Dogbert: barking up the wrong tree

With all the hoopla about Maps, I couldn’t help tinkering around with them myself.

Over the weekend, I took the Google Maps API out for spin and I was impressed by the ease of use of the javascript API. Checkout my quick hack here:

Google Maps – Kuwait

It’s only a very crude application that allows you to click around on the flags and see the name of the cities. It may take a while to load since it’s mapping about 200 locations.
But these basic tools can be used to conjure up some wicked apps like these:

oodle maps
Bicycle Route (Let’s you map your bicycle tour as an animation on Google Maps. Very innovative hack to animate the route.)

If people can provide me geocodings (latitude/longitude) of popular Kuwait landmarks, I can add them to the map.

I’ll do a small write-up later on if anyone is interested in playing around with the API (You don’t really need to be a programmer to do simple things with it).

I came across this site to “speed up” page downloading in Firefox. I think I do notice an improvement in the speed but it may just be my imagination:

How To Speed Up Firefox

At a technical level, I can see how establishing 30 connections to an HTTP server can speed up download. Without the tweak outlined in the article, all elements on a page are downloaded one after another. So if you have a page with 100 images on it, these images will be downloaded serially. However, with parallelization, it will download 30 images at a time. Of course if you have an all-text page, it wouldn’t affect the download speed at all since the page will only be downloaded serially on one HTTP connection.

That said, I wonder why they don’t use these as the default settings. One reason I can imagine is that they want all users to have equal access to the HTTP server. Since the number of users that can logon to an HTTP server is limited, if I hog up 30 connections, that’s 29 fewer people who can browse that site while I’m on it. That’s not so good from the perspective of commercial websites because more traffic translates to bigger $$$.

Setting the nglayout:initialpaint parameter to 0 milliseconds should have a big impact on pages that have a lot of HTML on them. This is because even though most browsers start rendering the webpage before all the images have been downloaded, they will never render the page without downloading all the HTML. If I understand this correctly, setting this parameter to zero may have undesirable effects on a huge HTML page that uses javascript to modify the page at the end of the HTML contents. (e.g. updating div tags)

Nonetheless, a great speed booster for those willing to risk it all =)

I saw some “How many books do you own?” type questions on some blogs recently and IMHO, it was either using a really silly premise (your intelligence is directly proportional to the number of books you have) or was just good ole’ ego-inflation at it’s best.

In order to disprove the abovementioned premise consider the fact that I have about 3000 books and am told that I have (under?) average intelligence.

You don’t believe that I have 3000 books? Just take a look at my library.

Working where I work, I get free subscription to this wonderful resource called Safari Online . Safari Online (SO) is an online library of IT-related books from leading publishers (O’Reillys, Pearsons, SAM Publishing etc.). SO contains not only the full-text books online for your viewing pleasure but also includes a really good search tool that let’s you search for text, and more importantly, relevant pieces of code.

That’s incredibly useful because I can directly copy-paste code rather than have to type it out from a book. The only issue right now is that I have to read the books online and can’t print them out or save them as PDF (I’m guessing this is for IP reasons). Although there does seem to be a more expensive subscription where you can download and print chapters.

Subscription to Safari Online is “Enterprise-only” which means that your organization has to purchase group-wide subscription for SO. I’m not exactly sure why they’ve done that. One reason may be that if books are illegally distributed, they can hold your company liable (If that is the reason, then it’s one smart move).

Oh yes, they also have a library for Business professionals (which is a lot of handwaving if you ask me).

Here are some useful links:

Safari Online
Test Drive SO instantly
Trial Subscription to SO-Tech Books Online
Trial Subscription to SO-Business Books Online

It takes a lot of balls for someone like the Mayor of London to say:

Decades of British and American intervention in the oil-rich Middle East motivated the London bombers … Instead, they had often supported unsavoury governments in the region…”We’ve propped up unsavoury governments, we’ve overthrown ones we didn’t consider sympathetic.” [Source]

And to say that right after the London bombings? That’s like committing political harakiri. I would only expect someone like Chomsky or George Galloway to say stuff like that.

But way to go Livingstone for calling a spade a spade.

Something comes over me when I enter the narrow lanes at the end of the 5th Ring Road. The lanes I’m talking about are the ones setup temporarily due to the construction work going on with the 5th Ring.

It’s business as usual while I’m driving along on the rest of the highway but the moment I enter those narrow lanes squeezed in between an SUV and a half-lorry, I transform into an F1 racer. I feel like I’m racing on one of the circuits from ‘Need For Speed’. I ease into turns and speed out (just like I do on the video game) and I tend to give sideway glances to the drivers on either side of me (to check whether they’re gaining on me). The moment I’ve exited those lanes, I’m back to my normal self.

I guess I feel this way because they’re the only roads in Kuwait that are “fun” to drive on. I remember loving driving along Highway 1 in California. Those of you who’ve been there will know that some parts of Highway 1 (close to Monterey etc.) are pretty treacherous and one false move can land you into the Atlantic Ocean!

So yeah, the next time you see someone mistaking his Corolla for a McLaren, that’s Dogbert.

I got this in the mail today:

A dog went to a telegram office, took out a blank form and wrote: “Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof. Woof.” The clerk examined the paper and politely told the dog: “There are only nine words here. You could send another ‘Woof’ for the same price.” The dog replied, “But that would make no sense at all.”

