Saturday, May 19, 2007

Microsoft

Alas I'm finally here. I've been here since a month just in case I didnt tell someone. I also just passed my driving test. Today is a good day :).
 
This place is fun. Pictures speak louder than words. I'll put links to pictures somewhere around here in a bit.
 
Take Care Dudes. 

Saturday, April 14, 2007

3 Tragic Demises

My EPSON LQ-550

First of all I'd like to offer my condolences to the Epson family of printers for the demise of my LQ-550. It had been a faithful printer.
About my EPSON-550:-

This model of EPSON 550 was bought in December 1991 along with a 386 machine with something called an IO card in it back in the days when PC's used to have a Turbo button which worked.

It was not an ordinary 9 dot matrix, it was a 24 dot matrix with advanced graphics support. It was not as fast as one of em daisy chains or line printers but it was a lot better. Color printing was not an option back then and you had weird dot matrixes that could print in 2 or 3 colors but none of them beat my LQ-550 which rendered a good 15 years of service after which it was put into a box never to be seen again until today.

Upon plugging in the device its soul made a final shreiking static noise and now its dead.

I hope my LQ-550 rests in Peace.

Battle Star Galactica:-

This one happened some time back but I just realised it. BSG is finally over I'll have to find some other series. I'm too upset about the first loss I wont write much here.

Anyways there is going to be another series about the battle star Pegasus and what happened to it between the invasion of New Caprica and its reunion with Galactica.

I actually started watching this show when Whiz told me that Cmdr Adama looked like Gen Pervez Musharraf that got me on one episode and then I watched every episode till the end. BTW near the end they show Adama with a moustache then he looks like Musharraf for sure.

Prison Break

This is also over and this time for good. But they still left room for more seasons I think.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Coldest day in 70 years

I'm at home in Lahore[Yes yes laziness got the better of me] and its the coldest day in 70 years. At a stagerring -1 degrees Centrigrade, it really isnt that much but for an unprepared population it can wreck havoc, especially with respect to young, old and people with breathing ailments like asthma. For a live feed into Lahores temperature with a considerable lag time, check this [ link]that reports the temperature at Lahore Airport.Delhi also saw its coldest day in 70 years logged in at 0.2 Degrees [ link]. I hope that there isnt a significant loss of livestock, crops and worst of all people.[Not everyone can enjoy a warm cup of custard next to the fireplace]

Monday, January 01, 2007

Seasons Greetings, Happy 2K7, Eid Mubarak and lots of Cheese

The first act of the new Year:

Well, let me recall whats the first act I this new year, I broke my 1.5 month abstinence period from carbonated drinks. No thanks to my younger brother who filled the fridge up with Pepsi Lemon. Man a new flavor had to get the better out of me.

Who moved my Cheese

Right around this time of the year, I read a book called who moved my cheese[click for website]. One of the best books I've ever read. It contains a different approach to look at life and I feel that its raised my motivation levels to do something new by a significant amount and I hope it raises yours too. Also by Dr Herbert Spencer is the 1 minute manager, while being a good book with some valuable lessons I didnt find it as awe-inspiring as "Who Moved my Cheese". Lets get to what this book is about. It's about four characters: two mice called sniff and scurry and two littlepeople called hem and haw. They're all stuck in a maze and they need to find cheese[something that makes you happy]. The cool thing is that by comparison you can actually use this story to motivate you whenever you're down, its something that you'll have to read yourself in order to appreciate. The cool thing is that this book only takes an hour and a quarter to read.

Visual Mumbo Jumbo [Cheese for Geeks {Inspirational} ]

Another thing [for the geeks] that had me interested is a paper by a notable Google Employee TV Raman on "Visual Techniques for Computing Polyhedral Volumes". Now I generally dont put Geek stuff on my blog, however this paper compares properties of various shapes in 2D and 3D and relates them all to simple elements such as unity(1), important angles in a unit cube and the golden ratio and goes on to derive lots of stuff visually using only class 8 Math. It had me impressed. And more amazing is that this person has a sight disability. Just lets you wonder at the accomplishments a motivated and hardworking individual can make despite of handicaps.

Fake Powdered Cheese Leading to Real Lunar Cheese [Cheese for Geeks]

Nasa Needs Ton's and Ton's of Fake Moon Dust.

The Cheese I hope to have in a months time

Oh and well I've decided on one thing for sure this year and that is to buy myself a digital camera. After around 2 days of extensive web search I selected the Fujifilm S5600 which is also rated #1 Camera on PC World's List of Advanced Digital Camera's. For people in Pakistan, this is availible from the official dealers for 23,900 Rupees from the official Fujifilm Dealer in Lahore.

Apart from StevesDigicams, another cool site for camera reviews is Digital Photography Review.

How I intend to work towards my Cheese

We'll I'm not very Certain at the moment, but I have a feeling it would include Crofty.

A Miscellaneous Tip to help you get to your Cheese

If you havent already, check out FreeMind an open source mind mapping software that helps you come up with new dynamic ideas, do research, maintain a featureset for an existing product, brainstorm for an essay and lots of many other uses including undiscovered ones. In addition, it does not lack the usual annoyances of mindmapping on Paper[cutting & starting over] and you never run out of space. Its worked for individuals like me, its worked for the industry and it could work for you.

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Wishing you a Happy New Year With all the Cheese you Hoped For, this is your host I-T signing off and retiring to dream about Cheese. Good Night!!! And Eid Mubarak in Advance.

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If you're a resident of Lahore Pakistan and want the prayer timings for this Eid, they're availible at the Daily Times WebSite here. List covers most mosques in Lahore.

So that web crawlers cache this : Eid Eid-ul-Azha Lahore Timings Prayer timings

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Two things I liked about Christmas

Christmas brings with it lots of new movies, happiness, joy and snow. However this Christmas there were two things that I really fancied:-

  1. Aleks's Controllable Christmas lights was a really good site that lets you view a house from three camera's with inflatable homer, santa, elmo, a message board and lights and the fun thing is that you can control the items in the web cam feeds using simple controls on the web page. Really awesome and neat idea. No wonder its raising lots of money for Celiac Research. I wish his kids a brighter future.
  2. The dudes at the Planetary society have set up a page that allows you too to submit your name, email address etc to be flown to Mars for the upcoming Phoenix mission. It even lets you take a print of a certificate. Cool stuff. It can be found here.
So this Christmas has really been about useless but fun stuff, unless you believe in aliens. Just the way we like it.

In case you guys want to know where I've been recently, we'll my teaching duties at GIK have kept me really busy. I even have a web page at www.giki.edu.pk/go/IT. You may want to check it out. And we had an end of semester party for my compilers students. Pics at http://s119.photobucket.com/albums/o124/iqqi84/GIKI/TASHIP/Comp_Lab. Apart from that all is smooth sailing.

Need to get a decent digital camera fast under 20K(PKRs). Any recommendations???

Looking forward to hearing from you guys. See you around. Take care & seasons greetings. Looking forward to blogging again on or before Eid.