Sajjad's Blog

After weeks of waiting, I finally managed to have MMS enabled on my Ufone connection. The delay was mostly my fault since I couldn't make the follow up call after asking for the service many times. Yesterday, I called them up again and managed to get the confirmation that it's done.

The first thing I'll do now is try to get moblogging working, though I'll have to write the plugin from scratch. Simple text messages at first, followed by image handling. And since I'm becoming used to the T9 input method, it should be fun. Maybe I'll become the first ever moblogger from this country (no, Pakistani bloggers outside Pakistan don't count).

Posted at 20:00pm PKT Comments(9) | ¶

Ever thought about how realistic some movie scenes are? Scenes where otherwise normal humans have trouble escaping from zombies or snakes, yet can outrun cars, missiles and even meteorites. Here is a chart comparing the speeds of common objects (as well as the undead and meteorites):

Pretty useful for the next time you encounter something that may be dangerous.

Posted at 14:54pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

My first email address (that I actually used instead of just creating and forgetting about it) was a Yahoo! one about six years ago and believe it or not, I still have it. It's usefulness disappeared a long time ago since with my current setup, I have full control over everything. The space is only limited by the system's disks and mutt makes handling the 50MB+ folders and torrents of messages a day a breeze.

I tried to let the Yahoo! account go many times because it kept running out of free space and because I find web-based email too inefficient, but never got around to doing it. This was mainly because I still receive useful messages on it once in a while and it's used (occasionally) for instant messaging. The forwarding option they used to have a long time ago and an easy way to move my stored messages would have made things a bit simpler, but I guess they really want me to stick around.

Now Yahoo! has upgraded the mailbox size to 100MB, probably in response to Google's 1GB GMail, killing any chance of moving away for another couple of years. I can predict what will happen now. I'll still keep the account, letting new messages come through. Soon the mailbox will grow to a few dozen megabytes, making it even more difficult to get the old messages off. This is one of the reasons I'll be hesitant to seriously use Gmail.

Posted at 11:48am PKT Comments(2) | ¶

Another post about an article from the Beeb. This year's Wimbledon tennis tournament will rely on Linux and Grid computing to keep their website and other services running smoothly. This is the first time I'm hearing about Linux being part of an actual sporting event and it's nice to see it cover yet another territory.

Looking at some of the decisions made by the German government favoring Linux and open source, I believe it could be a big part of the IT infrastructure of the next Football (Soccer for you yanks) World Cup in 2006. It wasn't during the 2002 tournament in Japan/Korea (I know because my friend was involved with that) so I would like to see it happen. Anyone require my services for Germany 2006?

Posted at 22:23pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

It's surprising how many different drinks there are in Pakistan. Among my favorites are sugar cane juice, lassi and "sattoo" (made from evaporated cane juice and some powder that comes from some part of a wheat grain) and off course the fake cocktails (non-alcoholic) such as coladas and margheritas. Then you have the concentrated, colored syrups made up of everything from almonds to fruits to certain herbs and spices. The variety is probably due to the scarcity of alcohol and the hot weather as well as continual reliance on traditional medicines which these form a large part of. This variety is one of the few things I missed while in Japan.

Here is something home-brewed that I discovered at my aunt's place last summer and which I now have whenever I can. Maybe this should be on Kristin's blog together with all her other great recipes, but I thought I'd share here:

Take half a glass of milk and pour in some 7-UP/Sprite to fill the other half. Add ice if you want. Viola. You have a refreshing fizzy milk drink. Good to fight the heat and also keep your stomach in a nice shape. Haven't tried it with anything weirder such as colas yet, but lassi + 7-Up work pretty well.

Posted at 22:22pm PKT Comments(2) | ¶

The Beeb has an informative article on how hard it is to break the 128-bit encryption in common use by a lot of current software. It explains the basics of private-public key pairs without sounding too technical as well as describing other popular methods of breaking security.

Although I've played with brute-force tools myself, I've found them to be inefficient and time-consuming at best, especially when dealing with key pairs, so they're right about it being almost impossible. Other methods, such as social engineering, seem to be much more effective.

