Monty Hallin'

Two days ago I saw the movie 21. Its based on a true story. Its a story about five MIT students and how they are recruited by a university professor to count cards in Black Jack. The plot is absolutely predictable but I definitely enjoyed it.

They referred to the Monty Hall Problem in the beginning of the movie. This sent nostalgia spinning up my spine. I never did pay attention in that class on probability, maybe cause the room was always so jam-packed and the professor was sooo irritatingly annoying. Thus, I never did get the hang of it and I think that was my lowest grade in all my years at uni. So I obviously couldn't remember much about the problem except its name.

The Monty Hall Problem is a problem of probability based on a tv show. The host asks you to pick one door out of three knowing that behind two of them is a goat and behind just one of them there is a bran new car. The objective obviously is to pick the door with the car behind it.



Once you pick one of the doors which has a probability of 1/3 to have the car behind it, the host then goes and opens one of the other two doors. It reveals a goat. The host then asks you whether or not you want to change your choice. So you offered to keep to your first choice or to switch to the other closed door.

The simple scenario is that you pick one door and stay with it. The probability in this case is 1/3 that the car is behind it. But actually it would be wiser or mathematically wiser to switch. Why?

The probability of your chosen door is 1/3 which makes the probability that the car is behind one of the other two doors 2/3 (shared across both doors). When the host reveals one of the two other doors, he has made the 2/3 probability rest solely on the closed door of the pair. Therefore your chosen door has a probability of 1/3 (same as before) and the other remaining door has a probability of 2/3. This is why it is wiser to switch.



You can look at it from various angles. You can analyze it using Bayesian analysis or map out all scenarios and see what happens. Another way to look at it is that the probability of choosing a goat in the first place is 2/3. In all cases if you choose a goat in the first place, and switch, you will win the car. This is because the host will reveal the other goat and thus the remaining door has the car behind it. But if you stick to the choice you only have a 1/3 chance of winning the car.

An easier way to look at this is to increase the number of doors to say; a 100. You choose one and the host reveals 98 of the other doors. Will you switch? The probability of choosing a goat first is 99/100 which is 99%. It is almost certain that you choose a goat door. Then the passes along the other 99 doors and opens them all except for one somewhere along the line. A rational decision would be to switch to that door knowing that there is a 99% chance you choose a goat to start with and a 1% chance you choose the car from your first choice. Pretty cool huh?

Its a really cool problem that sparked confusion and debate in the world. The problem and solution were published in the Parade magazine. About 10,000 readers (including several hundred mathematics professors) wrote to the magazine claiming the solution was wrong. People saw the problem of switching as a bran new problem independent of the first choice. In actual fact it is because depending on which door you choose at the beginning the host will reveal one of the other doors which has a goat. So the host's choice is based on your choice. So therefore there is a relationship between which door the host reveals and the door you choose.

My Lumix

Got my new camera two days ago and took it for a Macro Morning Spin!!! Took some pix in my back garden this morning using macro. Here they are...

An Egyptian fly unaware of my presence...



Eaten by a rose...



Mushroom Kings



Love...



Honey suckle....or close



The Brain...



Crown




A fallen rose

Asciimation!!!

This is sooo kool!

You've got to check it out!!!!



Open up the windows command prompt (you'll find it under All Programs > accessories.
Once the black window opens up type in the following line:

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

and enjoy :D!!!

Stylish Firefox

This is definitely the best UI enhancement add-on for Firefox I've seen. It's called Stylish. It actually applies styles to the websites of your choice. It replaces the existing styles of websites and puts your own.

The effects of this add-on are amazing! and as usual in the open source world there has been a swarm of commotion and hence you can find ready made styles to install onto the add-on. Here are some snapshots of what can be done.

Gmail in black!



Wikipedia painted dark!



Rainforest Yahoo!!!



There is a site called http://www.blackle.com/
which claims that because of it's black theme it saves energy and is easier on the eyes. Easier on the eyes maybe but Google denies the greenness of black. It says displaying black on flat-panel monitors actually uses more energy.

:D

iframes!!!

Aliens in Egypt!!!

View Larger Map

This funny looking sign was found on Google maps. It shows a weird pattern in the middle of nowhere. Could it be aliens?

hehe...don't think so...Could be some very innovative dumpster truck drivers with a lot of free time :). Its quite interesting. Some of them are holes in the sand and some are tiny hills. There are no traces of vehicles to show how it was made. It could actually be a Google April fools prank. It could have been deliberately inserted into Google maps by Google!!!

Can you think of any other explanations?

Calories Affect Brain Power!!!

"I fast for greater mental and physical efficiency", Plato said.

A study has been published that says:

When the stomach is empty the body produces a hormone called ghrelin. This hormone travels to the hippocampus in the brain and causes new brain cell connections to form. The hippocampus is the memory engine of your brain. when lab animals are injected with extra ghrelin, their learning ability and memory improved.

"Could intentionally keeping your stomach empty (by cutting down your food intake) accelerate learning ability and improve memory? The recent discovery involving ghrelin, taken in conjunction with recent research involving calorie restriction - suggests this may very well be the case"



Wow. Very interesting stuff...

