How you do (online) Social!?

Pretty much of the people who follow me, do so for stuff related to Agile or Community events/stuff (along with a few others who knew me for sometime and might really care to follow my news as a person/friend)

I thought it was obvious how I categorize my stuff but lately I realized that it needed to be more explicit, so here is a list of what I'm sharing so you won't get spammed by my other personal stuff (That is the way I do it, what about you?):

ComCal.org: Wanna follow follow technical events and share events with others? Egypt IT community Calendar is a public calendar that includes offline IT community Events held around Egypt. Also, online events both from Egypt and around the world. Choose your way subscription between from the site. You can add events to share it with the community here.

@ASGEgypt: Anything Agile, I was a bit sleepy but probably will be posting there more often soon. Note: this is a "colaborative" twitter account, others (ASGE organizers) post there too.

FCIH Blog: A collaborative blog by many guys from FCIH, I try to blog there as much as I can, but the blog is really full of great posts by my fellow Helwaneez there.. Strangely, we have huge (daily) hits from USA & India compared to those from Egypt.

@FCIH: Speaking of the blog; many guys from FCIH blog might post/reply there to any technical questions.

Google Reader Share items: for more "serious" stuff like articles I read, etc

LinkedIn: my online "professional ID"/CV/Resume.

@mShady: I was always fond of status messages (here's the proof!).. So this is my status messages/shout out/ etc extended and kinda archived! This is "me"; no filters attached!

This Blog: A year or so ago, I've went back through my blog to make sure my tags are more limited. No I have like only 9 (not sure if I should really reduce that again). I'm trying to make sure that all the posts here are either under "Personal" or "Tehcnical" Tag.. All the other tags are just extra tagging..

Facebook: is more for friends and family (or at least I'm trying to do so from now on) though it's wasn't exactly my "policy" before, I used to accept almost everybody as friends as long as they look "human" to me.

BUZZ: A combination of all the above!! I prefer discussions on Buzz and Facebook.. twitter is not made for that!

 

Now that I wrote it down, may be this way I'll be more strict about these rules that they are now public

A late brief review of #GEgypt

G-Egypt was a 3 day event held by Google on Dec 8th-10th at Dusit Thani (New Cairo). I've attended Day 2, and 3 (Day 2: targeting Software Developers, Day 3: targeting Entrepreneurs and Software Developers), & knew about what happened on Day 1 (targeting Academia) from my brother and a couple of my younger friends from the community/FCIH.

Most of the sessions was too simple (may be except for Day 1, as mostly the attendees were younger/students) and sometimes they seemed even dull too, as most of the speakers seem to be software developers who aren't much exposed to speak on similar events before.

Yet, the same speakers were much more interactive, answering questions at the pods. There were 5 pods on the open area for most of the speakers of each day + one for Cairo-GTUG (Google Technology User group).

The Keynotes was mainly talking about Google's plan on targeting MENA , and what they're offering (especially in Arabic) lately, with some demos (stuff like search, translate, Ejabat, Maps, AppEngine, with a note that Android Arabization is in there plan, but no dates announced). Stressing on that one of their main issues is the lack of "well-formatted" Arabic content, that's mostly buried in forums (which is not the best place to put your content SEO-wise), asking for developers of the region to help them with that.

The sessions about AppEngine (Google's cloud computing offering, and the main reason I attended the event) was one of the most attended sessions, yet the session presenters were pretty boring and later on, many of the attendees either left for the other parallel session or stayed not paying much attention.

Yet, Again, to get the audience attention, the AppEngine speakers (there were 2 of them) announced a technical contest (only on day 1, 2) for creating apps using AppEngine (+ using other Google Technologies) which was judged by the end of each day with the best app awarded a Google Nexus!

On Day 2, the most attended and most lively session, by far, was the mobile (Android) development session. There was another couple of sessions by Site Clinic team, analyzing real sites of some of the audience from an SEO (and sometimes a little security) point of view. There was a rather dull session about Chrome extensions too.

