20 July, 2006

My 1st NON-VIRTUAL cup of Java

The other day I had my FIRST ever non-virtual cup of Java.

From no were else but Starbucks (yeah, yeah,,,, I know what most of those who know me perfectly would say now regarding my strict ideologies when it comes to starbucks ... and Yes, I do still hate starbucks ... its not the topic now)

So, I was first of all amazed with the question: “Do You want your Java with coffee or without?!” ;) So, not being a coffee drinker i answered : “Of course not :)”. its either Java or coffee :)
I didnt really know that Java doesnt belong to any type of “Usual casual coffee” others drink....
Cool.....
I'm into it.

& by the way, they are calling it in a geeky way, “Java Chip”...
its a frappuccino coffee... just a perfect cold summer breeze.

So for all of those who are already afraid of my Java Skills....

You didn't see anything my friends.

19 July, 2006

A disappointing Global Village

Did anyone go until now to this year's 2nd Global village?

I know Jad did, coz I saw him there....

I dunno, but, last year's was better, or this is what i felt, despite this year's space is larger.

The Jordanian section, not to mention, was, as always, empty .... mostly, despite its the largest section. But .... UUHHHHH! What an Ugly outside it had!
Terrible!

Last year the Jordanian branch wasn't that “nice” either but it had a nice “FACE” from the outside, and one that was attracting people after all!

The Main sponsors “Jordan Telecom Group” aren't playing either any serious role in this years Global Village, except for some Ads here and there and an empty tent..

Last Year Umniah was blowing the place with all sort of stuff!

I'm afraid that the idea organizer's concentration on having other global villages in other arab countries is decreasing the concentration on Jordan's Global Village!

16 July, 2006

Northern Jordan following up with the situation in Lebanon through the Lebanese airwaves

Lebanese FM stations reaching northern jordan (Irbid specifically) are noticing a huge audiance by the jordanians.

what ever taxi or bus you ride in irbid, you'll find its radio tuned in to a lebanese radio station.... with all sorts of lebanese radio station, from entertainment stations that have turned their programs to catch up with the events, to the loud pro-Hezbulla stations, to stations that only receive calls from people reporting about what's happening in their area

Radio Guide Update: Radio Rotana in Irbid

Radio Rotana have started lately transmitting in Irbid on 90.5 FM.

you can always keep checking the entire frequencies table on Jordan's Radio Guide powered by yours truly.

14 July, 2006

BiSCA @ ITSAF 2006

Last Wednesday, ITSAF 2006 took place at Petra University, ITSAF is a graduation projects exhibition and competition, in case you are wondering, and Project BiSCA was there in action.

ITSAF was, considered by my self as well as others, a nice place of enthusiasm for us, fresh grads, and definitely a success. Except for 1 thing, Microsoft had its nose here as well. (well, Ok, I didnt really like the campus.... and who on earth said that the private university chicks are better than the governmental universities! HU ROXX MAN;)).

24 IT projects participated, those 24 projects were partitioned into 3 groups, with 8 projects each, out of which 2 are chosen for the finals.

The evaluators for each group consisted of 3 Drs (Dodgy Style University Dr if i'd describe them) as well as 1 out of “People from the IT market”. Ironically, out of the companies participating in ITSAF, the 3 guys “From the market” in the 3 groups happened to MICROSOFTISTS!

Either from Microsoft Jordan or “Microsoft Partner” training centers.

Anyway, this came out with only 1 non Microsoft project in the finals, that was definitely not us!

Actually, 3 projects were made with 0% of Microsoft stuff: Java SMS API by a couple of guys from PSUT (which passed to the finals and got the 6th position), a Digital watermarking kit made with Java by a guy (YES, He was the only 1 man show, he deserved the 7th place for that for sure ;) from Zarqa Private Uni, and project BiSCA which even had Linux as part of its deployment plan (the Street Situated displays in BiSCA are to be running a light weight Linux kernel, X Windowing system and our BiSCA-Display), and had TUX as well as Solaris (for the server) on its poster ;) BiSCA got the 8th place.

By the way, BiSCA was the only project with an Arabic User Interface!

The guy from compu-base (Microsoft Partner, and slave) in our evaluation group asked the guys that did the Java SMS API, explicitly: “What Microsoft Components did you use”!?!??!?!?!??!

the evaluation was “supposed to be” according to: The Applicability in the Industry, GUI usability, Suitability and Complexity of Tech used, creativity, and efficiency.

But taking a look at the final 6 projects, they included:
A restaurant touch screen ordering system, with a WEB Interface! (Damn it, it was full of tiny Hyperlinks and radio buttons!).

