Sajjad's Blog

2005 marks 100 years since Albert Einstein published his papers on Brownian Motion, the Photoelectric Effect and his theory of Special Relativity. This year has been marked as "Einstein Year" and there seem to be lots of fun things happening. This site has lots of interesting facts about the man and physics in general:

Posted at 20:48pm PKT Comments | ¶

It was a turbulent year and I didn't achieve much of what I was aiming for. Was reading Mediatinker after quite a while and saw Kristen's summary of her year in 25 words which reminded me that I haven't done mine yet. I did one a year ago (when I was a more active blogger and blog reader) so here it is for 2004:

Got married
Blogging decreased
Took on another job
Made more friends
Had a scary car accident
Got aquainted with Pakistani law
Attended lots of weddings

Posted at 19:43pm PKT Comments | ¶

Via Jim's blog:

Silly, but fun.

Posted at 20:50pm PKT Comments | ¶

"Aliens have stolen your time machine! You've reached their base, which is travelling away from earth close to the speed of light. Problem is .... because of relativity, your twin on earth is aging much faster than you"

An action game (flash required) where you try to get back your time machine before your twin is old and smelly:

Posted at 20:33pm PKT Comments | ¶

I'll keep it simple after the tsunami tragedy of last week and the ensuing aftermath. Hope that this year eases the suffering of the victims and brings about peace and prosperity to all.

Posted at 23:20pm PKT Comments | ¶

Relating to my last blog entry, I was quite surprised to see a message saying that my IP was banned when I tried to open Slashdot (News for Nerds) yesterday. The banned IP belongs to our proxy server so it means other users also can't access it, though it seems that not many of them are regular Slashdot readers since I received only one complaint and that was from another Linux geek I know.

The page said that it was probably due to multiple requests from the IP. It also said that they are usually able to distinguish multiple requests through proxies from multiple (and most likely malicious) ones by individuals. Either they didn't or there really is something fishy going on. The instructions said I should ask my proxy admin to contact them if I'm behind a proxy. Since I am the proxy admin, I checked the proxy logs and sent them an email asking them to unblock it or give me a solid reason for the ban.

Still no reply so I can't read Slashdot unless I change the proxy IP or bypass my own IP so it doesn't go through it. Well I did manage to read it, but only after logging in to another server and running "lynx". I'll try sending another message if there's no response by this afternoon.

Posted at 07:55am PKT Comments(3) | ¶

This Slashdot article points to a step-by-step account of what a person did to stop a fraudster from selling his software on a copycat site.

It didn't seem that interesting to me, until I clicked it and realized that the original owner of the software eventually traced the fraudster to Pakistan and that a local ISP was hosting the site. After some threats and a positive response from the ISP, all signs of the product were removed from the site so the damage done wasn't much.

One of my current duties is to handle abuse complaints concerning our customers and I have to go through lots of them each day. Almost all of them involve email, either open mail relays which are being used by other spammers to send unsolicited mail, or complaints about local PCs sending out email viruses. The normal procedure is to send a warning to the customer and block their outgoing email if there is no prompt action taken.

The response from the clients is usually frustrating at best. Some remain helpless because they don't understand what we are talking about or how to solve the issue. Others think they've done something by re-installing the software or Windows only to see the problem reappear. One customer went as far as to blame us for blocking their legitimate outgoing mail while allowing the deluge of incoming spam and viruses they were receiving (their POP3 server was hosted elsewhere, thus was not our problem).

But the worst kind are those that claim what they are doing is right when it's clearly wrong, like what the above fraudster did. One customer was furious that their "bulk email software" wasn't working and that their business was suffering because of our decision. They went on to say that they don't send out "spam" and are against "spamming", but their business involves "legit advertising" to online groups and mailing lists. Their outgoing mail remains blocked.

Posted at 21:50pm PKT Comments(12) | ¶

The death toll for yesterday's quake near Indonesia's Sumatra island, is now hovering around 23,000. Coastal areas as far West as Somalia and Malaysia to the East were affected by the waves it generated. More details here:

They're expecting smaller aftershocks which may cause tsunamis, already a frightening phenomenon. If these are the result of small quakes, I can't imagine what the initial wave would have been like.

At first, I thought Pakistan's coastal area, which touches the Arabian Sea and isn't far from the Indian Ocean, would also have been affected, but when I called Karachi, they didn't even know anything about the quake. Looking at the map, I guessed the southern part of the Indian sub-continent took the brunt of the force and stopped anything from reaching here.

