Rayed's Real Life on Rayed's Real life

Shell Function to Enable Python Virtual Environment

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:00:31 +0300

It always cumbersome to enable Python virtual environment, it is something like:

. ./venv/bin/activate

Vue Modal and Offcanvas Component

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:10:33 +0300

My Modal and Offcanvas components for Vue using Boostrap 5.3.

Grafana + Playwright + Docker Problems

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 11:50:58 +0300

I am using Grafana to graph one of my applications, and I wanted to export these graphs to PDF and email them periodically.

I decidede to use playwright, which is a testing framework that uses a real browser engine and run it without user interface, and it support PDF printing too (only chromium engine).

اول نسخ لينكس اعمل عليها My First Linux

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 09:44:38 +0300

نسخ سي دي من عام ١٩٩٧ لانظمة تشغيل Slack ware Linux و FreeBSD نظم سلاك وير هو اول نسخة لينكس عملت عليها (نسخة اقدم من هذي) اذكر جلست اسبوعين حتى نجحت في تشغيل الواجهة الرسومية، في نفس الفترة كان تركيب ويندوز يحتاج ٢٠ قرص ٣،٥ وتحتاج تغيرها كل شوي جهازي كان انتل ٤٨٦ بدسك ٢٠ ميجا

How to Write a C Module and Build it with Meson

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 16:47:00 +0300

In this post I put my latest C project skeleton, you can find a github repo for the this tiny project here: https://github.com/rayed/c_module_meson

Fast Way to Edit SSH known_hosts

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 10:43:53 +0300

Few days ago I migrated my website to a new server, and whenever you try to connect to a server using ssh it must know it first, if not it will complain, and ask you verfiy the server key signature:

$ ssh rayed.com
The authenticity of host 'rayed.com (x.x.x.x)' can't be established.
:
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?

If you say yes, it will add the server signature to your system as known host, in the file ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Migrating From Centos to Debian

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 09:41:26 +0300

Finally I managed to migrate from Centos 7 to Debian.

The migration was motivated by two updates:

Debian has improved a lot, specially in the field of ease of use, I can now recommend it without hesitation.
Redhat decided to stop supporting Centos as a downstream version from its own OS, it is now continuous update OS similar to Fedora but for the server version. Thank you Redhat but I don’t think I can rely on it any more.

I also updated my Hugo website setup.

Debian New System Useful Commands

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:22:48 +0300

Update System

# switch to user root
su -
apt update && apt upgrade
apt install sudo
usermod -aG sudo rayed 
# logout from root & user

Network

Enable New Interface

Ref: https://wiki.debian.org/NetworkConfiguration

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
:
auto enp0s8
iface enp0s8 inet dhcp
:
sudo ifup enp0s8

NTP

sudo vi /etc/systemd/timesyncd.conf 
:
NTP=sa.pool.ntp.org
:
sudo systemctl restart systemd-timesyncd
timedatectl timesync-status

Security

Secure SSH

sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
:
PasswordAuthentication no
:
sudo systemctl restart ssh

Firewall

Ref: https://wiki.debian.org/Uncomplicated%20Firewall%20%28ufw%29

Django and NGINX in Docker

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 22:00:00 +0300

In this post we will run Django application behind a NGINX webserver, which is a very common practice in production.

Build small Go Program Docker Image

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 10:00:04 +0300

Let’s start with this small Go program:

package main

import "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"

func main() {
    r := gin.Default()
    r.GET("/ping", func(c *gin.Context) {
        c.JSON(200, gin.H{
            "message": "pong",
        })
    })
    r.Run() // listen and serve on 0.0.0.0:8080 (for windows "localhost:8080")
}

We will use go modules to manage dependencies:

go mod init rayed.com/server
go mod tidy

You can run it without installing Go on your machine using Docker:

docker run --rm -it   -v `pwd`:/app -w /app golang:1.16   go run server.go

Building a Docker Image

Next step we will make a custom Docker image from our application, we would need a Dockerfile like this:

SELinux Tip: Web Contents in User Home

Tue, 12 Nov 2019 18:33:00 +0300

I moved my website to new a server, since I moved my blog to Hugo I only needed small machine with minimal spec, so I downgraded my server to one costing $5 per month instead of $10.

I usually put all my personal projects including the blog under my home directory /home/rayed, and point the Apache web server to serve content from inside it.

So I configured Apache web server as follow:

My "Introduction to Cryptography & PGP" Talk

Sat, 23 Feb 2019 19:22:29 +0300

I had the pleasure to give a talk at The Saudi Federation for Cyber Security and Programming titled “Introduction to Cryptography & PGP”

You can watch Video of the talk, and for the slides:

Art Installation Technology

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 12:53:51 +0300

Have you ever wondered about …

how a ride in a theme park works
how the lights in a music show move and synchronize with the music
how a dancing fountain … dance
how the interactive art installation move based on your movement?
how a skyscraper change color during special occasions

If you haven’t I have! and here I am trying to find the technology behind all of these projects.

In this post I’ll keep links and videos related to this subject, I’ll try to keep adding to it as I learn more about the subject, and please share with me any links about resources that could be relevant.

Parsing In Shell Script

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:34:43 +0300

Here a small snippet to parse name:value pairs is shell script:

SSH to Virtual Machines

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 17:32:29 +0300

I use VirtualBox a lot during development, create a VM try something, destroy, or abandon it.

I always face a problem connecting to it to from my host machine (e.g. MacOS), you can add a port forwarding to ssh, then add another port for http, then another for DB, and so on.

To solve the forwarding issue, I usually replace the VM network from NAT to “Bridged Network” so my VM can get an IP from my home/work router using DHCP.

Django CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete)

Sun, 20 May 2018 14:52:00 +0300

One of the most common task when developing web application is to write create, read, update and delete functionality (CRUD) for each table you have.

In this post I briefly cover the step needed to create a CRUD app in Django, the steps we will need are:

Goodbye Wordpress, Hello Hugo

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 10:50:00 +0300

In June 2005 I moved my blog from Blogger.com to self hosted Wordpress blog.

Wordpress served me well the last 13 years, but during that time I had some issues that made the experience less enjoyable.

With the rise of static site generators I was tempted to migrate, but when I tried it, it was much harder that I though, running the generator isn’t that hard part, but mainly migrating my old contents.

But early this year I migrated my whole blog to use Hugo, it wasn’t easy and it took few days of research and trial and errors but I finally managed to do it!

Here I’ll explain my motives for migrations, and also my experience of migrating to Hugo!

Playing with Elasticsearch & Kibana in Docker

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 10:08:38 +0300

An easy way to start an Elasticsearch server with Kibana (Elasticsearch frontend) instance!

GO language Environment Setup

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 13:36:00 +0300

Here I’ll write about setting up a GO language environment in MacOS and CentOS.

Search

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 09:53:28 +0300

Django with Docker: Add Postgres

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 20:33:26 +0300

In the last post I covered starting a new Django project with Docker, and how to build a custom container image for my project, but what I haven’t covered is how to use a Database and how persist your data since all data stored in the container ephemeral and would only exist during the life span of the container.

Django with Docker: Build an Image

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 19:34:23 +0300

Docker is an interesting technology, although still young it gained a lot of buzz and momentum.

The last couple of weeks I started playing with Docker to see how can I use it for Django project development and deployment.

CentOS New System Checklist

Thu, 12 Oct 2017 06:49:22 +0300

Here I document minimal steps to setup a CentOS 7 machine, it suppose to be a live post, so I’ll keep updating it every time I found a step worth mentioning!

Go Language Setup for Multiple Projects

Thu, 29 Dec 2016 14:29:45 +0300

Update: It turns out that this setup is not needed, you should a have single GOPATH directory with all of your projects inside it, and use the vendor feature to handle each project dependencies. More details in a new post.

When working with Go language you must setup the GOPATH environment variable, but soon you will face two problems:

Each project should have its own Go dependencies and its own Git code repo, so putting your source under GOPATH would be problematic.
When working with “Atom” with “Go Plus” plugin, it needs to install several Go packages which would pollute your own source.

To solve both problems I added the following to my “.bash_login”:

أين تذهب في استراليا

Tue, 09 Aug 2016 22:25:46 +0300

لا يرتبط اسم استراليا مع السياحة لدى الكثيرين منا، على الرغم من انها مقصد سياحي عالمي مهم خصوصا لدى الدول الآسيوية القريبة منها.

سأذكر بشكل موجز مزايا وعيوب السفر الى استراليا

المزايا

سهولة اجرآت التأشيرة الاسترالية: يتم التقديم على تأشيرة الزيارة من خلال الانترنت، ويتم الحصول عليها الكترونيا في فترة قصيرة (اقل من اسبوع).
تنوع الخيارات فكل من سيدني وملبورن وجولد كوست لها طابعها الخاص.
الاسعار متوسطة، ويمكن استرجاع بعض ضرائب المبيعات عند مغادرة البلد.
الشعب الاستراليا ودود.
قلة الزحمة في الصيف.
الرحلات الداخلية اسعارها معقولة.
صيفنا شتآهم: نظرا لكون استراليا تقع في النص الجنوبي من الكرة الارضية فان فترة الصيف عندنا تكون هي فصل الشتاء عندهم، مما يعني ان الطقس معتدل الى بارد.
احد الخيارات القليلة عالميا عند لرغبة في السفر شتاءً.

العيوب

لا توجد رحلات مباشرة من السعودية الى استراليا، واسهل الخيارات هي رحلات الاماراتية من دبي وتستغرق الرحلة ١٤ ساعة الى سيدني، من ناحية أخرى تتوفر رحلات من دبي الى جميع المدن الرئيسية في استراليا مما يعطي مرونة في خط السفر بحيث تذهب من مدينة وتعود من اخرى.
التكلفة العالية لتذاكر الطيران حيث يكلف المقعد الاقتصادي قرابة ٧ الآف ريال او اكثر.
نظرا لان الطقس بارد خلال الصيف فان الفعاليات تكون قليلة وكذلك يصعب الاستمتاع بالبحر والمنتزهات المائية، وقد يكون بارد جداً لدرجة يصعب الخروج فيها ليلاً.
خيارات التسوق محدودة.
قيادة السيارة في اليمين، مما يصعب القيادة وتحتاج بعض تعود، على الرغم من المدينة الوحيدة التي قد تحتاج فيها سيارة هي جولد كوست.

كما كتبت مقالات مفصلة عن المدن السياحية الثلاثة التي تستحق الزيارة في استراليا:

أين تذهب في ملبورن استراليا

Sat, 30 Jul 2016 17:49:08 +0300

المركزالفني وساحة فيديراشن سكوير ACMI Cultural Center and Federation Square

المركز الاسترالي للصور المتحركة ACMI هو معرض مخصص للمحافظة على كل ما يتعلق بالصور والافلام، لكن بغض النظر عن اهتماماتك المبنى يعد من ابرز المباني في ملبورن ويلتصق به ساحة فيديراشن وهي ساحة كبيرة تقام فيه العديد من الفعاليات، وكذلك على بعد خطوات من محطة فليندر ستريت اكبر محطات القطارات في ملبورن، كما انه يطل على نهر يارا وحدائق اليكساندرا، ومن الجهة الاخرى من الشارع كاتدرئية ساينت بول، لذلك انصح ان تكون اول محطة في زيارتك لمبلورن هي هذه المنطقة.

اين تذهب في سيدني استراليا

Sat, 30 Jul 2016 17:46:52 +0300

دار أوبرا سيدني Sydney Opera House

اهم معلم في مدينة سيدني، تحفة معمارية غريبة ومميزة، المبنى مكون من مبنيين على شكل ٣ اصداف متداخلة.
خذ جولة داخل المبنى، واذا حالفك الحظ سيمكنك متابعة بعض المتدربين يعزفون مقطوعة موسيقية.

اين تذهب في جولد كوست استراليا

Sat, 30 Jul 2016 17:40:38 +0300

سرفرز باردايس Surfers Paradise

سرفرز باراديس (جنة المتزلجين على الماء) هي المنطقة الترفيهية الرئيسية في جولد كوست، مجموعة كبيرة من المطاعم والفنادق والمحال بمختلف انواعها من الفخمة الى محلات التذكارات، محلات الالعاب والترفية والمأكولات الشعبية.

في الواجهة البحرية يتحول الشارع في مساء ايام السبت والجمعة والاحد الى سوق مؤقت مليئ بالاكشاك التي تبيع مختلف البضائع الغريبة، وتمتليئ بمحلات الحيوانات الغريبة التي يمكن ان تلاعبها وتصور معها.

من الاماكن التي تصلح للصغار:
– Timezone Surfers Paradise
– Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
– Infinity Attraction

Change and rebuild an RPM on CentOS

Sun, 29 May 2016 20:24:14 +0300

Test

sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo yum install epel-release.noarch
sudo yum install yum-utils rpmdevtools

mkdir -p ~/rpmbuild/{SOURCES,SPECS}
wget http://example.com/lame-3.99.5.tar.gz
mv lame-3.99.5.tar.gz ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES
rpmdev-newspec lame
mv lame.spec ~/rpmbuild/SPECS
cat < < EOF > ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/lame.spec
# ------------------------------------------------------------
Name:           lame
Version:        3.99.5
Release:        1%{?dist}
Summary:        LAME MP3 Encoder

License:        N/A
Source0:        lame-3.99.5.tar.gz

%description
Educational tool to be used for learning about MP3 encoding. LAME aims to be the basis of a patent free audio compression codec.


%prep
%setup -q


%build
%configure
make %{?_smp_mflags}


%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
%make_install


%files
%doc
/usr/bin/lame
%dir /usr/include/lame
/usr/include/lame/*
/usr/lib64/*
/usr/share/doc/lame/html
/usr/share/man/man1/lame.1.gz

%changelog
# ------------------------------------------------------------
EOF
rpmbuild -ba ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/lame.spec
sudo rpm -Uvh ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/lame-3.99.5-1.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm 


yumdownloader --source sox
sudo yum-builddep sox-14.4.1-6.el7.src.rpm 
rpm -i sox-14.4.1-6.el7.src.rpm 
vi ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/sox.spec
:  Add "--with-lame" to the configure line
%configure --with-lame
:
rpmbuild -ba ~/rpmbuild/SPECS/sox.spec 
sudo rpm -Uvh ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/sox-14.4.1-6.el7.centos.x86_64.rpm
sox | grep mp3

References: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_an_RPM_package

Limit String Length in Printf in C

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 23:22:14 +0300

I can’t believe how many times I forget this trick! so I am writing it down so I won’t forget it!

Normally when you use printf function with “%s” formatting to print a string (char *) you rely on C convention of terminating a string with a NULL character (i.e. value 0).

So if you want to print small part of longer string, you copy the part you need to a new buffer and terminate it will NULL.

Django: How to pass an url as parameter of include

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 13:21:38 +0300

In Django web applications I usually have a single template file for navigation or bread crumb that I include from other template files, it is easy and straight forward to pass parameter to the included template file, some thing like:

{% include "nav.html" with title="title" object=my_object %}

But it would be a little tricker to send a URL as a parameter, i.e. you can’t write it:

{# WRONG DOESN'T WORK #}
{% include "nav.html" with title="title" link={% url 'book_edit'%} %}

But luckily Django have a decent and elegant solution, you can use “url” template function with “as” parameter, which will not display but will store it in a variable that you can use later in the include function:

Django CRUD Parent/Child Edition

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 00:06:18 +0300

I’ve written before about implementing CRUD operations on a single table in Django, and the post was very popular on my blog and I hope many people learned something from it.

The next logical step is to write a CRUD application with Parent/Child relationship, the application is bit more verbose but it follow the same simple logic used in the first post.

In fact I didn’t write a single application, I wrote five stand alone applications that shows different ways to implement CRUD operations:

اقتراحات لتفعيل خدمة لاسلكي الهواة

Sun, 30 Aug 2015 17:17:25 +0300

كتبت رسالة الى معالي الدكتور محمد السويل وزير الاتصالات باقتراحات لتفعيل خدمة لاسلكي الهواة او ما يعرف بـ “Amature Radio” او “Ham Radio” ردا على طلبه للعموم باقتراحات لتطوير خدمة الاتصالات في المملكة:
https://twitter.com/MIsuwaiel/status/580704446520291328
وفي ما يلي نصها، للتاريخ وكذلك كمرجع لي.

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله،

معالي الدكتور محمد السويل اكتب لكم بمقترحات لتشجيع خدمة لاسلكي الهواة في المملكة العربية السعودية.

قبل قرابة السنتين احببت ان اتعلم تقنيات اللاسلكي ولاسلكي الهواة لاكتشف عدة عوائق لاستخدام الخدمة في المملكة.

My first public Python Package “pyagentx”

Sun, 14 Jun 2015 19:28:15 +0300

I’ve just published my first public Python package “pyagentx”, the package will help you build “AgentX” agents to extend a master SNMP agent.

Let’s assume that you want to monitor your custom application from your Network Managment System (NMS), but the NMS only speak SNMP, this package allows you to extend the master SNMP agent to include your custom application metrics.

Project page on Github

Package page on Python Package Index

Django Image and File Field Caveats

Sun, 19 Apr 2015 00:49:36 +0300

Every time I work with Image or File fields in Django I forget some tiny detail that waste 10-20 minutes until I remember what was I missing, I always say I will remember it next time but I never do! so I made a list of common errors I keep doing while working with Image/File fields:

For complete working project: (https://github.com/rayed/dj-imagefield-example)

Setting MEDIA_URL and MEDIA_ROOT

Make sure you set proper values for MEDIA_URL and MEDIA_ROOT in your settings.py, e.g. I use the following structure:

Intro to Ansible Presentation

Thu, 22 Jan 2015 21:00:46 +0300

My presentation at Riyadh Linux User Group about Ansible

Git directory outside working directory

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 13:13:03 +0300

I have an old PHP website that I wanted to have its code/content versioned with Git, normally Git setup the repo directory in the “.git” directory inside the working directory, but I faced a problem, if the working directory is accessible from the web server it means “.git” is also accessible too.

Luckily git have an option to have the repo directory located somewhere else using the GIT_DIR environment variable, so here what I did:

Install psycopg2 (PostgreSQL adapter for Python) on OSX

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 15:18:20 +0300

I was playing with Django with Postgres backend, and I had little difficulty installing “psycopg2” the Python DB adapter for Postgres on my Mac OSX.

I’ve installed Postgres using Postgres.app for OSX which is straight forward and standard Mac app.

But when I tried installing “psycopg2” using “pip” (the python package manager) I got an error:

$ pip install psycopg2
:
Error: pg_config executable not found.
:

I just searched for “pg_config” in my system:

Limit SSH to Copy a Single File Only

Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:51:51 +0300

I want to allow host-2 to copy a file securely from host-1, so the easiest way is to use “scp” command which use “ssh” as a transport to copy the file.

If you want to do it manually it is straight forward “scp” invocation:

host-2$ scp host-1:data.csv .

But if you want to automate it you have to use “ssh” keys, but this means leaving a private ssh key on host-2 that can access host-1 without any restriction, i.e.

“sar” command cheat sheet

Thu, 11 Dec 2014 13:43:08 +0300

“sar” is a Unix command that collect, report, or save system activity information, it is different from other system status command like “top” or “vmstat” that only show real time status only, “sar” in the other hand collect these data so you can find the system state at any time.

Solving Python virtualenv “DistributionNotFound: distribute”

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 12:44:10 +0300

After upgrading my Ubuntu machine from 12.04 to 14.04 I had this error on virtualenv wrapper:

Rsnapshot on OSX

Mon, 27 Oct 2014 22:12:58 +0300

Rsnapshot is a backup solution for Unix machines including Linux and OSX, it supports many great features including full backups with the size of only incremental backup, it also support backing up local and remote machines.

Monitoring Servers with Munin

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 14:26:51 +0300

This is a draft on configuring Munin to monitor services on a Linux machine, still dirty but published for my reference, if you have question let me know.

Django memory leak with gunicorn

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 18:57:09 +0300

If you have a long running job that leaks few bytes of memory it will eventually will consume all of your memory with time.

Django Themes (or where to put base.html?)

Sat, 20 Sep 2014 21:33:23 +0300

The Wrong Way

I used to create a new directory to hold common templates like “base.html”, and add it TEMPLATES_DIR in the settings.py file:

Protect your Server with Fail2Ban

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 17:07:06 +0300

Fail2ban is a program that scan your log files for any malicious behavior, and automatically block the offending IP.

كيف تنشئ موقع انترنت مجانا

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 00:30:12 +0300

هل تملك عنوان بريد الكتروني تحت gmail او hotmail؟ ماذا لو بحثت عن اسمك هل ستظهر صفحتك في تويتر او فيس بوك؟

لماذا لا تقوم بحجز اسم نطاق خاص بك مثل www.rr.sa ويكون عنوانك البريدي هو rayed@rr.sa، وبالمجان ايضاً.

Accelerating Postgres connections with PgBouncer

Wed, 28 May 2014 12:03:58 +0300

PgBouncer is a lightweight connection pooler for PostgreSQL, connection pooling makes Postgres connection much faster, which is important in Web applications.

Translation in Django

Sat, 17 May 2014 23:02:11 +0300

Preparing Django project to support multiple langauges is easier than you think!

Graph you Data and Email It

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:11:52 +0300

I have a new website and I want to know the number of new signup every day, so I wrote a small script new_users.sh that will print the number of new signups today.

Free Electronics Video Courses

Sun, 09 Mar 2014 10:57:24 +0300

PyroElectro have decent and recent courses on electronics that cover different fields.

Ubuntu new server checklist

Wed, 05 Feb 2014 12:31:15 +0300

These are the step I perform after installing new Ubuntu machine.

Django returning JSON for AJAX requests

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 17:34:30 +0300

In your views.py you can have a page that return JSON data for AJAX request like this:

Setting Up Python and Supervisor on CentOS

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 14:55:33 +0300

CentOS default repository is very limited, and even if you install EPEL you will get old packages, in my case I needed to install Supervisor to manage my Django application, after trying to do it manually and through EPEL I ended up with the following setup.

Django Multiple Settings with Single File

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 14:16:10 +0300

Instead of having multiple settings files one for production and one for development and so on, I prefer to use an “if” statement with environment variable:

Information, Knowledge, Wisdom

Fri, 06 Dec 2013 11:47:31 +0300

Via: https://twitter.com/flowchainsensei/status/408167162344648704

PostgreSQL Replication

Sat, 23 Nov 2013 02:03:19 +0300

Setting up a Postgres replaication

Login to PostgreSQL without typing a Password

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 15:12:06 +0300

If you to connect to PostgreSQL without typing a password, you can do it by having your password in the file “.pgpass”.

Django “render” vs “render_to_response”

Tue, 19 Nov 2013 01:37:29 +0300

Summary: Always use render and not render_to_response In Django you have more than one way to return a response, but many times I get confused between render and render_to_response, render_to_response seems shorter, so why not use it!

Install Python Image Library (PIL) on OSX

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 15:14:18 +0300

PIL or Python Imaging Library is a library that allows you to manipulate images in Python programming language, trying to install “PIL” using “pip” tool won’t work perfectly so here is how to proper installation.

My New Project: AgentX Implementation in Python

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 23:15:47 +0300

During this Eid vacation I spent many hours working on AgentX implementation in Python.

You can find the project in GitHub:

(https://github.com/rayed/pyagentx)

Backup Journey to rsnapshot

Wed, 18 Sep 2013 14:09:03 +0300

When I started producing backup worthy files (code, documents, projects, etc …), I realised the importance of backups after losing important files which happens to everybody. So I started my journey with backup solutions.

Backup generation 1: My first backup was simple directory copy operation, I copied my important directories to external floppy (then CD), and since it is manual operation I always forget about it and my backups was always old.

Python auto complete in OSX

Mon, 26 Aug 2013 00:35:35 +0300

If you run Python shell in OSX you notice the auto completion functionality isn’t working, this is caused by Apple decision not to ship GNU readline and instead they use libedit (BSD license), to fix the problem I used the following snippet:

IPython Import Error

Sat, 24 Aug 2013 01:44:52 +0300

I tried to install IPython to play with it and learn more about scientific Python packages, but I faced an error on my first step:

Implementing Login/Logout in Django

Wed, 21 Aug 2013 19:21:46 +0300

Update: add names and namespace to URLs

Implementing user authentication is fairly easy job in Django, many functionalities are already included in the standard Django installation, you can manage users using the default “admin” app the comes with Django.

Here I will show how implement Login/Logout feature by relying on Django built-in views.

اليابان: رحلتي الى طوكيو

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 02:49:28 +0300

منذ صغري وانا احمل تقدير كبير لليابان واليابانين خصوصا عندما رأيت نهضة اليابان المثيرة امام عيني خلال فترة الثمانينات، عندما كانت المنتجات اليابانية المشهورة برداءة الصنع تأخذ عقول واموال المستهلكين في العالم حتى اصبحت في القمة من ناحية الجودة، كانت المحطات التلفزيونية والجرائد والمجلات تتحفنا بعجائب الاختراعات اليابانية من روبوتات وسيارات والكترونيات والاهم البطيخ المربع

عيدكم مبارك وكل عام وانتم بخير

Wed, 07 Aug 2013 21:01:36 +0300

تقبل الله منا ومنكم صالح الاعمال

Supporting Right-to-Left (for Arabic) in WordPress: the Easy Way

Fri, 02 Aug 2013 09:28:16 +0300

This post is an update of previous old post: Supporting right to left writing (for Arabic) in WordPress

Source Code Management with GIT

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:41:42 +0300

I gave an introduction to Git in the last DevCamp meeting held on the 18h of April at Badir.

I hope you find it useful

أين تذهب في نيو اورلينز New Orleans

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:29:39 +0300

روابط ذات علاقة

تقع مدينة نيو اورلينز في ولاية لويزيانا في الولايات المتحدة الامريكية، ولسبب ما فان المدينة سحرتني منذ زمن بعيد قبل ان ازورها ولا اعرف كيف ولماذا! كل ما اعرفه انني عندما زرتها لم تخيب ظني وطابقت كل ما تخيلته عنها وزادت.

