Monday, December 22, 2008

Solution for the current Internet speed problem

This afternoon, I got really fed up with the slow Internet when suddenly an idea came to me:

Could using freegate help with this?

I'm not going to explain how it works here; you can read all about it on wikipedia.

You can get it from here.

You'll have to set your proxy to localhost:8580.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Traditions

Just in case you don't know, I'm from Iraq--I had to say this 'cause this post is all about traditions so it helps to know what traditions I'm talking about.

I left Iraq 3 years ago, came here, studied in the Philippine school for 1 year before joining college at the age of 16.

During that one year, I learned a lot of traditions and since I'm open-minded I adopted with them and accepted them easily.

Last week I was chatting with my Iraqi friend and I was surprised to hear her say that in our traditions a girl isn't allowed to date a guy until they're engaged!

I never knew this before, really!

Engagement isn't just the guy proposing to the girl; the guy's family goes to the girl's family and propose.

I've heard people say "(some guy) proposed to this girl and she and/or her family rejected him" and I think to myself "how could (some guy) and that girl know each other before?".

It wasn't until now that I knew what really goes on: they propose THEN they get to know each other.

It's stupid! A couple should get to know each other first BEFORE getting serious...

If they break up even before getting married, people will say "They disagreed", well, none said they will agree!

Traditions are useless; they were started years and years ago and they can be wrong, bad, harmful, useless, etc...

It's not like they're based on any scientific facts or any thing that backs them up, they're just started by people because they think something's good or bad.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Great people (seriously this time)

So, I was gonna comment about ESR's post--kinda tired of linking to it here--last night but I found something much cooler so I blogged about that instead.

So, how can one define "great people"? Personally, someone is "great" if he does good things in his life and is remembered by them after his death, and that's exactly what Gilgamesh came to conclude by the end of his trip; he traveled seeking immortality, but tried as he might, he couldn't do what Utnapishtim asked him to do to become immortal.

Look at him for example, he died thousands of years ago yet he's still remembered until today! Look at the prophets! Look at Albert Einestein! And the list goes on and on.

So ESR may have missed his chance of becoming a great physicist but he's still considered a great person, he's gonna be remembered after his death, every book about Linux and open source will mention him, he has a wikipedia page!

As for believing in your thoughts, well... Every kid is born like that: they believe what they think is right, but over the years, they get discouraged to do so by their parents and other adult people.

"But I can start my own company" "Earth is calling, get back to reality!"
"Fine, I'll work for a great company (Google, MS, etc)" "Yeah! Go tell them you can count from 1 to 10"
"Ugh! I'll come up with a new product" "A bidet? Already done" :|

Personally I believe that every person can be great if they really want that.

Maybe some people are more talented than others which gives them an advantage but that doesn't mean that others are completely hopeless.

I can talk about this all I want but will anyone care? After all, I'm just an 18 year old kid!

Great people... NVM! Let's talk about Noah!

I was gonna comment on ESR's post and I wanted to reference something in the epic of Gilgamesh when I found something AMAZING.

The epic is written on 12 tablets, the eleventh is about Gilgamesh talking to Utnapishtim, who tells him about a flood that happened and how he was ordered to build an ark and all... It's like the story of Noah.

You can read tablet 11 here.

If you think about it, it's written thousands of years before the bible and there's no way that the people who wrote the bible have read it, how can you explain the similarity?

Atheists, take it as a challenge!

Peace!

Updates again

OK... So I haven't posted in two months now.

Here's what's new:

Trying to finish my project on time so I won't have to do it next semester and I'll be free to work on Connectiyo.

Connectiyo is going pretty well, although still far from it, I'm steadily approaching a usable version, and I'm kinda confused about some details. The development is kinda boring 'cause there aren't interesting stuff to do in it for now.

I have been asked to create a website... I'll be working on it after my exams are over (31 of Dec).

I need to rant about traditions but it's too long so I'll do that in a separate post.

I came to some conclusions about YFC (Youth For Christ) that I'll blog about soon.

What else? Can't wait till Christmas ;)

Oh! I also feel like commenting on ESR's post.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Updates

So, I haven't posted for almost a month now, here's what's going on:

I have some pending assignments.
Connectiyo is going really well (I need to update its page).
Programming is fun.
I'm getting distracted from programming easily.

