Sajjad's Blog

KO puts forward some views about cricket that I share completely:

"The UK gave up on cricket a long time ago, but sadly this so called sport still persists in the Empire’s former colonies. Its a terribly elitist and clubby sport. For the British army officers posted to the middle of just about every forever back during the days of the Empire, cricket served a vital purpose. They could form their little cliques and clubs and spend whole days weeks just passing the time away. It can be argued that there is nothing like a mind numbingly boring and totally pointless activity to while away the times, and cricket fitted the bill so well that someone would have had to invent it during the days of the Empire if it hadn’t already existed."

Read the whole piece here:

Posted at 13:13pm PKT Comments(4) | ¶

This site is currently the hot topic on quite a few blogs and news sites. Elena, an avid biker, has dared to go into the "Dead Zone" around Chernobyl and document her rides on its deserted roads.

Until now, I hadn't really known much about the Chernobyl disaster and this has really brought forward what effect it had on the people, the surrounding area and the world's view of nuclear technology. A whole town devoid of life, empty roads, death everywhere. Something you wouldn't think existed outside movies and sci-fi novels.

Now considering that I don't live too far from a nuclear reactor myself, I have another reason to move somewhere else. Still, I think the world learnt something from Chernobyl and hopefully, we won't see anything like it ever again.

Posted at 11:11am PKT Comments | ¶

For the last few months, I've noticed a lot of changes taking place in the capital. Initially, I thought these were just due to the summit that took place in January, but these have continued long after that.

A missile that was acting as a monument in the middle of a roundabout near F-10, was taken down after relations with India started to improve. Palm trees sprung up on the road leading to the main government buildings (though this project seems to have failed, given the nature of Islamabad's climatic extremes) and more recently, road-sides are being redone with new trees and shrubs being planted. The road leading up the Margalla hills to "Pir Sohawa" is now brightly lit and presents an awesome sight from the city below.

Apart from these, I've also noticed an increase in entertainment events taking place in this previously quiet and sleepy city. Hordes of people were out for the Basant festival last month around the main park in F-9, the same place where the Islamabad Police hosted an event recently.

An event called "SAF Expo" is underway near the smaller hills of Shakar Parian as well as a fair with rides and other attractions. Even foreign holidays are often celebrated.

During the past week, huge billboards have suddenly gone up around the main roads though they are still empty of any advertisements. I wonder if they are a way to fund all this other development.

All this is great, but I think the authorities should be putting more emphasis on improving the housing situation. With little being done to expand the city, prices of existing land and houses have sky-rocketed. Most people are now forced to live in outlying areas like mine, that don't fall under the control of the Capital Development Authority and lack basic facilities.

If a viable solution to this issue could be found, I just may consider staying here, but until then, I'll keep thinking about Lahore, Karachi and all the other places.

Posted at 14:09pm PKT Comments | ¶

So how do I feel after having to work almost non-stop, without rest or a good meal for over 32 hours? Awesome. I just hope I can leave "early" tonight.

Posted at 20:21pm PKT Comments | ¶

So much to blog about yet so little time. If only I could implement some kind of protocol for communicating from thoughts alone (over an encrypted SSH channel off course) :-).

For short, "Ashura", the day of mourning, went quite well here though the bomb blasts in Baghdad and the shooting in Quetta were the worst type of things that only served to increase the grief of us mourners.

Another horrible event was the Madrid bombing. Seems like no place is safe these days, sacred or otherwise. And no, I don't believe invading more countries will improve the situation in any way.

Was in Peshawar most of yesterday. Will try to write about it soon.

Victor has almost completed his picture section of his visit to Pakistan. It includes photos from my wedding, the Eid celebration and other observations he made while here. Check it out (Warning! Includes gruesome photos of animals being sacrificed and a bride and groom trapped under huge flowery headgears):

If only he stopped using frames. I'll also try to complete my style sheet-based album soon.

That's all the time I have for now.

Posted at 23:27pm PKT Comments | ¶

Went shopping for a test/build machine last week and found a nice used IBM Netfinity server with 2 processors. Slightly underpowered, but good enough for most functions. And it looks really cool too.

Now building binary packages of all my favorite software on Slackware Linux. One thing I couldn't find was an smp-supported kernel with the distribution which is quite odd since Slackware is considered more of a server or expert oriented distro.

Decided on building my own 2.6 kernel which seems to be working fine, except that I can't see the two penguins (one for each CPU) at boot time. Some problem with the framebuffer settings which I didn't bother fixing. I'm tempted to replace the Dell desktop I'm using with one of these.

Posted at 22:06pm PKT Comments | ¶

After about 3 weeks of it collecting dust in my house, I managed to drop my bike off at the repair shop last Monday. Just that task required the services of a pick-up van since even the closest repair shop is too far from my house to drag the bike there.

Now that the engine has been remade, it has to run about 1,000 km before it gets back into proper shape. That task is bigger than it looks due to the engine's small size: 70cc.

So according to the mechanic, I shouldn't ride faster than 40 km/h, take any passengers or go non-stop over long distances until the running is complete. I think I used to ride my mountain bike faster than that. It was definitely more fulfilling. I miss that bike.

Posted at 11:52am PKT Comments | ¶

With US elections looming, there's a public outcry against Ralph Nader's decision to run for president again. Some argue that he was wholly responsible for getting George W. Bush elected by taking votes away from Gore during the last elections.

This site has a nice flash advertisement to persuade Nader and his supporters to vote Democrat and have Bush evicted:

Posted at 20:38pm PKT Comments | ¶

Got this from a discussion on Netiquettes on the TLUG mailing list. It should visualize Thread Hijacking for you if you're used to broken mail clients that don't support threading:

With the percentage of clueless people, who have no regard for Netiquette, growing so fast, the battle is starting to look like a lost cause. I'd really hate to see the Internet turn into a wild wild net or the other extreme; a closed system only available to the clued.

Again, I'm posting these links to articles that everyone should read at least once in their online lifetime:
USENET and Mailing List posting netiquette
Newbie Survival Guide to Mailing Lists
Linux FAQ

Posted at 15:16pm PKT Comments | ¶

This Indian cabbie has been driving backwards for two years. Now he's planning to drive to Pakistan in reverse to promote peace between the two countries:

An interesting and novel way to make a point, though is it really worth the suffering and possibly permanent damage to your body? I just hope he survives Pakistani traffic.

Posted at 14:36pm PKT Comments | ¶

According to this article, Yahoo! is dropping Google in favor of it's own search engine. With Microsoft working on it's own mechanism, will the next war be search engines?

Which reminds me, I should do my part in making the world a better place. Here you go guys:

Posted at 12:05pm PKT Comments | ¶

Mouth watering isn't it? Though to get even a piece of this 1,500km wide gem, you'll have to travel 50 light years or wait a few billion years until our Sun turns into one. More info here:

I guess I'll wait until a chunk (really small chunk) of one of these stars lands in my backyard.

Posted at 12:53pm PKT Comments | ¶

"...the nearest thing we have to the perfect bend. It is symmetrical, it is easy to tie, it does not slip easily in wet material, it is among the strongest of knots, it cannot jam and is readily untied."

Yeah, you guessed it. I found it while wasting time on Slashdot. :-)

Posted at 12:39pm PKT Comments | ¶