زرت نيو اورلينز خلال زيارة لي لمدينة هيوستن في ولاية تكساس، وكانت المسافة بينهما هي ٥ ساعات بالسيارة، مدينة هيوستن وولاية تكساس بشكل عام فاقتا توقعاتي خصوصا من ناحية اعتدال الجو والانشطة الثقافية فيها حيث ضمت العديد من المتاحف والحدائق والفعاليات، والتي لم يتسنى لي الاستمتاع بها كون سفرتي كانت خلال شهر رمضان.

العربية تعني جودة اقل!

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:58:04 +0300

لو مريت على محلين متشابهين احدهم اسمه “احنا الورق” والاخر اسمه “Paper R Us” من ايهما سوف تشتري؟!

لماذا تسعى الشركات المحلية لاستخدام اسماء انجليزية بدل العربية؟

لماذا الشركات التي اسمأها انجليزية جودتها اعلى واسعارها افضل؟!

لو طلب تاجرين فتح محلين وصُرِح لإحدهم باستخدام اسم عربي والآخر أي اسم يحلو له، هل هناك افضلية لإحدهم على الآخر!

لماذا الـ"STC" ولماذا “موبايلي”؟!

هل حافظنا على لغتنا ام ربطنها بالدونية؟!

Django Serving Static Files without a Web Server

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:21:16 +0300

UPDATE: Steps in this post isn’t correct, check the Django Themes post for better solution.

When deploying Django site it is always recommended to serve static files (e.g. js, css, img, static, media) using a normal web server instead of relying on Django built development server or Gunicorn.

But sometimes you want to test something quick and you don’t want to bother with installing or configuring a web server, the solution is to use the built-in django.views.static.serve view to serve the static files from Django it self:

rayed.com IPv6 Ready!

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:00:43 +0300

This website rayed.com is now IPv6 ready:

$ dig rayed.com AAAA 

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;rayed.com.			IN	AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
rayed.com.		21600	IN	AAAA	2a01:7e00::f03c:91ff:fe70:5c6a

You can test IPv6 readiness for any website from IPv6 Test service.

Change Default Editor in Ubuntu

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 03:03:42 +0300

Just type:

sudo update-alternatives --config editor

Managing Python Environments with “virtualenvwrapper”

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 09:48:33 +0300

What is virtualenvwrapper

virtualenvwrapper is a tool that (as the name suggest) wrap “virtualenv” program, virtualenv solve the following problem:

Fixing “cannot change locale (UTF-8)” error

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:21:06 +0300

I am trying new way to fix the annoying “cannot change locale (UTF-8)” error, this error usually show when you login from your OSX to a Linux machine:

Update Linux without a password

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:15:27 +0300

So you managed to login to your Ubuntu Linux machine with a password by using the magic of ssh keys, and you installed “apticron” to email you whenever their is a system update, you login to the system and issue the update command “sudo aptitude update” and “sudo” asks you about your password! not only it is annoying, it also can’t be automated, imaging you manage 10 servers and you have to type the password to update each machine! or you want to automate using some remote execution application like Fabric or Salt (I am Python fan, so I won’t mention Chef or Puppet here).

Best GIT cheat sheet

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 12:56:42 +0300

Click on each region to find out how to change its state: http://ndpsoftware.com/git-cheatsheet.html

الحذاء وطبق الكريستال

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:50:29 +0300

قصة للأطفال، تحكي عن حذاء جديد يتسخ من اول استخدام مما يجعله عرضة للسخرية من قبل صحن الكريستال.

بعد فترة يمل الطبق من السخرية ويبدأ الحديث مع الحذاء عن كيفية تعرضه للاتساخ، ويبدأ الحذاء بالحديث عن مغامراته اليومية خارج المنزل، وكيف انه يفيد صاحبه كل يوم.

بعد ما تشبعت مخيلة الطبق من مغامرات الحذاء اليومية بدأ يحس بمدى تفاهة حياته، وحاجته لان يكون مفيداً أكثر من الاستخدام النادر عند قدوم الضيوف.

My First Makefile

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 14:15:37 +0300

The following is a sample Makefile for simple project, here I am building a simple “Bloom Filter” library, and “main” program to use it.

The library will have the following files:

hash.h and hash.c
bloom.h and bloom.c

and we should get “libbloom.a” out of it.

The “main” program will use:

main.c
bloom.h
libbloom.a

and we should get “main” executable. So our make file should look like this:

$ cat Makefile
CFLAGS=-Wall -O3
LDFLAGS= -L.
LDLIBS=-lbloom

CFLAGS += `pkg-config --cflags libpcre`
LDFLAGS += `pkg-config --libs libpcre`

OBJS=main.o other.o libbloom.a
BLOOM_OBJS=hash.o bloom.o

all: main libbloom.a

main: $(OBJS)
        $(CC) $(LDFLAGS) -o $@ $^ $(LDLIBS)

libbloom.a: $(BLOOM_OBJS)
        ar rcs $@ $^

.PHONY: clean
clean:
        -rm main libbloom.a *.o

Makefile use TAB not spaces for indentation.

Minimal Django Project: Part 2 … Flat Pages

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 17:59:29 +0300

In this step we will setup the Flatpage App, Flatpage allows you to create simple static pages from the Admin interface:

**mycms$ mkdir templates**
**mycms$ vi mycms/settings.py**
:
MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
:
    # Add Flatpage Middleware
    'django.contrib.flatpages.middleware.FlatpageFallbackMiddleware',
)
:
TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    :
    '/Users/rayed/python/mycms/templates',
)
:
INSTALLED_APPS = (
:
    # Add Flat Pages App
    'django.contrib.flatpages',
:
)
:


**mycms$ vi mycms/urls.py**
:
# Your other patterns here
# SHOULD BE THE LAST RULE
urlpatterns += patterns('django.contrib.flatpages.views',
    (r'^(?P<url>.*)$', 'flatpage'),
)

**mycms$ ./manage.py syncdb**
**mycms$ mkdir -p templates/flatpages**
**mycms$ vi templates/flatpages/default.html**
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>{{ flatpage.title }}</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>{{ flatpage.title }}</h1>
{{ flatpage.content }}
</body>
</html>

Now from the admin interface add a new page from “Flat pages” app, and you can view directly from the normal site.

Minimal Django Project: Part 1 … First Run

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 17:21:01 +0300

Update: Django 1.6+ don’t need any of these steps! it will work out of the box.

The following is the shortest way to create DB backed Django project, it uses SQLite as a backend, which make the setup very easy and fast.

I usually use for testing new Django modules or apps.

**$ django-admin.py startproject mycms**
**$ cd mycms**
**mycms$ chmod +x manage.py **
**mycms$ vi mycms/settings.py **
import os

PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__name__))
:
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': './mycms.db',
:
    }
}
:
TIME_ZONE = 'Asia/Riyadh'
:
TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    PROJECT_ROOT + '/templates',
)
INSTALLED_APPS = (
:
    'django.contrib.admin',
:
)
:
**mycms$ vi mycms/urls.py **
# Uncomment the next two lines to enable the admin:
from django.contrib import admin
admin.autodiscover()

urlpatterns = patterns('',
:
    # Uncomment the next line to enable the admin:
    url(r'^admin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
)
**mycms$ ./manage.py syncdb**
:
provide username, email, password for admin
:
**mycms$ ./manage.py runserver**
:
To access it from outside
:
**mycms$ ./manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8080**

To access it: Frontpage @ localhost Admin @ localhost

PostgreSQL: New Project Setup

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:36:08 +0300

For each new project that need PostgreSQL you should create its own user and its own DB, the following are the steps need for that.

Installation

$ sudo aptitude install postgresql
$ sudo aptitude install python-psycopg2  # For Django access

Require a Password

$ sudo vi /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf
:
#local   all             all                      peer
local    all             all                      md5
:
$ sudo service postgresql restart

Create Postgres User

$ sudo -u postgres createuser -P my_user
Enter password for new role: 
Enter it again: 
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) n
Shall the new role be allowed to create databases? (y/n) n
Shall the new role be allowed to create more new roles? (y/n) n

Create DB

$ sudo -u postgres createdb my_db -O my_user

Test It

$ psql -U my_user my_db

After login you issue any SQL statement, you should also try the following commands:

My Python and Django bookmarks

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:39:30 +0300

This a list of Django and Python websites I found useful, I hope you find it useful as well, and may be add to it in the comments:

Japan Trip Photos

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 15:00:40 +0300

In October 2012 I visited Japan with my lovely family, overall Japan was great country to visit, and I will be writing more extensive post about my visit, mean while I hope you enjoy my photos.

Flickr Japan Set

www.flickr.com

عيدكم مبارك وكل عام وانتم بخير

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 00:23:05 +0300

تقبل الله منا ومنكم صالح الاعمال

Supporting right to left writing (for Arabic) in WordPress (Updated)

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 19:31:18 +0300

UPDATE: I found an easier way to do the same thing Check it out

This post is an update of previous old post: Supporting right to left writing (for Arabic) in WordPress

In my blog I write in both languages English and Arabic, but I have to switch text direction from the template default English direction “Left to Right” to Arabic “Right to Left”. One way do to it is to add HTML tags in each Arabic entry.

Kiva systems: innovative warehouse robotics

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:45:51 +0300

Kiva Systems is a company that makes order fulfillment systems that use mobile robots for warehouse automation. Its material handling systems are used by Staples, Walgreens, GAP, Crate and Barrel, Toys “R” Us and Gilt Groupe, among others.

Wikipedia Kiva Systems

Amazon bought them for $775 million, you must watch the videos!

Blast from the past: Small Piece of Saudi Arabia Internet History

Thu, 10 May 2012 19:27:41 +0300

Last week my friend Osama Aldosary was cleaning his emails and found this 13 years old email from me back when I was working as a system admin at ISU KACST, and I was administrating the email servers that accept and forward all internet emails for Saudi universities, Osama was working for KSU back then.

Thank you Osama

Subject:	New Link Migration Plan
Date:	Wed, 10 Feb 1999 15:34:40 +0307
From:	Rayed Al-Rashed < *****@kacst.edu.sa>
Organization:	KACST
To:	*****@kaau.edu.sa, *****@kfupm.edu.sa, *****@ksu.edu.sa, *****@ksu.edu.sa, *****@uqu.edu.sa

Salam Brothers,

As you all know KACST was connected through King Faisal Specializes
Hospital, and since KACST is now connected through ISU, we have to
replace our old IP addresses with the new ones from ISU.

Of course this will affect the leased-line link and E-Mail traffic with
all of you, and we tried to delay the migration as much as we can to
give you enough time to set up your own services through ISU link.

Our dead line to return the old IPs will end in less than a month, then
we have to return them to RIPE, we are going to start our plan to
migrate to the new IPs, and we have to stop the leased-line link and our
old mail relay that serve your domains when we return the old IPs.

I am sure that most of you are ready by now, but if you are facing any
problems we will be happy to help you with it.

NOTE:
Please send me the current state of your migration plan, and the
estimated time to finish.

-----------------------------------------------
Rayed Al-Rashed
Internet Services Unit
King abdullaziz City for Science and Technology
-----------------------------------------------

Django backend benchmark

Thu, 10 May 2012 19:10:42 +0300

I create small Django app and tried to benchmark it with different backends, here is the result:

Backend	Req/Sec
PostgreSQL	68.41
PostgreSQL+pgpool	116.12
MySQL	127.61

The test performed using "ab" tool, 1000 requests with 5 concurrent clients: `$ ab -c 5 -n 1000 http://localhost/test`

PostgreSQL on Ubuntu from scratch

Thu, 10 May 2012 03:03:36 +0300

My notes on installing and configuring PostgreSQL on Ubuntu Linux.

PostgreSQL is used by many large web sites and services, including Skype, Reddit, Instagram, “.org” registerer, check longer list here Prominent Users

Best of all it isn’t owned by anyone, not Oracle nor anyone else!

مقابلتي في اطياف

Sun, 06 May 2012 14:53:20 +0300

مقابلتي في اطياف اكرة صوتي المسجل، بعض الاحيان انسى انه انا 🙂

روابط ذات علاقة

Atari 800 XL MSX

جامعة جورج واشنطن George Washington University

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_University

Deploying Django

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:07:30 +0300

Django is a web framework written in Python language, my favourite computer programming language.

Python a language is really great language, easy to read and understand, and very easy to learn, but for me I always found setting up Python for web development as a challenge, socially if compare it to PHP, which almost works out of the box, actually most people think PHP works only in the web server and can’t work as stand alone application, search for PHP CLI if you are interested.

I will try here to document an easy Django deployment for my future reference and hopefully it will help others:

MENOG 10 In Dubai

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:32:48 +0300

If you are working in Internet network operations you don’t want to miss this event, MENOG -Middle East Network Operator Group- is a conference where network operator from all over the globe and the region of course come to talk about network operation issues, trends, etc…
MENOG 10 Agenda

MENOG is also a great opportunity to get quality education, this time they have 2 workshops one about “DNS Operations & DNSSEC Deployment”, and another one about “IPv6 for ISPs”, the workshop is 5 days training.
MENOG 10 Workshops

The Big Book of Monsters

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 23:54:50 +0300

Few months ago while waiting for our flight in the airport I took out my notebook (paper one) and I start drawing with my son Dody, we started drawing different monsters trying to be funny and creative, and we decided to write a book with the name “The Big Book of Monsters” where we fill it with drawings of monsters with names and describing their powers.

So here some sample pages: The Big Book of Monsters

Where do Saudi Arabia’s Top 1000 Websites hosted?

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:25:48 +0300

Small report I worked on to find out the hosting location of Saudi Arabia’s top accessed websites, the aim of this report is to raise the awareness of the lack of Internet hosting in Saudi Arabia, and the slow adoption of Saudi TLD “.sa”.

Short summary only 8.9% of sites are hosted locally, and only 4.9% have “.sa” domain.

The Report

My new Arduino kit

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:50:24 +0300

I ordered The Ultimate Microcontroller Pack with Arduino UNO, in fact I ordered 2 packs one for me and my 6 years old son, and one for my 13 years old nephew Abdullah.

I am very excited to try all the components, so far I am still with LED and buttons, looking for moving my first servo and of course my first robot 🙂

Arduino and other embedded boards

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:12:24 +0300

My list of embedded boards, I hope to keep it updated as I learn more about embedded systems options:

Arduino: $15, Atmel AVR, microcontroller.
Pinguino: $24, PIC, microcontroller.
Netduino: $35, ARM, Microsoft .Net!, Atmel 32-bit microcontroller.
Raspberry Pi: $25, ARM, Microprocessor, SoC, Good Video (HDMI), Linux.
Teensy: $16, Amel AVR, Microcontroller, Tiny.
BeagleBoard: $89, ARM, Ethernet, 2GB MicroSD, Linux.
mbed: $45, ARM.

Very interesting interview with Monty, MySQL inventor, in FLOSS weekly

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:15:22 +0300

Don’t miss the latest episode of FLOSS weekly podcast with Monty the original author of MySQL, to learn why you should consider Maria DB instead of MySQL in your next project, some highlights from the interview:

He is Finnish not Swedish!! yet another Finnish changing the world!!
He has 2 daughters My, and Maria, and one son Max … this where “My”SQL, “Maria”DB, “Max”DB names come from.
Even after selling MySQL for 1 Billion dollar to Sun, he still lives in the same neighborhood.
Why he created MariaDB, how he feel about MySQL under Oracle
Still coding, at least 4 hours a day!!

Thanks Randal and Simon for great interview, and thank you Monty for great product.

Bash auto completion heaven

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:21:07 +0300

bash completion extends bash’s standard completion behavior to achieve complex command lines with just a few keystrokes. This project was conceived to produce programmable completion routines for the most common Linux/UNIX commands, reducing the amount of typing sysadmins and programmers need to do on a daily basis.

Just install:
sudo aptitude install bash-completion

Great Arduino Tutorial Videos

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:27:54 +0300

Great Arduino Tutorials videos from Jeremy Blum, the good ting about Arduino it simplify many aspect of Electrical Engineering and make it easier to play with.

Tutorial Series for Arduino

Thanks Jeremy

عيد سعيد وكل عام وانتم بخير

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 01:27:49 +0300

عيد سعيد وكل عام وانتم بخير

My new “.sa” domain name

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:50:33 +0300

I registered new domain name under “.sa” ccTLD, try it out rr.sa, the registerion was smooth and took less than one hour, registers your now, SaudiNIC. (You have to be Saudi resident)

Loop Unwinding Experiment

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 17:43:12 +0300

Few months ago I read an interesting post by Mike Haertel the original author of GNU grep titled “why GNU grep is fast“, one of the reason given is loop unrolling.
Few weeks ago I came a cross the same post which made me more interested on Loop Unrolling, so I decided to experiment with it, I implemented simple function to search for an item inside a list of items, and return as soon as it finds it, soo here is my result:

Tips for a Faster Website

Fri, 20 May 2011 19:18:27 +0300

Last week I presented at Gitex Riyadh in Alriyadh.com booth about ways to improve website speed.

جناح الرياض في جيتكس " اليوم الأول "

My presentation at IPv6 workshop

Tue, 10 May 2011 13:33:45 +0300

Download the presentation in PDF format:

IPv6 Technical Introduction

Faster file syncing with Redis

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 19:01:44 +0300

The problem
In alriyadh.com most of the site administration take place inside the premises of Alriyadh Newspaper offices, and as you can image the bandwidth dedicated to the website team isn’t that big. This why we designed our system to have two parts, one inside Alriyadh Newspaper internal data center where the local access is very fast, and another part accessible to the public hosted in MeduNet, and we would have a database replication for the website data, and file system replication for the web site images and media.

Configuring IPv6 in your server

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 11:41:30 +0300

Getting IPv6 connectivity to your server isn’t very hard in fact if you have a decent provier you might already have it configured.

Do you have IPv6 already configured?

First try this command


$ ifconfig -a

You will have result like this:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1e:0b:d6:7b:b8 inet addr:88.85.245.43 Bcast:88.85.245.47 Mask:255.255.255.248 inet6 addr: fe80::21e:bff:fed6:7bb8/64 Scope:Link :

he-ipv6 Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
inet6 addr: 2001:470:1f08:1160::2/64 Scope:Global inet6 addr: fe80::5855:f52b/64 Scope:Link :

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host :

مينوج ٧ ورحلة اسطنبول

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:02:22 +0300

زرت اسطنبول في رحلة عمل قصيرة لحضور مؤتمر “مينوج” مشغلي شبكات الشرق الاوسط

للأسف لم تسنح لي الفرصة لزيارة المدينة بشكل جيد، لكني خرجت بانطباع ايجابي ورغبة في زيارتها سائحاً مرة اخرى، هذه بعض الصور التي التقطتها خلال الزيارة، اضغط على اي منها لرؤية باقي الصور:

My first Git Session

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 08:42:27 +0300

This guide for my own reference please don’t rely on it, for a better introduction check out Git Reference website.

Basic concept and terminologies, Git have 3 logical places:

Working Area: normal directory where you edit your project.
Staging Area: Think of the staging as your project state before you start your coding session, after each coding session you add your changes to staging area using git add filename or git add .
Snapshot Area: After multiple coding sessions you would finish a logical change, e.g. adding commenting system in web site, next you need to store a snapshot of your project after these changes, you would do that with git commit

Setting the environment:

أين تذهب في لندن

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:41:02 +0300

روابط ذات علاقة

مقالة مقتسبة من رسالة بريدية ارسلتها لصديق سألني عن لندن، على الرغم من خبرتي المتواضعة جداً عن المدينة الا اني كتبت عن الاماكن التي اعجبتني واستعنت باحد اصدقائي ساكني لندن لاكمالها، علها تكون مفيدة وتلغي صورة ادجوار رواد التي تظهر لدى الكثيرين عند ذكر لندن.

رحلات الباص

اول نشاط اقوم به عند زيارة اي مدينة هي رحلات الباصات السياحية، فهي تعطي تصور عام للمدينة وعن الاماكن التي تستحق الزيارة في الايام القادمة من الرحلة، كما انها مثالية لالتقاط الصور. غالباً تتوفر تذاكر الرحلات السياحية لمدة 24 ساعة مع امكانية الصعود والنزول من الباص في اي وقت.

Geneva Motor Show March 2010 Photos

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:22:13 +0300

Apricot Malaysia Photos

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:19:28 +0300

وظيفة شاغرة: مشرف محتوى الكتروني

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 10:23:45 +0300

نبحث عن مشرف محتوى الكتروني بالمواصفات التالية:

شهادة دبلوم ذات علاقة
سنتين خبرة في اعمال مشابهة
اجادة اللغة الانجليزية
اجادة النشر على الانترنت بالتقنيات المختلفة (www,email,PDF,twitter,facebook)
خبرة في برمجة بتقنيات الانترنت (HTML,PHP,ASP,AJAX,CSS,Javascript)

The Story of Bottled Water

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:32:56 +0300

The joy of bookstores

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:00:06 +0300

Whenever I visit a bookstore abroad I get really high from all the books and magazine I see, all types of books with shiny colorful covers, covering all subject serious and silly for all range of ages from childhood to 100, all types of people browsing or even sitting on the floor reading their book flavor of the day. Really get my heart exploding from joy, all I need is more time and money to browse through all of these books and share all the knowledge from reading with all people i love, what a feeling!!
Unfortunately this joy soon disappear with the realization that I came with my family for a few days vacation that soon will end, in fact my return back trip is tomorrow.
What change this joy to sadness is the fact that these experiences can not be felt again for the next year if I am lucky.
Bookstore in Riyadh are merely stationary and electronics stores, and although books cover large portion of the store, they are mostly outdated with no relevance to anyone with interest on reading.
Why do our bookstore are in this state? Is it because most of Saudis can not read English? Or because we have the tendency to hate anything cultural.

The Internet Revealed & What is Internet Exchange?

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:21:11 +0300

A short film about about how the Internet work, and what is an Internet Exchange, and why it is very important.

Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a functioning Internet Exchange yet!!

Thank you Nasser for the video.

MENOG 6 in Riyadh

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:30:36 +0300

The Middle East Network Operators Group (MENOG) announced that 6th version of the meeting will take place in Riyadh from 10 to 14 of April 2010.

MENOG is a regional forum offering network engineers and other technical staff the opportunity to share knowledge and experiences, and identify areas for regional cooperation.

MENOG 6 will be include:

Workshop 10-12 April
Tutorials 13 April (morning)
Conference 13 April (afternoon) and 14 April

If you are in the business of Internet operation, or have any interest in Internet at all, don’t miss the opportunity to attend.

Google best Ad ever

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:48:41 +0300

This the first time Google seems human, it can be really romantic movie to 🙂

Youtube Page

Error when updating Ubuntu

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:04:43 +0300

Lately I migrated all of my server to Ubuntu server, what I really loved about it the easy of updating the system, all I need to is:
$ sudo aptitude update # to update packages meta data $ sudo aptitude safe-upgrade # to perform the actual upgrade

But sometimes on of the package information meta data files get corrupted, and I will get this error:
$ sudo aptitude update : W: A error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used.GPG error: http://security.ubuntu.com hardy-security Release: The following signatures were invalid: BADSIG 40976EAF437D05B5 Ubuntu Archive Automatic Signing Key <ftpmaster@ubuntu.com>



اخيراً مقاييس لافياش الكهرب في المملكة
Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:36:48 +0300
واخيراً وبعد 25 عام من اصدار المواصفات لافياش الكهرب، اعلنت الجمارك انها ستطبق القرار وستمنع الافياش غير المطابقة.
قوابس كهرب 110 فولت:


قوابس كهرب 220 فولت:


تأكد من تركيب القوابس الصحيحة في منزلك، واطلبها في الاجهزة التي تشتريها.


أين تذهب في واشنطن
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:59:25 +0300
مواضيع اخرى قد تعجبك:

اليابان: رحلتي الى طوكيو
أين تذهب في لندن
خواطر عن لندن
أين تذهب في نيو اورلينز New Orleans

تحديث: ٨ / ٢٠١٤ قمت بزيارة المدينة واضفت بعض الاماكن الجديدة وحذفت بعض الاماكن التي اغلقت، ولا تبخل بملاحظاتك واماكنك ومطاعمك المفضلة.
احد الاصدقاء سيسافر الى الولايات المتحدة الامريكية وسيقف في واشنطن العاصمة لبضعة ايام فسألني عن المدينة بحكم اني درست فيها في مرحلة الماجستير، اول كلمة قلتها له هي لا تقف فيها، لاعتقادي انه لن يجد الكثير ليراه.


Malaysia trip photos
Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:45:20 +0300



أسهل طريقة لإزالة صرير الباب
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:35:05 +0300



Short Podcasts, how to listen to them?
Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:12:54 +0300
I own an iPod for more than three years now, and since I am not a music fan it was setting in my drawer doing nothing, the only useful thing I used it for was putting some kids shows for my son to keep him busy during long journeys.
But recently I discovered the wonderful world of Podcasts, and to be honest I got addicted to it, these days you will often see me with my earbuds walking like a zombie.


Study Says US Needs Fewer Science Students
Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:20:42 +0300

It’s an article of faith: the United States needs more native-born students in science and other technical fields. But a new paper … contradicts the notion of a shrinking supply of native-born talent in the United States. In fact, the supply has actually remained steady over the past 30 years, the researchers conclude, while the highest-performing students in the pipeline are opting out of science and engineering in greater numbers than in the past, suggesting that the threat to American economic competitiveness comes not from inadequate science training in school and college but from a lack of incentives that would make science and technology careers attractive. Cranking out even more science graduates, according to the researchers, does not give corporations any incentive to boost wages for science/tech jobs, which would be one way to retain the highest-performing students.


