Offline Ramadan Greetings :))))

I just got this from a friend and I was laughing my head off when I read it ( he is a guy ), but it is sweet right ? so I think its worth sharing maybe somebody else could put it too good use :)))).

يادانه في البحور يازهره بين الزهور أهنيك بقرب رمضان زينة الشهور ... السنة تمشي وتـدور ويجي احلى الشهـور ونقول لاغلى القلـوب كل عام وأنت بصحه وسرور

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Ramadan Mubarak Everyone

Given my busy schedule ( I know it's hard to believe :P ) and the fact that its Ramadan I won't be posting as frequently as before ( if I post at all ), so I would like to apologise in advance and wish you all a blessed and happy Ramadan.

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Liberal vs Conservative Brain Activity

According to a research paper just released by a joint team of researchers at the university of New York and the UCLA, which was reported here and here, it seems that the idealogical differences between liberal and conservative leaning people is a result of differences in the way their brains process information .Of course only subscribers to the Nature Neuroscience journal have access to the original paper, so my opinion is based on the two articles I've linked to above.

To sum it up it seems that liberal minded people act less habitually, are more accepting of new ideas and are more tolerant of ambiguity, which was induced from the increased brain activity ( compared to that of their conservative counterparts ) they exhibited before making any decision in the experiment they were put through; when faced with a conflicting situation . If you want in on the details of the experiment you should read either one of the above articles, here are some excerpts from the LA Times article I liked the most :


"The results show "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style," said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research."

"Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when............"

"Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity.""

""There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science," said Sulloway, who has written about the history of science and has studied behavioral differences between conservatives and liberals."

"...........it would be a mistake to conclude that one political orientation was better. The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation......."

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Adding a Java/HTML script to your blog

Recently I noticed maya was having a problem adding a ticker from tickerfactory.com to her blog and I also noticed that rosebud added a website counter to her blog as a post, which would render it ineffective once that post was archived or if a reader accessed another post directly without going to the blog's main page. So I thought it would be best to make a post to address the issue of Adding HTML/Java scripts to a blog, if even small one.
If we were to take maya's ticker script as an example of a script we want to install on a blog, we would basically start by copying the script from the ticker webpage after customizing the ticker ( use CTRL+A to select the whole code and CTRL+C to copy it ).

Now after copying it from the ticker webpage we have to insert it into the blog . To do that we go to the Dashboard and pick "Layout" from the options presented, then we will be led to the "Page Elements" page as shown below.

In it we can see the blog's layout, from which you choose were you want to insert the ticker ( in our example ) and you click the "Add a Page Element" link at the top of that section, after which you will be presented with the following pop-up page.



Now all you have to do is click the "HTML/Java Script" "ADD TO BLOG" button and you will get an empty box in which you paste the previously copied code and then press the "SAVE CHANGES" button in the subsequent page and you should be done. If there is no problem with the script all should be well and in tip-top shape, and Maya should have her Birthday ticker going :P.

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Rich Beggar

These are a group of photos, of a beggar, a friend sent me from another forum ........... In the first the beggar is own his way home with his wheelchair .......




The poor thing is still struggling to get home .............................





Lucky guy seems he has a car, and what a nice car it is too ............................ :P




Wait a minute I thought you couldn't stand ???????? Maybe he is only leaning on the car maybe thats all ?????



Oh boy he can walk ......................




and there goes our rich beggar after another hard day's work ............. :)))))))))))))))

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Blogger Blog's Backup

Given the recent debacle on Highlander's blog, I thought now would be the appropriate time to make a post on how to backup your Blogger Blog ........... I mean I don't want any of the blogs I frequent to be lost or taken offline :P .

Even though there are many tools out there that allow you to save/backup your blog or any webpage for that matter, there aren't many that allow the restoring of your blog automatically ( if even partially ), i.e. , without having to restore the whole blog on a post per post basis. As an example of such software, that only allow backup, we have WinHTTrack ( which doesn't work with the new version of blogger but is totally free ) or WebsitePacker which isn't free but you can download a shareware version of the product that is good enough .

There is on the other hand a number of good solutions that allow backup and recovery of blogger posts even though blogger doesn't support them, which makes them more cumbersome . The program I preferred the most is called 'Blogger Backup' and can be downloaded here.


Below is an image of the main dialog page of Blogger Backup and I've summarized its advantages and disadvantages below it :



Advantages :

• - It's free and open source, for those among us who might want to customize it :P.