There was a couple of session about the benefits of working with open source and using open standards on Day 2, 3 (which were generally favored by most of the people I talked to about). Also, on Day 2, there was a session by adopters of Google development technologies (Android, Maps), talking about their experience using it, and starting their new businesses on top of it.

There was a multitude of sessions about maps and their applications on Day 2, 3 with a business (possible uses of maps, no code) sessions about the topic on Day 3.

On Day 3, the most attended and tweeted about sessions (actually throughout the whole 3-day-event) was the session and panel discussion about Entrepreneurship,. There was another Entrepreneurship panel discussion on day 2, but that too dull compared to Day 3.

Concerning logistics, the event was held on four areas: Main Auditorium, Breakout sessions room, an open area, and the dining area. The open area has many entertaining stuff like the ones you'd see on a typical "Life at Google" video; stuff like Wii, Beanbags, seats, Sofas. Also, the speakers’ pods were at this area. Also, there weren’t many giveaways, only t-shirts at the end of every day, and a couple of Google-branded mugs during the sessions. No attendee-kit, only a notebook and a pen on the seats during sessions.

The main organizer/host of the whole event is a French guy called Sebastian. He is a very lively person; probably most of the attendees will remember him and G-Egypt as synonyms (especially the ones not familiar with Google, before the event).

The event has a major drawback is that on every single day of the three day, the schedule wasn't progressing as planned. Also, the sessions were too short. Probably those were a couple of the main reasons why most of the sessions were too simple as most of them had to wrap up too soon.

 

Let me know how did G-Egypt went with you?

Quote of the Moment

ليت الكلاب لنا كانت مجـاورة               وليتنا لا نرى مما نـرى أحـدا
إن الكلاب لتهتدي في مواطنهـا             والخلق ليس بهاد شرهـم أبـدا
فاهرب بنفسك واستأنس بوحدتها           تبقى سعيداً إذا ما كنت منفـرداً

الإمام الشافعي

Quote of the Moment

“Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will – tomorrow!” – Gloria Pitzer

Power to the people!

Earlier this week, I posted about Vodafone Ad showing a distorted version of Abbas Ibn Fernas (check it here). Finally today, Vodafone issued an apology on their Facebook page. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but they are promising to stop airing it on TV, too, soon (I won't listen to the "conspiracy theory" roaming in my head now).

Some people suggest that: nobody really watches ads on TV any more. But I'm kind of reluctant to accept it. Many "regular" people, who aren't familiar with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc (my dad, & granddad generation, also, people with less education/social status) usually depend heavily on TV as their main source of entertainment.

One last thing, I just realized I didn't publish an important link on the last post, which was really the main pillar behind the campaign, this is vodafly.tumblr.com. Actually I'm very eager to use tumblr for similar stuff, it allows great collaboration for similar usages.

THANKS FOR STANDING TOGETHER, GUYS!!

Vodafone Egypt #FAIL!!

Today I came a across a video shared by @MostafaNageeb on Facebook. The video is a part of Vodafone ISP ads campaign, the one with the three guys from “سمير و شهير و بهير”, the movie. I didn’t watch the movie, and I’m a (kind of) loyal customer of Vodafone Egypt, but I find the video pretty offending and ignorant too.

The video show Abbas Ibn Firnas, [a polymath: an inventor, engineer, aviator, physician, poet, and musician], as a maniac who would throw oneself over the edge of a cliff just for fun, mistaking him for the Greek fable of Daedalus and his son Icarus.

After sharing the video with a couple of links about who is really Abbas Ibn Firnas, and reading a couple of comments on my post on Facebook, I realized that some people were really anxious that they filed complaints to Vodafone Egypt about it on their Customer service complaints page, even more: some complained on the phone! The reply was: it depends on the volume of feedback they get, whether they will take it down or not. On YouTube, Vodafone replies (through the comments) is pretty mild.

Already, the ad on YouTube is getting lots of dislikes, so if you can, add yours too, there. If you find it that irritating, you might file a complaint too (find the links below).

One last note, Abbas didn’t get killed from that experiment!!