Uh, that's all I guess :)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Deep Linking in Flex

Two weeks back I was looking for a Flex-based social network when I found Doof and I couldn't help but notice that the address in address bar changes as I switch between the different states of the site.

I asked at #flex and googled a bit and found that it's using something called deep linking to do that, here's the article I read.

After reading that article I thought that it's too hard to do that every time so to day I created a class to make life easier, you can find it on my website.

Have fun :)

Friday, August 29, 2008

I'm really confused

I guess the title explains it: I'm confused.

I just can't seam to commit to a project because I want to work on Deviyo, but when I do decide to work on Deviyo, I don't know where to start.

Maybe the idea of Deviyo needs to be narrowed down, at least in the beginning, that's what I'm thinking right now but, I don't know which part to start with, I don't even know what the parts are :(

How can you plan a big project like this? It seams impossible, but I'm determined to find a way, and with God's help I will.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Alan Kay

I'll start by saying "I LOVE OOP"!

It's just amazing! I can't imagine myself writing Claire without using OOP! And I feel so grateful to Alan Kay who coined the term object-oriented programming!

I don't know how I used to live without OOP! I'm not an expert in it yet, I still have difficulties designing an app with OOP but I'm getting used to it.

Pleasure of programming!

Remember I said I got rejected by programming but I'll keep fighting for it? Well, today it finally started to work out: I was working on Claire, trying my best to create an application with OOP and I finally did it! I have two classes, one interface and one MXML file that all "work together in a magical way" :)

I'm so excited! If I wasn't so sleepy I'd be jumping all over the room like I usually do when I accomplish something.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

OK, so I'm a nerd!

Yesterday I was chatting with my friend and she said she's preparing for her SAT tests in Oct, next thing I know: I'm solving practice SAT questions for fun! :(

Not only that but I found most math questions super easy :/ I thought the questions were actually easy so I gave one of the questions to my friends to solve but... Apparently it's only me.

The weird thing is that I don't get high grades, I barely passed chem in my HS exams...

Great! I just got the answer to one question I couldn't answer yesterday :(

I don't know if I should be happy about this or not.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Best birthday gift

I'm chatting with my best friend from Iraq, we've studied together from kindergarten to 3rd yeah HS, we're really close, I haven't talked to him in over 9 months now.

Anyways, that's not the interesting thing, the interesting thing is that he says that the situation in Iraq is getting better, last time I talked to him he said it was really bad, they moved to another area because his area (where I was staying too) is really bad, he said the safety is really bad, lots of bombings and all.

Today he said they've moved back to our area a month ago, he says al qaeda people are going down, they managed to kick them out of our area which is really good, he says there hasn't been any explosions since they moved back, the shops are open till late at night (which would have been a miracle when I was still there three and a half years ago), he stays out till 12 am which, again, something that no sane man would do.

It's the best birthday gift ever :)

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Toolmaking Predilection

So the day before yesterday I started working on Claire, it's something new in the programming world that should cause programmers to make less bugs, you can find more about it here.

Today, I started thinking about how I'm going to manage my time to work on both Claire and Deviyo, then only I realized that, the reason I got the idea in the first place is because I had problems with Deviyo, I started creating Claire to make developing Deviyo easier, suddenly, something I read in Dreaming in Code came to my mind, here it is:

In software management, coordination is not an afterthought or an ancillary matter; it is the heart of the work, and deciding what tools and methods to use can make or break a project. But getting sidetracked in managing those tools is a patent temptation. When the cry of "Let's build it ourselves!" arises, geeks are all too happy to rally and cheer. A celebrated (and perhaps apocryphal) bit of graffiti from MIT captures this: "I would rather write programs to help me write programs than write programs." Similarly, there is a saying attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." This principle, which found its way into the business advise manual The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, appeals to every programmer's passion for toolmaking. But if it becomes an end in itself, it can drive the best-organized projects into a ditch.

I don't know what to say, that book is amazing! Everything it mentions seams to be true, I'm so happy I bought it, it's the only book I bought, usually I either borrow books or get free e-books from the Internet and print them.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Falling in Love with Programming

The other day I was reading Dreaming in Code, it's a book that talks about software development and why we still have bugs after more than half a decade since the invention of computers, when I found a saying by Jaron Lanier that I've been thinking about since I learned about OOP, here's what he said "We start off writing little programs--'Hello World,' or whatever it might be. Everyone has a wonderful experience. They start to love computers. They've done some little thing that's just marvelous. How do you get over that first love? It sets the course for the rest of your career. And yet, as you scale up, everything just degenerates."

