to India and Pakistan - link to video

Many of Stewart's shows can be seen on youtube, which seems to be the first serious video publishing & boradcasting site. I wonder how long will it take for yahoo to acquire it.....

A must watch is Stewart's bashing of CNN's Cross Fire show who pride themselves on running a tough, in-your-face kind of program. He talks about how programs like Cross Fire actually help politicians run away with falsehoods due to the hosts's flip-flop interviewing methadology

Jon Stewart gave a commencement speach at his alma-mater in May, 2004 - a transcript is available here which is again a must read

Stewart regularly lampoons the atrocious Bill O' Reilly. The latter was brave enough to come on his show once leading to a very funny interview. Bill O' Reilly once said that the viewers of the Daily Show were "stoned slackers", so someone did some research and guessed what they came up with? Daily Show viewers were the better educated than O' Reilly watchers and knew more about world politics than people who did not watch Daily Show at all

what is a remix

2006-03-08T20:47:00.000+05:00

It's pretty difficult to explain the difference between a good remix and a lame attempt to make a song that sounds similar to the original.

Lame remix attempt:

Jal's original Lamhey and Atif's Bheegi Yadein

True Remix:

Jal's original Aadat and Jal's Bikhra Hoon Main

(a free subscription at sangeetradio is required to download the wma files)

Jal became super-famous for their song "Aadat" in Pakistan in 2002. The lead singer of the band, Atif Aslam, went solo after a highly publicised breakup with half the fans siding with Atif and the other half supporting the writer of the song "Aadat", Goher Mumtaz. Trust a Pakistani not to look at the bigger picture and break off to do their own thing as soon a couple of bucks start pouring in

Atif ripped off quite a few songs and decided to release them as his own, receiving a lot of flak as a result. Most of his songs were badly composed and only his strong, though poorly executed vocals supported the songs

crop circle on ggl

2006-03-07T21:58:00.000+05:00

Came across this on Google's API/Code Blog. Click the image to go to the maps page.

Crop circles are a matter of interest for many people who believe they are either messages by extra-terrestials or the result of unknown atmospheric phenomena - a very good article on crop circles can be seen at wikipedia

the servile indian

2006-03-06T15:39:00.001+05:00

Kipling's take on Clash of the Civilizations.

Its not good for the Christian health to hustle the Asian Brown;
for the Christian riles,
and the Asian smiles
and he weareth the Christian down;
and the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
with the name of the late deceased,
and the epitaph drear,
"A fool lies here, who tried to hustle the east"

Rudyard Kipling

Kipling lived and worked for a long time in what is now Pakistan at the Mayo School of Arts, now called the National College of Arts. At that time, South Asians were supposed to be servile, back-stapping, cheating, lying people. In 1962, an American diplomat, JK Galbraith wrote that an “Indian would kick if you lick (him) and will lick (you) if you kick”.

Remembering the government approved text books which used to teach (read brainwash) us about the "ideology" of Pakistan (muslims are good, hindus evil etc., Pakistan has always been stabbed in the back by India /Afghanistan /Iran /USA etc.), the message that used to come across was that Pakistanis, being Muslims, have always been very brave and confident, whereas the Indians have always been a conniving, cheating people. A chapter in my 9th grade history book told the true story of Shiva Ji who convinced Afzal Khan, the leader of an attacking Muslim army to meet him unarmed and the repeatedly stabbed him, thus rendering all Indians/Hindus back-stabbers for life in the eyes of all Pakistanis/Muslims

This kind of thinking led Shaan, a top Pakistani actor to make a film called Moosa Khan (now banned). The film is set "in some time warp suggesting a pseudo colonial subcontinent... Beautiful white doves of peace flutter about in the foreground in idyllic slow motion while an all male choir of angels kicks up a heavenly tune as the audience is introduced to the local Mosque and its saintly Maulvi Mufti.... Meanwhile we are shown that across the way there is a temple where instead of doves of peace, there is a menacing looking python at large along with a group of snarling, drooling old men draped in orange robes, with funky hairstyles who are cringing at the sound of the azaan from the nearby Maulvi." You can read the rest of the excellent review at theHotSpot

This is all fine and dandy but it forced me to think twice when I since I read the story of an officer who fought in the war against India in 1965. He describes about how the Pakistani Army attacked and decimated an Indian platoon and while he was walking about the Indian corpses, a fallen Indian soldier suddenly held his leg and shouted out, "Mubarik ho Sir! Aap ne Hindustan kee behtareen paltan tabah kar dee hai" (Congratulations Sir! You have just managed to destroy only the best platoon in all of India). The officer says he was amazed by the bravery of this young man, who was half-dead and defeated but still talked with such courage. Hopefully, I will come across this anecdote again and mention the reference. If any reader knows about it, please do let me know

gmail rss feed

2006-03-06T12:53:00.000+05:00

If you cannot access gmail from your machine (due to corporate/ISP policy etc.) you can atleast read your mailbox by subscribing to gmail's RSS feed

Subscribe to https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom using an RSS reader, I use bloglines and you can read all those important messages you are missing

no blogs in PK

2006-03-06T11:19:00.000+05:00

*.blogspot.com was blocked in Pakistan immediately before and during Bush's visit to Pakistan on 4-5 March.

What the n00bs who executed the dumb ban did not know was that you still publish and update your blog since blogger.com is used to write/edit your blog and myName.blogspot.com is used to view it, so you could still rant/rave/abuse all you wanted to, only you could not see it with your own eyes

News reports have stated that the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered the block because a couple of blogs on blogspot.com were hosting the blasphemous caricatures.

"Attorney General for Pakistan, Makhdoom Ali Khan was directed by the apex court to consult technical experts for internet laws as to how the order of the court may be implemented and come up on the next date of hearing."

I am pretty sure the "technical experts" were doofuses with post-grad degrees in some coversion MIT (Masters in IT) degree from some alleyway in downtown Cyprus. Here in Pakistan, a "foreign kee degree" with zilch knowledge is worth much more than a local degree with good IT/CS know-how, specially for a "gore-mant" job

The ban has been lifted, now that Bush has left. This leaves a big question mark as to the real reason of the ban. Maybe in their super-conspiratorial frame of mind, the government imagined that a "fundo" would get his motivation for an attack from ABC.blogspot.com.... unbelievable!!

pirate booty

2006-02-28T22:02:00.000+05:00

c& search

2006-02-28T20:39:00.000+05:00

This seems too good to be true

Search C&H comics based on the words in the text

google maps at night, sailor's delight?