10% هي ما بقي من الانترنت
Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:02:06 +0300
لم يتبق من عناوين الانترنت سوى 10% وبعدها لن يتمكن اي مستخدم جديد من الاتصال بعنوان حقيقي.

http://www.inetcore.com/project/ipv4ec/index_en.html
الحل طبعاً هو التحول الى النسخة السادسة من عناوين الانترنت (IPv6).
عدد من مقدمي خدمة الانترنت اعلنوا بدأهم تقديم الخدمة تجارياً، مثل “بيانات” و"نسمة" وآخرون في الطريق، لكن يبقى السؤال هل لدينا وقت!!!
فريق العمل السعودي لـIPv6 هي مجموعة عمل من مقدمي الخدمة وشركات تقنية المعلومات والقطاعين الحكومي والخاص، دور الفريق هو التأكد من جاهزية جميع الاطراف لنهاية عناوين النسخة القديمة وضمان تحول سلس الى النسخة الجديدة.
Saudi Arabia IPv6 Task force


البيت الابيض يحول الى دروبال Drupal
Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:56:17 +0300
البيت الابيض الموقع الرئيسي للحكومة الامريكية يحول الى دروبال، نظام ادارة المحتوى المفتوح المصدر.

للمزيد من التفاصيل:
http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/whitehousegov-goes-drupal


Firefox block Microsoft plugins
Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:37:34 +0300
Today when I started Firefox on Windows XP, it gave me the following warning:

These plug-ins are installed without user permission, and virtually impossible to disable or uninstall, and it turned out that these plug-ins left the browser open to attack.
More info:
Sneaky Microsoft Add-On Put Firefox Users At Risk


صور جديدة لدودي وتالا
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:21:29 +0300

صور عند مصورة محترفة، عيالي طالعين هادين ومؤدبين وحلوين وبدون مخوش على غير العادة (قولوا ما شاء الله بس تراهم مهوب كذا في الطبيعة)
المزيد من الصور


Smart phones and netbooks operating system
Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:02:00 +0300
I compiled a quick and dirty list of smart phone and netbook OS, the list included the OS that I think are relevant.
I merged both smart phone and netbooks OSes in the same category, because it seems they can be used on both platforms.
Please let me know if you want to include any data worth adding.
Open
Chrome OS
Started: 2009
Company: Google
OS Base: Linux
Browser: Webkit based (it is Chrome!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_OS


FLOSS weekly Linus interview
Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:07:08 +0300
FLOSS weekly (FLOSS = Free Libre Open Source Software) interview with Linus Torvalds, straight questions and honest and simple answers, I love it.
http://twit.tv/floss88 (56 minutes)



How to feel miserable as an artist
Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:37:23 +0300









خواطر عن لندن
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 23:07:29 +0300
خواطر سريعة عن زيارتي الاخيرة للندن.
الحبر النظيف

خلال المساء وفي وسط لندن تلاحظ العديد من مراكز توزيع الجرائد المجانية مثل جريدة London Lite، ما اعجبني في هذه الجرائد ليس النموذج المجاني، لاني اعتقد انه يستهلك العديد من المصادر الطبيعية دون تقديم قيمة حقيقية، لكن ما اعجبني هما شيئن، الاول مقاس الجرائد، فالمقاس الصغير او ما يسمى بالتبلويد سهل جداً في التصفح ولا تحتاج الى طاولة 4 في 6 لقرأته، الشئ الثاني وهو الاهم هو نوع الحبر المستخدم، فهو حسب زعمهم وحسب تجربتي لا يلوث الايدي بالحبر، وحقيقة هذه الخاصيتين هي من اكثر الاشياء التي اكرهها في مطبوعاتنا.


بيانات برنامج القرآن
Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:18:07 +0300
وضعت كل البيانات التي استخدمتها في برنامج القرآن للتحميل، مع معلومات عن كيفية استخدامها.
صفحة بيانات القرآن
برنامج القرآن


برنامج القرآن على الويب
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:38:23 +0300
منذ ان كنت صغيراً ولدي رغبة بانتاج مجموعة برامج اساسية لكل مستخدم حاسب عربي ومسلم، القائمة كانت تشمل البرامج التالية:

برنامج للقرآن الكريم مع التفاسير المشهورة.
برنامج للتقويم الهجري، مع مواقيت الصلاة.
برنامج قاموس عربي انجليزي، انجليزي عربي.

قمت بعمل برنامج للأذن عام 1997 باستخدام لغة ديلفي، لكن للأسف لم احتفظ بالمصدر ولم ارفعة على نفس الخادم الذي رفعت فيه البرنامج، عموماً كونه المعادلة غير متطابقة مع معادلة مدينة الملك عبدالعزيز والعلوم والتقنية، فان البرنامج ليس له قيمة فعليه كبيرة.
صفحة البرنامج القديمة


Presenting at Riyadh Geeks Today
Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:08:21 +0300

Today at 7:15 pm Riyadh time, I am going to give a presentation titled “Tips for faster websites” in front of  Riyadh Geeks group at Bader.
Alriyadh Newspaper covered the meeting and the presentation:
http://www.alriyadh.com/2009/08/08/article450749.html
I got many calls and emails from to attend the presentation, which made me bit nervous and worried, thank you all, and see you their.
Update:
We’ve just finished Riyadh Geeks meeting, big audience, thank you all for coming, and special thank to “Riyadh Geeks” for inventing me, and arranging this event.


Why I can’t trust Microsoft
Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:06:40 +0300
When Microsoft released Bing search engine, I was really impressed, it looks good and the search is good.
But unfortunately Microsoft have a very bad habits of ruining really good products.
When you try to search for Why is Windows so expensive?, the first result you will get is: “Why are Mac’s So Expensive?”



Google Chrome OS
Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:23:41 +0300
Every time I visit a family I spend considerable time fixing Windows desktop and laptop, I don’t mind helping, but I mind not getting paid by Microsoft!
Windows machines are really hard to maintain, and you will rarely find someone happy with, unless he do the periodic re-installations, plus Windows is really pricey software, Windows 7 pro will cost $199 (home is $80 cheaper), it was acceptable 10 years ago when the computers prices were around $3000, but nowadays it i


TED: Success is a continuous journey
Sat, 13 Jun 2009 12:21:24 +0300
3 minutes presentation:
Richard St. John reminds us that success is not a one-way street, but a constant journey. He uses the story of his business’ rise and fall to illustrate a valuable lesson — when we stop trying, we fail.


Link


TED: Schools kill creativity
Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:22:57 +0300
I saw this video last year by Sir Ken Robinson, as the title say “schools kill creativity”, watch and tell me what you think.

Very funny and insightful video (20 minutes)



Google Wave: Is What Email Would Look Like If It Were Invented Today
Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:25:19 +0300
Lengthy but a must see presentation.




Arabic Projects Ideas 3: Open Arabic Stemmer
Sat, 23 May 2009 18:20:45 +0300
Nowadays we have many great options to build your own search engines, either for your website, or for you own custom applications. to mention a few:

Lucene

Solr (uses Lucene)
Sphinx

All of these search engine option works great for English language, and they have decent support for Arabic language thanks  to Unicode and UTF-8, but unfortunately they still lack a the power of stemming that you will find in English language.


Arabic Projects Ideas 2: Open Arabic Fonts
Sat, 23 May 2009 18:07:57 +0300
If you build Arabic website you must be hit by the hard reality, Arabic web font options are really narrow, the only realistic choices are:

Tahoma: only good for small sizes.
Arabic Transparent
Traditional Arabic

My idea is to buy other quality Arabic fonts and ask browser/OS vendors to include them, we really need more choice to improve the quality of website productions, and add more creativity to our Arabic Internet.


Arabic Projects Ideas 1: Open Um Alqura Calendar
Sat, 23 May 2009 17:52:56 +0300
In Saudi Arabia the official calendar is Um Alqura calendar, which is a Hejeri based calendar.

The idea is to buy the royalties of the calculation function (KACST owns it), and open it, and force all software vendors to include it.

Just imagine that your mobile date, match your outlook date, match your favourite website date. Stakeholders:

Government: KACST, CITC, Yesser, MCIT
Software vendors: Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun, Apple
Open Source: Linux, MySQL, Postgresql etc..
Mobile phones vendors: Nokia, SonyEriccson, Apple, HTC, etc…
Other electronics vendors: Humax receiver manufacturer.
Content Providers: Google, Maktoob, Yahoo, MSN, Newspapers, etc..
Development Languages: Java, .NET, PHP, Python, Perl, etc…

If you have an ideas to improve the initial idea please comment.


MySQL Founder Starts Open Database Alliance, Plans Refactoring
Fri, 15 May 2009 09:01:49 +0300
Monty Widenius, the ‘father’ of MySQL, has created the the Open Database Alliance, with the aim of becoming the industry hub for the MySQL open source database. He wants to unify all MySQL-related development and services, providing a potential solution to the fragmentation and uncertainty facing the communities, businesses and technical experts involved with MySQL, following the news of the Oracle acquisition of Sun.

Via: Slashdot


Linux.com relaunched
Wed, 13 May 2009 07:58:48 +0300
The new Linux.com relaunched under the management of Linux Foundation.


Riyadh Geeks meeting
Mon, 11 May 2009 23:13:57 +0300
I just came from my first meeting, one word awesome 🙂
Thank you guys for arranging such nice event, as usual you meet with
many interesting people with great ideas, and a lot of energy.
One thing for sure, it won’t be the last meeting for me.


alriyadh.com ver 6 released
Fri, 01 May 2009 04:39:49 +0300
Finally after 2 years of delays alriyadh.com new version is released.

No matter how many test you perform, something will go wrong when you launch the website.

Special thanks to Turki Aljaber, and Malik Alghasab for a really great job building the website.

If you find any problem please let me know.


شعب مُصاب بالشيزوفرينيا!
Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:02:30 +0300
 هي، أو هو: يدخل الشات ليتحاور مع الجنس الآخر

بكل شيء وحول أي شيء. يذهب إلى موقع الأفلام

ليشاهد أحدث الأفلام السينمائية. يدخل إلى منتــداه المفضل ليناقش في كل القضايا السياسية والاجتماعية

بكل جرأة. وعبر اسمه (أو: اسمها) المستعار يبتسم

بمرح ويوزع النكات على الآخرين. وما أن يضغط

على زر إغلاق الكمبيوتر، ويخرج من عالم الانترنت

الافتراضي، إلا وتعود إليه بطريقة آلية: تكشيرته، وخوفه، وشكله التقليدي المحافظ!

كل شعوب الأرض: شكلها الواقعي لا يختلف كثيراً

عن شكلها “الافتراضي” على الإنترنت.. إلا نحن ..

في الواقع شيء، وعلى الإنترنت: شعب افتراضي!! 


What does it mean to be free?
Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:38:25 +0300



More information about Google Servers
Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:32:46 +0300
Have you ever asked your self where does Google buy its servers, Dell, HP, IBM, or Sun?
Unlike everyone in the world, Google don’t buy servers from different vendor they build them!
It doesn’t make sense if you have 100 or 1000 servers, but if what about if you have hundreds of thousands of servers, which is the case for Google.
Actually Google have long time ago stated that they their own server, but the company revealed many new details about its servers, and operation.


The World’s Worst Places to Work: #3 Riyadh
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:24:52 +0300
Overall Grade: Very High Risk Location

Severe Problems: Political Violence & Repression, Political & Social Environment

Major Problem: Culture & Recreation Facilities

Other Problems: Housing, Climate, Disease & Sanitation, Education Facilities, Physical Remoteness, Communications
No surprise here. Life in the Saudi capital is not easy. “The possibility of a terrorist attack is an ongoing threat,” according to ORC, “while wide-ranging restrictions on dress, movement, conduct, food, alcohol, travel, and communications limit expatriate life.” The city is especially hard for foreign women. Finally, adds ORC, “violating the country’s strict moral religious codes is a particular danger in this conservative city.”



jQuery tutorial video
Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:44:20 +0300
jQuery is a lightweight Javascript library, it is very easy to learn, I found this amazing video from Google TechTalk channel on Youtube, don’t be fooled by the presenter age (he is 12 years old) he knows what is he talking about, enjoy!




Ericsson 500Mbps DSL
Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:43:12 +0300
Ericsson has successfully demonstrated data-transfer speeds of more than 500 megabits per second over copper, the communications company said Monday.
The data-transfer rates were achieved using a version of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology called “vectorized” VDSL2, Ericsson said in a statement. The technology, also called “crosstalk cancellation,” provides the high transmission rates through a twisted pair of copper cables by reducing the noise coming from other pairs in the same cable bundle. VDSL2 has traditionally offered speeds of around 100Mbps. 


موقع قيم النسخة الثانية
Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:19:30 +0300
يوم امس دعاني جهاد العمار الى مؤتمر صحفي نظمة حول اطلاق النسخة الجديدة من موقع قيم، 50% من المؤتمر كان حول التطويرات الجديدة في الموقع والتي من اهمها اضافة خاصية الخرائط، فعلا رائعة!!! وكذلك اعلى مستخدمين (ترتيبي كان قليل 🙁 )
ما اثار اهتمامي اكثر هو الحضور، كان كثير ورائع، كمية الحماس والطاقة الموجودة كانت رائعة. لازم ابداء احضر مثل هذه الاجتماعات.


15 Inspiring Bruce Lee Quotes
Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:03:40 +0300
My favorite:

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory
Simplicity is the key to brilliance
A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done

Complete 15 @

http://www.junauza.com/2009/03/15-inspiring-bruce-lee-quotes-that.html


يا حبي للرياض
Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:43:54 +0300




بنتي تالا
Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:45:51 +0300
الحمد لله رزقني الله بصبية اسميتها تالا



تالا انضمت لاخيها عبدالله
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rayed/tags/dody


The most efficient way of getting around
Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:01:19 +0300


http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/transparency/web/trans0209gettingaround.html



PHP development enviroument, what do you use?
Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:05:27 +0300
I must confess, I still use HTML-kit for PHP development, the only reason I use it for direct FTP editing, I know I should be ashamed of my self 🙁
The last couple of months I started to look at Subversion version control system, as a secure and professional way to edit your code, so I started shopping for new PHP IDE.
My requirements are:

Support Arabic
Support UTF-8
Support Subversion

So what do you use for PHP development? and what feature is a must?


IPv6 workshop photos
Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:49:45 +0300
Unfortunately, I was very busy organizing I didn’t have a chance to take a lot of pictures.



تذكير ورشة عمل IPv6 غداً الأحد
Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:23:00 +0300
اذا كان لك اهتمام بالانترنت، والشبكات فيجب ان تحضر. هناك أكثر من عرض يجب على الجميع حضورها.

المكان فندق الشيراتون الرياض، نلقاكم هناك.


12% to the end of the Internet
Mon, 02 Feb 2009 08:37:04 +0300

Mr. Latif Ladid, the president of IPv6 Forum, left a comment on a previous post on my blog with the latest update on IPv4 exhaustion, only 12% of IPv4 address are left, that is 2% in less than 3 months, the new estimate is 769 days.
This this insightful comment:

The IP address space is down to just 12% with 534 M IP addresses or 32 blocks left. see http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html
One of the most obvious and easily quantifiable incentives of the move to IPv6 is the growth and the continuity of the Internet and then the run to the bank for the remaining address space as it will be needed to have a secure dual stack transition which is the most secure transition and will be unfortunately the rich man’s transition. All others will tunnel which is not secure making it the poor man’s transition. Even the transition will aggravate the digital divide between the haves and have-nots in terms of security. The IPv6 Forum knew this problem 10 years ago and pushed ISPs to move earlier to manage a secure transition, but it takes patience and passion to make this happen.


IPV6 دعوة لحضور ورشة عمل الإصدار السادس لبروتوكول الانترنت
Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:38:16 +0300
الدعوة الالكترونية الرجاء ارسالها لكل من تعرف وقد يهمة الامر:




Kudu’s kids meal toy … after 20 minutes
Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:26:51 +0300

No my son didn’t even try to break, it just break in 4 places in 20 minutes, the worst toy I ever saw. Of course Kudu isn’t the only restaurant with crabby kids toys, Herfy and almost all restaurant in Saudi Arabic.
The only exception is McDonald’s, where kids ask for it just for the toys.
Local restaurants, please improve your toys.


KDE 4.2 Released
Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:44:18 +0300

For more info:
http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.2/index.php
Don’t know what is KDE? check Wikipedia KDE page


Back to School
Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:05:04 +0300



Saudi Arabia IPv6 workshop and website
Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:21:52 +0300
I am currently preparing for Saudi Arabia IPv6 workshop, that we at CITC arranging at 8th of February 2009.
The workshop will have many high profile speakers in the IPv6 field.
You can find more information about the workshop at IPv6 website:
www.ipv6.org.sa
Don’t forget to register for the workshop.
P.S. the website is built using Drupal


Network Solutions Under Large-Scale DDoS Attack
Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:16:29 +0300
I got a DNS failure when I tried to access my website yesterday, I didn’t suspect my ISP because I am using OpenDNS as my name server, so I switched back to SAUDI NET name servers and it worked fine. So I thought it was OpenDNS problem, until I read the news about large-scale DDoS attack on Network Solutions my DNS registrar, where I also host my DNS for rayed.com.
Slashdot Article


Nothing is original …
Sat, 17 Jan 2009 23:54:42 +0300
Nothing is original ....


ورشة عمل المحتوى العربي المفتوح
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:29:25 +0300

تنظم مدينة الملك عبدالعزيز للعلوم والتقنية في يومي السبت والأحد القادمين ورشة عمل بعنوان “المحتوى العربي المفتوح” وتأتي هذه الورشة لتعزيز مبادرة الملك عبدالله للمحتوى العربي.
شخصياً اعتقد ان انطلاقة اي تطوير للأنترنت يجب ان تبدأ من المحتوى.
نقلاً عن: سوالفي


Qt becomes LGPL
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:29:38 +0300

Slashdot:

Qt, the highly polished, well documented, modern GUI toolkit owned by Nokia will be available under the LGPL starting with version 4.5! … [Nokia] want to encourage and stimulate the use of Qt Everywhere. This is fantastic news for all commercial developers looking to create cross-platform applications …

Wikipedia:

Qt is most notably used in KDE, Opera, Google Earth, Skype, Qtopia, Adobe Photoshop Album, VirtualBox and OPIE.

Really good news for KDE project and fans.


Drupal best modules
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:27:26 +0300
One of Drupal’s best features is the modular design, the core of Drupal is very small but flexible, and it only implements basic functionality.
The good news is that Drupal already has hundreds of modules to implement any missing feature, you can even build your own module if you didn’t find a module to fulfill your needs.
But having all these choices make finding the appropriate module a really hard job, to help you select the best Drupal modules I found a good list of module at Acquia (a commercial company founded by Drupal inventor Dries Buytaert to provide different services around Drupal).


nginx [Engine X] enters webserver top 5
Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:55:36 +0300


nginx [Engine X] became the world 4th most popular web server, according to the latest Netcraft survey.

It is an event based web server, which makes really scalable especially for static files, so if you are serving many images, audio files, video, you might consider it.

It can also configured to work as HTTP and mail proxy.

Of course you should look also at Lighttpd [Lighty] which work with the same principle, and I have been using it for around 2 years for alriyadh.com


Not dead yet!
Sat, 27 Dec 2008 10:15:26 +0300
More update will come 🙂


Selling the Iraq War ! Canadian and Australian Prime Ministers give Exact SAME SPEECH
Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:54:18 +0300

via: reddit


شعار جديد لمدينة الملك عبدالعزيز للعلوم والتقنية
Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:57:01 +0300

للمزيد


Al Madina newspaper uses drupal
Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:02:44 +0300


It seems that Al Madina daily newspaper is using drupal fro their newspaper website, really nice.
al-madina.com 


FreeBSD has an offical forum
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:22:44 +0300

FreeBSD my favorite OS, has an official web based discussion forum:
http://forums.freebsd.org/
Congratulations, an good job.
It seems to me FreeBSD is getting easier everyday.


في وطني كن مهايطيا ولا تكن مبدعا
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:08:27 +0300
مقال يلخص احد اهم مشاكلنا في هذا الوطن:

في وطني كن مهايطيا ولا تكن مبدعا
احمد، جزاك الله خير، دائماً ما يثلج صدري بمقالتك.


How many IPs do we have left?
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:04:39 +0300
Only 14% of IP addresses are left, which is estimated to be used in 811 days which is around 2 years!!
IPv4 Exhaustion counter
Does that mean the Internet as we know it will stop growing? yes exactly, if we ran out of IP addresses you can not connect your new game console, phone, notebook, etc... to the Internet.
Scientists has found many solutions to delay this problem, including “classless network”, and NAT, which allowed us to use the IP address space more efficiently.


Drupal wins 2008 Best Open Source CMS
Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:35:00 +0300
Drupal wins 2008 Best Open Source CMS from Packt Publishing

More from

http://www.packtpub.com/article/2008-open-source-cms-award-winner-announced
More from Wikipedia:

Drupal
Content Management System (CMS)



Wikipedia switch its infrastructure from RedHat to Ubuntu
Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:27:13 +0300
It is a bit of old news but thought I would share in case you missed it.

Basically Wikipedia is switching 400 server from Redhat and Fedora mix to Ubuntu server.

Check the details in ComputerWorld article 


I am Free
Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:30:53 +0300



أفضل رسام كاريكاتير سعودي
Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:19:19 +0300
الكاريكاتير … قد يكون هو الشئ الوحيد الذي يقرأه السعوديين من اوله الى اخره 🙂
اعترف اني شخصياً احرص على الاطلاع على الكاريكاتيرات اليومية ونادرا ما اقرأ مقالات الكتاب، باستثناء فهد الاحمدي لكون مقالاته ظريفة وخفيفة ولا تجيب النكد.
فنانين الكاريكاتير السعوديون رسامين مبدعين (مثال) وغالباً خفيفين الدم (طبعاً هناك استثنآت)
في ما يلي قائمة بالرسامين المفضلين عندي.



غبار الهجير افضل مسلسل سعودي؟
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:03:49 +0300
اعتماداً على تصويت جريدة الرياض فان 92% من المشاركين يرون ان مسلسل “غبار الهجير” هو افضل مسلسل سعودي!!
وكان التنافس محموماً بشكل واضح بين “غبار الهجير” و”غلطة نوف” و”كلنا عيال قرية” على صدارة فئة المسلسلات إلا أن اللحظات الأخيرة وسعت الفارق الكبير بين الأول وبقية منافسيه.
انا في الحقيقة لم اعرف بهذا المسلسل الا من هذا الخبر و لم اسمع احد يتكلم عنه اطلاقاً، لا بمدح ولا بذم، وزالت حيرتي عندما عرفت انه يعرض في قناة المجد.


كل عام وانتم بخير وعيد سعيد
Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:54:43 +0300



STC’s new logo?
Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:40:23 +0300
It seems that Saudi Telecom Company (STC) is going to change its logo, the new logo is all over Riyadh, without any reference to STC, with only the slogan “What good is technology if doesn’t make your life easier (poorly translated)”.

This time STC is using the logo one of the companies STC bought, STC bought 51% of Indonesian GSM operator Natrindo, and AXIS is the brand name used by Natrindo.


Django 1.0 released!
Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:44:44 +0300
Django team released version 1.0 of the their web application framework, Django is written in Python.
I only tried Django for a week more than one year ago, and it was really amazing, and easy to create web application.
Even if you don’t write in Python I recommend you spend sometime to know it, may be walk through the tutorial. It has many inspiring and brilliant features you definitely need to know before select your next web framework.


The Adventures of Johnny Bunko
Sat, 06 Sep 2008 11:49:38 +0300


A friend recommended that I read “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko”, I read it and I loved it, thought I should share it with others too.
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko is America’s first business book in manga and the last career guide you’ll ever need.
The book, which you can read in an hour, tells the story of Johnny Bunko, a beleaguered Everyman toiling away at the Boggs Corp.


Chrome: Google new web browser
Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:43:15 +0300
Google is building their own new browser, very interesting features, it has so many advance features that makes you wonder is the next OS GUI going to be a browser.
A post about the “chrome”:

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-01-n47.html
Nice comic describing chrome features:

http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/


حملة الجمعية السعودية الخيرية لمكافحة السرطان
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:19:55 +0300
الجمعية السعودية الخيرية لمكافحة السرطان تقوم بحملة على الانترنت لجمع التبرعات وزيادة الوعي بالجمعية ونشاطاتها.
شاركنا بالتبرع ووضع اعلان الجمعيى في موقعك:

صفحة الاعلان


TED: Ideas worth spreading
Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:24:14 +0300

TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is an annual conference […] It defines its mission as “ideas worth spreading”, and selected talks given at TED are available free on its website. Its lectures cover a broad set of topics: science, arts, design, politics, culture, business, global issues, technology, and entertainment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TED_(conference)
So many inspiring talks (in Video and Audio format), you will find it really hard to keep listening because the inspiration effect is almost instant.


Erlang, or Utility-computing vs. Appliance-computing
Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:30:07 +0300
Very good read about cloud computing, trust me it worth it.
I strongly believe that cloud computing (or computing as a utility) is the way computing is going to evolve over the next few years/decades.
[t]he two biggest computing-providers of today, Amazon as well as Google, are building their concurrent offerings on top of really concurrent programming languages and systems. Not only because they want to, but because they need to. If you want to build computing into a utility, you need large real-time systems running as efficiently as possible. You need your technology to be able to scale in a similar way as other, comparable utilities or large real-time systems are scaling — utilities like telephony and electricity.



تتبع: خدمة تتبع سيارتك من الاتصالات
Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:05:17 +0300
تتبع خدمة جديدة من شركة الاتصالات تمكنك من متابعة موقع سيارتك في اي لحظة باستخدم برنامج خاص او جوجل ايرث، يمكنك متابعة مسارها، سرعتها، التحذير عند تجاوز سرعة معينة، او منطقة معينة، او حتى وقت معين.
طبعاً، هذه الخدمة مصيبة على المراهقين اللي بادين يسوقون او يسرقون سيارات اهلهم 🙂 حتى السووايق ما راح يسلمون.
ويبدو ان الخدمة ستكون موجهة للافراد والشركات، واعتقد ان توجيهها للافراد حركة اعلامية من شركة الاتصالات، اما للشركات فاعتقد انها ستكون خدمة ممتازة، خصوصاً شركات تأجير السيارات، وشركات النقل.


Network Timeout!!
Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:05:43 +0300
Lately I am getting a lot of “Network Timeout” errors, is it my machine or does everybody get this error.


