Sarfaraz Soomro's Blog

Adobe and Avatar the Movie

2009-12-28T18:22:00.003+05:00

There is a lot of hype regarding the technologies used in the making of "Avatar". Here is a video featured on Adobe's website regarding the use of adobe software in the making of Avatar.

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/customer-stories-video-film-and-audio/adobe-and-avatar/

Empty space search on Google

2009-11-05T10:58:00.001+05:00

Edit: OK, now on analyzing more, I see that it's a 204 No Content

Ever tried searching google with empty spaces?

Uploadify - jQuery File Upload Plugin

2009-08-28T00:56:00.007+06:00

I seem to be posting more and more content about jQuery lately. Thats very obvious since jQuery is a heaven for those who have long been victims of pure Javascripting. It just makes stuff so easy for you, and handles the cross browser issues very well. Another plus point is that it has a very rich repository of plug-ins available.Today I am going to talk a bit about the jQuery File Upload Plugin. Have you ever been asked to create a file uploader that would actually be able to upload multiple files all at once. So instead of using an ActiveX Control or a Java Applet (ok I agree that they can be far more superior in certain aspects, but given that they require time and effort for development) why not use a simple Javascript Uploader - Uploadify.

Uploadify, as I mentioned is a simple file uploader that also has the capability to select & upload multiple files at once. In addition to that, it has a nice set of features and events as well to give you more freedom for customization purposes.

Note: Uploadify uses SWF Object for the SWF file selector component.
Note: Since it uses a SWF component to through out POST requests, so don't expect it to share your existing sessions and cookies :)

jQuery Visualize Plugin - Make charts out of HTML tables - jQuery Greatness!

2009-08-10T16:32:00.004+06:00

This jQuery plugin from filament Group will convert you HTML table into charts and graphs! Just build the markup and a single line of code is all you need to do the magic!

http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/jquery_visualize_plugin_accessible_charts_graphs_from_tables_html5_canvas

Corruption

2009-01-30T10:40:00.002+05:00

Lately I had more than a couple encounters visiting Civic Centre, Karachi, for some property tax and car transfer related work. Not to anyone's surprise, it's hard to find a clue of fair and transparent workings. In addition to the legitimate government charges, you are asked to pay twice or thrice of that amount, and you won't have to go through any official procedure. Every thing would be taken care of you! you won't have to wait in long queues for hours, a week long procedure would be completed in a couple of hours, your work would be done prior to those standing in the queues, and your documents would be delivered at your doorstep. My other encounter was visiting the driving license branch. The same story goes there, the rules are the same, it's just the people that have changed. As soon as I entered the Driving License Office, i was reprimanded by an officer that "Your test would never be cleared without our help".
The sad side of the story that the entire hierarchy is involved in this game. Starting from the poor guy grabing your attention outside these offices on the road, to the well suited guy, sitting in a luxurious office in an expensive suit.
I believe we all have similiar stories to tell

Philips 21" Ultra SlimLine

2008-12-14T19:00:00.007+05:00

Yesterday I dumped the old Sony trinitron TV - 1989 model for a new one. This time it's Philips 21" Ultra SlimLine. It's quiet sleek and flat, with a compact body. And it's light weight aswell! yaaay! I don't like the one's with a huge body, they are too heavy to pick up. This one, as I mentioned, is pretty light weight in a compact and pretty body.
So surveying the market, I found that Sony was pretty expensive. I believe Philips is pretty good quality wise, I have this 19" Philips CRT for the past 3 and a half years, and it's still working great. So I thought to my self, why go for fancy Sony, when their is reliable Philips available at a much lesser cost!
So, Any one for the old Sony 21" Trinitron 1989 model :-D

The hottest PC technology for 2009 - TechRadar

2008-12-14T01:32:00.003+05:00

Surfing through TechRadar, I came across this interesting article. Just to mention, the Core i7 initial entry level processor is already in the market.

The hottest PC technology for 2009

Karachi Bloggers Meetup - It was great !

2008-12-07T18:39:00.045+05:00

Having been a blogger for more than three years now, I had came across a lot of blogs. Interacted with bloggers online, hated some blogs while some became my favourites. During the last two years, I believe Pakitani Blogosphere has matured more than ever. Although other reasons come into play, but the one that keeps ringing in my mind is the happening of so many events (12th May, Lal Masjid, political unrest, lawyers movement, BB assasination ) in the last two years coupled with the curbs on media. Now there are a host of blogs out there dedicated just to Pakistani Politics.

Any ways, coming back to the topic under discussion and in the heading :). Having missed a few chances to meetup with the local bloggers, I didn't want to have missed this one.

So the Karachi Bloggers Meetup 08 was jointly organized by CIO Pakistan and Google Pakistan, with the efforts of people like Sabin Mehmud, Teeth Maestro (Awab Alvi), Badar Khushnood and Rabia Gharib. I congratulate them on holding such an awesome event.

The meetup was scheduled on 6th Dec, 2008 from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, at The Royal Rodale club, Karachi. Although the proceedings didn't start at the designated time( am I being too skeptical here ? ) but they did finish on time ( no! I am not ) . We ( me and Kamran ) reached there around 2:00 pm and were first greeted by ladies at the reception and then by ladies of RedBull ( as I call them! ).

Inside the hall, bloggers had started gathering. While I was trying to find a familiar face, I got to meet Dr Awab ( Teeth Maestro ). Also got to meet Farrukh Ahmed from KMB.

The proceedings started roughly around 2:45 pm. Initally Dr. Awab and Sabeen Mehmud gave a brief talk on their what/how/when of blogging. Then Badar Khushnood from Google came up and elaborated about using Adsense on your blogs, if you would like to make money. Saad from Islamabad and Haris from Lahore had came all the way along to share their secrets of making a lot of money from advertising & writing reviews on your blogs. I must say this was a very good session, both these youngsters have left pretty seasoned ones out of the race when it comes to generating revenue out of your blog. The last session was a full panel Q & A session. The entire thing lasted for around 3 and a half hours, followed by tea and refreshments. The refreshments were pretty good. I had another RedBull on my way out!

Here are some snaps I took

The Evil in Facebook + IE 7 + Windows Vista

2008-12-06T03:01:00.012+05:00

Some time back i found an issue with Facebook on IE 7 in Windows Vista. Today I tried to reproduce the issue but was unable to get it. I believe that it might have been fixed. So, if I had the main facebook page open, and I click on any request or invitation links on the right hand side, and immediately close the browser, the browser will pop up a couple hundred windows/tabs at you. Although I am blogging about it today, but I did have the screen caps to share with every one. I planned to make a video capture of my screen today, but it seems that the issue is no more reproducible. If any one finds a similiar issue, please do mention. I found something which might be related to this : http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?id=23832

Here are the screen caps of the disaster :-D

This was the first time i discovered this issue, in september.

Playing again, this time it opened up tabs :-D

What a mess?

Just look at how much memory this beast is consuming!

More...

...

Karachi Bloggers Meetup

2008-12-05T10:57:00.001+05:00

CIO Pakistan in association with Google Pakistan is organizing Karachi Bloggers Meetup at The Royal Rodale Club tomorrow from 2 pm to 6 pm.
Register here.
I am looking forward to it.

Microsoft & Nokia Using jQuery

2008-12-02T02:39:00.002+05:00

I have been using jQuery for quite some time now and I must say that I'll never be looking back at pure JS again. Although I have a plan in my mind to look into other JS libraries like DOJO and YUI, but a quiet dated blog post i just came accross has increased my belief on jQuery as being the best JS library out there.

Read the jQuery blog post here, which mentions that Microsoft and Nokia and going to use jQuery.

I didn't looked further into the Nokia part, but I did come accross this on googling.
jQuery to ship with ASP.NET MVC and Visual Studio

Photobucket Privacy Concerns! Don't Use it

2008-11-23T00:07:00.002+05:00

Today I found out what a shit piece of software photobucket is.
After finding out that some one has been posting pictures from a lot of photobucket albums to an online forum, some of these pictures happened to belong to a friend i know. So I told her to either make her albums private or use some other photo sharing application like Flickr. (I thought flickr would be save aswell! More on this).
To check further out, I logged in to my Photobucket account and checked to see if there were any album level privacy settings. No, big NO. Theres nothing like an album level privacy setting on Photobucket. Next thing, I checked my account options. There you'll find that there is an Album settings section, where you can set your album to be private, and mention a guest password, that you can distribute to your friends and family for sharing your albums. So after having set the guest password, i checked the link to my album and it prompted me for a password. I thought that this would also protect the direct image urls generated by Photobucket from being viewed by anonymous person. But again I was wrong! If some one already has a URL (for example as is the case I mentioned above, the images have been posted in the forum using their direct Photobucket URLs) even if your album is set to private the images will still show up! Surprised ?? I was aswell.
So about my comment above on Flickr. Yes the same applies to Flickr. If some one has a direct link to the image, It will show up even if you have set it to private, the direct url to the image will still be viewable. But flickr does allow a more granular control for content sharing and privacy settings.
Comparing Photobucket and Flickr with regards to privacy, you'll only get a head ache when some one has already got the direct URL of your images on both the systems (which is the situation i am discussing here primarily) . Other wise, if you are wise enough to set your albums to private right after creating them, then it's usually impossible to guess it :-s. ( And if one does, that would really be a wild wild guess ! )

On a technical note, i am urged to think about why would the request for the image not be validated. Maybe they have performance concerns. I believe the way it works now is that the url for the image hits the file in the server directly and fetches it and the request is not delegated to some script for privacy validation.