 

UPDATE (14-15/11/2010):

The ad video I mentioned above (which was "disliked" a lot on YouTube, also had many negative comments), was removed earlier today (14/11/2010) which made may people cheer about it. Only to find it republished under another name (Browser), a couple of hours later.

I was starting to feel that people were (kind of) exaggerating about the ad (even thought about re-blogging about it). But, now, that feels pretty sneaky of Vodafone, as if the people's feedback doesn't really matter, why are you doing ads for in the first place!? More over, were the marketing guys thinking that the (angry) users won't find out they did the republish!? Dah!?

 

UPDATE (17/11/2010):

We almost made it!! Read this post about it..

 

References:

The second ad republished, Browser [Arabic]

A video about Ibn Firnas [Arabic]

Wikipedia page about Ibn Firnas [English]

Vodafone Customer Service [English Complaints page]

Vodafone Customer Service [Arabic Complaints page]

Visual Studio Design view disappeared?

Go to: Tool>Options>HTML Designer

About #ArabNetMe, #EgyITevent and similar stuff!

Was there pretty late (around 1.25hrs late), traffic was awful

I met a lot of people @NohaMahmoud @MGhoz @maha_ashour @Salma_ts2al @AhmedMoneim @RamyMahrous @MostafaNageeb @mostafasiraj

I suffered a bad headache so if I wasn't that nice, please pardon me

I came across many people who seemed (twitter familiar) but due to my grumpy attitude, I was too shy to ask them if they were who I thought they were (@3GFalcon, @a_monem).

Saw @AhmedYahia face-to-face for the first time but again I was too lame.

Had a brief discussion with @AhmedMoneim about (what they decided to "hashtag" as) #EgyITevent, (aka Limousine Gatherings)

Saw @remon_z for a sec before he disappeared!

Was planning on travelling but had to stay for urgent stuff at work that just came up, a couple of min before I leave!

As usual (saw it twice till now) @ZiadAly embarrassed himself by asking the audience to raise their hands if they used or knew about his latest startup but a pretty small number of people raised their hands.

Someone was sarcastically talking about the analogy between @kanaafa (Irish I think?) being an investor here in Egypt & a typical Egyptian going to invest in an even less developed country than Egypt (if that is ever possible!). Though, I find what he did pretty brilliant, the note was quite funny on the spot, though!

The typical idea in my head of a digital media marketer (like .digitalrepublic CEO?) is quite the "showy" extrovert type of people. On the extremely unexpected side, Karim? was pretty introvert not talking or even giving context to data he was showing us (on a discussion panel!). Yet the data was pretty useful, but needed much accompanied talk, insights before and after. They could have become something like @HansRosling talks if done well.

Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English?

I was reading a question with the same name on Stack-Exchange Beta site for Non-programmer-related questions (aka Programmers) when I came across this answer posted by a (probably Ukrainian) developer named Igor.

Accompanied by an earlier attempt by a colleague at work to write an enum in Arabic, I tried to write this piece of code:

Strangely enough it compiled and even ran showing the expected output (10)!! Note, the order above of the 2nd & 3rd line is mingled due to RTL issues in Gist. Visual Studio will show it in the right order (or at least, a more readable order for me, copy it & past it in your IDE to know how it looks).

Off course, I’m pretty convinced that this isn’t the best practice you should follow, (check my answer to the same question). Yet, I find this really hilarious! As a matter of fact, I took the claim that it’s bad practice too much for granted to the extent that I’ve never even tired to write such a strange piece of code :D

Does Google Instant really ruin SEO?

I was just reading an article I found on twitter about how Google Instant (the new Google search enhancement to be rolled out to all users soon) will ruin Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which I find kinda wrong.

First: SEO is a way to aid (content providers to provide ways to) internet users to find their way to their content. ie, it’s a mean to an end, not an end! So if Google (or Bing, etc) added new features to enhance the user experience (UX) and personalize search results that might break SEO, SEO should find a way to adapt. Killing innovation is not an option :)

SEO is not about deceiving people to direct them to your content, whether it’s relevant or not!!

