I get to listen to some FM radio ads every now and then (don’t ask why) but today’s line up was rather interesting. !ہر چیز میزان میں، اچھی لگتی ہے (append more ridiculously childish lyrics here) Warid is asking us to start using our SIMs again by uttering the spell “کھل جا SIM SIM”. Not a bad techie pun even though its a bit corny. Junaid Jamshed is telling us that its ok to get Lays (no ungrammatical pun intended)....

This picture was taken while trying to install XP and Xubuntu on my machine without a CD. It’s quite clear how the data storage media has shrunk with the passage of time. The biggest disk here has a 2GB limit and was taken from an old dell laptop. The CF Card is 2GB as well, taken from a relatively newer Canon camera. The 1GB SD card is from my XDA and the teeny weeny micro SD is from my brother’s new ASUS EEPC....

Reflecting on reflections wrong Amidst acute allusions, strong he tries to be, to fit, belong But cravings cold, like senseless space just make him face his weary face They see him think,they see him place his head down in the sand, and say “It is not here, its far away- today is just another day.” 02:11-6.4.2009.

They flow on with the morning rush don’t hear, don’t see, don’t feel this human flood of vain concerns uncouth, unclean , unreal He travels on the metal road and weaves on dreams unique of ticklish clouds and purple pines of papers that can speak She comes and sits in front of him and opens up her book but words are smudges on a sheet fordone, forborne, forsook I watch them smile, I watch them talk...

Here is a short intro on how to make sure that major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) can be directed to see different URLs with the same content as a single ‘conanical’ URL. For example, the following links point to the same page but have different URLs http://nu.edu.pk/default.aspx http://nu.edu.pk http://www.nu.edu.pk/default.aspx http://www.nu.edu.pk/ http://nu.edu.pk/default.ASPX The solution is to select a single point as your representative URL and include this line in the HTML code....

Twitter asks ‘What are you doing?’ Google Latitude asks ‘Where are you?’ del.icio.us asks ‘What are you browsing?’ As in science, one of the most important things in web application development is thus asking the right question (at the right time). A properly phrased question can identify your niche along with giving you a guideline for keeping your focus on a single problem. As some people might notice, I tend NOT to write much anyway....

[caption id=“attachment_27” align=“alignleft” width=“151” caption=“BBC heading gone wrong (again)”] [/caption] I am sure BBC Urdu never does this intentionally but every once in a while, they put up an ambiguous heading. This one, roughly translated, can either mean ‘Exhibition of students from NCA’ or ‘Exhibition by students from NCA’. (You may NOT comment about the font problem here :> )

There was a talk today by Dr. Richard Larson at FAST-NU on an initiative by LINC called BLOSSOMS (Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies). It focuses on developing open ware modules for high school students which can be recorded and shared in classrooms. The creative twist is to create a ‘blend’ between the video lectures and an in class teacher. Participants are to be selected from US (MIT), Jordan and Pakistan....

The Conference on Language and Technology (CLT) 2009 is starting from tomorrow. Its a 3-day event consisting of invited talks, workshops, paper presentation and some other stuff as well. I hope to catch at least some of the workshops barring time overlap with classes and the session on Semantics and Information Retrieval if possible. Details can be viewed on http://www.crulp.org/clt09.