A CMS (Content Management System) or website if you would call it, where 5 guys were in the project, and only 2 programmed, 1 programmed it with ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL server, while the other with PHP and MySQL....! kinda too hybrid, don't you think!

A Car Navigation system, with a dumb GPS device and Labtop!
Yes, the labtop is running the navigation system, connected through bluetooth to the GPS device, and running Microsoft SQL Server Database!!!!!!!!!
They even suggested applying it to TAXIs and restaurant deliveries!!!!! WHAT!

Anyway, out of 2 HU projects in ITSAF (we could have participated with more, someone is to be blamed in HU), 1 of us got to the finals, the project is called JordanGuide, a website portal with all sorts services, the project was neat enough so that it can be deployed at the very moment on a server and run.
And yes, they rocked the 1st place baby :)

Congrats to Abu Satif, 3ala2, Shaza, and 3abood (who didnt make it)... they won 1000 JDs by the way, and 3ala2 had enough luck last wednesday to win the draw on a ticket to Larnaca ;)

It was definitely an HU day wednesday, it was a happy HU table during the dinner, and man we were all up and running, everyone was staring at us, they were like: “Man, those guys are, beside knowing what they're doing, they are crazy”.....

The HU 2002 is invading everyone, its just that we are still sleeping after those 4 year of Campus... but we are invading :)

10 July, 2006

Dear Licensed Microsoft Windows user, thanks for being a FOOL!

Yup, this is how it sounds that microsoft is thanking their clients that buy their original products.

They are like telling you: “you fool could have installed a pirated version!”

Here's how the story starts, I buy a labtop, with its bundled Windows XP Home edition... I wanted to be fully legal this time, as the only pirated softwares that i use nowdays are Microsoft's Windows Operating System, and Macromedia's multimedia packages (Fireworks, Flash, Dreamwaver, and Handsfree).

(Note: No, I never bought Microsoft's office, I've been using OpenOffice for over a couple of years now)

Now I dont really know what does the word (Home Edition) mean for those at microsoft!? Doesnt mean that the home edition fool user doesnt have an interest to have any type of network connections but a direct one to the Internet?!

Does it mean that he cant have users account management but throughout a fancy lousy utility in the control panel that changes a user's icon or password!

Or Does it mean that a user can't have microsoft's own web server (not even for experimental purposes for you kids that want to learn some programming!), even if microsoft claims it makes its web server: ( IIS ), free for its users!

So, you want make a peer to peer connection between two PCs (because maybe as a home user you may not have the interest to have an Ethernet network at your home) .... and what you'll find is ..... a disabled option!!!!
WHAT.....?!
and for accepting a connection, it considers the connection a phone call throughout your modem...
DUH!



On the other hand, you want some advanced user management, you click on the “manage” option rightclicking on your “My Computer” icon.
And WHAT?!
No “Manage Users” in the right bar tree!

This is how it should look:


& this is how it is!


I go, to the system32 folder inside the windows directory, and hey, there's the execution runner called “lusrmgr” available in there (The Management console consists of several execution runners like this one in case you dont know, and those execution runners are called behind the seen when you change some option from the control panel in windows in a “User Friendly Way” ).

and surprise surprise, here is what appeared in there:
“This computer is running Windows XP Home Edition, This SNAPIN MAY NOT BE USED with THAT version of Windows.”


Man, they dont know how to inform their users properly, the even don't know how to write proper english!!!! what “THAT VERSION”!!!
or is it that they use linux and call their own made operating system: “THAT”?!

Hell Ya.... and they call linux “not so user friendly”.

And by the way, The need for the user management thingy appeared from the another problem, running Oracle's Enterprise Manager, any import or export from user files saved on the operating system, you will be requested to enter the credentials for logging in to the file system throughout the operating system running on the machine from which you want to extract or import the files stored on your machine....

and guess what, you put the user name and password, and it says it cant log-in to the operating system you are running at the moment (I never faced such a situation with Oracle 10g since it was released).....


I want my money back and my pirated Windows XP professional back, at least I know its pirated what ever fools came out in my face!

The question of why do i still need windows, well, i need it from time to time in my programming and development issues, i need both actually (Windows and Linux). So double booting is indeed the most suitable option.

Technorati Tags: microsoft,knows,nothing,but,to,steel,people's,money,using,windows,

08 July, 2006

IT graduation songs ;)

This post published earlier by the title (BARMAJEE YA BARMAJEE), were some of the lyrics we were singing in our graduation last sunday.

seems nobody could guess them though ;)

Yes, My Graduation was last sunday, I didnt post about it because of the lack of the pictures i have for the celebration, simply because i decided not to use the digital camera for it,,,,, we wanted to have real memories, not digital vanishing ones ;) so we went back to KODAK :)

anyway, my mum had a couple of pictures with the digital camera, and here is one posted right now.....