I started looking into the relationship between food and mental power when I finally got fed up of the situation I fall into whenever I eat large meals at work. My efficiency falls to the floor. Not only do I feel slow, tired and exhausted after the large meal, I am unable to concentrate. I become a zombie!

The relationship between our diet and our life is extremely strong. Unfortunately I abuse my diet. I'm working on that...

PS: Definitely more posts on this subject...

The Indian Fibonacci and Rabbit Reproduction

Most of you know of the Fibonacci sequence. Its the magical sequence of numbers that was mentioned in the Da Vinci Code novel. I took it in school and university and never actually knew what it represented.

The original sequence was studied by an Indian mathematician called Virahanka in the 6th century AD. Virahanka was analyzing the length of sequences of long and short syllables in an ancient Indian language. The long syllable was twice as long as the short syllable. The Ith number in the Fibonacci sequence is the number of total combinations that can be composed of those two syllables with length equal to I.

For example:
If the short syllable is S (represents 1 unit of length) and long is L (represents 2 units of length) then for the 3rd number in the sequence the number of combinations of the two syllables that make a total unit length of 3 are:

{ SSS, SL, LS }

If you do this for lengths of 1,2,3,4,5,... you will find that the original Fibonacci sequence is created which is 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,...

Later on Leonardo of Pisa (AKA Fibonacci) studied the sequence of numbers and linked it to reproducing in rabbit populations to produce the sequence we know today which is summarized in the formula: F(n) = F(n−1) + F(n−2). Which is:

0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...

Has anyone seen rabbits reproduce before? I had rabbits in my back yard when I was a kid. We bought two French rabbits (male and female) and two Egyptian rabbits (male and female). In about a year they had become an extended family of 18 and the number went up and up exponentially just like the Fibonacci sequence. Very often we would catch sight of a new born exploring its way outside of the burrow and race back in as we approached.

Yaaaaa...those were the days...

I came across the Fibonacci sequence the other day when I came across a question; It said, "Given that you can take one step or two steps forward from a given step, find the total number of ways of reaching the Nth step?"

Space Tourismo!!!

How amazing would it be to go up into space, experience zero-g and to look back at our home planet and see how small we really are in the context of the universe.

The Russian space program offers trips to the International Space Station. There have been five space tourists who have undertaken this trip before. The next person to go up to the ISS in October of this year is Richard Garriot - a Game desginer. The last one to go up was Charles Simonyi - a software company executive. Richard Garriot is paying 30 million dollars for this. Quite an astonishing amount of money to be paid by one man for one trip.

Is this a waste of money? I personally think there are much more productive ways to spend that kind of money. For starters he could help millions of unfortunate people on Earth instead of riding off on his dream voyage. He could help starving people. He could donate it to disease research. There are many benefits 30 MILLION DOLLARS can bring!!!!

In the end it isn't my decision, I'm just wondering how the last two to go up are people in the software business!!! I want to be next!!!...hehe.

A Sneak Peek

My poor telescope is still being held in customs...:'(. I just hope it gets here in one piece. I guess I'm going to have to introduce it before it actually arrives. Maybe I'll get it piece by piece (Rabena Yostor).

There are of course many different types of telescopes. There are three main types of telescopes; reflectors, refractors and catadioptric. Reflectors use mirrors to reflect the light captured by the aperture. Refractors use lenses to convey the image caught at the aperture to the opening for the eyepiece. Catadioptric telescopes are telescopes that combine together mirrors and lenses. There are many pros and cons of each type of telescopes. I'll talk about these in later posts.

The telescope I ordered is a 90mm Maksutov-Cassegrain. This is a catadioptric type of telescope. The 90mm corresponds to the diameter of the aperture of the telescope. This is the most important aspect of a telescope. The larger the aperture, the more light the telescope absorbs and hence the more fainter and further objects it can reveal.

Another important factor is the focal length of the telescope. The longer this is the more power of magnification it provides. The magnification is the first thing people think of when they think of telescopes and they believe this is the metric on which to evaluate a telescope. This is not true.



The magnification of a telescope equals the focal length of the telescope divided by the focal length of the eyepiece. Eyepieces are changeable. Astronomers typically have sets of different eyepieces to attach to the telescope depending on what they want to see. Eyepieces each have a focal length and a field of view. There is no point in trying to get the highest possible magnification, which means getting the eyepiece with the smallest focal length. This is because there is a limit to the amount of magnification a telescope can handle. The limiting factor is our old friend, the aperture. There is only so much detail (i.e. light) that exists in the image caught by the telescope's main mirror or lens (according to the aperture size). There is no point in trying to magnify beyond the detail that the telescope reveals. This will give you a blurred image. Another thing to consider is the field of view of the eyepiece being used. I'll talk more about eyepieces in future posts.

My telescope-to-be (isA) is a catadioptric type. It is a very compact model. You can see it here...



I didn't order the tripod you see in the pic.

This telescope should be able to see, believe it or not, the red spot on Jupiter and the dust ring around Saturn. Of course I'm going to go out to the desert or somewhere with no light or air pollution.




Just hope I get the scope intact soon isA...
When I do I won't stop showing it off :p

The formidable wall we know so well

Very frequently in my line of work do I find myself in front of an obstacle. I find myself confronting a dead-end wall. There is no way around this wall. No solution to allow you to pass. You are stuck. You struggle to get around it, but in vain. You hack away at the wall but everything seems impossible. Then you really break down in spirit. You feel helpless and useless.



