March 21st, 2009 — Tags: iran, Life, News, Politics
He was my age. I’m not sure what he studied, and what he did to make a living. But on his time off he was a blogger, and criticized Iranian society and government openly. Last year he was sentenced to two years in prison for “insulting the authorities”. And now he is dead. Just before the new Iranian year. Many bloggers are lamenting his loss: here, here, and here and here’s an English language post. And the interview with Omidreza’s lawyer is here.
I Fought Windows And I Won!
March 3rd, 2009 — Tags: linux, opensource, Technology, windows
Yesterday I went to my home theatre pc to be greeted by an endless barrage of error messages. In my efforts to fix the problem, I forgot to take a snapshot of the error, but suffice it to say that it was some odd error about svchost.exe being unable to write to a memory location.
I tried a reboot hoping it would fix the problem, but after the system came I was bombarded by pop-ups! Good old adware! It was years since I was a victim of one of those…
I saw this chance to put one of my diabolical plans into action: Install Linux.
So, I didn’t even try fixing the computer. I quickly backed up my important files, and knowing my media files were safe in a separate drive popped in the latest copy of Linux in – which happened to be Kubuntu 8.04. The install took no more than 45 minutes, and right away the difficult stuff was over with and the Logitech diNovo Edge was detected with all buttons working!
As we speak the system is updating itself to the current version of Kubuntu: version 8.10 and soon I will be able to install MythTV and have a proper HTPC.
Man, I remember the days when I had to scour the internet boards to get info on get X working on my old 90MHz Pentium. Or when a simple install was a frustrating experience.
I just like to say great success!.
My Surfing Habits
February 26th, 2009 — Tags: internet, Life, Productivity, Technology
Yesterday I was feeling a bit unproductive, and a bit guilty for not doing more during the work day. So I looked at my trends on Google Reader and realized I could improve by looking at its data.
So as the data above shows my websurfing is at its highest on Mondays after coming back from the weekend. This statistic makes sense to me, considering I don’t read any news over the weekends and I try to catch up on the news. But on the other hand, I think the opposite would be better for my productivity. Where I work getting the bulk of work done on Mondays and Tuesday is more beneficial and leaves me the rest of the week to debug and troubleshoot.
This graph is a bit embarassing and I could do a lot to fix my work habits just based on this. Here’s what I see along with my excueses in italic:
- I do most of my browsing during the work day. I guess it’s a form of a mental break at work!
- At 9am and 10am I do a lot of websurfing, along with 12pm (during lunch) and at the end of the day. I just start my day a little slowly that’s all!
- My surfing remains high during the work day and is never that high in the evenings. I prefer to chill at home!
So what’s the point? I’m not sure. Can you interpret these graphs?
Kamkar Ensemble in Montreal
February 21st, 2009 — Tags: iran, Music, Video
A fantastic concert, took me to another world! I took some video (poor quality):
And here’s a an older video of them I found on YouTube
Balatarin is back!
February 5th, 2009 — Tags: internet, iran, Web 2.0
Balatarin ( Farsi: بالاترین ) is a farsi website dedicated to social information sharing and link aggregation. This site is much like digg but mostly for the Iranian internet sphere. (wikipedia article)
A couple of days ago, the site was hacked (most likely their DNS or the registrar info) and suddenly the importance of this site to Iranian internet users became quite apparent.
Well, the good news is that the site owners have now gained control of the site. It will come back soon, but in the meantime here’s the message on the front page:
Video: A Closer Look At Gaza
January 27th, 2009 — Tags: channel 4, gaza, Video
This is a segment that aired on Britain’s Channel 4. The first video is a report followed by an interview with Mark Regev, the Israeli spokesperson.
[ via: Kamangir ]
Chalet In Mont-Tremblant
January 26th, 2009 — Tags: cottage, Mont-Tremblant, Video
Last Weekend
January 17th, 2009 — Tags: gaza, protest, Video
CBC.ca – an example of proper online presence
January 16th, 2009 — Tags: cbc, internet, media, Web 2.0
I’ve had a new-fangled smart phone for the past 4 months now, and I’ve been using it to read the news whenever I’m on a bus, or train. I’ve found that some sites understand their audience better than others. After looking into it some more, I realized that by far the best of these sites is CBC.ca. So, here are some things that makes CBC a very cutting edge site – or web 2.0!
Continue reading →
War Propaganda
January 12th, 2009 — Tags: gaza, israel, Politics, Video
With the war going on in Gaza these days, there’s a lot of talk on various places on the web. However, the Israeli government is making an effort to blanket the media with its own propaganda (As happens in any war…).
Well, something always slips through the cracks
Note: After doing some basic research into the time and date of this video, it looks like it’s not from this year’s Israeli incursion. The sad truth is, I’m sure the same thing is still going on today.