Recently in Education Category
I came across this. Marvi Memon is one of the brightest young politicians in Pakistan - too bad she supports the dictator - and is in the party of chaudry brothren (PML-Q) - you may then question how I am calling her among the 'brightest' - but still she seems to have a personality that may change things. I've seen her style of talking and I enjoy it - and her background is indeed attractive.
Anyways, this post is not about if i like Marvi or not, it's about she having a blog - which is cool i think, and she asks for the opinions of the readers! I think it would be cool if other members of the parliament can follow suit and have a blog of their own - would prove useful in the end - as the blogosphere in a way connects the members of the parliament to the educated/intellectual lot of the society and as a result we can grow better ;)
Anyways, this post is not about if i like Marvi or not, it's about she having a blog - which is cool i think, and she asks for the opinions of the readers! I think it would be cool if other members of the parliament can follow suit and have a blog of their own - would prove useful in the end - as the blogosphere in a way connects the members of the parliament to the educated/intellectual lot of the society and as a result we can grow better ;)
We often keep hearing about some PHP integration at some level or the other in all the major open source IDEs. But frankly, none of them seemed much useful to me. I somehow never liked PDT from Eclipse (and for some reason I don't like Eclipse at all :S). Now the latest milestone release of Netbeans has a cool addition: PHP Integration that really kicks! Just to mention a few highlights: great intellisense for both the builtin library functions as well as our own, full support for class browsing and intellisense for object oriented PHP as well, integrated debugger, live error checking and much much more. Do check out if you are a PHP developer! You might no longer need the expensive Zend studio to have a smooooth PHP development experience.
Below is a screen shot with some of the candies demonstrated, click to enlarge:
Below is a screen shot with some of the candies demonstrated, click to enlarge:
TrueSpace, one of the popular 3d production systems in the market - is now free. Here is a piece of art produced using TrueSpace:
It used to sell at a price around $600 before Microsoft acquired the parent company Caligari some time back.
TrueSpace, which is now actually a Microsoft product, is available for download at www.caligari.com (free registration required).
Different people have come up with different opinions about this relatively surprising news - to set free a $600 product. But the general opinion is that Microsoft has taken this step to compete with Google's SketchUp - which is also available for free - and allows you to upload content to Google Earth directly.
Here is an excerpt from the official blog posting:
TrueSpace is way ahead in terms of features and power when it comes to comparison with SketchUp - so time will tell how the audience react to this.
I personally use Blender 3D, but choice is always good.
It used to sell at a price around $600 before Microsoft acquired the parent company Caligari some time back.
TrueSpace, which is now actually a Microsoft product, is available for download at www.caligari.com (free registration required).
Different people have come up with different opinions about this relatively surprising news - to set free a $600 product. But the general opinion is that Microsoft has taken this step to compete with Google's SketchUp - which is also available for free - and allows you to upload content to Google Earth directly.
Here is an excerpt from the official blog posting:
As you'll recall, several months ago we acquired Caligari because of their advanced 3D toolset - trueSpace (among other assets). I've always felt sketchy about other 3D freeware, so starting today trueSpace 7.6 is now available for download.....FOR FREE! And, there is a direct connection into Live Search Maps so you can create SUPER high resolution 3D models using trueSpace, then right from the environment upload the model into Live Search Maps as a collection item. Once you've created your collection, you can import your collection into your Virtual Earth application and BAM you have your own custom 3D models in your Virtual Earth application. We'll host the models right in our 3D collections cloud! This is going to be a long post - get some coffee and make it diesel.
TrueSpace is way ahead in terms of features and power when it comes to comparison with SketchUp - so time will tell how the audience react to this.
I personally use Blender 3D, but choice is always good.
Part of what I do to seek pleasure is teaching some undergraduate students about the concepts of computer programming. While I try and explain the ideas which are in my mind, and pass them to the young developers out there in front of me, I often feel proud, so proud, that I am able to develop an interest level in them. I feel fascinated by the fact that the student is learning to program not because the student has to, but because the student wants to. That's something very important when you are starting to learn something, and it's always much more fun.
I've seen that the students like to ask questions that may have no logic in your world of things as a teacher - but extracting what they want from their questions and successfully delivering them back is a really rewarding exercise.
And every time I am the teaching assistant of a particular course, I end up finding some students who are really very promising - with great potential within them to lead the rest. I just love the way they approach things - the focus that they have when solving a problem. They're coding as if no one else is watching them, and I love it!
I don't know if it happens just with me, but I've noticed that I can tell by just looking at a person first time how good that person is, in any particular area they may be in. It's the charm of the personality such people have perhaps, that gives me such an impression straight away. Or I'm just lucky at making wild guesses.
It has happened a lot of times with me - that I have a look at a person - or just talk to that person once, and then in my mind I just get a certificate telling me that the person will make it big - will be a distinction or is already a distinction (even if i don't know). And after some time, I get to see that the person who I met has really excelled at all the things I thought s/he would excel at. And it's just so refreshing, and fun.
It's probably one great thing about great people: they won't tell you how great they are, but still you can't help but notice the charisma that they hold.
Thanks to God - it is one of the greatest of gifts to have from God - to be able to meet and know great people.