Misfer has a blog
Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:04:44 +0300
My dear friend Misfer Almaymouni finally got a time to start a blog, and as you expect deep posts, that type of posts you have to read 5 times to understand (and sometimes you don’t 🙂 )
http://misfer.fqaqee3.net/


Download Firefox 3 now
Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:58:55 +0300
In Saudi Arabia download Firefox before 10 pm on Wednesday to help Firefox to set new world record.
Make sure you scan the file before installation, just in case.


شارك فاير فوكس لتسجيل رقم قياسي جديد
Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:01:47 +0300
يسعى متصفح فاير فوكس Firefox  لتسجيل رقم قياسي في موسوعة جينيس لأكثر برنامج تحميل خلال 24 ساعة، واليوم المنتظر هو يوم إصدار النسخة الثالثة، وسوف يكون يوم الثلاثاء القادم 17 يونيو.

يمكنك التسجيل في موقع فاير فوكس لتذكيرك بيوم الإصدار (رجاء لا تستخدم عنوان بريد العمل الرسمي)

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/
شرح فيديو لاهم مزايا النسخة Firefox 3
Field Guide to Firefox 3


Being poor is …
Sat, 07 Jun 2008 13:07:20 +0300
Being poor is …

Short but heart breaking essay on what is it like to be poor.


فضيحة شواطئنا!
Thu, 29 May 2008 10:58:13 +0300
فالدراسات والبحوث التي نفذتها جهات حكومية منها وزارة الصحة ومراكز بحثية أثبتت بداية أن الشواطئ السعودية غير مهيأة للسباحة أو الصيد كونها شديدة التلوث، وأن 4% فقط من الواجهات البحرية للبحر الأحمر متاحة للجميع مقابل 96% مملوكة لأشخاص
رابط الخبر
قرأتها في موقع نبيل المعجل


لينكس: تبي تحيرة خيرة
Sat, 24 May 2008 20:29:59 +0300
تحديث فبراير ٢٠٢٢ :
بعد تغيير سياسة Centos في التحديث، قررت التحويل الى ديبيان
توزيعة ديبيان خفيفة ورشيقة مقارنة باوبنتو، ومجانية وتحديثاتها آمنة
تحديث ١٢ اكتوبر ٢٠١٨:
حولت بالكامل لسينوتس CentOS متوافق مع رد هات لكن مجاني.
تحديث ٢٩ اغسطس ٢٠١٣:
حاليا الخيار بالنسبة لي اوضح كثيرا، فهو ينحصر في اوبنتو Ubuntu خصوصا نسخة الخادمات، او سينتوس CentOS اذا احتجت توافقية مع RedHat.
الموضوع الاصلي
من اهم نقاط الضعف في نظام لينكس هي تعدد التوزيعات، مما يخلق حيرة في اختيار التوزيعة المناسبة حتى لدى خبرء يونكس، فعلى الرغم من اني مدمن انظمة يونكس منذ اكثر من عشر سنوات الا اني لا ازال احتار عند العمل مع لينكس، وهذه احد اهم الاسباب التي تجعلني افضل نظام فري بي اس دي (FreeBSD)، حيث لا يوجد سوى نظام تشغيل واحد فقط لا غير، واذا بحثت عن حل مشكلة في فري بي اس دي ستعرف انها سوف تعمل لانه لا يوجد سوى نظام واحد اسمه قري بي اس دي. طبعاً اذا اخترت توزيعة لينكس وبقيت عليها فانك تحصل على نفس الفائدة، لكن يبقى التشتيت مستمراً من قبل التوزيعات الثانية التي يظهر فيها مزايا جديدة من هنا وهناك.


Engineers endangered species?
Sat, 17 May 2008 20:47:26 +0300
High-Tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers
After years of fretting over coming shortages, the country is actually facing a dwindling number of young people entering engineering and technology-related fields.
Universities call it “rikei banare,” or “flight from science.” The decline is growing so drastic that industry has begun advertising campaigns intended to make engineering look sexy and cool, and companies are slowly starting to import foreign workers, or sending jobs to where the engineers are, in Vietnam and India.


تدريب واختبارات “رد هات” لينكس في المملكة
Sat, 10 May 2008 11:26:45 +0300
أكاديمية الفيصل العالمية تتحالف مع “رد هات” لتقديم دورات واختبارت “رد هات” لينكس، خبر جداً مفرح لسببين:

سهولة التدريب على لينكس
ارتفاع الطلب على انظمة لينكس في السوق السعودي

الرجاء التعليق على الخبر اذا كان يهمك 🙂



http://www.alriyadh.com/2008/05/10/article341420.html
تحديث: موقع الاكاديمية على الانترنت:

اكاديمية الفيصل: رد هات


Alriyadh.com image quality improvements
Thu, 08 May 2008 11:21:59 +0300
PHP default resampling method vs “resampling and sharping”;
Move your mouse over the image to see sharp version

Influenced by:
Smart Image Resizer
Flickr’s Dirty Little Secret


موقع الرياض وجائزة جديدة
Wed, 07 May 2008 07:58:28 +0300
 في احتفالية كبرى احتضنتها قاعة الفلك في فندق برج العرب بمدينة دبي، حقق موقع “الرياض الإلكتروني” جائزة جديدة ضمن سلسلة الجوائز التي نجح الموقع في كسبها خلال السنوات الماضية، حيث فاز بجائزة أفضل المواقع الإستراتيجية الإعلامية Best Strategic Media and Press Portal على مستوى المواقع العربية متصدرا بذلك ترتيب قائمة أفضل المواقع الإلكترونية لوسائل الإعلام العرب

“الرياض” الإلكتروني ينجح في تحقيق جائزة أفضل موقع عربياً 
“الصحفي الإلكتروني” نموذج حديث لمفهوم التحقيقات الإلكترونية
موقع “الرياض ” الإلكتروني الأفضل.. محلياً وخليجياً وعربياً
الرياض الإلكتروني بتقنيات 2.0 web قريباً!
المستقبل برؤية الشباب الطموح

التعليقات صوت القارئ الأول



CSS tutorial site
Mon, 05 May 2008 14:15:26 +0300
One of the best CSS tutorial I ever seen:

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/
Step by step explanation of many of CSS concepts.


TIOBE Programming Community Index
Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:40:25 +0300
TIOBE Programming Community Index
The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and YouTube are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.


Putty Tray: The best SSH client?
Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:14:08 +0300
PuTTY Tray is an improved version of PuTTY. It features some cosmetic changes, and a number of addons to make it more useful and much more fun to use.
The features that I really like:

Minimizing to the system tray
Portability: optionally stores session configuration in files (for example: on a USB drive) like portaPuTTY
Reconnects when your PC wakes up from stand-by / Attempts to reconnect when the connection fails

http://www.xs4all.nl/~whaa/putty/


The geekiest pants… ever?
Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:54:18 +0300

More pictures: (http://www.vouspensez.com/2008/04/22/the-geekiest-pants-ever/)


My vacation in Mauritius
Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:05:17 +0300




www.flickr.com


قيم: موقع تقييم المطاعم
Sun, 06 Apr 2008 17:28:55 +0300


“قيّـم هو موقع تفاعلي لتقييم المطاعم. يعطي قيّـم اعضاءه كامل الحرية في اضافة وتحرير محتوياته, مثلاً كأضافة اي مطعم في اي مدينة في العالم, التصويت على مستواه, كتابة تقييمات مفصلة عن تجاربهم و ملاحظاتهم, النقاش عن تفاصيل المطعم, وغير ذلك.”

qaym.com
اعتقد اننا في حاجة الى المزيد من المواقع التي تزيد من وعي المستهلكين، وتزيد من الضغط على المنتجين (المطاعم في هذه الحالة) لتحسين مستواها.
شكراً جهاد العمار على تطوير الموقع 🙂


Linux Kernel Development: How Fast it is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It
Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:08:57 +0300
Nice article about Linux kernel development, the most interesting to me is the section “Why Companies Support Kernel Development”:
The list of companies participating in Linux kernel development includes many of the most successful technology firms in existence. None of these companies are supporting Linux development as an act of charity; in each case, these companies find that improving the kernel helps them to be more competitive in their markets.


Upgraded to WordPress 2.5
Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:22:06 +0300
I’ve just upgraded my Blogging software to WordPress latest version 2.5
Since I skipped a version I noticed huge improvements, tags, widgets, new dashboard, new interfaces, more info in this post WordPress 2.5


UNIX Toolbox
Sun, 23 Mar 2008 14:51:54 +0300

One of the best cheat sheet / reference on UNIX and Linux:

UNIX Toolbox is a collection of Unix/Linux/BSD commands and tasks which are useful for IT work or for advanced users. This is a practical guide with concise explanations, however the reader is supposed to know what s/he is doing.

http://cb.vu/unixtoolbox.xhtml


معرض الرياض للكتاب باقي 5 ايام
Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:19:24 +0300
باقي 5 ايام فقط على معرض الرياض الدولي للكتاب، اذا لم تذهب حتى الآن اذهب.
المعرض يقام سنوياً ولكن للأسف لم احضره خلال العشر السنوات اللتي مضت (ان لم يكن اكثر)، خلال هذه الفترة لم اكن اقرأ سوى كتب الحاسب الانجليزية، والانترنت طبعاً 🙂 لكن هذه السنة قمت بزيارة المعرض مرتين، مرشحة للزيادة.
كان لدي العديد من الاعتقادات عن المعرض وهي ما منعتني من الحضور كل هذه السنين:

الكتب العربية مملة
المعرض مزدحم
عدم وجود مواقف للسيارات
لا يوجد كتب جديدة تستحق الذهاب

بالطبع كل هذه الانطباعات تغيرت بشكل او بآخر، فالكتب العربية ليست مملة، او على الاقل ليس كلها، لكن عليك ان تجد ما ينساب ذوقك، فانا وجدت الكتب الاجتماعية الساخرة، وادب الرحلات مسلية ومفيدة للغاية، حتى انني بدأت اقرأ الروايات الاجنبية المترجمة (الحديثة) مع انها كانت ابعد ما يخطر على بالي.


FreeBSD 7
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:20:22 +0300

FreeBSD 7 is available, many new improvements performance and feature wise, check the announcement.
One of the most impressive improvements is SMP (Symmetric multiprocessing):

Dramatic improvements in performance and SMP scalability shown by various database and other benchmarks, in some cases showing peak performance improvements as high as 350% over FreeBSD 6.X under normal loads and 1500% at high loads. When compared with the best performing Linux kernel (2.6.22 or 2.6.24) performance is 15% better


Mozilla Messaging: conquering the enterprise?
Sun, 24 Feb 2008 11:39:04 +0300

Mozilla Foundation the people behind Firefox are launching a new Foundation Mozilla Messaging, their objective is to improve how people communicate on the Internet. Of course they will start with my favorite email client Thunderbird :

The initial focus for Mozilla Messaging is the development of Thunderbird 3, which will deliver significant improvements, notably integrated calendaring, better search and enhancements to the overall user experience.

If Thunderbird improve its collaboration features it will be great contender in the Enterprise Collaboration arena, watch out “Lotus Notes” and “Outlook”.


Moving from Nokia to Sony Ericsson
Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:51:23 +0300

After spending couple of years with Siemens, and 6 years with Nokia, I decided to convert my mobile to SonyEricsson, I switched to SonyEricsson T650i.
So far I like it, the OS is fast and so far reliable, the screen is very colorful and smooth, the camera is descent with auto focus feature which I love, and I really loved the design. Need sometime to get used to the back button.


Valentine in Riyadh
Sun, 17 Feb 2008 07:21:32 +0300
This is really funny 🙂





Drupal 6 released
Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:48:57 +0300

Drupal the open source content management system has a new fresh release Drupal 6.
Update: It seems CCK and VIEWS aren’t compatible with Drupal 6 yet, does anyone use Drupal without CCK and VIEW?


CodeIgniter setup tips
Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:26:59 +0300

Fix mod_rewrite to have clean URLs, and get rid of “index.php” part.
Edit “config/config.php” and change the following:



// Setup your base URL

$config['base_url']="http://rayed.com/ci/";

// No need for index.php

$config['index_page'] = "";

// Remove AUTO and Put PATH_INFO

// this will allows you to pass variables as URL

// segments or Query string "?id=1"

$config['uri_protocol'] = "PATH_INFO";



Setup your database configuration “config/database.php”
Auto connect to database, edit “config/autoload.php”: 

$autoload['libraries'] = array('database');

Edit “config/routes.php” to change default controller:

$route['default_controller'] = "users";




CodeIgniter yet another PHP framework
Sun, 10 Feb 2008 23:38:03 +0300

For the last year I spent a lot of my PHP time playing with CakePHP I like it at first, but when I tried to build large applications with it I noticed it have major issues with performance, plus I really had difficult time dealing with it is strict naming convention and it object-relational-mapping (ORM).
Few days ago I read about CodeIgniter framework and its similarities to CakePHP and its amazing performance, so I went and visited their website again, I heard about CodeIgniter before from Abdullah Aldosari (I miss our technical discussions) but when I visited the website I wasn’t really impressed, but the new website looks much better, so judging by the look improvement alone I decided to give it a try 🙂


My Hong Kong tips
Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:05:53 +0300
Two separate friends are visiting Hong Kong soon, they asked for tips about Hong Kong this it what I remembered, hope others find it useful.
Overall Hong Kong is very beautiful and modern city, hotel prices are bit high (with the weak dollar everything is), transportation is very good and efficient, the food is good and you can find Halal food in many places but you have to ask for.


This post left empty on purpose
Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:55:30 +0300



وداعاً امي منيرة
Sun, 20 Jan 2008 08:20:01 +0300
انتقلت إلى رحمة الله جدتي الغالية “منيرة بنت عبد العزيز الزامل”، توفيت يوم أمس قرابة الساعة العاشرة والنصف صباحاً عن عمر يناهز 87 لتلحق بجدي “عبد الرحمن بن عبد العزيز الراشد” رحمة الله عليه بعد 58 سنة، قضت معظمها رحمة الله عليها في تربية أطفالها الستة ثم العناية بأمها رحمة الله عليهما.

جزاك الله ألف خير، وغفر لك، وأنزلك الفردوس الأعلى يا رب.

لا تنسوها بدعائكم


Sun Buys MySQL
Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:58:24 +0300
Sun Buys MySQL, good or bad? we will see.


Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:38:24 +0300


Great quote from Leonardo da Vinci.
More Leonardo da Vinci  quotes


script.aculo.us auto completion made easy
Sat, 05 Jan 2008 10:49:49 +0300
I was not a big fan of JavaScript, until new cool technologies emerged that utilize JavaScript in really useful ways, the most impressive of course would be AJAX related functionality.
AJAX is really easy to use, put some features are hard to implement which lead to JavaScript libraries emerging every where, the most popular are:

Yahoo! UI
Prototype and script.aculo.us
jQuery
Dojo
MochiKit

I’ve played with Yahoo! UI it was really powerful and have many features, but it was getting complicated by time, the last time I tried to implement auto complete feature it took me a whole day 🙁


Moving rayed.com email to GMail
Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:30:05 +0300
I am moving all my emails (except work email) to one single email using my own domain (myname at mydomain), and I am going to use Google Apps service, basically I am getting GMail for my own domain, I even have my own start page and tons of applications.
The provided storage is unbeatable, and after Google provided IMAP service, it is really tempting.
So guys if you want to contact me please do at myname at mydomain.


ماهو ارخص سوبر ماركت في الرياض؟
Wed, 02 Jan 2008 09:00:50 +0300
أمانة مدينة الرياض طورت برنامج لقياس تنافسية محلات بيع السلع الاستهلاكية، البرنامج يقارن اسعار مجموعة من السلع الاستهلاكية بين مجموعة محلات.
صفحة المؤشر
نشر المؤشر وزيارته الدورية يساعد على زيادة المنافسة بين المحلات مما يفيد المستهلك، اللي يبدو انها صاير ملطشة هذي الايام 🙁


Learning Drupal
Sun, 30 Dec 2007 09:30:32 +0300

Every Eid vacation I end up with an extra free time, I usually use it to learn new stuff, the latest vacation I decided to learn Drupal. Drupal is a Content management system (CMS), it is basically a software to help you manage your content.
Drupal is a modular and customizable CMS, you can use it to build different types of web sites, a Blog, company or organization web site, community website, you name it.


The Story of Stuff
Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:11:05 +0300

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.


alriyadh.com new search engine
Thu, 22 Nov 2007 20:11:05 +0300

After serving Alriyadh.com the past 3 years, I am replacing Swish-e with Solr search server, Solr is a search server based on Lucene text search engine.

Solr has many advance features I didn’t utilize most of them yet, but hopefully you will see them soon. I will write a post about Solr and how it works and its integrate with PHP soon.
For now please have a look at it and tell me what you think.


Pictures of the new 1/2 Riyal
Sun, 04 Nov 2007 08:41:29 +0300
Without any announcement Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) released the new 1/2 Riyal, it replaces the old coin, with special technologically advanced features, like UOO (Use Only Once), and WCAC (Who Cares About Consumers)
Old 1/2 Riyal photo:

New currency photo:

Seriously SAMA I am sick of shops handing me a chewing gum instead of 1/2 Riyal, and you have to do something about it, my suggestions (some of them not related to SAMA):


Leaving SAUDI NET
Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:23:23 +0300
This week, I started my new job at CITC, I am leaving STC, I’ve spent the last 6 years working for SAUDI NET and SAUDI DATA.
Alhamdu Lelah, the last 6 years were amazing, I learned too many thing, made friends with too many people.
Thanks to everyone participated in this great experience, and special thank to Abdullah Aldosari who add the extra spices on it 😉


Exploit of Moms
Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:26:25 +0300

http://xkcd.com/327/
If you didn’t understand it read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_injection


Where to buy computer books in Riyadh?
Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:04:19 +0300
Al Mayman closed

Ba Shamakh closed

Jarir out dated books
Where can I find computer books in Riyadh? any suggestions.


CSS Layout and design articles and resources
Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:38:46 +0300
If you still use tables to build your web site you really need to go back to school to learn CSS, and understand why CSS should be utilized to design your web site.

Here are some resource I found most useful to understand and start using CSS for layout, enjoy:

Learn CSS Positioning in Ten Steps: Teach you about CSS “position”, “float”, “clear”, very important in CSS based design.
No More Tables CSS Layout Techniques: layout using table is old and bad practice, learn why and how to move to CSS based layout.
Listamatic: create horizontal and vertical menus using simple <li> elements. 
Yahoo UI Library Fonts and Reset: Library to make your design and fonts look the same in all browsers.



MySQL: fixing errors of the past
Sat, 01 Sep 2007 14:37:35 +0300
Old MySQL versions didn’t have good support for Arabic, so what I used to do is to configure MySQL tables with any character set e.g. latin-1 and configure PHP to read it and write in Windows-1256 and pass it to MySQL as is i.e. MySQL think it is “Latin-1” but in fact it is “Windows-1256”.
Needless to say cheating in the character set have many bad consensuses:

Sorting will not work as expected
Other applications will assume you are using the correct character set and you won’t be able to read or write your data. e.g. PHPMyAdmin could display something like this:

“ÈÓã Çááå ÇáÑÍãä ÇáÑÍíã”

How to fix it

I found this trick in MySQL documentation, what you need to do is convert any character field to “blob” then convert it back to the desired field type with the desired character set:



ALTER TABLE t1 CHANGE c1 c1 BLOB;

ALTER TABLE t1 CHANGE c1 c1 TEXT CHARACTER SET cp1256;



You can change it and test it from phpMyAdmin.


Back to Riyadh
Sun, 26 Aug 2007 09:37:01 +0300
Guess which countries I have been to during my vacation, my Flickr photos could help:



http://www.flickr.com/photos/rayed/


Convert videos for iPod
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:35:08 +0300
My son Abdullah is addicted to Dora the Explorer cartoons, and since I am planing to travel in the summer I am looking for ways to take his DVDs with me using my iPod.
I found this free software that convert videos to iPod ready format, so far it is doing very good job.

Koyote Free Ipod video converter


My brother Khalid got a Wii
Sun, 01 Jul 2007 01:31:23 +0300

The last computer game I spent more than 1 hour playing was Crash Bandicoot on Sony play station 1, after this game I lost interest on all computer games, I even started to hate them specially football related game (e.g. Winning Eleven), for some reason I couldn’t train my self to hit the sequence square-square-triangle to do whatever it do in PS.
Few months ago I read about Nintendo Wii and it is new revolutionary controller, the Wii remote, it is basically a game controller that you wave in the space and can detect 3D motion. You can use Wii remote as a sword, baseball bat, tennis racquet, human hand, you name it.


Wanted!! Cholula hot sauce
Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:52:30 +0300

Few months ago I went to Fuddruckers restaurant, and I ordered grilled chicken salad, I am not a salad guy and the salad tasted bit plane, so I went to the sauce bar and took the most exotic looking sauce, I grabber Cholula hot sauce with its distinct large round wooden cap and tried it with my salad, the flavor was amazing. I even took a picture of the sauce trying to find it in local stores.


Moved to a new server
Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:56:41 +0300
rayed.com to new server with upgraded softwares:

FreeBSD 6.2

Apache 2

PHP 5

MySQL 5


Linux vs FreeBSD kernel rebuild
Sun, 10 Jun 2007 09:49:16 +0300
For the past couple of week, I am trying to refresh my Linux skills, I abandoned Linux as the server platform of choice in favor of FreeBSD, but recently unfortunately FreeBSD isn’t supported as Linux, and sometimes Linux have this weired feature that isn’t available in FreeBSD, e.g. DRDB.
I am big FreeBSD fan, and I loved it even more when I worked with Linux, Ubuntu, the Linux distribution I use, is really impressive as a desktop OS, but if you want to hack the system, and play with its internal it doesn’t give much room, and this the exact reason I switched from Windows to Linux 10 years ago.


Fly Sama
Sat, 02 Jun 2007 14:47:52 +0300

Two weeks ago I visited Jeddah city for the first time since 1990, yes 17 years since my last visit!
I made my flight reservation on Saudi Airlines, and the only return flight I found was on Friday 7am, and since the flight is so early it will ruin my Thursday too, I decided to try the new economical air lines, Sama or Nas.
I visited the two sites, and I made my decision on how good the website was.


Shrinking Vista Partion (to install Ubuntu :))
Mon, 28 May 2007 12:27:18 +0300
Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management
Chose Storage. Then chose Disk Management. And now you can play with the partition sizes.


Abdullah Aldosari left SAUDI NET
Sun, 27 May 2007 11:48:32 +0300
After spending 6 years at SAUDI NET, Abdullah Aldosari has left us and joined Mobily.
Abdullah was our system architect, with large arsenal of skills talents, we have working very tightly all these years. SAUDI NET sure lost a very valuable team member.
Abdullah it has been a pleasure and honor to work with you.


Alriyadh.com converted to CSS based design
Fri, 18 May 2007 00:53:30 +0300
Warning: It is the same design converted to CSS.
After 5 weeks of development and testing, Alriyadh.com is now converted to CSS based design, it still not 100% complete.
You can view the design by using this URL:

www2.alriyadh.com
Some benefits of moving to CSS:

Fonts look the same a cross browsers: I am using Yahoo! User Interface Library fonts file to guarantee that font have the same size a cross browsers.
Page are bit smaller: because many presentation tags are now removed from the HMTL and put in the CSS.
Printer friendly by default: we now have have separate CSS file for printing, so no need for printer friendly page since all page are automatically are.
PDA friendly by default: same as printer CSS, not implemented yet.
Rendering is faster.
It will simplify future redesign. (since we are talking about redesign, suggestion are welcomed 🙂 )



Muntaqa the best of Arabic email groups
Fri, 04 May 2007 22:04:59 +0300


Today me and Abdullah launched Muntaqa.
Muntaqa is a website that collect large number of email groups, e.g. AbuNawaf, and displays them in a single page, people can vote, bookmark, and comment on all emails.
In the front page you will get the most popular emails, so you want miss any interesting emails in the Arabic web sphere 🙂
Muntaqa works like Digg, but instead of submitting websites, we automatically submit emails from email groups. A big population of computer users in Arab world (at least in Saudi Arabia) still consider the emails as the only form of publishing in the Internet.


IE6 in Ubuntu
Mon, 23 Apr 2007 12:54:55 +0300
Ubuntu Linux is really easy OS with many interesting features, one of the best sites to help you with your Ubuntu experince is Ubuntu Guide, the site has many useful tips on how to do thing in Ubuntu.
One of the tips is how to install Internet Explorer under Ubuntu, I saw Fahad AlShenaifi do it, he is our Ubuntu expert since he is using it exclusively for the past year or so.


CentOS the free RedHat, Version 5.0 released
Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:21:56 +0300
CentOS is a freely available Linux distribution which is based on Red Hat’s commercial Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product. This rebuild project strives to be 100% binary compatible with the upstream product, and within its mainline and updates, to not vary from that goal. Additional software archives hold later versions of such packages, along with other Free and Open Source Software RPM based packagings. CentOS stands for Community ENTerprise Operating System.


Dovecot 1.0.0 released (Mail Server)
Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:48:08 +0300
Dovecot version 1.0.0 finally released, after almost 5 years of development.
Dovecot is IMAP and POP3 server, it is one of the best and easiest servers I ever worked with, easy enough for home environment, and flexible and powerful enough for service providers.
I’ve tested it earlier before and hopefully we will migrate to it later this year.
Dovecot integrate very well with Postfix mail server (Postfix handle SMTP, Dovecot handle POP3+IMAP), and can easily support virtual hosting.


WordPress 2.1 as CMS
Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:14:49 +0300
On of the cool new features of WordPress 2.1 is “Front Page” options it allows you to make WordPress front page a static page instead of showing latest post.

This make WordPress suitable as CMS for small websites, without any heavy customizations.


Supporting right to left writing (for Arabic) in WordPress
Fri, 06 Apr 2007 12:08:30 +0300
UPDATE: I found an easier way to do the same thing Check it out
In my blog I write in both languages English and Arabic, but I have to switch text direction from the template default English direction “Left to Right” to Arabic “Right to Left”.
One way do to it is to add HTML tags in each Arabic entry.
Another way to do it is to utilize WordPress “Custom Fields” feature, WordPress allows you to add custom fields to any entry, so I add a new custom field to my Arabic entries, the key will be “wp_direction” and the value will be “rtl”.


