http://www.basilgohar.com/blog Technology, Development, & Interesting Stuph Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:00:57 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem michael.dehaan (his spelling, not mine!) posted something that you can take or leave (I don't want to start a flame war on my own blog): michaeldehaan.net | Popularity Contests Are So Junior High School. But what is intriguing are the ideas that develop in the comments.   Please take some time ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/08/28/freedom-is-for-the-people/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, while reading about integers and, subsequently, prime numbers last night, I decided the time had come for me to write a primality calculator in PHP.  The test I use in my implementation is about as a naïve as one can possible get, but it was fun, nonetheless. Interestingly ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/08/24/naive-integer-primality-calculator-in-php/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I was able to take some pictures on the beach near our home here in Kuala Terengganu (KT). [caption id="attachment_217" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Beach Panorama"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_218" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Kuala Terengganu "Island""][/caption] http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/08/20/kuala-terengganu-beach-island/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I've been able to make some major- and sorely-needed-upgrades to Audio Islam.  Interestingly enough, for the vast majority of people, these changes won't really be that visible as they are all behind-the scenes. The desire to upgrade Audio Islam has been around for a long time, and I ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/08/16/audio-islam-now-running-on-lighttpd/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I've returned "home" to Kuala Terengganu (KT), which is my wife's hometown, and I've taken it to be my home-away-from home.  It's a beautiful place, especially because we actually live in a kampung, or village, not to far away from the main part of KT.  Additionally, compared ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/08/12/back-home-in-kuala-terengganu/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, my good friend Belal Khan of Leechon Films fame has started (a while back, actually) a program called Message Mastery.  You should get the full explanation from the website, but the basic gist of it is that it is a training seminar focused on developing masterful messages ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/07/29/message-mastery-by-belal-khan/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I've been able to take an enormous amount of pictures during my stay here in Malaysia until now.  And while the actual yield of shots with any value may be low, the sheer volume of photos means that I have plenty I would like to share. The sheer ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/07/29/time-lapse-barrage/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I just caught the news that Nokia is planning to buy Symbian and subsequently plans to open-source Symbian OS last this year or at the beginning of this year.  If this all plays out and is true, then this is a great boon to world as a ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/06/26/nokia-plans-to-buy-symbian-open-os/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulilllaah, there are some outstanding opportunities for views of the downtown Kuala Lumpur skyline from the roof of our apartment here.  Some of the shots are clearer than others due to the conditions at the time I took theme.  These are my first attempts, as well, so keep ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/06/26/panorama-shots-of-kuala-lumpur-downtown/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, after finding the wpLicense WordPress plugin on the Creative Commons website, I've been able to completely license all my work released through my blog under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license.  This means such world-changing works as my essay on Social Networking & online projects, ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/06/21/blog-now-completely-creative-commons-licensed/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I am back in Malaysia, which means I am also back with my wife.  Words cannot express how much joy the two of us are experiencing being together once again.  More than six months have passed since we'd been together the last time.  In case it is ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/06/20/back-in-malaysia/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Okay, so I have an addiction. Here are some more time-lapse sequences I took this past weekend and Monday. I'm now dabbling with alternative frame rates and sizes, including, by "popular" request, HD resolution videos. I've learned a few lessons from these sequences, and I'll elaborate a ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/21/more-time-lapse-fun/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I have really been engrossed in using ffmpeg, one of the most amazing a/v command-line tools out there, for my various personal video projects.  However, recently I was experiencing a recurring bug where I could not work with some specific codecs when either the input or the ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/18/ffmpeg-from-svn/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem As I've already alluded to in a previous post, I've been using the CHDK firmware supplement with my Canon PowerShot A550, which on it's own is an outstanding camera, alhamdulillaah. This firmware add-on, though, really takes the cake! One of the features made possible by CHDK is the ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/16/time-lapse-photography-with-chdk/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I've been playing around with CHDK, which is a free firmware add-on (note: it does not require flashing your camera's firmware) that enables a multitude of features on your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Canon PowerShot digital camera. In short, it's amazing. I haven't had enough time to ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/15/chdk-unleash-the-power-in-your-powershot/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, I'm about to head out from work, and I'm going to have to disconnect my torrent seeds that have been running all day - at least until I get home, in shaaʾ Allaah. Here are the graphical bandwidth charts showing the stats of the seeds from ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/13/fedora-9-seeding-stats/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Alhamdulillaah, Fedora 9 is officially released! At least, the official torrents are available. The main site doesn't seem to be updated yet, but then again, it's not 10 AM, either. I'm grabbing the x86_64 DVD build on one server and the i386 on the other, ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/13/fedora-9-is-gold/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem Okay, I know that title is a pretty pretentious statement by itself, as much of Fedora 9's awesomeness isn't unique to it. So, I'll grant that much of the coming awesomeness is related to Gnome 2.22, which is not limited to Fedora 9, nor is Pulseaudio, Upstart ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/12/fedora-9-why-its-so-awesome/ Note to self: If I want my blog posts to show up in an aggregator, make sure to give the admin the right link first... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/07/syndication/ Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem The command you want is mogrify. I am working with some images generated from within Windows XP, and they (sometimes thousands) are all in uncompressed bitmap files.  I wanted to find a free-and-open-source application to do the batch conversion easily, and I came across ImageMagick, which I had known ... http://www.basilgohar.com/blog/2008/05/07/batch-converting-images-using-imagemagick/