Sajjad's Blog

Following MediaTinker's lead, here is a recap of my year in 25 words:

Snowboarding fun
Lots of blogging
Worked on Pylogger
Made lots of new friends
Left Japan after 5 years
Settled in Pakistan
Started my own company

Nice idea Kristin.

Posted at 22:41pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

Looks like Linux is starting to go to some interesting places. The "Robot Tarzan", or Treebot, runs on Linux, has a webcam and a wireless link. It helps scientists monitor environmental changes in forests. More here:

Posted at 15:15pm PKT Comments | ¶

Victor just sent in this article on the emergence of Japan as the next cultural superpower:

It was quite an eye opener for me since initially I thought of Japan as devoid of local creativity and imitating Western culture. Now that I think about it, it has gone through a radical change during the 5 years I was there, albeit in a subtle manner, and signs of Japanese culture can be found in far away places.

Looking around, quite a few things come to mind. Trey Parker, the creator of one of my favorite shows, South Park, also lived in Japan for a while and Japanese influences can often be seen on the show. As mentioned in the article, a lot of things in the Matrix series were derived from Japanese culture. Even Pakistan hasn't been spared. Just take a look at my company's name ("ii"nix) and logo .

Posted at 11:50am PKT Comments | ¶

Following the bomb blast just over a week ago, there have been 2 more today, again aimed at President Pervaiz Musharraf. Fortunately, he has survived these too, though sadly there was "collateral damage" this time. These blasts also occurred in Rawalpindi though I only found out about them just now from the BBC breaking news service:

It's just infuriating to see things like this which make Pakistan look like a war zone when it really isn't. This happened just a day after the Pres agreed to step down as army chief by the end of 2004 and after agreeing to the demands of the mullas. He's also trying very hard to solve outstanding disputes with India. Why anyone would still target him is something I don't get. I guess some people just can't stand peace.

From what I've read about the President, this was only one of many occasions where he has had a close brush with death and survived. Good luck Mr.President and may Allah watch over you.

Posted at 17:19pm PKT Comments(14) | ¶

First of all, Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate today. It's a public holiday in Pakistan, but not because of the birth of Christ. Today is the 127th birthday of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Yes, the same Jinnah that our favorite Saruman, Christopher Lee, portrayed in the movie "Jinnah'.

Posted at 11:47am PKT Comments | ¶

Until now, I was using the time stamp from my web machine for blog entries which has its timezone still set to that of Japan. I couldn't find a clean way of changing this from within Pylogger so now I'm setting my "TZ" variable to "Asia/Karachi" in .bash_profile (export TZ="Asia/Karachi"). Wish I had figured this out earlier.

Posted at 17:12pm Comments(1) | ¶

Last Saturday was Pakistan Linux Users Community (PLUC)'s December meeting for the Islamabad chapter. We had a nice discussion on different Linux distros and the recent progress made by Linux. After that, we tried out some Live CDs which can boot a whole Linux system from the CD without installing anything on the hard drive.

We tested the Linux BBC (Bootable Business Card), LAS, Penguin Sleuth and Gnoppix though Knoppix (version 3.3) seemed the best for desktop use. It detected everything fine and started up KDE and Open Office without complaining, though the performance was expectedly not too great. Some of the other distros complained about not having enough RAM (128MB) while a few had trouble starting X, though they should work fine on more decent hardware.

Many thanks to Kashif for bringing the CDs and doing the demonstrations. Also thanks to Imran, Iftikhar, Junaid and Sufyan for contributing to the discussion. Hope to see more of you in future meetings which I'll try to announce well ahead of time.

From the things that were agreed upon, we will set aside every 3rd Saturday of the month for meetings. This may change depending on the circumstances, but we'll try to stick to this schedule. Venue will be my office in City Arcade, I-8 Markaz.

Another thing I'd like to announce to everyone else is the free CD burning service. I have verified ISO images of some of the commonly used Linux distributions which will be updated as newer releases come out. If you'd like a copy, bring in your blank media and we'll burn it for you. Will post a list at a later time.

Posted at 03:20am Comments(4) | ¶

The moment we've all been waiting for:

It was in January 2001, just under 3 years ago, that I got back from the holidays and saw that the long awaited 2.4 kernel had been released. Though not as hyped as 2.4, 2.6 is another major step forward for Linux and makes it one of the most advanced operating systems of today.

Posted at 17:23pm Comments | ¶

Got my first one today. Not a problem for me yet. Just edit the file and remake, but will have to speed up my anti-spam module for Pylogger if this becomes more frequent.

Funny that my original "manual" comment system took care of this nicely by emailing me the comment which I then copied into the comment section. The comment module was the biggest and most complex thing I've written yet so this is sad. Still, it was a good experience and the effort wasn't a total waste.

Posted at 16:12pm Comments | ¶

Right after the good news of Saddam's capture, here's a bad one and much closer to home for me, which just came in as a breaking news on TV. Apparently, there was a bomb blast near Chaklala in Rawalpindi, a place not too far from my house, right after President Pervaiz Musharraf passed by. I had felt a small shock wave around 19:15 PKT and wondered what it could have been. Guess my fears were not unfounded.