Then I always remember standing on the other side of the wall and looking back at the wall and thinking, "It wasn't that hard? It all worked out in the end". I take a deep breath and walk on. Only to confront another wall may be even bigger than the last.

Time and time again you look back upon the wall you just conquered and think, "there is no such thing as impossible".

How many times have I slumped down at the sight of a formidable problem with "no" solutions at all. I've tried and tried different approaches and nothing helps. I get tangled up in the threads of my own thoughts and little by little strangle myself. Then I can not take anymore so I get up and go take a break and suddenly as I'm watching the TV, walking away from my room or doing whatever it is I'm doing to get my mind off the problem at hand, I trip over the solution to the problem. I see something that I hadn't seen prior. I find a fundamental answer to the puzzling problem and later on, yet again, I look back at the wall I just climbed.

Dexter in Space!

We are minutes away from witnessing the launch of the Endeavour space shuttle from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA. It's quite amazing that some people are unaware of something orbiting the Earth called the international space station...hmmm...interesting...

The shuttle will be taking up an interesting two-armed robot called Dextre. Its a Canadian made robotic arm which will help substitute astronauts going out for space-walks. The shuttle is also taking up a Japanese made science laboratory or a piece of it at least.

This is Dextre below...



Quite fascinating I must say.

The World is Shrinking!

How I wish some times that I was an undergrad student again these days. The world is shrinking!!! There are more and more oppurtunities popping up everyday. All this has become possible by the Internet which youngsters take for granted these days. They never saw what was before the Internet! Since I'm from a slightly older generation; it's like the stone age humans who came across fire!!!! hehe...So the east and west have come closer and with the advancement in technology we see "exciting new opportunities that people are talking about" {The way Bill Gates puts it}.

The reason I was set on this nostalgic path of thought was because I was nominated to be a Google Student Ambassador. Where were these opportunities when I was an undergrad??? Fein???? :D. Google was still on the rise back then and well, more and more multinational companies are interested in draining the innovative brains of our talented youth :). Well that is another line of thought - Countries are loosing their little powerhouse brains to the west. The industry is reaching across the globe and hacking into oilfields of ideas from innovative young youth. :'(

Of course I don't have the time anymore to do something like this. In order for it to be done properly it needs time and commitment. Those are two things I have allocated to other aspects of life...

I'm not sad, just thought I'd share a spur of thought with ya as always...

Why do we stick out our tongue to focus?

The real reason to this, psychologists say, is because there is a significant amount of background processing that goes on in the brain that controls the movement of our tongue. We are of course unaware of this but when a person is trying to concentrate on a mind-intensive task at hand they tend to involuntarily stick out their tongue or fixate their tongue between their teeth or up against the top of the ceiling. This is to relieve the brain of any background processing and to fully focus on the task.



Quite interesting...

Blogging Mind-Bogglers

If you haven't watched this video on youtube then you've missed quite a lot...thats if your interested in virtual reality and gaming. I was sent a link to this video a long time ago but never actually watched it. Yesterday I came across the same video again and it blew my mind away! It is one of the most watched videos on the Internet. Its utterly awesome!

Its by a guy called Johnny Lee from Carnegie Mellon University. He created virtual reality using the Wii controller and sensors. You have to watch this. Towards the end when he views the stadium, its like looking out a real window! Watch now...

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Clap for WikiSky and Google Sky

WOW! Technology is definitely moving faster than we can grasp. The discovery of Microsoft WWT has brought to my attention two other technologies that have beaten Microsoft to the stargazing software arena. The first being Google Sky who has already launched itself with the newer versions of Google Earth. Now not only can you look at Earth and zoom down to street level, but you can turn the gaze up and look at the night's sky. Unbelievable!



Seriously mind-blowing!



Download it now and take a look for yourselves. Another technology I was aware of but caught my eye as I was looking at Google Sky is KML (Keyhole Markup Language). This is an XML-based language which was originally built by Keyhole Inc. - the creators of Google Earth. The KML file specifies a set of features - placemarks, images, polygons, 3D models, textual descriptions - for display in Google Earth, Maps and Mobile or actually any other 3D earth browser (geo-browser) implementing the KML encoding. Pretty neat huh?

This has led to some amazing applications like for example watching the animation of international flights on Google Earth and a scary simulation of water level rising. You can see this @ here!
and watch it in the Google Earth application.

Another stargazing technology I came across is WikiSky @ Wikisky.org. This freaking blew my mind! I've recently gotten into astronomy again after long years of absence. This comes at a wonderful time.



We have come a long way with technology. There are even virtual moon trips coming up! Imagine this...going to the moon in virtual reality. You can read all about this here. This should be coming up in a year. This will allow people to hitch rides on probes to the moon and watch as the lunar robots explore the surface of planets. This will all be in real-time and will allow everyone to participate in space exploration. WOW!

I'm glad though that I ordered my telescope. So far I can see that these two portals into the night sky are just knowledge providers and will in no way replace real astronomy. They will definitely greatly help the astronomy communities around the globe and are welcomed as an amazing innovation. They are truly grand! I can't wait to explore some more!

