Ammar Ibrahim's blog

My Favorite Pro Palestinian Song

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-08-28T20:39:09Z

My problem with most pro Palestinian songs is that they have lots of religion, violence and annoying thoughts. But two artists have remarkably created a very nice form of art based on the cause. Marcel Khalifeh and Ahmad Qabour are my favourites in this area. For many, many years, I have been enjoying and feeling the strong emotions in the fantastic songs the two composed. I love how they focues on the human issue above anything else. My favorite song happens to be a song by Qabour which I found on YouTube today, I really hope you enjoy it, and I highly recommend you check his other songs provided below the embedded video:

ارحل

Ommi - Ummi (My Mother) أمي - مرسيل خليفة

I need your opinion...

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-08-27T17:52:45Z

I'm not sure if you guys follow the local stock market (Amman Stock Exchange). If you do, I would like your opinion on few things:

1- Do you like the current site?

2- Can you find information you are looking for easily?

3- What kind of functionality/pages do you use most?

4- What are the problems, and how can they be fixed?

5- If the ASE redesigns the site, what would you like to see?

Thanks in advance.

Sending Emails with MIME attachments on Linux from the shell

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-07-13T16:26:15Z

mutt -s "Email Subject" -a /home/blabla/attachment.tar email@example.com < /dev/null

If you need to type anything in the body you can replace "/dev/null" with a text file.

Back to Italy...

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-05-22T16:49:58Z

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.

PHP developers needed

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-04-17T22:08:24Z

I'm seeking to hire PHP developers in all levels. We have very

exciting projects that we are working on with clients from all over

the world. Most of the projects we work on are technically challenging

and part of a team that requires great communication skills. Even if

you don't know PHP specifically but you live and breathe to program

and you are always trying to find a way to improve your skills, we ask

you to join us.

Please send your resume/CV directly to "ammar [dot] ibrahim [at] gmail". Please put

"[PHP-DEV]" in the subject line,

Leaving to Italy

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-03-25T16:50:20Z

I will be leaving to Italy in few days to continue my work on an interesting project I'm about to finalize this month. A friend came up with a crazy idea to imeplement a cheap, but higher quality entertainment system for private Yachts. It turned out to be so much more challenging than I thought it would be. The system is entirely built using Apple technologies. I will be writing more about it in the near future once I finalize the entire setup.

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

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-03-18T23:08:48Z

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 Video That Made Me Emotional

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-01-28T02:10:26Z

Growing up in Jordan teaches you to be tough, and sharpens the art of hiding your emotions. As a male you are supposed to be mtamse7 (). I'm not ashamed to show my emotions once a while (whenever my Jordanian pride lets me). Yesterday, while checking out YouTube, I found a video that received over 20 million views! I thought I should check it out. It happens to be an audition for Britain Got Talent, which - not surprisingly - is the counterpart of America Got Talent.

I thought this would entertain me for few minutes. So, I played the video and to my surprise it let my eyes drop few tears. I'm sure it would be very hard to understand as there's nothing emotional about it. But, to me it is. I'll let you watch the video below, then read what I have to see below.

There you see, a sub ordinary human, not very young, who most of us would never be interested in from the way he looks. He's modest to a degree I can't comprehend. He shows up on stage, with obvious lack of confidence and a rusty suit. Then he completely leaves you in shock! It's very hard to believe. The words are failing to describe my interest in this situation, I wish I was a better writer.

Then, you get to see that because there was a platform, this very ordinary man will become the next Pavarotti. Oh how I wish we could have a platform one day for someone to solve the humanitarian issue in Palestine. How I would love to see some ordinary man revolt, overnight, and solve our misery. We need Paul Potts, we need a hero.

I Hate Medicine

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-01-27T04:18:02Z

Disclaimer: this entry is pointless.

Life has a weird way of balancing things out. I'm a very scientific person that loves technology to the max, and I spend all my day interacting with advanced technology. Even when I run, I have sensors, remotes and hi tech crap over my body to tune and benchmark my runs. You would expect me to trust science when it comes to my health, not that I don't, but I love organic things. I happen to hate medicine a lot, on average I take 4 Panadol pills a year, and that is it. I clearly remember a few years when I didn't take any medicine at all. I'm sort of an old 7ajjeh (old woman) when I have a flu; I keep myself warm, relax, and drink lots of orange juice. Never medicine.