It's true, I started programming when I was 8! I started with BASIC, just writing sentences that are executed one after the other from top to bottom. Then I was introduced to VB, I never knew about classes or anything then, I just dragged controls to the form, I set their properties, put code in events and voila! I have a working GUI application, which is probably why people recommend against it for beginners.

Then I moved to C, there were some features that I wasn't aware of (recursion, pointers, etc) but that wasn't hard to get used to.

Then came C++, I borrowed a book from the library and started reading it, I thought the only difference was just in the sentences and the libraries used (iostream, cout, cin, etc) but then I reached chapter 7, it started talking about OOP, it was complicated and I started thinking "Why on earth would I want to learn this?", so I just read it because I didn't want to skip anything, what made it worse is that chapter 9 (chapter 8 is about OOP too) was about programming for windows which is the main reason why I borrowed the book.

It wasn't until recently when I started using Flex and started planning for Deviyo that I realized that OOP is important.

All this time I've been in love with programming, I used to think it's the coolest thing on earth, I'm taking a course in IT, I'm convinced it's what I'll be doing for a living.

The result is? I fell in love with programming, it rejected me and I can't seam to get over it, but I'll keep fighting for it.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Ideas are killing me!

I have so many ideas and so many potential projects and they're all simple but "revolutionary" if they work and I don't know which ones to try to do and which ones will be a waste of time.

Here are some of the ideas I have:
1. 3D TV: You've seen one of those 3D TVs that don't need glasses, right? I have an idea to create one,it's simple but... It's too simple to be true.
2. Holographic displays: Yup! The idea I have, scientifically, should work, but I can't find any references to it online. And again, if it can be done then it's just amazing that no one has thought of it before.
3. Deviyo: *rolls eyes* Yes, it is revolutionary if it works like I hope it does.
4. Graphical programming: Uh... I can't explain this more because someone might just do it, but lets just say it'll make bugs much less.

AND MORE! GOD! I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH ALL OF THESE IDEAS!

Friday, August 1, 2008

Now what?

OK, so I'm back from my "vacation", it was nice, I had lots of fun but I'm starting to wonder what I'm gonna do now.

Should I work on Deviyo? Should I read the book I downloaded about design patterns in Actionscript 3? What about the game of the generals? I don't know.

The most probable thing is that I will try to finish reading the book ASAP and then I'll resume working on Deviyo, meanwhile, I'll be working on GoG especially that I received an email from a guy asking about it :)

That's all for now.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

I'm on "vacation"

Sorry for not posting for over 2 months now (as if anybody's following up), I've been busy with my assignments, exams, etc...

3 days ago my parents and I came to Malaysia on a vacation (not really, my dad is doing his PhD here and he took us with him.

Just when I thought I'll stay away from programming and computers for a month, I was asked to create a system for a local company, and I can't complain; this is the best vacation I've ever had, I'm not "hired" so I'm not obliged to do anything but I did say I will create it for them and I will.

Why am I doing this? Well, first of all, I can't help it, second, it's a good thing to add on my CV, and last but not the least, I can submit this as my final project in college.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Comics

Here are some episodes of comics I like:








And more :D

Friday, March 28, 2008

Deviyo

First of all, Junia is now known as Deviyo.

I've been working on Deviyo for the past few days and I have to say that more and more ideas are popping, it's not just a website anymore, it's not just an RIA (Rich Internet Application) anymore, it's much more than that.

Here are some of the things it'll have:

1. An on-line desktop with amazing effects (window rotation, tiling, etc).
2. Fully tag-powered (no hierarchies anywhere).
3. Integrated applications.

And much much more!

Honestly, I didn't expect it to be this big at first but...

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Tag FS

I really don't know where to start this post, but let's start with imagining the following scenario/situation/fact:

You have different files on your disk ranging from music to videos to documents to pictures to applications to system files, all these files are arranged in a hirarchial way, for example, you have your My Music folder under My Documents wich is under your name and so on... Under My Music you probably have different folders for different artists inside which you have folders for each album which in turn have your music files, what if you wanted to see all your rock song files in one page? (forget about media players for now).