Another common reason for breaches is poor security policies or not taking the policies seriously. Recently, a certain friend of mine (you know who you are :-)) emailed his private ssh key to his webmail address so he could use it from anywhere. This off course, makes the whole point of private keys moot since nothing is safe if sent unencrypted through email. It sent alarm bells ringing in my head and I made him generate a new key.

Posted at 18:30pm PKT Comments(2) | ¶

Via Stuart, this page lists the world's 100 largest economic entities, of which 51 are now corporations and 49 countries:

So Sony's sales are higher than Pakistan's GDP while IBM's are higher than Singapore's. Wow.

Posted at 15:11pm PKT Comments(2) | ¶

A non-lethal, crowd-control weapon that is still under development. The Active Denial system focuses a beam of energy that penetrates just enough of a person's skin to cause receptors to go off and cause great pain to the receiver without causing permanent damage. Think of people running away in fear, not knowing what is happening to them. Off course, it wouldn't be non-fatal if they jumped off of high places or trampled down others in that state of panic.

It sounds like an excellent tool for torture, though I've always thought that the fear of permanently losing functionality of an organ was the most effective means of torture. Again it would work best if the "torturee" didn't know anything about it.

Other uses I can think of include securing vaults and sensitive areas though I'm sure someone would come up with an effective armor against the beam. Tin-foil anyone?

Posted at 13:24pm PKT Comments(2) | ¶

I happened to stumble upon this long article on Pakistan in the NY Times this morning:

(free registration required)

The picture it paints of the country I call home is pretty grim, but unfortunately, most of it is true. I had always hoped things would get better, but it doesn't seem likely.

Posted at 14:15pm PKT Comments | ¶

After the time-wasting I did chasing after my ID card, I had decided to forget it and hope that it somehow finds me, but a couple of days ago, Sufyan wanted to go and submit his own application so I went with him to the G-8 NADRA center.

I thought I'd just check where they had sent mine off to this time, but surprisingly, as soon as I told the lady at the counter my first name, she told me to hold on and brought out my card in a sealed envelope. She didn't ask for the number or copies of my parent's IDs. Not even for my old ID. Just brought it out and gave it to me. I was expecting it to belong to one of the countless other Ahmed's, but it was surely mine.

The funny thing about these new IDs is that there doesn't seem to be any rule regarding their expiry date. Some of my friends' ones expire within 5 years and others in 8 or 10. So far I'm winning with an expiry date of 2018. That's 14 years of not having to deal with these goons (fingers crossed). Cool.

Posted at 18:18pm PKT Comments(18) | ¶

Via BoingBoing, this site lets you guess what we have in store from the Bush Administration this October:

The most popular choices include:

• WMD's found in Iraq!
• Osama bin Laden captured!
• Spectacular terrorist attack on US soil!
• Vote is threatened by terrorist attacks, vote suspended due to red alert.
• US pulls out of Iraq in October, leaving the UN in charge.
• Diebold Election Systems fixes the vote in battleground states.
• Escalation in Israel, Iran, or North Korea. US opens a new war front.

I picked the "Vote is threatened by terrorist attacks, vote suspended due to red alert." option since I don't see the administration giving up power simply based on the outcome of an election. The "Diebold Election Systems fixes the vote in battleground states" idea is less far fetched, but they're likely to try something really sneaky.

Posted at 17:28pm PKT Comments(8) | ¶

Due to increased trading during the last couple of weeks, my total worth on the Blogshares fantasy stock market has gone way over a billion dollars. As of now, my cash balance is almost 8 billion blogshare dollars and total worth is around 13 billion. Plus I own around 40 artefacts (which alone cost me about 10 billion). These I'll try to use once there's more cash balance.

As good as that sounds, I feel that most of the initial fun of trading has disappeared. The worth of the market just keeps growing, contrary to real world theories of finance. The traders keep getting richer without anyone getting poorer and making fantasy dollars is now just a matter of clicking away as much as you can. Despite having billions, I'm still going in and out of the top 100 players list.

My trades are simply based on finding the top 100 most expensive blogs that are available to buy. Then buying more of the same to push the price up until no shares are left. Then I have to wait 6 hours before I can sell all at the inflated price and make a profit. It's become a simple clicking game and I wish there was more randomness involved, but it is still addictive.