Down with Wateen Wimax

2008-08-11T02:55:00.007+06:00

Earlier this year I made a post On The Fly With Wateen's WiMax !. Over the last 7-8 months things have changed terribly. Wateen is struggling badly with its consumer base having dropped by 50% in the recent months (read from Wired Pakistan). When I bought the connection I was a post paid customer and they received 12 post paid cheques of Rs. 1350/- each for the next 12 months. A few days back my internet stopped working. On calling up the customer service, to my surprise i was told that I have been converted to a Pre Paid customer by Wateen and they didn't even cared to ask for my consent. Any way, I am currently using Wateen, and most probably I'll do away with it in September, 2008. So much for Wateen, I hope they fail miserably.

Coal in Sindh

2008-08-11T02:06:00.031+06:00

The talk of Thar Coal is hot now days. There seems to be a lot of hue and cry emanating from locals of Sindh about the notice alleging the desolution of SCA (Sindh Coal Authority). I think we are better off being a nation atleast once.
This letter published in Sunday's Dawn has very interesting and eye opening facts about the coal reserves found in Sindh, Pakistan. It's a shame that after 60 years we are still unable to utilize these reserves. Another interesting thing that popped out from a circuilating email was that a place in Baluchistan, Pakistan called Riqo Dik (in Chaghai) has the worlds 3rd largest Gold and Copper reserves. Again a shame that we have failed to leverage those. Why do we rely on foriegn loans when we have all these great natural resources? This article also has the news that a 100,000 BBL/day oil refinery is going to be shifted from Italy to Thatta near Karachi. Now 100,000 BBL/day is a lot of oil? Why do we need to import oil? Check out this article in Dawn which says "From October 2006 till March 2008, Parco had exported 100,940 tons of petrol". Read on the entire article to gain more excitement. There are proven oil reserves in Badin, Sindh and in Baluchistan aswell. We are the fourth largest milk producing country in the world. We have worlds best canal system. We have a huge amount of fertile land. We have all 4 seasons to enjoy. We have plains, deserts, seas, oceans, mountains, plateaus and every thing gathered in this small country of ours. Surely this is a blessing of Allah. We need to realize these blessings. We don't need money from outside, we have well enough man power and natural resources to be a very stable country. I pray, live and work to see the hypocrites in the establishment to go to a disgraceful end.

Coming back to the original topic. We are facing Energy Crisis. What a shame? We have all the coal in the world to power up each and every house and industry in Pakistan 24/7. Here are some excerpts from the article.

"Thar coal deposits are worth $8 trillion and if converted into energy, its value comes to $25 trillion."

"It can generate 100,000 MW of electricity for 300 years."

"If only two per cent of the coal reserves at Thar gets utilised, we could generate 20,000 MW of electricity for 40 years."

TechElite 2008 - More than a success

2008-05-04T12:40:00.005+05:00

Building on the success of TechElite 2007, this year's TechElite turned up into a huge success. Inspired by hard work, dedication and excellence, I would rate this as the biggest academic IT event in the city.
Now let me first explain it for those who are still thinking what is TechElite.
TechElite is an IT competition and exhibition organized by CISD ( Computer and Information Systems Engineering Deptt.) of NED University, Karachi. It was first held on 18th August, 2007 and turned out to be a major success.
This year, the event was scheduled to be held a bit earlier, and by coincidence, the date of 3rd May, 2008 was just a day after Procom.net which was held on 1st and 2nd May, 2008. This turned out to be a bliss for those who had to travel from other parts of the country to Karachi as they were able to contest in both competitions.
TechElite 2007 was an all Karachi event, but this time, it got all Pakistan. And this time a new category of Network Security was added to the competitions, making the count to 4. The other competitions are Speed Programming Competition, Software Project Competition and Hardware Project Competition.

Anyways, lets get down to numbers !

About 35 sponsors
around 160 contestants in Speed Programming Competition
around 100 contestants in Software Project Competition
around 100 contestants in Hardware Project Competition
around 30 contestants in Network Security Competition
The booth area and the food arena(KFC, Pizza Hut, Hot & Spicy, Baloch IceCream) setup by TechElite team recieved a huge amount of visitors. The Hot & Spicy's Stall was the most visited one. (Yes we like their rolls)
The Event was sponsored by TPS Pakistan.
The Speed Programming Competition was sponsored by TRG Tech.
The Software Project Competition was sponsored by Kalsoft.
The Hardware Project Competition was sponsored by Wavetec.
The Network Security Competition was sponsored by Cybernet.
Other sponsors were Mobilink, Texitech, Horizon Computers, Telenor, Wateen, Bank Alfalah, Microsoft, Intel, Sapphire Consulting, United Mobile, Epson, Coca Cola, Siemens, NBP, messe frankfurt, Dadex, WorldCall, Hyundai, Apna Karachi FM 107, APIIT, ApnaKarachi.com and Air Weapons Complex.
Faisal Qureshi chairman P@SHA was the Chief Guest at the occassion.
A workforce of 200 volunteers and around 30 organizers, made this event a succeess. All hats off to them.

Pics and more details to be posted ASAP.

Making Money from Charging Cell Phones

2008-03-19T23:13:00.002+05:00

Came accross this at TGP .

Why?

2008-03-08T00:57:00.002+05:00

Why the UN Security Councel has called an emergency meeting now?
Why did they not wake up when hundreds and thousands of people have been butchered and buried to death with no regard to women and children?, in Iraq, Afghanistan and other war frontiers created at the very own pleasure of Israeli lobbied Anglo-American war lords?

The only point I am trying to make here is that the world should give as much attention to the lives of those people who are being killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palistine as much given to those killed in Jeruselum bloodshed. If they actually do so, the security council sessions might need to go 24X7X365. Please have some respect for the human life!

May Allah bring Peace to World (Ameen) and may All Muslims die in the state of Iman (Ameen)

Dead Crocodile

2008-02-16T22:30:00.003+05:00

Spotted this on Flickr via KMB.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22052782@N07/2269161054/
I think some one in the vicinity threw away their dead pet?
If anyone has any details, please inform !
NOTE: IMAGE IS THE COPY RIGHT OF THE OWNER! USED WITHOUT PERMISSION

Coincidence - Bird Flu & Valentine

2008-02-11T23:52:00.000+05:00

Last time in 2004 when Bird Flu was around, it was the valentine season. This year again, birdflu has hit in the valentine season. In 2004 I did this little abstract in Maya and Photoshop to depict a bizzare combination of Bird Flu and Valentine. I thought i would post it at my blog this time !

Bush Pardons himself of War Crimes

2008-01-23T23:06:00.000+05:00

What a shame ! Bush has finally drove way for a bill that would grant him and his entire administration pardon against any War Crimes conducted since Sept 11

MilkaTeer is here!

2008-01-22T08:36:00.000+05:00

MilkaTeer is here!

A great start to an awesome looking sequel! Don't miss your part of Eye Candy!

Watch it now !!

I loved the PakTel ad campaign, they really put in a lot of 'character' into their characters. Pure local touch is what i am talking about.

Congratulations to SharpImage for pulling this off wonderfully and best of luck for the future !

The SharpImage guys have put it up on a post at CGX

Teaser

Promo

Complete Milkateer Episode!! (90MB)

Safari for Windows!

2008-01-20T21:28:00.000+05:00

A friend of mine had complained a few times that his clients keep telling him that the designs don't work in Safari(Mac). Now for such PC guys, heres a good news. Apple has released Safari for Windows now! go and check it out here

Apple Macbook Air

2008-01-17T23:21:00.000+05:00

I think this will be as successful as their previous products like; iPhone.

In the first instance all I can say is that its awesome, specially the touch pad innovations are great!

Watch the complete video to get your share of excitement!

Not to forget that I had nothing too great to blog about but this thing really pushed me to make a post about it!

On The Fly With Wateen's WiMax !

