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google maps at night, sailor's delight?

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

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

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

[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

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

Found a very good source for political satire - bendib


© bendib.com

isloo/pindi in high-res

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posting this due to popular demand


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