I live right next to the main highway connecting Islamabad to the airport so often have to put up with extra security measures when the president or a visiting dignitary passes by. All traffic is restricted from using the highway and pedestrians are kept far away during the passing. That, and the fact that it has been quite peaceful lately, bring this as a shock.

I haven't seen any more details yet so will write about it as I get them. Hmm, could it have anything to do with the Indonesian president's arrival today?

Posted at 01:04am Comments | ¶

Got a surprise when I turned on the Tele and saw on the BBC that Saddam had been captured.

Real surprise to see someone who used to be so powerful in such a terrible state. With all those rumours about his doubles and his keen interest in human cloning, I expected things to be more interesting than this. Maybe real life isn't that exciting.

In any case, congratulations to the Iraqis and all those who suffered because of this man. May we never have to deal with such filth again.

Posted at 01:04am Comments(327) | ¶

Steve invited me to join Friendster yesterday. Now I'm hooked. It's a nice system to create a network of friends and make new friends through existing ones. If I haven't already invited you, please join and let me know.

Posted at 16:10pm Comments(3) | ¶

Boing Boing had a link to this article about the "case for open source in developing countries":

If I understand correctly, an average Pakistani would have to work approximately 16 months to be able to afford a Microsoft license for Windows XP, while an Ethiopian would require about 71 months (or 6 years). If you include the price of even a used, low-spec PC, then I doubt anyone with legitimate income can get online. Even after special discounts from Microsoft, why should they have to starve a couple of months just to be able to use a PC and yet have the system crash or become infected every so often? (to those that say WinXP doesn't crash and is more secure, it's not what I've heard from others or experienced myself).

Yes, I do have a personal interest in promoting open source, but you can't deny the evidence supporting it's superiority. I still keep bumping into people (and technical people at that, not just the average granny) who think Linux is all command-line based and difficult to use or that it only supports server h@rdware.I agree that it isn't yet perfect, but it has come a long way.

Here in Pakistan, piracy is rampant (the official figure is 83%, but I suspect that's only for corporations and the government) and the most logical way of bringing it down is through extensive use of open source.

Posted at 01:38am Comments | ¶

Stuart just sent me this link about keeping the connection open to spammer's mail servers to help bring them down. Kind of an "Acceptance of Service" attack you could say:

Unfortunately, when Stuart said, "the guy kept a spammer tied up for days", he didn't mean literally. Reading the article took away the only joy I got today from misunderstanding that sentence. Still, another step in defeating spam isn't bad.

What I'd really like to see is a spammer captured using the latest "search technology", tied up with "silk ties", hung upside down from an "RC helicopter" and force fed "diet pills and viagra" until his eyes popped out. Having him (or her) constantly listen to messages about sons/daughters/widows of former African dictators would also be nice, specially if she (or he) was one herself.

Posted at 20:38pm Comments | ¶

Read about the awards from Anti-pixel which is one of the nominees for the Best Japanese Blog. Glad to see others that I know on the list and doing quite well. Good luck fellow bloggers.

Now, if you think my blog is the best Pakistani blog (one can always dream right?), head on over to:
http://www.flyingchair.net/vote.php?categoryID=21
and give me a nomination. Thank you and may the best blog win.

Posted at 16:27pm Comments(1) | ¶

KO has a nice list of Pakistani blogs. I didn't know there were so many and there are probably more not listed there.

Posted at 16:24pm Comments | ¶

Try searching for ' miserable failure' on Google and look at the first result.

Hmm, I should add Google bombing to the list of things to try for pulling my company out of the red (yes, still in the red after 5 months). It is after all the best linux consultant and one of the few linux support companies in Pakistan. :)

Posted at 15:40pm Comments(1) | ¶

I'll soon be starting an evening language class at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML) and just for fun, I tried searching for a st@tistics of the most widely spoken languages of the world. This is what I found:

Some very interesting results though the page fails to mention how it got the figures. I would have expected English to rank higher, more than Spanish anyway. And what about all those French speakers in Africa and Belgium?

Since I had already given German a try while in Japan (thanks to Michaela, my neighbour and the best German teacher I've known), I'll go with "doitsugo". It seemed much easier and more fun to learn than either French, Japanese or Italian. It would be nice to give French another try (which I've alre@dy studied twice, in Morocco and later in England at my secondary school) and brush up my Japanese, though they'll have to wait for now.

Posted at 00:29am Comments(1) | ¶

Last month, I exceeded the 2GB data limit on my DSL connection by a few hundred MBs and was duly charged for it. After some calculations, I concluded that with an additional 24-hour 56Kbps dialup connection, I could increase the total data downloaded by approximately 12GB per month. That's about 20 CDs on standard dialup.

An idea that came to my mind was to have my gateway route to different links based on the type of data. With Jim's help (as well as David from TLUG and the "Advanced Routing HOWTO"), I now have a system where important SSH traffic and normal web browsing use the faster and more reliable DSL connection while everything else goes over the dialup. Super.

Posted at 20:55pm Comments | ¶

The Brazilian government is setting these up to improve conditions for poor Brazilians:

It would be interesting to see similar projects in other poor parts of the world.

Posted at 21:47pm Comments | ¶