A Definite BRAVO for Microsoft

I was just notified by a friend of something called "The Microsoft Research WorldWide Telescope"

"The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe.





WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft's high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience"
source: you can find this @ WWT!

A screenshot of the whole experience...



Check it out on Youtube

It is still not operational. It should be out as an alpha version in several weeks. Can't wait! This comes at a weird time...as I'm actually waiting for my new telescope. WWT revolutionizes astronomy. Should I have thought twice before ordering a telescope...

The Lunar Eclipse From Egypt

Last night was a very interesting night. It seems not many people here in Egypt were aware that the Earth would cast its shadow on its nearest neighbor, the moon. Or may be no one was interested. It started at about 3:30am here in Cairo. It started like this:



This was the first thing I saw as I switched off the movie and looked up. I had been watching a movie as I waited for the eclipse to begin. The shadow appeared on the rim of the silver sphere. It slowly made its way further and further across the bright silver moon.



I struggled to capture decent photos of the eclipse with my primitive automated cybershot. I tried my best and to be honest I was happy with the outcome. My other visual aid was my telescope. I set it up on a tripod on my roof ready to watch the event. I've had this telescope since I was ten years old or something. It was a birthday gift from my father and the night I got it was one hell of a night. I could finally see the moon up close and see the dinosaur-looking or dragon-like craters of the glaring moon. Now, many years later I look up again at the glowing ball in the night's sky.



It's quite ironic that a few days earlier, unaware of the lunar eclipse coming up, I ordered a 90mm Mak-Cass telescope. Interesting that my interest in astronomy re-emerges just before this event. Another ironic thing is on the 21st of February 41 years ago the Apollo 1 was planned to launch but there were unfortunate events in one of the test runs leading to the death of some of the astronauts due to fatal errors in the designs of the Apollo command module.

So there I was freezing in the cold pre-dawn air. My hands were frozen blocks of ice and every time I looked into the eyepiece of my telescope the chilly metal would scorch my skin cold.





The star you see in the above image is Saturn. There is another bright star above the eclipsed moon that you cant see in the picture. This is Regulus (a bright star of the Leo constellation). Hopefully with the telescope I ordered, I'll be able to meet Saturn and Jupiter up close and personal :D.



The picture above is the last picture I took. It isn't clear at all but you can see that the moon has disappeared behind the shadow cloak of the earth all together.

The picture just below is the telescope I used to view the amazing experience.



It's a 20x50 refractor telescope which isn't too bad. You can see the moon fairly clearly. I still plan on buying a deep space Imager which is something you put on the eyepiece of the telescope and connect to a USB port in a computer. It allows you to take images using your telescope. I just hope my telescope gets here and the 6.3mm eyepiece I ordered along with it.

As you can see the moon turned dark orange as the full eclipse came into play. I was forced inside by the cold and so had to look up from my window. The full lunar eclipse was approximately at 5am. I had work early that day so I was forced to shut down my operations and get some rest.

It was definitely an interesting experience. It was so grand. So much bigger than us. I kept imaging the whole event up close, seeing the massive earth moving across the rays of the sun and cutting off light from the lunar disc. The disc darkened with the umbra of the shadow and the people on earth, so small and insignificant in the context of such a large-scale show, looked up in absolute awe.

Could it be due to Multitasking?

"To do two things at once is to do neither". This was said by a Roman slave, first century BC.

I read an interesting article about how multitasking is making us dumber and drives us insane. I must say I really hate living two paths. In this I mean doing masters and working at the same time. It takes its toll on you in the end. I wish I could focus fully on one thing. Each task constantly threatens and alleviates the focus on the others leading to doing nothing good in the end.

Anywayz, read the article if your interested:
CLICK HERE!

AaaaHhhh...Vacations

I'm back from a long awaited vacation in the UK. Now it has disintegrated into history and memories. Only one emotion describes the state I'm in now...Depressed :(. It was an awesome two weeks. Now I'm back to work and back to my routine life.

Then again could have been worse. EL humdulilah 3ala kol shai2.
It was a fun two weeks.

Build Up vs. Deep In it and Random Thoughts

How often is the build up to something much better than the actual event that takes place after the anxious wait. In many cases it is. I live on dreams, hopes, feelings that just maybe something may happen. Even though all the odds point the other way, I insist on delving into the daydreams of things that never can be. It is true that nothing is impossible. But we can tell when things are impossible. Impossible is possible. Somethings were never meant to be. If I was to say, "I'm going to be the first Egyptian in Space!". Could that be true, remotely true, even possible? You tell me! I would bet it would never happen. But then my brain could go into daydreaming hyper-drive and imagine out a whole concise, logical and detailed scenario of my dreams become reality. Then I start to analyze the situation I'm in now and try to find a way to get me closer to the dream.

The truth maybe that I have a war to win. If I win that war I may be, just may be somewhat closer to what I want to have and be. Time can only reveal so much. We never see too far into the future. We can expect but life is certainly mysterious in its ways of showing us things. I have made up my mind as to what one of my new years resolutions will be. The only discouraging aspect of this is that they have been the same year-out and year-in. Its the same old story. I fight and fight for something and then slip back down the mountain side. I get hyped up and do marvels and not to soon after I see them diminish and drown in my own soul. The next year dawns and yet again I dream of winning. I can only wonder now if what I want will ever be solidified into reality of life. It can be done and I know it. I can do it but am I up to the pain and sacrifice that scatters the reached path to this goal.

