Ammar Ibrahim's blog - IT & computers

Sharekna - Video & Photo Sharing for the Arab World. Launched

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:08:48 -0500

Today we [soft] launched the alpha [and buggy] version of Sharekna.com, The free online Video and Photo sharing for the Arab world.

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.

The Great Writer

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 18:24:36 -0500

Once upon a time
there was a young man who wanted to become a great writer. "I want to
write things the whole world will read," he declared. "Stuff that will
elicit strong emotions from people in every walk of life. I want my
writing to make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger."

He now lives happily ever after in Redmond, Washington, writing error messages for Microsoft.

Switching to Mac

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 04:24:14 -0500

It's been such a long time since I blogged. I got a very sexy MacBook Pro, and I'm currently trying to migrate to it. I will blog about my experience once I have something to write about.

Announcing Jordan Macintosh User Group

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 18:51:25 -0600

I'm happy to announce Jordan Mac User Group (JoMug).

Read the announcment.

Pretty good for Windows XP!

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 20:01:28 -0600

I love my new IBM machine! Check the uptime...

Highly Technical Tat3eemeh

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:24:35 -0600

$chmod 777 okhtak

permalinks MUST die!

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 02:30:28 -0500

With all the blogging hype so many terms came to existance; trackback, blogroll, ..etc. The most annoying and stupid term I've ever heard in my life is "permalink", not only it's meaninless, it confuses people to think there are temporary links.�

There's nothing that is referred to as permanent link, a link to a blog entry will always point to the same entry unless some wacko came up with a stupid blogging platform.

On Web Design

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 14:30:30 -0600

Currently I'm reading a very interesting Information Architecture book called "Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web".

The first chapter starts with a sentence that exactly explains how I've always felt about an idea that I've always argued with friends( designers ).

"Design is an old craft; digital is a new medium"

This is what many designers who design for the web need to understand. Web Design is way beyond Thinkin outside the box, or being a creative psycho artist. You need to understand the science of web design, you need to be very familiar with the technology before you call yourself a web designer. A utopian web designer would be a designer who can think of elements( I like to call them widgets ) that can be represented natively in the target technology( HTML, CSS, JS ).

Although I want to write more, but I beleive blog entries longer than two paragraphs get ignored... and my writing skills suck.

Google Reader....

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 17:51:24 -0500

Google reader is a new service from, duh, Google. It simply makes your daily internet reading easier. It's just an over hyped RSS client.

After you login you search for or import feeds from other apps. Then you'd get this really nice yet simple interface. You can also navigate with keyboard shortcuts, makes life much easier.

Test Drive Albawaba Blogs

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 15:52:53 -0500

As you probably know we've been working on creating the first region-wide Bilingual blogging service. It's nearly finished. The service is not officially launched, we're doing some final tests before going live with the BETA.

You can test drive Albawaba Blogs today. Your feedback is what will make the service better.

Uptime Cake!

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 04:16:56 -0500

Uptime is a technical term that measures how much the system has been running for( no reboots ). Admins brag about their uptimes, especially Linux dudes.

But this is quite new, an uptime cake for a server check it out on NuCleuZ blog.

JUDGE DENIES BIAS AGAINST "GUILTY MICROSOFT BASTARDS"

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 04:43:53 -0500

An interesting article on satirewire

"I had then, and still have
today, no personal opinions whatsoever as regards those guilty lying
bastards at Microsoft, or the evil prick son of a bitch who runs it,"
said Jackson, adding that his earlier negative comments were taken out
of context.

Read the full article.

Arabization Project - Call for Volunteers

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 15:24:20 -0500

Let me get straight to the point, in Arabic we have no official reference to ICT( Information & Communication Tech. ) terms. As a result, we can't properly translate software interfaces, relevant books and other stuff in a standard manner.�

Relying on official entities to come up with official list is just not gonna happen. Here's my idea of how to tackle this issue:

Manage to get a comprehensive list of ICT terms in English
Work privatley with a small group of volunteers and translate the list
Once the list is translated, publish the list on a website
When you have something almost comprehensive, people will start referring to the list, and day by day, it'll become the official list.

So if anybody is interested leave a comment, I spoke to some people about this Idea, and I already have two volunteers.

Norway - finally

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 22:13:54 -0500

after travelling 18 hours or actually 19 if you include the way from home to airport I reached my destination; middle of no where, hehe. I'm currently in the breathtaking Gaustablikk Resort to attend EZ summer camp 2005. Had to take two buses from Oslo in a 4 hour trip to get to Rjukan. There the really nice CEO of ez was waiting, he drove me and 4 other participants to the resort. The country is so beautiful, so green, nature is amazing!

Yesterday was one of the weirdest/craziest days in my life, I need at least 2 hours to write about that, will do when I get some time

Featured: Jordan Planet in Jordan Times

nospam@example.com (admin) — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 18:33:29 -0600

Jordan Planet was featured in Jordan Times. I'm really happy to see that our community is getting lots of attention from press. Read the feature.

This wouldn't have been possible without all the bloggers, I would like to thank two exceptional people: Natasha & Isam, you guys simply ROCK, keep it up!