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.

memory stick, anyone?

i can’t really say i saw this one coming… but uh, memory stick, anyone?

random engadget links

first, there’s this weird pedant which blocks electromagnetic fields, and, as a bonus, also blocks negative thoughts!? rather odd…

second, there’s this honda accord that drives itself. not that i would not have expected this to happen, but just kind of neat to see it happening. i wonder if 20 years later, we will all have automatically driven cars that drive on special roads at crazy high speeds and with no errors… i guess it would be kind of like your own personal train that can switch tracks intelligently and take you from any one point to another…

happy new year - 1427 AH

kol 3am wa antum bekhayr. (transliteration will have to work until i can go home and type it in arabic :)).

green tea, microsoft keyboard

not that the two aforementioned subjects have anything to do with each other, but i figured i’d combine them in one posting anyway… so yesterday was my first real venture into green tea - i mean, seriously, how could i not try it when the back of the tea bags (which are provided free for employees to drink during the day, along with a whole slew of different other kinds of teas, coffee, and soda) reads: “Indulge in the soothing ritual of Bigelow Green Tea and discover a tastier, cleaner, smoother cup of tea that is high in antioxidants, and has no calories, carbs or fat. It’s a whole new dimension in green tea enjoyment!” – actually, i only just read the back today. the real reason i tried green tea again (which, by the way, doesn’t appear anything close to green to me) was because my throat was bothering me… and i realized its not too bad actually.

as for the microsoft keyboard… i bought one of those natural keyboards yesterday after seeing the deal on fatwallet and slickdeals… it was cake to install in linux (i didn’t have to do anything at all actually, it just worked (i was worried and expected to have problems because it was a usb keyboard, but didn’t)). but i found out that lilo doesn’t support usb keyboards, so unless my bios supports it (which i didn’t bother to check), lilo boots always into the default os, which is linux :)

but yeah, i decided to return it, simply because it was too “unnatural” for me – it felt weird, plus i had to stretch for keys that i usually wouldn’t have to stretch for as much, so, as a result, i made more typing mistakes. i think i’ll stick to my cheap labtec keyboard :)

that’s all for now.

i want this checkbook!

despite the fact that i pay almost all my bills online and barely ever write checks, i’d love to have the katamari checkbook… or, as the author pointed out, a debit card would be quite nice… but for some reason, i can’t see wachovia giving out katamari debit cards :)