Does truth dictate that somethings were never meant to be? Are the feelings of being doomed in a dungeon-state make our minds switch on the dreaming daze. I find myself these days delving into it all to often. I sit there or lie there living the impossible as if it was very much possible

Maybe I'm going through this thought now as I'm on vacation in a very different world to the home I call home these days. I'm on holiday in a place that I consider my second home. It could have easily been my first home but due to some fortunate or unfortunate events has become second. I see them as fortunate events that have twisted and turned my fate. I see things here that I long for. I see things here that are close to who I am in blood and flesh. I see common things. I see dead things!! hehe. In the end I am who I am. I think im going to have another post about this.

Back to the prevailing thought; I can never forget the adrenaline rush and excitement bubbling in my blood before a trip. I love it! I always remember later being on the actual trip and thinking: Here it is! Its happening. Is this what I expected! Is it as good as the build up before it. In some cases it is and in some cases it flashes before your eyes as your enjoying the trip and soon its only a memory. A memory you look back on and long to change things and long for more and long for those days to come back.

I stand there knowing that I could have been in a much better situation if I had sacrificed a little along the path to that situation. You know there is a prevailing chance that what you want will never come but you insist and insist and your brain resorts to stargazing to prevent the progress of insanity. It gives me peace of mind.

I don't really know what I wanted to say in this post. Its just one of those random posts that are a spill out of a core dump :D. I need to every once in a while dump my brain into writing. Feels useless. It feels aimless, target-less and goal-less but it does feel a bit good. Well maybe not as good as Im coming to the end of this post. Well I feel neutral now. I feel I will try and fight harder for the war I must win.
What war is that? you ask. The answer lies in a quote I heard a long time ago:

"The greatest battles in life are fought within the inner most chambers of the human soul".

It sounded something like that. I cant remember it verbatim but it holds basically the same meaning. The war is something and everything. Life is a struggle to become who your subconscious and conscious want to be.

Social Networking

I think social networking has to be one of the best inventions this century. It is in my opinion the true link between humans and society and the cyber-world of the Internet. Too bad I didn't think of an idea like that! Actually many thought of it. There is a number of them out there: Hi5, Orkud, Facebook, MySpace...etc. Hi5 twisted dirty and somehow did not attract our attention as much as Facebook and MySpace did.



I've always been dumbfounded by the links between the virtual world of the Web and the real world and how the former imitates the latter and how real-life relationships can be built up by the virtual world. I used to think, if I had the chance to date a girl I met off the Web - I wouldn't do it because it would feel unnatural. It would feel eerie and not so normal. Nowadays I think it is kind of normal because it does happen in real-life in the end.

So the winner is social networking. People send out their wedding invitations on Facebook. Astonishing I must say. The missing link between real life and the virtual life.

Talking To Cyberspace

Why do you talk to the cyberspace?

I for one do it because I like to write! It removes the burden of ideas from upon my back. Its a way of documenting your thought. Its a way of crying out without facing the shyness of distress before other people...hehe. Its a way of conveying your ideas and hoping that someone out there will trip over your blog and share the same ideas or feelings or find your blog interesting!! We do it because we are human and we like to talk and express ourselves. We do it to "fadfad" (an Arabic term), to let our heart bleed out its secrets, to speak to nothing because nothing just absorbs and does not answer back. Nothingness just listens. It may be the best listener of all.



When I find myself talking to void. I'm not really talking to void. I'm talking to God. I speak out to him and ask for his forgiveness or help. inshAllah.

So I write to be heard by no one at all or by someone who will ping me back and put a smile on my face OR make me think more and "analyze this" which will lead to more and more posts and to an exponential search space...lol. Well this hasn't happened yet so lets hope for the best!

Taxation Without Representation

TWR is a common scenario seen in third-world countries. "Taxation Without Representation" is the renowned slogan that echoed throughout the grieving thirteen colonies of pre-"Police The World" America. It came about as the American colonies had to pay taxes to the occupying British Empire. In spite of these taxes Americans had no representation in the British parliament and hence did not have any rights associated with these taxes. The British tried to suppress this outrage by allowing "virtual" representatives of the American people to attend parliament. This of course caused more commotion as these representatives knew nothing about America.



As we look at this glimpse of Earth's history, we cant help but see this happening all over again. It is happening ever so insidiously hidden away in another context; taking taxation and never seeing the return of this money to the streets. All we can see are the "virtual" representatives. The mouths are filled, minds kept busy with the pettiest of life and the lips are stitched. You cant keep burying and burying the earth you stand on.

Beneath A Century of Ks...Gears of War

All I can hope for now is to dip below the century of Ks. Its a war I must win InshAllah. Now a battle, always a battle. Later another shall rise. Overall the war must be won. I try, try hard but in vein it seems.

I'm pretty close now to the century. I may cross the line this coming week. I may, just may before I travel next week. It is the traveling that started this battle. It is also usually around this time each year that I get the urge to wage the war again. I click on my gears of war and mount the reigns onto my jarred mind. Almost all battles I have won have rebound. I hold my ground but I get tired and slowly slip back.