2008-01-04T22:16:00.000+05:00

I bought Wateen's WiMax service and equipment yesterday. Just a while ago I got activated and online with Wateen's WiMax. The package I bought is a bundle offer of 1 Year for about Rs. 19,700/-. The speed is very good, and I am getting downloads at 65+ kBps. The streaming experience is very good aswell. YouTube, MetaCafe, LiveGeoNews Stream are all coming in smooth.

Package Details:

The package I mentioned above is called Package A - Option 2.

It is a 12 months Internet and Telephone bundle offer. The first month is free internet and telephone uptill 31st January, 2008. So, if you buy your connection now, you are actually going to get 13 months of service.

As I mentioned, the package costs you about Rs. 19,700/- but there are two ways to make the payment.

The first way is that you pay all the amount at once.

The the second option is that you can pay Rs. 4850/- at the time of buying the connection and hand them 11 post dated cheques of Rs. 1350/- each staring from 1st March,2008 till 1st Jan, 2009. The initial cash payment includes Rs. 3000/- upfront payment, Rs. 1350/- 1st Month's payment and Rs. 500/- security deposit (refundable).

When you go to buy your connection make sure they have proper coverage in you area.

As for me, I am living in Block 10-A, Gulshan e Iqbal just opposite Alladin Park and getting full signals quite inside my house, with out using a Jupiter (External Antenna).

The package also includes telephone service. Again you can make unlimited national and international calls for free till 31st Jan '08. I can't say about the quality of telephone service, because mine in not activated yet. You can plug in the regular telephone into the CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) and you are done. Telephone number alloted will be a PTCL number, starting with 8025 (as for now). As for the rates that will apply after Jan 31st, 2008 here comes a catch. The bundle offer actually signs you up for "EverGreen Unlimited" fixed line telephone package. This package has a line rent of Rs. 270/- per month and is included in your 1350/- permonth payment. So, if you are not making enough calls then you are sending Rs. 270/- to the trash.

Again coming back to the call rates:

Wateen-to- Wateen: Free

Other Landline: Rs. 1/min including a 25% tax :-S

Mobile: Rs. 2/min including a 25% tax :-S

Line Rent: Rs. 270/- per month

You will get a monthly telephone bill at your doorstep that would be excluding the line rent.

Again, if you are going to buy, do make sure that you have signals in your area.

The Technology:

From the backbone to the Access Points mounted on Warid's Towers to the CPE's (Customer Premises Equipment), every thing is a part of MOTOwi4 WiMax suite of solutions for WiMax implementation. Its based on 802.16e (a standard for WirelessMANs). The CPE operates at 3.5 Ghz.

The CPE (Motorolla's CPE i600) has 4 ethernet ports and 2 telephone ports. Its light and about the size of an A4 paper. I dont have a camera with me, otherwise would have posted the images of the CPE.

I hope that this brief post will help any one interested to make a decision, as for me I am enjoying fast internet and hope to get the telephone working soon.

A Story

2007-12-31T00:52:00.000+05:00

We already had been very well honoured in terms of notoriety through out the world. Yes there are Pakistanis around the world who have achieved marvellous feats. But, our government leaves no stone unturned to put those efforts down to ashes. Speaking of this topic with context to Musharraf's regime; brings much more than just notoriety. If I were to pick a man as "The Lord of Terror" it would no doubt have been him. How many more lives will be lost to satisfy this ego-maniac of his thirst of power. No good words for him and the same goes to his bitches (you know which bradraan i am talking about :-))

What we had in 1947 was a ray of hope for every one...

But things started to change massively in 1970's. It is said that from the murder of Liaqat Ali Khan to the most recent murder of Benazir Bhutto, all had been at the behest of Pakistani Army and Intelligence Agencies.

And this is how it looks now. The seeds of hatred and terror sown by Musharraf and his bitches have spread a deadly poisson, effects of which will keep on visiting us time and again.

At the end of the post I wont say that Lets just pray for our Homeland, Instead lets start feeling responsible for every thing thats happening around us. Be a social animal & get into politics, I mean clean and faithful politics.

"If you have a social sense, then you are a politician" - Imran Khan.

IT Industry - Good Future Ahead?

2007-11-03T15:40:00.001+05:00

http://www.app.com.pk/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20086&Itemid=1

Just came across this piece. Despite all the good indicators, i think with all the bomb blasts & deteriorating security conditions in Pakistan; there is very less attraction for new investors. Every one needs financial security ! What do you think?

PDC 2007

2007-06-22T19:50:00.000+05:00

Hello every one, long time no see :)

Pakistan Developers' Conference 2007 was held here at 19th and 20th June, 2007. This time INETA Pakistan sponsored 5 members per user group. I was one of them (Thanks). The first day wasn't that good, especially, the opening ceremony and keynote. I understand the broadcasting of Opening Ceremony from Islamabad, but i dont favour broadcasting of a somewhat technical talk by Rafal from Islamabad. Anyways, day2 was great, i attended Stephen Forte's sessions, all day long.

Let's see, there were a number of good speakers present, but i only attended sessions from the following;

1-Stephen Forte (4 sessions)
2-Hammad Rajjoub (2 sessions)
3-Goksin Baker (1 session)

I really liked Steve's and Hammad's sessions.

I also met Hammad Rajjoub and Adnan Hashmi after quite some time.

Interesting thing i came to know was that Richard Campbel was unable to get the visa, so he could't come to Pakistan.

Here are some pics, with Shoaib sheikh and Kamran Usman.

Kamran and Me, and Shoaib and Kamran

Bob Woolmer Passes away

2007-03-19T00:13:00.000+05:00

Bereaved Pakistan Cricket team coach has passed away at a local
hospital in Jamaica.

"There are a number of extenuating circumstances in the last six months that have made coaching Pakistan slightly different to normal sides," he said after the defeat by Ireland.

Office 12 Trial

2007-03-15T06:28:00.000+05:00

Installed the Office 12 Professional 60 Day Trial

MS Word 2007

MS PowerPoint 2007

High Performance Computing Centre

2007-03-11T10:41:00.000+05:00

This facility is situated in NEDUET Karachi, and features a cluster of 50 Nodes,
over 100 GB of RAM,
Dual Intel Processors in each node.
Managed and monitored using Scali Manage

Best Picnic Mate !!

2007-03-10T04:10:00.000+05:00

Last monday we headed for picnic to DreamWorld Family Resort, Karachi. Had a lot of fun, loved the food, loved the place. Only the paddling boats were a pain in the thigh, all else was cool :)

Yeah come and get some....(Sarfaraz ... ohh wait thats me)

'saday dostaaan di toli'....(L->R;Noman, Aneeq, Sarfaraz, Sajid, Arsalan, Shoiab, Umair, Ahmed)

up and still running.... friends...(L->R; Sarfaraz, Umair Rabbani, Aneeq Hashmi, Noman Shaukat)

He needs some attention... Umair Rabbani Hero Pakistani

Beating the heat...(L->R; Danish Siddiqui, Shoaib Sheikh)

Noman CHOKUS, 'Bringing Down the Horse' :D

aay te sadda style hay ... Shoaib Sheikh

And we won !!

kiaa baat hay !! (L->R; Sarfaraz Soomro, Umair Zafar)

Naaah baba naaah, Ghussa Haram hay, (Ahmed Minhas :)) Your new WindowsXP Wallpaper :)

Photo of the Year

2006-04-20T19:56:00.000+05:00

http://bop.nppa.org/2006/still_photography/winners/LPP/69456/137740.html
© copyrights of the original author

System.Collections.Generic

2006-02-20T18:47:00.000+05:00

Previously one would inherit from System.Collections CollectionBase to make a strongly typed collection( plus write some code aswell). In .Net 2.0 there is this new name space System.Collections.Generic having a host of generic collections & interfaces helpful in creating strongly typed collections. One such is the List construct where T is the type of the collection you'd like to create. This is surely a helpful feature.

Insanity

2006-02-14T00:23:00.000+05:00

Bringing down the shutters of our shops, pelting our people and police men with stones, calling a nation wide strike and shutting our own Economy off for a day.. Will This Help Us against the sacriligeous cartoons posted in the Danish Newspaper??

Are you a genious?

2005-12-21T10:47:00.000+05:00

I thought i would share this with you people;
Are you a genius?

Furthermore if someone just wants a guide to getting started with game development; this can be a good place to start off. Though its not very technical but a good place to get a general overview of the gd process.

the kitten fever

2005-12-03T22:20:00.000+05:00

today a little kitten clutched some claws in me. My sister gave me an anti-tetanus dose on that.

of cars and girls

2005-12-03T18:58:00.000+05:00

we guys look at cars the same way we look at girls...

