Reorganized blog categories

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem I just finished re-reorganizing my blog categories after pondering the difference between tags & categories.  Incidentally, I will attempt to start using tags on my blog posts as well.  Subsequently, I will be recategorizing a lot of posts that are categorized in both a category as well as its parent, since that…

60 Minutes segment on apartheid in Israel

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml#ccmm Watch at the link above for a bold & frank look at the living conditions of the Palestinians under apartheid in Israel, specifically in the West Bank.  Interesting to note is that the story only mentioned the West Bank.  Keep in mind when viewing their situation that Gaza is far, far worse off due…

LDAP for authentication back end

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem For a long time now I’ve been wanting to setup an LDAP back end for various Hidayah Online Network resources, especially the Columbus Dawah project.  This has become particularly pressing as the Columbus Dawah website has three primary public services – the blog, the forums, the school.  Additionally, in the future I…

En route to Malaysia

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, my wife & I are en route to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where we’ll be staying one night with her brother & his family before continuing on our way to home in Kuala Terengganu, in shaaʾ Allaah.  Right now we’re in the Kuwait International Airport, and, alhamdulillaah, they have free wifi throughout…

Flock of Seabirds

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, from our apartment in Alexandria, Egypt, we have an outstanding view of the Mediterranean Sea on clear days. On foggy days, we’re treated to an eery sight where the sea is ambiguously “missing”. One of the amazing sights I discovered while looking over the sea was the hypnotizing landing sequence of…

Concatenating compressed files

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem I have my new server (aalimraan.hidayahonline.net – the one hosting Audio Islam) setup to log web accesses each day to its own file which is then bzip2-compressed.  This is convenient for a variety of reasons. Firstly, I can easily access statistics for each day by processing the appropriate file. B, I can…

International Year of Astronomy 2009

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured an announcement for the International Year of Astronomy.  This alone would be noteworthy enough, but they also have a downloadable trailer (warning: contains some music, but it’s not prominent until the end).  This is great for geeks, and especially video geeks like Belal & me…