www.emadashi.com my new blog space!

Finally, I am doing it! I am becoming a big boy and taking care of my self; moving from the caring WordPress.com world to my own hosting with my own domain: www.emadashi.com

While taking this step I had many flashes ranging from “COOL, I CAN DO ALL THAT NOW!” to “OH MY GOD, WHAT AM I DOING!”; it’s hard, has lots of responsibility, and many sacrifices like simple life, and the Google ranking I will be losing since June last year.

Checking all the stats and visits brings my tears down (not really down though!). So what I am going to do is to keep my old blog (this one) so visitors can still see my old posts and I won’t loose the ranking, what do you think? should I do that? (comment if you please)

The good thing is, though, that if you are subscribed to this blog’s feed, you don’t have to change anything; It will happen automatically and you will still get the new posts (you might get the old posts again once more when I take that step).

So anyway, I hope this step to be a new era for better life, all hope.

Google Is Moving Feedburners’ Servers

As the title tells, Google is moving the Feedburner servers, and my RSS feed URL has changed now to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/eashi. 

Google “promised” to keep the old feeds working for a while, so anyone who has subscribed to this blog will not be affected “for a while”; so if you want to stay up to date with the proper feed URL of this blog (and I hope you do ), please change the feed url to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/eashi.

Thank you all  for your continuous attention

Gaza, Starvation For 18 Months And a Massacre Today!

Update: death toll rate reaches 470 and 2400 injuries, and I will stop counting.

After a 20 months siege during which there was no water, food, medicine, gas, oil, and electricity…today Israel thinks that’s not enough…and starts a massacre; 160 dead, 200 wounded by 40 rockets hit Gaza and still going.

Photos From the Massacre Taking Place Today

English news: here
Arabic news: here

Photos From the Siege

English news: here
Arabic news: here, and here

smuggling food through the tunnels

Milk for the small children who lack the basic ingredients for healthy food, finds its only way trough tunnels under ground.

no electricity, you know what this affects; imagine yourself without electricity for 1 week, not saying 20 months!

Travians be Warned…Rapacious is Rising

I don’t know whether thank or scold my good friend Omar Qadan for introducing me to Travian, a strategy game played online.

It’s amazing how a simple,  web-based, HTML-front game can be so rich and vast entertainment wise! It’s a real strategy game where you build villages, resources, armies, embassies, and conduct trading, diplomacy, wars, and alliances…all through simple images, numbers and text.

On the other hand, I can’t ignore the programming part of the game (being a developer that is), it must be big, fun and tiring; think of all these rules and the simulation algorithms the game is being built upon , the server handling thousands of players, …and scripts (yes! lots of hacks!  ). Even the hacking idea it self is so delicious (programming wise only   ), a true heaven for developers .
Also the makers of the game are on the right track of providing developers points through which they can access the game and display information on other sites or applications; ok for now it’s only exporting database tables of statistical information about the game status, but still I consider it a cool step toward supplying nice end-point for developers, maybe Web Services in the future  .

Every time a new idea hits the web I say “ok, that’s it…there are no more idea’s!”, and every time I say that I  am proved to be wrong; YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Delicous, Digg, SlideShare, Flickr…and the list goes on.
So this is a message for all of us, don’t limit your imagination, ideas never run out.

The only concern now is that I don’t want to be addicted, so let’s wish for the best…and be warned…because Rapacious is rising

Introduction to NHibernate Session at Jordev Was Good

The feedback was very good, and I was glad that everybody liked it. Jordev is really moving ahead, and I am very excited being part of it

Below is the slide show (it’s an enhanced version from my previous one):

Code is the same of the previous one which you can download from here

My First Talk at JorDev .net

 

JorDev .net is a .net user group founded by enthusiastic Jordanian IT professionals. On Wednesday the 26th of November I will be doing my first session of a series about NHibernate.
Details of talk is here:

Overview	NHibernate is an Object-relational mapping (ORM) solution for the Microsoft .NET platform. it provides an easy to use framework for mapping an object-oriented domain model to a traditional relational database. Its purpose is to relieve the developer from a significant amount of relational data persistence-related programming tasks.NHibernate is free as open source software that is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License
Target Audience	.NET Developers, Software Designers, Software Engineers, Software Architects
Date	Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Location	MIC (Microsoft Innovation Center, Royal Scientific Society Building, 3rd Floor)
Time	6:30 pm – 8:30 pm (Amman-Jordan local time)
For More Info	Mohamed Saleh @0788716457 Ayman Farouk    @0795727344
Reminders	Live Calendar Facebook event Outlook Calendar Google Calendar

The Story of a Winning Frog (a story we all know, and few comprehend)

If you don’t know it:

Once upon a time there was a group of little frogs, who decided to go through a competition to climb a tower. The tower was high and difficult, and no one of the spectator frogs believed that any of the tiny frogs can make it to the top.

