Sunday, December 23, 2007

Iran's Nuclear Program

I don't know if you've seen this or not, but its the front cover of TIME magazine's Dec the 17th issue. It kind of sums up the whole conflict in one :P.





You can read the full story here.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Happy Eid Adha Everyone





Translation:
" It's simple all you have to do is wear this sheep skin for the first day of Eid and act like me and I'll pay you well for it ............. after the third day of Eid .......... what do you say ?"


and I hope you all have a happy Christmas/Eid holiday <:-P .

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Wireless Missile Launcher

Well these should take the boredom out of the office hours >:).





You can get more details from the original source here if you want to buy it ( yes its for real :-O).
Here's a demonstration of a battery of the previous wired version I found on Youtube thats been tweaked with a camera for tracking :

Friday, December 14, 2007

Finally, Blogger is compatible with other blogging systems - Updated - Updated Again

On my previous post a discussion was brought up on the motives behind Blogger canceling the ability to link back to your blog when commenting. Two theories were thrown around, my initial was it being for security reasons and the other theory was that Google was trying to sideline other blogging systems and their users :-B .

Well yesterday I started to notice that a Blogger icon would appear beside a commenter's name, if he was using a Blogger id, later in the afternoon I noticed a drop down list below the commenting section allowing you to choose were you were signing in from (Google/Blogger, AOL, Wordpress, Live Journal, TypeKey ).

I signed into a Wordpress account I have ( for backup :P ) and found that I actually can comment with either one of my identities ( Blogger/Wordpress ) by simply switching between the different choices in the drop-down list, as long as I was signed into both. This is a great feature for non-blogger readers ( Rein, Melantrys ) from either Wordpress or Typepad or any other system; as they won't have to worry about their identities being forged and they won't have to create a new blogger account to comment on blogger either B-) .

Even though I'm not a great fan of large corporations and I do have my reservations on some of Google's privacy issues, but I have to admit this is Great ! <:-P

Update :

Well blogger has made a post explaining the premise behind its move to support OpenID and how it went about doing it. It also apologizes for "prematurely" disabling commentator link back support as quoted here :

"
The "Other" URL field

Right now, the only way to add a URL to your name when commenting is to sign your comment with OpenID. We apologize for removing the URL field from the comments form prematurely two weeks ago. That was a mistake on our part that came from launching OpenID support on Blogger in draft.

Ironically, our testing of OpenID, a feature that lets you use accounts from all over the web to comment on Blogger, made it appear that we were trying to force you into getting a Google Account. We regret this appearance, since we're strong supporters of OpenID and open web standards in general.

"


Update - 21/12/2007 :

Now you can add a URL of your website our blog to your nickname ............. so everything is back to normal :P.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Here comes another bubble

As most of you have probably noticed by now a lot of investors are on a shopping spree of the newest Web 2.0 technologies like facebook, skype which many fear is going to end with a second internet bubble similar to the dot-com bubble. The following video is highlighting this theory while at the same time making fun of people who are making the same mistakes all over again :P.


and here are the lyrics, courtesy of Podesk Videos:

"There's absolutely no bubble in technology"
Peter thiel october 31, 2007
investor, Facebook

got me a CS degree
honor roll, MIT

moved to Palo Alto
opportunity Knocked

thought i had the perfeect plan
took a job at webvan

traded in my twenties
for a worthless pile of tech stock

Suffered throught the market crash
lost a giant wad of cash

Pink slips, burger flips
would you like some fries

happy days are here again
lary page, sergey brin

time to write a business plan
so i can be like those guys!

here comes another bubble

it's a monster rally
all around the valley

first you need a buzzword
(Ajax)
then a second and a third

pick at least two industries
you'll revolutionize
(newpappers + friendship bracelets)

find yourself an engineer
feed him pizza, buy him beer
(product placement : Samel Adams)

Give him just a fraction
of a fraction of the pie

need a good domain name
must be cheap, can't be lame

something cool like
flickr, meebo, wikiyou, mahalo, bebo

"telephone" without the "t"
"digg" but with a triple "g"

make your elevator pith
("We're going to change the world!")
code it up and flip the switch
(internal server error)

here comes another bubble
(VC #1: friendship bracelets and news is a game changer.)
the VCs are backing
(VC #2: The next wave of the web will be friendship bracelets.)
baby let's get cracking

blog, blog, blog it all
blog it if it’s big or small

blog at the cineplex
(justin.tv)
blog while you're having sex

blog in the locker room
babies blogging in the womb

blog even if you’re wrong
won’t you blog about this song?
(Yet Another Stupid Web 2.0 Video)

launch party, nicely dressed
what the point? sausage fest

blue shirt, khaki pants,
looking like a line of ants

need to get a facebook page
all these guys are half my age

twenty nice, past my prime
i feel so behind the times

here comes another bubble
(Matt is broke)
in a year we swear
we'll all be billionaires

make yourself a million bucks
partly skill, mostly luck

now you can afford a down payment
on a small house

if you want a bigger one
hillsborough, atherton

better hoipe the same thing
happened to your spouse

IPO... luky you
have your cake and eat it too

Party yacht, party jet
why not buy a matching set?

build yourself a rocket ship
blast off on an ego trip

can this really be the end?
back to work you go again

here comes another bubble
(im in ur serverz making thingz better!!, Twitter has problems!!)
and when we are gone
(You looked better on Myspace)
this will still go on

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Old and New Libyan License Plates

I've just stumbled across this website ( via TheB-Sides ) which shows license plates from around the world and from different periods of rule. So I checked for Libyan plates and managed to find the set I've posted below that include plates from the Italian occupation era :-O.

The only plates I've seen are the ones from the 1997 to 2001 set. I think they are lacking the yellow plates for the pick up trucks and some other plates from the 90's, but its a good collection nonetheless ;). You'll also notice how different numerical systems were used during different eras :-B.