العربية.نت منبر من لايستحقون منبر
Thu, 05 Apr 2007 09:14:36 +0300
استغرب على العربية.نت تركيزهم على بعض الاخبار التي لاتستحق ذكر، لكنها تثير الجماهير.

وعلى عكس القناة المرئية فهي لاتبدو بمظهر متزن، بل هي اشبه بصحف التابلويد.

هل سنظل نتابع اخبار المرتدين، والشاذين، والعاهرات، لفترة طويلة على هذا الموقع ام سيؤدي دورة المفترض كموقع اخباري متزن. 


lighttpd enters the Top 5
Tue, 03 Apr 2007 21:02:49 +0300
Lighttpd web server is becoming major player in the web server space, according to Netcraft Lighttpd is the 4th most popular web server on the net, and it is moving fast!




Best times to enjoy ٌRiyadh
Fri, 09 Mar 2007 11:28:30 +0300
Riyadh is a very big city, with 5.5 Million person sharing it streets, driving in Riyadh can be one of the worst experiences you may ever have.

Many people nowadays avoid the pressure of commuting and prefer to stay at home, I am a big example 🙁

The secret to enjoy the city is to use taxi to go wherever you want, and preferably stay in the back seat, and void the habit of looking at the road and try to enjoy the ride, you will be surprised of how many new things changed without you noticing it.

The other option to enjoy the city is Weekend mornings, Thursday morning is the best, business are open and the traffic is lighter that other days, Friday morning is nice with no one in the roads, but there is no places to go 🙁 may be you will find small fool restaurants, it can be ideal if you want to explore new places in Riyadh.


Fahad weblog
Sat, 03 Mar 2007 11:29:58 +0300
My dear Friend Fahad AlShenaifi finally found a time to launch his blog, http://fahadblog.com/wordpress/
The blog in English, and talk about Ubuntu, computer security, and him self.
Don’t miss his photo gallery.


CakePHP under Lighttpd
Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:28:06 +0300
After moving alriyadh.com to Lighttpd I had some problem making a CakePHP application I wrote to work properly.
I searched the net for a solution and I found this post, but unfortunately the solution they proposed didn’t work, I spent several hours trying to make it work until I gave up, I decide to do it from scratch and luckily it worked. 
The mod_rewrite rules I used in lighttpd.conf file:



url.rewrite-once = (

        "^/cake/(css|files|img|js|stats)/(.*)$" => "/cake/app/webroot/$1/$2",

        "^/cake/(.*)$" => "/cake/app/webroot/index.php?url=$1"

)



Where cake is you cakePHP application.


Submitting Forms using Ajax
Wed, 07 Feb 2007 11:57:06 +0300
When you build AJAX based form, you need to provide visual feedback to tell the user that something is really happening.
I created small template for this purpose:


Ajax Form
Hopefully you will see it in the next alriyadh.com CSS based theme 🙂


Improving thumbnails quality
Mon, 05 Feb 2007 12:51:45 +0300
Inpired by Flickr’s Dirty Little Secret post, about how Flickr thumbnails make the photo prettier than the original photo.
The article suggest that Flick sharpen the image before it resize it.
So I did my own test, this the result and you are the judge:
 
Image 1, normal resize.
Image 2, sharpen before resize.


Sharpened and saturated +100:

All I need to know is how to do it from inside PHP.


alriyadh.com moved to lighttpd
Sun, 04 Feb 2007 09:23:03 +0300
Alriyadh.com website is now served by Lighttpd (aka Lighty).
I moved all static content from Apache to Lighty, Lighty “select” based design makes it ideal for I/O bound operation, i.e. disk and network operations. For this reason Lighty move all CPU bound operations to external process and communicate with them using FastCGI protocol.
This is what delayed my migration to Lighty, because I used to compile PHP with mod_php only and with FastCGI support, so I have to recompile PHP to enable it. Of course I spent few days testing, and I am still having some areas not covered completely.


Unleash the power of RSS, use Google Reader
Sun, 21 Jan 2007 14:17:24 +0300
Few weeks ago I started using Google Reader, and so far it is amazing. Basically you subscribe all your RSS feeds you are interested in Google Reader, and instead of visiting 10 or 20 website, you visit Reader page to get the latest updates.
The integration with Firefox is amazing, just click on RSS icon and you can add it directly to Google Reader, very easy.
I used to use Thunderbird for a while for RSS, but after I set it up I forgot to use it. The subscription method is bit more complex than Google reader, and lack of a single folder for all of my RSS feeds make it useless.


Lighttpd powers Saudi Arabia most popular unpopular website
Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:12:34 +0300
Since we migrated Saudi Arabia international lines from ISU to us, we started to host the most unpopular web page in the kingdom, Internet Block Page.

We started hosting it on Apache web server, but we noticed timeout problems with the server, to discover that slow clients reserve many Apache process which lead to consuming all of Apache processes.

Lighttpd came to the rescue, I replaced Apache with Lighttpd and so far it is doing a great job. Lighttpd is a prefect fit since the website only serve one static page, and this where Lighttpd shines.

This doesn’t mean Lighttpd is better than Apache, each one has its own uses, this small comparison table for both:


FreeBSD 6.2 released
Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:24:07 +0300
FreeBSD my favorite operating system has new version 6.2. The new version has many features, the most intersting (for me at least):

freebsd-update provides officially supported binary updates for security fixes and errata patches (I always thought applying the patches manually isn’t friendly enough for most people).
csup, an integrated cvsup client  (Now I don’t have to install it manually in new machines).

If you never used FreeBSD invest sometime on it, and I guarantee that you will fall in love with it 🙂


SAMA sending us to the 80s
Sun, 07 Jan 2007 13:09:45 +0300
Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) lately is doing a horrible job with SPAN network, SPAN is Saudi Arabia system for paying using your bank card.
In the last 4 months, most transactions from local store fails, which force many business and customer to fall back to an older technology, Cash!!
I am not used to carrying a lot of cash with me, and rely on my bank card to buy goods.


Alriyadh.com previous polls
Fri, 05 Jan 2007 19:05:28 +0300
Recently I have improved alriyadh.com voting system, many of them are in administration area, some of these changes will be visible in the near future.
One of the new additions is the previous votes page:

http://www.alriyadh.com/php/vote/
Check it out, and keep in mind the design is still under work.
Memo to self: replace the word “vote” with “poll”
UPDATE: If you see weird colors in IE (7?) it is fixed now.


Saudi Arabia is the 8th fattest country on Earth
Thu, 04 Jan 2007 19:37:19 +0300
According to this website:

http://linkdonkey.blogspot.com/2007/01/fattest-countries-on-earth.html

Saudi Arabia is the 8th fattest country on Earth. Other Arab countries are also included!
Does the government know about this?

What do you suggest to do about it.
10) Emirates – 25.9 men/39.9 women

9) Palestine – 23.9 men/42 women

8) Saudi Arabia – 26.4 men/44 women

7) French Polynesia – 36.3 men/ 44.3 women

6) Qatar – 34.6 men/45.3 women

5) Nieue – 15 men/46 women

4) Jordan – 32.7 men/59.8 women

3) Samoa – 32.9 men/63 women

2) Tonga – 46.6% men / 70.3% women

1) Nauru – 80.2% men / 78.6% women


XCache new PHP optimizer
Mon, 01 Jan 2007 00:24:37 +0300
XCache is relatively new PHP code optimizer, written by “Jan Kneschke” the same guy who wrote Lighttpd web server.
After migrating Alriyadh.com to the new dual CPU servers, I had problems with APC PHP optimizer and locking, so I disabled the optimizer altogether, after all the CPU was very fast and it handled the load without any problems.
But lately with my increasing interest on Lighttpd I noticed XCache, I never heard of it before but after reading the web site, and the problem APC have with multi processors I decided to give XCache a try, and the best of all it was ready in FreeBSD ports, so I installed it and so far it doing a good job.


Back in Riyadh
Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:18:57 +0300
since Saturday 3 am, but I just got recovered from the jet lag.

Hopefully I’ll post my trip highlight and photos soon.


On vacation :)
Tue, 14 Nov 2006 20:54:05 +0300
I am currently on vacation in Thailand, so far I love it. Really beautiful and clean despite being crowded in some areas.
Hopefully I’ll post more about in the coming days. Meanwhile checkout out my photos on Flickr:

rayed @ Flickr


My DSL is back :)
Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:25:26 +0300
Extremely slow but still DSL. My phone line got off line for more than a month, after that phone worked but with out DSL for another 2 weeks, during this time I only connect using 28K dial up connection, which is really really slow. 
Update: I upgraded to 512K and it is awesome, it wasn’t slow Windows was downloading tons of updates 🙂


WordPress spam proctection: Akismet Out, CaptCha! In
Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:14:06 +0300
Since I upgraded my WordPress to version 2 I used Akismet to protect my from comment spam, it did a great job for a while but lately it passes a lot of spam, I am not sure what is the problem but I am suspecting some network problems.
So until I resolve this problem I’ll try using CaptCha! plug-in, it uses captcha method to prevent spamming.

Captcha works as follow, when you want to submit a comment, the website displays an image with few characters shown in wave shapes, and you requested to type the character you see to accept your comment, the idea is to prevent automatic script from submitting comment because they can not read the character in the screen, even if they used OCR it would be very hard to recognize it.


Car stolen this time mine!
Sat, 28 Oct 2006 22:31:54 +0300
Yesterday I went to Jarir Bookstore between exist 5 and 6, and when I came back to my car I found the passenger glass smashed and all my stuff scattered on the car. Fortunately, I never leave anything in my car, so nothing got stolen, but fixing the damage would cost around 1000 SR.
My brother car got stolen 500m from my Jarir Bookstore near Saco, both accidents happened in less than 6 months period!!


Firefox 2 and IE 7
Tue, 24 Oct 2006 23:56:06 +0300
Recently the 2 most popular browsers IE and Firefox released a new version.
Firefox is already a very good product so improving it is very hard 🙂 The most important new feature is the online spell checker which is really lovely. It also has a new theme, I didn’t like that much but it might take some time to get used to.
IE 7 in the other hand is really impressive (compared to IE 6 of course), it has tab browsing at last, the theme is really really good, the new font rendering engine is really smooth and clear it feels like a Mac.


Java what to learn
Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:16:19 +0300
Every year or so I have a project in Java I learn enough thing to finish the project then I forget it by getting busy in other proejcts.

Over the years I really loved and hated Java, 
Java what to learn:

Ant: is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like Make, without Make’s wrinkles and with the full portability of pure Java code.
Tomcat: servlet and JSP server, can work as standalone, with Apache HTTPd, or IIS.
log4j: log4j is a Java-based logging utility. It is used primarily as a debugging tool.
JUnit: JUnit is a unit testing framework for the Java programming language.



Java Package for FreeBSD
Fri, 13 Oct 2006 02:32:54 +0300
Installing Java on FreeBSD (my favourite operating system) wasn’t an easy task, you have to download Java files from Sun web site put them in a special directory then start a lengthy build process that never successed.
Fortunately FreeBSD Foundation has binary package for Java, all you need is to Download and install using:
# pkg_add diablo-jdk-freebsd5.i386.1.5.0.07.01.tbz

and you are done.
With Java on FreeBSD may be I will start playing with Lucene instead of Swish-e as Alriyadh search engine.


Things I want to write about but don’t have time
Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:58:44 +0300
These days I really don’t have time on the Internet, but I really want to talk about some of these issue in more depth later.

My phone line (including DSL service) is out of service for more than month, and until now no hope 🙁
IGW the new ISU: STC is now handling Internet gateway operation, the service is still has some issues, and we are still understaffed.
Dev4Islam: Project to devlope open source Islamic and Arabic software and services. We aim to collect data and make it available for other so they can build better software.
Java + Delphi = C# Anders Hejlsber the creator of Delphi, create a great language for Microsoft.
Lucene is a full text search library, exteremly fast, and the API is awsome. I tested it Lucene .Net port it is really super fast.
Swish-e same as lucene, this what I use for Alriadh.com, still very good.

Alriyadh.com new feature: user login for better experince, no need to rewrite your name and email when you want to submit a comment or send article to a friend, and you can bookmark your favourite articles, any thing else we should add.

Screen Shot of Quran program:








My brother car got stolen again!! this time the whole car!!!
Sat, 16 Sep 2006 13:13:01 +0300
Few months ago my brother Fouad went to SACO hardware store, unfortunately he forgot his wallet in the car, as soon as he remembered it he went back to the car to find the window broken and all his belongings stolen, including his wallet and his work briefcase, he reported the accident to his bank within few minutes to deactivate his VISA card, but it was too late they thief already purchased 17,000 SR worth of good including laptops and mobile phones, all this happened in less than an hour!!!! Until he is still talking to the bank to return it back.


Implementing Pingback in alriyadh.com
Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:53:02 +0300
Pingback is a method for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles.
Implementing Pingback feature is very easy, you need to add the following code to your template:



<link rel="pingback" href="http://www.alriyadh.com/php/xmlrpc/" />


This code will make other blogging software notify your software that it is linking to it, It do this by sending “pingback.ping” XML-RPC request to the given URL, when you get the notification you can add it to the database, email it, or do what ever you want with it.


Virtual FTP accounts with Pure-FTPd  and MySQL
Sat, 19 Aug 2006 13:17:09 +0300
Pure-FTPd is a FTP server with many features that enable you to host virtual accounts, these are the features that I loved and tested:

You can put the user information in MySQL database, without having to create a real UNIX account for each user.
It also have the feature of creating the user home directory when the user logging, so all you need to create a new user is to add it to the database.
CallUploadScript this feature will make the server run a script whenever a new file is uploaded, I used this feature to scan the file for viruses as soon as the user upload the file. (I use ClamAV as my virus scanner)

Installation (FreeBSD)



# cd /usr/ports/ftp/pure-ftpd/

# make install

# vi /etc/rc.conf

:

pureftpd_enable="YES"

pureftpd_upload_enable="YES"

pureftpd_uploadscript="/path/to/pureftpd_uploadscript.sh"

:




New Thunderbird checklist
Tue, 15 Aug 2006 11:42:12 +0300
Check all IMAP folders:

By default Thunderbird only checks the inbox for new messages, but since we use server side filter emails don’t have to go to inbox and sometimes go directly to destionation folder.

Fortunaltely Tunderbird can be configured to check all folders, but it has to be done manually, put the follwoing lines in “user.js”:



// Download mail from all accounts on startup

user_pref("mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new", true);



The file doesn’t exists by default so you need to create it in your “profile” filder, this link will help you to locate your “profile” folder:

http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/edit#profile


Installing Ubuntu Linux 6.06
Tue, 15 Aug 2006 01:23:08 +0300

Today I installed the new Ubuntu 6.06 on my laptop, and I wanted to share my experince.
I took me a while to find out how to install it, after I rebooted from CD, and selected Start/Install a live Ubuntu system showed up, I thought I downloaded the live CD version of Ubuntu, but I remember that I raed “Install” during booting, so I rebooted again to try to install the system, same thing happen, I gave up and tried to play with the live CD version, then I found the “Install Ubuntu” icon on the desktop!!


Don’t super size me!
Sat, 12 Aug 2006 11:50:16 +0300

Yesterday I visited one of my favourite fast food resturants, Herfy, and I order my usual meal “Super Herfy”. It usually cost 15 SR, but when I ordered it he asked me for 17 SR!! then I remembered that some resturants super size your meal without asking, I usually expect this kind of practice from “Hardee’s” and “KFC” not from Herfy.
I hate super sizing in general, because they super size the french fries and the drink, and I am not a big fan of both, and the medium serving is more than enough for me. But if you are offering super sizing my burgers this is a different story 🙂


Cricket extensions
Thu, 10 Aug 2006 15:13:24 +0300
Cricket
Cricket is trend monitoring software, it allows you to monitor trend for any device you want.
I wrote 2 extensions for Cricket to monitor Lighttpd web server, and Memecached caching server.
Lighttpd web server
“lighttpd (also called “Lighty”) is a web server which is designed to be secure, fast, standards-compliant, and flexible while being optimized for speed-critical environments. Its low memory footprint (compared to other web servers), light CPU load and its speed goals make lighttpd suitable for servers that are suffering load problems, or for serving static media separately from dynamic content. lighttpd is free software / open source, and is distributed under the BSD license.”  Wikipedia


lighttpd the new webserver in town
Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:37:22 +0300
For the past 9 years I used Apache Web Server exclusively, Apache is very stable and feature rich web server. The only downsize is consuming a lot of computer resources, Apache is a multi-processes server which mean you will find many Apache process running in your system and if we say that each process cosume 2MB of RAM and you have 5 Apache processes running this mean it needs 10MB of RAM.


Mac experience so far
Fri, 07 Jul 2006 00:36:23 +0300
The Bad

Mouse movement: Mac OS has very strange mouse movement, if you move the mouse slowly it moves “very” slow, and if you move it faster it move “very” fast. I couldn’t get used to it until now and it drives me crazy.

I tried different software to fix this weired behavior, but it is still awkward.
Arabic support is really bad:

Keyboard layout is different than PC layout, which is frustrating for PC converts.
Most soft wares don’t provide good support for Arabic, Front page doesn’t connect Arabic characters. Apple iWork Pages doesn’t even support right to left writing.
Writing in “bold” in Arabic font is the same as non bold.


Software updates are huge, I guess they don’t have incremental update, you need to download the complete software whenever a new version exists. e.g. I am downloading 51M update for QuickTime, and you have to restart the machines afterward!! So far I downloaded more than 1 GB for software update!!

The Good

It is UNIX 🙂
In Mac OS an application is a complete folder when you click the folder the application runs. So software installation is very easy, you just move the folder to where you want to your application folder. To uninstall move the folder to the trash.
The graphics are awesome, wallpapers, screen savers, application everything is cool!
The machines is really great looking, and the 20″ monitor is really amazing and bright.
Super quite you don’t hear any noise.
Mac OS sleep feature is really fast, one click and the machine is running in less than a second!!








Python 2.5 Beta, and new Python website
Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:19:06 +0300
Python, my favorite computer language (althought I don’t use it that often) released 2.5 beta version.
What amazed me that their website is now changed with new look, and Python has a new logo too.



Optimizing MySQL
Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:30:31 +0300
The last 3 days we were facing many problems with Alriyadh.com web server, the server suddenly get very slow, and all requests times out. It took me very long time to identify the problem, I tried many things and every time I think it will solve the problem completely, but after few hours the problem appear again and he server start to crawl.

Until this moment I am not 100% sure the problem is solved, but during the process I learned many things, so I’ll share it with you and hopefully everything will go smoothly, if it doesn’t I have to learn new thing to figure out the problem.


JEdit the ultimate editor!
Sat, 17 Jun 2006 20:03:16 +0300

A year ago Waleed Alzuhair asked me about the reason I am still using Windows-1256 Arabic character set, intead of the new standard Unicode. My reason was the lack of good editor that support Arabic and Unicode, my favourite eidtor HTML-Kit doesn’t have any support for Unicode.
But lately while looking for an editor for Mac OS I found JEdit, it is a Java based editor which means it will work with any OS, it supports many charachter sets including Unicode UTF-8, another intersting feature is its support (through a plugin) of remote editing using both FTP, and SFTP  (HTML-Kit doesn’t support SFTP).


SAUDI NET needs fresh graduates
Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:05:26 +0300
SAUDI NET is hiring and we are looking for fresh graduates in CS/IS, we have very large expansions that will give you many great chances to work with different technologies. 
SAUDI NET is part of Saudi Telecom Company (STC) so you will get all the STC employees benefits.
If you are intersted send me your resume at (rayed at saudi.net.sa)


FireFTP: FTP client inside Firefox
Sun, 11 Jun 2006 11:52:13 +0300
I always have trouble finding and recommending FTP clients to friends, I used to use WS_FTP but it isn’t free, same thing for Cute FTP.
Lately I didn’t use FTP client any more, because I start using HTMLKit it isn’t an FTP client per se, it is an editor with the ability to open remote files using FTP, so I do most of my file editing using it.
HTMLKit is great but it doesn’t support moving files or directories, or transfaering a complete directory. In these cases I usually log to the machine using SSH and do the need operations using the command line, but this not an option for most people.


Testing Google AdSense Images
Sat, 10 Jun 2006 15:27:07 +0300
It has been 4 months since I put Google ads on my site, and so far the result are rediclousy funny, I only earned $4 🙂 , I didn’t expect to get anything at all, and even if I did I doubt that they will send to Saudi Arabia.
Today, I noticed an ad that I didn’t like and it appeared very frequently, so I decided to block it, fortunately Google have a mechanisim for that but it will take some time, so I decided to switch from text ads to image ads, and change the location of the banner to better place, and I will wait to see how it will affect my earnings.


Thunderbird extension for Arabic
Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:44:51 +0300
Thunderbird is a great email client, it has very good support for international languages, and it displays Arabic emails without any problems, the only problem that I face with it is when writing Arabic emails, unfortunately Thunderbird doesn’t have shortcut or button to change the writing direction from left-to-right used by most western languages, to right-to-left used for Arabic.
But through the power of extensions you can install this small extension (37K) that will add 2 new buttons in Compose window, one for changing the direction from LTR->RTL, and vice versa.


Alriyadh Newspaper world cup vote and win
Thu, 08 Jun 2006 03:17:04 +0300
Alriyadh Newspaper is giving away 25 one year subscription, one subscription for each game day in FIFA world cup 2006, all you need to do is to guess the result of each match, of course the more matches you get correct the more chance for you to win, to vote go to alriyadh world cup site http://www.alriyadh.com/worldcup/, and it is absolutely free, no need for 5 SR SMS to subscribe, and if you get the result right you really have good chance to win.

Update:

“All” correct guesses will get 50% discount on Arliyadh Newspaper subscription, so it will become 300SR instead of 600SR.


WP1 & WP2 spam filtering
Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:33:16 +0300
While upgrading WordPress to version 2, I backed up my database and I noticed that the comments table size is around 1.7MB which is huge, I don’t have that many comments. I find out that WordPress don’t delete comments even if they were marked spam, so I deleted them manually, so go check your comments table and save some space.
WP1 Spam detection:

WordPress 1.x has a feature that mark comments as spam if they match certin keywords, it was doing very good job, except for that last few weeks I start getting new spam comments so I had to update my spam keywods.


Internet traffic slowness in Saudi Arabia
Wed, 07 Jun 2006 13:06:35 +0300
These days Internet backbone in Saudi Arabia is having many problems affecting mainly DSL customers in some areas. I guess it must be related to the boom in new DSL connections.
To make things worst the school vacation just started and the Internet browsing became very very slow.
Thank god that I host my website at SAUDI NET so no speed prolem with it.


Finally I upgraded WordPress
Wed, 07 Jun 2006 00:19:35 +0300
Today I had to finish writing some code for Alriyadh Worldcup web site, and I was expecting it to take at least 5 to 6 hours, and it had to be finished today, so I planned all my evening for that coding session
Fortunately I finished the job in 2 hours, and I had some extra time in my hand, so I decided to do something I planned to do for very long time, upgrade WordPress, so I sat down and upgrade it from version 1.5 to the latest version, alhamdu lelah the upgrade process was very smoth, althogh some features didn’t work, mainy the rich text editing feature.


CSS designed websites
Tue, 30 May 2006 13:26:46 +0300
These sites collect links to CSS designed websites, great if you want to get some inspiration, it also give some idea on the capabilities of CSS:

css thesis: sites, that’s all
CSS Import
CSS Beauty
Unmatched style



Alriyadh.com Worldcup 2006 website
Tue, 30 May 2006 08:44:13 +0300
Alriyadh.com launched a new website for covering the FIFA world cup 2006, the website can be found here http://www.alriyadh.com/worldcup.
The new site isn’t a regular news website, it is a new web application specifically designed for the world cup, it would be also updated in real time, i.e. you can follow any match events while it is still in play, of course you will still find regular coverage like news, and photos.


My MAC OS downloads
Sun, 28 May 2006 18:33:29 +0300
Until now my downloads are basically similar to Windows counter part:

Firefox
Thunderbird
Real Player
Windows Mediaplayer
Windows Messenger

any thing else I should look at.


Greylisting: New weapon to fight Spam
Sun, 28 May 2006 10:59:06 +0300
Last Tuesday, I enabled Geylisting on SAUDI NET mail servers, and you can see the decrease of spam we are getting (the blue line):

The first day of enabling greylisting we got many complaints about delayed emails, but after that all emails flow with delays.
To learn more check Greylist @ Wikipedia


I bought a 20″ iMac
Sun, 28 May 2006 09:15:27 +0300
First impressions: WOW, WOW, huh, why, where!!! I guess I need sometime to get used to it. At least I have a terminal program with ssh, after all it is UNIX machine 🙂


Alriyadh.com wins ICT Excellence Awards
Tue, 23 May 2006 09:08:41 +0300
Yesterday, Alriyadh.com awarded the Middle East ICT Excellence Award in the “Print and Electronic Media of the Year (Print)” category from the Middle East Excellence Awards Institute.
Alriyadh Newspaper covered the story, and we received a great response from many people, thanks everyone:

«الرياض»تحصل على جائزةالشرق الأوسط في تقنية المعلومات والاتصالات لأفضل موقع الكتروني
«الرياض» تحصل على جائزة أفضل موقع إلكتروني في الشرق الأوسط
موقع «الرياض» الإلكتروني.. عمل دؤوب وتطوير دائم(screen shots for alriyadh.com since opening)
السحيباني: انتظروا المزيد من التطوير في موقع «الرياض» الإلكتروني
شباب سعودي يتوج «الرياض» الإلكتروني باللقب
تقنيون سعوديون: فخورون بفوز «الرياض» .. والجائزة ذهبت لمن يستحقها
قراء «الرياض» يتفاعلون مع الفوز

Special thanks to Ahmad Alsuwailm for the great coverage.


Mac buying update
Tue, 16 May 2006 19:30:27 +0300
Today I contacted ADAM -the Apple distributer in Jeddah- by email and they replied after 20 minutes, which is a good thing, here is the reply:

Our branch in Riyadh is for whole sale only, but we can send you what ever you need from Jeddah.