Little frogs started climbing, while spectators yelling:
- "oh my, it’s too high…I don’t think they can make it!"
- "they are too young, how possibly can they reach the top?! that’s insane"
.
.
Shouting and yelling continued, while the little frogs surrendering one by one, except for this one little frog who kept going and going, climbing up further and further more. Surprising everyone, that frog made it to the top and he won the race! well…the only reason for his success that…HE WAS DEAF, he simple couldn’t hear the negative shouting of the spectators!

1) The effort a man produces trying to succeed is proportional to the amount of expectation to succeed
2) and the more effort he produces, the more it is possible he will succeed.

So if one member of a team starts putting the team down, the teams effort is absolutely going down, even if they can make it, they won’t. no passion, no effort, no success.

The only thing you will get from being around negative people is being pulled down with them; they will keep discouraging you, to give up, to stop you from reaching your goal! with all sort of discouraging words:
- "the way we work is wrong, this is stupid! this is never gonna work"
-  "I knew it! I knew it!"
-  "the client is going to reject it, I am telling you! he is!" *with yellow smile*
Enlarging the disadvantages of the surroundings, and forgetting about the advantages, putting the passion off.

Yes, there are annoyances, but come on, NOTHING IS PERFECT! any sane human would obviously tell you that "not getting all" doesn’t mean "giving up on all"; if you do that, while there is nothing perfect, obviously, you will end up losing all!

Believe in yourself, try to improve, never surrender. And while doing all that…just enjoy what you have.

Successful Meetings Is The Responsibility Of All

Through all the meetings I had in my life (the voluntary and the professional), all meetings shared key points that made it either successful and constructive, or a complete disaster and waste of time!

These key points can be summarized into:

• Meeting is conducted to achieve certain target , a solution to a problem, Keep the focus on that goal
  Time is valuable, and the participants will be very annoyed when they see their effort and time is wasted on a subject different from the one they originally agreed to sacrifice their time for. if the meeting was anything except resolving the original subject, it is a failure.
• all participants should be sincere to achieve the target of the meeting
  Because we are humans:
  • we will still use meetings as war-ground to prove intelligence superiority over others, by interruptions, mockery and shouting (in extreme situations). This will not be disruptive to the meeting only, but also will be for the team as a whole! most likely you will loose quite people hate “arguing”, who might have a very smart opinion and potentials. And then you will have the side effects of bad relations within the team; nothing have worse influence than that.
    The coordinator role here is to prevent such situations by eliminating any reason the participants may use to act so selfish; not encouraging them, not letting them sneak with the interruption, etc. this goes beyond the meeting as well by raising the team spirit within the team members
  • Another less serious example of unfaithfulness is the will to support wrong opinion because it’s easier, or less tiring. Again, the coordinator should be careful, and try to make the individuals targets of the team members pour in the projects target (or at least the meeting target), this also needs a lot of effort and team building actions (and that’s another story).
• Interruptions are evil and should be eliminated
  To know how bad interruption is, imagine your self talking in a meeting, all passionate and ongoing…suddenly a guy thinks you are talking nonsense, or that he is smarter than  you are, and interrupts you…aaa’a!!…see how bad it is!! it wastes time, energy, and produces anger and disrespect. 
• so is prattling!
  The more the prattle, the less the focus… the less the focus, the more the meeting loses the target. prattling can be as distructive as the interruptions, make participants less interested and even angry, hence failing meeting.
• Don’t offend others by any means. 
   if you do so, a wall will be built instantly between the meeting and the guy offended; he will not be able to listen to any sound logic (by nature), and will prove anything to be wrong. as long as you are discussing ideas, people will feel safe, when you bring it to their essence, they will be too protective. be cautions choosing the right words.
• Silent people can be a hidden treasure 
   The meeting is not meant to choose country presidents, it’s meant to elicit sound logic and constructive opinions, even if it comes from that silent little participant at the corner. if you are in charge, give him a chance, let him speak his ideas out, it might surprise you how good it can be, And if it is, you have raised his self-esteem to be more participating in the future and more successful team.