It can be done. Nothing is impossible. Possible is not impossible. It is the thought that I will see people I have not seen for a long time that fuels this battle. Onslaught after onslaught, I try. I try and try but the urge flows back. I push harder and harder but the wall caves in.

All I can do is try. Thats all I can do is try my best. Somewhere along the line with the busy days of life I will break through the ironclad wall. I shall crush it once and for all and live a new life. One free from this burden I hold up upon my shoulders. A new life it shall be.

Raining Apples!!!

When I think about friends, I think about apples.



Its the time of year of eid al-Adha, the triad of christmas days (eve, day and boxing day), the Hajj and the beginning of the mid-year vacation. Its a time of festivities and relaxation after long hard work in academia. Its a time when it rains apples!

I have soo many people I have to meet! Im actually torn between all of them. They say it's a blessing to have friends, many of them. I believe this true but sometimes I'm cursed by the way I'm stretch between all of them and in the end I'm left with a sheared brain and soul panting for breath.

Don't get me wrong, it is an absolutely wonderful thing to have friends. Without them you couldn't lead a decent life. The pros of having many friends definitely out-weights the cons. There is no debate here.

Lets get back to the falling apples. So as I mentioned this is a time when people come back to their mother-land (although my mother-land is not where I currently stand) for the wonders of such a blessed time of year.

Unfortunately I cant help but say that this time has been accompanied by silent sadness with the death of soo many loved ones. God bless their soles (inshAllah).

So I have five friends here in Egypt now. Most of them I have seen and some I haven't had the time to. I hope I see all of them before they leave...

I see friends as apples, some sweet and some sour. The sour you know to learn about yourself and the sweet you know to help and be helped inside and out. Friends are a blessing.

I hope I catch all the apples before they go away.

Last Course

Its done. The semester is over. I did my graphics final project demo yesterday and handed it in last night. That was the last step. Now I'm through courses. All I have left is a year of thesis. I got to find a topic now and follow it through until I graduate InshAllah.

Now I can fully focus on work and manage my own time a little. I'm looking forward to my thesis year. Its back to the time in your life when your searching for that big wave to ride. I feel if I carry on looking for that big thing I'm not going to end up picking a topic. I'm going to try and discover what I love best. So far I'm thinking of combining AI and graphics, but I still need to take an in depth look at things. Its going to be a tough time ahead. Working and masters isn't the easiest thing in the world i must say.

We will see what happens and hope for the best...

Application of Mathematics

Its really awesome when you finally learn why you took all that mathematical crap quite some time ago! Calculus, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry.....you name it. We science and engineering students have all seen them! We have seen some applications of these cool equations but the majority of them we haven't or maybe I've just forgotten with the overload of this semester coming to a stressful end. :D

It's only through these two courses that I'm taking this semester that I realized the power of mathematics. Well obviously I knew all along the importance of math and that it is like a universal language but my thoughts have been lingering about this for sometime so guess what, I'm here writing up a post about it.

There are actual courses that we at my university haven't probably heard of. At MIT they have a course called "Applying Mathematics" or something like that. Its a whole freaking course. Luckily for me and the rest of the students, we have an agreement with MIT which gives us MIT OpenCourseware. It's really profound to get an insight into the stuff they take there.

Anywayz thought I'd share the pico-second of inspirational thought that went through my neural net of a brain. I need to get back to studying Backpropogation, Hopfield, Kohanan and bla bla bla. Need to comprehend all the work these great guys including mr. backpropagation (:p) brought to life and pay tribute to the research and dedication that they have given us. "Ay kalam tahn".

"Who among us shall change life, time shall tell" - Anonymous
"Where there is a will, there is a bill" - K. Sohano
"Where there is a will, there is a hill to match that will. Only those who challenge the hill shall see the greener grass on the other side" - from the book "Wind of Sway"

An Interesting and Inspirational Read

I came across this read as I was fiddling around on the Internet and dreaming of days to come instead of studying for my final exam tomorrow. Its called "Advise to A Beginning Graduate Student". Check it out HERE

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is an interesting extension for firefox that allows you to blog. This is the first post I'm writing using it. Im not sure yet if it makes a difference to the conventional way of opening up the blog via URL, logging in and then writing. Maybe it is a few clicks faster. Actually it must be. To start blogging with ScribeFire you use one click and then you may have to select the blog you want to publish to. In my case most of my blogging activity is on one blog so its one click. With the conventional method, it takes you about three. It actually depends greatly on how you have your browser configured. If you use automatic login using cookies in your browser then it saves you time of logging in. Anywayz, just thought I'd try out this new feature. I think I will use it in future.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Bifurcation

I'm being tormented by two paths in life. Its an awkward situation being stuck between two opportunities, each quite different from the other. They could collide in the end actually, which would make a very interesting combination. Now its just a matter of weighting the pros and cons of each and querying my heart for answers. A wise man once told me, "Do what you love, so that you love what you do". It turns out to be a quote from somewhere. It is very important to do what you love, and its no easy task finding what you love to do. You can read an interesting but hell of a long article here. I didn't read the whole thing, but skimmed through highlights. Seems interesting. Anywayz, I'm fed up of writing. Need to get home. I'm still at work and what seemed to be an ever simple task turned out to be a pain in the back but thank goodness I'm finished now.

