Ammar Ibrahim's blog

NOISA Stands for (No ISA) . ISA(Internet Security & Accelaration Server) is Microsoft's firewall, VPN, Internet Connection Sharing, And web caching solution.

The project aims to write a replacement for ISA. The project was initiated by Yaman Al-Saqqa, over 15 Members of JoLUG joined the project.

Talking to Yaman, he said that we're almost %20 done now. The project might release the first unstable version in the next 6-9 Months.

I joined the project, As I will be writing a Web monitoring tool. The really interesting part is to write a Real-Time Monitor using PHP. I might push it to the extreme and write a Rich Internet App. Using "Macromedia Flash" As a front end. That should be really amazing .

I'll keep ya posted.

Today I had a really hard day at uni trying to do all the stupid registration stuff. I figured out something really relaxing.

try to say "Ya hani" 3 times, it's quite good. Today I think I said "Ya hani" over 300 times in a very loud voice. And everybody near the languages department, J.U. Starred at me.


Downloads:
"Ya Hani" (wav)

While working on a project that allows the admin to upload files, images ..etc using web forms I tried the HTTP_Upload package. It's wonderful.

I stumbled across a problem, when you want to have unique file names, it uses a certain method to generate unique names, which results in really long & ugly file names( e.g. 'ghsjd23786djs4.png' ).

If you were uploading files that you want an end user to download this is not acceptable, a pdf user guide should have a descriptive name( e.g 'userGuide.pdf' ). So I have patched the package and modified it to allow for a naming mode which i called sequence. If a file with the same name exists, it'll start a sequence.

So for example if i'm uploading a file called 'userGuide.pdf' And a file with the same name exists in the directory it'll have the name 'userGuide[1].pdf' the next file will be 'userGuide[2].pdf' and so forth.

I will post the code as soon as I clean things up. I have discussed my modifications with the Package maintainer and others on the PEAR-Developers mailing list. Seems like this is a feature everybody is excited to have. Most probably you're gonna find my patch in the next stable release of the package

• Read the discussion between me and the other developers.


• PEAR-DEV mailing list NNTP HTTP

This is one of the greatest radio stations ever. Playing classical, tarab, cultural Arabic music. It really helps me when i'm working. I wake up at 5 am everyday, tune in, and start working .

http://4allofus.net:2580/

My hair is really short now .
I look so innocent, I kinda hate that.

If you've seen me the past couple of weeks, you'd know why i'm writing this I have been getting many requests lately to get a hair cut. Well, I got an Afro, and I kinda like it.

Here are some funny stories that happened lately.

• I was going to a meeting in Syntax, a really dear place to my heart, I worked there for 4 years. And as soon as I opened the door, I heard a laughter, not a normal one hehe, a VERY loud one! Lina, was there and she couldn't handle it hehe, and she actually went to look for scessors. then I walked into the room, I saw wa'el, and he kinda rolled on the floor laughing. Well, he's bald. I think he's just jelous hehe
  
  I was wearing a funky shirt, with an Afro, I looked like a 70's Disco fan. The speakers turned on in the office, then I heard a really funny comment. "The 70's are back" hehe! It was Ahmad Humeid. Again the guy is bald

• Yesterday My sister left back to KSA. We were at her husband's parents house. And there was a 2 year old kid there. I was wearing a Redhat Fedora, I took it off. And the baby freaked out, she ran away, and cried for 10 minutes, haha.

Anyway, I'm gonna go cut my hair after 2 weeks probably. So no more funny stories

Well, If you're a normalizer(Like me) who hates to denormalize his database design. You might end up writing really complex JOIN queries that consist of seomthing like 10 tables. There might be a performance hit. So what's a nice work around?

Here's the deal, you could split the query into two. e.g 5 tables in each query. Store the result of the queries in a temp table. 'Heap' would be perfect if you use MySQL, MsSQL uses the temp tables, just put # infron of the table name. Then write a query that joins those two temp tables. There might be times, when this produces results faster!

I found what I have been looking for! Some quality oriental music. Don't get me wrong, but most of the "arabic" Music is shitty. Absolutly crap. But there are many artists( not famous of course) who are trying to fight and write really good music.

The really good music is really hard to find, you can't buy it over amazon or any place. Oriental Tunes is what I have been looking for. They have a wide range of really good oriental stuff. Oriental Jazz, Rai influenced music and other stuff. The problem is that I only found one peice for naseer shamma!

You really need to check out these artists:

• Naseer Shamma


• Simoon Shaheen


• Anouar Brahem

Horray! It's finally there.

"Go" is the latest song By my friend Akram Baker. written specially for "Rock for Change concerts". A group of concerts for the greatest music artists of our time( Pearl Jam, Dave mathews, dixie chicks...) To change USA's Administration(Kick Bush out.)

And you know what's really amazing? It could be the 2nd best thing ever happened to Akram Baker, 1st thing to him being knowing me hehe, Is that "Pearl Jam" Might be playing his Song! I'll keep ya posted

You can download the song here! Please tell me what you think, I really like it. I think it sounds so Pearl Jamish, and Akram's voice sounds like Eddie Vedder.