Thought Clouds
The Digital Bender

From Gaza Demonstration in Amman 29th December 2008

I say let them. Its been more than two years since they got their behind handed to them. They ran away from the North, and now bullying the South. They will soon realize who stupid this decision is. الله يعزك يا غزة

This is not a blog post. It is not an entertainment piece or an opinion piece. It is not a product review, or best of 2008. This is a piece to bear witness, an article of evidence that you will read and understand and then make a choice. This is so you could not claim ignorance. Yesterday, 27th of December 2008. American airplanes bought for Israel with American money, were flown over crowded locations over the Gaza strip of Palestine and carried out a massacre against helpless people in their own open-air prison. Hundreds killed, maimed, orphaned and burned alive. The word Holocaust comes to mind.  The official statement from Israel, and the general media push is that Hamas is the target, as if Hamas is a discrete round target in a shooting range that you can safely shoot and leave when you are done. For those who do not know Gaza, please take a look. It is so crowded, you couldn't sneeze there without spraying a few people, let alone target a Hamas member with a bomb that takes t...

Israel is using American weapons bought with American loans to bomb from the sky school children running around in the streets and their parents -- also running around in the streets.  The children are guilty, of course, of throwing stones AND guilty that some 5 people made a pipe that directs metal balls with gun poweder attached to its end, that they built in their toolshed. Catapolting watermealons may be more effective, but still. There's gun poweder involved. Must bomb the children. Here is my message to Arab leaders and the Palestinians: "Save your breath". The world does not hear you. The world will not come to rescue you.  REALITY Palestine is a country under occupation by Israel, the most over armed gang in the history of the world. And that is it! The only thing to do is fight it. Its the only thing we can do. Alternatively, we can just sit there and accept it becoming one of the many people in history that welcomed its aggressor and accepted is invaders. UNLIKL...

Here we go again. I wonder who is next? re: The URL

Yelsmin at 7 Years , originally uploaded by LotusGem .

A brilliant animation from Pixar. Note the music. Reminds me a bit of ratatouille's. Also, note a shot where you see both sides of the character in the same shot. The hand making a move in the foreground and in the background a breathless and shocked Geri.

Fun clip of the day

Fuzzy Logic , originally uploaded by LotusGem . Is it just me, or is this beautiful.

So I was wrong. I can see that now. In a previous post, I had declared that Wi-tribe which I was using at the time sucked a bit. Thought Clouds - The Digital Bender: Why Wi-Tribe may not be your best bet I can see now after nearly two months of using UMAX that Wi-Tribe, was BRILLIANT. And that it is UMAX that sucks. With the exception of a few good sales people, and one good engineer. I have had no pleasant experience with UMAX whatsoever. The connection was very unreliable, the signal often bad, speed never reached 1mbps except in one isolated moment, support is reluctant and rigid. Dear Wi-Tribe, I apologize, I made a mistake. I love you and I'm coming back to you.

UPDATED - Oct 28, 2008 - Here I've been connected through Wi-Tribe during the past month and a half. And here is the verdict: Coverage in my area was good, as long as the modem was near or outside a window. I live in Al-Jubeiha Area Bandwidth was near the amount I paid for but always less Torrent traffic is shaped, don't expect anything above 32KB After forgetting a couple of torrents uploading at full speed for a few days, I found out that I was getting around 56kbps, about the same speed a quick dial up phone connection If you reach around 20GB of total upload+download in a month, you will be dropped down to 128kbps, but you will be really getting around 56kbps On support Calling support is a hit and miss deal. Meaning that you may or may not get through Getting through to support is a hit and miss deal. Meaning that you may or may not get help In reality, I was always shown a caring attitude but never got any results One funny thing. I called to complain about the speed, and...

Great looking rock buildings in Jordan Who knows what this is called

So here I am back in Jordan, and I find my self immediately adapted to the moods of living here. Crazy is the new definition of oil prices in Jordan. But these prices lead me to believe that Jordanians are complaining more out of habit than anything else. I mean people are still driving their cars and scooters/bikes are no where to be seen. One positive side to this oil crisis is that my trusty old Toyota Tercel is now worth significantly more than it did 5 years ago. Thanks be to God, it seems I am making money on everything these days. Even by accident. I will start looking for work/job soon. Due to a long bumpy road from Doha to Amman, my furniture is in dire need of a good carpenter. Once that is sorted out I need to sit down and think about Wi-Tribe, UMAX, Zain DSL, Orange ADSL ...etc. Until then, I will try to keep these nuggets of blog posts coming through for my few loyal fans. (bas balash). PS: The problem with driving in Jordan is not that traffic laws are too lenient. It...