Second: & that’s the main point here: As far as I can see, Google Instant is not ruining SEO as Steve claims. Search results are still gonna be shown as the good old days, the only main difference is that you won’t have to click ENTER after typing your search words. You can get instant feedback about where your search results meet your expectations or not. So if content-providers did their SEO job right, their content will show up according to the relevance of their content to the typed keywords.

So, what do you think? correct me if you can see it in any other way..

Update:

I find this tweet by @Bashmohandes more valid though:

Google Instant is cool, but I worry about advertisers, as some of their impression budgets are used while the user didn't show enough intent

Quote of the Moment

Such controversial feelings (of hope & despair, pride & disappointment) when people think of you better, yet you know they probably shouldn't!!

FCIH Initiative Updates

Finally we are glad to announce the launch of

FCIH Initiative Program

On Next Sunday 25/7/2010 at FCI-Helwan

Join our great event; Join a group of carefully selected sessions highly needed in your practical life.

Event Schedule:

Day 1 [Sunday: 25-7-2010]: Let's get started
10:00	10:30	Orientation
10:30	12:30	Object Oriented Blocks
12:30	01:00	Break
01:00	02:30	Good Code
02:30	03:00	Break
03:00	04:00	English for Business
Day 2 [Monday: 26-7-2010]: Develop your path
10:00	11:30	Web Development A – Z
11:30	12:00	Break
12:00	02:00	Software Quality Engineering
02:00	02:30	Break
02:30	04:00	CV Writing and interviewing skills
Day 3 [Wednesday: 28-7-2010]: IT, World of Endless Choices
10:00	11:00	GIS: Geographic information system
11:00	12:00	CMS: Content Management System
12:00	12:30	Break
02:00	02:30	BI: Business Intelligence
02:30	03:30	RIA: Rich Internet Application
Day 4 [Thursday: 29-7-2010]: Into the business world
10:00	01:00	Agile Software Development
01:00	01:30	Break
01:30	3:00	Understanding Business Analysis
03:00	04:30	Global / Local IT Market
04:30	05:00	Closing

Don't miss the chance…..and don't forget our date "25/7/2010" at FCI-Helwan.

Waiting you there :)

Find more about the event here:
Mail: FCIH [dot] Initiative [at] fcih [dot] net
Website: http://www.helwan.edu.eg:90/fcih/details.asp?id=161
               http://www.helwan.edu.eg:90/fcih/details.asp?id=162
FaceBook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128813070490801

Creating a simple Open Search Provider/Plug-in

Yesterday, I needed to check/search my delicious bookmarks more than once. I then realized that delicious have its a search plug-in as a part of a tool bar (along with other bookmarking tools, few search tools, though), which -I guess- loads all your bookmarks to browser & make them available for search.
As I’m not so much into too much plug-ins, specially if they load lots of data (in contradiction to Pointy-haired Boss) , not to mention that I won’t need bookmarks when I’m offline, anyway, I decided I should create my search provider.

Creating the Provider:

Here’s an example:



Away from the fact that I badly need a WYSIWYG code hi-lighter, let’s check that XML. First the ShortName which appears in your search box, something like this:
Description and Tags are obvious, & I think optional too.
Image is the small icon that appear beside when you select your provider (check the pic above again). You can either supply it as a URL to an image file (usually .ico or .png) or you can replace it with the base 64 string of the image (though I wasted quite sometime to make that work), like:



Finally, URL note that I’m using {SearchTerms} to pass the string typed in the search box. You can send other parameters to your search page. You might want add another URL for suggestions, here I’m only providing the search URL.

Using the Provider:

To add the provider to your browser (as far as I’m concerned it works fine for Firefox & IE) you have one of two options:
Adding it as a suggested search provider: This can be done by adding a single line in your page <Head> tag, note that the attribute title in the below tag refers to the name appearing in the list as [Add “title”], check the image below the tag.




Using JavaScript to add the provider: The other available option is to add the provider using scripting, here’s an eg of how you can do that:



Clicking a link like the one above will pop up a windows asking if you want to add the search provider.
References: http://www.opensearch.org

Changing regional settings for System accounts (including ASPNET) in Windows 7

One of the small issues I faced while switching my development machine to windows 7 was a bug/exception in an application I was working on in parsing date format.

