A man will die, but not his ideas.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

SMS Delivery Reports

I found this post very useful. It works on non-iPhones as well. All you need to do is add a certain network-dependent prefix to the message body. The prefix will not be seen by the recipient. Once the SMS message has been delivered you will get a text message back saying:

Message for +(number) has been delivered on (date and time).


The prefix for Fido is *!# and for Vodafone Egypt it is *VF#.

Posted by A :: 12:21 AM :: 0 Comments:

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Give Us A Reasonable Reason

Ok, I agree that the media attack on the Egyptian national team, such as the one by Amr Adeeb in Orbit's show Cairo Today, was very harsh. And I find some of the words used in these attacks inappropriate. Especially since there's no clear evidence that some of the players did accompany some girls with them to their rooms. But forget about the media and what was published and said. Just give us a reasonable and convincing answer, what happened to the team during that match?! I mean all what the US was hoping for in this game was to show a good performance regardless of the outcome. And the entire world was expecting that Egypt would beat the US easily, especially after their lousy performance in the first two matches in the competition.

And what's this tone all the players are repeating: "so what if we lost a game!" What?! Are you serious?! A team that plays without the spirit of winning will always be a loser and should not play as a national team in the first place. And besides, you weren't even fighting for the game. Losing 1-0 or even 2-0 would've been accepted if the game was two sided. But what we saw was a great puzzle. Both the defence and offence were non-existent. The players were not concentrating and there were a lot of missed passes. In addition, they didn't even want to run for any ball. If I didn't watch Brazil's game, I would've sweared that the team I saw in the US match was a totally different team with different players.

And don't give me that crap that the players were suffering from fatigue because of the two previous games and that you were playing three matches within six days. The US, Brazilian, and Italian players were playing under the same conditions and none of them complained of fatigue. So, such a complaint is an indication of a problem in the players themselves and not an excuse.

I respect and appreciate Abou Trika's position and his colleagues positions as well. But give us a reason for this unreasonable and humiliating defeat.

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Posted by A :: 6:41 AM :: 0 Comments:

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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Fixing Some of Guest OS Issues with VMWare Workstation on Linux

  • When the virtual machine image is stored on an NTFS partition, NTFS-3G hogs the CPU and freezes the machine very frequently leading to very slow performance of the virtual machine and possibly preventing you from using files on that partition during the freeze periods. The reasone is a bit complicated, but a temporary solution is mentioned here. Just add the following line to the .vmx file of the virtual machine.

mainMem.useNamedFile=FALSE
  • Cannot connect to sound card because it is busy. Make sure knotify and Enlightened Sound Daemon (ESD) are not running. Kill those two processes (if they are active) and restart the vmware service just to make sure.
  • On Linux, VMWare frequently stopped my Shift/Ctrl/Alt keys from working when going back from the guest OS (was XP in my case) to Linux. A solution to this problem would be to use the setxkbmap command to reset the keyboard layout.
  • The arrow keys and other special keys are not functioning properly or not functioning at all. Create a config file in ~/.vmware directory and add this the following to the file then restart the vmware service.

xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu

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Posted by A :: 6:05 AM :: 0 Comments:

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Sunday, May 17, 2009

Removing .svn files manually from a managed directory..

I made a copy of an Eclipse project I was working on because I wanted to experiment with some things and didn't want to affect the original code. However, that project was managed by SVN and consequently all of the subdirectories of resulting copy also had the .svn subdirectories in them. I wanted to quickly delete all these subdirectories manually from the command-line. Here is what I did.

Use find to locate all the subdirectories having the given name within the desired directory. For example, for locating subdirectories with the name .svn within the current directory, use the following:

find . -name .svn

Now we pipe the results to xargs and use the rm -r as the command of choice for xargs. xargs will execute the given command on all the results obtained from the find command.

find . -name .svn | xargs rm -r

Note:
Because Unix filenames can contain blanks and newlines, please read the man pages for xargs for information regarding using xargs with such files.

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Posted by A :: 7:48 AM :: 0 Comments:

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Thursday, March 26, 2009

EARTH HOUR - Saturday, March 28th (8:30-9:30 PM)



This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming.

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

This meeting will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, which will replace the Kyoto Protocol. It is the chance for the people of the world to make their voice heard.

Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness.

In 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote. Unlike any election in history, it is not about what country you’re from, but instead, what planet you’re from. VOTE EARTH is a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community. A call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet. Over 74 countries and territories have pledged their support to VOTE EARTH during Earth Hour 2009, and this number is growing everyday.

We all have a vote, and every single vote counts. Together we can take control of the future of our planet, for future generations.

VOTE EARTH by simply switching off your lights for one hour, and join the world for Earth Hour.

Saturday, March 28, 8:30-9:30pm.


Posted by A :: 11:01 AM :: 0 Comments:

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Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Proper User Policy


Posted by A :: 2:41 PM :: 0 Comments:

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Friday, February 27, 2009

Venus on a date with the Moon

While walking back home today, the sky was finally clear after a rainy morning. Looking up at the sky, I saw a breathtaking sight. It was Venus on a date with the Moon. Unfortunately, I did not have a suitable camera with me. But I did find many photos of the event online. Below is a clear one from Vancouver which can be found here.

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Posted by A :: 11:27 PM :: 0 Comments:

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