2006-02-28T19:56:00.000+05:00

A Georgia Tech PhD student has a site that displays the earth at night. He has used night-time satellite imagery from NASA and uses Google Maps to manage the maps. It looks really beautiful. Check it out here

Guess which is the darkest continent? :)

This image shows Pakistan and India, the bright lights at the bottom left are Karachi, and there are lights again all the way along the GT road that snakes through the country up-to Peshawar in the North, the other bright spot on the right appears to be Bombay

"The underlying 128 megapixel night imagery from NASA uses a map projection different from Google Maps'. The two are aligned near the NYC-Madrid-Tokyo axis only"

The creator of the site has a very good blog, too, check it out here

ben kingsley comes to pk

2006-02-23T16:54:00.000+05:00

Ben Kinglsey, the British actor was in Pakistan recently to make a documentary about the catastrophics Oct 8, 2005 quake that killed over 80K people in the northern regions. The newspapers and the media were luke-warm about his visit, considering the madness that breaks out whenever Lara Croft comes over in person as a UN goodwill ambassador.

Jolie was here in May '05 on her second trip to the country and the PM decided to ask her for a stroll in the meticulous PM house lawns - the PM house, mind you, like the President House, is more of a palace. That time she was there to raise awareness about the tens of thousands Afghan refugess languishing in camps in northern Pakistan. I wonder what she thought of the country and its rulers when she saw the poverty among refugess and ordinary people and was then faced with ostentatious chandeliers, bullet-proof Mercs and ready-to-fly choppers

The next time she was here with beau Brad Pitt in Nov 2005 and this time all hell broke loose. Ministers, beaurocrats and all their minions were salivating at the thought of being in the company of the actress - an op-ed in a national newspaper described the full horror of the visit

patenting code

2006-02-23T16:29:00.000+05:00

We thought we had dinosaurs here in Pakistan in tech-related organizations, the US Patent Office seems to have its fair share of goons who approved each and everthing that came their way

Someone let Adobe patent tabbed browing, I guess I will have to pay a royalty everytime i click Ctrl-T in my Firefox

Seems like the patent granting officer was really high on dope/acid/sugar&coffee when he gave the A-OK for this gem:

#6055910: Toy gas fired missile and launcher assembly - "A toy gas-fired missile and launcher assembly whose missile is composed of a soft head and a tail extending therefrom formed by a piston.....To operate the assembly, the operator places the inlet tube with its valve open adjacent his anal region from which a colonic gas is discharged" - link

More crazy patented ideas here

Civic vs GTTi

2006-02-23T12:51:00.000+05:00

[Update: the video was made by Bilal, brother of fellow blogger Usman Ilyas, on Constitution Avenue, Islamabad]

This video has been doing the rounds here in PK - it shows a Charade GTTi overtaking a Honda Civic Vti (sorry for the bad quality; Bilal, next time take a better camera)

Honda Civic is a fashionable car wanted by almost everyone who can (and cannot) afford it here in Pakistan - many hours are spent everyday by enthusiasts (who have nothing better to do) debating how a Toyota Corolla in city XYZ overtook a Civic Vti in a race

Daihatsu Charade GTTi is an older model of the hatchback that has a super-charged engine and was a very desirable car by late-teens everywhere about a decade ago

old internet

2006-02-22T14:54:00.000+05:00

Waybackmachine lets you "browse through 55 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago"

Click the image to see the page

(12/02/98)

The images load very slowly, so be prepared for it...

political satire

2006-02-21T20:53:00.000+05:00

Found a very good source for political satire - bendib

© bendib.com

isloo/pindi in high-res

2006-02-16T15:32:00.000+05:00

Google Earth now has high-resolution satellite imagery of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan in addition to Karachi too

See if you can identify the following places (hover over the image to see it's name):

destructive hackers

2006-02-14T15:45:00.000+05:00

This is a chat transcript that shows why it's no good to try and "hack" systems without an inkling of how PC's work...

link

I remember how girls (usually) used to come online on our IRC channel at giki and ask dumb questions like "I have problem with my computer, please help fix me" or something and the response would consist of carefully spelled out steps with an instruction to click Alt-F4 in the middle...

caricature blasphemy

2006-02-10T19:12:00.000+05:00

In addition to the peaceful protests, physical attacks on the Danish and other European embassies & economic boycotts, cyber-attacks have also been launched at many European websites, specially those with the .dk domain

Zone-H, a security firm, lists the details of the 1000+ attacks here

One of the most prolific hackers around is the Pakistani group called GForce Pakistan. They were featured on the BBC and were also interviewed by an Indian security website. I am not sure if GForce Pakistan was involved in any of the attacks, they are mostly attributed to script-kiddies

uncyclopedia

2006-02-10T14:21:00.000+05:00

I don't know how I could have missed something as cool and funny as this wiki site - it is a humorous version of the very famous wikipedia and has been running since Jan 2005

The wikipedia article on the site can be seen here

All the articles are monitored by the admins to ensure they follow the rules to good humor: "In essence, written humor is not "Whack-a-mole;" it is more like Tetris."

Browsing it is a *must* for everyone - it features everything from the satirical to the absurd. Some gems I came across in the 5 minutes I browsed:

9/11 (video game) - (9/11 runs as a hacker noobs chat session)

[9/11 Chat session]
*Flirty18 has joined the game*
Flirty18: asl? me: 18/f/Kabul
fundaMENTALIST: OMG WTF J00 HAV DESECRATED THE HOLY SERVER!!1!1
fundaMENTALIST: J00 MUST PAY FOR YR SIN!`~~!!
*Flirty18 has left the game (kicked: INFIDEL!11!!)*
fundaMENTALIST: pak, u need to Nforce rulz on ur svr
tuPAK: um yah sure right after i patch #Kashmir
fundaMENTALIST: ur svr is full of infidels. u need 2 drop da bomb.
fundaMENTALIST: if u dont i will
tuPAK: how bout u dont. haev this insted
*tuPAK has given GUNS to fundaMENTALIST!*
*tuPAK has given CASH to fundaMENTALIST!*
[9/11 Chat session]

Pakistan:

img © uncyclopedia
“What muslim leader Jinnah made to the Indian subcontinent is somewhat the same as hindu leader Jawaharlal Nehru made to Lord Mountbattens marriage ”~ Oscar Wilde on Pakistan

"The national motto of Pakistan is Allah o mamnunam ki ham bharati nahin hai~, which means, Thank God , we are at least not Indians!"

Metal Gear's Solid Snake:

"I'm going to f** bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f** kill Solid Snake." ~ Steve Ballmer on Solid Snake

"Solid Snake is a crazy dude who has saved the world, like, a bunch of times."

Ducks:

"A Duck is a mythical creature." "Now the word ‘Duck’ is actually an acronym. It stands for Dynamic Uber Commando Koala. Why? Because inside every D.U.C.K is a Dynamic Uber Commando Koala bent on donut domination. They will enslave your donuts and take over the Galaxy."