After switching my regional settings to the “expected” format, I still got the same exception. After playing a little with the regional settings, I realized that I was switching only my account date format, not the whole machine's date format. To push those settings to other system accounts (like ASPNET, etc), I did the following steps:

After setting your your account regional settings, switch to “Administrative” tab:

From “Welcome screen and new user accounts”, click “Copy setting”:

Make sure “Welcome screen and system accounts”  check box is checked, press ok, and Voila!

FCIH Initiative

Don't wait the chance, Create it

Thinking about your future? Worried about your career?

Thinking that you're far away from real market life and limited by your academic life?

All are talking about financial crises? Need a solution?

Want to be professional but don't know where to start?

Interested to know how do people work and deliver their projects?

Need to gain experience in market? Need to know about Egyptian IT market?

So FCIH Initiative is now here for you

Our goal is you, preparing for you, planning for you.

This summer, we'll be together to make your dreams come true.

To bridge your academic study and your career

To make you start the right planning for your career from now

Join us and enjoy:

Trainings – Research – business experience – technical knowledge – English Club - and more….

FCIH initiative program will start on 17-7, so don't miss the chance.

We're planning to provide:

·        Technical sessions

·        Training program in 3 tracks (java, .net, and PHP)

·        Sessions talking about market, and adding to your personal skills.

·        Program for those who are interested in research.

·        Soft skills program.

·        English club.

Contacts:

Mail: FCIH.Initiative@fcih.net

Website: http://www.helwan.edu.eg:90/fcih/details.asp?id=161

FaceBook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128813070490801&ref=mf

VS 2008 to TFS 2010 (on windows 7, or may be x64 in general)

Probably you already know that Visual studio (Team explorer) 2008 can connect to TFS 2010 if you installed the right Service Pack (there’s one for VS 2005 too) and types the right server name.

 

Yet, a week (or so) ago I switched to windows 7 (64 bit) which lead to a couple of issues with my development environment (feel free to ask me or share your experience with me on that topic, I’m still struggling at that point). One of these issues was that the Visual Studio 2008 SP 1 Forward Compatibility Update for TFS 2010 wouldn’t work for me.

 

After a long search, & several installs, uninstalls, reinstalls, etc.. I came to the following solution that worked for me & (later) for a couple of my team mates at work. Here’s what you might want to do to fix that:

• If you have Office 2007, uninstall it (I’m exactly sure if Office 2007 is one of the causes but it was one of the paths I tried)
• Reinstall Team explorer 2008 (even if you already have it installed)
• Reinstall VS 2008 SP1 (even if you already have it installed)
• Reinstall VSTS 2008 Forward compatibility update for TFS 2010 (even if you already have it installed)

Try to use the same order above, and make sure you reinstall the above stuff even if you already have them.

Something the Lord Made

Just watched a movie with that name today. The movie was really inspiring, probably the life of Dr Vivien T. Thomas was too. The movie based on his life (probably though his autobiography, published after his death) & his complex relationship with his fellow/teacher Alfred Blalock.

Dr. Thomas life is a great example of how can one live in such miserable conditions & yet achieve great things in life. Though he didn't get enough appreciation until later in his life, Thomas (who had no more than high-school education, even before the civil rights movement; ie he was treated as a "colored person") was able to along with Alfred a cure for Blue baby syndrome through a major heart procedure at a time when the such "insane" procedures weren't the norm.

This is a MUST-watch movie..

About Swine Flu

Is it just me or It has been quite sometime since I heard anything about swine flu? After all the propaganda about how dangerous it could be, specially for countries who are already suffering a lot without it (like Egypt for eg)..

Was it really a hoax? Were the "conspiracy theories" loads of email that circulated the cyberspace true? Or may be it's really getting bigger and wilder but no one (from the media ppl) is giving it much of a focus??