Maybe I should hire a "clicker" to do all the monkey work and bring me back into the top 50 player's club. What then? Maybe I can buy up important blogs and gift the shares to the owners. If only I could get a thousand (or even a hundred) real dollars for every billion of blogshare money.

Posted at 22:12pm PKT Comments(511) | ¶

Heard about this second bombing in under a month through BBC's "Breaking News" alert on Monday. When I realised that the mosque in question was the one right near my in-laws' house, I immediately called them. Luckily, everyone in the family is ok though a lot of people that my wife or her family knew were killed.

The bomb was powerful enough to do a lot of damage to the mosque as well as kill about 20 people and injure many more. It's a weird feeling to know that something like this has happened so close to home and at a place I've prayed in.

Apparently the authorities were also pretty hard on the mourners the next day instead of doing something about all this violence. Now, the police chief of Karachi is being transferred, but I wonder how that will improve the situation. Two mosque bombings in a month and killing of a preacher on Sunday. When will all this stop?

Posted at 23:44pm PKT Comments | ¶

The National Database and Registration Authority, setup to modernize the issuance and tracking of national ID cards, must be the biggest failed project in the history of Pakistan. Its aim was to replace the flimsy and poorly maintained older cards with newer, digitized ones by December 2003. Yet more than half of the country's 150 million population is still stuck with the old, obsoleted ones.

Due to various reasons, I didn't apply for mine until about 2 months ago, but still haven't managed to get it. This after paying extra for urgent processing. It clearly states on their website that regular applicants will receive theirs by regular mail while urgent applications will allow the cards to be delivered by courier service and within two weeks.

After over a month without any news, I called their hotline number and was told that my card had been delivered to the center where I applied. I wasn't impressed, but decided to go and collect it myself.

Upon reaching the center, I was told that they were breaking for Friday prayers and that I should come back in the afternoon to collect my card. This despite the fact that a large sign clearly said that the prayer break starts at 1:15pm, when it was only 12:30pm. Trying to point this out didn't help either so I came back after 3:00pm.

The final straw was when they told me they had already shipped the card to yet another location, one with a funny, hard to remember name. Off course, they couldn't just ship it to my home or office address or let me know the final location when I first applied. I have now decided to stop the wild goose chase and try to find someone who I can complain to. Anyone want to help?

Posted at 20:00pm PKT Comments(5) | ¶

I was around the Jinnah Super Market area this afternoon when I heard a bunch of shopkeepers pointing towards the mobile phone shops on the center's northern edge and discussing what had happened. What I gathered from the discussions was that there had been an armed robbery there just a while ago.

Apparently, the robbers took a bunch of cell phones and did a lot of damage to the shop, but failed to take all the booty because their car didn't start. Then they tried to make their getaway in a taxi cab, but were caught somewhere near G-10, quite a distance from the scene of the crime. They must have really bad luck.

Also, this must be the first time I've heard of the Capital's police doing something useful instead of harassing law-abiding citizens. I'll know more details tomorrow, but if they really did have a hand in apprehending them they have my appreciation.

Posted at 21:31pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

Last Tuesday was reserved for meeting my relatives in Korangi. It is a huge area near the sea that is notorious for violence between rival political factions. It is supposed to be a crime-ridden slum, though I found it to be pretty much like any other place in Karachi (i.e. seemingly calm and dirty). There was also some visible development of the place in action.

On the way there, I noticed a group of "luxury" flats next to a dried up and polluted riverbed. It was amusing to see a huge signboard proudly marked "Grey Riverside Apartments". They could have at least given it a less depressing name.

We spent the rest of the day at my uncles' houses, enjoying meals and chatting. In the evening, one of them took me out to the fishing area on his motor cycle. Before the coast, there is a large shanty town with small, meandering streets and the foul stench of rotten fish in the air. By the time we reached the enormous chicken feed factory on the other side, next to the sea, I had become accustomed to it and it didn't bother me any longer. I even got to board one of the fishing trawlers which were marooned due to a storm alert.

A cousin also pointed out an area where huge concrete pipes lay scattered and where mutilated bodies would get dumped at the height of Karachi's violence. It is now the site of a weekly cloth market made up of tents.

We finally left Korangi around midnight, something considered quite dangerous as everyone kept reminding me.