Noman: abay yeh konsi gari hay?
Me: pata nahi...
Noman: Honda ki hay
Me: nahi Honda ki nahi hay...
Noman: "achi lag rahi hay"
Me: haan.. hmm

Then I ponder for a while and start laughing :)

...achi lag rahi hay...

PTCL Mobile Manners Ads

2005-12-03T12:32:00.000+05:00

Sharp Image has been kind enough to share the PTCL Mobile Manners Campaign's Ads they did (local eye-candy).

last paper

2005-11-26T22:15:00.000+05:00

tuesday, 29th Nov,2k5; Last paper this year. Subject Maths 3. My preparation is almost nil :'(. Anyways there'll be practicals afterwards; they'll be held till 12th Dec, 2k5; so there's no escaping till then.

i came across Keith Lango's Blog; a highly respected name in 3d animation. Another blog/site worth visiting is of Jason Shielfer; he is a senior animator at Weta Digital and worked on LOTR; worth visiting if you do animation/rigging. I also watched his Fast Animation Rigs Master Class; though 50% of the stuff went over my head; but i guess i'll get more grip after some time.

have fun all.

Character Rig in Maya

2005-11-20T20:35:00.000+05:00

CharRig101-JakeCallery

An awesome guide to character rigging in Maya. A must see for aspiring new animators(like me :))

Linux Geek?

2005-11-03T17:49:00.000+05:00

http://www.wimp.com/linux/

Note : i have nothing against linux...

Fake Quran

2005-10-13T01:30:00.000+05:00

Have a look:
The new Furqan
A fake quran being sold; be aware Muslims aswell as those non Muslims looking into Islam; accrding to the reviewers; this book is against the teachings of Islam.

Exams

2005-10-09T23:00:00.000+05:00

Exams are just about to start. First paper is on 11th Oct, 2005; Tuesday. Subject LDST. I hope to do well.

Earthquake

2005-10-09T22:42:00.000+05:00

Yesterday's earthquake toll has rose to about 20,000 people dead alone in Pakistan(Including Azad Kashmir). International figures would be much higher. There is President of Pakistan's relief fund and donations to it can be made through all Pakistani banks working abroad and through Pakistan's embassies in every country. Also Edhi Foundation is in the forefront of rescue operations, so if someone wants to donate through Edhi Foundation, they can do so aswell; their landline local number in Pakistan is 115; i wonder if thats accessible from outside the country aswell. May Allah bless those who have passed away in this trajic earthquake; in the Sacred month of Ramazan. May Allah also protect us from these natural calamities.(Ameen)

Shoes

2005-10-04T19:28:00.000+05:00

Today my dad lost his pair of shoes in a mosque near Sindh Secretariat. Isn't it great? Actually shoes were not lost but someone had intentionally took them from 'inside' the mosque. Usually we feel that shoes would be more secure if we place them somewhere near ourselves inside the mosque instead of just taking them off at the entrance. But THE GUYS have proved to be smarter!

Annual Dinner

2005-09-05T22:03:00.000+05:00

I left home at 7:25 PM, went to the Labour Camp gas station to fill up the tank. It was a huge queue and had to wait for half an hour to get to my turn. Then went to Noman's house to pick up shoaib from there and reached University at 9:00 PM exact. The annual dinner function went awesome and smooth. The arrangements were nice; better then last year. It was a brief program, in which the chair and dean addressed the CIS nation. Later some skits were played and titles were given to the teachers. We also had a qawali performance, 'main sharabi,..sharabi.. main sharabi, sharabi'. It was awesome, though we had to go to stage on a very very short notice; but it went pretty good, and people liked it. I had a very embarrasing moment when i entered the dressing compartment to get changed for the performance, and two girls from final year were already there :$; fixing up their dresses; i felt pretty embarrased and said sorry a couple of times in the air. Later i asked one of our female teachers to ask the girls to leave the compartment so that we can go to change. Anyways, later there were two awesome skits by third year guys. Though the number of performances this year was not much, but most of them were quality stuff and entertaining. Later there was dinner, and like i mentioned it was way better than last year. I had asked Sir Anwar who was the chief organizer of the event to arrange for Bar BQ, but there wasn't any BARBQ rather roasted chicken, it tasted pretty good. Soon after the dinner, there were the photo sessions which were again turned into 'pick your chick' session by the seniors with most of them carrying cameras and taking snaps of the girls of their choice. I pity these pathetic people; who were so well dressed and were acting like they haven't ever seen girls before. Anyways, we were out at about 12:45 AM; (we=me, aneeq, umair rabbani, and shoaib), we left pretty late, most of the crowd had left earlier, we were waiting for Preeya's father to pick her up.
Anyways the worst part was when i drove to the main road. I didn't believe what i saw, the third year and final year boys (along with some Second year guys) had block the entire road and enjoyed themselves dancing in the middle of the road. What a pity, people from the prestigious CIS department of NED behaving like lunatics; I wonder what impression were they trying to create. There were families in the cars, there were ladies and there were old men. Maybe there was someone ill trying to make his/her way to the hospital. There was this girl driving the car; who bravely and inhesitantly drove without stopping the car; i guess thats the right way to deal with such maniacs. Anyways, i made my way pretty easily through, though it was a very rough experience. I dropped aneeq and rabbani at NIPA, dropped shoaib at his home in Malir as promised; and drove back to home at about 1:20 AM.

CIS Annual Dinner 2005

2005-09-03T07:27:00.000+05:00

Today 3rd Sept, 2005 is the 8th Anniversary function of Computer And Information Systems Department, NED university, Karachi, Pakistan. I feel previledged to be studying there, because of many reasons. Not so many people will agree to me, but thats what i think and thats important to me. Anyways, we have got an Anniversary Function and an Annual Dinner tonight. Hope to have fun there.

Cute :)

2005-09-02T23:02:00.000+05:00

Today a girl from 3rd year told me that she thinks that i am very cute :D; i thank her for her gratitude. I felt extremely falttered; as it hadn't occured to me before that i got such remarks from a girl(if a boy would have called me that, i would have thought otherwise :D). I had a small chat with her and then we got busy with other chores. I also mentioned to her that i have been attributed as a Pathan(Why God? Why me? :D) by many. Anyways; it looks like i have found another good friend.

Natures Fury

2005-09-01T01:55:00.000+05:00

Hurricane Katrina has raised disasters in some US States; this is how the nature strikes. Its a mass scale destruction and human kind can do nothing against this. The last century saw the most bloodshed and natural disasters ever, can't say how bad this one is going to be; theres already been a lot of bloodshed and disaster in the first five years; The 9/11 incident, the iraq and Afghanistan war, earthquakes, sunamis, draughts and epidemics, and there are a lot more to say. It needs not to be a very high intensity nuclear bomb to root out populations, neither does it need to be an earthquake of 11 magnitude. What happened yesterday in Baghdad will explain this. No guns, no bombs just a hoax and there are more than 1000 people dead in a stampede. Dying in faith is what I pray for.

All work and no play :(

2005-09-01T01:53:00.000+05:00

Electronic Arts , the makers of famous games like NFS Series, Medal of Honor, NFL, NBA and lot more is the world's largest and leading Game producing as well as title publishing company. It's been featured in Fortunes top 100 best companies to work for in 2003, and makes to the fortune 500 ratings. With annual revenue of $3.1 Billion for the year 2005, and more than 4800 employes worldwide; EA can be an ideal place to work. But with big places there are bigger problems. Read This!.
The well known particle man Habib Zargarpour who had worked at ILM as VFX Supervisor left ILM some time ago and joined EA. Habib had been a Maya Master for year 2001 for his work on particles; emminently in The Perfect Storm. At EA he did the dynamics for NFS underground(yes they do feel real!). Now maya comes with a whole separate module for Fluids! Maya Software also won an Oscar award :) Self learning this software had become a passion of mine since i got rejected at PA for an internship just because 6 months later i had to join NED University(Actually i got the job, but somehow they came to know about NED; and since I had applied for an *internship* i thought that 6 months period would be an eligible period, but anyways i was given a choice NED or PA and i said NED; bet i made the right decision; I reckon now!). I am still not good at 3d, need to go a long way.