You also have documents ranging from tutorials you downloaded from the net to your work, and just for the sake of explanation, let's assume that your source code files are documents too (which they are), now, what if you wated to organize your files, you've been working on a prjrct for your school where would you put your source files? Will you put them in the folder in which you keep your school work and assignments or in the flder in which you keep your projects? What about the tutorials you used to learn more about some library you used to create your prject? Where will that go?

You see, it is really hard to organize files in a hirarchy and find them easily, if you want to access one of your songs, say Rise Inside by Killswitch egaged you're gonna have to navigate through C:/Documents and Settings/<your username>/My Documents/My Music/Killswitch Engaged/Alive or Just Breathing/Rise Inside.mp3, I know, I know, you can have shortcuts in windows and links in *nix sytems but that's not an answer, smply because if you click on the My Documents shortcut on the desktop you don't actually open a My Documents that's in your dekstop, it's the same one, think of command line users, they can't even use these shortcuts, links in *nix systems are a bit better but they still can't solve the problem, you can link files but you can't link directories, well, you can create symblic links for directories but what if you dcided to delete the original one? The link is useless now!

Now, lwt's imagine the same situations with a tag file system.
For the first scenario you can simply add tags your music files with generes, years, artist names, etc... So if you want all the rock songs that were released in 1965 all you have to do is to open /rock/1965/ and you should find all the artists, albums, etc... If you want to view all the files that have these tags you can use /rock/1965/*/ where the astirisk means all the tags that are here...

For the second scenario you simply have to tag the files with college, prject and you're good to go, if you want to view your college files it will show there and if you want to view your projects fils it'll show there too, it's the same file, in the same place only accessed using different tags.

For the third scenario, tags do the trick and more, if you want to access your my documents you just have to open /My Documents/ and you have youe My Documents folder open, it's the same one that you can access from somewhere else.

What can I do? Well, I've been wondering about tha myself, don't know if I should merge it with Junia, make an FS for *nix systems based on libfuse (note that there is one already and it's called tagsistant), or just stick to theory.

Vista was supposed to ship with WinFS which was supposed to do something similar to this, but it didn't ship with it.

Tags have been getting more popular these days, take chandler for example, it was supposed to be a revolutionary PIM that gets rid of hirarchies but, it's been years sonce it started and they haven't reached version 1.0 yet.

On the other hand, you can see may websites using tags to arrange their content, from bookmarks to emails.

Laith Juwaidah
http://www.ljuwaidah.org/

Monday, February 25, 2008

Projects, projects, and more projects

I know, I know, I'm supposed to be working on Junia but I'm also working on many other projects, one of them is Game of the Generals, another is a resumes' website that I should help my dad's colleague creating, another potential project is a blog for Be In Oman.

A list of the things I need to do right now are:
1. Finish my assignments.
2. Learn Flex.
3. Finish Game of the Generals.

Things I might need to do/will do later are:
1. Create the blog for Be In Oman.
2. Help creating that resumes' website.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Why the apps?

One of the reasons I hate Facebook is its apps, they make it so hard to use, adds unnecessary functionality, and gives you annoying notices about people inviting you to use their apps.

Recently, Friendster (which is the only social network website I use right now) added apps, fine, they didn't have invitations or anything, I just ignored them, I didn't add any applications, until ,a few days back, I started receiving app invitations from Friendster, I was so pissed, and so disappointed.

I just don't get it, these are supposed to be social networking websites, not online operating systems.

Monday, January 7, 2008

KDE4

I moved to rawhide a few days ago because I wanted to try KDE4.

At first I had some problems because I didn't install all the related packages, actually, I had a lot of problems, ranging from 3 crashes an hour to missing icons.

After I installed those packages, crashes started to happen less often, some icons just showed, but I still didn't like it.

Then I started messing around with whatever settings I have (many settings are missing and won't be implemented until 4.1), and that helped the desktop look better, I had gray around the panel, boring decorations, etc... But now, I have cool glassy edges around the panel, with semi transparent decorations :)

Then it was time to fix the sound problem, I headed to #fedora-kde and asked, thanks to the folks there I have the sound working fine now.

I still have some problems such as not being able to use shortcut keys, and some other problems that I can't think of right now.

