interview, yahoo mail beta, etc

yesterday, i got in on the yahoo mail beta by using the tricks mentioned on several web sites. i like it actually, despite the fact that some of the people commented on some of those sites saying its nothing compared to gmail… i think yahoo did a good job, and it certainly is a lot better than the hotmail beta in my humble opinion which barely works under firefox…

this morning, i read an interesting interview with marc allen. i don’t really know who he is, just that he’s a multi millionaire… he makes some interesting points throughout the interview… the three points that struck me the most were: 1. with regards to money, he says, “It is a very, very good servant but a terrible master.” 2. he says that you should save at least 10% of your salary monthly, and save more if you can. he says that once you’re able to live off 90% of your salary, save another 10% and give it in charity, saying that those two steps are “great keys to a better life and a better world.” 3. he says that all it takes to becoming a millionaire today is intention.

i also like his work schedule… 4 days a week, not going in to work before 11, taking mondays off, dedicating sundays for family, etc…

overall, i was just impressed by his way of thinking about money as a utility, as something that can improve society. i wish someone would tell this man about islam and its teachings with respect to money, people, and societies. the interview is a great read overall.

rapdizzle

fo’ shizzle my nizzle rapdizzle – lol i was talking to my boy OK and he got me in a rapping mode… so i started this codeish rap, first line of which is inspired (ripped) from eminem, and dumped it in achinb’s gtalk window… so per his suggestion, here it is..

my code is like a dagger with a jagged edge, to push your computer over some big ledge, java, python, and php, easy stuff compared to c, and then there are kids who do ajax, simple little javascript hacks, these script kiddies have no clue, holding UIs together with glue.

other folks code in c# better play a violin and drop that harp, i don’t wanna care about what ms did, or on which big company google may bid.

on second thought, i think i’ll stop it here and won’t post the rest :p

difference between italians and europeans

this funny video reminds me of arabs… :)

technology, languages, and y3k

the past 2 days at work, i’ve had some interesting happenings… yesterday, i met my egyptian friend and coworker who works here with me too, and, when he asked how i was doing, i said, “el7asharat wel saraseer metala3een 3aynee” (which roughly means, ‘insects and roaches are giving me a hard time’) – he said, “oh, you’re one of those guys! just like these other guys who are like, ‘senna zar2a’ for bluetooth” :p i practiced it on some germans in broken german too, ‘hast du blau tzan on dein komputer?’ – hehe.

i guess what’s interesting though is that in pretty much all languages, all the technical terms are in english. it sounds really funny to say ‘senna zar2a’ or ‘blau tzan’ for bluetooth and ‘saraseer’ or ‘7asharat’ for bugs… why though? hehe i guess in arabic, some people call the internet, ‘alshabaka,’ which literally means ’the net’ (like a fishing net) – (by the way, why don’t they say ‘3esh el3enkaboot’ or something? (spider web)). but yeah, most people call it, “el net” – ’el’ being the.

as for y3k… so today, i introduced a y3k in the source code to our application. i asked my project lead and such if it was okay, and they said, “no one will be using our software until then.” – basically, i had a list of files, *strTIMESTAMP.ext – and i wanted to delete them all, but i don’t want to delete *str.ext itself – just the ones with a timestamp. so because the delete method doesn’t take in a regex (so i can’t pass in *str+.ext), i had to find another solution.

the easy way (which i didn’t want to do because i am lazy) is just copy *str.ext if it exists to something else, do the delete, and copy it back. but instead, i opted to do delete str2, which means in the year 3000, our software will stop deleting its temporary files… i might go back and fix it later after fixing the other important bugs…

update: i found a much easier fix – use str?.* instead since ‘?’ is supported :)

sergeant!

i am in the top 2000 pvp players on silverhand! w00t! i am now a sergeant, 1704th place on silverhand :) not bad for the first week of serious pvping :p

wow reader

i installed wow reader - cool stuff, though i think it can be improved (automated somehow? i still have to do a /wver to get it to load, but… yeah). here is my first and most leveled up character’s stats :) i should probably put this on the sidebar of my blog somewhere… what would be really nice is also a time tracking thing that looks at /played… hehe except then people would know how much i play ;)

my guild members and i were experiencing some major lag in the game, so we started to quote movie phrases, replacing random words with the word lag… the best one was, “with great lag comes great latency…” :)

so, in the words of another guild member, i am lagging out.