Now most people I know don’t find this joke that funny but for some strange reason these kind of jokes just crack me up. I think I find most jokes that involve animals really funny. Like there was this one comic illustration I saw a while back that showed a bunch of chickens sitting around a microwave oven watching a chicken being roasted. The cartoon was titled “Reality TV”. Now that’s so hilarious especially because the chicken were all dopey looking. I wish I had the picture with me so I could’ve posted it here.

Gary Larson is the best.

Another crazy link I Stumbled Upon. The whole idea is so innovative. I really envy people who come up with stuff like this.

Top 5 Reasons why I still prefer Opera to Firefox:

#5. Download Manager: I find Opera’s download tab much more nicer to use than the popup window in Firefox. Why doesn’t Firefox just integrate the download as just another tab?

#4. Session Saving support: If i have 10 tabs opened up and my boss passes by, I just close Opera. When I re-open it, it asks me whether I want to restart the last session. I click ‘Yes’ and voila, back to time wastin’ =)

#3. In-built support for RSS feeds: It’s child’s play to subscribe to RSS feeds. Just click on any RSS link and it will ask you whether you want to subscribe to it. If you click ‘Yes’, it’s added to active RSS feeds. Anytime there is a new post, there is a notification in the taskbar telling you that the feed got updated. You can read the feed in a ‘mail-reader’ like tab.

#2. The ‘Zoom’ feature: It doesn’t just resize the text but zooms into pictures as well. You have to see it to believe it.

and the #1 reason why i still prefer Opera to Firefox (drumrolls)

#1: Bookmarking: I love the fact that you can navigate down to the target folder and click “Bookmark Page” and the bookmark directly goes there. Big points on usability. Firefox should have taken this cue from Opera.

(Next up: “Top 5 Reasons why I may switch to Firefox” =)

Check this out: Hollow Einstein illusion. A bit unnerving.

There are other really great illusions, all based on sound physics, at the Grand Illusions site. The video downloads are a bit large but well worth it.

Today marked the culmination of a tedious two-month process quite innocuously called “Transfer of Residence”. As I straightened out the two 1KD bills and inserted them into the vending machine, all I could think of was the hell I have gone through the last couple of months to get this little piece of plastic.

It all started with my decision to accept a government sector job. After all, my boss was a teaching professor (no micro-management), the pay was great and the 8-2 timings ensured that I could give more time to my “extra-curricular” activities. I was told that this particular government institution could not afford to waste a ‘mandub’ (ministry liaison) on me so I would have to do all the Ministry-related work myself. “Mafi Mushkila” I say to myself as I exercise my Arabic vocabulary. It shouldn’t be a problem because time is on my side and my Arabic consists of more words than just the ubiquitous ‘salami lakem’ and ‘in shala’ (I’ve seen way too many Westerners [ab]use these phrases).

So with much gusto I started the “ta7weel” (transfer) process. My enthusiasm was short-lived though, because I was asked to run from pillar to post to get things done. The worse part was the medical tests though. I’ve lost count of the number of times I must have gone to the ‘Majlis At Tibb’ (Medical Council) to get an array of tests done. As if poking me with a needle wasn’t enough, the blood-sucking (and I use this term loosely) ‘nurse’ was fishing around with the syringe in my arm like she was trying to put a worm onto a hook. This resulted in blood being spilled all into my internals and I had a nasty bruise on my arm for about a month! The most baffling part is that less than 2 months prior I was applying for my first work-visa and I had just got the exact same tests done. Surely the Ministry of Health has a file on me saying that I don’t have TB, don’t carry any STDs and my blood sugar is normal. But they don’t care, we’re Ex-pats (best read with a rapid “spitting like” gesture). After all .. who cares about them ‘Ex-pats’.

Coming in a close second for “10 Worse Nightmares to Endure for an Iqama” was the bureaucrats. Ah.. where would this lovely country be without them. Now I know every place has its share of paper-pushers, but the Kuwaiti bunch take the prize. I had to arise at insane hours just to make it in time to be 150th in the queue (really, do people camp overnight at the Ministry of Social Affairs in Sharq?) I am desperately trying to forget the terrible encounters I had with the apathetic jerks at the ‘shuoons’ but this one I think will take me a lifetime to forget: I was trying to get something done at the Ministry of Employment in Farwaniya. I noticed that most of the employees there were ladies and I thought to myself “Ok.. they’re ladies, they’re going to be nice to me”. I was in for a rude awakening. Having being sent from one of the ‘Mudeera’(departmental head) to the wrong place, I returned to her only to find out that she wasn’t there and someone seated in her place. I politely explained my situation to this new female and she told me in no uncertain terms to ‘F*** off’. So I switched gears and asked her to guide me to the person previously sitting in her desk. The reply is “Look around for her. She is here somewhere.”. Well, I would have done that in the first place except that literally every woman in this place is wearing a niqab (face covering)! Am I supposed to look under each niqab? The ridiculousness of her suggestion amused me.

Another thing that annoyed me no end was being referred to by my country of citizenship rather than name. “Wayn hadhal Elbonee?” was a common question if someone was trying to refer to me. Is “Dogbert” that hard to say?

Add to this the 50+ Celsius heat, the barrage of verbal insults if I got one of the myriad of processes slightly incorrect and the general feelings of racial disdain just because I happen to be from Elbonia and you will understand why I was more than a little miffed.

So you can imagine my tears of joy as in went my 2KD and out popped the CivilID at the PACI. After the hell that I went through, the CivilID process was anticlimactic. Just choose the renew option at PACI’s website and go over to pickup your card. No human intervention necessary. How boring.