I bet your thinking, "what kind of gibberish is this guy speaking?". Well the answer to what your thinking is that I'm speaking the normal gibberish that haunts peoples' minds as they approach huge decisions in life...

Its the end of the week and the weekend is just about to begin. I have a long one coming up. I have to finish my A-Life neural net by Sunday. Hope all goes well as the final two weeks of the semester are upon us. May God have mercy on all our souls...

Particle Systems

This graphics course has been one of the most enjoyable course I've ever taken. It is something else when you can see what your creating and fiddling around with.

My final project is going to deal with particle systems. Particle systems are what are used to render what are called "fuzzy phenomena". Examples of fuzzy phenomena are: fire, smoke, liquid...etc. These are all quite difficult to render using the conventional rendering methods. The simplest and most basic particle systems is where you represent each particle by a pixel. More complex particle systems represent the particles by 3D meshes or metaballs.

Here are examples of particle systems:



I hope to create scenes like these...

Alife

A term referring to Artificial Life. I'm working on a project for my other course (Neural Nets course) which consists of a neural net that acts as the brain of a creature in an environment. The neural network controls the creature's actions through out its life. I've tried this before in an undergraduate course. I was so close to creating a neural net optimized to use PSO as the backpropagation algorithm. Unfortunately that project didn't quite work properly. I think I had a couple of days to do that project and I decided to be cool and do everything from scratch. It was a gallant attempt and I think I was a scratch away from making it work. Anywayz, with that behind me, I now have a week left to finish this neural net project.

I probably told you before that this is my last semester taking courses. The next and after next will be dedicated purely to research. I still haven't found a topic or field for that matter. I talked to my probably-to-be adviser and we brainstormed for ideas. I left the office with the intent to do more research and find a topic where I can combine graphics and AI. Of course as the semester is coming to an end, there isn't much time left and I'll be up to my neck in work. I'll even have my job to attend to.

This is an update of recent events. It's almost dawn here in Cairo. Its 5:47 am and pretty cold. I'm sure its nothing to what its like in Vancouver, where a friend of mine immigrated to. There right now, its highs of -6 and lows of -8. Shit! Thats cold. Anyway, I slept early and woke up at 4:00 am. I have work in a few hours but decided to use this time to work on the project. As usual I get carried away with searching for a thesis topic and haven't been focusing that much on the project.

Peer Classes

A friend of mine was asked recently in an interview, "What are peer classes?". I decided to find out what a peer class is.

For example if you desire to use a c++ class code in a java program, an approach of doing this is creating a java class which is equivalent to the c++ class. The java class is the peer class and tracks the state of the c++ object.

You can see this here

Tracy

Tonight I submitted Tracy (the final version). I'm satisfied with the outcome of this project. The images Tracy produces is far better than the OpenGL graphics.

In case your wondering, Tracy (Beta version) is my ray tracer. Here's a starter pic:



There she is rendering shading, illumination, reflections, shadows and the whole package. Beautiful isn't it? I hope you agree. Here's another image for those of you who are doubting Tracy.



Take that you paranoid readers out there. It took me quite some time to render these images. Of course I wasn't working full time on it, so maybe thats why.

Now I have my fingers crossed for a proper grade in this and the previous assignment. I still have a neural networks project to do for this coming Sunday (thats in 6 days). Since I'm taking tomorrow off as a rest between the hurricanes, that leaves me with five days. Lets hope for the best.

I'm going to create artificial life. I plan on developing a neural network that controls the actions of small creatures in an artificial environment. I've decided to call these tiny creatures ... I don't know what I'm gonna call them. Have to think of something. The C# neural network library I plan on using was created by a guy called Franck Fleurey and can be found at . I've just taken an initial look at it and downloaded the source code.

This is the time when the hurricanes collide. The time just before the end of the semester, when everything just starts to fall and fall and your left clambering behind. This semester is the last semester I will take courses in. The next semester and the one after will be left for my thesis. Im getting frantic about the thought of thesis. I still havent made up my mind on what field im gonna go for. The ones im surely interested in is AI, graphics and pervasive systems. I believe that anything I do, I will have to apply some AI to.

Lets leave this for further posts where I set out to discover which field to do my thesis in.

Quaking Quake

I just tried out Quake 4 and this is a game not to be taken lightly. I previously thought my laptop was a monster, with a ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 which has 512 MB of RAM. It also has 1.5 Gegs RAM. Unfortunately my thoughts were not matched when I put this game in. It would not run at the maximum video setting. Even in the minimum video mode, the graphics sometimes screwed up in the middle of gameplay. I thought I have a above average gaming system here. Maybe or maybe not...

Quake 4 is a very gruesome and bloody game. From the very beginning I felt its darkness and evil. The first scene shows soldiers floating in space with missing eyes and limbs and bloody faces and bodies. Ouch! Anywayz I started playing and I was chilled up the spine from step 1 as I faced the first Strogg. They produce a sickening growl before they attack and one of them has a sharp metal arm that he pokes you with and as you get poke you loose focus and the screen distorts as if the spike is actually hitting you. My heart was pounding all through the short time I played it and I jump up in my seat suddenly every time a monstrous Strogg came out of no where. And they don't die straight away, they take a beating to fall to the floor.