The Great Pirate-Ninja conflict:

img © uncyclopedia
"It is a proven fact that pirates and ninjas are polar opposites, thusly there is a theory that neither could get along very well with the other. This theory is proven by the fact that there is a war going on, as of this very second waged between both of these great forces." "image: A brave cameraman takes a moment to film some ninjas running over to kill some pirates."

"pretty" zinta

2006-02-09T21:35:00.000+05:00

Did i mention I am a big fan of Preity Zinta, the Indian movies actress (yeah, Bollywood sounds lame!!)

More here and here

Finally, it's refreshing to see a picture of an Indian actress that does not make you cringe

john carmack on mobile games

2006-02-09T19:27:00.000+05:00

John Carmack is the head of id software, the people who created Wolf3D, Quake, Doom and of course Commander Keen

I was very happy to find out he writes a blog, but it turns out he has only 2 entries... well, so much for the good news

His writings about mobile gaming is very interesting - keep in mind he is the guy who almost single-handidly invented 3D gaming and the market for high-end graphics cards

Click the picture to see a photostream of Carmack's team preparing an attempt at the Ansari X Prize, which was a competition to see which private venture first made it into space (his team could not finish their spaceship in time)

vista launch date guess contest

2006-02-09T17:43:00.000+05:00

MS is hosting a contest to guess the launch date of the new Vista OS

One of the few countries that the contest is open to is Pakistan - even the US/Canada do not show up there, I wonder why is that...

" * 1st Prize: Be live at the Vista launch event in the USA: a full package with entry, flight, and 3 nights in a 4-star hotel.
* 2nd–4th. Prize: New XBOX 360
* 5th–10th Prize: XBOX Core System

All legal residents of Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, UK who are 18 years of age or older will have the chance to win."

best smallwares

2006-02-09T15:08:00.000+05:00

This site is pretty popular - it keeps coming up on del.icio.us and stumbleupon - it lists some very useful small & free softwares - marktaw's smallware

Some of the best include Analyzer, the packet sniffer, it helped me write a program for downloading my fave daily comix off the web, folder size view in explorer (this is something so simple, why did'nt MS think of this?) and waste, a p2p client written by Justin Frankel, the guy who wrote winamp - the last one is the best for p2p file sharing, only if you can get into a network (u need an invite), I have lost access to mine unfortunately so it is'nt much use for me - if anyone reading this has access to a network, please do let me know

a take on blogging

2006-02-08T16:34:00.000+05:00

be careful since there is some strong language here but it's too funny to pass up - link

all the satire here is pretty humorous but the take on blogging takes the cake...

al-jazeera in english

2006-02-07T14:24:00.000+05:00

Coming "late spring" is Al-Jazeera International, an English language channel of the famous Arabic news channel

It's already sending ripples through the so-called mainstream media, which is largely corporate and special-interest owned/influenced and provides a very one sided view of world happenings with a few off-the-script interviews and comments thrown in just to show they have a "balanced" approach towards news

Our cable service provider does not show the channel, saying it has been "instructed" by higher authorities - I wonder if the scene is the same elsewhere in the country

The channel is based in Kuaula Lumpur, Malaysia and has signed up a star cast of news commentators including the veteran Jewish, American anchor David Marash, Josh Rushing, a former US Marine who conducted journalist briefings at CENTCOM HQ in Qatar during the attack on Iraq, David Frost (the "Breakfast with " guy) and Veronica Pedrosa & Riz Khan from CNN. The channel is headed by a 33-year veteran of British journalism, David Foster

An interesting news item about the new channel can be read here

fon

2006-02-07T14:01:00.000+05:00

FON is a Spanish company that recently received $20M investment from VC's, Google and Skype

"FON is a global community of people who share WiFi connections. We call these people "Foneros", as a tribute to our heritage as a Spanish company. In order to become a Fonero, you go to FON, to download software that you install in your router, you place your antenna by a window and you share bandwidth with other Foneros from anywhere in the world. You can also buy the FON Ready router from our web site, plug and play. FON creates a free WiFi roaming environment for those who contribute WiFi signals, namely those who have already signed up with a local ISP and downloaded our software into their WiFi routers.

The success of FON, like the success of all online communities -- such as eBay, Skype, ICQ, IM -- depends on many people joining.

FON was launched just 90 days ago and we already have over 3,000 registered Foneros." - link

What got me interested was their idea of this working in developing countries like Pakistan

"While in Europe, Japan and United States FON´s motto is share broadband at home have broadband everywhere in Argentina for example our motto will be, team up with your neighbors to share bandwidth...through wifi. In order for broadband to have a similar impact on people´s budget the sharing will have to be on an approximate 10:1 ratio. Initially ISPs may be against our model but we will probably prevail when they see that we will work with them, deploy our model in low income neighborhoods and the result will be that more connections are sold." - link

I wonder if it is really feasable in a place like PK, where broadband is prohibitively expensive, costing Rs 1K per month (about US $15) for a 256KBPS (allegedly) connection with a 1GB/month limit - broadband licenses are only handed out to a select few, there is no level playing field - Spider Magazine has debated this issue many times

2006-02-02T17:48:00.000+05:00

sania mirza is a hot indian tennis sensation who has most men drooling both sides of the border due to her short skirts and good looks and some religious men on the Indian side issuing fatwas (religious edicts) blasting her for her casual display of flesh

During the on-going Pakistan-India cricket series, Pakistani fans decided to show their appreciation of Sania

This reminds me of a quote that was going around at the height of Pakistan-India tensions over Kashmir in the 90's: "Madhuri de do, Kashmir le lo" (Give Madhuri and take Kashmir). Madhuri Dixit was India's top movie star for over a decade during those times

ascii matrix scene

2006-02-02T13:52:00.000+05:00

The famous bullet dodge scene has been rendered as an ASCII animation - link

For more info about the animation, see this

summer of '69 in karachi

2006-01-31T17:58:00.000+05:00

Bryan Adams was in Karachi on the 29th

BA in action © reuters

A couple of people I know went there and had a hell of a good time, Adams supposedly knows how to rock a crowd

Of course, professional musicians like Adams know that lip-synching is considered a boo-boo among civilized societies - if only someone would tell those goons on Pakistani TV

Karachi is a much maligned city, and cricket matches there are usually called off by visiting teams, on account of security so it was a nice surprise to see a top music star coming over to perform - Karachi maybe has less of a security problem than London did at the time of the IRA bombings but unfortunately it's bad image has refused to go away

good books

2006-01-31T12:34:00.000+05:00

This C&H comic says it all - when looking for a good book to read, people look at the reviews on the jacket, find out if the autor is famous, has been interviewed on TV etc. when the word of mouth is the best advice