Our ceremony included The Engineering and IT students (considered a men Party ;))
but it also included the faculty of Sports chicks (appearing in the picture below)

Click on the pic to amazingly make it huger :)



and this, in case you dont know is my faculty: HUIT, were HUIT 2002 graduated from;) and man we're like fire :)

Play 99.6's podcast IS NOT the FIRST in the middle east! Not even in Jordan!

Now I've wanted to write about this, but was kind of busy.

Yes, the PLAYCAST, is not by any mean as Play 99.6 is claiming to be the 1st Radio station's podcast. Because there ARE others using it since quite a while ago.

RMC, or Radio Monte Carlo, which is the middle eastern section or RFI (Radio France International) WAS the 1st radio station in the region and the middle east to have itsown shows on PODCASTS.

RMC's podcasts, as you might be able to mention HERE, are dedicated for several shows, and are updated in a more professional way than play's even, hint hint: XML FEED.

Well I know that Play have this tenancy to keep calling it self "Jordan's No 1 Hit Music Station" and its shows with "Jordan's Official Chart Show", and "Jordan's Official Request Show", and "Jordan's Official World Cup show" .... but.....


RMC do have "REAL" activities in Jordan, especially when we talk about cultural events (I Shall be posting about the RMC awards taking place in this year's Jerash Festival as I would be getting more information about it hopefully).

They don't have the right to get over a big station like RMC!

I mean, RMC has been here for Ages, they had their 1st ever 24h FM station in Amman, they had their 1st local studios and offices in Amman, and they transmit in Jordan now on TWO frequencies (97.4 in Amman & 106.2 in Ajloun and the North) covering over 4 million people of jordan's population.

While Play's transmission barely covers 60% of Amman! (in case you don't believe it, just have a drive west on the University street and tune in to "Play" after you reach Addustour Newspaper's building!).

And finally, RMC's podcasts are real shows that have place on the airwaves as well, I didnt figure out what prevents those couple of guys from Play saying what they are presenting in the podcast on air as they are claiming!

Technorati Tags:
RMC,radio,monte,carlo,has,the,first,podcast,in,the,middle,east,not,Play

06 July, 2006

برمجي يا برمجي

برمجي يا برمجي ... بدي سي دي ألها و بدي سي دي ألي

حالي حالي حال, و مالي مالي مال ... أولتك آي تي و أخرتك زبال

04 July, 2006

Radio Guide Update: Sout Ma'an

Sawt Ma'an, a local public radio station project, owned and powered by Al-Hussein University in the southern town of Ma'an, will be finally ready for the launch.

This project has been launched since over a year now, but it didnt complete the requirements for getting a license yet, yesterday it finally did. waiting for them to start the real work now, and in rich the local community with a bunch of good useful shows.

I know now that Yarmouk University is applying for a similar license as well, not to forget that they have a media and journalism department in there, such a station is more than a MUST.

hope they will move faster in the procedure!

Radio Guide Update: Amen FM

Soon, on the frequency of 89.5 FM, a station that goes by the name of "AMEN FM"
أمن FM
will be broadcasting in the grater Amman area, covering Amman, Zarqa, Mafraq, Madaba and someparts of Jerash and Salt.

the station, which is owned by the Jordanian Police department will be oriented towards increasing the interactivity between the police and security forces and the community, and will be considered for sure a unique experience for a public radio.

I'm just wondering what will remain for The governmental Jordanian Broadcasting Radio after having this police owned public radio running later this year, and after the jordanian armed forces-owned Fann FM has been operating and gaining the highest ratings in jordan!

just a question

Update (18-Oct-2007): Amen FM can be heard online now through the website http://amenfm.jo/

01 July, 2006

World Cup Fever hits my coincident-related observation

Lousy subject, I know, this is a personal post so don't hesitate in taking your web ride back with that "Back" button on the upper left corner.

I'm just wondering how the world cup fever hitting the nation can cause such funny unexpected observations between the people getting into the fever.

Specifying, Male - Female relation..... plus, mind talk conversations. Yeah, ok... I know what your saying, that I've been seeing our Jordanian director's, Amin Matalqa, movie: (If ...).

The other day, back in the 1st round of the world cup games, I've noticed a lady at Prime Megastore, Mecca Mall.

