Digital Thoughts

le Internet Medley: this is the music video of the internet...

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:49:03 -0500

le Internet Medley: this is the music video of the internet generation.

one of the best tourism videos I’ve ever seen!

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:18:30 -0400

one of the best tourism videos I’ve ever seen!

one of the best tourism videos I've ever seen!

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:23:18 -0400

one of the best tourism videos I've ever seen!

Nom Nom Monster

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 23:25:00 -0400

Nom Nom Monster

The view last night was beautiful

Sat, 09 Apr 2011 13:10:00 -0400

The view last night was beautiful

No slam dunk for you!

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 16:52:22 -0500

Zathman: I read that RIM is bringing BBM to Android, will you install?
Me: maybe, i have lots of friends still living in the dark ages ...
Zathman: Well considering the playbook apparently supports Android apps, it may perhaps be a reality.
Me: The playbook supporting Android apps, is like a football player playing basketball, he can throw the ball, but there wont be any slam dunks.

REST Console - a Google Chrome REST/HTTP Client

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:40:00 -0500

“REST Console” is a REST/HTTP Client for Google Chrome to visualise and construct custom HTTP requests to test with any RESTful web service.

Features:

syntax highlighting
set custom headers
construct POST or PUT body via raw input
basic & plain authentication
and more …

Coming Soon

oAuth 1 & 2 authentication
history manager
URI auto complete
headers auto complete
add headers via html form
add query string parameters via html form
add post body via html form
file upload

source code can be found at http://code.google.com/p/rest-console/
please submit issues and bugs at http://code.google.com/p/rest-console/

Canadian Doctors

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:44:59 -0500

I don’t really believe in modern medicine, it has become industrialized and the practice of caring for others has become institutionalized and is now buried under corporate structure and incentivised by money!

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in science and in people who want to dedicate their lives to help others, what I don’t like is the pursuit of monetary revenue as the main motive for everybody who works in medicine and health, all the way from researches to the family doctor …

Of course that is not always the case, there are good doctors out there, ones who really care about your well being and genuinely want to help.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve never met one!

My experience with doctors wasn’t always so unpleasant, when I was a kid in Syria, I remember loving our family doctor! He was a very smart man and on more than one occasion would offer his services for free and would check up on me and my family out of genuine concern!

He became the perfect model in which I framed every health worker I’ve ever met since, so far none made a good fit.

A couple of years back, I participated in the first Ride to Conquer Cancer, which took place between Toronto and Niagara Falls, a 200 KM ride that I was preparing my body for over the course of 6 month. It was glorious!

A week after the ride, I started feeling pain in my knees, which I attributed it to the intense ride and I figured it woud fade away soon, but the pain continued to bother me and it wasn’t getting any better.

So, I took a day off work to go visit my family doctor, the drive took 40 minutes, waited for an hour and a half for my turn (even though I had an appointment) and finally went in to be examined.

All it took was a quick listen with the stethoscope, a tap on my knee, and 2 minutes later the diagnosis was complete!

the doctor proclaimed: “You are not exercising enough!”

If you ever wondered what 6 years of studying to become a doctor can do you, wonder no more! Apparently it turns you into a genius with a build in Tricorder!

Of course I had not mentioned the 200 KM ride to him, I wanted to perform a little experiment to discover how accurate a diagnosis can be, and as it turns out, it wasn’t even close!

After I heard the diagnosis, I held back the urge to tell the guy that I’ve been exercising for 6 months and that he couldn’t be any more wrong! … I just couldn’t wait to get out of there and laugh my ass off!

My mom told me the pain is from all the red meat in my diet, and that I should cut down on it and balance my body with a diverse diet, which I did, and a few days later the pain started to go away, with no exercise needed!

Naturally, that was the last time I saw that doctor, and for 2 long years I stayed as far away from doctors as I can manage.

Eventually, my fiance kept urging me to go with her to a new doctor and do a checkup, “this one is young, recently graduated, so he’s more up to speed with modern medicine” she said … I can’t argue with science and the logic seemed solid, so I went along.