After I had finished all the Enid Blyton books I could find in my childhood, I started reading authors for "older" people like Agatha Christie, Jeffery Archer, Michael Crichton and god forgive me, even Sidney Sheldon - other than Christie, most of the books were crap, where all the books followed the same pattern: have a handsome hero and a drop-dead gorgeous, techie heroin, a devious, secretive, well-connected villian; run their stories in alternate chapters, end each chapter with either a "and his head was reeling when he realized...." or "she screamed when she saw that...." ; and force the reader, through these cheap tactics to turn pages. When the novel ends, the reader thinks he has read a good book, only a couple of days later he realizes what shallow nonsense he has wasted his time on

So I decided to see what the great thing was about all books people called the classics and started reading the freely available books available online at gutenberg (many of the classics listed here can be found for free online, since their copyright has expired). And some of those books were definitely one of the best I had ever read

Below is my list of Must Read books followed by a list of Close To Must Read books, in no particular order:

1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - this book is probably the darkest and funniest book I have ever read - it was intitially rejected by many publishers because it was written in a very wacky way - as one review said "it gives the impression of having been shouted onto paper.”"

2. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - a very good read, encourages you to follow your dreams etc. I would not suggest reading the rest of his books, his The Devil and Miss Prym was excreble - the problem with some writers including Douglas Adams (more about him below) is that they manage to write with some restraint in their first novel and after it's a huge success, they manage to divulge all their crazier, unpalatable, story-wrecking ideas in their following books

3. Cakes and Ale by Somerset Maugham - Maugham was an MD by profession, who turned to writing after the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, which came out of observing how the poor lived in pre-WWII England - his philosophy towards life is the sopposite of Coelho's above, he warns people not to go into the arts unless they are absolutely sure they are extra-ordinary, otherwise an ordinary arist is almost a failure. All his books are very readable including the collections of Short Stories (in his Ant and the Grasshopper short story, the grasshopper wins :), Of Human Bondage and many others

4. The King's General by Daphne du Maurier - du Maurier belonged to an aristocratic family of Cornwall, in England and most of her stories centered around this area. She also wrote "The Birds", which was turned into the movie by Hitchcock, only in her story, the birds won - her stories are all fantastic reads, to say the least - other excellent books include The Scapegoat, Rebecca & Frenchman's Creek

5. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott - this is a book full of excellent diatribe, chivalrous knights, a Jewish beauty, Knights Templars, King Richard and even Robin Hood - the best 18th century roller-coaster novel, in my opinion

6. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - this started as a radio program on BBC in the late 70's and very soon became a cult classic - sequels to HHGG books are pretty useless though

7. Faraway Tree & Wishing Chair Series by Enid Blyton - I am not sure about other older readers but I still enjoy Enid Blyton books, these two series were the best :)

The following books I would recommend highly, although if you miss them, you would not miss a major part of life :)

1. Candide by Voltaire - the story of a young, naive man and his mentor - a classic

2. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - pretty lengthy but very, very readable

3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin - forget the crappy movie made by holly/bollywood - read the real, unabridged novel - I must have read it 10-12 times by now

4. Harry Potter by JKR - I really mean this one, no subconscious media pressure :)

5. First Among Equals by Jeffrey Archer - by the end of the novel, you will have a very good idea of how the British parliamentry system works, very informative if you live in a country that is democracy-lite at the best of times and have no idea how civilzed countries run their political systems

6. Angels & Demons and Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown - I found the first one infinitely better, the other Dan Brown novels stink to high heaven though

All classics are not good reads though, Jane Austin's Emma was pretty boring and so was Madame Bovary - James Joyce's Ulysses was a torture to read, I guess you need more patience (and a degree in literature) to understand someone like him

One book that I would like to read ASAP is Anna Karenina....

the office

2006-01-30T19:20:00.000+05:00

The Office is a sitcom from BBC - it ran for six seasons and it's one of my all-time faves

The program centered around David Brent, who is the manager from hell - he thinks he is very articulate, politically correct etc. but is the exact opposite, reminds me of a manager of mine - Gervais, who plays Brent is also the show's writer/creator

Many of the series clips can be seen here, Brent's are the funniest

In this clip, David is accused of being racist so he decides to make disprove it

luv in india

2006-01-26T13:21:00.000+05:00

Posting this due to popular demand

This was captured during the Pakistan-India Cricket Series 2004. Zaheer Khan is an Indian bowler

b&w to color

2006-01-25T17:01:00.000+05:00

Found this really cool app, recolored - it let's you take black & white photos and change them to color with a small amount of input - you specify which gray areas should take which color and it handles it all, including highlights and specular spots

It is available for download here

The series of the pics on the main page are pretty straightforward. I managed to "colorize" a Marilyn Monroe pic, it turned OK, not too bad - I guess you need a fair amount of practice and some knowledge of photograph colors will be of help

Unfortunately, the intermediary picture which generated the colored one was lost, much as I hate to post incomplete works - Murphy was definitely around today...

Some tips, keep this in mind while working, also do look at this very useful tutorial

a. thickness of the stroke does not matter
b. start with marking out main areas, like clothes and background
c. follow up by fixing areas where color bleeds in
d. test out color dropper, pen, eraser & color replacer, all 4 tools - to change hue, dbl-click color swatch

Another attempt, notice the color bleed around the knees, this can be fixed by putting the correct color stroke where the bleed occured

hyperscore

2006-01-24T16:24:00.000+05:00

I have been playing around with HyperScore for a few days, spending a few minutes each time, trying to make sense out of it

The application is driven out of a PhD project of an MIT Media Lab student. It's purpose is to help kids (and musically ignorant adults) to create music in an intuitive manner. Download it here

It lets you create MIDI files which can be emailed to mobile devices (in the US) for a small fee - you cannot make an MP3 out of it, that might be available in the paid version - however, if you are using WinXP, there is hack to do it - I wrote about it in a previous post

Hyperscore lets a user write music by painting squiggly (or straight) lines to denote music thingies like motifs & harmony - while painting in the Melody window tool (see the tut for details), you can select a variety of instruments from drums to flute to electric guitar

It's pretty confusing if, like me, you don't know a motif from a score - but this tutorial helps you make sense of it

The Hyperscore forums www.h-lounge.com lists users' tones - it also has a web-based player so you can sample the sounds without downloading the composition files

indian blogger in lahore

2006-01-24T15:03:00.000+05:00

An Indian blogger managed to do what I could not, living in Pakistan - photographing Lahore - he visited the historic city as part of a TV news team and wrote about meeting the drum beating dervishes and cringing at the sight of stripped chickens

It's funny at times - if you are Lahore fan or just someone who would like to know how an Indian sees Pakistan, do read it... the article and pics on Cooco's cafe are particularly nice

Every Thursday afternoon, qawwali singers from around Pakistan gather at the shrine of Data Ganj Bakhsh Hajveri to perform. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has performed here, and it is said to be quite an experience...... The dynamics within each group were fascinating: if one guy had energy and fire in his singing, another had a soothing voice – they would harmonise, play off each other, and move into impassioned choruses.

