Published on August 1, 2010
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
الحد لله, on Friday, the 11th of Shaʿbān, 1431 (23rd of July, 2010), at 12:40 AM local Columbus time, Allāh blessed us with a healthy, 6 lbs, 14 oz blessing that we’ve named عبد الله (ʿAbdullāh), which, in Arabic, means, “slave of Allāh” (Allāh being the proper name of God). For the very same reason we’ve named our first son ʿAbdurraḥmān, we chose this name for our second son, in reference to the following ḥadeeth of the Messenger of Allaah, salallaahu ʿalayhi wa sallam:
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Book 025, Number 5315:
Ibn Umar reported that Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: The names dearest to Allah are ‘Abdullah and ‘Abd al-Rahman. (link)
Both mother & new son are doing very well, walḥamdulillāh. The birth of Abdullah was a bit special as we chose to have him delivered at home (i.e., a home birth), and that turned out to be an excellent and blessed decision, alḥamdulillāh.
Note: I strongly apologize for the delay in announcing this birth. Please forgive us and do not let it detract from your duʿaaʾ for him. No special reason for the delay except that I wanted to have this post ready first. 
Note 2: You can see the announcement for our first son here.
Note 3: You can see the birth of ʿAbdurraḥmān noted here.
Published on May 29, 2010
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
A few days ago, Matt Lee of the Free Software Foundation had asked in the #theora IRC channel for help in making a DVD of the Patent Absurdity documentary. Several people volunteered to help, and I was one of them. I discovered later that this was related to the “Who should see Patent Absurdity?” campaign of the End Software Patents project (an initiative started by Brad Feld, I just discovered!).
Incidentally, we all ran into different kinds of problems, doing what should have been a rather simple task. The sources of the problems ranged from simple bugs to rather weird video formats. In this post I will discussed the various issues that I personally encountered and how, alhamdulillaah, was able to overcome them.
The Absurdity continued »
Filed in Free Software, Society |
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Tags: DeVeDe, dvd, ffmpeg, Free Software, mpeg-2, Patent Absurdity, software freedom, software patents, story, tutorial
Published on May 25, 2010
Alhamdulillaah, Fedora 13 has been released! Torrents (on a newly redesigned torrent page) are also available. Not a bad way to get back into blogging, either. Look for more updates soon, in shaaʾ Allaah.
Published on March 26, 2010
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Assalaamu ʿalaykum wa Rahmatullaahi wa Barakaatuh
Alhamdulillaah, I’ve decided to get back into blogging. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve had much of a presence in the Blogoverse, and part of that is due to just not having the desire to go through, login, and making a post through the traditional WordPress administrative interface. However, until now, I still have not found a blogging client with which I’m totally satisfied. So, I’ve decided to go ahead and give lekhonee another shot.
One aspect for which I have not made an opinion yet is that the interface is basically plain text, and it allows you to post in raw HTML, which isn’t terrible. However, having a rich-text editor really isn’t that difficult to add, so, I’ll just have to see if it’s worth it or not. So, let’s see how it works-out.
Published on August 23, 2009
بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم
رمضان 1430 مبارك
الحد لله, it’s Ramadhaan once again! Granted, I’m a bit late, but I posted elsewhere in a more timely fashion, so I guess I have some kind of an excuse. ِAnyway, while this is definitely a month most noted for the abstention of Muslims from food & drink, in reality it is so much more than that. It is the opportunity to really get yourself into less of a worldly mindset and focus on our goal – Jannah. So, I ask Allaah to grant us the ability to seek out the full reward of this most blessed month and grant us the fullest extent of His Mercy, Forgiveness, and freedom from the Hellfire.
Published on August 5, 2009
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
الحد لله, I am trying more-and-more these days to practice writing Arabic with actual Arabic letters rather than using cumbersome transliterations. This is partially due to my father’s abhorrence of transliterating Arabic, lest the skill to actually write Arabic in Arabic be lost. I agree with him, and besides, it’s a great way to learn the language and get used to using it. So, as much as possible, I’m going to try to start using more-and-more Arabic, where appropriate, in my typing, by using the actual Arabic letters, إن شاء الله. If anyone has any questions about what a particular Arabic phrase is, then please post your question. I will try to include a simple glossary. Some autolinking would be great, too…let me look for a WordPress plugin for that…
Published on August 2, 2009
Bismillāhir Raḥmānir Raḥīm
Alḥamdulillāh, I’ve decided that, after upgrading WordPress, I should do a little housekeeping. As usual, I find a list best presents the ideas I wish to express:
- I upgraded to WordPress 2.8.2 (mentioned here).
- I fixed some posts that had some typos (I usually am good about this, but these had slipped by).
- I deleted some links that really weren’t relevant to me anymore (i.e., Ruby on Rails) and I added some new ones.
- I changed to a new theme (comments welcome!).
I’d like to elaborate a bit more on the last point above, since it merits some discussion and the action is rooted in something I care about deeply.
More updates to blog, switching to GPL theme continued »
Published on August 2, 2009
Bismillāhir Raḥmānir Raḥīm
Alḥamdulillāh, I’ve just successfully upgraded my blog to WordPress 2.8.2, along with several other blogs that I maintain. I’m really looking forward to the merger of WordPress & WordPress-MU, which, ideally, will make managing multiple WordPress sites on the same server easier to deal with, in shāʾ Allāh.
Published on July 25, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Alhamdulillaah, I’ve discovered a new WordPress blogging client packaged with Fedora – namely, Lekhonee. There aren’t a lot of formatting options, but it appears you can post using HTML, so that’s a plus, I think. Let’s see how it goes.