I am back in Jordan now. Safely back at home and happy about it.

I am leaving Qatar. NOW.

So. I will most probably go off the DRADIS during the next few days, and will remain off until further notice. I will be disconnecting the comms in my HQ (house) tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Which means I will have no access to the net until I am in Jordan. I need all of your recommendations on the best ISP in Jordan. I need: Mobile number Wireless Internet Access (3G, Wifi or WiMax???) DSL or ADSL2 or faster connection Please let me know your opinions and recommendations on the ISPs and their performance in Jordan.

There is a need for a way to manage what I am going through. Normally, I manage everything with ease. Taking decisions take just a little more time than is required to gather the information. I manage projects, communicate effectively, identify and manage risks and issues. But now, I am helpless. I am trying to move to Jordan. There are 100 interdependent issues of selling the cars, the ACs, disconnecting the services, turning the house over to the landlord, making the deal with the transportation company and finishing the packing, finishing the paper work required for the borders, canceling my residence permit, finishing the paper work with my employer ....etc. Each of the things strung together in a specific order can make a neat time line which you can base your plans on. Complexities happen once you realize that any change to any of these tasks, means a change to most others, in terms of dependencies, probably of risk becoming an issue and time line. How do you manage this? Work st...

I am about to see the movie review from the Totally Rad Show guys, but before I do that I want to put on paper what I think of this movie. This movie is retarded. M Shamalamananihnih sucks, he should change his career to cinematography or something that is not director. I've better performances (FAR BETTER) for the actors in other movies, and the only reason they come across overacting and stupid in my opinion is the director. The story is primitive and immature, and feels like how a 10 yearold would tell the story. The premise, however, is interesting, and it feels like the story telling and the direction spoiled what could've been a really good movie. Bottom line, the movie is crap. Don't pay money for it. Just let someone tell what it is about and you will have a better experience than what they had. PS: Go see the movie if you like watching people killing themselves.

So the Cylons are saying this and I quote: "There is no God but God" which literally translates to لا اله الا الله "There is no such thing as coincidence, God wills the universe according to his desire" which translates to لا يوجد شيء اسمه صدفه، انما يدبر الله الكون كيف يشاء "There are no Gods, there is only one God" translates to لا يوجد آلهة، انما هو اله واحد Picture by immolation scene. All of these themes are at the core of the Muslim faith. And the literal translation translates into verses commonly used by Muslims everyday. The first one is what you HAVE to believe as the basis for Islam. I would assume that the writer(s) of BattleStar Galactica probably knew about this, and is(are) making Cylons talk like Muslims. The question is why?

Here is a link, ictQatar Borchure Go to page 2 and check the bottom left side. The whole background photo is one of mine, and I one a photo competition in Qatar a while back with this same photo. I have a hard copy of the brochure and I must say that I could have done a better job at printing it, though the direction and design is amazing. Here is another of your favorites.

EPIC!!! *LOL* 'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

It's the little things that get to me. Here is a bit of education. I know most of you already know that, so this is targeted to the 1% of you who do not know it and insist on using the elevators I use EVERY TIME! If you want to go up, you press up only. If you want to go down, you press down. Failure to do so gives me the right to tell you off. If you want to go into the elevator, you should wait for whoever wants to get out before you go in. Failure to do so, gives me the right to walk through you. If you want to get out of the elevator, and someone is waiting to go in, they are waiting for you to leave. Hesitation only makes you look stupid. You should leave the moment the door is open. If I am waiting in the bottom floor for the elevator, and after a long wait I find you in the elevator taking the trip down and up, looking stupid and smelly, don't be surprised if I give you the evil eye.

So The Island disappears, and people have different names, Jack's father appears to whats his name... and says its time to go home or something as stupid as that Hurley as playing chess with echo ... Lock is dead, but is not really Lock. And climactic music when John Lock finds out about the time travel capabilities of the Island. Did they forget they spent around 3 episodes of the season talking about it?!!! May be they did during the strike. Who cares any more. WHAT IS THIS SHOW ABOUT ANYWAYS?!! I really forgot, what are we thinking about? What are we trying to figure out?! Seriously. I mean it is ALL questions now. There is nothing happening. Only more weird stuff that cannot be explained and can only more question marks. And there are more uninteresting and insignificant twists. And many many useless fillers that we can all do without, especially when sitting through two full episodes. But I cant stop watching. Not now. Next season is ALL answers. HAS to be ALL answers .... now...