• - Given that it backs up the blog to a local Hard drive there is no limit on the blogs size, except the free space on the Hard Drive

• - It backs up the blog on a per post basis and it also allows you to recover them on a per blog basis. This actually allows you to restore your posts to blogs other than your own ( as long as its on blogger ) if you want to move to another blog or share a post with another blog you're a co-editor of .

• - It preserves the timestamps of the original posts.
  

Disadvantages :

• - It doesn't back up images uploaded to blogger, even though any saved images that are hosted on external servers would be preserved in the posts, as the links are preserved. This also allows videos embedded in posts to be preserved.

• - Comments can't be restored; this is due to an inherit limitation within blogger ( so that commentators can't be impersonated ), but there are other programs/web solutions that restore the comments as part of the original post. An automatic solution to this isn't provided in this program.

• - There is a limit on the maximum number of posts you can restore each day, which is imposed by Google, at most you can restore 50 posts on a given day and the program keeps count of that.

Now to get to how the backup/restore process of your blog using this program. I have broken up the process into two sections in the first I demonstrate the backing-up and restoring of posts while in the second section I demonstrate the backing up of the images.



A- The steps required to backup your Blog posts :

• - After downloading the software and installing it which is fairly simple and straightforward, or at least it should be, you have to add your blog to the list of blogs you wish to backup or restore. To do that you simply click the drop down list adjacent to the "Available blogs" label, which will allow you to add, remove or edit a blog simply by clicking the "[Add/Update/Remove Blogs]" option in the list.

• - To Add you blog(s) you can either simply log into blogger through the programs interface, by entering your blogger user ID and password then pressing the 'Log into Blogger and Get Blogs' button. There is also another manual method for adding blogs which you can access by pressing the 'OR Manually add a Blogger blog' and enter the link to your blog and your blog feed in the appropriate boxes and your blogs name and press 'Add Blog' and hey presto there it is.

• - Now to actually start the backup press the 'OK' button at the bottom of the dialog box so you return to the main program interface. Then you simply have to press 'Backup Posts' button; but before doing that you should configure the setting for backing up to suit your needs. My personal preferences are to get all posts, set no limits on the maximum number of posts per file and to use one file per post and tick save comments ( even though a method to restore them hasn't been added to the program yet, but its work in progress ).

B- The steps required to restore your Blog posts :

• - To restore your blog all you have to do is pick it from the list of blogs you frequently backup/restore ( from the drop down list adjacent to the "Available blogs" label on the Main Dialog box ).

• - Then press the 'Restore Posts' button, which will open a dialog box asking you to choose the posts you want to restore from the backed up posts ( you can choose multiple posts using the shift or control key ), press OK and its done. You should note however if you restore an already existing post you will get two duplicate posts :P.

C- Backing Up Blog Images :

• - To backup the images saved on your blog insert the following URL into your browsers address bar, where 'blogname' is your blog's name in the URL to your blog :P :

http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000

• - Then simply save the resulting page. The page will most likely be saved as an htm/html file with the name search and will be accompanied with a folder called search_files. In that folder you'll find all the images on your blog. You should note that the number 1000 in the above link refers to the number of posts to display so if you have more than 1000 posts on your blog you'll have to increase that number to accommodate it .

So everybody should start backing up their posts :P

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Uploading personal video's to Blogger

Well given that today is Bloggers 8th anniversary, Blogger has enabled a number of new features ( while messing up some of the old - like RSS - for some bloggers ) among them the ability to browse the profiles of other bloggers who share your interests. By clicking one of the links on your profile, that highlight any of your interests or your profession, you will be directly taken to a page that lists all the bloggers that share that interest or profession with you, kind of like Googling ( well its Google so its to be expected :P ).

But For me the most important feature that they added was the ability to upload a video from your personal computer directly to your post, which you can do by pressing the new video icon on the top of your post editor that is located beside the image upload button. There is a 100 MB limit on the video size so if your video is bigger you would have to split it into 100 MB sized pieces.


Even though the uploaded video would be technically saved to Google video; but no public access would be allowed to it ( at least thats what they say :P ). Below is an example of a video I uploaded to make sure it really works ( hattip to Trabilsia for previously sharing it with us ) :P.

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Dick Cheney '94: Invading Baghdad Would Create Quagmire - Updated

Update :

This is an interview by Jon Stewart with Stephen F. Hayes, author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President, in which they discuss the reasons behind the change of views and why this opinion of his was hidden by the Bush administration during the run-up to war, given that he was among the staunchest supporters of the war.

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