Posted at 22:50pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

After about seven months, I was back in Karachi last week, this time for my sister-in-law's wedding. Regretfully, it wasn't one of the best weddings I've attended and the rest of the trip was pretty awful.

It was partly my own wedding earlier this year that took away a lot of steam from this one. A number of people from Islamabad and Lahore couldn't attend due to the timing of the event and those that did, looked back nostalgically at my wedding and didn't even try to make it as fun. There were no digital cameras around (except the ones on our mobiles) and I alone lost about 4 rolls of film (yes the black shiny things they used to use before CF cards and memory sticks took over) due to camera malfunctions.

As for the rest of the trip, I wasn't in very good health when I landed in Karachi and being there just made it worse. Although the cold disappeared in the mildly warm weather, the slight cough I had just kept getting worse and is still bothering me. I've never before realised how bad the air really is down there and the water is notorious for causing all sorts of illnesses. The swarms of unmaintained vehicles and most of the refuse of 10 million+ citizens just burning in the streets probably sends out enough toxins to put Mordor to shame.

One of the main drawbacks of having hordes of relatives in a city you hardly ever visit is that you end up with no time to make even brief visits to everyone you know, let alone go sight-seeing and have some fun. Most of the Karachiites I met had a disturbing laid-back demeanor about them instead of the hectic mood you would expect in a metropolis this big and I ended up wasting a lot of time simply waiting or listening to others go on and on about things that don't exactly interest me.

Development work on new roads and utilities also seems to stand still though a lot of residential and commercial buildings are popping up everywhere. The whole city seemed to be a giant, developed slum that's slowly falling into decay. Even the really affluent areas seem to have a dusty, worn-down look to them. Maybe I just never got to the really good places, but compared to Karachi, Islamabad feels like a smaller, greener Tokyo.

Calling it a blessing if you like, but I was cut off from email and the net for the duration of my stay. Nobody I know in Karachi uses it for anything serious. It's just a means of chatting to relatives or strangers when they have nothing better to do.

On the positive side, I got home safe without falling victim to the growing crime (armed muggings and car-jackings are quite common these days). Thank God for that. I got to drive a classic (a first) left-hand drive (also a first) Mercedes (another first) in Karachi (one last first). A strange thing I noticed was that despite the much higher volume and worse condition of vehicles and roads, the Karachi traffic was generally much better than that in Islamabad/Rawalpindi. I put it down to better driving skills.

Though the return Aero Asia flight was over two hours late (second time that's happened on the same flight) and uncomfortable, they bumped me up to business class on the one leaving Islamabad. I guess it really does help to dress well.

Posted at 22:31pm PKT Comments(12) | ¶

I haven't blogged for almost a whole month. Early to mid December was not a very interesting time and I had a lot of uninteresting things to do so had neither the time or good material. Last Saturday, I got back from a wedding in Karachi so have a few things to write about. Will do so once I'm done catching up on things.

Posted at 14:19pm PKT Comments(13) | ¶

Have so much to write about, but the last couple of weeks have been especially hectic. In brief, Babar got married and all three events of the wedding went really well. Congratulations Babar and Qudsia. Nabeel also got married, though since the wedding fell during weekdays and at a time when there was lots of other stuff going on, I couldn't participate in the way I should have done.

The Dancom office shifted from the Evacuee Trust Complex to a building in the F-7 center. The new office covers the whole top floor and is over twice the size of the last one. Right now, there is still a lot of construction going on and we haven't gotten quite used to the bare, cold rooms, but it is at a very convenient location with an abundance of banks and other commonly used services nearby. Unlike the one, mediocre restaurant at ETC that has a very limited menu and even worse service, we have lots of lunch/dinner options to choose from. Lots of opportunities to spend lots of money on good coffee, good food and other expensive things to buy. Just what I needed at this point in time.:(

I finally managed to get the car back after many more trips to the courts and police station. My good friend Razzaq managed to change a few parts and get it running on the spot so I didn't have to go through the hassle of arranging a towing service to take it to the workshop. However, it'll be a while before I can arrange enough funds to get it back in perfect shape.