About TED, TEDx, etc

Applying Hanselman's advice about conserving one's key strokes, & since I've been asked about TED, TEDx, TEDx Nile lately a couple of times, I'll sum up all the answers (to the questions I was asked) in one blog post to refer people to it whenever I'm asked again :D

So, first TED is a a foundation, that is mainly focused on sharing Technology, Entertainment, & Design ideas (that's where the name TED, comes from) through (mainly) a series of conferences held across Asia, Europe, US. There's also a TED prize for the best idea. TED later decided to share their talks with the world through their website. Also, the talks aren't bounded by technology, entertainment, & design ideas anymore..

Later, another project called TEDx was started. That's independently organized events (aka independent from TED foundation) where people share their ideas, or watch TED videos & discuss the ideas, in a TED-like environment/format.

Since TEDx project started, a lot of people -here in Egypt- were really anxious about bringing such an experience to us. The first one that came to my knowledge was TEDx Cairo, I was then introduced to TEDx Nile(which is the only & first TEDx in Egypt to come to reality, as far as I know), & TEDx Giza.Yet, I need to add that a fellow twitter pal claims that TEDx Giza was the first initiative :)

For more about the topic you might wanna read:
Wikipedia entry about TED
TEDx Introductory video
Review by fellow TEDster أحمد المهدى مسعود
My review about TEDx Nile (April 1st, 2010)
TEDx Nile hype on twitter
TEDx Arabia
My favoorite Talks & speakers

TEDx Nile (2010-04-01)

Every now & then, I tries to go out to see completely different people, either on events or with friends of friends who are of completely different background, education, careers, mindsets & usually it is a nice experience.. Usually, I have back-up plan in case the lonely geek inside took over me, that’s my friends who I can fall back to when ever I’m to shy or too lazy to network & get to know new people :D

So, last night, I went to Cairo Opera House to attend the first TEDx event held in Egypt: TEDx Nile.. I knew about the event by plain chance from Ahmed Adel’s tweets, & later from Khaled Adel, on FCIH-blogger mailing list.

I was following (for quite sometime) the news of another TEDx: TEDx Cairo,  There was a buzz earlier about it, & some rumors that Khaled Abo-El-Naga will be the host. competition is good, so I’m expecting that TEDx Nile will make TEDx Cairo organizers move a bit faster, they seem quite lazy!!

Just realized while writing this post that there’s TEDx Giza too!! :D

Through out the night, I’ve been heavily tweeting (never thought I could do so, with my humble cellular, specially that I hate typing on it).. So I thought the best way to write about the the event is to list my tweets through the night & comment about them, so here we go:

TEDxNile until now: total failure :S

What a start!! :D At that point we already had a couple of sessions I think, Yasser Quessny’s & Salah Makhlouf’s.. I was (irrationally) expecting “TED-class” sessions/talks, my expectations were a bit shred to pieces.. The talks weren't bad but I wasn’t taking into consideration many factors like: this is the first time in Egypt, & that most of these speakers aren’t exactly acquainted with such situations.

#tedxnile somebody kill mado
#tedxnile thu mado looks like a total :L that 2nd song (ketab l ser2a) was awesome

That was during the first performance on the night, a fairly young singer : “Mado”, from Taxi band, sang around 3 songs, the first one was kinda disappointing (not to mention that he looks, talks in a pretty weird way for me) that’s why my first tweet with a bit over the edge. He then sang couple off songs, “كتاب السرقة” & “جوايا حلم” which were awesome (Generally I loved most of the performances coz most of them depended on guitars heavily).

#tedxnile ahmed adel talking abt cloud computing not #enwi :( & in English too ! y?
#tedxnile finally adel is talking abt #enwi

Ahmed Adel, then started his session, about cloud computing, he had to suffer a lot since most of the audience weren’t that technical.. I was expecting his whole session to be about ENWI, it wasn’t exactly, but at least he mentioned it.. At some point he was talking about Bill Gates being the person who started the “PC era”, and one of the audience corrected him saying it was Steve Jobs :D..

