Musharraf Can Joke (New Business Opportunities)

January 22, 2008January 22, 2008 ReallyVirtual

shirt Who says our President Musharraf can't joke? Here's the latest news from GEO:

PARIS: President Pervez Musharraf Tuesday invited French businessmen to invest in Pakistan without any fears, saying circumstances are conducive for investment in the country. Addressing business executives at a hotel after reaching here in the second leg of his visit, President Musharraf assured safety to the foreign investment and pointed out that the terrorists have never hit business entrepreneurs in the country …

So, can you spot the cruel joke in there? Though the word 'Frenchman' itself is an oxymoronic joke to some, the one I am referring to is how our President (who seems to lack sincere advisers these days) actually used the F word ('fear', you effin eff!) in a room full of French business people! Of all the places in the world, he had to do it in France!

Didn't anyone tell him about what French people are famous for?! On second though, maybe he was just trying to help the French by giving them a chance to work in the most dangerous country in the world, or maybe his speech was written by a~~n american~~ master with a sense of humor. I wish I were there to see it happen (please point me to a recording if one exists please).

(When a country's president has to point out that 'look! our terrorists don't kill entrepreneurs!", that is another huge sick joke, but we aren't supposed to notice that.)

In the last couple of weeks, two potential client firms from Europe that we were negotiating with, politely 'postponed' their decision to start their outsourcing centers in Lahore after hearing about the blast at the GPO. So let us make some lemonade… forget 'Destination Pakistan', there must be a huge untapped market in T-shirts and other memorabilia around the '… most dangerous…' phenomenon – and pretty soon, it may be the only viable business option left for us, so let us start practicing. Let us ask our terrorist brothers to keep blowing people up, while you and I can start selling stuff. Here's one I just made [cafepress.com], wear it with pride!

80 Million Images

January 20, 2008 Sohaib Athar

What happens when you take 80 Million tiny images, group them by their name, and create a mosaic from their thumbnails?

You get a stunning visualization.
You get a searchable database of 80 million images.
You get a couple of research papers.
You get another website to bookmark and play with.
You get one picture per Pakistani voter. Can you handle that?
You something to blog about.

A Long List of Leftover Links…

January 20, 2008 Sohaib Athar

… from last year that couldn't grow into posts. Now I can clean up my 'TO BLOG' bookmarks folder and continue pretending to be a blogger:

Moneygami – great Origami with currency notes. I made a few of these before I ran out of the leftover 1$ bills from my US trip.
An impressive interactive neuron anatomy and function tutorial for kids (and adult who care).
The geeky way to find your soulmate.
The American government can kidnap, occupy, torture and kill you, but they are surprised at the science of suicide bombing.
The 'soundtrack' from the book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid
Why Eidi is better than Christmas gifts.
Dvorakzine is a comic book that can help you save your fingers by switching to DVORAK, or at least alternating between DVORAK and QWERTY. I have been using DVORAK off and on for 5 years myself and it really makes a difference.
The Universal Digital Library has over a million free books for your reading pleasure.
Some amazing images of our neighboring galaxies – taken from Hubble.
Israel is the country with the highest phishing incidents (104106 from 70106 sites), but we Pakistanis are pretty bad at being phishy. Strange.
Rocks may have a mind of their own.

Election Commission of Pakistan – Live Voter Search

January 19, 2008 Sohaib Athar

The Election Commision of Pakistan has released their cutting-edge website that allows anyone who can read and type Urdu to search for any 'Live' (and I presume, dead as well) voters in Pakistan. It is no mean feat to develop an Urdu website in Canada (handling a character-set twice the size of the English alphabet is surely twice as hard), especially a completely secure one that lets you search 80 Million (*gasp*) records!

Even though I still don't understand the need for the website (though it can be fun to search for the people you know to get their exact age and/or who they are married to), and even though its on-screen keyboard thinks 'undefined' is an Urdu character, and even though it does not know me, though I have tried both versions of 'hay' in my name along with my old and new NID numbers (which probably means I can't vote – (Yay!)), but I feel I should still congratulate the CEO of Mehndi.com for an excellent 'gift' back to the nation (in all its waving flag animated gif glory that messes up in Firefox), and for showing us backwards Pakistanis that "nothing is impossible if you go for it." (which translates loosely into "you can create projects out of thin air if you know the right people").

Now, can somebody lend me around 50 shell accounts or zombie machines so that I can scrape that database in a couple of days please? I promise to return them.

CBeebies and UptoTen.com – Fun With Your Kid(s)

January 19, 2008January 19, 2008 Sohaib Athar

The Cbeebies storytime website or UptoTen is where you should be headed to spend a few fun interactive minutes each day with your kid… the website can also give you a few moments of peace and quiet if you have a computer savvy kid (like my 5ish year old son). Better than TV or XBox IMHO. Don't forget to encourage and praise them while they play. If you didn't know about these websites already, and decide to try them out, I would be very interested to hear your story in the comments 🙂