Respect to the graphics. I read about the real-time ray-tracing technique that Quake 4 utilizes for rendering and collision detection. The shadows too are done very well. The game is very dark. Pretty kool stuff, I must say. Quake 4 uses the same engine as its predecessor and Doom 3. The funny thing is I'm taking ray-tracing in the graphics course I'm taking. Only yesterday did we discuss the differences between ray-tracing, using z-buffer algorithm and BSP object rendering. Im new to all this, so its all very exciting!!! I cant wait to do my next project.

Im starting to dread the moment when I go back home tonight after work and after my masters class and play the evil Quake 4 in the darkness and solitude of my own room. "Its just a game" - they always used to say. We will see...

Graphics Premiere

I created my first openGL graphics composition. This was our first assignment in a graphics course Im taking. The whole idea of the project was to draw graphics on a buffer without using openGL functions. Once the buffer has been drawn on, we only use openGL to output the buffer to the screen.



Of course the composition you see above has animations, color changing, color filling and size changing. I tried to experiment with all the basic techniques in 2D.

I hope the grade I get for this lives up to the effort I put in. InshAllah.

My next challenge will be trying to create a 3D corridor with a box in the middle with fog, lighting effects and (something i'm dying to do) image wrapping. This will be my ultimate goal. After this I want to experiment with 3D modeling and importing real 3D model characters like Warcraft orcs or something and do some animations.

Until my next blog entry...

Which game console is the greenest of them all?

One guy was probably soooo bored that he decided to discover the "greenest" of the three major game consoles in the market.

He measured the power consumption of the Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. To no surprise the Xbox 360 proved to be a monstrous energy sucking creature taking in 194 watts. This was followed by the PS3 with a 171 watt energy footprint. The Wii sips in 17 watts and has been declared the greenest game console.



So the little Wii has beaten its bulky brethren at the "Greenest of them all" contest. If you want to help keep energy consumption down to a minimum, buy a Wii instead of the other two.

Copyleft

Copyleft is an interesting term i came across. It is kind of the opposite of copyright. It uses copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of some work and force any further modifications to also apply this.

Am I a geek? A nerd perhaps...?

According to a t-shirt I got from the Microsoft store @ Microsoft HQ in Redmond, a geek is a excessive computer user. With this, Im definitely a geek.

According to Wikipedia a geek is the following:
1: a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken, bat or snake
2: a person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked
3: an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity

Hmm. I dont qualify for 1 or 2. 3 sounds more like me. I am an enthusiast and a bit of an expers in some technological fields. I am after all a software engineer.

So I guess I do qualify as a geek. What about a nerd? I was once called "Closet Nerd". What this person meant was that I studied my ass off in secret and did not like to show I was studying. This was kind of true, but not for the fact that I wanted to hide it, but because I was unable at the time to study in groups. I found it very distracting and inefficient.

According to Wikipedia again (my favorite source of information) a nerd is:
A person who passionately pursues intellectual or esoteric knowledge or pastimes rather than engaging in social life.

Well right now I definitely classify as a nerd and a geek...hehe...

The Halo Effect

Im sure if your a gamer then you've heard of Halo 3 (the third part to the XBOX's killer app). Its believed to be the biggest entertainment release ever. In the first 24 hours it made 170 million dollars.

This of course smacked me right in the back, coz I was dying to be a part of the whole hype about the game and try out the revolutionary MMO (massive multi-player online)
FPS (First Person Shooter). I dont have an XBOX, and believe you me, when I say Im dying to buy one now to try out Halo 3. In order curb my vein-racketing urge to play it, I decided to check out the history of Halo and go out and buy Halo 1 : Evolved Combat, the first game in the Halo trio.

I bought it from a local shop and started playing. I must say it has been one of the most enjoyable games Ive ever played. The storyline is catchy and the way you can ride vehicles and fly Banchees really really appealed to me. It satisfied my current surge for computer gaming.

Well Ive just finished the game in easy mode. Took me around 3 sittings to finish the game. Unfortunately Halo 2 runs only on Vista and I dont have Vista. So Im still thinking of buying an XBOX but I read some reviews about it and there are many complaints. People are complaining of the Red Light Of Doom (RLOD), I think its called. The console freezes up and stops working and displays a red ring of light. They have claimed to have fixed the problem in all newer versions. The slight probability that this could happen to me, has made me rule out ordering it from abroad. If I do decide to buy the XBOX, it will be from Egypt for a higher price.

Hmm, I dont really know, maybe I should wait a while until i cool down a bit and my gaming hormones settle down.

I also finished Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow around a week and a half ago. I bought a multiplayer game called Battlefield 2142 which seemed interesting, but I got fed up of the limited single player mode.

As you can see i'm in a gaming frenzy...

Which game am I going to try out next!!!! Oh I bought Quake 4 which I anticipate to be awesome, but there is something wrong with the setup files. I'll return it. I cant wait to play it, now that im done with Halo.

Imagine working in a game studio in Microsoft and developing something as complex and enjoyable as Halo 3. I can only dream of working in something like this. If I ever do (inshAllah), I hope it lives up to my dreams, and I live up to my dream.