It's a wonder that the men in Pakistan are so big and the autos[rickshaws] are so small," remarked my friend and colleague Dileep Premachandran as we walked the streets of Lahore.

The roads are conducive to this speed. Everywhere in Lahore we have seen wide, smooth roads -- with no garbage anywhere to be seen, unless we are in a self-deprecatory mood. Last night, when we got in, we were stunned by the lights of Lahore

quotes about programming langs

2006-01-20T18:09:00.000+05:00

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. (Bjarne Stroustrup)

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. (Nathaniel S Borenstein)

[The BLINK tag in HTML] was a joke, okay? If we thought it would actually be used, we wouldn't have written it! (Mark Andreessen)

First learn computer science and all the theory. Next develop a programming style. Then forget all that and just hack. (George Carrette)

If buffer overflows are ever controlled, it won't be due to mere crashes, but due to their making systems vulnerable to hackers. Software crashes due to mere incompetence apparently don't raise any eyebrows, because no one wants to fault the incompetent programmer and his incompetent boss. (Henry Baker)

Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. (Mao Zedong)

More here

one does not simply...

2006-01-20T13:57:00.000+05:00

stumbled upon this gif - must appeal to LOTR fans... (please note this is a 1.4 MB file)

professor walter lewin demos physics 101

2006-01-17T13:56:00.000+05:00

[Update: Pakistan's HEC is now mirroring MIT OCW here]

If you have ever wondered if the period of a pendulum is independent of the mass hanging from it, see this video available on Physics MIT's OCW page

See the last 5 minutes of the Lecture 11 video as professor walter lewin demonstrates a basic principle of physics

christmas lights

2006-01-17T13:26:00.000+05:00

This is amazing....

Carson Williams, 40, spent nearly two months hooking up 25,000 lights, programing them to flash to Christmas music. Hundreds of cars drove by his house north of Cincinnati. The music was broadcast through a low FM transmitter, so that passers-by could pick it up on their car radios and the music wouldn't be played through the neighborhood.

Now the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Gardens is courting Williams to set up a Christmas display later this year.

"We have a long history of bringing in new entertainment. His would rank right up there as one of the best shows," zoo spokesman Chad Yelton said.

link to news

time for some satire

2006-01-17T11:51:00.000+05:00

please note that both these websites have some off-color humor, do not go there if don't like such humor

the onion and satirewire are two of the best satire sites on the net - the latter is disontinued though and only the archives of the former are funny anymore now though but I found a couple of "news" too funny to pass up

ESPN Courts Female Viewers With World's Emotionally Strongest Man Competition

"The hour-long weekly show, which will run opposite ABC's Monday Night Football, features an international cast of powerfully caring, emotionally resilient, deeply sensitive men pushing themselves and each other...."

"Other strong overall performances were turned in by Martin "There, There" Richards, a graphic designer who remembered to make his wife's beloved tapioca pudding on the anniversary—not of their marriage—but of their first date; Garth "The Embrace" Josephsen, who maintained some form of reassuring but undemanding physical contact with his fiancée for nine consecutive hours...."

(ow, ow, ow, even reading this stuff makes my head and stomach hurt)

TORMENTED BY NEW U.N. CLASSMATES, SWITZERLAND ALREADY WANTS TO GO HOME

("The Swiss voted Sunday to join the United Nations, moving their country warily but decisively closer to the international community after centuries of neutrality and independence." — L.A. Times, March 4, 2002)

"According to U.N. school nurse Martha Kelly, the Swiss ambassador to the U.N. has visited her office no less than three times in the past 24 hours, twice complaining of a stomach ache, and once sporting a pair of black eyes."

"This isn't a community of nations, it's a zoo," said the Swiss ambassador after a voting bloc of central African nations ran his boxer shorts up a flagpole

"I was talking with Kamalesh Sharma, (India's ambassador to the U.N.), whom I had met on the train," Nordstrom wrote, "when (Chinese Ambassador) Wang comes swaggering up and sneers, 'Hey Switzerland, you're getting off to a bad start, making friends with losers. Maybe I should teach you a lesson.'"

"According to witnesses, moments later Nordmann was punched in the left eye by the Pakistani ambassador, who was upset that the Swiss was talking to an Indian. Nordmann then reportedly asked the Indian ambassador to punch him in the other eye, so as not to appear to be playing favorites."

For some more gems, see the archives of the onion & satirewire

p.s. Snakistan sounds suspiciously like another country I am familiar with....

how to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds (almost)

2006-01-16T19:27:00.000+05:00

I was looking for this video for sometime now - it has to be seen to be believed...

RNGs detect major events

2006-01-16T14:34:00.000+05:00

Now this is something totally weird - a Random Number Generator system that detects and sometimes even predicts major cataclysmic events happening around the world. And this is no paranormal mumbo-jumbo experiment conducted by a questionable psychic society.

From wikipedia: Global Consciousness is the idea that there is a collective consciousness in which all individual consciousness participates in, in some ways comparable with an electromagnetic field. There are many hypotheses as to how the field might operate. A project in Princeton University called Global Consciousness Project is created to study it. It was started in 1998 by Roger D. Nelson.

There is a hypothesis that the global consciousness has been getting stronger for the last decade because of communications networks which create more coherence between individual minds around the globe. (about the dot, if you cannot see it properly, you need firefox)

"The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) studies anomalies arising in human/machine interactions" - much of the stuff here belongs to the exciting :) field of stats so I really cannot make sense of much of it but it's conclusions are pretty exciting nevertheless...

The department was created by a Robert G. Jahn, who, in 1979, was Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University.

Their most significant project is the Global Consciousness Project where they have been collecting data from a global network of random event generators since August, 1998. The RNG's are located all over the world from NJ, USA to India to Fiji. "The network has grown to about 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of physical random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years. The data are transmitted over the internet to a server in Princeton, NJ, USA, where they are archived for later analysis."

The data is collected and graphs are created from the random numbers collected from RNG's around the world - but just before the graph is created, a prediction is made on the shape of the graph - in case of a catastrophe that has affected hundreds of thousands of people physically (earthquake or flood) or mentally (reading in the newspaper or watching on TV), a noticeable spike is seen in the results - the probability of these spikes occuring otherwise is very little, < 0.1% - the people running the show here insist that this shows that the Random Number Generators (RNG) are somehow affected by the consciousness of the people of the world and hence, show a departure from the norm.

