Sajjad's Blog

Here is an article on four different distributions that can boot a whole system without requiring any installation. Great way to allow people to see what all the fuss is about:

For my home machine, I've found an easy solution to the noise problem. I have three aging hard drives and the covers don't fit anymore on the warped chassis so it can get really noisy, even with headphones on. Since the system is usually used for playing DVDs, it makes sense to disconnect the hard drives when I don't need them, both for noise reduction and to increase their life.

Movix allows me to boot from the CD and simply start playing DVDs/VCDs in peace. Plus, it uses MPlayer, my favorite video player. Even my brother, an avid XP user, liked it enough to replace the Windows player he was using.

There are three variations of the project. "Movix" is the bare-bones console version that writes directly to the framebuffer while "Movix2" starts up an X session and MPlayer in gui mode. "eMovix" is used to create bootable VCDs/DVDs that play themselves. An awesome project.

Posted at 16:19pm PKT Comments | ¶

Orkut is a social network service similar to Friendster, affiliated with Google. I haven't had much time to expand my Friendster or LinkedIn networks, but another one can't do any harm.

The downside to Orkut is that the only way to join is through an invitation by Orkut itself or an existing member. Now who wants to invite me?

Posted at 15:45pm PKT Comments(10) | ¶

Here's an idea I'm borrowing from Kristin which she borrowed from Antipixel. Turn your work sideways:

.ecnalg a ta elbazingocernu kool egaugnal eht sekam ti woh ynnuF .)hsilgnE rof tfel ot thgir( elihw a ni ecno sdr@wkcab ffuts gnitirw tseggus dna rehtruf pets eno og ll'I

."tac" fo etisoppo eht ,"cat" nisuoc sti oslA .metsys XINU/xuniL yreve tsomla htiw semoc taht "ver" dellac ytilitu elttil eht tegrof t'nod tub ,nuf elttil a rof elssah hcum oot s'ti taht yas thgim uoY

Looks like Elvish doesn't it?

Posted at 16:49pm PKT Comments | ¶

Just a few days ago, some of us were having a discussion about Linux on the desktop and what it needs to move ahead. Here is an interview with Torvalds about it:

One thing I've noticed is that roughly three years ago, I was arguing the case for Linux on servers as a better alternative to other operating systems. Now it is about desktops so things have definitely improved.

Posted at 23:29pm PKT Comments | ¶

Just got back this morning after a rather uncomfortable night journey. I had left for Lahore late Tuesday night to bid farewell to my uncle who departed for Oman (for work) yesterday. Wish I had more time to spend in Lahore since there's so much to do and see there, but that'll have to wait for now.

The newly opened Allama Iqbal Airport looks awesome and development of the city seems to be moving at a much faster rate than Islamabad or other nearby cities. I might think about moving to Lahore since there's so much going on. Unlike the Capital, it's also a bigger market with potentially more demand for hi-tech.

Just wish they would improve the transport system.

Posted at 14:38pm PKT Comments(5) | ¶

That's what the banner on the highway said this morning on my way to work. There were a few others as well, all welcoming the guests to the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit being held here.

Among the guests are leaders of neighbouring countries such as India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh so it is probably the biggest event to be held here of late. Due to the unfortunate events of last month, security is also tighter than it has ever been before. A large part of Islamabad is sealed off to the general public and I have to go through security checks while coming to the office or going home.

Hope everything goes well and this inconvenience is worth it.

Posted at 14:42pm PKT Comments | ¶

The latest in my seemingly sadistic and twisted computing tricks includes adding another machine to handle my workload. I already use my laptop to connect to Sufyan's desktop at work (through VNC) to delay the death of my lappy's hard disk (bad sectors have started to appear), but it slows down response times for both of us.

My Opera browser alone eats up over 100MB of RAM due to my nasty habit of keeping dozens of pages open at once. Add to that, Sufyan's instance of Opera and all the other apps that we both run, the 370MB of system RAM runneth over pretty quickly.

Instead of going through the pain of moving data to another system and reinstalling/updating the software I need, I've mounted my existing home directory on another machine (through NFS). Now I can connect to this new machine through VNC, take advantage of the newer interface (Fedora) and take the load off of Sufyan's machine. Since all my configuration files are the same as before, I don't even need to reconfigure anything. Try accomplishing all this on that certain other OS.

There was one problem though. The new machine has even less RAM than the old one so Opera still wasn't playing fair. In the end, I'm running everything, except the browser, on the new machine, using its RAM and CPU, while Opera continues to run on the old one, projecting its display on the VNC server through SSH.

Simple, ain't it?

Posted at 18:18pm PKT Comments | ¶

Wish all of you a prosperous year full of joy and happiness. My apologies to those I may have left out when sending greeting (e)cards. I'll try to be better organized about it next time.

A lot has changed during the last 12 months and I'm still not sure if it was overall for the better or worse. My New Year Resolution will be the same as last year's. 800x600 on my lappy and 1280x1024 at home. Sorry, couldn't resist :-). I'm tempted to say, "Crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentations of their women", but I'll go with something more civilized and serious. Here it is:

This year, I will try to improve the lives of as many people as possible, in whatever way I can. I'll also make an effort to be more organized.

Quite general, I know, but I'm still working on how to go about doing it. Again, happy new year.

Posted at 00:00am PKT Comments | ¶

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 | ¶

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 | ¶

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 | ¶

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 | ¶