Tuesday, March 28, 2006

ch ch (tsk tsk)

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

"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)

Friday, March 17, 2006

sweet victory

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."

Monday, March 13, 2006

they fight crime

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

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

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


 

Saturday, March 11, 2006

dubya in pk

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

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

what is a remix


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

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

crop circle on ggl


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





 

Monday, March 06, 2006

the servile indian

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

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

*.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!!

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

pirate booty

c& search

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?

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

Thursday, February 23, 2006

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

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

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...

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

political satire

Found a very good source for political satire - bendib


© bendib.com

Thursday, February 16, 2006

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):

Convention Center

STP 1& 2, Marriott

Sports Complex

Faisal Mosque

Daman-e-Koh

Japanese Garden & Zoo

Race Course Park & Lane 1

F9 Park

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

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...

Friday, February 10, 2006

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."

Thursday, February 09, 2006

"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