Some points in time where a major spike was noticed are listed here (notice the last column, "Z-score statistic for the analysis, and its associated probability" alongwith a description including 9/11, Pak-India cricket series 2004 and the Pakistan eartquake in Oct 2005

See this for a near real-time display of the graph

How this happens and what are the implications, no one is sure of it - this is just too wierd and maybe intangible a science to make any use of it... atleast for now...

firefox screws up & live mk4

2006-01-13T18:56:00.000+05:00

Upgraded to Firefox 1.5 (from 1.0.7) and it started actign up, refusing to show embedded Flash movies - after a lot of searching (and many reinstallations/reboots), found the source of the problem, the Adblock extension - in order to make it work, disable tools->adblock->preferences->adblock options->obj-tabs

More details here

One of the first videos I saw after fixing firefox is this hilarious MK spoof

my google video

2006-01-13T17:06:00.000+05:00

I uploaded a video to ggl video

It's a 14 minute basic video teaching a beginner in Alias Maya to build a glass tumbler using NURBS and the software's default renderer - I will update this post when the film is online - I encoded it using WMEnc which is probably the easiest way to make a tutorial movie but google asks for MPEG2+MP3 - it may take longer to verify...

(had some problems with capturin video, see this for help if you want to capture screenshots of your video)

downloading google videos

2006-01-04T17:05:00.000+05:00

found a way to download google videos - thanks to an alumnus of mine

1. select a google video from - http://video.google.com

2. from the menu, select view->source and find /googleplayer.swf?videoUrl= and copy text between videoUrl=" and ">

3. Save this text on your machine with the extension .html (e.g. paste in notepad and save file as "converter.html" - with the quotes)

<html><input type="input" size="70" id="converter" title="convert"><input type="button" size="70" id="btn" title="convert" onclick="func()"><script language="javascript">function func(){converter.value=unescape(converter.value)}</script></html>

4. Paste the text copied above in the edit box and click convert - copy the text again (which will now contain a correct url and paste it in the location bar - save the file to disk when it prompts)

5. Add .flv to the end of filename and play it using flvplayer

i am on tokyo time

2006-01-03T13:13:00.000+05:00

im back from my holidays... spent some time in lahore and the rest at home in 'Pindi, with a really bad case of flu...

the following comic reminds me of myself, very much :)

© c&h

holidays...

2005-12-16T03:14:00.000+05:00

to all the millions of my readers :), i am on vacation till the new year... for the first time since i started work

hopefully i'll be back with some great pictures of the great city of lahore.... cheers!!

meanwhile, check out these fantabulous pix by the guy at ddoi - if only peter jackson had him for art director - LOTR would have looked half-decent....

linus the creator

2005-12-09T15:07:00.000+05:00

Linus almost sounds like Calvin when he makes a snowman but in the end, he shows he really is Linus...

Calvin is very active in the winters - this site is a testament to his creativity - read and enjoy

For those unaware of it, Calvin and Hobbes were two real life people from the 16th and 17th centuries whose philosophy about life is mirorred in the characters by their creator Bill Waterson

Wikipedia links to John Calvin, Thomas Hobbes and Calvin & Hobbes, the comic strip

new hotmail

2005-12-06T14:21:00.000+05:00

hotmail, following the footsteps of gmail are using ajax to run their service

I received an email telling me that being a "VIP" hotmail member, I am invited to use their service - dunno what made me a VIP - maybe they are aware that we have many status-conscious people in Pakistan - yes, I am in Pakistan, only I set my location to USA to try one of those tricks for increasing mailbox storage

The service is nice and slick with an outlook like interface drag/drop for moving messages to folders and right-click context menus

In a clear "inspiration" from gmail, they have added auto-complete in the mailto address bar, their news about this feature is well worth a read:

"Start typing a name and—pow!—up pops a list of possible recipients from your contact list. Click on the one you want and you're done."

It's the "pow!" that converted me.... (sarcasm)

tv shows from too long ago

2005-12-05T18:32:00.000+05:00

I remember very vaguely a few TV shows from the early 80's when I was in pre-school

Back in those days, there was only one channel, PTV, which showed (as far I remember) just one English TV show per week - since there was (and still is) a strict censorship policy in place, the shows hacked in places to make them kid-friendly

I was reminiscing with friends about them and was amazed to find they remembered almost all of them

If you grew up in Pakistan in the 80's, you might remember them too, being primary TV viewing for kids, in addition to Nazia, Zoheb songs

These are listed in the order I remember them being played on PTV, I am sorry I cannot find better links to the shows

1. Chips
2. The Man from Atlantis
3. Tales of the Golden Monkey
4. Voyagers
5. The Powers of Matthew Star
6. The Fall Guy
7. Airwolf
8. Knight Rider

follow-up on the mess-up

2005-12-05T13:07:00.000+05:00

[Update:
. Bob responds to the controversy
. USAID's page about education reforms in PK
. Congressional Research Service Report (CSR) on education reforms in PK]

My last post was about a poem that is now part of the 11th Year curriculum for Pakistani students - the first letter of each verse of the poem reads the name of the US President

After a ruckus was raised in the Pakistani newspapers, the Education Ministry has announced that it will withdraw the poem from the textbook from next year - of course, no heads will roll, "it was an honest mistake", "our intentions were clean" - these are the words we will hear - a simple google search for one verse of the poem would have clarified the source - but who uses computers in the Ministry? They are certainly nothing more than decoration pieces for them

Of course, the real reason is that the poem must have had the stamp of approval of the Education Ministry and now lowly book editor would dare to raise his voice, even if he could

For those unaware of this, the US government is funnelling in money to "help improve" Pakistani education currculum - the Pakistani government (and all its predecessors) being more loyal than the king, fall head over heels to appease the Americans whenever they can and hence this poem

I imagine it went something like this in the funding agency's office:

Some guy in USAID: Dude, let's play a trick on these Pakis and send them this poem - bet you 10 bucks they will publish it without reading it
Another guy in USAID: Bet you 20 bucks they will publish it even after they read it

It must be said that USAID is doing a lot for education in the country - even the MBA programs in our top business schools are fully funded (tuition & living expenses) - see the info on financial aid at LUMS

I emailed the gentleman who wrote the poem, probably in 2003 - he was kind enough to write back in a very positive way - I really appreciate him for doing this - the response is produced below:

Dear Sami,

If I'm correct in assuming that your blog is Sami's Place, I must say
it's a very nice blog. You keep it updated much better than I do mine.
I do respect your feelings in the "Shameful" post. I don't recall
authorizing the reprint in the Pakistani educational textbook. To be
fair, I sometimes e-mail permission for limited copying without paying
too much attention to details, so I'm not sure.