Even when it comes to food, I like healthy food, not because I'm on diet (god forbid), but it's actually tastier. I find processed food usually disgusting, I grew up in a healthy family. I would assume that my family are helth freaks, we're thin it's not a joke. I don't even like sugar that much, which is a weird for half a Nabulsi.

I just wonder for how long can I keep my hatred to medicine before I have those bags of medicine all around me.

Charlie's Angels Favorite Part

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-01-26T04:23:13Z

I happen to like a few cheesy movies; one of them being Charlie's Angels. There's a hilarious funny part of the angels yoddling. Here you go:

Running a Marathon - litrally!

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-01-22T22:47:40Z

It's not a joke, I'm as scared as you are. I will be running a marathon in 10 days! It may surprise those who know my bad habits of smoking, partying like there's no tomorrow, and lack of physical activity. Fortunately, I quit smoking almost 3 months ago, and decided to become a healthier creature. I've been practicing for some time now, and hopefully, my team will be able to finish the race.

Dead to Read (D2R) is an annual event for psychos, you get teams of 10 people to run 242KM from Dead Sea to Red Sea in under 24 hours. we start running at 3 PM Thursday Jan 31st, and finish (hopefully), by friday morning. I don't understand how I will be awake for 24 hours running. Let that not worry you, as I'm sure a lost hyena will find my sweaty meat tasty on the way down to Aqaba.

My team is a combination of not-bad-runners, horrible runners, ballroom dancer, gimp and a friend's wife. Since the friend's wife is the only woman on the team, we decided to call our team "Sarah and the Sausage Factory". I already heard the not-so-funny jokes of "small sausage, and 4 inch sausage factory". The bad news is that if we win, we won't get any press coverage, I'm sure any editor who grow up in a nasty family would understand the nasty name.

Wish me, and the sausage jockeys some luck.

Women are crazy!

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2008-01-20T22:35:51Z

Via Rueters

BEIJING (Reuters) - A 19-year-old Chinese student recorded the killing
and dismembering of her married lover by her boyfriend, local media
said on Friday.

Read the full story.

Blogging from Italy

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2007-11-20T20:40:17Z

I'm currently in Italy, in a quiet industrial town called Ancona. I will be heading to Rome in few hours, hopefully I will get to see the Colosseum. The thing I'm loving about Italy is food, it's so freakin' good. Gotta run, will write more when I can.

Live Blogging a Mac story

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2007-10-08T04:48:48Z

I would like to share a story that just took place.

I developed a habit of working from a nice coffee place called Gloria
Jeans (Especially that I don't like Starbucks). The place happens to
have a free WIFI for the customers. As I walked in, I saw a young lady
and a young man setting up their new MacBook. I introduced myself and
welcomed them to the Mac world and helped them setup a few things, as
they had just started their Mac for the first time. They were so
excited and in love with their machine. I also told them about our Mac Users Group, and they said they will join and spread the word.

It would be great if we can get more & more users to this group to share our thoughts, and hopefully learn. Please, all Mac users out there, help us create a decent community.

Ruby On Rails Fans: Go "duck" yourself

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — 2007-10-03T22:21:48Z

I'm not alone, read what this guy had to go through when he migrated to RoR from PHP, and then went back!

I'm always angry when someone mentions RoR, it's like teaching a new dog new tricks, when the old dog knows it all.

For the love of god, stop migrating to RoR just because it's cool. No one ever said RoR sucks, it's just that there's SO much pre-exisitng PHP code that you would never find in any other language. 40% of the top 100 sites are PHP, and PHP is the most used language on the Internet. What else do you want to know?

PHP does have tons of frameworks, yet doesn't force a style or a paradigm. You can do whatever you want with it, you can even build the biggest, most trafficked site in the universe!

Why the hell do you even want to consider something else!

Update: Why don't you also check an entry I wrote about ColdFusion few years ago