I don't know if it's just a passing phase or if things really are getting worse, but lately, I've noticed an increase in the number of traffic-related accidents. First it was my colleague's bike accident. Then mine. My neighbor's car got hit by a tractor and just today, a vehicle slammed into my friend Shiraz's nice and shiny new car. I've also had a few near misses on my own bike. Traffic may be worse in other cities like Lahore and Karachi, but unlike Islamabad, most roads in those cities aren't open enough to have many high-speed mishaps, especially those involving large trucks or buses. Hope something is done about it soon.

That's about it for now.

Posted at 21:23pm PKT Comments(4) | ¶

Gmail now lists email forwarding and POP3 access on it's about page:

While I'm quite happy with my Exim+Mutt setup, all this talk of Gmail made me create an account and check out what's good about it (other than the 1GB of space). I was thinking of putting a webmail system on top of our IMAP/POP3 setup, but SquirrelMail just can't compare to Gmail. Maybe I should spend some more time checking other open source webmail packages.

Posted at 19:45pm PKT Comments | ¶

It's been a really long, hard day. Although the later part of it was spent doing some critical (and very tiring) configuration on remote servers for totally unrelated projects, my day started at the courts.

Ever since my accident a couple of weeks ago, the windshield-less car has been gathering dust and who knows what else at the police post nearby. I didn't have the time to go through all the procedures required to get it back, nor the heart to look at it again, but it's something that has to be done.

After a visit to the courts a couple of days ago, I learned that I need to get a copy of the police report I filed at the time of the accident and attach a few more documents before the judge issues an order handing me back the vehicle. That meant another trip to the police station where I filed the report and which happens to be in an even remoter rural area of Islamabad than where I live.

There, I had to tell the exact details of the accident to at least half a dozen people before they bothered to check their records and fish out the report. Even after that, it took them quite some time to get moving and make a copy of it.

This morning, I went straight to the courts and walked around for quite some time while gathering pieces of information about what I needed next and where I had to go. It was almost as simple as trying to build a jigsaw puzzle with your eyes closed.

Finally, I got to the crowded courtroom where my application had to get stamped. The courtroom was nothing like you see on TV, or even in Pakistani/Indian movies. It was just a small room with the "judge" and his clerk sitting on an elevated platform, signing away piles of files and hoardes of lawyers and other people standing around. I managed to hand my application in straight away, but had to wait almost two hours, listening to the proceedings, before getting it back.

Now that I have the stamp and signature on my application, I can go back to the police station and ask them for more papers. Once I get those, I'll get another wonderful chance to go back to the courts to get the final release order which I'll have to bring to where the car is, before being allowed to tow it away. Simple as that.

I need a break.

Posted at 00:41am PKT Comments | ¶

Firefox, the lean and mean browser from the Mozilla project, has reached version 1.0. Mozilla's download site, as well as mirrors, are swamped with traffic and I'm still trying to find a place to download it. The torrents I got had some issues so it may take a while to get a good file. Optimized builds for Windows are available at MOOX though not as cleanly packaged as those from Mozilla.

Coincidentally, another problem with Microsoft Internet Explorer has just been reported. Variants of the MyDoom virus use a known flaw in IE to propagate and another outbreak is starting. More info on CNet, McAfee's site and CNN Money. An excellent time to switch your browser to Firefox (as well as your mail client to Thunderbird and best of all, your OS to Linux).

Posted at 12:21pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

The last company I worked for before leaving Japan was kind enough to host my server together with their own servers. There, I had a reliable, very fast connection with a fixed global IP. A good friend, who still works there, made sure nothing went wrong and things were running very smoothly (thank you Rey and everyone else who helped). Due to cost cuts however, they've had to scale back on IP addresses and bandwidth which means I've lost the hosting.

After my futile search for another place with good bandwidth to host my mail and sites, I decided to put it on my DSL connection at the office here. It's roughly a hundred times slower the one I had in Japan and we have frequent power and/or network outages, but it's the best I can do right now. You may already have noticed the slow response time from the site.

Don't get me wrong. I would be willing to pay for commercial hosting and you can get that anywhere in the world for a reasonable price (I was happily using pair.com for a while), but in my line of work, having full control of such things as the operating system and email service can be cruicial. Hosting a server with full control is usually many times more costly than simply hosting a site and your email on a shared virtual server.

The current server is an old (though very reliable) IBM Netfinity, running my favorite Linux distribution and Mail Transfer Agent. It is configured pretty much exactly the way I want it with virtual domains for both web and email. It also means the others at the office can now read their mail directly through IMAP instead of forwarding it somewhere else first.