I've seen that the students like to ask questions that may have no logic in your world of things as a teacher - but extracting what they want from their questions and successfully delivering them back is a really rewarding exercise.
And every time I am the teaching assistant of a particular course, I end up finding some students who are really very promising - with great potential within them to lead the rest. I just love the way they approach things - the focus that they have when solving a problem. They're coding as if no one else is watching them, and I love it!
I don't know if it happens just with me, but I've noticed that I can tell by just looking at a person first time how good that person is, in any particular area they may be in. It's the charm of the personality such people have perhaps, that gives me such an impression straight away. Or I'm just lucky at making wild guesses.
It has happened a lot of times with me - that I have a look at a person - or just talk to that person once, and then in my mind I just get a certificate telling me that the person will make it big - will be a distinction or is already a distinction (even if i don't know). And after some time, I get to see that the person who I met has really excelled at all the things I thought s/he would excel at. And it's just so refreshing, and fun.
It's probably one great thing about great people: they won't tell you how great they are, but still you can't help but notice the charisma that they hold.
Thanks to God - it is one of the greatest of gifts to have from God - to be able to meet and know great people.
When I say "I don't trust you", I don't mean you're a liar, I just mean you're a human
Me and my elder brother (Ashfaq bhai) were discussing something regarding what is happening and what should be happening around us. In between that, the bro talked about whether the Hajj is an obligation in current times or not. Generally speaking, God tells us that it is much more important to try and prevent human suffering - more so than the prayers that we offer.
My bro gave a really good and simple example, that, if we are going to a Masjid to offer our prayers, and we see a person dying of some major injury or disease, the obligation of prayers is automatically lessened and the obligation of helping that person takes precedence.
Today, there are a lot who are suffering, and still we see many thousands of people go for Hajj, and it takes atleast Rs. 150,000 a person from Pakistan to perform a Hajj. Of course it was Hajj that my brother was talking about, which is a really big thing to talk about. Perhaps we have to consider this thing in each and everything (big or small) that we do in our daily lives, consider if we have a much more important thing to do than whatever we are doing right now? i know, that's not as easy as just writing it here, but maybe I'll just provoke a thought.
So my question to you is, do you think offering the Hajj is more important or helping those who need our help in the current times?
My bro gave a really good and simple example, that, if we are going to a Masjid to offer our prayers, and we see a person dying of some major injury or disease, the obligation of prayers is automatically lessened and the obligation of helping that person takes precedence.
Today, there are a lot who are suffering, and still we see many thousands of people go for Hajj, and it takes atleast Rs. 150,000 a person from Pakistan to perform a Hajj. Of course it was Hajj that my brother was talking about, which is a really big thing to talk about. Perhaps we have to consider this thing in each and everything (big or small) that we do in our daily lives, consider if we have a much more important thing to do than whatever we are doing right now? i know, that's not as easy as just writing it here, but maybe I'll just provoke a thought.
So my question to you is, do you think offering the Hajj is more important or helping those who need our help in the current times?
Whenever I read Rasmus Lerdorf, I feel amazingly blessed for that particular time of the day. This man is a true gentleman. I would assume you'd be pretty amazed when I call a geek a gentleman but he truly is. Lerdorf's writings are so very different and better from all the other "php experts" in terms of pleasure that one avails when reading.
I, for one, had lately become a language purist complaining why PHP doesn't have a much more organized structure for some of the things. And in this article, Rusmus seems to have read my mind. He answers those questions beautifully and emphasizes that PHP was never meant to be the Goddes of beautiful code structure, it was just a mistress that solved the Web problem.
Here is an extract from article that would make the point clear:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/php_experts/rasmus_php.html
The interesting thing to note is that he answered this very question of mine about the lack of formalized structure to some of the things in PHP quite a while ago (somewhere in 2004 to be precise). A genius isn't a genius for no reason and mashaAllah Rasmus is definitely one of them. Looking at the amount of stuff he has written, it seems to me that he is not much of a talker, which reminds me of the line I once read in the beautiful PHP Manual: Those who talk don't know and those who know don't talk!
I, for one, had lately become a language purist complaining why PHP doesn't have a much more organized structure for some of the things. And in this article, Rusmus seems to have read my mind. He answers those questions beautifully and emphasizes that PHP was never meant to be the Goddes of beautiful code structure, it was just a mistress that solved the Web problem.
Here is an extract from article that would make the point clear:
"What it all boils down to is that PHP was never meant to win any beauty contests. It wasn't designed to introduce any new revolutionary programming paradigms. It was designed to solve a single problem: the Web problem. That problem can get quite ugly, and sometimes you need an ugly tool to solve your ugly problem. Although a pretty tool may, in fact, be able to solve the problem as well, chances are that an ugly PHP solution can be implemented much quicker and with many fewer resources. That generally sums up PHP's stubborn function-over-form approach throughout the years."
Here is the link to the article:http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/php_experts/rasmus_php.html
The interesting thing to note is that he answered this very question of mine about the lack of formalized structure to some of the things in PHP quite a while ago (somewhere in 2004 to be precise). A genius isn't a genius for no reason and mashaAllah Rasmus is definitely one of them. Looking at the amount of stuff he has written, it seems to me that he is not much of a talker, which reminds me of the line I once read in the beautiful PHP Manual: Those who talk don't know and those who know don't talk!