Published on July 15, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Innaa lillaahi wa innaa ilayhi raajiʿoon. Verily we are from Allaah, and verily unto Him we shall return. Shaykh Abdullah ibn Jibreen has passed away. Muslim Matters has some additional coverage, including some kind words by Shaykh Abu ʿAmmaar Yasir Qadhi, who had the occasion to meet the shaykh several times.
Whenever the news of the death of one of the scholars reaches me, I always remember the following hadeeth from Saheeh Muslim:
Book 034, Number 6462:
‘Abdullah b. ‘Amr b. al-’As reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: Verily, Allah does not take away knowledge by snatching it from the people but He takes away knowledge by taking away the scholars, so that when He leaves no learned person, people turn to ignorant as their, leaders; then they are asked to deliver religious verdicts and they deliver them without knowledge, they go astray, and lead others astray.
May Allaah protect us from the dangers of ignorance and following the ignorant.
Published on July 11, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Assalaamu ʿalaykum wa Rahmatullaahi wa Barakaatuh
Innaa lillaahi wa innaa ilayhi raajiʿoon. Our sister, Marwa Sherbini, was murdered in Germany as a consequence of wearing her hijaab, a style of dress fulfilling the commandment of Allaah for women to cover themselves appropriately when outside of their homes. Muslim Matters has a story covering this great issue: Marwa Sherbini: The Hijab Martyr.
Marwa Sherbini: The Hijab Martyr continued »
Published on June 11, 2009
Published on June 9, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Alhamdulillaah, the Fedora Project has released Fedora 11! You can get the torrents and/or check out the new features!
(Sorry for the rather uninspired & lazy post…I usually like to share more details, but I’ve got work to do…;) )
Published on June 5, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Alhamdulillaah no one was injured in the dramatic collapse of the roof of the Sultan Mizan Zainal Abidin stadium in nearby Gong Badak here in Kuala Terengganu. It is only about 10 minutes away from where we live here in KT, and in fact, it’s on the way from our place to downtown. Therefore, I took the opportunity to snap some pics over a couple of days. You can find more pics in the gallery, including several panoramas. I’ve also taken some HDR pics, but they are not processed yet. Patience is beautiful. 
Published on April 26, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Alhamdulillaah, nothing can take away from the blessing & joy of being a father, but one of the obvious side effects of having an infant is the drastic change in priorities. So, naturally, most of my projects have fallen on the wayside. Even work has suffered. But, alhamdulillaah, this just means I have to reshuffle schedules and be more prudent about my time usage – I’m still figuring this out.
To help me get back on track, I wanted to revisit a recent post I had made about unfinished projects. The two projects that I feel I need to put some extra time into, due to their nature, are the AlMaghrib in Malaysia project as well as the Global Homeschooling project/business idea. The former needs attention because people are waiting on me for further action, while the latter is important because I am convinced it is the future for my family, in shaaʾ Allaah. Although the other points on the list are quite important as well (and some are, actually, more important), I am choosing these as examples because I think making progress on them is something of a “low-hanging fruit”. Therefore, I need to make some kind of schedule or plan for getting both of these done.
Getting back on track continued »
Published on April 6, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Alhamdulillaah, I’ve successfully loaded the Fedora 11 Beta Live CD onto an SD card. This allows me to boot directly from the card using my USB card reader, much as if it were a USB key/flash drive. In short, after a few attempts, everything just works.
Fedora 11 Beta LiveCD continued »
Published on March 17, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Alḥamdulillāh, on Monday, the 19th of Rabīʿ ulʾawwa, 1430 (16th of March, 2009) at 5:38 PM Malaysia local time, Allāh blessed us with a 2.3 kg (~5 lb.) blessing we named ʿAbdurraḥmān (عبد الرحمن), which, in Arabic, means “slave of the Most Merciful”, which is one of the beautiful names of Allāh in Islām. In fact, the Messenger of Allāh, ṣalallāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam (may Allāh peace & blessings be upon him) mentioned that the two most beloved names to Allāh are ʿAbdullāh & ʿAbdurraḥmān (slave of Allāh), which is why we chose that name for our first son.
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Book 025, Number 5315:
Ibn Umar reported that Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: The names dearest to Allah are ‘Abdullah and ‘Abd al-Rahman. (link)
Both mother & son are doing fine, alḥamdulillāh, and we all came home earlier today.
Picture requests will not be honored.
Published on March 13, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Alhamdulillaah, I am quite pleased with the following HDR image I was able to assemble. While not as good as the best that are out there, it is definitely a step-up from my other attempt I shared here.
HDR Scooter
HDR Scooter continued »
Published on March 10, 2009
Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem
Alhamdulillaah, to my pleasant surprise, I discovered that I started using Fedora personally with Fedora Core 4, and not 5 like I had previously thought. This makes me feel better as I’m glad I started using Fedora earlier, because I like to think I recognized the importance of a completely (or as close as possible) free operating system (free here means freedom, not just free of cost).
My first Fedora continued »
Published on March 7, 2009
Bismillāhir Raḥmānir Raḥīm
Alḥamdulillāh, I’ve gone ahead and removed all the microblogging updates to my blogs (the ones titled, “Identi.ca updates for yyyy-mm-dd”). I thought it would be a neat idea, since I had started using identi.ca, to add some unique content to my blog, but the result was all I was doing was spamming my own blog. How terrible is that? Since I already have a sidebar widget that displays my identi.ca activity and anyone can subscribe to my dents directly from the site, I felt the blog updates were just too much.
In an ironic twist, I’ve now enabled my blog to make a dent (the identi.ca term for Twitter’s “tweet”) whenever I make a post using the same plug-in. In shāʾ Allāh I won’t have the reverse problem.
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