Posted at 17:00pm PKT Comments | ¶

Yesterday, I "officially" resigned as the Tokyo Linux Users Group's Lead Sysadmin. As much as I loved maintaining it's server, iinix has kept me too busy to do much of late. Not being physically present in Japan (much less in the Tokyo/Yokohama area) in case of an emergency was also a negative point.

Thankfully, Tim Meggs has volunteered to take over. I'll be around to help, but he'll be the one to blame if anything goes wrong. Congratulations Tim. :-)

Posted at 16:48pm PKT Comments | ¶

It was this day, exactly a year ago that I arrived in Pakistan from Tokyo. It still feels like just yesterday though when I think about it, so much has changed since then. Life is nowhere near as good as it used to be. I haven't made many new friends and miss my old ones dearly. I'm not as fit as I used to be and don't enjoy the same sports that I did while in Japan.

On the plus side, I have my own improving business (though it's not quite profitable yet) and biggest of all, I'm a married man. Wonder what the next one year has in store for me.

Posted at 23:17pm PKT Comments | ¶

Just before leaving last week, I got a phone call from my worried wife about how bad things were in Karachi and that I should reconsider coming there. I had missed the news about the suicide bombing during Friday prayers on the 7th and apparently, things were starting to get ugly there.

I decided to ignore the warning and stick to my schedule since I assumed the worst was over. The day I arrived, there had been some riots earlier and there was talk of a couple of protestors getting killed, but the ride home from Karachi station was just like that on any other day. Reports of isolated incidents of violence continued to come in during my stay, though I really couldn't see what the fuss was about. The only disturbing part was how the security forces were rounding up and detaining so many innocent young men on the slightest suspicion.

Other than the unfortunate and despicable bombing, the killings seem to be limited to men actively involved in riots and protests or those who ignore common sense and wander into the wrong areas at the wrong time. Though some of the violence may have been sectarian, a lot of it was the result of local elections which were held on Wednesday.

From what I gathered, things used to be much worse some years back and the smallest act of this nature causes great concern to Karachiites. I still remember reading about dozens, sometimes as many as sixty or seventy people being killed daily in drive-by shootings and other attacks so this isn't surprising.

Still, Karachiites seemed much more resilient than before. The markets were bustling with shoppers and life went on as usual most of the time. I even heard people joke about how there are still more new borns each day than those killed.

Bushra and I managed to leave on time on Friday despite a strike call by a political party, but I really would like to see more of Karachi and try to find some business there. I just hope the government does something to improve the situation and root out the perpetrators since any disturbance in Karachi has a lasting effect on the rest of Pakistan.

Posted at 23:01pm PKT Comments | ¶

Got back Saturday evening from Karachi after a whole week of travelling and meeting people. I first took a bus to Lahore via the Lahore-Islamabad Motorway which went pretty well. Now, they even have a DVD player on board and the timing is pretty good too.

On reaching Lahore, I had to travel all the way across the city to the train station. There I learnt that the train (Karakoram Express) was an hour and a half late and may be further delayed along the way. As soon as it left, I realised my mistake in choosing the non-airconditioned economy class. Despite the air being hotter outside, all the other passengers insisted on keeping the windows open. Soon, the whole carriage was filled with smoke and dust, which didn't seem to bother anyone except me.

After a few more delays, I reached Karachi 16 hours after leaving Lahore, my hair turned brown and my dark gray t-shirt a sandy color. At that point, I upgraded my return tickets to the air-conditioned class, something that cost me three times as much.

Posted at 19:07pm PKT Comments | ¶

I'm off to Karachi in the morning. If I can find the time, will try to get moblogging working with my new phone, though I don't think the connection I have even supports email.

Also, I doubt the net connection I'll have in Karachi will allow me to use SSH, so no blogging for a week. Anyone know of a WiFi hotspot that offers relatively unrestricted access? I should have completed web support for PyLogger. Maybe another day.

Posted at 01:57am PKT Comments | ¶

Finally took the plunge with my first real cell phone in over a year (sorry Nabeel, but the Siemens I bought from you isn't *that* good :-) and the Nokia that got snatched was also a low-feature, budget set).