#tedxnile why ppl r talking in English?
@ahmed_adel fine talk, hated it being in English thu :D #tedxnile

Though there’s nothing in TEDx that implies that it should be in English, almost all the guys (even some of the performers) were talking in English, the issue here, is why? We are Egyptians for God sake!! Not to mention that a couple of them were barely pronouncing any word right!!

#tedxnile akid ana leya lazma :D
#tedxnile it's getting better here
ROFL! the devil is running #tedxnile

That was when Ahmed Hayman started his session about “Picture the change”, & he experience of using photography for doing good to the less fortunate, which was pretty touching (the first tweet is a quote from his talk). Also, I started to feel better about the host: Amr Salama, he has such charisma.. Also, during Rabee Refaat session about “Mutable building envelope”, the laptop they were using for showing the slides desided to stand-by & when they logged in again the user name was “devil” :D

#tedxnile men dol ya 3am l 7ag :D the weirdest set of performers I've ever seen! :D
#tedxnile if he only shuts up & let the guitar say it all :D
#tedxnile @ramymahrous beside me suggests that he yesama3na sedy wesalak :D
#tedxnile when Mario falls in love :D
#tedxnile I hate to admit it but till now I'm enjoying the performances more than the talks !

That was during ‎RaSh Radio‎ performance, the guy -like all of the performers, last night- looks weird, pretty “Un-Egyptian”, unauthentic to me.. Yet, to tell the truth, his music (I only liked the lyrics/idea of Mario song) was great!! The note about Ramy happened as is :D

#tedxnile Quesni's are trying to sell the idea that design is a random process, isn't that obvious!?

Mariam El-Quessny was talking to much but I didn’t get much of what she was talking about actually, at some point, what I got was that both her & Yasser Quessny (not sure if they are relatives) were trying to saying stuff everybody already know, in a way.. Either they are to much for me, or I’m..

#tedxnile now I'm sure they are paid :D
#tedxnile they are not paid they are maniacs!
#tedxnile & they were talking abt not copying others! We really lack an identity!

At that point, I was wondering whether the ppl clapping all the time (almost the same direction (Back of the audience to the right!) was paid to do so :D, then after they started wowing & clapping for that lunatic called NeoByrd I was convinced they are maniacs!!

Yes, he was on stage wearing the exact outfit you can see on his page (including the helmet/mask!).. I was really feeling uneasy by that time, feeling the whole even is to fake.. Yet when I tried to listen to his music now, it doesn’t sound that bad. But still I can’t help feeling disgust when ever I remember his appearance on stage!!

#tedxnile finally 3amr is making me enjoy it
#tedxnile loved 'how to play life'

As I told you before, Amr Salama (director of  “زي النهاردة”) was such a great host. Though he seemed  (or may be he’s playing) shallow a bit when it comes to technical stuff, he sees things from a completely different point of view. That really showed when he was introducing every, idea/speaker to us.

His own talk (& the final one) was titled “How to play life”, in which he tried to tell us (& convince to do the same) how he looks at life as a “game” (not a path/journey, or test) & how that affects his decisions in life, & his passion about everything he do.

How to configure SQL Server for ASP.NET SQL Server Session State <sessionState mode="SQLServer" ../>

On your prompt (doesn’t matter if you’re on the SQL server machine or not), run the below command:

”system root”\Microsoft.NET\Framework\”version number”>aspnet_regsql.exe –S “server” -U sa -P “Password” -ssadd -sstype p

for eg:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727>aspnet_regsql.exe -S MySQLServerInstanceName -U sa -P password -ssadd -sstype p

OR

C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.21006>aspnet_regsql.exe -S MySQLServerInstanceName -U sa -P password -ssadd -sstype p

Now you have ASPState database on your servers with the tables, stored procedures, jobs needed to handle SQL server mode session state.

My mentor profile on #ImagineCup updated!

Mohamed Samy has been tweeting a lot lately about ImagineCup, asking people to sign up as mentors & support the Egyptian teams. So, I’m posting this to let you know that I’ve just updated my profile there. So if you’re looking for a mentor (I guess I won’t be useful except in software design competition) look for my profile under the name “Shady M. Najib”.