It looks like things will stay like this for the meantime, but if anyone with a good connection outside Pakistan is interested, I'd be willing to provide support and services in exchange for keeping a machine running there.

Posted at 12:49pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

Well he did it. The elections looked pretty clean so I guess from now on, most of the American public will be at least partly responsible for whatever Dubya does during the next four years of his presidency. Not like the last four years with people claiming that they didn't elect him.

It was pretty exciting to follow the results though. On election day (night in Pakistan) even the local channels were just focusing on the elections and discussing the various outcomes. They were also a hot topic of discussion among ordinary people who usually just discuss how bad the Great Satan is and ignore the internal politics involved.

So much for all those "get Bush out of the office" campaigns. One thing that the talk shows did discuss was that whoever got to the oval office, things are unlikely to change dramatically in Iraq and other places. The US PATRIOT act has caused a lot of controversy and could still be abolished and some of Kerry's ideas on foreign policy weren't much better than Bush's. One can always hope for the better.

Posted at 14:12pm PKT Comments(3) | ¶

Just isn't my time. I left for my office last night after having the iftari (evening post-fast meal) and as soon as I got on the main road, a truck hit the side of my car from behind. Yes, one of those tall, colorful trucks that so amuse you foreigners, but are probably the most dangerous thing on Pakistani roads.

The car spun around, hit the kerb and flipped over while the truck didn't even bother to slow down and escaped. I had to crawl out of the shattered side window, but luckily didn't get so much as a scratch on me (or my suit). Thank God for that.

In these situations, I have to say that Pakistanis are extremely helpful. Passers-by noted the truck's number and notified the police. Later they also turned the car right side up. Almost all my close friends arrived right away and got to doing the required legal paperwork. Thanks guys.

I have no ideas what the damages will amount to or if the truck driver will ever be caught, but it really hurts to know that this happened right after I had spend a huge sum of money and lots of time getting the car in a proper shape.

Posted at 13:19pm PKT Comments(4) | ¶

The holy month of Ramadan started on Saturday. Our (official) office timings have been reduced to just 7 hours a day (5 hours on Fridays) and the weather has suddenly gotten much cooler. I've also come up with an office anti-virus policy which fines offenders one breakfast meal per offence. Should be a fun month. :)

Posted at 15:03pm PKT Comments | ¶

Starting off with a Monty Python reference, this article on the Beeb lists some of the achievements of American scientists and researchers. It points out how in this area, Americans are still in the lead:

Posted at 13:38pm PKT Comments | ¶

Due to an error while trying to renew my 'zaidi.jp' domain, it has been suspended till the end of the month. I was using it for my primary email address which would explain why your emails to me have been bouncing and why I must have been unsubscribed from lots of mailing lists.

From what I can gather, the problem probably occurred because some Japanese companies make a test charge of 1 yen for credit card transactions before charging the full amount. Since that is too small for a lot of foreign banks, it doesn't get through. That still doesn't justify suspending the account for a whole month. I can't even register it as a new user. Bummer.

For the time being, you can use one of my other addresses. 'sajjad at  iinix.com' is working. So is 'sajjad   at sajjadzaidi.com'.

Posted at 21:44pm PKT Comments | ¶

The Political Compass runs a test where you are asked sets of questions about your political and social leanings. After that, a grid is generated showing where you stand. This is where I am.

Compared to other famous (and infamous) personalities, I'm in the same quadrant as Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Gandhi, though more towards the center. Michael Moore is also somewhere nearby.

Give it a try here.

Posted at 16:29pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

Paul Graham, the author of Hackers & Painters, has published an article about the dotcom bubble and has some interesting insights on it:

Too bad that things work in a totally different way in Pakistan. Firstly, the concept of VCs is alien to most people and you'll be hard-pressed to find many "26 year old" entrepreneurs (hey, I'm one of them ). Most businesses are started and run with personal savings after years of work or with the help of rich parents for the lucky few that have them. That's another reason why it's so tough to do business here without "powerful connections".

Secondly, IPOs are quite rare and happen only after a company has been profitable for many years and has at least a few hundred employees. That pretty much rules out stock options as an incentive to work for a startup.

As for technology, it consists mainly of redoing or improving on what has already been done elsewhere. There is little in the way of new ideas and innovations. I see the same mistakes being made here that were common in the US and other technology centers a couple of years ago. Maybe it's because people are too busy worrying about putting food on the table and other short-term problems.

