Headlines!!
- Internet is acting weird, thanks to the cable fault. As a result, we are suffering!
- Aitezaz Ahsan, one of my favorite personalities, is still under house arrest. Shame on our government.
- We won! We got the first prize in project exhibition for our SE project. It wasn't too much of work, but still, we won!
- Our CG course is really exciting. I need to think of a project. Ideas welcome!
- Network Programming brings back Data Communication course memories.... OSI, TCP/IP, WINS, boo!
- I'm thinking of taking some certification exams, especially those of Sun and Zend.
- I've got an OpenID!
Take cares,
Kami!
Jack the ant killer!
Some of the times are just like that. You feel like on top of the world and then you feel it all went upside down! You never meant to, or wanted to go down, but you had no choice, you just had to!
You worked hard, you stayed honest, you prayed, you knelt but only thing you got in the end was despair.
You wanted to be the giant killer but came out to be just the ant killer.
Something tricky goes into your heart, that tells you to f (whatever) the whole thing up and let's make your own way, irrespective of whether that way is right or wrong, or partially wrong. That's the devil my friend!
Stay away from the devil, for the devil is .. well.. just devil 
bad, sinful and just not trustworthy enough.
And those who stay away from acting weird in bad times, they see the light of the day very quickly. They take whatever happened to them as something that was good for them, was a lesson for them, was a test for them. They see green, they are rewarded with something better.. this is the glorious system of Allah.
As philosophical as it may sound, the above write up is based on my desperate attempt to get Internet at my new home some time back; But sounds perfectly fine with other situations of life too! so had to add that magical touch to it pal =P
Bill Gates : Last day at the office! (Funny)
Now this is funny. I loved watching it. Bill Gates spending his last day at office! Just watch this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HA4lSUhlbw
I'm sure you're gonna love it!
Milkateer (pronounced Milk-a-tear) is here!
Milkateer - another fully animated series, this time by Sharp Image, has hit the TV channels now. I must say, this is a really good production!
I remember talking to my friend Sarfaraz about things like "Man, If Sharp Image comes up with a fully animated series, I think its gonna be much better than Commander Safeguard (made by Post Amazers) in terms of animation quality and overall look and feel".. and I think we were not wrong!
Here are some screen shots from the show that I took (download links to actual video files below):
The environments are really well made and the story line is also pretty good keeping in mind the commercial interests of TetraPak, the company who paid Sharp Image for creating this cool show. The animation is good too and so were the special effects.
The story is primarily about two kids: Fiza and Zain. Fiza is all-active, smart and positive while Zain, even after trying much, doesn't get up to the reasonable standards in different activities of life. Reason: Fiza takes TetraPak packaged milk while Zain takes 'Khulla Doodh' from the market.
CGEXpanse.com, Pakistan's Digital Art window on the web has a post on its forum which provides links to Promo, Teaser and the full show download! Here is the link to the post:
http://www.cgexpanse.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8518&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
The teaser and promo are small in size (2 and 4 MB respectiely) and the entire show is a 90 MB download.
It's always special to see content which is local to us simply because it's naturally close to us. Way to go Sharp Image, you've made us proud!
MySQL to be acquired by Sun Microsystems
Hmm.. this seems like a really neat development. I really feel Sun Microsystems is a great company and I really appreciate the way Sun conducts its business. I love Java, which is a great innovation, and Netbeans is just one example of how well Sun can run an open source software project. The other one is Open Office, the powerful open source office suite for those who can't afford Microsoft Office or who run other operating systems than Windows.
For the developers, I think this $1 billion acquisition is going to be a good news. I think we would be having much more relaxed licensing terms as compared to MySQL's current terms of licensing. I think this would open up MySQL more. I am yet to investigate the Solaris OS offering from Sun because of lack of time perhaps but some people do tell me that Solaris OS is one big powerful monster itself in various situations.
I think Sun has taken a really good step in a positive direction and this is going to do good to the Developer community.
Click here to read the official press release from Sun Microsystems.
Me at Work
Right, I'm officially posting my pic of how I look at work 
no, that's not a uniform. This is just how I looked like that day! 
Sigh of Relief!
A sigh of relief is something that I took after a long time today
I got rid of my semester projects at PAF-KIET. All the things went superb!! My SE teacher Sir Fawad told me I got highest marks in Software Engineering course
We had externals visiting us to evaluate out projects and my spy in PAF-KIET told me our group might be in for a prize in the exhibition =D. Lets wait for the results and see pray for us readers!
I am hoping good marks in all the other subjects as well, as everything went really fine as far the exams and projects go.
Now the next semester, which starts from 21st of January, is going to be another milestone for me
Cheers!
Some Random Headlines
- We have hired a new developer in our team, this means I'll have much less time spent with the code. His name is Immad and he is freshly baked out of NED. He holds a BSIT from there. He seems to be a really nice and confident person, somebody who can make a difference in the upcoming years
- My brother Mushtaq bhai just had a cute baby about a week ago. They've named her Mariam. Congrats Bhabi and Bhayya!
- My Big B Ashfaq bhai is back with his family from the rented house to their own flat where only I was living since the last few months. Welcome back family!
- We have another bomb blast at Quaidabad. Wonder why I am not that worried about it... oh yes, that's because it has become so common.
- People are stealing my Radio City collection. I am going to go to Radio City again for some DVDs!
- Musharraf says "Mujhe dar nai lagta aey!"
Ah Life!
oh life, please decide
the way you adore...
you do give me miracles
but i want control
to live you as i like,
to love you as i should
life, please decide
the way you adore
i read all your stories,
yet i only just endure
searching for myself,
trying to find the cure
oh life, please decide
the way you adore...
you show me the red
you show me the green
at times you show nothing
you act really mean!
honestly corrupt.
eternally unsure.
life, please decide
the way you adore.
Cross Browser Design Tip: Use Internet Explorer Conditional Comments
There are some things which you really want to remember all your time while designing web pages that look the same in Internet Explorer and other browsers. Such experiences come in handy when you need them the next time.
One of such things is the Internet Explorer's conditional comments. IE's conditional comments allow you to insert markup within your code that is rendered in IE but NOT in other browsers. How? This is simple:
<!--[if IE 6]>
Your IE specific stuff here
<![endif]-->
Now, the above chunk gets past the eye of all the other browsers since they act as simple HTML comments in those browsers. Internet Explorer identifies that special [if IE 6] thing and renders the comment block as if it was normal markup.
This also works with other version of IE. You just have to use the appropriate IE version number (it works from IE 5.0 and onwards) such as IE 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0.
IkJample:
Suppose there is a DIV in your code that renders just fine in Firefox but it is appearing to be about 5 pixels above where it should be in IE. You can do the following to get it right easily using style sheets and IE conditional comments:
<style type="text/css">
.myDiv {
padding-top: 10px;
}
</style>
<!--[if IE 6]>
<style type="text/css">
.myDiv {
/* Now we add an additional 5 pixels just to */
/* make sure it also looks fine in IE */
padding-top: 15px;
}
</style>
<![endif]-->
Hope this is useful to me and to some other readers in the future
Cya!