LuckyDraw

2005-08-28T01:00:00.000+05:00

Today we had a very memorable lucky draw in the class. And the winner of the lucky draw got a free ticket to this year's Annual Dinner party of our Department. Actually we raised some collection this week to give farewell parties to two of our teachers. Some amount was left and i had been carrying it in my bag for a couple of days. I don't like carrying other peoples' money as a responsibility; its a risky matter :) So i was trying to figure out some nice way to make use of that money. I suggested to my class mates that we can have a lucky draw; and the winner of the lucky draw would get a ticket to the Annual Dinner Party. Majority of the people were convinced on the idea, infact everyone was very glad with the idea and gave me very good responses. Some people did object to it and my explaination to why i wanted to get rid of that money is as above mentioned. Anyways, majority is authority! i asked my mates Aneeq and Rabbani to prepare the slips having names of students in the class on them as I had to catch a teacher during that time. They were a bit slow, i returned back and helped them out with the rest of the stuff. We held the Lucky draw as soon as the 4th period was over, i shuffled the slips infront of the entire class, gathered them around and then Rufia took out the slip of the lucky draw winner. It had the name Sara Ahad on it. Surprisingly she had deposited her Rs 225 for Annual Dinner a little while earlier to me; so i had to return money back to her; and made her contribution from the money that was left from the previous collection. It was a good and unique activity i believe; 95% of the people were happy.

We had a harsh moment at the bus stop.(no more explanations, this is just to make me remember of that when i read this blog again some time)

After that we went back into the university(me, Aneeq and Umair Rabbani); i had to rush to toilet and joined my friends back at Mech Corner where Mashud the guy from 1st year was already giving a treat to my two fellows. He got me a roll and a pepsi; very nice guy. I feel lots and lots of guts in him. So it was drizzling a bit, the weather was nice, two tents had been erected; one for Mechanical's Annual Dinner Party and the other one for Electrical's Annual Dinner Party. As soon as we stepped out of the university's gate; the very next moment Kamran bhai(driver) was there as if in some hollywood movie where a life saver arrives from nowhere.
We went to Tariq Road; Aneeq had to change pants he bought a few days back. Guess his tummy had grown wild and betrayed him in the past few days. Later we had burgers at Aneeq's Uncles restaurant and then back to home.

Audi A4

2005-08-27T07:44:00.000+05:00

This is the Audi A4 i did last year. It was my first attempt at modelling a car, modelling process was fun, but lighting and shader's work was even more fun. I did a lot of test renders from very grainy metallic to fine metallic paint. In the end the black one stood out from other renders. It took more than half an hour for a single frame to render, no HDRI or GI used, but rendered with Mental Ray for Maya. I didn't got time (rather i was being lazy) for the interiors :(. I had started off with a Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren in June 2005, though i have completed the exterior the interior is still left to be modelled, i feel really bad for not completing it yet :(. My good friend Waqar asked me to do it. I am hoping to get time after 31st Aug, so i'll be completing this McLarenASAP. I'll post the progress sometime later, right now its Audi A4,i did last year, took me about 3 months in whole as i used to work for an hour or so daily(normally). I got a good feedback on this car when i posted it at CGX here

Spamming on blogspot

2005-08-25T02:02:00.001+05:00

Bloggers' posts are being spammed by comments. They are mostly like " your blog is good, mine is better, please visit". But there are also like "we have a leasing company...", "we are dept relievers..", "we offfer free software and ebook" and so many others. Infact they are all there to make your blogging experience miserable. I wonder what is Google doing to overcome this problem?

Saying GoodBye

2005-08-25T02:02:00.000+05:00

two of the teachers who taught us programming at NED University are leaving for higher studies pursuing thier Phds. They are Miss Humera Noor and Sir Saqib Ilyas. These two people have been favourites of many students and been very famous. We had a small farewell party in our class room for Miss Humera Noor on Monday 22nd Aug, 2005. And a similiar (very similiar except for a different cake flavor) party on the following day for Sir Saqib Ilyas. In these two little gathering we had invited some other teachers from the department aswell. It was very nice to have a non formal gathering with the teachers we admire. Faisal bhai had once quoted it somewhere that teachers live through their students. Very true, I now feel that being a *good* teacher is the most honorable profession. You earn so much respect if you are dedicated, otherwise, if a teacher is not dedicated, i believe that he doesn't desereve the right to be called a teacher. There are some who have taught us courses, and personally i dislike some courses just because my interest is wornout because of the lame way in which the subject is being taught.

Anyways, back to the point, the farewell parites were great, i hope they fullfilled their purpose :) and conveyed to the teachers how much we admire and love them.

SIGGRAPH 2005

2005-08-21T23:41:00.000+05:00

ACM's Siggraph is the CG Hotspot for all those belonging to CG industry in one way or the other. I wish one day i be able to attend this event; lets hope InshAllah!. Read more about this year SIGGRAPH at CGSociety.

Touch Light

2005-08-21T22:51:00.000+05:00

Microsoft Reasearch is working on TouchLight . The user interaction we saw in Minority Report as Tom Cruise manipulated the interface with his hands; this is a step in that direction as it is being expected. I am downloading the demo video, still it seems very cool. This was also part of the Emerging Technologies Section of ACM's SIGGRAPH 2005.

Straw Like User Interface

2005-08-21T22:42:00.000+05:00

Japanese people kick ass!!

Look at what they have developed. This was showcased this year at ACM's SIGGRAPH. Its really amazing that this system gives you the drinking sensation by applying pressures and vibrations through the straw to your mouth from a system that get the pressure and vibration data from a data base; the reading of which have been recorded while people drink in real. This is so much amazing, just imagine how great can this be; take for example one can simulate slapping or punching on the face??

Big Ad

2005-08-21T13:38:00.000+05:00

This add for Carlton Draught Beer is awesome!! and humourous. You can download it and read about it here. The best thing is that it looks totally real, they have used Massive software for crowd animation( the same software used in LOTR series). All the huge crowd running and dancing is CG. Its really worth a shot! Enjoy

Note: to download u'll need to register(for free) to CGSOCIETY.

ways to make money

2005-08-20T10:36:00.000+05:00

A couple of days back, i went to a pretty famous CDs shop on University Road to buy some CDRs. There i saw that Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 DVD set was displayed on the showcase, separate from other CDs. I asked the guy on the counter how much was it for and he said "teen so rupia" (Rs. 300).
How pathetic is that, our people don't let a chance to make illegal money go by. BULLSHIT

NOTE: The Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 DVD set is avaiable for free (free shipping aswell) from Microsoft Website.

CGX Get Together [Karachi Members]

2005-08-01T08:06:00.000+05:00

Iqra university launched its BS in Media Sciences Course with a ceremony on 27th July 2k5 Monday. There was also a small media exhibition and seminar at the launching ceremony. The speakers were Muqeem Khan, Ali Thanvi (PTV's head of animation dept), Tahir Moosa(Sharp Image founder), Ali Ahsan(Sharp Image and also worked at Post Amazers as a TD for The Son of the Mask and The Exorcist(second part)), Ali Iqbal Kapadia(Video Director) and Adnan Malik (asst. Director Narena Video). The program incharge of Media Sciences Mr Rehan Zia who has been a CG accomplice for a couple of year now, coordinated a CGX Gettogether with Amaan Akram and Kami. It was a good experience meeting with the people driving the relatively small media industry of Pakistan. I also met Waheed Nasir from PA. He's been incharge of most stuff in Commander Safeguard series. The only regret is that CGX has over 1000 members now out of which most of them are based in Karachi, but even then just about 15 members showed up. But still it was a good experience and i look forward to more CG happenings in Karachi.

Infact an Eternal Loss

2005-08-01T07:46:00.000+05:00

Sabz writes it an Eternal Loss, infacts its an eternal loss. Sir Ali raza who taught us English in 1st year at NED passed away on 25th July Saturday, 2005. Sad, indeed; he had cancer in his lungs due to excessive smoking(smoking doesn't make people bad), ever sinced diagnosed he had quit, he went through an operation and then through regular Chemotherapy treatments aswell, but his time was over and thats how nature works. I want to be really honest in this case, and hearing of his death came as no surprise to me. The last time i met him was in the humanities department. He took me to his room; asked me how were the studies going. He told me that the doctors had advised him to stay airconditioned most of the times, and he was taking the classes in the humanities department's airconditioned room, and at KIET where the class rooms were already airconditioned. This man hadn't gave up even at that time, when he was hardly able to speak, yes really I felt that; he was severely caughing and had extreme difficulty in speaking. He had his hairs worn out due to chemotherapy. I asked him to excuse me as i had a class to attend and the last thing he said to me was "Agar zinda raha to zaroor milaingay"(if i'll be alive we'll surely meet again"), and i was filled with sadness and strange feelings inside,"Nahin sir.. Allah aap ko zindagi day" ("may Allah give you a long life"). I said Allah Hafiz and left. This was my last meeting with this great human being, may Allah Bless him. We went to condole his family, Her wife and daughter were glad to see the students of their family leader. I just knew him for like 18 months and in that period he had become a big source of advice and admiration. He once told us the value of determination and courage to do what you want to do, the will do change things. He and his fellow started the audio library at Karachi university for blind students. He surely lived his life for others and gave a lot to others, and received a lot of praise and admiration from others. As her wife quoted him that he always said that he wanted to do something that would become a Sadqah e Jariah for him. I guess he has earned what he seeked. God Bless Him.