yahoo rocks

i am starting to really like yahoo. besides having a good taste and aquiring del.icio.us (no pun intended ;)), they released a pretty neat user interface library, which contains some utilities for web development with ajax and such. i glanced at it a bit, looks really cool and plan on playing with it later on. best of all, its open source!

by the way, if you don’t have a del.icio.us account, get one now! here is my del.icio.us (i still need to integrate it into this blog at some point). for those who haven’t used it, del.icio.us is a (social?) bookmarking service - you can look at mine for an example. i have a button in my browser, and whenever i come across an interesting link, i click it to add that particular site to my del.icio.us.

amazing television commercial

this is one of the best islamic reminders i’ve seen in the form of a very short television commercial (you can right click and do save as if just clicking it doesn’t work). if you don’t speak arabic, the verses being recited are in surat al-qiyama (75:26-35). the text at the end reads: “اقم صلاتك… قبل مماتك” - which means, “establish your prayer… before your death.”

day of 3ashoora

tomorrow (thursday) is insha’Allah the 10th of muharram. just a reminder to myself and any muslims reading this to fast insha’Allah. the day of 3ashoora is the day in which Allah saved Prophet Musa (Moses) (AS) and the children of Israel from Pharaoh, and it is also the day in which Prophet Nuh’s (Noah’s) (AS) arc reached saftey. the reward for it is expiation for sins of the past year insha’Allah.

the danish cartoons

greets. so i have not written anything on the subject, but i’ve been reading the opinons of others (ayman’s, for example) and the news and such, and i finally thought to post some thoughts here.

note, however, that this post is influenced by amr khaled’s message to the world about the danish cartoons, which i highly recommend everyone (muslim or not) to read (or, if you understand arabic, to listen to or view).

so what i want to address and focus on in this post is the comics themselves (i know ayman talked a lot in his blog about the world reaction, and i agree with some of his points and disagree with others, but this is not my topic here). the mere publication of the comics is, as amr khaled said, not only something degrading to islam and muslims, but its something degrading to all of mankind - yes, that includes members of all faiths and all religions. why?

let me start by using the words of george bernard shaw, a nobel prize winner for literature in 1925 - he said:

“I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of Humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today.”

this quote comes from a non muslim playwright and nobel prize winner - and its not off some “Abdullah Muslim’s” webpage (you can find it on the link above, and you can also find it on wikipedia). why would a non muslim say this about the Prophet Muhammad (SAW)?

regardless of whether people are muslims and revere the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as a prophet or not, one thing remains true: no one, including his enemies, ever pointed out a fault in his character - why? because he was like no other man in his character. he showed unbelievable amounts of love and mercy to all of mankind.

the comics are a sign of pure ignorance on the side of the person who published them. does jylland-posten really know who this man he portrayed with a bomb in his turban is? he (SAW) is the first man to bring about the issue of equality - equality between everyone despite their gender, race, or economic status. it was he (SAW) who built the first hospital in Madinah at the time and made the person in charge of it a woman. it was he, (SAW), who on his deathbed, “take care of your women.”

it was he, (SAW), who gave the most honorable task of the calling to prayer to Bilal, a freed abassynian slave. it was he (SAW), the man people dare attribute to terrorism, who was the first to put forth rules of war - “do not kill any women, do not kill any children, do not kill any old people, do not cut any trees.” it was he (SAW) who conveyed to us the verse revealed to him in the Quran which states, “… that whoever slays a soul, unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the land, it is as though he slew all men; and whoever keeps it alive, it is as though he kept alive all men” (5:32).

muslims love the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) more than they love themselves. if you want to get an idea of this, find any place with an arabic satellite dish and sit down and watch one of the talk shows - people call in and break down crying at the mere thought that someone could dare talk about their Prophet in that way.

no one is against freedom of speech - however, i heard someone say that there’s a very thin line between hate speech and freedom of speech. and i believe this is one case in which it was obviously crossed. i am passionate about this subject because i love the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) just like all muslims do. and, in the same way as i would stand up against such comics against another prophet (Moses or Jesus (peace be upon them), for example), i would hope that people of the world stand up against this blasphemy and blatant lie as well.

so i am hoping this post actually shows up on planet arabeyes, but i think they’re using a buggy version of planet software, but that’s a different story.