I have been using Aptana (open source extension to eclipse) for a few weeks now and really like it. Javascript dev is usually a pain in eclipse since testing needs to happen in the browser. This gets most of the syntax issues as you are writing the code.
via Ian Connor
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
The Prince is home now!
We are now back home. Baby Amir and mom passed all their medical tests with flying colors. Since Randa did a c-section, her recovery is slow and will take a few weeks. However, everything appears to be moving as expected. Amir is still figuring out his rhythm and clearly adjusting ours to match his :).
Throughout our lives there have been a few moments that we both recall to be life changing in a grand way. People have told us that seeing your child for the first time is an amazing experience, but words can not describe how much joy he has brought into our lives. We both wept when we first saw him. The toughness of Randa's pregnancy was instantly forgotten at this moment.
Now the fun begins and we both pray that we will be great parents for the new bundle of joy that has entered our life.
Sami & Randa
Throughout our lives there have been a few moments that we both recall to be life changing in a grand way. People have told us that seeing your child for the first time is an amazing experience, but words can not describe how much joy he has brought into our lives. We both wept when we first saw him. The toughness of Randa's pregnancy was instantly forgotten at this moment.
Now the fun begins and we both pray that we will be great parents for the new bundle of joy that has entered our life.
Sami & Randa
Monday, April 09, 2007
Amir Shalabi
Dear friends and family,
We are very happy to announce the arrival of our pride and joy Amir Shalabi on April 9th 2007 at 4:22pm. He weighs 6 pounds and 6 ounces (3kg). His height is 19.5' (50cm).
Thank God Mom Randa, baby, and Dad are doing well, and will be leaving the hospital in a few days.
With love,
Sami Shalabi "DAD" :-)
We are very happy to announce the arrival of our pride and joy Amir Shalabi on April 9th 2007 at 4:22pm. He weighs 6 pounds and 6 ounces (3kg). His height is 19.5' (50cm).
Thank God Mom Randa, baby, and Dad are doing well, and will be leaving the hospital in a few days.
With love,
Sami Shalabi "DAD" :-)
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Physics legend on getting creative ideas
Came across this talk by physics legend Murray Gell-Mann. He is a very impressive man! The talk builds a framework for getting to creative ideas. He explains his ideas through observations he saw and collected from science. An inspiring talk that can be applied to any field. The QA at the end has some funny moments.
Enjoy!
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Software Engineering Proverbs
Came across Software Engineering Proverbs. A wonderful collection of proverbs. Here are some of my favorites:
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it.
-- Einstein
We reject kings, presidents, and voting.
We believe in rough consensus and running code.
"If you think good architecture is expensive, try bad architecture."
-- Brian Foote and Joseph Yoder
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Happy Holidays everyone!
I have been under the radar lately, and wanted to get out of my hole and just say "Happy Holidays!"
Be happy or get out!
A study from the University of Toronto says that creativity is improved when people are in a good mood.
This was something that was obvious to me. I have found that I get into the "zone" only when I am really in a good mood. In any work environment, positive karma is a must! If you are ever in an environment that has bad karma, either change it or find a way to get out. Life it too short!
This was something that was obvious to me. I have found that I get into the "zone" only when I am really in a good mood. In any work environment, positive karma is a must! If you are ever in an environment that has bad karma, either change it or find a way to get out. Life it too short!
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Amazing Advertising
Found this link that shows some creative advertising campaigns.. My favorite is the lady swimming with sharks..
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
The Economics of Open Source Education
Came across the essay The Economics of Open Source Education. It does a good job analyzing the effects of open source on education.
It is only in the past couple of years that we started to see the effects of open source in the software industry. It has created new business models for building and selling software. Now that the world is more connected, I believe its effects will appear in new domains beyond software.
Open source is one of the great innovations that will impact the 21st Century. Enjoy the article!
It is only in the past couple of years that we started to see the effects of open source in the software industry. It has created new business models for building and selling software. Now that the world is more connected, I believe its effects will appear in new domains beyond software.
Open source is one of the great innovations that will impact the 21st Century. Enjoy the article!
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Ajax Hangs in Safari
At my recent gig, Zingku, I have been doing some heavy duty AJAX. There was one particular bug in Safari that I wanted to share with folks that took a while to figure out.
Our environment uses Tomcat as its servlet engine and only on Safari we would experience these random hangs in some AJAX based requests. These AJAX requests would never leave the browser and were difficult to reproduce. However, they happened often enough to frustrate us. The lack of debugging tools in Safari made things very difficult.
Well, after a weekend of digging into the problem I figured out the magic URL that caused the hangs to occur. Safari would just hang on AJAX URLs that contained the character ";". The reason it was hard to find was that we do not explicitly generate URLs that contain the ";" character. Tomcat does in the form of a ";JSESSIONID=magic_number" token when it thinks the browser does not have the right session cookie. This is what made it feel random.
The solution was to encode the ";" prior to feeding the URL into the XMLHttpRequest.. Here is how you can do it using a quick localized hack:
url = url.replace( ';', '%3B');
I hope Apple will introduce some better debugging tools for Safari in the future.