The one point I really liked in the article was how what we've seen of the Internet is nothing compared to what's coming. The medium is still in its infancy so this isn't surprising. Just look at how much things have changed since the bubble burst. I think we are only now beginning to see the real advantages and these should increase as it matures.

Posted at 02:54am PKT Comments | ¶

Came across this site, quoting from the fabulous Monty Python movie, "Life of Brian". I found it in a comment on an article about "the bubble" (what has the Internet ever done for us). More about that in a while:

Posted at 14:37pm PKT Comments | ¶

This morning I was a little late to work, as usual, and by the time I got to the car park, there were no more empty spaces left. I got quite frustrated until I managed to sneak in my newly polished car into Marriot Hotel's parking nearby.

When I started work here at Dancom, there was more than enough space in the large, gravelled area, just behind Marriot. It is the unofficial parking area for those visiting or working at the Evacuee Trust Center, the building's own tiny parking being in the basement. Within these two months, I have seen the number of cars almost double and it looks like things will get a lot worse soon.

I've seen similar problems all over Islamabad. I had to change the route I take to work because the main highway connecting Islamabad to Rawalpindi and the airport is clogged with traffic in the morning. The CDA (Capital Development Authority) is widening it by adding another lane, but I doubt even that can keep up with the growth rate.

Try eating out at a decent place on a weekend. You'll end up wasting as much time looking for a place to park as you will spend actually enjoying your food. And I can't even begin to describe the horrors of trying to drive down Blue Area during office hours, let alone finding a parking spot.

I remember that just a few years ago, you could play cricket or badminton on most mid-sized roads and just give way to the one or two cars that drove by every half an hour or so. Right now, that's unthinkable.

There seem to be a lot of causes for all this mess. Firstly, the number of people who can afford at least one vehicle has increased. Salaries are better than they've been for a while and leasing cars has become much easier and popular lately. Then a huge number of people have returned to Pakistan from overseas in the last couple of years, bringing with them lots of foreign currency and the comfortable lifestyle they were used to.

Then there is the great social pressure to own a car. Owning a car is a sign of success. It earns you respect and envy from those around you. It means that you can be indifferent to weather conditions or time schedules of buses and vans. In Tokyo, almost everyone I knew, including our CEO, often rode the train with us because it was faster, cheaper and less hassle than driving. Cars were usually used only by people in the suburbs and that too mostly for weekend outings. It was much the same in Singapore.

Public transport is still a joke here and even riding one of the Varan buses I once wrote about is not much different from being herded into a cattle truck. But that is still better than being stuffed into the smaller vans that have replaced every normal sized seat with two tiny ones. Even cab rides are not a very pleasant (or safe) experience. And this is just the Capital. The traffic situation in other large cities has worsened to the point of complete chaos.

Luckily, unlike other Pakistani cities, Islamabad is designed with some room to grow internally in the shape of green belts and open areas. Not the best idea to cut down trees to make way for roads, but it's still better than traffic jams creating copious amounts of noise and air pollution.

What's the solution? I would recommend a world class mass transit system that is clean, affordable, comfortable and gets you where you want to go in half the time. But that seems unlikely anytime soon since the population density isn't that great in most of Islamabad and the places with higher densities lack most other basic necessities (such as a proper water and electricity supply). Plus, not everyone would be willing to pay a little bit extra for a more comfortable, faster ride.

They could do something similar to Singapore and make it less attractive to own a car. Tax single vehicle owners a little more and a lot more for more than one car, then use the extra revenue to improve public transport, build roads and car parks. Not something that people would welcome with open arms, but it's for the best in the long run.

Posted at 17:01pm PKT Comments | ¶

Got this spam yesterday on one of the corporate email accounts (sensitive parts removed/blanked):

From k219@hotmail.com Mon Sep 27
Return-path: 
Received: from [80.48.192.72] (helo=80.48.192.72)
From: fneves@registro.br
Subject: How one can become a terrorist?
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="Windows-1252"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1437
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1441

Welcome to our web site www.#########

Please use http://63.240.81.# in case of our domain outage.

You\'re invited to shop for large selection of bombs and different
kinds of rockets such as surface-to-air,
surface-to-surface and weaponry available at reduced price. With the
following types of rockets you will be
able to commit terrorist attacks, destroy buildings, electric power
stations, bridges, factories and anything
else that comes your mind. Most items are in stock and available for
next day freight delivery in the USA.
Worldwide delivery is available at additional cost. Prices are
negotiable.