Unlike my old family doctor, this one was clearly into the digital age, the secretary handed us forms to fill (5 pages long) with so many questions that I simply couldn’t connect to health reasons, like how much income do I generate, what’s my profession, etc … but I went along and didn’t make a big deal of it, it all made sense a year after …

A couple of weeks ago I started feeling some pain in my chest, it was consistent and according to an extensive research I’ve done online it matched a number of signs for heart related issues.

“Time to visit the young, smart and recently graduated doctor with knowledge of modern science” I said!

Day off work, 30 minute subway ride, 20 minute wait and I’m in, the nurse takes me in, hooks me up to a machine to measure my blood pressure, 20 minutes on the machine, another 10 minutes of waiting and finally the doctor is in!

He takes a quick look at his computer screen, a quick listen with the stethoscope, taps on my chest and 2 minutes later the diagnosis is complete!!!

Déjà vu!

So according to this doctor, there is NOTHING wrong with me … he’s quite certain too! After all, he did tap on my chest with his magic hands and build in Tricorder! it can’t get any more accurate than that!

Apparently the key skill they teach these guys over the course of 6 years is to look at a patient age, anything below 30 and the diagnosis is “There’s nothing wrong with you!” I don’t know if its because they can’t make money off people under 30, or its easier to recover from whatever illness at that age but the end result is the same: if you are young then doctors wont help you

Wait till you’re another 20 years older, then, by the mercy of statistics alone, you are prone to have something wrong with you, so they can’t just tell you “you’re fine” they have to investigate, otherwise you’ll die at 40 and they’ll get sued!

So naturally, I’m going to get a second opinion, hopefully I could find somebody who is more interested in doing a proper health diagnosis and helping me rather than scan my health card at the door, charge the government tons of money only to spend 2 minutes with me and give me a useless diagnosis.

I still can’t get over the fact that I spent more time with the Blood Pressure machine than with the doctor!

After sharing the story with a friend of mine, he suggested that all Canadian Doctors are like that and the reason is because a lot of Canadians are hypochondriacs …

I’m not sure how accurate that statement is, or if there is any scientific research behind it, but we do live in a very harsh environment so I presume people tend to get sick quite often, but that is not an excuse to diagnose everybody in the flu season with the flu just because its the flu season and its a no-brainer diagnosis!

There is NO such thing as a Vegan.

Sun, 06 Feb 2011 10:45:00 -0500

There is NO such thing as a Vegan.

Laser skeletons. how has this not been done before?

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:35:00 -0500

Laser skeletons. how has this not been done before?

This morning I was thinking of what would happen if my bag clip...

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:22:00 -0500

This morning I was thinking of what would happen if my bag clip broke, guess what happened after?

What's an anti-Apple guy like me doing with an iPad?

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:46:00 -0500

First off, let’s get somethings straight:

I don’t hate Apple, I think they make excellent products with amazing quality.

What I don’t like is people telling me what to do and how to do it, and Apple is the king of telling people what to do and how to do it. It’s either their way, or the highway!

And I have no respect for twisting truths and re-wording facts to benefit personal interest, and of course Apple is the queen of twisting facts!

Apple didn’t invent video calling, yet they certainly went out of their way to make sure everybody believed they did!

There are many other examples and bad practices that Apple is the king, queen or duke of … but I’ll keep those rants for twitter …

I bought an iPad! and I’m pretty sure if @MarkRuddock is reading this, he will be LOL-ing right now … after all, I was the one who kept saying the iPad sucks, its useless and I personally have no use for it.

Well it turns out I was right all along! Ha!

The iPad does suck, its too. Heavy, awkward to carry, Apple somehow managed to completly screw the WiFi and it lacks so many essential features and parts that I won’t go into right now (much like the first iPhone did)

I also said, that the iPad is useless, and I find to be more true everyday, I hardly find myself using any of the native iPad apps, I basically live in the browser all the time, from checking my email with gmail, to writing docs in Google Docs, to managing projects and invoices in Basecamp and Freshbooks.