In short, KDE4 is OK, not as great as I expected it to be though, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone at the moment, maybe later when KDE4 is actually released it'll be more stable. I also find not being able to configure the panel a bit annoying, yet bearable.

I have to say that the only thing I really liked in it is the code folding feature in KWrite :D

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Chainletter Reply

I found this on http://www.strangeplaces.net/ and I liked it, so I decided to post it here.

Hello, my name is Basmati Kasaar. I am suffering from rare
and deadly diseases, poor scores on final exams, extreme
virginity, fear of being kidnapped and executed by anal
electrocution, and guilt for not forwarding out 50 billion
chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe that
if you send them on, that poor 6 year old girl in Arkansas
with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough
money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her
off to the travelling freak show. Do you honestly believe
that Bill Gates is going to give you and everyone you send
this email to $1000? How stupid are you? Ooooh, looky here!
If I scroll down this page and make a wish, every Playboy
Bunny in the magazine'll visit me! What a bunch of B.S.!
So, basically, this message is a big ***** to all the people
out there who have nothing better to do than to send me
stupid chain mail forwards. Maybe the evil chain letter
leprechauns will come into my apartment and terrorize me in
my sleep for not continuing the chain which was started by
Jesus in 5 A.D. and was brought to this country by midget
pilgrims on the Mayflower and if it makes it to the year
2000, it'll be in the Guinness Book of World Records for
longest continuous streak of blatant stupidity. If you're
going to forward something, at least send me something
mildly amusing.
I've seen all the "send this to 50 of your closest friends,
and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow
receive a Nickel from some "omniscient being" forwards about
90 times. I don't give a damn! Show a little intelligence and
think about what you're actually contributing to by sending
out forwards. Chances are it's your own unpopularity.

THE FOUR BASIC TYPES OF CHAIN LETTERS:
Chain Letter Type 1:
(scroll down)
Make a wish!!!
Keep Scrolling

No, really, go on and make one!!!
Oh please, they'll never go out with you!!!
Wish something else!!!
Not that, you pervert!!
STOP!!!!
Wasn't that fun? :)
Hope you made a great wish :)
Now, to make you feel guilty, here's what I'll do. First of
all, if you don't send this to 5096 people in the next 5
seconds, you will be assaulted by a mad goat and thrown off
a high building into a pile of manure. It's true! Because,
THIS letter isn't like those fake ones, THIS one is TRUE!!
Really!!! Here's how it goes:
*Send this to 1 person: One person will be pissed off at you
for sending them a stupid chain letter.
*Send this to 2-5 people: 2-5 people will be pissed off at you for
sending them a stupid chain letter.
*Send this to 5-10 people: 5-10 people will be pissed off at
you for sending them a stupid chain letter, and may form a
plot on your life.
*Send this to 10-20 people: 10-20 people will be pissed off at you
for sending them a stupid chain letter and will napalm your house.
Thanks!!!! Good Luck!!!
Chain Letter Type 2
Hello, and thank you for reading this letter. You see, there
is a starving little boy in Baklaliviatatlaglooshen who has no
arms, no legs, no parents, and no goats. This little boy's life
could be saved, because for every time you pass this on, a dollar
will be donated to the Little Starving Legless Armless Goatless Boy
from Baklaliviatatlaglooshen Fund. Oh, and remember, we have
absolutely no way of counting the emails sent and this is all a
complete load of B.S. So go on, reach out. Send this to 5 people in
the next 47 seconds. Oh, and a reminder - if you accidentally send
this to 4 or 6 people, you will die instantly. Thanks again!!
Chain Letter Type 3
Hi there!! This chain letter has been in existence since 1897. This
is absolutely incredible because there was no email then and
probably not as many sad jerks with nothing better to do. So this
is how it works... Pass this on to 15,067 people in the next 7
minutes or something horrible will happen to you like:
*Bizarre Horror Story #1
Miranda Pinsley was walking home from school on Saturday. She
had recently received this letter and ignored it. She then
tripped in a crack in the sidewalk, fell into the sewer, was
gushed down a drainpipe in a flood of poopie, and went flying
out over a waterfall. Not only did she smell nasty, she died.
This Could Happen To You!!!

New year's eve

This is probably the geekiest way to spend new year's eve: Reading a tutorial on QT programming on Linux :P

I'll make learning QT/KDE programming my resolution for 2008 :)

Happy new year!