Our environment uses Tomcat as its servlet engine and only on Safari we would experience these random hangs in some AJAX based requests. These AJAX requests would never leave the browser and were difficult to reproduce. However, they happened often enough to frustrate us. The lack of debugging tools in Safari made things very difficult.
Well, after a weekend of digging into the problem I figured out the magic URL that caused the hangs to occur. Safari would just hang on AJAX URLs that contained the character ";". The reason it was hard to find was that we do not explicitly generate URLs that contain the ";" character. Tomcat does in the form of a ";JSESSIONID=magic_number" token when it thinks the browser does not have the right session cookie. This is what made it feel random.
The solution was to encode the ";" prior to feeding the URL into the XMLHttpRequest.. Here is how you can do it using a quick localized hack:
url = url.replace( ';', '%3B');
I hope Apple will introduce some better debugging tools for Safari in the future.
Run away from EJBs
I came across this article (Java EE Fallacies: EJBs are too complex, POJOs are easier.).
EJB, at least EJB 2.0, was one of the most over engineered and painful frameworks I have ever used. Given how bad the taste EJBs left with me, there is nothing any updates will do to get me to ever use or consider them for anything.
The author talks about non-functionals such as "real time monitoring (JSR-77), threading, proper load balancing etc" are just plain over engineering again. These requirements should not be solved by the mother of all frameworks. My experience suggests that these requirements need to be hand tuned for the app and by the app, not some advanced solves world peace framework.
Given the EJB experience what I suggest to any developer is to evolve from SIMPLE working systems as opposed to starting a project with the goal to solve everything. Grow into your requirements and iterate furiously.
PS. I can see some previous colleagues telling me, "I told you so" when we first starting using EJBs. Right Bob and Brian :)...
EJB, at least EJB 2.0, was one of the most over engineered and painful frameworks I have ever used. Given how bad the taste EJBs left with me, there is nothing any updates will do to get me to ever use or consider them for anything.
The author talks about non-functionals such as "real time monitoring (JSR-77), threading, proper load balancing etc" are just plain over engineering again. These requirements should not be solved by the mother of all frameworks. My experience suggests that these requirements need to be hand tuned for the app and by the app, not some advanced solves world peace framework.
Given the EJB experience what I suggest to any developer is to evolve from SIMPLE working systems as opposed to starting a project with the goal to solve everything. Grow into your requirements and iterate furiously.
PS. I can see some previous colleagues telling me, "I told you so" when we first starting using EJBs. Right Bob and Brian :)...
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Monday, July 31, 2006
We're hiring
We are a small funded company that is building an exciting consumer site that brings together web, mobile, and IM. We are looking for a junior engineer to join our small growing team.
- Do you love to code? Does the line between hobby and work feel blurry?
- Have you been inspired by your own ideas and then get them done?
- Do you like working in small teams?
- Do you love working on every layer of the software stack?
- Are you excited by stuff you can do with mobile phones and IM?
- Do you like to invent and learn new technologies?
- Do you like to work with little supervision?
- Do you love your Unix and Java?
- Do you debate about programming?
- Do you obsess over creating beautifully simple code?
- Do you love to get things done?
- Do you want to work on a cool consumer Web 2.0 product that will change the world?
- Do you want to work in the Boston area?
Thursday, July 27, 2006
I need my Web 2.0 logo
Came across this site focused on "Web2ifying" well known corporate logos. Some are just hilarious. Enjoy
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
Found this video of Steve Jobs doing a commencement speech at Stanford... Another wonderful speech from a great visionary about how he lived his life and his advice to the next generation. Watch it...
Monday, July 03, 2006
Art of the Start Video
I read The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki a while back. It had wonderful down to earth advice about innovation and entrepreneurship which apply to both startup and corporate settings.
Guy recently posted a video he did that covers a lot of topics in the book. If you do not have time to read the book watch the video... He is a great speaker!
Thursday, June 22, 2006
World Cup Prize Money
I was watching a game the other day and was a little surprised to hear one of the commentators talk about prize money. For all the years I have watched the world cup it was the first time I heard it. So I looked around and found out that a lot of money is set aside for this. In fact it is 332 million Swiss francs ($270 million) that is set aside for prizes. It was hard to find the data since it was distributed in many small articles.
The amount given to teams range from 7 million Swiss francs (currently $5.6 million) for teams beaten in the first round to 25.5 million Swiss francs ($20 million) for the champion.
So the next question is who gets the money? hmm..
The amount given to teams range from 7 million Swiss francs (currently $5.6 million) for teams beaten in the first round to 25.5 million Swiss francs ($20 million) for the champion.
So the next question is who gets the money? hmm..
Saturday, June 10, 2006
World Cup in ASCII art!
Nice hack for geeky soccer fans.. Reminds me of the matrix.. Watch a live feed of the world cup in ASCII art at http://ascii-wm.net/
All you need to do is telnet ascii-wm.net 2006 and enjoy!
Saturday, June 03, 2006
InquisitorX
Came across inquisitorx today which is a little search aggregator that provides suggestions as you type with one click search engine changes. Additionally, you can download a safari plugin for it. Seems useful and cool. Plan to use it for a couple of days.
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