The intel iMac 20″ is for 7500SR not including shipping.

In another front Apple announced the new MacBook which replaced the iBook, it cost $1099 which is really attractive, but with only 13″ screen, it can be a good gift though.


Apple store in Riyadh?
Sun, 14 May 2006 22:54:10 +0300
Today I went to Apple Store in Riyadh looking for a Mac, I was interested in the 17″ iMac, but after seeing the 20″ iMac the 17″ won’t satisfy me, it was really amazing and looks much prettier in real life.
The bad side is the price, the 17″ cost 6500SR ($1730), and the 20″ cost 8400SR ($2240), keep in mind that in the US the 17″ cost $1299 ($430 difference), and the 20″ cost $1699 ($541 difference).


Convert to Mac! Is it time?
Fri, 12 May 2006 00:44:27 +0300
Every few years I think of buying a Mac machine, usually it happens after Apple annonce new cool thing, first the PowerPC CPU which was really amazing back in the 90s, then with Mac OS X being built on top of UNIX, then lately with the introduction of Intel based Macs.
Also 6 months ago my friend Misfer bough a PowerBook, and he loves s much.
So is it time to convert to Mac, Mac machines are generally more expensive than Windows machines, especially here in Saudi Arabia, and I only know one store that sells Macs.


FreeBSD 6.1 released
Tue, 09 May 2006 12:30:17 +0300
FreeBSD my favorite operating system released version 6.1, they finally put the new logo.
For more information about FreeBSD checkout FreeBSD@WikiPedia


Firefox Google toolbar : uninstall now
Sat, 06 May 2006 09:11:10 +0300
I noticed that Firefox takes more than 100MB from my memory, I thought it would cache something and I didn’t get that much thought, specially when it very clever to adjust the cache based on my memory. But yesterday it took 170MB from my notebook 256MB, this huge!!
Today I chatted with Abdullah about Firefox memory consumption, and he said it is normal on his machine, Strange! I restarted Firefox on Safemode to see if anything in my settings or extension are wrong. Yeppy! Firefox back to normal in 20MB range.


CakePHP 1.0 released!
Wed, 03 May 2006 10:49:11 +0300
CakePHP version 1.0 is released, CakePHP in thier word is:
Cake is a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front Controller and MVC. Our primary goal is to provide a structured framework that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.
I have tried it few times and it is really intersting peace of software, many say CakePHP is Ruby on Rails clone.


Alriyadh.com new 404 page
Tue, 02 May 2006 02:35:00 +0300
Check it out:

404 Page
and give me you feedback, what to you think it should contain.


Genius, my favorite mouse
Fri, 28 Apr 2006 22:52:52 +0300
A while ago I bought an “Orange” mouse for my parents home, I bought it based on a recommendation from a sales man at “echo” electronic store. I thought optical mouses reached apoint where all mouses are the same, I was wrong. “orange” mouse was very stupid, jumping all the time and it drove my crazy.
So when I went to computer complex at Olaya to buy my DSL modem, I decided to buy a mouse for my parents computer, and since I have a good Genius mouse I bought another Genuis mouse for 20SR (Ibought mine for 30SR 3 years ago), and what a difference between the two. Genuis mouse was very wasy moving and no jumping all over the screen, I loved it.


DSL access at last :)
Wed, 26 Apr 2006 11:11:41 +0300
After three months delay from the inital plan I finally got DSL access.
My friend Abdulaziz Alqudhibi offered me NetGear DSL Modem/Router/Access point for really great price but it will take two days to install, but I couldn’t wait so I went to the market and bought a SpeedTouch 585, I hope I won’t regret it



الحليفة، مزرعة في وادي
Fri, 14 Apr 2006 17:55:46 +0300

الحليفة هي مزرعة صغيرة اشتراها عمي عبدالعزيز قبل قرابة السنة، وعلى الرغم من صغر المزرعة التي لا يتجاوز مساحتها 5000 متر فانها معروفة لدى الكثير من سكان الوشم.

تقع المزرعة بالقرب من مدينتي “اثيثية” و “مرات”، والمزرعة موجودة داخل احد الاودية، ويحدها من الغرب سد الحليفة.

ارجوا ان تستمع بالصور مثلما استمعت انا بزيارتها.

   


New theme PaintedDesert
Sun, 09 Apr 2006 13:21:06 +0300
Today my friend Feras Al-Jumah sent me a link to a WordPress theme called PaintedDesert. I liked it so much that I installed it on my blog, hope everybody like it.

Thanks Feras for the link.
Here is a screenshot of my old theme:




Alexa experiment end
Tue, 04 Apr 2006 09:30:12 +0300
Today I’ll end my Alexa experiment. During the last 60 days I tried to improve my Alexa ranking, my ranking jumped from 1,603,040 to 133,430.
Today I removed Alexa ranking banner in my website footer, and I’ll remove all A9 toolbar extension from Firefox, it is occupying 20,000 pixels from my screen and I rarely use it.


PHP output compression
Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:30:42 +0300
PHP 4.0.5 and above added new feature to compress your PHP pages on the fly, all you need is the zlib extension, this how I configured it.

# vi /usr/local/etc/php.ini

:

zlib.output_compression = On

:

# apachectl graceful


Alriyadh.com front page size dropped from 20.5 K to 5.6 K, according to my tests almost 50% of browser don’t support compression, IE for instance turn off gzip compression support if you have bad firewalls (Zone Alarm), and even some IE extensions (specially ad wares) turn off the compression.


Caching: memcached vs MySQL
Thu, 30 Mar 2006 23:46:27 +0300
Several month ago I researched caching methods to use with Alriyadh.com, it was essential because we used old and slow hardware.
The result of my test showed that MySQL based caching was superior to memcached caching.
I did a new benchmark comparing MySQL, PHP memcache extension, and PHP memcache class.
The text is done by fetching the result of a complex query 1000 times, and calculated the time it took using my bechmark library (link dead!), times in seconds:


I got Google Analytics Invitation
Thu, 30 Mar 2006 07:38:12 +0300
WikiPedia definition:
Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website.
I’ve just received my Google Analytics Invitation, so I subscribed to the free service. Of course no interesting reports until now, but I’ll keep you updated when I got anything interesting.


Saudi credit cards are useless
Sun, 19 Mar 2006 08:43:32 +0300
It cost 150SR per year and I never use it in the Kingdom, even abroad I use for reservation only, because the last time I used it to pay for my hotel stay I couldn’t get approval for a rented car because the hotel held more money than the cost of my room, and my credit card limit was reached, so I had to pay double in cash 🙁
To make thing worse, I tried to purchase a product from the Internet using my credit card and they refused to process my credit card most likely because it is Saudi card.


1000 Mabrook Eyad
Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:40:09 +0300
My brother Eyad graduated from Aman University.
1000 Mabrook Eyad


Sorry for the photo bad quality, I took it using my phone from the TV.


Alriyadh.com migration finished
Wed, 15 Mar 2006 17:20:21 +0300
Today alriyadh.com main website migrated to FreeBSD, now the complete website runs on FreeBSD on HP servers.


Alriyadh.com ads server migrated to FreeBSD
Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:55:04 +0300
The ads appear now as if they are local images, awesome 🙂

You will notice that the maximum CPU utlization is 29% at around 7:30 am, at this time the old server would hit 100% CPU utlization.
The 29% is before enabling APC (Alternative PHP Cache) which replaced PHPAccelerator I used with the old server, you can see a major drop in CPU utilization after enabling it.


My new 80GB USB hard disk
Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:42:07 +0300

I love it, I backed up everything Pictures, Movies, PDF books, ISO images, everything you can image, I wounder why I didn’t buy one earlier.
My brother in law Turki Almuamer suggests that I should buy one, after his laptop go stolen from Dubai airport with all of his data :(, sorry for your loss Turki, and thank you for the suggestion, and another thanks to Abdullah Aldosari for suggestion on where to buy it.


My tiny contribution to ClamAV
Sun, 26 Feb 2006 15:40:12 +0300
ClamAV is an open source Anti Virus software for UNIX systems, we use it here in SAUDI NET to stop Virus in email message it stops thousands of viruses  everyday, I also use it in our personal hosting service that we provide for our customers, unfortunately some customers upload virus intentionally and unintentionally, so I installed ClamAV to scan and delete viruses.
Last week I noticed one of our trouble making customers uploading sospious files, I ran “clamscan” on the user directory but it didn’t detect it, when I tried to download it my PC anti-virus software “MicroTrend” stopped the download warning me about the Virus. So I went home and downloaded it again and scanned it using Norton AV, it didn’t detect it either! 


“The Complete FreeBSD” book in PDF format
Sun, 26 Feb 2006 10:47:05 +0300
FreeBSD is my operating system of choice, for many reasons, one of them is the great documentation, all you need to know about FreeBSD you can find in FreeBSD handbook.

But to make thing better Mr. Greg Lehey decided to release it for download under the Creative Commons license.  Go pick your copy at http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/CFBSD/
Thank you Mr. Greg


“Unfair” Apache performance comparison
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 23:09:27 +0300
To find out how fast our new servers are I run a small test using ab Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool.
I’ll send 10,000 requests using 10 simultaneous processes, I run the same test on both old and new server:
Old Server
$ ab -c 10 -n 10000 www.alriyadh.com/zzz.txt

:

Time taken for tests:   78.172 seconds

:

New Server
$ ab -c 10 -n 10000 new-www.alriyadh.com/zzz.txt

:

Time taken for tests:   3.851 seconds

:

This mean that the new server is 20 times faster than the old server, the test is really unfair because the old server is running on production and serving other requests. I’ll repeat the same test after migration to see the real numbers.


alriyadh.com migration status
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 22:53:06 +0300
Alriyadh.com is hosted at MeduNet, they unpacked the servers on the lab for now, and hopefully they will prepare the racks and install the servers next week.

Mean while I went to MeduNet and installed FreeBSD 6 on the 3 servers, fortunately I brought 2 installation CD with me which allowed me to work on 2 servers concurrently. The whole installation process took 1 hour for the 3 servers, of course this a basic setup to allow me to connect remotely to continue installing required software.

I went back home and continued working on the servers, it took more than 7 hours to update the system and install the required software, specially Cricket which required a lot of time and configuration.

I also started migrating some of the data from the old servers to the new ones, and to tell you the truth the link between those servers are extremely slow, I left rsync running for overnight and it only copied 1.7G out of 10G.


rsync tips
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:28:42 +0300
rsync is a really smart file transfer tool, when you want to move a large directory from machine to machine it is the best tool you can use.
The tool utilise ssh protocol (among others) to transfer files, this is a sample command:
host_1# rsync /some/dir host_2:/other
The above command will copy the directory /some/dir  from host_1 to host_2, the smart thing about rsync that it check what files are already copied so it won’t copy them again.


alriyadh.com migrating from Solaris to FreeBSD
Wed, 22 Feb 2006 19:17:07 +0300
alriyadh.com new servers arrived, we are upgrading from 4 Sun Solaris machines to 3 HP machines with FreeBSD, the machines specification as follow:

Dual Xeon 3.40GHz
1GB RAM
4 x 36GB Hard disk

The servers should be in production next week, you should notice significant performance improvements Insha Allah.

Other website enhancements will follow that wasn’t possible with the old hardware.


rayed.com the first result in Google
Wed, 15 Feb 2006 11:13:41 +0300
Finally my website http://rayed.com/ became the first result in Google when searching for “Rayed”:

http://www.google.com/search?q=rayed
For years and years when you search for my name you will get X-Ray related sites, because the past of the verb “ray” is “rayed”.


Google AdSense on my blog
Tue, 14 Feb 2006 02:13:44 +0300
I signed up with Google AdSense, and you can find Google Ads in sidebar, I am still learning about the AdDense program.

But basically it allow content providers (i.e. owner of Internet websites) to earn money by displaying google ads, and each time a person click on an add it add more credit to him.

To learn more here are some links from Wikipedia links:

AdSense

AdWords

Mediabot


BBS News script no longer work
Mon, 13 Feb 2006 14:36:58 +0300
Long time ago I built a PHP script that fetch and parse Arabic BBC news and format them in Javscript format, this can be used by adding few HTML code in your website.
The script located at: http://rayed.com/bbcjs.php3
I stopped the script more than 5 years ago, but until now I found many entries in my log asking for that file, so I decide to take an action, I put the file back but I put a warning message to notify the user that the script is no longer working.


New look
Thu, 09 Feb 2006 12:37:51 +0300
I chaned the default image that comes with the default WordPress theme, what do you think about it.


Alexa Ranking imporvment
Thu, 09 Feb 2006 11:53:16 +0300
My ranking from:

1,603,040

To:

1,052,170

In less than 10 days.
UPDATE: My ranking jumped to 629,132, I am starting to enjoy this 😉

UPDATE: Day 17 my ranking is now 473,585.

UPDATE: Day 20 my ranking is now 388,412.

UPDATE: Day 23 my ranking is now 360,154, I guess it starting to slow down.

UPDATE: Day 28 my ranking is now 322,116.


Firefox 1.5.0.1 upgrade
Sat, 04 Feb 2006 09:18:13 +0300
Few days ago while browsing my favourite websites, a pop-up showed asking me to install Firefox 1.5.0.1 … WOW, I didn’t have to re-download 4.5MB for Firefox again, this really nice feature.
It also appears to me that the new version 1.5.0.1 much better than the old one, at least in memory consumption, I like it.


Cheese Steak @ Subway
Fri, 03 Feb 2006 19:29:42 +0300








Everyone who know me knows that I love Subway subs, but recently I switched to Quiznos mainly because they toast the sandwiches, yummy my mouth start watering 🙂
But two days ago I got tired from Quiznos so I went back to Subway and I tried the “Cheese Steak”, oh my god, it is really delicious!
The worst thing about Subway that you need to know which topping and sauce is good with what, and of course if you get something wrong it could ruin your sandwich.


Alriyadh a record number of comments
Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:00:04 +0300
It is still 10:54 pm and until now we have around 1200 comments:

923 Viewed.
65 Pending.
207 Rejected.

and I complain when I get 3 spam messages.
الله يعينكم والله


Alriyadh.com eBooks
Tue, 31 Jan 2006 09:19:45 +0300
alriyadh.com introduced new service called “Alriyadh eBook”, basically they collected articles of selected writers and group them in one downloadable PDF file.

We used to get hundreds of request for some writers, specaially “فهد عامر الأحمد” who write very informative and in the same time amusing articles.

http://www.alriyadh.com/static/ebooks/


Trying to improving my Alexa ranking
Mon, 30 Jan 2006 01:55:29 +0300
I really hate Alexa, and I never trust their ranking method, you must install their toolbar to get counted but I never saw any one using their toolbar, but unfortunately it is the only was to measure website popularity.
Any way I am going to use A9 toolbar (which is part of Amazon, who in turn own Alexa), and I added Alexa Badge in the bottom of my page to see how this will affect my website ranking.


Faster Dialup Service
Fri, 27 Jan 2006 18:15:38 +0300
SAUDI NET is testing new dialup service, the new service uses PPP compression to give faster links, the difference is noticeable espically with HTML pages. Of course images and binary files get less compression which mean you won’t notice a big difference with them.
The service is tested with SAUDI NET prepaid service only (Phone: 3604567), if tests went ok we deploy it on SAUDI NET EasyNet (Phone: 3660077).
Improvemnt of performance depeneds on your browsing behaviour, but 25% is the average increase. So if you connect using 45K you will really get 56K, and if you connect with 52K speed you will get 65K.


alriyadh.com news in your website, cut and paste
Wed, 25 Jan 2006 00:21:18 +0300
I developed a new Javascript based feed for alriyadh.com that can be included easily in any website, all you need is cut-n-paste some HTML code (mostly Javascript) into your web page and you will get all the news you need.

The script is customizable you can select the following:

What section you want to view.
How many links in each section.
How do you want to view the links.

Give it a try and tell me what do you think, remember it is still under development, so please don’t complain about the design 🙂

http://www.alriyadh.com/static/feedjs/


Fastest CVS UP server
Sat, 21 Jan 2006 09:31:38 +0300
FreeBSD use a protocol called CVS to update its source code, it is also use it to upgrade FreeBSD ports.

But before you start update you must specify the mirror you want sychronize your code with, of  course you should use the server near you to speed up the process.

I always had trouble finding the best mirror, I used pickup server in France, then I switched to servers in the US, but I never satisfied with the speed.

Until I discovered fastest_cvsup which is a tool that test all mirror of given country(eis) and give the fastest one of them, neat!

It turned out that the fastest mirror are indeede in france, here is the result:



# fastest_cvsup -q -c sa,fr,us,ca

 -=(ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo)=(cvsup2.ca.freebsd.org)=-

cvsup4.fr.freebsd.org



The command check server in Saudi Arabia (nothing in Saudi Arabia but to make sure), France, US, and Canada.

You milage may vary, in fact teh result could change from day to day, so it might be a good idea to use a script like the one given with the tool:



#!/bin/sh

if SERVER=`fastest_cvsup -q -c fr,us,ca`; then

 cvsup -g -L 2 -h $SERVER /usr/local/etc/cvsup/ports-supfile

fi




SAUDI NET DSL without proxy: Fixed
Tue, 17 Jan 2006 21:59:40 +0300
We found a small configuration error that broke the transparent proxy from working on some DSL connections, it should work now with every one, Enjoy!


After 8 months of waiting, the Avalon arrived
Mon, 16 Jan 2006 19:45:26 +0300
Finally after 8 months of waiting, and many calls and visits to Abdul Latif Jameel my new Avalon arrived.



Flickr open again, but is it for good!
Sun, 15 Jan 2006 12:54:33 +0300
Today a friend of mine opened my old web site http://myweb.saudi.net.sa/rayed/ and I noticed that my flickr badge is working again! I thought he used an external proxy, but he wasn’t 🙂

Flickr is open again but is it for good or it is just a mistake from ISU.

I enabled my Flickr badge again, I miss Flickr!

UPDATE: ISU blocked flickr again 🙁

UPDATE: It is open now, I am confused!

UPDATE: It seems that Flickr is open in Riyadh proxies, and not on Jeddah proxies, I hope it is closed by mistake.


Back to Riyadh :)
Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:21:54 +0300



Photos from Konstanz, Germany
Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:11:48 +0300
Here are two photos I took today when visiting Konstanz, I forgot my Canon camera so I took these photos with my Nokia phone, surprisingly they look good. Click to enlarge.




In Germany now
Sat, 07 Jan 2006 21:47:13 +0300
So no real updates for a while, it is freezing in here, a lot of pictures in the near future.


Finally DSL access :)
Thu, 29 Dec 2005 00:47:54 +0300
but after two months 🙁

STC is under going a massive deployment in DSL lines in 2006, they announced that they will increase the number of DSL lines kingdom wide from 50,000 line to 500,000 line by the end of 2006!

So I decided to call the STC service number 907, and order DSL, they gave me an appointment today to tell me if the line is ready or not, no called me, so I called and they told the “Moather” exchange -which my area belongs to- will get DSL access in 26/1/1427 Hejjri which corresponds to 25/2/2006 according to IslamicFinder

I’ll be waiting.


alriyadh.com first DDoS
Tue, 27 Dec 2005 17:53:30 +0300
We had today a major DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service), we get thousands of concurrent connection from all over the globe. It took us a while to figure out the problem, the attack still active but hopefully we managed to take the site online again for Saudi Arabia users.


WordPress 2
Tue, 27 Dec 2005 17:47:34 +0300
WordPress the blogging software that runs my site released version 2.

A lot of new features, the admin interface is complete changed with many new enhancements, they also added WYSIWYG editor, and easier file upload.


Refresh firefox, and make it faster
Mon, 26 Dec 2005 14:23:09 +0300
Today I tried to install LiveHTTPHeaders extension and I had to kill FireFox in the middle of installation process, so I ended up with half installed extension,  I tried to install it again to find out two copies of the same extension one working the other just showing in the list without being able to do anything with it.
Then I decided to remove manually, to find out 340M temporary files in the profile directory, so I decided to replace the complete profile, and create new one again.


SAUDI NET DSL without proxy
Sun, 25 Dec 2005 13:03:29 +0300
We’ve just launched transparent proxy solution on our DSL service, since I don’t have DSL at home I can’t test it yet 🙁

But if you do and have problems please let me know.


SAUDI NET photo shoot
Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:12:04 +0300


Very busy shooting studio 🙂





Yet another Ad :(
Tue, 13 Dec 2005 13:10:03 +0300
www.alriyadh.com added a new advertising banner to all pages, they now show 6 ads in a single page, I am not sure what they are thinking why don’t they increase the prices, and put fewer ads. I hate it.


Writing Arabic emails under Thunderbird
Mon, 05 Dec 2005 09:33:09 +0300
Thunderbird is my favourite email client, I really love it.

The only problem I face is when writing an Arabic email, the problem is with changed the direction of text from “Left to Right” (ltr) to “Right to Left” (rtl).


The trick works like this:

From the toolbar change the text alignment to the right.
Double click on the line.
The “Advanced Property Editor” will popup, it will allow you to add any custom attribute to the current section.
In “Attribute” add “dir”, and in the “Value” add “rtl”.

I am sure we will have some short cut in the future, I know there is an extension for supporting “Right to Left” but I guess it is old, and I personally prefer built in support.


Exposé for Firefox
Sat, 03 Dec 2005 12:32:38 +0300

Exposé is a feature in Mac OS X that enables you to see all your open windows with only one click.
foXpose is a Firefox extension that give you similar effect, it will show you all your open tabs at once, give it a try it is only 6kb extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/...


Cleaning up readers comments
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 16:54:01 +0300
When reading alriyadh.com readers comments, I found many readers using bad practices when posting comments for example:

Repeating one character many times, e.g. “……”, “!!!!!”, “?????”, etc..
Using empty lines
Using Kasheda to format Arabic strings.
Using more than one space between words.
Misspelling “لكن”

So I wrote a filter to remove all these practices.
What do you think? good or bad idea, please tell me what do you think.


Firefox 1.5 released
Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:35:53 +0300
with auto update, i.e. you don’t have to reinstall it every time a new version released, it will update it self with small download.

Plus it means the browser will be always secure.

P.S. Firefox 1.5 is 5 Mb download.


I love Thursday mornings
Thu, 24 Nov 2005 10:11:59 +0300
The best time of the week by far is Thursday morning, I usually wake up around 8 am, even when I stay late the night before it, I go out for breakfast at any place quite.
Today I went to MyPie restaurant in Olaya, it is a small restaurant that serve Pies of course and sandwiches. I usually take Labna with Tomato, and Meat pies, but today I tried the lever sandwich (very popular in Saudi), and Shakshokah (Scrambled eggs with tomato and onion).


Cat in a microwave
Wed, 23 Nov 2005 21:30:02 +0300
This a very disturbing story, I don’t recommend reading it at all, or at least don’t try to visualize the story.
A family left their 3 kids, oldest is 8, at home with the family maid, they were playing in the garden with a small kitten they have, while playing it rained and the kitten got wet, so the kids thought they need to dry her, so they put her in the microwave and they clicked random numbers and started cooking the poor kitten, after few minutes the microwave exploded and the kitten internal part shattered all over the kitchen.


My JVC Everio camcorder
Wed, 23 Nov 2005 21:12:11 +0300

I wrote a while back about JVC camcorder with hard disk, I bought this camera to shoot my baby life 🙂
I thought I would write small review about it, so here is the good and the bad.
The good:

Easy to use.
No tapes to buy, to take on trips, to exchange, just take the shoot.
No over writing other clips by mistake.

The bad:

Less than average video quality.
I have an old notebook with USB1, moving clips from the camcorder to notebook takes very very long time.



digg.com vs Slashdot
Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:49:31 +0300
If you like SlashDot the technical news site, you will love Digg.
My first impression of digg is that Digg has more links, and less discussion.
The major advantage about Digg is that stories are picked by users not by ad editor, which makes it self maintained site! check Digg FAQ.
There is even a dedicated website to compare Digg to Slashdot, and give score to based on how fast they post a news, so far the result Digg 24, Slashdot 14:

http://diggvsdot.com/


alriyadh.com usability improvements
Sun, 20 Nov 2005 11:37:27 +0300
alriyadh.com added multiple usability improvements to comment posting form:

To prevent duplicate posting, the submit button is disabled after the first click.
The user name and email is now remembered, so next time it will be auto filled.
Focus is set to the first empty field in the form.
Client IP is now recorded to detect fake posting, some users sends multiple posts with different, this will help to detect them.



PostgreSQL included in Solaris 10
Fri, 18 Nov 2005 13:56:47 +0300
Sun microsystem will include PostgreSQL open source database with every copy of Solaris 10, with 24/7 support also 🙂
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/news/111705.jsp


SAUDI NET DSL feedback
Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:17:37 +0300
It is thrilling to see these words:

http://www.adslgate.com/dsl/showthread.php?t=10976

http://www.adslgate.com/dsl/showthread.php?p=85995


alriyadh.com one man show!
Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:35:41 +0300
Everyday at 11pm, alriyadh.com team start working on the next day issue, the job involve copying all contents from the printed version to the alriyadh.com content management system, the process involve 2 to 3 team members, and takes about 4-5 hours to complete.
But last Thursday was a special case, due to a planned vacation for one team member, and family issues for another member, Faisal Alenzi was the only guy working that night and he carried the whole show and published the whole issue on time by him self.


Abdullah Alrashed
Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:47:02 +0300


My friends at Alriyadh Newspaper published my son news on todays issue:

Abdullah Alrashed

Thank you guys 🙂





PostgreSQL and PHP (on Windows)
Sun, 13 Nov 2005 10:12:35 +0300
After installing PostgreSQL (15 minutes job), and playing with pgAdminIII, I decided to try it with PHP.



PostgreSQL on windows
Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:00:19 +0300
Last weekend I decided to try PostgreSQL on Windows, I download PostgreSQL 8.1 installation file from PostgreSQL website, it was 22Mg zip file.
I also downloaded the 12 Mg manual, which contains everything about Postgres.
The installation is straight forward, simple wizard with some clicks and everything is installed and Postgres is running.