Along the way, I’m inviting you too, to join ImagineCup both as mentors and competitor, it was & will be a great experience, that one thing you should be sure of.

One last thing I should says here, is that I realized while updating my profile that I set my “Notify me of new private messages” status to “No” which kept a couple of messages off my radar. So please guys & gals, pardon me, that wasn’t intended! :$ I’ll be more attentive next time :)

PS.: remember to check Egypt Local website: http://imaginecupegypt.com/

Quote of the Moment

“So many times, it happens too fast:
You trade your passion for glory.
Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past,
You must fight just to keep them alive;
It's the eye of the tiger,
it's the thrill of the fight,
Rising up to the challenge of our rival,
And the last known survivor,
stalks his prey in the night,
And he's watching us all with the eye of the tiger..” – Survivor, “Eye Of The Tiger”

Why would you need a Gender table in your DB??

A friend of mine was tweeting about how he found a drop down control in some application he’s working on that binds on a (“lookup”) table with only the 2 rows for male & female.. Check the short conversation on twitter.

In my humble opinion -as weird it may sound-  this approach (for similar, small lookups) might makes sense, in some way. Not exactly as is, may be it will make sense more if it’s within a lookup module (a single table for all lookups where every entry has a lookup type).

Other “regular” approaches (& their expected problems) :

People usually tackle such small lookups using enums, or just using an “agreed on” key/value pairs convention (not stores anywhere in code or DB, may be only a code comment here or there) which usually tend to get forgotten & you have to  trace code to know which key stands for each lookup value..

Even worse, is using a boolean for such

Benefits of a DB Table approach:

Other than the benefits of avoiding the above, using DB to explicitly state lookup values, is that they are more dynamic, ie: you can always edit them without touching much code, that would be handy in cases like:

• Clients constantly changing small stuff like spelling, etc
• Adding other functionalities/features, like multilingual support for eg..

Thus, I find avoiding enums, etc & using tables even for small stuff like that gender much more convenient..

Let me know what you think about it, & (hopefully) suggest a better approach..

TekPub/CodeThinked Challenge

 

Justin Etheredge posted this challenge on CodeThinked so I thought I should give it a try though I’ve just had my TekPub subscription (Looking forward to use it, heavily!! :D)

So here’s my solution:

var myPrimes =
                Enumerable.Range(1, SomePositiveValue)
                    .Where(x => x != 1 &&
                        !Enumerable.Range(2, (int)Math.Ceiling(Math.Sqrt(x)))
                            .Any(y =>   x % y == 0 &&
                                        x != y));

You might want to remove the “x != 1” depending on you consider 1 as a prime or not :)

Petitions!!

Today I came across a couple of petitions,

ScottGutoME & #iWantScottGuInCairoCamp:

The first one was about asking Scott Gu to be there on Tech·Ed ME 2010 in Dubai..

After tweeting about it, Meligy & I started a convo about it, which lead to a kinda another petition for Cairo Code Camp 2010, so go on retweet it!! :D

RT #iWantScottGuInCairoCamp if you want @scottgu to come to Egypt during #CairoCodeCamp.Make it twitter trend so that GU notices

[Ar]droid:

Another nice petition was about pushing Google to Support Arabic in Android, which is a nice petition from a user perspective, but kinda lame speaking as a developer & taking into consideration that Android is (mostly) open source.. Arab Developer community need to get more involved.. not to just "ask for Arabic support"!!

Another funny thing is that most of the comments on the issue on Android Google Code project is that almost all the comments are in pure English.. For God sake, dudes!! Google has “Google Translate”!! :D

Yet, speaking about ROI (for Google), Arabic Language is spoken by more than 280 million people as a first language, and by 250 million more as a second language.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language

Fix Arabic Google Translation

Go to ‎http://translate.google.com/ translate "اسرائيلي يقتل فلسطينيا" from Arabic to English, then "اسرائيلي يقتل فرنسيا"!! The 1st is translated "Israeli killed by Palestinians" and the 2nd "Israeli killed Frenchman"!!

Please share & Contribute a right translation!!