Image via Wikipedia After 5 years in Qatar, with career progress well below my market-aware expectations, and less the perfect living conditions. I've finally decided to go back to Jordan and end my 5 years of good-fortune-bringing presence in Qatar. I quit my job and should be in Jordan in time for the summer, which is perfect for my fig addiction. I had quite a few blog readers from Jordan and hope to finally link the emails and avatars to actual physical people. If you are reading this, and you are in Jordan, you have the following tasks: Start looking for a job for me Make your self available for a physical meeting under my patronage* * Ugly people and children are not welcome

Guess which car this is?

Public park in Sweileh , originally uploaded by LotusGem . A public park in Sweileh

I've received an invitation on flickr to join a group called "We say no to videos on flickr". Any one else find this shocking? Why would any one oppose something like that? Seems to me the only reason for someone to not want such a new feature on flickr is that they're rigid dinosaurs pretty much stuck in their ways and will reject anything or anyone that is new or different. Here is a tutorial on how to solve this problem on flickr if you don't want to see the videos. You click on a flickr link that takes you to the page with the evil video on it Don't click to play the evil video on the page Problem solved. Videos, when not moving, are really only pictures Could it be that some people are afraid they wouldn't get as much attention to their photos when there are prettier pictures that move? If so, those attention h***s need help. What is more shocking though is that it seems the majority of people who join these groups are just sheep and cows Baaing and m...

I don't like tags, and I do not do them. However, this one is entertaining to me. So I will make it entertaining for you too. I will list the 10 things but some of them might not be true. Here we go: I get red-in-the-face-seething-mad at things people usually find merely annoying *such as someone not waiting in line*, and could care less about things people find seethe worthy *such as "I'm better than you" type people*. I mean, who cares?? I am vocal (sometimes nasty) when letting people know that they should wait in line, or clean after themselves or drive like a human being I've never driven a car without wearing a seat belt I started driving at 9 years I wrote my first program at 10 and first game at 14 I can save money like chipmunks saving nuts for winter I can spend money like there is no tomorrow (depends on the mood) I once played a 2 on 1 half court basketball game in college. And Won. I developed an online banking framework from white page to fully teste...

Awesome MacBook Air Parody. By the way, I used it the other day ( The Macbook Air ) and it gets a firm two thumbs up.

Panorama of Doha Corniche , originally uploaded by LotusGem . Doha corniche . A group of 4 photos were merged together for this one gigantic one. I am thinking this may be a very nice photo if taken around sunset. Large size

Source: Wikipedia As a Lexus owner, I always thought people who buy Mercedes were, well, Chumps! They are chumps in that they Multi-overpay. They over pay for the car, as in no car should cost that much. They overpay for the name, as in Mercedes is not what it used to be, especially in reliability. They overpay for running cost, as in Mercedes parts are very costly the world over and running cost is way above average. You can get a much better car from any similarly priced Lexus. Of course, I speak as a person who had the pleasure of owning a couple Lexus cars for a long time and had enough using a Mercedes to know what I am talking about. Plus the numbers support it. TCO numbers from edmunds.com and reliability reports from JDPower should give a good reading. Go here to see JDPower's ratings per brand Check this for TCO of Merecedes S Class compared to average I mean, if you have the money, you cannot go wrong with the Lexus LS 460 . There is simply no better car.

ABB FlexPicker Robots

I dont know how people can justify it, and by people I mean people who are Muslim, say things like "boycott American/Danish products", and act all holy and righteous. Those people would always patronize and take the high ground, yet, you find out they are taking usury loans from banks usury banks. I don't know how they can justify Riba? Is it possible that they do not know how sinful this is? Or may be they do but they "really needed the money to buy a 2008 car". Hypocrites! يقول أكرم الخلق سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم لعن الله آكل الربا ومؤكله وشاهديه وكاتبه رواه أحمد، وأبو داود، والترمذي وصححه، والنسائي، وابن ماجة

Talk about an amazing talent that is rendered useless by a 15$ calculator

I was torn between extreme happiness and utter sorrow as my son came into this life and my father in law left this life with no more than 7 days between them. This combo event put thing in perspective and I have hopefully taken the lesson learned and using it to better center my self in this life. A side effect of this is that blog about Jordan day dropped from a very important event to an insignificant and short lived blimp on my radar.

