Personal
I've just had a fascinating experience that I wanted to share here. For those not familiar with it, GnuPG is a system for digitally signing and encrypting emails and other data. Since I created my GnuPG key pair, I used to sign all my outgoing emails, but unfortunately this caused many troubles to those not familiar with digital signatures. I often received replies from people not able to view my emails in MS Outlook (because it ignores standards), or found random garbage at the beginning/end and thought the message was corrupted (not realizing that the actual message was in between). Until a couple of weeks ago or so when I decided to only sign messages when required, or when the receiving party is familiar with GPG. And it just happened that I didn't have to sign any emails until tonight. I clicked "send" and a window popped up asking me for the key's passphrase (a long password). I sat there for a while trying to remember what my passphrase was. I entered one but it was wrong. I tried a couple more but no luck. Finally, I realized that I forgot my passphrase!
Read more
Submitted by Ayman on Fri, 2006/09/01 - 12:40am.
Tomorrow I will apply for a visa at the Belgian embassy, the reason is attending FOSDEM (an Open Source developers meeting), I was invited by Mozilla Foundation, which generously offered to cover flight expenses, the meeting has a very interesting schedule, there will be a Mozilla developers room with an interesting schedule as well.
Thanks Mozilla Foundation!
Submitted by Ayman on Tue, 2006/02/07 - 7:53pm.
Submitted by Ayman on Thu, 2006/02/02 - 1:32pm.
I am a Computer Science graduate, an Open Source enthusiast and a Googler.
I enjoy solving mathematical problems and programming challenges.
I like to contribute to Open Source projects, be it code, documentation, translation, or support.
I'm 24 years old, and live in Dublin, Ireland.
Read more
Submitted by Ayman on Tue, 2006/01/17 - 9:48pm.
My GnuPG public key is attached below.
Key ID: DE81027D
Fingerprint: 6359 B274 BA2B 74FE DF89 AC08 99F1 EDCD DE81 027D
It's also available from public key servers (for example pgp.mit.edu).
Submitted by Ayman on Mon, 2006/01/02 - 10:00pm.
The other day I received a comment in Arabic to the entry "Arabic in Gentoo Forums", saying something along the lines of "Your native language is Arabic, why blog in English?!", especially that the post was about adding an Arabic forum to the Gentoo forums, well I have 2 reasons behind posting in English:
- Most of my posts are about tech subjects, and while it is possible to post about them in Arabic, the post will result in confusion for many, because Arabic still doesn't have unified tech idioms, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Arabic can't handle tech language, I work on Arabizing myself, instead of just wining that no one uses Arabic on the web, but I still believe Arabic needs a unified effort to make it able to handle tech language, at its current state, Arabs use many different words for the same tech idiom, making Arabic text about tech confusing.
- The Internet is still not widely available in the Arab world, and as a result, people here still lack basic Internet etiquette, lurk an Arabic forum for a while and you will know what I mean, even the largest Arabic forums on the web lack very basic rules, by posting in English, I make sure those who are reading and commenting are most likely well aware of Internet rules and etiquette.
So Arab bloggers who post in English? Why do you do so?
Submitted by Ayman on Thu, 2005/09/15 - 8:28pm.
I was phone-interviewed by Baxter Yazbek a couple of months ago, on Firefox localization and the 1.0 release, the interview (along with a nice article on Firefox 1.0) is out now on the 15th of February issue of Asharq Al Awsat newspaper, it's available online too (Arabic).
Baxter called when I was on my way home back from college, I was surprised first, he asked to phone-interview me, we agreed on a time later that day, he called, and it went smooth.
Read more
Submitted by Ayman on Fri, 2005/02/18 - 7:28pm.
The ad looks great, I like the idea of using names to draw Firefox logo. The quotes, the final piece of text are all very well done in my opinion.
I don't really think that the ad will dramatically boost download numbers, but it will sure help, especially that Firefox has been in the media for several months, not only tech, but normal news websites visited by all kinds of people, I think that a good percent of people is familiar with the name Firefox now, so it will be a lot easier to tell them to try it, or easier for them to remember the name, go to the website and download it.
Read more
Submitted by Ayman on Sat, 2004/12/18 - 3:22pm.
Found this article on /. a few days ago, being left-handed, and although I couldn't find a real point behind the article, the scattered theories here and there were quite interesting.
One point I could gather from the article: Left part of the brain is responsible for language skills, each side of the brain controls the other side of the body, so right-handed people are left-brained, and therefore, are also better when it comes to language skills. Sounds correct to me, I'm not exactly the best person when it comes to expressing ideas or feelings, in school, my worst nightmare was having one of those language classes assignments in which I had to describe something, or talk about a historical event, stuff like that...
Another point in the article, right side of the brain (remember, lefties are right-brained :)), is associated with creativity and motor control skills. Yes, I think I'm good when it comes to controlling and mechanics, I used to prefer math and science classes in school. It's especially true when I get one of those creative ideas, fail to explain them to those around, later when I start implementing them, they see the point that I had in mind.
Any other lefties who want to share their experiences? I know at least one left-handed who reads the blog ;)
And yeah, while not really on topic, I almost always write using my right hand, because I was taught to do so in school (weird religious reasons, but that's another story), as a result, I can write using both hands, much faster with the right hand, but hand-righting quality is the same, it's horrible in both cases, because it doesn't feel right with the right hand, and in the left hand's case, because of not practicing enough.
I seriously thought of switching back to left hand for writing several times before, but the speed issues held me back.
For everything else, I prefer and usually use left hand. I can use computer mice with either hand, but since they are usually positioned in places where using right hand is more comfortable, I use right hand.
Submitted by Ayman on Wed, 2004/12/08 - 1:56pm.
I'm enjoying the last few days of "real Internet", never thought I'd say enjoy, being on dialup and having to deal with the slow speed and the regular downtime.
Internet in Syria is horrible, there is dialup which costs a lot when compared to other countries in the region, ISDN and ADSL (in some areas) are available, but ISDN is pointless (costs even more when considering speed/cost) and ADSL is ridiculously expensive, it used to be 75,000SyP/month (~$1500/month)! There are claims that ADSL will be available for a cheaper price, but I have yet to find a way to sign up for it.
The funny thing is that all connections (even broadband) are behind proxy servers, the only type of connection you can do is HTTP (and downloading through FTP), when connected, you aren't given an IP address over the Internet, you just connect to a local network and request pages from a proxy server connected to this network. And don't ask about the point of broadband if you can only surf the web.
Read more
Submitted by Ayman on Thu, 2004/10/28 - 11:27pm.