Postgres comes with two clients:

psql: CLI (command line) client.
pgAdminIII: graphical client.

pgAdmin (see the screen shot) looks amazing and gives you access to all parts of the database, and you can connect to multiple databases. I got intimidated at first when I saw all the options in pgAdminIII but after looking carefully at them it isn’t that scary 🙂


Saudi NIC new website
Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:40:09 +0300
Saudi NIC the organization responsible for registering “.sa” domains updated their website, the new design very clean and fresh. Congratulation.
Registering under “.sa” is free, and you can get good names too, so if you have a company please go and register (it is easy).
They also register Arabic domain names.


ISU block flickr AGAIN
Wed, 09 Nov 2005 22:39:09 +0300
ISU blocked Flickr for the third time in less than a year, I HATE YOU ISU.
Please help me to unblock Flickr by filing URL unblocking request.
The importance of flickr is that thousands of weblogs and personal websites host their image at flickr, so by blocking flickr they blocked all images from all of these weblogs.


Spelling mistakes drive me crazy
Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:35:42 +0300
I am not a “speeling bee champion” -the previous sentence proves it 🙂  -, and I usually don’t care about spelling mistakes of others, but some spelling mistakes drive me crazy.
One of the most common in Arabic is:

لاكن

This is wrong, if you write it like this please stop, it is written:

لكن
I hope Google would support Arabic in their toolbar spell checker.
P.S: If you noticed any spelling mistakes in any of my post please let me know.

P.S: I used to write “great” as “grate” for many many years, but thanks to my friend “Fayez Alazmi” who corrected me one day I don’t write “grate” that often any more 🙂 .


PostgreSQL 8.1 released
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:07:44 +0300
PostgreSQL (Wikipedia) 8.1 released, check What’s new in 8.1 document.
For some reason I love PostgreSQL althought I never really used it before, I am very happy with MySQL but I really would love to use PostgreSQL, for me MySQL excel in 3 areas:

PHPMyAdmin: I can’t live without it, I know PostgreSQL have phppgadmin, but I don’t think it would match PHPMyAdmin.
Windows port: I remember they ported PostgreSQL to Windows, a while ago but I never tried it either, I guess I am lazy.
Replication: I am not sure about the status of replication in PostgreSQL, am I lazy or what.



alriyadh.com new comments style
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 13:24:30 +0300

Alriyadh.com introduced new style to display comments, see the Sample Article
The new style uses CSS instead of tables, which make it much smaller and cleaner.
A link to each comment is also added -the time of the post- to allow bookmarking and sending URLs to specific comment.
The posting form is now viewed in the same page, it is hidden by default but after clicking “Post Comment” it will appear thank to the power of Javascript.


Crazy or Executive
Mon, 07 Nov 2005 00:09:50 +0300
Nice Dilbert strip (click to enlarge):



alriyadh.com most commented articles
Sun, 06 Nov 2005 23:28:00 +0300
This is an experimental page that shows the articles with most comments:

http://www.alriyadh.com/php/comments/comments_top.php
Hopefully it will find it self in the front page shortly, I don’t where should we put it, the front page is little crowded as is.


FreeBSD 6.0 released
Sat, 05 Nov 2005 03:35:45 +0300
My web server is running FreeBSD 5.3 for the past 100 days without any problems. But 5.X isn’t as and fast as 4.X series, hope this will change with the new 6.0 release.
Some major improvment over 5.4:

Significant performance improvements to the filesystem and direct disk access layers of the OS.  The filesystem is now multithreaded and can take full advantage of multiple CPU systems.
Expanded support for wireless networking adapters and new support for the WPA wireless security protocol.
Experimental support for the PowerPC platform.

Slashdot covered the story, and most of the feedback from FreeBSD 6.0 beta users was positive:


Alriyadh.com: tell us what do you think!
Thu, 03 Nov 2005 00:09:23 +0300
Today Alriyadh.com opened comments on all articles, instead of articles in the “columns” section only.
In the first day of opening comments the amount of comments posted today tripled the average daily volume.
This means the work on the Internet team will need to work three times harder than they used to be, since all of user comments need to be moderated!
This is a huge step from being just an electronic copy of the printed newspaper, to becoming a real Internet website.


New FreeBSD logo
Wed, 02 Nov 2005 00:14:20 +0300
FreeBSD the amazing Operating System running this site got a new logo:

More Pictures


I became a dad
Mon, 31 Oct 2005 02:11:03 +0300
For a very beautiful boy.
Say Mashallah
UPDATE: I named him Abdullah 🙂



New services at my.saudi.net.sa
Tue, 25 Oct 2005 11:44:53 +0300
We’ve just added new services and features to SAUDI NET portal my.saudi.net.sa:

New prayer times service, with alerts 🙂 , just click setting and add it to your page.
Two newsfeed: alriyadh.com, and alarabiya.net through RSS.
New option in the setting for external link target, either to open them in the same page or new one.




Homer Becomes Omar
Fri, 21 Oct 2005 01:41:32 +0300
Slashdot covers the Simpsons in Arabic.

Link


JVC camcorders with hard disk
Thu, 20 Oct 2005 14:28:45 +0300
No tapes or discs any more! It stores 5 hours of DVD quality movies.
http://www.jvc.com/presentations/everio_g/


FreeBSD new website
Thu, 06 Oct 2005 03:32:47 +0300
FreeBSD finally updated the website. I wrote about the new website 10 months ago, I guess it took more than they expected 😉

The new website look modern, but the logo still old.


Happy Ramdan
Tue, 04 Oct 2005 11:11:12 +0300
🙂


The Simpsons in Arabic
Sat, 10 Sep 2005 17:35:34 +0300
MBC will broadcast an Arabic version of the Simpons, Mohammed Heaindi will play Homer Simpson, it will broadcast in Ramadan Month.

Couldn’t wait for it 🙂


SAUDI NET logo back in Tadawul website
Wed, 31 Aug 2005 11:26:56 +0300
Tadawul returned powered by SAUDI NET logo once again.



PHP & regular experssion named groups
Fri, 26 Aug 2005 20:04:11 +0300
This is a nice regular expression feature, sometime when you have complex regular expression, you could forget what each refer to:



$str = '2005-08-01';

preg_match('/(\d{4})-(\d{1,2})-(\d{1,2})/', $str, $m);



Now you don’t know which group is which part in the regular experssion.
Instead you can name all groups by using the format (?P<name>pattern) instead of just (pattern), then you can access this group by name you assigned it, so the previous regular experssion could be written like:



preg_match('/(?P<year>\d{4})-(?P<month>\d{1,2})-(?P<day>\d{1,2})/', $str, $m);




SAUDI NET customer care close their door
Thu, 25 Aug 2005 18:09:56 +0300
This week SAUDI NET customer care team left NCCI building and moved to one of the STC (out parent company) headquarter buildings.
The customer care works in shifts 24 hours a day, and today it is the first time since I came to SAUDI NET 5 years ago I come to my office and no one else in our floor except me.
I rarely chat with the guys in customer care, I am not very social person after all, but today I really missed them a lot, I really feel a huge void in my life, very sad moment indeed.


Riyadh City Webcam
Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:03:07 +0300
http://my.saudi.net.sa/webcam






Tip on installing graphic support for PHP in FreeBSD
Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:10:54 +0300
GD is a graphic library that enable PHP to manipulate images, to install it from FreeBSD port us:

# cd /usr/ports/graphics/php4-gd
# make -DWITHOUT_X11 install

The tip is to use WITHOUT_X11 option this will save you from compiling X Windows which is needed for some of GD supported formats.


New start page
Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:01:49 +0300
Whenever I install new machine or a new browser I download one HTML file and make it my home page.
This start page contains:

Search form for many of my favourite search engines.
Links to my favourite links.

The start page save me a lot of time typing, since it have links of frequently used websites.
Give it a try, My Start Page.


Caching method compared
Sun, 07 Aug 2005 22:30:19 +0300
I tested different types of caching, here is my times:


Method
Hit Time
Improvments over Miss


File
0.00029
19337.93%


MySQL
0.00064
8762.50%


memcached
0.00103
5444.66%


Altought File caching is much faster that the other two methods, it can suffer from file locking problems, and can’t be shared between more than one server.
memcached client used is written in PHP which will slow it down a little bit.
So MySQL seems the ideal choice 😉


New plans for alriyadh.com
Fri, 05 Aug 2005 01:03:13 +0300
When I started building alriyadh.com website I decided to generate all pages as static HTML files, I relied heavily on Server Side Includes (SSI) to build complex pages.
The main reason for this decision was the fact that the server was very slow on processing PHP files, espcially with a site with high load.
Generating static HTML files has its advantages but it also had many problems:

Regenerate everytime you want to test a change
Changing the design will cause regenrating the whole website, which could take forever.
Generating complex pages is very hard, I had to rely on SSI.
What to do with pages that change frequently, e.g. pages with comments.
When importing old data, you need to generate them as well.
Static HTML files performance advantage for frequently used data, like todays issue, but for old issues it just take a lot of disk space.

Soon I’ll start testing dynamicly generated of pages with these points in mind:


Ruby on Rails
Wed, 03 Aug 2005 23:16:00 +0300
Ruby on Rails is a web development framework written in Ruby computer language.

It is based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture.

Smarty does a good job in the areas of View-Controller in PHP language, but I always had a feeling that the model part can be improved, but no idea how. I raed a little about Object-Relational mapping but it seems very complicated and very restircting.

Ruby on Rails on the other hand does a good job in the these 3 areas, specially the Model part, they have something called ActiveRecord which maps database tables.

There are also PHP clone for Ruby on Rails, Cake PHP, it is still in its early phases, but could give a feeling of what Ruby on Rails can offer.


Saudi Ubuntu Yahoo Group
Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:30:41 +0300
Osama Aldosary started a Saudi Ubuntu email group at Yahoo Groups, join us!



Click to join subuntu


Upgrading SAUDI NET mail server
Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:16:20 +0300
We’ve just upgrade SAUDI NET main mail server 350GB, RAID-5, simply awesome.


What Does the Fungus Know That You Don’t?
Tue, 12 Jul 2005 23:48:41 +0300
Even fungus couldn’t eat McDonald’s Food



My Sun Certified System Admin notes
Mon, 11 Jul 2005 21:33:19 +0300
It is little old but I found it useful from time to time.
My Notes


no-www
Mon, 11 Jul 2005 21:04:32 +0300
I removed www from my site name, so from now on it is only http://rayed.com/, www.rayed.com will be still acceptable but will be redirect to rayed.com.

Here is how it is done in Apache:

<VirtualHost *>
        ServerName www.rayed.com
         Redirect permanent / http://rayed.com/
</VirtualHost>



Figlet
Mon, 11 Jul 2005 20:30:49 +0300
FIGlet is a program for making large letters out of ordinary text, it mainly for UNIX but you can find other versions for other OSes.

http://www.figlet.org/

                          _
 _ __ __ _ _   _  ___  __| |  ___ ___  _ __ ___
| '__/ _` | | | |/ _ \/ _` | / __/ _ \| '_ ` _ \
| | | (_| | |_| |  __/ (_| || (_| (_) | | | | | |
|_|  \__,_|\__, |\___|\__,_(_)___\___/|_| |_| |_|
           |___/



Google toolbar now for Firefox
Sat, 09 Jul 2005 14:50:36 +0300
I never liked Google toolbar anyway, but for those who can’t live without it here it is:

Google Firefox toolbar


Ubuntu Linux?
Sat, 09 Jul 2005 11:54:30 +0300
Lately I raed (and heared) a lot of good things about Ubuntu Linux, my understanding is that Ubuntu is a user friendly Debian (I am sure it is more than that).
My friend Osama Aldosari gave me a copy of Ubuntu CD, and made think of installing it on my laptop, more to come one the experince.
Read more about Ubuntu at Wikipedia


Archive link fixed
Tue, 05 Jul 2005 13:14:08 +0300
I added small Javascript to the list:



<select onchange=" location.href= this.options[this.selectedIndex].value; ">




My wife’s painting
Tue, 05 Jul 2005 00:23:50 +0300
My wife bought this lovely painting:


The painting is by an Iraqi artist -I couldn’t get the name- check other paitings from  www.iraqifineart.com


Moved to WordPress
Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:46:17 +0300
I moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress the process was very easy, but I am still having difficulties with slow parts of WordPress!


Moving my blog from Blogger to WordPress
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:24:00 +0300
I am thinking seriously about moving from Blogger to WordPress, Blogger is really great service, I mainly choose it because it doesn’t need any server side scripting at all, i.e. it will work with SAUDI NET myweb service.

But lately I moved some parts of my site to a new server, and I now have a more reliable Apache+PHP+MySQL installation, and start playing with wordpress and it was really cool feature, I even built a plugin 🙂

any way here is my test wordpress page: (http://rayed.rayed.com/wordpress/)


My new Nokia 6230i
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:02:00 +0300

I bought a new Nokia 6230i mobile phone after I my old Nokia 6610 was stolen (actually  dropped in a cap while he drove me home).
The new phone comes with 1.3 Megapixel camera see a sample picture
Luckily STC started providing MMS service, which allows me to send emails from mobile phone, so now I can take a picture from mobile phone and email it direclty my flickr account, or I can blog by sending an email to my Blogger email address.


Fixing WordPress dashboard
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 12:27:00 +0300

WordPress is a personal blogging software, works with PHP and MySQL.
The first page of WordPress administration page is called dash board it usually takes forever to load, this due the fact that WordPress display some RSS feed from its development blog.
The loading problem caused by trying to access the RSS feed with a proxy server, which won’t work inside Saudi Arabia, so here is the fix, in the file wp-includes/class-snoopy.php modify the proxy lines to be something like:

var $proxy_host = "proxy.saudi.net.sa"; // proxy host to use
var $proxy_port = "8080";  // proxy port to use



SAUDI NET new DSL prices
Sun, 26 Jun 2005 08:34:00 +0300
Unfortunately I don’t have DSL in my area 🙁



64K
128K
256K

Old Price
160
250
400

New Price
100
180
270











New world record number of ads in a single page
Sat, 18 Jun 2005 10:57:00 +0300

Today alriyadh.com broke the world record for the largest number of ads in a single page, today they added yet another banner to become 7 banners in thier frontpage.



Interanet searching with Swish-e
Thu, 26 May 2005 09:14:00 +0300
Swish-e (Simple Web Indexing System for Humans – Enhanced) is really nice small program that index almost anything, I am playing with it at the moment and I am thinking of dumping my own search engine and replace it with Swish-e.
Swish has many features but the one feature that stroke me is the speed:

66,548 files indexed.  164,076,410 total bytes.  26,496,024 total words.

Elapsed time: 00:02:44 CPU time: 00:02:31

Indexing done!


Firefox essential extensions
Thu, 26 May 2005 07:14:00 +0300

Here is my list of essential Firefox extensions:

Tabbrowser Preferences
Session Saver
miniT
SwitchProxy Tool



Online Arabic to English dictionary
Thu, 12 May 2005 08:27:00 +0300

Thanks to ArabEyes project WordList which is an Arabic to English wordlist, I created small web based dictionary application.
It is very simple but yet useful application, all you need to do is drag-n-drop the following link into you bookmark toolbar Qamoos
To use it you mark any word in your browser, and after clicking the Qamoos Bookmarklet then a popup like this will show with the Arabic meaning for the word.


Web based Quran Application
Thu, 12 May 2005 07:58:00 +0300
Last week I rediscovered ArabEyes which is a web site dedicated for Arabic UNIX software, they host many Arabic projects.

One of the hosted projects is Quran project, they produced many XML files of Quran text, and they needed help with collecting data, both textual data, and audio data.

So I talked with Abdullah Aldosari about it, and it happened that he have MySQL table with this kind of data, so I processed the table and convert it UTF-8 to be complatible with ArabEyes and UNIX, my plan is to cleanup this data and contibue it back to ArabEyes.

Meanwhile I started playing with this data and created a web based Quran software, please try it out.

Quran

It uses AJAX to make fast and user friendly interface.




I like the new Avalon
Wed, 04 May 2005 12:52:00 +0300

I really like the new Toyota Avalon 2005, and I am really thinking of buying one.
     



ISU opened flickr but with restrictions
Wed, 04 May 2005 02:14:00 +0300

After closing the great photo site Flickr for couple of weeks, ISU opened the site again but with some restrictions, searching for photos are now blocked.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags 🙁



Saudi Radio stuck in the 80s
Sun, 24 Apr 2005 07:26:00 +0300

Today I woke up at 5:30am after 12 hours of sleep (I just came from a long 6 hour journey to Bahrain) I took a shower prayed then I went to work around 6:30, I turned on the radio and it was set on one of the Saudi Radio channels, the same music, the same programs, the same songs, it was like the last time I listened to Saudi radio back in 80s when every body stopped listening to radio and start watching satellite channels from other countries.
When I think about it, not only Saudi radio, all Saudi media stuck on the 80s, despite some cosmatic changes, all news paper, all TV channels are still the same.
Thinking: is it only the media or does the whole country stuck in the 80s!!!


Moved rayed.com email hosting to SAUDI NET
Tue, 19 Apr 2005 06:12:00 +0300

Finally I moved my domain rayed.com email hosting to SAUDI NET, the main reason is that old server was very unreliable and was down for 5 days, the old server was very old Compaq PC Pentium III with all disk almost full, it was shared with the great site Fqaqee3.net, Misfer the owner of fqaqee3.net is little busy these days, I hope he could rearrange the server and move it better server.


Hummer vs Toyota
Mon, 04 Apr 2005 11:34:00 +0300

This clip for you Rakan:
Hummer pulled by Toyota



Add Alriyadh newspaper headlines to your website
Wed, 30 Mar 2005 08:30:00 +0300

Alriyadh newspaper UNOFFICALY releasing new service that allow you to add alriyadh.com headlines into yuor website, it very simple to include, for example if you are interstead in putting “Internet & Communication” into your website put this code into your website:
<iframe style="width:400px; height:30px; border:0px;" src="http://www.alriyadh.com/section.net_marque.html">
It will show into your website like this:

Of course you can change the section by replacing the file name:

Local News:
http://www.alriyadh.com/section.local_marque.html
International News:
http://www.alriyadh.com/section.inter_marque.html
Columns:
http://www.alriyadh.com/section.columns_marque.html
Clinic:
http://www.alriyadh.com/section.clinic_marque.html
Art & Culture:
http://www.alriyadh.com/section.art_marque.html
Light News:
http://www.alriyadh.com/section.misc_marque.html
Economy:
http://www.alriyadh.com/section.econ_marque.html
Sport:
http://www.alriyadh.com/section.net_marque.html



Playing with Flickr API
Sun, 20 Mar 2005 01:38:00 +0300

Flickr has really amazing web service API, they support many transports REST, SOAP, and XML-RPC. I had some idea about SOAP, and XML-RPC, and never worked with REST, it turned out as the best and the simplest one of them.
All you need is API KEY which is a key you use every time you call a function, it is used by Flickr for statistics, you can get it from here Get a key, it is only one form, and you will get the key instantly.


PHP Accelerator is awesome
Sun, 13 Mar 2005 07:08:00 +0300

I have a server with PHPAdsNew installed serving around 20 requests per second serving a really busy web site.
Few days ago the admins for that website doubled the number of ads per page, and the server stopped responding most of the day 🙁
I installed PHP Accelerator to make it faster to serve the those ads, but it didn’t help that much, I tried every trick I know to maximize MySQL performance (although it didn’t have any load in the first place) nothing worked.


Building a search engine
Tue, 08 Mar 2005 01:43:00 +0300

Currently I am working on a search engine for a large website, the search engine is based on PHP+MySQL.
You may wonder why not use LIKE in SQL for searching! Of course LIKE will work with few documents, but how about tens of thousand of documents it would be very slow, since the DBMS would have top scan all reconrds one by one in your database to find the word you are looking for.


Car accident update
Wed, 23 Feb 2005 11:32:00 +0300

I got my money back!!
The guy who crashed my car came to the traffic department and paid the money 🙂
It has been 8 month since the accident I never thought I’ll get anything from it.
Alhamdou Lelah
Original Posting



SAUDI NET is now the laregest ISP in Saudi Arabia
Wed, 16 Feb 2005 02:11:00 +0300




I got my Canon digital camera back
Tue, 08 Feb 2005 11:10:31 +0300

Finally after two months with the Quershi service center I got my Canon digital camera back.
I tried to call them for the past couple of weeks and no one answers, so I had to go to the shop my self, and surprise! Surprise! the shop is closed they moved to another location, so I went to the new location and took my camera, I wonder why they didn’t call me to tell me that the camera is ready.
BTW, they took 235 to fix the dark LCD screen for the camera, they said there were an oil on the LCD which ruined it!!! and it isn’t covered by the warranty.
I hope I’ll live until I see real warranty in Saudi Arabia, they always says it isn’t covered by the warranty !


Weve just implemented transparent proxy
Tue, 08 Feb 2005 11:04:11 +0300

Now you can use SAUDI NET EasyNet without any proxy settings, we knew that transparent HTTP works fine for a long time, unfortunately we didn’t know that transparent HTTPS could work too, this is why we waited until this time when we saw one of the ISP implemented it 🙁
Any way it is working fine now, so if you want to use SAUDI NET EasyNet just:

 Call 3 66 00 77 



SAUDI NET EasyNet Ad
Tue, 08 Feb 2005 03:23:43 +0300





Eezee Net phone numbers working now
Mon, 31 Jan 2005 03:00:58 +0300

SAUDI NET EezeeNet number ( 3 66 00 77 ) is now working and you can start testing now.
Remeber to setup the proxy:
Host: proxy.saudi.net.sa
Port: 8080
Remeber it isn’t free as some ISPs prompote, it cost you 3 Riyals per hour, it is free in the sense it doesn’t need any Internet account to to use it.
Enjoy it, and tell every body.



PostgreSQL 8 released
Wed, 19 Jan 2005 02:22:36 +0300

Many new improvements but the most important to me is the native support for Windows platform, not that people will start using it in production in Windows, but it will allow more people to use and play with it.
I wonder about the status of the replication system.
What’s new in 8.0



PostgreSQL new website
Thu, 13 Jan 2005 01:40:35 +0300

PostgreSQL launched a new good looking website, it look more professional 🙂
PostgreSQL if you don’t know it, is the open source Oracle database server. It has many  advance features not currently found on MySQL.



3660077
Wed, 29 Dec 2004 03:39:33 +0300

3 66 00 77
EezeeNet from SAUDI NET



Eezee Net phone numbers
Wed, 29 Dec 2004 02:28:17 +0300

Today EezeeNet phone numbers will be announced for all ISPs, the phone numbers start with 366 instead of 368 announced earlier.
EezeeNet is dialup service provided by STC to allow customers to connect to the Internet without having ISP account, of course ISP will share the profit with STC for the connection, it costs 3 Riyals per hour, and I guess the ISP share is .65
any way I’ll post the given numbers earlier this day insha Allah.


My annoying neighbor
Mon, 27 Dec 2004 02:16:37 +0300

Yesterday, at 12:00 am while me and my wife watch TV, the  guy living in the apartment above mine start drilling, I start complaining to my wife saying what insensitive neighbor he is. At first I said it won’t take long, few minutes and he will be over, but the noise didn’t stop and it became very annoying.
At 1:00 am I decided to go to bed and ignore that noise, the strangest thing happened, I didn’t hear any noise, I went back to the living room to find out that all this noise was coming from an electric tooth brush connected their, which I drop (and apparently broke) few days ago, and it start working and stopping by it self.
Sorry neighbor.


FreeBSD new website
Wed, 22 Dec 2004 11:23:58 +0300

FreeBSD new website, check it out, but not today it due in 1/1/2005.
Just a reminder.



Riyadh newspaper new web site
Sun, 12 Dec 2004 11:05:39 +0300

Check it out! Riyadh newspaper has a new domain name www.alriyadh.com, not just this it has new simplified, and cleaner design.
The new design dramatically improved the browsing speed, and daily bandwidth usage for the site dropped 40%
Thanks to the hard work of Abw Nawaf, Waleed, Mohammed, Faisal, Majed, and abdullaziz, good job guys 🙂



Thunderbird 1 released
Tue, 07 Dec 2004 01:48:33 +0300

The Internet is safe again 🙂
Thuderbird is an email,news,rss client developed by Mozilla foundation, it is really fast and light weight, the only problem is with compose Arabic Emails, I couldn’t figure out away to toggle the input direction.



Finally I sent my camera to maintenance
Sat, 04 Dec 2004 03:54:36 +0300

My digital Canon camera LCD display got very dark, It was very hard to see even in the night, so I decide I should send it before the warranty expires, I went to three stores to find the right store for maintenance, they will sent it to Jeddah, and it will take from 2 to 3 weeks.
I hope they fix it.



My Sister
Sat, 04 Dec 2004 01:17:31 +0300

Check this great song about the sisters … in Arabic
Akhyaty



Enabling FreeBSD firewall
Sun, 28 Nov 2004 09:06:23 +0300
Now with the new FreeBSD releases you don’t have to recompile the kernel to add firewall support (which is easy but take sometime), now firewall module can be loaded as a kernel module, with a simple command like:



# kldload ipfw        # (WARNING read on first)


But be careful the default behaviour is to block everything, you need to open the connection you need manually using a command like:



# ipfw -q add allow all from any to any




my.saudi.net.sa tip
Tue, 23 Nov 2004 02:31:12 +0300

SAUDI NET portal site has a little anoying box called “New @ MY” this box is mandatory and you can’t remove it or change its location.
But there is a little trick to remove it completely, instead of accessing the portal using the address:
http://my.saudi.net.sa/
You can use:
http://my.saudi.net.sa/?nofixed=1



Indian food killing me
Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:56:38 +0300
Couple of weeks ago a new Indian restaurant open in Raka Plaza near my home, it is called “Spice”, it looked nice, and the logo was really cool.

Last week me and my wife tried it, the food was good, the problem was the day after that, I had the worst stomach ache, and it didn’t stop until today. Everytime I eat anything the same pain comes again.



They stole the logo from Cafe Spice.