While I still admire GWB, I have learned since I wrote "The Leader"
that he certainly has some shortcomings in the leadership role. The
vertical spelling of the president's name is, of course, intentional.
Even at the time I published it, along with the questions on the
worksheet, there were included these notes to the teacher in the
answer keys:

The Leader
Best answered in discussion format:
1. Student should refer to text when putting a characteristic in his own
words.
2.Answers may vary.
3. There is a clue in addition to inference: The name is spelled out
down the left column. Respect any opinion if student backs it with a
reason or reasons.
4. Answers may vary.
In other words, no brainwashing intended!

Thanks for writing and good luck with your blog.

Bob (RHL)

Please note the the author does not hide the fact that the name of George W Bush is hidden in the poem (link)

shameful

2005-12-02T11:51:00.000+05:00

What a dark day for Pakistan and for the students of Pakistan... this poem is now a part of the high-school syllabus for all Pakistani students

link to bbcurdu story

If you cannot read the above, don't worry - it was lifted from another source, read it in its full glory here - do check out the questionnaire at the end of the poem

Who does this remind you of? Read just the first letter of each verse and see what it all spells...

What a bloddy sovereign country we are... I wonder which picture now hangs in the Education Minstry where Jinnah's used to be?

(I wanted this blog to be apolitical - unfortunately, that's getting tough so I will start posting some news related to "politics" or "international relations" as I see fit - be assured, it will be interesting....)

how to tick people off

2005-11-29T15:29:00.000+05:00

this is doing the rounds on mailing lists these days... i refrain from publishing from these sources but this is too funny to pass up

how many people have actually tried one of these?

1. Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99 copies.
2. In the memo field of all your checks, write "for sexual favors."
3. Specify that your drive-through order is "TO-GO."
4. If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others.
5. Stomp on little plastic ketchup packets.
6. Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions "to keep them tuned up."
7. Reply to everything someone says with "that's what you think."
8. Practice making fax and modem noises.
9. Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and "cc" them to your boss.
10. Make beeping noises when a large person backs up.
11. Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with prophesy."
12. Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears and grimacing.
13. Disassemble your pen and "accidentally" flip the ink cartridge across the room.
14. Holler random numbers while someone is counting.
15. Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you "like it that way."
16. Staple pages in the middle of the page.
17. Publicly investigate just how slowly you can make a croaking noise.
18. Honk and wave to strangers.
19. Decline to be seated at a restaurant, and simply eat their complimentary mints at the cash register.
20. TYPE IN UPPERCASE.
21. type only in lowercase.
22. dont use any punctuation either
23. Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and reroute whole streets.
24. Repeat the following conversation a dozen times.
"DO YOU HEAR THAT?"
"What?"
"Never mind, it's gone now."
25. As much as possible, skip rather than walk.
26. Try playing the William Tell Overture by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce "No, wait, I messed it up," and repeat.
27. Ask people what gender they are.
28. While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a parakeet.
29. Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down.
30. Sing along at the opera.
31. Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn't rhyme.
32. Ask your co-workers mysterious questions and then scribble their answers in a notebook. Mutter something about "psychological profiles."

ex googler talks about his days

2005-11-26T18:28:00.000+05:00

a 42 year old marketing guy joined google in '99 - he has now left google and is writing a blog of his experiences - very good read and very high on the del.icio.us rankings - xooglers

Excerpt:
"When Sergey showed up, my initial impression was even more reassuring. He was wearing gym shorts, a tee shirt and inline skates. He had obviously been playing hard. I'd known better than to wear a tie, but he took office casual to a new level."

wish my office was this casual... maybe when I start my own tech company.....

my firefox

2005-11-17T13:46:00.000+05:00

Following is a list of extensions that are *must-use* if you are a firefox user - if you are'nt one, do yourself a favor and go get it

. adblock - gives you the option to right click on an ad image and select "block image" or iframe or url with a wildcard (e.g. *_ad_click*) - the image is removed alongwith the whitespace that would have been left behind

Use the script here in tandem to give the best adblocking support

. apart from the heavy loading time, the one thing that was stopping me from switching to firefox was the terrible usage of tabs inside firefox - ctrl-tab opened the next tab in the firefox window and not the last selected - e.g. if you have 10 windows open on your windows machine and you opened window # 5 and then window # 8, pressing alt-tab would open 5 & 8 alternatively - in firefox doing the same for tabs would open tab 9 after tab 8 and then tab 10 next... grrrr.... fortunately we have lasttab now - not only it opens the previous tab but also gives a menu listing all the current tabs in the window

. this extension saves the state of your browser in real time (did not feel any difference in system performance on my p4/512 mb ram) - it's great in case your browser crashes with many tabs open - it even saves the text you are typing in an edit-box !

. one of the most annoying things on the web is when java applets decide to loading without asking you first - noscript can disable them (asking you politely at the bottom of the screen whether you want to run it or not) - it also disables javascript too - not sure if this is really useful...

. mouse gestures really improves your browsing experience, now you can only move your mouse without clicking to open and close tabs and windows - trust me, it's not an indication of laziness...

. firefox has a problem with adobe pdf files - use this extension to receive a prompt about whether you want to download the file

. use this extension to bypass compulsory website registration on websites (these come up often if you regularly read google news)

. stumbleupon - probably the best thing next to google for web browsing afficiandos

. I left Greasemonkey for the end but in the long term, this will probably overtake all the extensions - this is essentially a piece of code that acts as an extension engine - it lets people write scripts that can be run inside this extension - the coolest thing is that these are scripts, not compiled dll's or even zipped xpi files - so you can change variables, add functionality if you know even the most basic javascripting. Installation is very simple

1. just install the greasemoney extension and restart firefox

2. Next search for the best site-specific and generic scripts here and here

3. Click on the script you want to install - a whitepage with javscript mumbo-jumbo will open up - just click Options-> Install User Script and click OK on the window that opens up

4. Refresh the page on which you want to see the script action and you are ready to go

I have installed quite a few scripts including:

. ~~Gmail delete button~~ - this one is buggy, use the "smart" Gmail Delete Button
. adblocker
. bookBurro (let's you see prices of different books on different sites side-by-side, fantastic!!)

Please let me know of any other extensions if they are necessary for your firefox browsing

Murphy's love laws

2005-11-16T14:00:00.000+05:00

All the good ones are taken.

If the person isn't taken, there's a reason.

Brains x Beauty x Availability = Constant.

This constant is always zero.

Money can't buy love, but it sure gets you a great bargaining position.