2005-07-30T14:49:00.000+05:00

I am blogging this after a week. Last week Zeeshan Muhammad of Ineta Pakistan Conducted a seminar on ASP.NET Master Pages. It went pretty good, though it was his first presentation. It took quite a while ahead of the designated time to finish. Later on after that, all the Ineta Pakitan's Executive committee members present there went out for an eat out. I felt an honor to be with people like Saqib Ilyas, Hammad rajoub, Adnan Farouq Hashmi and Faisal Nasim.. It was good day!

They are not Pakistanis

2005-07-24T00:04:00.001+05:00

Javed Chauhdry is an awesome columnist, the following is an awesome editorial by him that appeared in the 21st July's Daily Jang;

"In 1970, a delegation of Israeli intellectuals, went to visit Henry Kissinjer, the then Foreign Affairs Minister of US. During the talks, an Israeli poet communicated to Henry Kissinjer as: " We are not here to meet Henry Kissinjer designated as the US Minister of Foreign Affairs, but we are here to meet an Israeli Jew; Henry Kissinjer. Listening to this Henry Kissinjer smiled and replied softly; "Theres no doubt to it that I am religiously a Jew, also I was born at Furth, but at present time I am only and only an American citizen. I am American Citizen, if you want to meet an American Henry Kissinger you are welcome, otherwise...", and left the phrase uncompleted. Israeli delegation was annoyed at this; said goodbye and left his office. These intellectuals, back in Israel started a Campaign against Henry Kissinger; wrote poems against him, published columns in Newspapers and Magazines against him and spoke in public against him. They used to call him Incomplete/Ill-Researched JEW (BAY-TAHQEEQ as Javed Chauhdry writes in URDU).

In 1971, Henry Kissinjer went to an Official visit to Tel-Aviv; all Israeli journalists, poets, writers and intellectuals boycotted his visit; They posted banners like "American go back to America" in the whole city. People also marched protests against him. When he reached back US, he was questioned by the journalist about the row of events against him. He smiled and replied; "This is the price I am paying for being an American Citizen, I am a confident and proud American and ready to pay every price for the honor given to me".

These words by Henry Kissinjer are a Philosophy, which can be called as the Citizenship philosophy. According to this philosophy, people are identified by their Identity Cards and Passports. When a person is given the Identity Card by some Country, he thereafter is a national of that particular country. America and 19 European Countries have this rule; according to which a child born in these countries is automatically granted the Nationality of that country; the child is then said to be an American or a Britisher.

I have wittnessed this: A man from Britain came to Pakistan at Kharian with his two daughters, and arranged their marriages. His daughters wrote to the British High Commision in Pakistan pleading that their parents were getting them forcefully married. The saff of British High Commision reahced Kharian accompanied by police. The prents of the girls claimed that they were their daughters and they can arrange their marriages any they like and that British Highcommison people cannot stop them. British Officers replied negatively; "No they are British Citizens and According to the Laws of England no one can force a British Citizen to marry someone." They took the girls under their custody and ported them to London. These girls married Britishers (white men "GORAY" as Javen Chauhdry write in Urdu) there and they still live with them. The parents of these girls couldn't even plead against this move as the British laws don't let any such move.

Westerners have always been very proud of this law. Americans claim that they are a multi color, multi religion and a multi state nation; anyone who crosses Atlantic is an American. On the other hand Britishers say that anyone carrying their passport can cast a vote in England and anyone who takes a primary school; he is a British Citizen, and enjoys all the rights in England. When Jews founded Israel, they made a little amendment to this rule and implemented it in Israel. According to Israeli Law, any Jew who once migrates to Israel is an Israeli. Talking about one's previous nationality is a crime in Israel. This law came from Iron Lady of Israel; Goldah Mayer. She was born in Israel; someone once called her a Russian born Israeli. She protested against this and said she was only and only an Israeli. Later on Goldah Mayer formulated this law according to which no person can discuss about the former nationality of any citizen within Israel.

Take the case of England, 5 years ago a Ukrainian family filed a case in the court declaring that they were Britishers, but their neighbours called them Russions. Court warned the neighbours that they were British nationals, and if again called Russians they will be jailed. In 1999 US President Clinton, attended a function of Pakistani Community in Washington. Some Pakistani there while addressing said' " We Pakistani Americans respect President Clinton cardially". Cliton was annoyed at this, and in his address referred to this phrase and said; "All Amercian Citizens have came to American from different parts of the world. Someone is Bristish, someone is Italian, French, Norweign, Spanish or Arab, but when these people came to America, they've become American Nationals, you people were Pakistani's before you came to America, but now you are only and only Americans; So please say I am American"; and the whole croud repeated "I am American" in chorus. Whenever i read these words, i feel that this is a good philosophy by Americans, Europeans and Israelis. I thought them as lawful and farsighted nations. But recent i have been amazed by them after the recent 07/07/05 event. The British Government has held 4 Muslims responsible for this disaster. Police have declared 3 of them; Shahzad Tanveer, Haseeb Mir and Muhammad Siqqique Khan as Pakistani Nationals, although they are born Britishers. Hasseb's parent left Pakistan during the decade of 1970. Haseeb was born in 1986 at Leads and is a British Citizen according to the laws of England. Parents of Muhaamd Siddique Khan; Tikka Khan and Mehmodah Begum got British Nationality during seventies, Siqqique Khan was also born in Leads in 1974. Shad Tanveer's parents also had acquired British Nationality in 1980 and Shahzad was born at Bredford in 1982. He is also legally a British Citizen, but the strange thing is; as the investigation is progressing towards them, the British Media and Government are publicizing them as Pakistani Nationals; This is unfair. Laws of both England and Pakistan declaim them as British Nationals. If Henry Kissinjer is an American after reaching America in 1943 and Goldah Mayer is an Israeli after reaching Israel in 1921, then how come these three young men be Pakistani; afterall they are born in England. Yes; these men are not Pakistanis but British goverment with the aim of defacing Pakistan and again and again claiming it on Pakitan.

It is my request to the Government of Pakistan that they should protest on these claims of British Goevrnment, otherwise it may be possible in the comming days, when someone named Mr. Tom carries a bomb and the world would declare him a Pakistani terrorist aswell."

(Translated by me)

Hallelujah

2005-07-08T22:22:00.000+05:00

I have been hearing this song 4 times(or even more) a day now. Its good, and has a soothing effect on the mind(especially when hearing this version by Pakistani vocalist, Arooj Aftab.
"Hallelujah" written by Leonard Cohen, was first released in 1984. It has been covered by a number of artist since then. Heres a list of covers for Hallelujah and other songs by Leonard Cohen. This has also appeared in the Sound Track of Shrek Two- a cover by Rufus Wainright.

Allison Crowe has also sung this song. Her version is good, but doesn't sounds to me the best. You can download her version of Hallelujah for free at this link

A Pakistani vocalist Arooj Aftab has also sung this song, and her vocals are awesome (Y). Check it out here. You can surely figure out which one is better. But to me its more a matter of personal taste. She has a beautiful voice and a beautiful flow in her vocals. She also maintains a blog.

So this might be the Song Of the Day for many of you guys. :)

cruel quote

2005-07-08T18:41:00.000+05:00

heres another one that popped in my head, its my msn messanger nick now a day. It came to me while i was having dinner alone :)

I rip thy flesh from your body and wave my flag across your lobby.

Theme seems to be pretty much changed now!! Its like your are in a competetion(war) confronting your enemy, determined, watchful and witty. You know what moves you need to make, to bring your enemy down. You are prepared and energetic and ambitious. Vicious to your enemy or firm in the competetion. This is what this quote of mine reflects; knowing the weakness whom you are confronting will bring victory to you, cheers in your life.

customized quotes

2005-07-05T00:47:00.000+05:00

here are a few things that popped in my head..

Important: I have not copied them from anywhere, if you find such quotes anywhere else, that should be pure coincidence. Please do inform me if you find so.

Life is what lies between birth and death.
Life is while one is alive.

Second thought; the moment i write these, i change my mind and thoughts of eternity and life after death came to my mind, so here is a different version...

Real Life is what lies after death. (pretty much common ehh??)

Thnx God for atlast i made a post, its been long since I last posted something here, i'll try to be regular from now onwards. Happy blogging every one.