Dumping Mozilla for Firefox,Thuderbird combo
Mon, 22 Nov 2004 01:59:36 +0300

I decide to stop using Mozilla in favour of Firefox, Thuderbird combo.
Firefox is a stand alone browser, and Thuderbird is stand alone email client, both made by Mozilla foundation.
I make this decision since Mozilla package isn’t as current as neither Firefox, or Thuderbird, and I think I raed that Mozilla foundation will favour Firefox/Thuderbird.
Another advantage of two seperate programs for browsing and email, is the ability to upgrade one component without affecting the other, althought all Mozilla upgrade were very smooth.


Working after Eid misery
Sun, 21 Nov 2004 11:33:34 +0300

Today is the second day of work after Eid vacation, I hardly got up from my bed today, as you know sleeping hours in Ramdan and Eid is dramatically fliped, I usually sleep after 6 am!! and wake up around 2pm.
I went to bed at 12 am but couldn’t sleep until 5:30 am.
Today I’ll try to stay awake all day, so I can fall sleep early in night.


Social bookmarks
Mon, 15 Nov 2004 02:15:43 +0300
Bookmarks … store them, categorize them, share them, plus much more…

Register and find out how great is it.

http://del.icio.us/


Sat, 13 Nov 2004 05:21:33 +0300



Firefox 1.0 released
Tue, 09 Nov 2004 02:38:50 +0300

Dump Internet Expolrer, and use.

 



Eid vacation starting today
Tue, 09 Nov 2004 01:55:39 +0300

What are my plans? Going to my uncles farm near O’sheger.



FreeBSD 5.3 Released
Mon, 08 Nov 2004 01:41:26 +0300

and it is now considered STABLE branch of FreeBSD, i.e. it is now ready for prodution.



FreeBSD port for PHP supports dynamic extensions (update)
Mon, 01 Nov 2004 01:36:45 +0300

Few months ago I wrote about php4-extensions as the way to install other PHP modules, php4-extensions is a meta port which mean it isn’t a real port, it is a port used to install other ports.
So when you try to install php4-extensions, and selected MySQL, and XML extensions, it will install the following ports:
 /usr/ports/databases/php4-mysql
 /usr/ports/textproc/php4-xml
and you can uninstall them separately.
This solve alot of issue for me, previously when I want to upgrade MySQL I have to uninstall PHP completly, and reinstall it again of course this mean upgrading all port used by PHP, which create a miss.
Now, I can reinstall only PHP MySQL extension only.


Came back from Gitex in Dubai
Mon, 11 Oct 2004 03:57:55 +0300

More details to come, I have tons of work to catch on.



Mozilla Arabic support improvments
Tue, 21 Sep 2004 02:36:02 +0300

Today I filled a Mozilla bug report about an old bug on handling Arabic paragraph, in the same day I received a feedback about this bug saying they couldn’t regenerate it on current versions. So I downloaded Firefox Preview Release and it really solved, I love Mozilla 🙂
Update: The bug still exists in Mozilla 1.7.3 🙁
Update: But it works with Mozilla 1.8 a 🙂



Back from vacation
Mon, 13 Sep 2004 11:58:03 +0300

… so tired, I found out that I don’t relax on my vacations, from now on I need to include a relaxation period in all of my vacations.
One more thing, when I go back to work I really hate it, but we will see if the relaxation period will solve this.
About my vacation, I spent two days in Ras Tanura in Aramco compound, in my wife’s uncle home, Fahad, it was great the place is very nice with a sea view, they have very small but fun city.
Then I spent two days in Bahrain, nothing new their same place, same activities, we saw 5 movies and came back again … and that’s it.


Going to Bahrain for the weekend
Tue, 07 Sep 2004 03:09:24 +0300

A short vacation 🙂



SAUDI NET pool cup
Tue, 31 Aug 2004 09:23:08 +0300
The place:



Our guest of honor Misfer Almaymouni who left SAUDI NET recently:


And the winner is: (this is my photo in case you don’t know me)


Panoramic view of the place
Some of the guys

All Photos


FreeRADIUS version 1 released
Mon, 30 Aug 2004 01:56:11 +0300

RADIUS is the protocol used for authenticating users, it is used mainly by routers and NASes.
FreeRADIUS is the best open source RADIUS server available, it support many external databases, LDAP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle.



Cost of living in Riyadh
Sat, 21 Aug 2004 09:36:58 +0300

According to this link from CNN the cost of living in Riyadh is ranked #77 out of 144 cities.
I wonder with the current oil price where are we heading and the worst part that we aren’t getting a dime from it!



More spam prevention using Spamhaus
Sat, 14 Aug 2004 12:02:28 +0300

Today I started using Spamhaus to help prevent spam, I use it now in addition to Spamcop.
It was triggered by many spam emails coming from the same range of IPs, so I tested it with Spamhaus and it blocked it.
Here is the code to add in Postfix main.cf file:
smtpd_client_restrictions =
        permit_mynetworks
        check_client_access hash:/usr/local/etc/postfix/client_access
        reject_rbl_client sbl.spamhaus.org
        reject_rbl_client bl.spamcop.net
        permit




Serious Security Hole In PuTTY
Wed, 04 Aug 2004 06:23:00 +0300

Putty is my favorite SSH client for windows.
Upgrade to 0.55, for more info check Slashdot



SMPP client rewritten in PHP
Tue, 03 Aug 2004 02:04:33 +0300
Today I ported my Python SMPP client library to PHP, I had to redesign the whole library because the old design was very bad, and with the new design it became very small, and trivial library.
Most of my work was on a library to convert between window-1256 charset used by most Arabic computers, to UTF-16 (big endian) used by GSM phones.
The new SMPP library supports long and flash messages, you can try it from SAUDI NET Portal.


Supporting long, and flash SMS
Mon, 02 Aug 2004 04:27:38 +0300

Today Abdullah Aldosari my coworker insisted on working on long SMSs, he kept dreaming of them the last couple of days, so we sat together today, and we figured out how to do it.
It was fairly simple, in fact I found an old code that I wrote for sending operator logos which use this feature! Abdullah also searched for the way to send flash SMS, it was even simpler, all you need is to set a flag when sending the SMS and that’s it.
These new features will be introduced to SAUDI NET portal after proper testing (i.e. tomorrow 🙂
We are using a protocol called SMPP it is used to communicate with the SMS Center, the SMPP client library we are using is currently written in Python language, I am thinking of rewriting it in PHP  as soon as I find a good way to convert between character sets.


FreeBSD port for PHP supports dynamic extensions
Thu, 29 Jul 2004 08:42:23 +0300

In the past when you forget to add a PHP extension in FreeBSD you have to recompile the whole thing, but now PHP port support dynamic extensions, in fact PHP port doesn’t allow you to add any extensions, you have to add these extensions using a separate port.
There is one wrapper port called /usr/ports/lang/php4-extensions/ which will allow you to select modules to install.
Very nice indeed, even when I spent long time to figure out how to add extensions.


Change PHPMyAdmin to view Arabic on English interface
Tue, 27 Jul 2004 01:35:42 +0300
I love phpmyadmin, it is a web interface for MySQL DB server, I usually use the English interface, but the problem with English interface that it doesn’t show Arabic string, of course you can change the whole interface to Arabic, but I don’t understand anything from that interface.
So I played with PHPMyAdmin code so I can use English interface but using Arabic character set, here is how to do it:



# vi lang/english-iso-8859-1.inc.php

... change: $charset = 'iso-8859-1';

... to: $charset = 'windows-1256';




MySQL replication is so simple
Sat, 24 Jul 2004 02:18:16 +0300

I just configured my first MySQL replication, it is very simple to configure, few configuration steps and it is done.
 The hardest thing is to figure the location of MySQL configuration file my.cnf under my FreeBSD, it doesn’t exists by default so you have to create it your self, it can be many place, I choosed /var/db/mysql/my.cnf to make reside with the datafiles.
 You can find a sample chapter from Jeremy Zawodny book, High Performance MySQL.


My wife had a lasik surgery
Sat, 24 Jul 2004 01:10:49 +0300

It took around 15 minutes, it was little painfull in the first day, her vision is somehow blurry, the doctor says the blur will go away in the next 10 days.
 Lasik if you don’t know it is a surgery to correct the vision.
 http://lasik.bab.com/ 



More about my car accident
Sun, 18 Jul 2004 02:09:02 +0300

Today the traffic department called me to telling that they found the car with the description I gave, but the color wasn’t silver it was gray! So they called me to change the paper I signed earlier. 
 Silver and gray is there really any difference between the two!?  
 The name of the guy who hit me and ran away was Abdullah Mohammed Alsalem. 
  


PHP5 relaeased
Wed, 14 Jul 2004 08:58:08 +0300

With many amazing new features, is it going to be the defacto scripting language!
OnLamp article about PHP5 new features
 



Amavisd + Spamassassin + ClamAV
Mon, 12 Jul 2004 08:45:13 +0300

Installing amavisd+Spamassassin+clamav

# cd /usr/ports/security/amavisd-new/
# make install
# cd /usr/ports/security/clamav/
# make install

Updating ClamAV virus defintation, every hour!:

# vi /usr/local/etc/freshclam.conf
... HTTPProxyServer proxy.saudi.net.sa
... HTTPProxyPort 8080
# freshclam
# crontab -e
... 43 * * * * /usr/local/bin/freshclam --quiet

Changing clamav setting to work as vscan user, same as amavisd:

# vi /usr/local/etc/clamav.conf
... # Change User to match amavid user
... User vscan
# chown -R vscan:vscan /var/run/clamav



Just came from Beirut
Sat, 10 Jul 2004 02:29:23 +0300

Going to sleep now 🙂



Free RHCE practice test
Wed, 30 Jun 2004 11:40:48 +0300

This is a practice exam for RedHat RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer Program)
My results so far: 50%, 70%, 80%, 70%, …



Blogger Bookmarklet
Wed, 30 Jun 2004 02:33:38 +0300

A nice feature from Blogger called bookmaklet, it is a simple link that you drag-and-drop it on your browser link bar, to allow you write a new blog entry related to the current web site you are browsing. Cool!
Blogger Bookmarklet



Clam AntiVirus and amavisd
Mon, 28 Jun 2004 11:25:51 +0300

After installing amavisd you need to edit the confiuration file to change some of the settings:
# vi /usr/local/etc/amavisd.conf
:
$mydomain = 'yourdomain.com';
:
$final_spam_destiny = D_PASS;
You also need to enable clamav section, then restart:
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/amavisd.sh restart
To allow amavisd-new to work with clamav you need to run clamav using the same user:
# vi /usr/local/etc/clamav.conf
... change user to:
 User vscan
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/clamav-clamd.sh restart



Spamassassin is easy
Sun, 27 Jun 2004 03:54:12 +0300

I was planning to install spamassassin+amavisd+clamav on our mail server for a long time, but every time I try to do it, I quit after few tries.
But finally I got it, and it isn’t that hard at all, although I don’t understand everything yet, but it seems easy. Hopefully I’ll add some configuration hints for FreeBSD of course.

Spamassassin is SPAM mail detection software, it became the de facto standard in SPAM fighting.
ClamAV is an opensource antivirus program.
amavisd-new is a high-performance interface between mailer (MTA) and content checkers: virus scanners, and/or SpamAssassin.



BBCArabic RSS newsfeed
Tue, 22 Jun 2004 12:36:02 +0300

Finnaly I can remove my old BBC parsing script and replace it with RSS feed.
Arabic BBC RSS
I also found (from BBC links) a nice software for reading RSS called SharpReader, I didn’t try it but it looks cool!



Al Arabiya news channel web site
Tue, 22 Jun 2004 09:47:37 +0300

Nice! Very clean and works well with Mozilla browser.



Remove Spyware from your Window machine
Tue, 22 Jun 2004 07:50:11 +0300

If you use MS Internet Explorer and you have one of the following:
Many toolbars that you didn’t install, and you couldn’t remove.
Pop-up windows from nowhere, coming from all Internet web sites, even the ones you know they didn’t have any.
Slow machine.
Slow connection.
Then you diffently need to install Lavasoft AD-Aware, and remove all the ad, and spywares.
Just try it.



Car accident update
Wed, 16 Jun 2004 10:28:52 +0300

I went to the traffic department to follow-up on my car accident report, I was told that the guy who hit me came and gave them his insurance -which won’t help since he escaped-, and they told me to go Car dealer (Al Hamza, Sheikh Almared) to get an estimate for the car repair.
After search for 20 minutes for the car dealer shop -the shop didn’t have a banner!!- I found it and they ask for 30 Riyals for the car estimate, they send me back to the Traffic department with a sealed envelope with the repair estimate, which was 1700 riyals.
The traffic department now will contact the guy to get the money from him, it could take months as they said!
Any way I’ll wait and see how our judicial system work.


My car crashed by drunk driver
Fri, 04 Jun 2004 07:44:37 +0300

On my way to my parents home to help my sister with her math exam a drunk driver (I think) hit my car and escaped! I stopped him, and called the cups, they told me to get his car plate and leave him.
My friends told me that I am not going to get any money to repair my car from him, but I’ll try my best with the traffic department to catch him.


SAUDI NET increase customers emails to 100MB
Thu, 27 May 2004 07:42:00 +0300

SAUDI NET got jealous from gmail for providing 1GB of free email service, so SAUDI NET will increase email quota to 100MB, to get SAUDI NET email you need to subscribe to one of SAUDI NET service, either Dialup, or DSL.



Installing Fedora Linux on my machine
Sat, 22 May 2004 12:02:30 +0300
What is Fedora?

Fedora is basically a hat, see image in Google

In the computer world Fedora is a new Linux distrbution sponsored by RedHat, and supported by open source community, it existed to replace RedHat free version Linux.
Dual booting howto

Using PartitionMagic I resized Windows XP partition, and added two new partitions, 9 GB for Linux, and 1 GB as FAT32 partition, to be shared between Windows XP and Linux.
I installed Linux, with GRUB (boot loader) installed in the partition (and not on MBR).
I rebooted the machine, then from Windows I used bootpart to add Linux to Windows boot option.



ISU block blogspot.com
Wed, 19 May 2004 03:14:19 +0300

ISU (Internet Service Unit) is blocking all domains under blogspot.com, blogspot is used by Blogger.com to host its customers blogs.
ISU always block the whole domain when they find bad subdomains!!
I already filled unblocking request.



Anyone interested on afkary.net
Tue, 18 May 2004 10:43:28 +0300

afkary.net domain will expire soon any one interested I can transfer the domain starting now.



ssh tunneling = fast browsing
Mon, 17 May 2004 11:36:32 +0300

A while ago I tried tunneling proxy conection though ssh, you asked why … because ssh have a neat compression feature, it will compress all ssh communication between your client and the ssh server, and by tunneling HTTP proxy trafic through ssh you can speed up HTML page loading time, you can really see the difference.
Any way I had a problem of having to run ssh client every time I want to use the Internet, even when you want to check one small thing, it was kind of anoying to change the proxy from the localhost (thought tunneling) and connecting directly to the SAUDI NET proxy server.
Today I invested sometime to build small proxy auto configuration script, that will try to use the local proxy (compressed & tunneled) and if it fails it will try to connect directly to the proxy, here is the script, give it a try it really makes thing FAST.


myweb under construction page
Sun, 16 May 2004 11:01:07 +0300

Misfer our talented designer designed new Under Construction page, this page will be the default page when the customer create new myweb account.



Fouad playing with Blogger
Wed, 12 May 2004 10:55:33 +0300

Two days ago I talked with my brother Fouad about Blogger and it features, he couldn’t grasp the concept at first, but he subscribed to it, and played with it, and he created his first weblog.
Fouad isn’t computer savy, and he found Blogger useful may be you should try it your self if you didn’t yet.
I didn’t get the URL of Fouad Blogger yet, I’ll publish as soon as I get it.


rayed.com points to rayed@myweb
Wed, 12 May 2004 03:10:57 +0300
I forwarded request to www.rayed.com to http://myweb.saudi.net.sa/rayed, for the following reasons:

To promote using myweb service provided by SAUDI NET.
To replace my own blogging software with Blogger, I know I can make Blogger publish to rayed.com directly, but I didn’t want to publish in two locations.

I also migrated all entries from the my own software to Blogger, so nothing lost. (as if there anything worth saving!)
The most important one, is because myweb.saudi.net.sa is much faster than my own server, which is a very old machine, with very limited bandwidth.



Another Blog from email
Wed, 12 May 2004 01:57:37 +0300

and this time from GMail.com



Blogger.com new interface
Mon, 10 May 2004 11:37:41 +0300

Although I liked the old one, but the new is really cool, the colors are great, the interface seems more logical, and they got rid of the HTML frames.



I got my GMail.com email account
Sun, 09 May 2004 11:30:31 +0300

I forgot to mention this earlier, but one week ago when I logged in to Blogger.com I got an invetation to try Gmail.com service, if you never heared of Gmail before, it is a webmail service provided by google.com and they give 1GB of space.



Blogging from Email
Sun, 09 May 2004 11:19:56 +0300

Blogger is really very nice service 🙂
I entred this entry by sending an email message to special email e.g xxxx@blogger.com, and it just posted it to my web site, I start to love these guys.



SAUDI NET website really sucks
Sun, 09 May 2004 11:07:02 +0300

SAUDI NET web site is really bad, we are trying to replace it since … well forever actually but we couldn’t, the marketing people signed a contract (!!!) with external company to deveploe the website.
and we are still waiting, it is really bad, and every time I see it I get very angry 🙁



Dinner at STC executive club
Wed, 05 May 2004 12:28:46 +0300

The weather was nice and we witnesed a lonar eclipse too … unfortunately I forgot to take a picture for the eclipse 🙁

Check out other pictures



Developing news paper site
Sun, 02 May 2004 08:24:51 +0300

It would be very interesting project to do, many ideas in my head but we will see what will comes from it.
I’ll definitely use CSS to support many printer friendly, light, handheld version of the web site, and will have RSS syndication.
and of course it will be compressed for faster download, what else … I’ll keep thinking
The worst part that it should be very simple to use, this would be hard to do, but I’ll try my best.


I bought new Canon digital camera
Sun, 02 May 2004 03:00:02 +0300

I like it a lot, although my pictures (most of them) look blury.

This is not my home, but I liked it



SAUDI NET myweb rocks
Sun, 02 May 2004 02:39:59 +0300

I really like it free web space, no ads, my own name, and fast, yummy!!



My first log
Fri, 30 Apr 2004 01:12:27 +0300

Hello every one, I will write here about my interests, I’ll mainly write about college life, homes, resturants, coffee shops, malls, etc…



I got gmail email account
Tue, 27 Apr 2004 02:56:25 +0300

I got an invetation to join beta testing of Google Mail (GMail), when you think that email can’t get better Google surprise you with many inovations.



I can’t sleep
Sat, 17 Apr 2004 02:55:47 +0300

Nothing to say … I am very borde so I thought I would update my website.
Sorry!



afkary.net
Wed, 09 Jul 2003 02:53:21 +0300

I know it has been long time since the last update to the website, I was very lasy lately.
The part were I wasn’t lazy I work in a new site called afkary.net, Afkary means “My Ideas”, no it doesn’t talk about my own ideas, it will be service to allow users to create their own eMagazine, without the need to install any software, just take the sample site, and customize it to your taste.
Still working on it to make it really easy, and useful.


New Design
Mon, 07 Apr 2003 02:52:34 +0300

I got sick from the green design … I don’t like this one a lot, but at least not green!



I became HP OpenView Certified Consultant in Network Management
Sun, 02 Feb 2003 02:50:28 +0300

I passed “HP OpenView Certified Consultant in Network Management exam” today, very long exam, but very useful!



I just passed SCDME exam
Thu, 09 Jan 2003 02:49:51 +0300

I just passed SCDME exam (Sun Certified Data Management Engineer), it was very tough exam.
The exam has two flavours one emphasis on Veritas Volume Manager, and the one I took emphais on Solstice DiskSuite.
Certificate Page



Denmark > Copenhagen > DigiQuant
Mon, 23 Dec 2002 02:48:12 +0300

I spent a week in Copenhagen, Denemark.
I went for training on , it was very good.
The weather was very cold in the first day, but I think I got used to it. Unfortunately I didn’t have time for sight seeing.
Picture of me and some colleges



Updated resume online
Sun, 20 Oct 2002 02:45:50 +0300

Not hunting for a job, but for the sake of updating it.
Resume



Back to Riyadh
Mon, 02 Sep 2002 02:44:05 +0300

Salam again, I am back in Riyadh, I was in vacation for the past month I visited my family in Washington DC, I also visited Naiagra Falls and Montreal in Canada, Anapolis, Baltimore, San Deigo, Las Vegas.
I spent around 5 days for travelling, I really need very long sleep now.



I became Sun Certified Network Administrator
Sat, 27 Jul 2002 02:43:26 +0300

Finally, after long delays -due to voucher purchase problems- I passed a Sun Certified Network Administrator exam.
Next plan?! I don’t know!! I am thinking of taking Java certifecations, but who knows.



My Chat System
Sat, 06 Jul 2002 02:43:02 +0300

Recently I was developing a Chat system software that can be used from regular browser window, the requirement for the client can be found on almost all browsers, it needs to run JavaScript1 .5+, Java1 .0+, as far I know there are some versions of WindowsXP that don’t have Java at all, of course you can download WindowsXP Java plugin from http://www.sun.com/.
Give a test drive Chat!



Web Server upgrade
Mon, 01 Jul 2002 02:42:16 +0300

Today I upgraded the server I am using to Apache1 .3. 26it should fix security hole found on versions older than1 .3.26.
I also upgraded PHP to the version4 .2.1



Sun Certified System Admin Notes
Mon, 17 Jun 2002 02:41:30 +0300
While preparing for SCSA exams I wrote some notes, not very useful for study, but might be useful for quick reference.
Sun Certified System Admin Notes


SCNA book arrived
Tue, 23 Apr 2002 02:40:05 +0300

Last week I orderer “Solaris 8 Network Adminstrator Certification training guide” to help me preparing for Sun Certified Network Admin (SCNA) exam, It just arrived 🙂 I am planing to take the exam in the 2nd May.
The books isn’t very good, but it is the only one I found about the subject.



Sun Certified System Admin on Solaris8
Sat, 06 Apr 2002 02:39:18 +0300

I finished the SCSA second exam, and I passed it 🙂
Now I became “Sun Certified System Admin on Solaris8 “, I am also planing to take “Sun Certified Network Admin on Solaris8 “, SCNA as soon as I get its material.



I passed Sun Certified System Admin (SCSA) first exam
Tue, 02 Apr 2002 02:38:31 +0300

Last thursday I passed SCSA first exam, and I’ll take the second exam this thursday, if I pass it (Inshallah) I’ll be SCSA 🙂
If I got SCSA, I am planing to take SCNA (Sun certified Network Admin)
Wish me luck 😉



Me and my lovely wife in Maldives
Wed, 13 Feb 2002 02:38:43 +0300

Hay ,, we are in Maldives, very long journey but it worth it, we traveled from Riyadh at8 , 30to Dubi, we arrived at11 :30, and waited theier till3 :30, then we took another plain to Maldives, but the journey wasn’t over, when we reached Male maldives capital we took small sea plane to Sun Island were we will stay,we have to wait for about1 : 30hour to rise the plane,the sea plane wasn’t bad but we were very tired and we slept on the journey, when we reached Sun Island we had to take a small boat to reach it.
But once we reached it, we forgot all the bad things, very lovely island, very magical beach, crystal clear water, real green palm trees, oh I am very excited to wake up again and see it again, we took Water Bungalow, it is small room inside the sea, yes inside the sea, we actually hear the waves beneth us, we have small stairs that reach the water, an we have our own sun dick were no on can see you 🙂
what else … the food is good, prices are good, and you didn’t have to carry money at all every thing will be billed to your room, and we have Internet in our room also 🙂
More to come in ten years 😉


Mozilla9 .5
Sat, 13 Oct 2001 02:37:56 +0300

Today I converted my browser from Opera to Mozilla9 .5, I was running Opera and Mozilla9 .X for the past couple of weeks, Opera is very fast but sometimes it gives poor view for some web sites, Mozilla is better in viewing web sites, but it is kind of slow, another thing I like with Opera is the tabbed view, all web sites are in the same window, and you tab to switch between them, but now Mozilla9 . 5have this feature, so I converted directly 🙂
I also moved my emails from Netscpe4 .X to the new Mozilla, a good thing about it, that you can use multiple email accounts 🙂
UPDATE: the email serach is very slow, and it doesn’t have spell-checking 🙁


No news!!
Sat, 13 Oct 2001 02:36:12 +0300

Is a good news 🙂
No really my life is getting very boring, long cycle of routines 🙁
Is that what I want to do for the rest of my life?!
Okay, let us take a moment to think what is wrong in the picture, first my private life (yes I do have one 🙂 I am engaged for abount three months now (this is a news isn’t it) … any way I didn’t want to tell you, don’t ask why, may be because it private, any way I already did.
Every thing is going ok on my private life, every thing is getting very clear, all the dates are known now, nothing in the near future yet, so I am starting to get used to the situation (Is this good or bad!!)
Work is another story, I don’t know what to say about it, but I really start to hate it, things take forever to finish, every aspect is improving but nothing finishes, I’ll taslk about it in the near future.


Redesign!!
Tue, 04 Sep 2001 02:35:26 +0300

I didn’t get any design ideas, so I went back to something similar to what I built, the news section is built from pre downloaded files, which will make the page runs much faster.
I wish I have more time to play with my site again …



10 days without any change
Sat, 23 Jun 2001 02:34:41 +0300

The last few weeks were very busy, My mothere had to return back to Washington DC, and we have to finish many issues here in Riyadh, my brother Hussam went with my mother too, it is his first time in non Arabic country, he was kind of nervous, but I am sure he will enjoy it.



New Website, new weblog :)
Wed, 13 Jun 2001 02:33:04 +0300

Hi there welcome back to rayed.com, still nothing here, I don’t have many plans yet, the only thing I am planing to do is to make it worth visiting.
Keep coming 🙂