More here

ms live

2005-11-10T10:52:00.000+05:00

microsoft finally decides to go the google way through it's Live initiative - i.e. embrace online("live"), free, integrated services (think google maps integrated with local search, gmail integrated with orkut) using a combination of Javascript and DHTML called Ajax

Ajax is cool since it HTML, Javascript and basic database services and you don't need extra plugins like Flash etc. to create lightly animated, dynamic web pages (check out the google personalized page and protopage)

Some of the "new" inventions include"

"It’s all new web mail, built from the ground up. Preview your e-mail without loading a new page each time...."
Gmail copycat?

"Coming soon - This will be the next-generation MSN Messenger. The name is new, but it will still be free to download Messenger and use most of its features"
How about an option to cut out the crappy ads? Right now the only way to do it is through hacking the resource file

dapnhe & apollo

2005-11-05T03:40:00.000+05:00

Adel Adili is an Iranian artist who was one of the winners of the Master & Servant Challenge at cgTalk, held earlier this year - this leading CGI forum hosts a now annual heavily sponsored contest based on a phrase and people create imagery using 2D and 3D software - it's essentially a contest for the emerging and the relatively well established artists to showcase their work to the world

© adel adili

Click here to read and see how the image was created - if you have ever wondered how they create those beautiful masterpieces, this is it

Adel's entry was based on the mythological story of Apollo, the Greek god, chasing Daphne, a nymph, who prayed to be changed to a tree in order to save her modesty (! - sounds like an Eastern story :)

pumpkins in the field

2005-11-05T03:34:00.000+05:00

Sam Javanrouh proves his pictures are the most beautiful in a photoblog on the entire 'net

© ddoi

See larger images here and here

(writing this again - blogger ate my entry text :(

drag the div

2005-11-02T20:22:00.000+05:00

ever wondered how you can drag and move the boxes in the personalized Ggl homepage?

Here is an excellent tutorial on how to do it... the Ggl page (and maps & gmail too) uses Ajax, a combination of different technologies and techniques to achieve this effect - the ability to drag and move the div elements takes place using javascript

see the previous post for more on ajax

ajax

2005-11-01T13:17:00.000+05:00

Found this tutorial on Ajax through del.icio.us, the tagged bookmarks website

http://dhtmlnirvana.com/ajax/ajax_tutorial/#

(my del.icio.us page is here)

The tutorials starts from the basics and builds it up - have'nt gone through it completely but seems to be one of the best tutorials on the subject yet

Ajax is an acronym given to a collection of existing technologiesan which are intended to improved the user's web surfing experience by reducing the time taken between a click-button -> page submit -> page refresh with new data - Ajax reloads the data in a table or an image in a div etc. without an annoying page refresh

Ggl uses Ajax extensively including in maps, personalized home and gmail

Some other very good examples of Ajax usage are protoPage and start.com, supposedly the MSN portal for people with a normal aesthetic sense

get your war on

2005-10-26T20:15:00.000+05:00

Get You War On is a comic strip highly critical of US foreign and domestic policy following the war in Afghanisation - think of it as Doonesbury meets South Park meets whitehouse.org - it's vitriolic, incisive and takes a jab at everything the Bush government and it's stoolies are supposed to believe in

© get your war on

It's highly readable from the start - but be warned, it's not for kids or the faint hearted - the humor may seem off to people who think Everybody Loves Raymond is cute and The Simpsons is too rude

quake stricken areas

2005-10-17T21:26:00.000+05:00

On Saturday, Oct 8, 2005, Pakistan was struck by a major earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale

Google Earth now has imagery and other data available with respect to the quake stricken areas

© Google Earth - Margalla Towers, Sector F10, Islamabad

The kmz file for this imagery is located here

Here is the link for updated data availability on current events

Updates on the Google Earth maps database are available here

big brother

2005-10-10T00:55:00.000+05:00

piri reis map

2005-09-30T20:19:00.000+05:00

In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin.
Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century.

The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC.

link

notpr0n

2005-09-13T11:06:00.000+05:00

Updated 11/01/05 - Sweet, this post is top of Ggl's search results for notPr0n passwords

It is what the name implies, not pr0n!!

This is a web based game similar to... i don't think it has a precedent

You need to go from one screen to the other by giving a username/password or changing the url or clicking in a "special way"... it's very difficult sometimes and the creator of the game could have designed a couple of levels in a better way, imho but it's very interesting and when you pass a level, it's very satisfying :)

It's easier if you have some basic knowledge about how url's work and how a web page looks like in the web page source...

Unlike puzzle based games like the Monkey Island series, I found it easier to do without anyone looking over my shoulder

[WARNING!! MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW - do not read below unless u r stuck on a level and pulling hairs from your head... there are not hints, just answers...]

below is a list of the username, passwords for all the level I have done.. I will keep updating as I go along (notpr0n keeps changing passwords frequently since they come up in forums etc so I cannot confirm if these still work)

(level - username/password - url)
1 - click door - http://www.deathball.net/notpron/levelone.htm
2 - change level2 to level3 or open door quickly - http://deathball.net/notpron/not/level2.htm
3 - change false to true in url - http://www.deathball.net/notpron/false/gototheothersite.htm
4 - voodoo/power - http://deathball.net/notpron/true/gototheothersite.htm
5 - simple/songs - http://deathball.net/notpron/google/shestheoneforme.htm
6 - kill/hour - http://deathball.net/notpron/nothing/hesgotitall.htm
7 - http://deathball.net/notpron/sdrawkcab/tieman.htm - rename to http://deathball.net/notpron/sdrawkcab/rediar.htm
8 - inverted/levelten - http://deathball.net/notpron/sdrawkcab/rediar.htm
9 - turnmeon/deadman - http://deathball.net/notpron/luv2music/paulisdead.htm
10 - grey/world - http://deathball.net/notpron/wrong/roawr.htm
11 - funcking/pans - http://deathball.net/notpron/reality/mystery.htm
12 - remote/control - http://deathball.net/notpron/blame/crossview.htm
13 - devil/hell - http://deathball.net/notpron/ps/afterdeath.htm
14 - déjà vu - http://deathball.net/notpron/neo/beenthere.htm
15 - random/shit - http://deathball.net/notpron/rusty/board.htm
16 - doom/murder - http://deathball.net/notpron/zoo/mznvh.htm
17 - change pron.htm to lamp.htm - http://deathball.net/notpron/finale/pron.htm
18 - change lamp to deaf - http://deathball.net/notpron/finale/lamp.htm
19 - weird/stuff - http://deathball.net/notpron/finale/deaf.htm
20 - really/unfair - http://deathball.net/notpron/windows/something.php

clouds over ottawa

2005-09-02T12:12:00.000+05:00

definition of work

2005-08-29T11:39:00.000+05:00