CodeRun 2005

2005-06-05T12:57:00.000+05:00

CodeRun 2005 speed programming competetion was held yesterday, by INETA Pakistan chapter. It was a competetion featuring 17 teams from NED's CIS and BCIT departments. I also participated in the competetion, along with Aneeq Hashmi(class fellow). We had a good time during the competetion, and secured second position overall. The first prize went to team from Third year CIS and the third prize went to some team from BCIT. Pizzas and drinks were served to the participants during the caompetetion. I had wanted to participate in some Speed Programming competetion as the last time i volunteered for CIS Infinity Speed Programming Competetion, the problems seemed pretty easy. I think i'll post a solution to all the problems at my geocities place.

City on fire

2005-05-31T23:26:00.001+05:00

yesterday's bomb blast aftermath has brought to the city to an almost halt, plus there is a strike tomorrow. Yesterday immediately after the bomb blast KFC Gulshan was set on fire with six people burnt alive. Plus both the petrol pumps near the mosque were also set on fire. My brother's office is at Nipa Roundabout, and he informed us of the situation on the phone. My sister who is a doctor at Patel Hospital told the the blast casualties were taken to Patel Hospital and the guys who brought the wounded were all armed, they took over the hospital, ceased the gates and ambulances. When the hospital staff told them that the facility was full to its capacity, they were almost about to kill a doctor. They let no one in or out!

On the otherhand i would like to throw all the words in my abuse dictionary on PTV for not giving out any news of the tense situation in Karachi. These guys are really pathetic.

At about 2:30 PM today, i went downstairs so that i can go to Patel Hospital to pick up my sister. There were gunshots and people running haywire. There was a mob passing by the main road and they were firing indiscriminately and pelting stones at anything they encounter. Most of the cars parked along side the main road had their window shields broken due to firing and stones. I had to call my sister again to warn her of the situation and she was like "when would i be able to get home!". Any ways it was mob and it passed by without causing any major casualties.

Karachi has once again been set on fire. Like always its sectarian. I guess the essence of Pakistan being a Muslim country with Muslim inhabitants (who are supposed to be tolerant) has faded away completely.

All i wish from Allah is that may peace be prevalent in this country of ours(specially to Karachi) and different political and religious parties learn to bear each other not inflicting sufferings to the common man!

picnic

2005-05-26T02:48:00.000+05:00

the sunday picnic was awesome. Though we got late in the morning .. but it all went pretty well. We reached the farms at 11:20 am, and had four of our teachers accompanying us; Sir Zafar Qasim, Miss Sadia, Sir Danish and Sir Mirza Mehmood Baig along with his family. We had a lot of fun in the swimming pool, most of the time was spent in the swimming pool; diving and trying to learn some swimming( yeah i know swimming now :p).. we had lunch at about 1:40. Zahid did the fantastic job of taking out biryani from daig with a plate. He also filled all the ice cream cups while we were serving those. After tea, we started packing up our stuff, and boarded the bus at about 6:00 pm. The bus reached university at about 7:30 PM. It was a really good day, special thanks to Aneeq and Saud (did all the thick chunk of organizing the picnic).

no good grades for me

2005-05-18T22:39:00.000+05:00

today i had an Electronics test, i studied the whole thing, and understood the stuff. I was able to solve the numericals when i was practicing. I referred to the formulae time and again to get numerical values and derivations. There are a lot of formulae that i came across. My bad, i am not good at learning ( or say ratafying formulae) unless I extensively use them(i.e. u get used to them). Bottomline, i knew the stuff but screwed up in the test.

The point here i want to make is ; its useless and rediculous to waste your time remembring formulae by heart. Instead i would like to devote that time to understand the major theory and refer to the formulae list whenever needed. Thats the way it should be IMO, if not.. there are no good grades for me ....

Booked Sherwani Farms for picnic atlast!!

2005-05-17T15:28:00.000+05:00

yesterday, we finally booked sherwani farm's Portion A for picnic on 22nd May 2k5, Sunday. We also gave invitation letters to teachers and a few of them showed their willingness to accompany us. Lets hope that every thing goes well !

Thrid and last trip!!

2005-05-16T23:05:00.000+05:00

Sunday; 15th May,2k5; 3:00PM, Saud gives me a miscall as planned, he is waiting in his car downstairs, i rush down, and grab the seat besides him. Thanks GOD! i am not driving this time:) It'll be Me, Saud, Umair Rabbani and Aneeq this time, no Ahmed bhai no Noman coz they had some domestic chores to deal with. We picked Umair and Aneeq from Nagan Roundabout and headed to our way. Umair had a map prepared to him by his father which would lead us to Siemen's Chowrangi and then to Shershah, we followed the map and reached shershah. This time we were looking for Sherwani Farm House, (yes searching a farm house had driven us nuts :S) We took the right turn from shershah and headed to HuB Police Station, which looked pretty near to Shershah as laid on the Borchure of the farm house but was pretty far away. Northern Bypass has been under construction so there were a lot of diversions in the way. We kept on going straight forward as directed by the map, and hey guess what " Aghaz Hudoon Soba e Baluchistan" !! (means the territory of Baluchistan Province starts here) we just crossed from one province to another. Aksed a guy about HuB Police Station and he said it was still 15 minutes drive. Another 15 minutes and we were there at Hub Police Station, took the Right turn and then it was a 12 KM ride to Sherwani Farms. We reached Sharwani farms at 4:30 PM and guess what the gates were looked!!.. Aneeq climbed the gate and went into the farm house(yes we know its illegal but we came a long distance, and incase of a casualty we had a survival Plan !!.. of which aneeq doesn't know about yet). Anyways he found a guy in there... who opened the gates and showed us around. Its a very large farmhouse and the first two portions we saw just disappointed us, but the third portion wasa nice one, large area, two swimming pools, large hut, kithcen, bathrooms and rooms. We decided that it would be the most suitable portion to book. The canteen guy also came over and told us about his canteen and stuff, on our way back to karachi, we left the canteen guy(Khurram) at Nagan Chowrangi. TheGas Tank had went down to reserve and we were looking for Petrol Pumps, didn't find gas at three pumps but got it after waiting in a long queue at the fourth pump. Saud left me home at about 6:30 PM and he went on to his home. This was our last trip of finding a good farm, ( i still don't know why we had to go to a farm house for a picnic...), and Thanks GOD that we found one. We will book the farm today InshAllah, an on next Sunday, we all (whole class) will be leaving for picnic :)

Dinner with friends

2005-05-16T23:04:00.000+05:00

my bro passed out from Sir syed uni in 2004. During his four years in uni, his friends became my friends aswell, as they frequently visited our house, yesterday, when i reached home at 7:00 pm, Adeel bhai was at home, i always have a very good talk with him, whenever he is at home, moments later other guys also started to pour in. They had a plan for a dinner, Adeel bhai asked me join them and how can i reject that offer !! We left the house at 10:00 PM and went to Shaheen Shinwari open air Hotel on the COD section of Rashid Minhas Rd, It was full packed, (weekend), we found ourselves a takht(rather we took it over from other two guys who were almost finished with eating, but weren't in a mood to leave if we hadn't sat besides them), we gave the order for karahi, handi and kababs, and started the countdown. It was a lot of talk most of the times guys recalling their old university memories and teasing each other over their girls :D Finally after about 40 minutes we had some signs of a waiter coming our way,.. but WT* only karahi and no handi.."sir woh kisi aur ko day di".. anyways we started off eating and asked the guy to get the handi ASAP, the karahi was over and we had to pause for 10 minutes and wait for handi. Though we had to stop a couple of times, but the food was delicious enough to overlook that :). It was a gr8 dinner, there was a snooker club nearby, where i played snooker for the first time, Adnan bhai and Adeel bhai taught me how to play, Adnan bhai is awesome with the stick! we played for about half an hour, left the club at about 1:00 AM, every one in the car and on the road, the buses were off by then and i had to drive the guys to their nearby stops, went on to the way to Nazimabad, to leave Adeel bhai , had to fill gas again, we stopped by at a pump, in the long queue. it took about fifteen minutes until it was our turn ( i hate these qqueues), and went on. Reached the Landi Kotal roundabout, dropped adeel bhai, asif bhai, and then, Adnan and Atif bhai at nipa, and then me and my bro back home,... ohhh it 2:00 AM :s