 

You can see from the points listed that it’s not only the coordinators responsibility to make the meeting successful, but the participants as well, after all they are the meeting!

There are lot’s of such points, but those are the one’s that come to my mind. If you have more to add, your comments below are most welcomed.

Changing Jobs

Yesterday was my last day in estarta, marking the end of nice period full of experience, knowledge, and amazing friends who have been like a family.

And now it’s time to move on, as a Technical Team Leader in esense. The excitement increases as time goes by (since I haven’t started there yet), I have only one week of preparations to step back into this role (yes, I have been TTL before) in this new environment, can’t wait.

Looking behind, it’s not an easy feeling;  departing such people who are dear to me! but my condolences is that I am not leaving the country anytime soon (so we will meet guys ), and I’m full of hope that I’ll find such great environment in esense as well.

في أي يوم العيد؟

في السنوات الأخيرة، كثر الحديث عن رؤية الهلال، و تحديد بدايات الأشهر القمرية، و لا سيما شهر رمضان و شوال لأهمتيهما. و احتار الناس بين البيانات الرسمية الصادرة عن المؤسسات الحكومية من جهة (نتيجة إدلاء شهود برؤية الهلال)، و المؤسسات الفلكية المتخصصة من جهة أخرى.

الموضوع -على عقده- بسيط؛ فلتحديد بادية هذه الأشهر الحساسة تعتمد المؤسسات الحكومية على شهادة مواطنين شهدوا برؤية الهلال، و هذا أمر طيب. لكن المشكلة أن لخمسين عاما خلت من الآن، كانت معظم تلك الشهادات خاطئة و ليس لها أساس من الصحة (و ما زالت)!  لم يكن بالإمكان -من خلال الوسائل المتاحة للمؤسسات المسؤولة حينئذ- أن تتأكد من صحتها. كان يكفي أن يكون مسلما عاقلا بالغا راشدا، و لا يزال الأمر كذلك.

لكن في الآونة الأخيرة، اجتهدت المؤسسات الفلكية (و على رأسها المشروع الإسلامي لرصد الأهلة) أن تبين هذا الأمر، بما أن لديها العلم الكافي و الكوادر المؤهلة كي تبين لهذه المؤسسات أن الشهادات في معظمها خاطئة! فبادرت بنشر الأوراق العلمية، و الخطابات الرسمية، و الظهور على وسائل الإعلام لعظم الأمر، و من هنا بدأ وعي الناس للموضوع، لكن للأسف لم تستجب هذه المؤسسات، فكانت البلبلة.

لكي يتضح الأمر أكثر، الشكل(1) الذي يبين منظر الأفق في الحالة الطبيعية عند امكانية رؤية الهلال:

الشكل (1)

الشمس تحت الأفق (غابت تماما)، وهجها بدأ بالخفوت، و القمر بعيد نسبيا عنها و فوق الأقق بمسافة تسمح لتكون الهلال، و تسمح للعين البشرية إبصاره.

أما في الشكل (2)، فيكون في حالة لا يمكن فيها رؤية الهلال لقربه الشديد من الشمس، فوهج الشمس يمنع رؤيته:

الشكل (2)

و أما في الشكل (3)، فإن رؤية الهلال مستحيلة! لأن القمر يغيب أصلا قبل الشمس، فلا يوجد شيء بالأفق لرصده من الأساس!!:

الشكل (3)

و معظم الحالات التي يشهد فيها هؤلاء الشهود تكون في الحالة الأخيرة التي لا يوجد فيها هلال أصلا!!! و لا حول و لا قوة إلا بالله!

للمزيد من المعلومات، انظر المراجع التالية:

• الفرق بين الهلال  و تولد الهلال
• الهلال بين الحسابات الفلكية والرؤية
• نتائج رصد الهلال العالمية لشوال هذا العام 1429
• تقويم نسب الخطأ في تحديد أوائل الأشهر الهجرية  (في الأردن)

و إن كنت مهتما بعلوم الفلك التطبيقية المتعلقة بالشريعة، اتبع هذا الرابط لمزيد من البحوث.