Please feel free to inquire by ICQ # ######### or contacting us
directly:

###############
###############
###############

Today special:

******* AIR BOMBS *******


******* UNGUIDED AIRCRAFT ROCKETS  *******


******* ROCKET PODS   *******



Our clients are well known Al-Q####, #########, Al-J####, #####, ####
###### Group and many other terrorist groups. We are well known
supplier in the market and looking forward to expand our clientage
with assistance of Internet.

Do not hesitate to contact us via ICQ # #########

Impatiently awaiting for your orders,
ShadowCrew

Instead of bombing sovereign nations and deporting innocent people, shouldn't the powers that be go after these guys? I mean how hard is it to track 'em down? They give out their ICQ/IP/Telephone numbers. The domain must be registered to someone. The owner of the network block (originating IP for the spam appears to be a polish network) must know who is using it. Hell, they're using Microsoft Outlook Express and probably a pirated version at that. What more do they need?

I know how difficult it can be to track online abuse and domains, IPs and other info can be easily spoofed, but it can't be harder than invading a foreign country, having lots of civilians as well as own troops killed and pissing off a large chunk of humanity.

Posted at 15:40pm PKT Comments | ¶

An update on my password generation effort, previously known simply as "Passgen". Say hello to PyKey. I didn't give it that much thought, but the name kind of popped up while I was trying out different combinations using 'py'.

It even has its own home:

I've also added a difficulty option which right now just prints out random words or combinations of words from a dictionary at the 'easy' level. 'Medium' does what passgen did before, i.e. mash dictionary words together and manipulate random characters. 'Hard' spits out random characters which are usually very hard to remember.

The medium and hard levels make sure the passwords have at least a digit, upper case letter, lower case letter and a special character so they should be pretty secure. The easy passwords should be crackable in a matter of minutes or hours unless other security methods (such as limited retries) are used.

Here is the demo:

and the source:

Use './pykey.py --help' for information on how to use it from the command line.

Now bring it on with the "I f#$@^& hate pykey" jokes.

Posted at 21:26pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

For the last year and a half, I've been using Straw to read RSS feeds of my favorite blogs and news sites. As of late, I haven't bothered to install it on new systems or update the current setup, mainly because of all the other dependencies I need to install.

Today, I got the Sage (http://sage.mozdev.org/) plugin for Firebird installed through a simple click and restart. Looking good.

Posted at 22:42pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

One of the most important things when it comes to security is good passwords. Ideally, a password should be of reasonable, but random length and consist of at least one digit, meta-character, upper-case letter and lower-case letter. This may seem extreme, but most people tend to forget that usually passwords can consist of phrases and words can be easily modified to match this criteria.

For a while now, I've been using simple scripts to generate totally random, really difficult passwords (or passphrases, which really is more appropriate). Although the human mind is quite amazing at storing this kind of information, memorizing a few dozen of these can get tedious.

The script I currently use, transforms randomly selected dictionary words to generate a passphrase that matches the above criteria. I've written it in Python and will keep on adding more options and features as new ideas come to mind.

One idea I have is to generate random, non-dictionary words which are easy to remember and pronounce, but can't be cracked using a simple dictionary attack or even one which tries all the possible substitutes (such as '@' in place of an 'a'). I memoramember fincovering another password generator that utiliates like this, though writing a function to test the readapronability could be an abonomatorically daunteresting task. Reminds me of the BlackAdder III episode about the origins of the Dictionary. :-)

Give 'passgen.py' a try here and please do suggest a better name. I'm thinking along the lines of 'pypass' or 'pygen':

The code is available here:

Please note that this is more of a demo. Since the generated passwords are transmitted in plain text to your browser (unless you are using SSL), there is a possibility of them being picked up on the way. The same script will run from the command line so run it from there.

Posted at 17:44pm PKT Comments(4) | ¶

There's been a lot of hype surrounding Sun's announcement about of its Project Looking Glass. It looked very cool in the demo and I would just love to get my hands on some of the features they showed off. Like being able to flip an application over and write a note on the back. The thing is, I couldn't find a way to try it out for myself, so thought I'll try out one of the other projects out there. Just installed 3ddekstop which runs on Linux and allows you to view your workspaces in 3d. Not very useful, but it was blazingly fast and just looked awesome.