The Samsung SGH-x600 seems to be a Rs.20,000 (~US$350/JPY 38,000) phone at the price of a much lesser one. It has all the features and I haven't heard any complaints from other users. The only reason I can see for the actual price being almost half of that is the negative image people have of Korean brands.

I just bought it yesterday evening and haven't used it much yet, but the interface is much better than that of others I've recently used. I generally don't like phones that are too small since they compromise on key and screen size and just feel flimsy, but now that I have one, it is quite convenient. I still would have preferred a flip model, but those aren't very common here. This is what the X600 looks like:

I've heard excellent things about the VGA (640x480) camera. Doesn't compare to the megapixel ones you guys in Japan are using, but good enough for blogging and other cool stuff. The one thing I was warned about is that accessories for these types of (relatively) uncommon, but good brands can be pricey. And the PC connecting cable alone costs about 20% of the price of the phone. I'll have to think about it, or maybe try to get Infrared working on my laptop.

Posted at 13:06pm PKT Comments(2) | ¶

An insider's view of Saudi Arabia (via Wirefarm). Reading this, I have newfound respect for my home country. I just hope Pakistan never deteriorates anywhere near to this level.

The incident involving the burnt schoolgirls reminded me of one on the night after the battle of Karbala (AD 680/AH 61). When the tents of the House of Mohammad were set on fire, the women consulted Imam Zainul-Abidin (A.S.), great grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and the only surviving male adult, about whether they should burn inside or leave the tents. The Imam decreed that saving their life was of utmost priority, therefore they must leave the tents.

How it became religious to let young women burn or be battered and abused by the men I just can't imagine.

Posted at 13:35pm PKT Comments | ¶

A good friend, Faraz Nayyar, has started his own blog. Good to see more Pakistanis getting started with blogging though it'll probably be a while before we have a community comparable to others such as Persian or Japanese. Wider use of Urdu script should help as well.

Posted at 17:32pm PKT Comments | ¶

This month started really hot, dry and sunny. It ends with a week of rain and thunder. The last few days have been especially bad. Current weather: Cold with light, but continuous rain.

Posted at 17:22pm PKT Comments | ¶

Found LinuxPackages.net which is a repository of all kinds of packages built for Slackware. Useful for when you don't have time to build something from source.

Next, I still have a couple of servers running Red Hat 7.3, which was retired by Red Hat last year. This meant that they couldn't be updated by regular means. The Fedora Legacy project provides these crucial updates so that the life of these systems can be extended. You'll need to install Yum for easier updating but you could just download the packages and manually update. I just gave it a try and it downloaded quite a few header files but didn't seem to update anything. Will have to check the configuration.

Posted at 23:21pm PKT Comments | ¶

Sorry, we couldn't be together on your first one after our wedding (another one of those weird customs of sending the bride to her parent's home for a while). I'll make it up to you when I'm in Karachi next week. Take care.

Posted at 18:07pm PKT Comments | ¶

Via VinBlog. Some memorable dialogues from Hindi movies as well as translations of some of the funnier ones (familiarity with Hindi or Urdu will help):

The villain has the heroine tied to an electric chair with a long electric wire leading to a switch. The villain throws the switch and the electricity is now shown flowing towards the heroin. The hero is running towards the heroine racing with electricity to save her, and yes he is catching up. The villain at this point shouts to his chamcha: "Charlie voltage baddhao, electicity jaldee jayegi".

The last line translates to, "Charlie increase the voltage, it will make the electricity go faster". 'chamcha' is literally spoon, but in this case refers to minion or gromit. I guess translating English movies would be equally hilarious for Urdu/Hindi speakers.

"There is no chamcha".

Posted at 16:43pm PKT Comments | ¶

How strange. I was just reading about perpetual motion machines a couple of days ago. It seems that a Japanese musician has developed a means to harness the power of permanent magnets, something I have been wondering about for some time. Read about it here (via Wirefarm):

I don't see a date so it could be an April Fool's joke, but it doesn't seem likely. If it wasn't for them stating that he has actually sold some of these and has gotten patents for it, I would have dismissed it as a prank. Afterall, it has lots of similarities with the Keely Motor Company, one of the biggest scientific frauds in recent history.