There are simply very few apps that are good enough or better than the browser! And there is a significant lack of iPad specific apps, take for example Meebo or eBuddy, they only have iPhone apps, and trust me you don’t wanna use iPhone apps on the iPad the scaling is just ugly and you loose a lot in terms of usibiltiy …

Why do I keep the iPad then? Well because it’s smaller and lighter than a laptop and its battery lasts longer! So I don’t have to carry a thick and heavy power adapter on top of it to make sure I never run out of battery when I need it the most … a simple USB charge will do the trick for the iPad.

Its also more convienent, how many times do you bring up your laptop in the subway or streetcar to quickly check a web page or an email? How much time do you waste waiting for you laptop to boot or wake up from sleep? Too much time!

But all of this doesn’t answer the question of why an iPad, I could have gotten an Android tablet or a Windows one, or many other options …

I’m not going to start discussing Windows, and I’m offended you even mentioned that horrible operating system in-front of me, now go away! (to clarify, there are no Windows Phone 7 tablets on the market yet, so I’m obviously referring to good old Desktop Window OS fitted on a tablet device)

as for Android, I love Android but I’m also realistic … the Android OS was not designed to fit the form factor of a tablet exactly like the iOS was designed. so the same problems apply, perhaps even amplified since there is no one authority on design standards so the market is flooded with crappy hardware running 2 year old versions of Android OS! Google has taken innitiative with Android 3.0 and forked the Android source code to dedicate some love to tablets but we wont see any of these products for a while and I don’t like waiting …

so an iPad in the pocket is better than an imaginary Android on a tree …

and of course in case you are wondering, I did NOT type this post on my iPad, but rather on my trusty Android phone (HTC G2) with a physical keyboard!

My Golden Rule of Software Development

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:05:00 -0500

My biggest pet peeve in software development is getting emails with questions about generic programming language errors or library bugs that could otherwise be solved by simply googling the error lines …

I don’t really know where the problem lies, but it doesn’t seem be limited to junior devs or people just learning to develop, I’ve gotten those pesky emails rom seasoned developers and very smart individuls that otherwise, I would have never expected them to ask for help, in fact I should be the one asking them for help!

My Golden Rule is simple: Asking for help should be the last thing you do!

It doesn’t matter what your skill level is, there is no justification for asking another developer about a common generic error, ex: [FUNCTION DOES NOT EXIST] or [PERMISSION DENIED] or my favorite [PHP EXTENTION NOT INSTALLED]

You’ll find hundreds (if not thousands) of online articles and discussions answering each of these basic questions, in as many different ways as your heart can desire, and when that fails there are a multitude of debugging tools and practices that one can follow to find the problem and fix it.

After all, that’s what your job as a software developer is: To Find Solutions!

Everybody can read and type, or at least can learn to read and type, and by doing so can have access to all the manuals and tutorials available online and in thousands of books that can teach them how to code, your skills as a software developers are not quantified by how many books you’ve read, courses you’ve attended or code you’ve written!

A software developer skills lie in finding solutions quickly, efficiently and intelligently.

When facing an error its not memory capacity you should rely on, it’s problem solving skills, and if you rely on other people to point out the solution for you, then consider yourself obsolete.

The TTC transfer system is broken

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 18:49:00 -0500

Ever since I arrived at Toronto I’ve used the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) for most of my transportation needs. The subway is at the heart of all my movement within the city, and with streetcars and buses I can make any trip within the city for $3 CAD (used to be cheaper but that’s a different story)

The TTC has many flaws, but one thing really bugs me beyond anything else is the subway transfer tickets.

One certain condition stands out and just doesn’t make make any sense: “Must be optained from station where fare is paid and cannot be used on surface vehicles at station where issued.”

basically: outgoing buses and streetcars will not accept transfers from the closest subway station, instead you have to make sure you grab one on your way in, which could be miles away from your destination … I guess the idea is to enforce the “one direction trip” rule … but in practice, it’s really silly.