Next thing to try (when I have time):

Posted at 01:07am PKT Comments | ¶

Last night was the first gathering of "Pak 2600", part of the actual 2600 (www.2600.com I think) which I hadn't really heard about before, but am getting to know better. PAK2600 is "bringing together people of all ages interested in Computer Society, electronic gadgetry, communications, privacy, telco and technology in general". In other words, a geek-fest.

It was mainly organized by Ismael, who is here on a visit from London, and was attended by some really bright people, including my friend Junaid. Zaeem, who works for Dancom Multan, came all the way to Islamabad just to be able to attend. Though I was stuck at work and arrived late, I found that the meeting went really well and we had discussions on some really interesting topics (wireless, VOIP, legal issues and Linux etc).

The turnout was pretty good considering that the event wasn't advertised much. Even I only found out about it a day or two before. For the next meeting, we're planning on informing many more people about it and trying to find something really interesting to try out. Kind of reminds me of the days when I first joined the Tokyo PC Users Group though the crowd here is comparitively much more technical.

The meetings will be held on every first Friday of the month at Civil Junction (next to Hot Spot) in F-7 and will start at 7pm. There will be free wireless access as well as lots of other gadgets that people might bring. Hope to see quite a few of you Linux users, bloggers and tech junkies next month.

Posted at 00:12am PKT Comments(1) | ¶

Here is something I was meaning to do for a long time. My site was badly in need of a makeover, both in appearance and underneath. You can be the judge of appearances, but I'm proud to say that I've gotten rid of tables that I was using for the layout of my html pages. As some of you may know, tables aren't supposed to be used for layout and can be taken as badly as blink tags by some. I'm glad to be rid of them. Better late than never.

As with any change, I'm expecting at least a few things to break. Since I can't test my site on IE or other browsers that don't run on Linux, I have no idea if an IE user will be able to read this. I also don't know if it will break my blogging scripts. So, if you can read this (properly), a lot of my work is done.

More later.

Posted at 00:15am PKT Comments(3) | ¶

A tale of a bunch of otherwise normal, influential people who think dropping IE is a good idea:

Why would someone give up the features that ActiveX and other parts of IE provide you in favor of safer, more stable alternatives? Unthinkable. Blasphemous.

Now seriously, it's a good thing that people are starting to realize the advantages of alternative software, even if it is a browser. I know that it will be a small dent since a huge number of Internet users don't even know what a "browser" is, let alone go to the trouble of downloading and double-click-installing something called Mozilla, but it should be enough for now.

As for my browsing, I can't remember ever using Internet Explorer full time. My web-viewing days started when the wars between IE and Netscape were in full swing. I had also started building web-pages around the same time, so I was using both browsers, leaning more towards Netscape.

Once I discovered Opera, IE pretty much left the picture, forever. This commercial browser didn't display Japanese until about a year later and didn't run on Linux till long after that, but Opera became my favorite browser due to the features, speed and customizability.

Opera is also one of the few softwares that I have actually paid for (not counting games). It was for the long-awaited Linux version which compared really well to the aging Netscape 4.7x that most Red Hat Linux users were using at the time. Just a note. Opera has a freely downloadable version which comes with an ad-bar at the top. The license fee is for the full version where the space can be reclaimed.

After Mozilla started getting stable, I normally ran Opera as my main browser and Mozilla for sites that didn't open in Opera. This lasted for a long time, but since each was a resource hog, it really put strain on my system. Galeon was another option, but I found it too unstable most of the time.

Lately, I've switched exclusively to Firefox. It is fast, simple and stable enough for most of my needs. After adding the java and flash plugin, there isn't much else I need to do and virtually all sites open without any complaints.

The one thing that I do miss, which is also a blessing in disguise, is Opera's save on crash/exit feature. It was really useful to open the browser after a power failure or shutdown and have the same pages open that I had before. Gradually, the tabs I thought were useful kept building up until Opera started using over 100MB of RAM and I had to live with the painfully slow experience. Now, I'm forced to bookmark useful pages in case the power goes before I've had a chance to read them and things are much smoother.

Lastly, I should mention lynx (and "links"), the text-based browser that just can't die. I'm often logged into strange remote servers where running a full graphical browser is not possible or would be too slow. With lynx, I can view html files or trouble-shoot other problems without delays or putting strain on the system. "links" is the newer app that supports frames and limited javascript, though I didn't like the way it handled copy/cut/paste on my system.

It's getting late so I'm going to stop now. Hope someone finds this useful, specially those still stuck with Internet Explorer.

Posted at 03:12am PKT Comments | ¶