She was an Italy fan, dressed in blue, including an italy T-shirt ( not an official football T-shirt, but well), and yes she was cute and attractive for those who are wondering, while I was with my "typical" and "formal" Germany World Cup cap. We were both hitting the books, we were exchanging views, I personally was making out a telepathic conversation in my mind with her, something like:

Me: My dear beautiful lady, you are too beautiful to support some losers like the Italians.
She: Hell Ya you and your dodgy Germans.
Me: Eh, I wanted to tell you that I'd love to see you (and your team) near the finals, but I don't really think those lousy guys will pass the 1st round.
She: We'll see, Forza Italia.
Me: As you wish, have I mentioned that your gorgeous.

Now when this last sentence was going in my mind she went away to another book stand!

Anyway, we kept spinning around the place, and we kept getting in front of each other every now and then, our eyes were like greeting each other each and every while..... I dunno, It might have seemed that i was going behind her, but i wasn't, I don't do those stuff. (in case you are reading my dear italian lady).

Now as she left the place I was saying to my self: "eh ... sleazy dreams, and this concludes another one moment silent date ;P"

Half an hour later, down the stairs at (Forever 21)... oh my god, its her again!
I swear to god, if I wanted to meet her it wouldn't have been so!

PS: NO, my mum wanted my opinions in some stuff she was interested in at Forever 21, so don't think neither that way nor the other way round dirty minds!!

Last Night, Germany's game, I watched this one at Mecca Mall (read more here).
Leaving the mall after the game, my eyes got on another lady just getting up the stairs from the ground floor, that is while i was heading to the stairs to leave the mall. A Germany fan ;)

Now this lady was a real fanatic, with an original Germany football T-Shirt, she had Ballack's T-Shirt ;) especially after the victory, we were both cheered up, we were both (despite moving in the oppisite directions), staring at each other cheered up and smiling,,,,, we were telepathically speaking in away like:
"Yeah, we rocked the house, we kicked their asses, yeah baby, Germany roxxxx, nice T-Shirt, nice cap ;)"....

exactly one hour after, I saw the lady again in shmeisani!
WHAT!
YOU AGAIN! HEYYYYYY ;)

We were both staring at each other and smiling again, having the same mental conversation we had at the mall ;)

PS: this happened in shmeisani as she was getting out from the car, while i was heading to my car to leave just across the street ;)

Now call this coincidence ;)

Technorati tags: World,cup,fever,hitting,mental,telepathy,in,town

Watching last night's Germany game at Mecca Mall

God, there were hundreds in there last night. I watched the game at Flavors, were i barely found were to sit, I sat at the tables in front of the bar, with tens of small TVs in front of me, unfortunately i couldn't get any chance at the big screens on the left side of Flavors, nor at the big screen on La Cabana (which are displaying the game from the viaccess cracked SF2 not ART), where Argentineans took over those two places before the start of the game, there were some Germans who got a place on the wide screens though.

There were Argentineans all over the place, I mean all over the place, especially at those two big screens on my right and my left.

And god how noisy they were... especially during the penalty kicks.

A funny thing was the fact that the goals were getting in on SF2 before ART, so when the Argentineans got their 1st goal those at La Cabana were screaming even before the corner was played on ART ;))))

during the penalty kicks there were like 200 people in front of La Caban out side the cafe standing and watching the game, and around 500 in front of flavors all the way from the electric stair until Prime Megastore.....

I was feeling the floor's ground shaking!

Especially with those people jumping around each and every penalty kick ;)

A funny thing that when the German goal keeper defended the last kick and made Germany win, i saw a German flag rising out of the bunch of 50 Argentineans at the nearbying La Cabana ;)

I think i should also tell you about 2 weired guys at flavors last night, showing out how many silly guys we have in our community nowadays (yes, I do agree with you Roba).

One was the guy at the bar sitting in front of me, he was a saudi kido (around 17-18 years old) with his funcky 80s hair, white dishdash, and a cheep plastic flip flop (yes, that brown ugly model called 7affaieh!).

Damn it, he was spinning all the time on that bar chair, he didnt know even how to sit, nor how to rotate his self on it! And he flyed his 7affaieh several time :/

All what he was doing was holding a pin and staring at girls passing by behind the cafe, he sometime even left the place hurrying after a bunch of them!

Sick people, sick minds!

Another weired guy was one that shared the table with me during the 1st 70 minutes or so of the game (since there a lot of people, people were getting together on the same table to watch the game, with direct separated bills to avoid payment conflicts).

He ordered a coffee and a chocolate cake, the last of which he didn't even touch, he wasnt really interested in the game either, he was there just to show off !!!!!! with what he ordered and his mobile he was “using” all the time.

And yes, he left around the minute 70 of the game and didnt even touch the cake!

Did I mention he was around 30 years old!? Now those are sick people! And this is why the mall is a place you should hate after all what ever places it may encapsulate!

Technorati tags: World,cup,Germany,Argentina,match,silly sick,guys,mall