I cannot begin to count how many times I went into the subway, and I forgot to grab a transfer on my way in, or I changed my mind on where to go, or decided to take another path … on the way out I realize I need to get on the streetcar to continue my journey, I grab a transfer and get on one, only to get yelled at by the streetcar driver! (they are very rude) followed by a lecture on how to properly use the transfer system OR they will let me ride along but only while making sure I’m quite humiliated infront of all passengers by highlighting how I missed the obvious way of using the transfer …

except I didn’t miss it, its just silly and illogical.

there is no way to get a transfer unless you are inside the “pay” area, so there is no way to cheat the system, there is no way for you to grab a transfer from the closest station unless you pay at the entrance, grab a transfer then go out again … which, (if my math is correct) should be totally fine!

what’s even worse is that this rule actually allows cheating in a different way, I could get on the subway grab as many transfers as my pockets can fill and get off at a later point and give all my friends free transfers and we all hop on a streetcar and get a free ride to our next stop …

Lesley Hazleton: On reading the Koran

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:51:07 -0500

Lesley Hazleton: On reading the Koran

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face"

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:03:48 -0500

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”

- Mike Tyson

Mobile Blogging

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:36:19 -0500

Its been a long time since I posted any original articles on this blog, the reason is quite simple, whenever I find myself sitting in front of a keyboard, my instincts trigger me to do some coding as its my primary hobby to hack!

Which only leaves one solution for blogging: going mobile!

The idea worked out quite well, when I’m mobile, traveling or in transit, I seldom think of bringing out the laptop, even though I see many people managing to do so comfortably, I don’t find it as comfortable or as private …

So with a BlackBerry in hand, I started typing down my thoughts whenever I had a few minutes to spare, in an elevator, on the subway, streetcar, even while walking! I remembered every key and shortcut location so I managed to type and walk without looking and get pretty accurate results!

Then the world changed, Apple decided to change the world and make a revolutionary product … only they left out one very important piece: the physical keyboard!

And as with every great success: others imitated, soon enough almost every smartphone was without a physical keyboard, even BlackBerry (whom success lies partly on their keyboards) went out of their way to make a touch only phone, which shall go without mention in this blog … what a disgrace that was!

But let’s get back to my story …

Soon after Google released the Nexus One (as in that same day) I went out and bought one! It was a bold move for me, especially since at the time I was working for Viigo (now part of RIM) a company that lived in the BlackBerry software world!

I had some great times with my Nexus One, but overtime my blogging dwindled and slowed down to a halt because I can no longer type the long posts that I used to with its Touch screen keyboard.

After a while I discovered Swype, a great input tool for Android, but even with fast input through Swype, I found myself even debating typing a 140 character tweet!

Eventually I had to make a decision, it wasn’t only blogging and tweeting that was affected, I also found myself less likely to answer an email or have a chat conversation, I was becoming less productive as I needed to postpone all the little things that used to get done in an instant on the phone, to a time that I’m near a computer so that I can respond to an email or write down some ideas ….

Well today it all changes, as an birthday present to myself, I got the HTC G2, which is basically almost identical to the Nexus One in every way but with an added physical keyboard.

It may not be as fast as Swype, but for some reason pressing buttons gives me the satisfaction I need to keep on typing.

This post is proof, I typed it all on my little G2 Keyboard.

Tech Mumbo Jumbo

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:09:00 -0500

Tech Mumbo Jumbo

A father and son attach an iphone to a weather balloon and send...

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:55:16 -0500

A father and son attach an iphone to a weather balloon and send it to the upper stratosphere.

Syrian School

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 10:28:00 -0500

Syrian School - Part 1 - Changing Schools

Syrian School - Part 2 - Rap Refugees

Syrian School - Part 3 - Being Inspired

Syrian School - Part 4 - Syria’s Got Talent

Syrian School - Part 5 - Marked for Life