Another Day, Looking for an Ideal Farm :s

2005-05-16T23:01:00.000+05:00

Yesterday, we again set out to hunt for a farm house, this time on SUper Highway. I got the car running from my house, at about 3:30 PM, picked Ahmed from Nipa and went to Saud's home, where the rest of the guys(Aneeq, Umair Rabbani, Ali and Saud) had been waiting for us. It was almost 4PM when we left from Saud's home. I took the route through Abul Hassan Asfahani rd, and reached Sohrab Goth intersection, to find out that the petrol pump there had no gas to fill(damn thats disgusting), we went all the to Water Pump roundabout and had the tank filled up from there. And we were again on Super highway, a much better road for driving as compared to National highway. A little further we took the service road andinto the small town that were in the suburbs of the city, its really a pain to drive on dusty roads. My car has a thick layer of dust over it. We were looking for Zaib farm house that was a little ahead of Cuzy waterpark. Finally we reached, though it was good, but not good enough for a rent of 8000/=. i was filled and had to look for a toilet there, i asked the guy if they had a toilet and he said:" Jab book karao gay tu peshab bhi karlaina, abhi nahi !! ", damn thats cruel, anyways, we left Zaib farm and went on to Farpo0 farm, again it was pathetic, but hey !!.. they had free bathroooms !!! aahhh.. thats so much relaxing!! Left farpoo and went to aljanat farm, they were just okay, but again not worth the money they were asking for. Confused and dejected we left the farm and took the road to the city. We had a lot of discussion in the car, and the only two suitable choices we are now left with are Mairaj farm and Sherwani farm. Back in Karachi, we went to sherwani's motors, where they also had booking for their farm houses, we asked the rates and left for homes. we haven't yet seen Sherwani Farms, guess would have to make one last trip there :s, its not been a good experience looking for farm houses, the way we thaught they would have been,
seems a dream now :s. I dropped the guys at places on my way back to home. I reached home at 7:00 PM and my car was coated with dust, pretty much had acccumulated on the dashboard aswell. :(

life's uncertain

2005-05-13T14:47:00.000+05:00

today, one of our class fellow(miss anum), lost her father. Most of the medical deaths which i come to know about are due to heart attacks( so is this one). We came to know about her father in the second period, informed every one in the class. Many of her friends left durin the period, Abdullah; our CR took care of the rest of the other two periods and we all left for the deceased's home. We reached the house at about 11:00 AM and had a very brief stay there. Met her and her relatives and condoled them. Losing father is not an easy thing to cope with, the shock is enourmous and grief is beyond one's control. It was a good sight to see her in control of herself, may GOD bless her father, and let the deceased family bear the burdon of grief and trauma.
Namaz Janazah was to be offered with the Namaz e JUma, so it wasn't a good idea for most of us to leave for home, as it was only a 2 hours gap, and people who come from far off place like Malir , Landhi and Nazimabad couldn't have made it later. So some of the guys went to Umer's place( he lives near university) and the rest of us took refuge at Saud's place. we had a lot of talk there, later most of other guys joined us there. and we left for Masjid(mosque) at about 1:00 pm, making it in two shifts. I am really glad the Umer was driving sensibly, (we thrashed him a lot before that, due to his AWESOME driving skills), we offered Juma and Janazah prayers, and every one was back on their way home.

Long Drive-> Went to hunt for a Farm House

2005-05-13T01:46:00.000+05:00

On wednesday, 9th may, we had to go and look for a Farm house. We were 5 in all, me , Aneeq, Saud, Noman and Ahmed(my class fellows). I drove the car from house at about 3:00 afternoon, picked the guys from uni and went on. I thought we were heading to SuperHighway, but infact we had to go on National Highway(very bumpy) and look for some Mairaj Farm House. We had the CNG tank filled from a Petrol Pump at Malir. we all thought that it won't be a more than 45 minutes drive from Malir, but the Farm House we were looking for was no way near, we crossed Karachi, Dhabeji, Pipri, Steel Mills, Gulshan e Hadeed and Gharo and there was no trace of the farm house we were looking for. It was a horrible drive, National Highway is a double way road at most sections for the places where we drove, we were about 32 KM from Thatta when we finally found that farm house (whew..!) Mairaj farm house looked a bit conjusted place to accomodate 40+ people in its half portion. The guy there incharge of booking was pretty rude. We took a walk around and left without deciding anything. On our way back we also went to two other farms; Ashraf Farm House and Mohsin Farm House. Honestly, what i thought of a farm house was far better than these farm houses( less than 1 yard land, with a lawn, room and a swimming pool!.. sorry thats not what i call a farm house), to sum it up, Mairaj farm was of some consideration and the other two were not. I had recived about 6-7 calls from home because the car was needed at home.. it was really a long route, the car was most of the time at a constant above 100KM/Hr; still it took us about 3 and a half hour in going and comming back.When i reached home the gas Tank was almost empty, and if i drove a 1 or 2 Km more, it would have been down to reserve. Thanks GoD, we reahced safely back, and the fuel didn't burn out completely :). It was one hell of a long drive :).

Class Picnic 2005

2005-05-13T01:43:00.000+05:00

we have been planning a class picnic for long, by now what we know is that we have to spend this picnic in a Farmhouse. Some of the male teachers have aggreed to accompany us (which is great). The girls are like to and fro in their decisions, they aren't getting to a point, an few have confirmed that they will be going with us, and the rest are like "we will go, we will not go" :S

CIS Infinity Speed Programming 2005

2005-05-13T01:22:00.000+05:00

CIS Infinity Speed Programming 2005 Competetion was held at NED University's Computers and Information Systems Department, in the Computation Lab. I was in the Organization committee. Main organizers were the guys from 3rd year; Faisal, Usman and Mehroz (They are awesome people!!). The competetion went smoothly, but there were some problems like one of the team had to shift through 5 pcs to get VC# compiler running (they never got it running, they resorted to TC :D, but still hats off to them, they won the competetion) and there was a problem with the keyboard assigned to one team (poor FE people), the backspace key very frequently stuck pressed and erased all their code, i had their keyboard changed, and needed to restart the system, guess what!.. it took more than 10 minutes for windows 2000 to load. Again it was a very good event, a team from my class won; comprising Noman Shaukat, Aneeq Hashmi and Ahmed Minhas. These are again some VERY INTELLIGENT people i have met. The problems weren't really hard, i tried them at home; pretty comfortably worked out the logic and inplemented a few. I guess i'll also compete in any future speed programming sessions. The second team which won was from Third Year, and the 3rd positon went to Final Year people. Theres a ceremony to be held on 21st May,2k5 where the prices would be given away. Congrats to The DEpartment and teachers and students on having some activity which broke the long held usual silence (not felt by many; its ironic).The panel of judges had the following teachers

Sir Saqib Ilyas
Miss Maria Wahab
Sir Farhan

The teachers supported the event by all means, specially i would like to mention that miss Anita Ali had been awesome with feeding our hungry stomachs out of her own pocket. She was incharge of the Competetion and took care of almost everything.

Gathering Ideas about my online Portfolio

2005-05-13T01:15:00.002+05:00

My portfolio construction is underconstruction. Though i have got a portfolio, but its not that good. I am working on a guy now days, its completely modelled and unwrapped, with clothing. I'll rig him and give him a few good poses. Life's been very messy, eversince i started 3Ding (4 years now), but never been able to slice time justly between my studies and graphics work. Mostly I feel that, having been in 3d for 4 years i have learnt too little, I should have been good at rigging and posing by now... but unfortunately thats not the case. Anyways, back to my portfolio thing; once i have this character prepared, i'll add some more stuff to my Audi A4, which i modelled last year (inreply to a challenge given to me by Kami Usman and i got a very good treat for that Audi, i was upto the task :)), like Wipers and some more stuff, (Interiors maybe) and then put up an animation and render it out ( i am worried about the horrible render times, one single frame of Audi A4 in Mental Ray took about 25-30 minutes at 800*600 on my PC (AMD AXP 2500+, 256MB DDR, Radeon 9200SE-128MB), but i gues i'll be increasing RAM to half a gig by then! lets hope). So once i have all this stuff prepared, i'll put it on web as a compiled portfolio. I haven't got a hosting yet, but by then i'll hopefully have one, incase not, i'll put it on some freeserver, and wait for the TIME ! some of my old work is at www.sarfarazsoomro.deviantart.com (don't mind the armless chick, she's an inspiration from the game character Jill Valentine (RE3 Nemesis), though it doesn't resemble her in anyway, except the clothing,... it was basically done as a clothing exercise, to model wrinkles and natural flowing cloth)

About me and my blog

2005-05-13T01:11:00.000+05:00

Atlast I have started blogging. I wanted to do this, as it had been a pretty good time reading blogs of some of my friends. I am still not sure what would be the scope of my postings here, but i am pretty sure that i won't let it be boring. By the way, I am a student at NED University, Karachi. Currently in Second year of my Bachelors course in Computers and Informations Systems Engineering. I am not good at studies, specially when it comes to things like Electronics and Electrical Machines (too much boring for me). I tend to put some effort in my computer related subjects, such as Programming and Alogos stuff ( not being good at them aswell, its pathetic!). Other than that, something i know a little bit is some basic 3d stuff. I use Alias Maya, Adobe Photoshop for my graphics work. Previously i used 3dsmax, heres some of my old work http://sarfarazsoomro.deviantart.com