Posted at 12:58pm PKT Comments | ¶

Buses seamed to have died out in Islamabad a couple of years ago. Sure, there are the vans and mini-buses, but not the large, spacious things you would find in another city. I rarely use the local public transport here, but today decided to give the new service a try. Varan already has buses running on different routes in Rawalpindi and have now started running between the Islamabad Secretariat and Rawalpindi's Sadar area, covering two whole cities.

To attract customers (and probably to kill off the smaller vans that are the main form of public transportation in Islamabad), they are charging a measly 5 rupees to go anywhere along the route and running a bus every five minutes or so. Quite amazing to see both the previous and the next bus from the bus you're sitting in. Now that's about 9 yen or 9 cents to go across that whole distance with optimal frequency. I doubt any small-time transporter will be able to survive this assault.

The service is a vaste improvement compared to earlier ones. The vehicles are new and clean, the ticket conductor wears a uniform and hands out a ticket (with others, you just pay the fare without any concept of tickets) and the drivers don't try to race with each other (common cause of accidents). While nowhere near the level of convenience and comfort of Singapore buses (ooh I miss those), I was quite satisfied.

The only thing to worry about is what happens when they have killed off everyone else. Off course a price hike is imminent, but will they maintain the same level of service or will it degrade just like the previous ones? I hope not and looking at how things are progressing these days, there's lots of hope.

Posted at 00:08am PKT Comments | ¶

Returned from Lahore this morning. Among other things I did there was a visit to Hafeez Center, a group of buildings containing countless small and large shops. The main product? Computer hardware.

They had a bunch of stuff from cell phones to piles of used PCs and workstations. A great place for a geek in Pakistan though nothing compared to Tokyo's Akihabara or Singapore's towers full of gadgets and geek toys. PC displays were abundant and so were used branded desktop systems, but I couldn't find a single shop that had a decent collection of mice.

Maybe things are different further down in places like Karachi, but that's one of the things that really bugs me about virtually any kind of shopping in Pakistan. Everyone carries the same stuff. I miss places like T-Zone and Sofmap in Tokyo where you could find dozens of models of any piece of hardware or the specialized shops that sold just Unix machines. Or the stores that carried a wide variety of a certain type of food, for example. In Pakistan (or at least in Islamabad), you can go to the biggest grocery store and still get pretty much the same type of goods you'll get at a smaller one, just in a better shape or in higher quantity.

The main reason for this is probably the hesitant nature of sellers (as well as buyers). Nobody likes to take risks. Everyone tries to do the same thing the guy next door is doing without realizing that in the end, everyone will suffer from the increased competition. The buyers initially get a better price, but also suffer from lack of choice and an eventual decline in the quality of service.

Maybe some hope is to be found in the better areas of Islamabad and Karachi, but they have a long way to go.

Posted at 23:01pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

Had a good jolt at around 2:15am, right here in Islamabad. Quakes are usually quite small, but this one was comparable to some of the scarier ones in Tokyo during the last couple of years.

What makes 'em really frightening here is that most buildings are badly designed (if designed at all) and either use too much or too little of the required materials. Forget about being built to withstand e@rthquakes.Maybe that's why I could hear rumbling from the houses around me. It terrified Bushra since they are virtually unheard of down in Karachi. Good thing she isn't in Japan.

Posted at 18:14pm PKT Comments | ¶

Ten years ago, my favorite musician shot himself at the relatively young age of 27. Admittedly, I wasn't really a fan at that time and was only exposed to Nirvana's music after Kurt's death, but it was still a huge part of my turbulent life back then.

The Beeb has a pretty good article on Cobain's life, together with comments from other fans and individuals:

I didn't know he had talked about suicide earlier, but I guess there couldn't have been a different ending than this for someone so troubled and full of angst.

Ten years. Has it really been that long? It's things like this, coupled with my prodigal long-term Memory that make me realise how old I've suddenly become (almost as old as Kurt was at the time of his death). I don't seem to have many friends and close family members that remember events older than the 90s. Time for some Pennyroyal Tea.

Posted at 19:18pm PKT Comments | ¶

Looks like I missed it (or survived it). Yesterday was the 4th day of the 4th month of 2004. As mentioned here, the number 4 is sometimes called 'shi', the word for death.

Posted at 14:47pm PKT Comments | ¶