Business

I will be going to Italy again on Monday to finish an experimental project I have been working on for the past 6 months. This will be the final implementation. Seems like I won't be going there again after this time. The best thing about Italy is food! Forget Pizzas; Italian sea food is like no other, it's very hard to explain how good the food is. It is the best food I ever had in my life.

I'm working with a friend to invent an entertainment system for Private Yachts, but with a twist. I wish I can disclose more details, but at this stage it's very confidential. The only thing I can disclose is that it's almost entirely based on Apple technologies. The thing is that most entertainment systems are over complicated, and the user experience is usually unpleasant. We're focusing on this area. It should be simple, advanced and very easy to use.

I promise I will disclose more details in the future And some photos of the kick ass system we're doing.

From a technical point of view, the site was built using CodeIgniter as an underlying framework, I had to modify some parts of the core to ease parts of handling Arabic and to have nice Arabic URLs ala Wikipedia style. CodeIgniter is not the greatest framework, but I would really recommend it for the first MVC encounter, especially if you have less experienced developers working on a project. The way it separates M from V from C is nice and easy to grasp even if the developer has no OOP experience. The thing that we did to a great degree is completely re sturcture the way CodeIgniter handles views. I hate how that was handled, and changed it to a more component/block based templating that proved to be a great time savior for our CSS/(x)HTML dude. The 2 other things I really hate about CodeIgniter are the way (GET & POST) are handled and the freakin disgusting DB layer that comes with it.

Another interesting thing we used was eZ Components (EZC), which to me is cleanest/most stable PHP code I have seen to date. EZC was integrated in CodeIgniter as a helper and it became very easy to load (autoload) EZC from within CodeIgniter. EZC was mainly used for image manipulation, and I'm very satisfied with the results.

- Junior Linux admin

- Senior Linux admin

- Client side technologes developer (CSS, JS, AJAX, X/HTML, DOM)

Shoot me an email (jobs@gnuix.com) for further details, no experience required, if you're a geek, smart and willing to work extra hard.

Currently I'm helping a client build their website. which is going to offer some digital communication services. We had some sort of a discussion about the way they brand their services, I'm no branding expert( Ahmad Humeid is). Which in this case is subscription plans. They want to put their brand with the name of the service, which i'm strictly against. Let's assume the brand name is ABC.

They want to have the following hypothetical plans:

• ABC basic
• ABC advnaced
• ABC power
• ABC ultimate

I think the following scheme is less confusing for users. Yet imagine someone calling customer support, this is by far easier to rememeber.

• Basic
• Advanced
• etc

All the following tips are based on true stories, things to avoid doing when applying for a job

Tip #1
When you walk in, and a gentleman( wallahy konet labes formal ) stands up and introduces himself:"Ammar Ibrahim", don't say "3ala rasy, meet wardeh 7abeeby"

Tip #2
Don't mention that you are part of a dabkeh group, and that this is your ambition in life if you're applying for an entry level programmer. Not that only, but never say things like "Wallahy il shabab ma betgasser iza 3endak fara7 aw ishy"

Tip #3
If you designed a website for a friend of yours to impress his girlfreind; a website that has pink background, damar music, flowers & cheesy arabic poems. Please don't use that as a PORTFOLIO! And don't pull out the CD from your pocket as if it was some illegal drug.

*I actually have a copy of what this dude showed me* I'm willing to sell it for $1000, it's worth every penny. I will guarantee you will laugh like you've never laughed before.