Looks like good Arabization

I just found this out and thought it may be useful for iPhone users. Most of us already know of the blogger.com feature where you can setup an email address @blogger.com where you can send an email to that address and blogger would either publish it immediately or save it as a draft post for further review. This can be found under Settings>Email>Mail-To-Blogger Address. I found out that if you use your Yahoo email account on your iPhone as your default sending account you cannot properly post images. You will get a tag that says "img src="cid:" and blogger fails to display the image you attached. I solved this by using gmail as my default sending account. To do this, go to mail>sending>default account, and choose your gmail account. From this point I could just click a photo, send it as email and add my text, hit send and I find it on my blogger. This this post was done through sending an email in the manner described above.

Sent from my iPhone

Inspirational video of the day.

WHY?! are these guys not more famous than Spears' drug problems?

I take it back. The iPhone is an amazing device, and is a reinvention of the telephone. Why the sudden change of heart you ask? Well, I used one. And let me tell you, I am definitely getting one soon. I mean the interface doesn't make you wait, it does what you want, and when you want it. Everything is easy, quick, fun and beautiful. Why cant other OSs do that? WHY MUST I HAVE TO WAIT TO GO TO PHONE?! And why do I have to worry about rotating the screen or setting the brightness or turning off the screen when I am not using it?!!!! Get the phone to do that for you. Am I finding my self aligned with the Apple way of thinking? Seem so. I read this in the iPhone User Guide. And it struck me that Steve Jobs understands why I want. Check if you can spot the epiphany-triggering-words. iPhone User Guide excerpt "Use the polishing cloth that came with iPhone to gently wipe the glass screen and the case. You can also use a soft, slightly damp, lint-free cloth."

Hmm ... I sense disturbance in the force. This is pretty much a place holder. For the future. I want to be able to see I told you so, or I told you so sort of. There is something happening behind the seens, and it involves iPhone, Android and Garmin's upcoming Nuvifone. .... Possibly others. (Dell soon?)

Go here for the video on metacafe

During a recent development in one of the projects at work, I saw me -- as my friends did, in a different light. I was all over the place. I mean networking, applications, DB, authentication, registration, even in deep detail. And was up to it. I think this is the first time people in this work place realized my swiss-army-knifness. And it is a beautiful and welcome reminder of what I once was. For those who don't know, I no longer have a technical title. I spend my time reviewing schedules and documents. Everyone thought I was an old timer who once had great digital bending powers but no more. Even I though that a bit. But I AM BACK!

First some background. Qwaider made the following comment on a previous post ..... On a side note, have you seen the reports on games? WII beat everyone for December, followed by Xbox36 then PS2 and finally PS3! Looks like Sony might be losing this one if their 5 year old console STILL beats their flagship console December Console NPDs are as follows: Nintendo DS - 2.47 mil Wii - 1.35 mil Xbox 360 - 1.26 mil PlayStation 2 - 1.1 mil PSP - 1.06 mil PlayStation 3 - 797,600 It is quite obvious that XBOX 360 is giving the Wii a run for it's money. And that Sony is struggling with getting people to embrace their next gen PS3. And there is no reason for that to change except for one tiny thing. Hollywood seems to have dumped HD-DVD in favor of Blu-ray, and that is guaranteed to drive up demand for the Blu-ray devices. Of which, PS3 is the most famous and sought after model. People who have been waiting for the format wars to end are now likely to go the PS3 route and get a gaming consol...

I don't know the context of this clip. But it's an excellent recitation of Al Rahman. I wonder if nonmuslims feel the power and warmth I (we) feel when we listen to this?

Online community. This is the big difference between the XBOX 360 and any other gaming platform. And I am not talking about being able to play with your friends online, only. I am talking about that unique ability to turn on your XBOX 360, see who of your friends is online and what they are playing, and playing with them, or at least start voice chatting with them while you watch a movie or play another game. Some of the best times I've had in gaming is when I could hear the bellowing screams of anguish as I crush my friends in Halo 3, or the hollow accusations of the losers as I pass them by in my lesser car blasting down a stretch of road in the Nurnburgring. "YOU ARE CHEATING!!" They would say, knowing that cheating is not possible on XBOX Live. Add to that the availability of MSN Messenger support and you have a the full experience. I wish more of my friends would pick up and XBOX 360 and "Jump in".

I can now go out and buy a card that can render a human that does NOT exist. Imagine what is now available for multi-billion dollar organizations. This is called "NVIDIA's Human Head Demo"