Touring Pakistan on a Motorbike

Twitter Nonsense

Twitter Nonsense is new addition to my portfolio. Its a beautiful and nice use of wordpress to present daily-comic strips. I was responsible for implementing the design into the wordpress theme with some necessary customization to wordpress itself. The client for this project is Anton Gigov, one of the best clients I’ve been working with.

The difficult part was to show comments and commet-form on home page. It is possible with a hack: by commenting out line # 643 in wp-includes/comment-template.php:

642. if ( ! (is_single() || is_page() || $withcomments) )
643.         return;

But modifying wordpress core files is never a good option if you can achieve the results with a plugin or custom coding within theme. What I did for Twitter Nonsense was to write the following code segment at the top of header.php that redirects the user to latest-post when he visits the site:

$url = “http://” . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

if($url == ‘http://www.pink-sheep.com/twitter-nonsense/’)
{
global $wpdb;
$last_post_id = $wpdb->get_var( “SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_type = ‘post’ AND post_password = ” AND post_status = ‘publish’ ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 1″);
wp_redirect( get_permalink( $last_post_id ) );
exit;
}

My First Day at Hospital

Finally, they had me!

For the first time in my life, I was in a hospital. It was quite an experience for a person like me who has never been there, believes in human adaptability & natural healing and is quite lazy too

The hospital was all fine and not at all like what I had imagined and read in newspapers. But I didn’t quite like it. I didn’t like the need to get checked. I hated it.

I was having lowgrade fever every other month. And some people said it might be something serious. So I was there to get tested for anything other than fever. I don’t even understand the names and effects of those disease! They have taken half a syringe of my blood. Will be applying some chemistry over them to tell me what chemicals (they call it medicine) I need to take.

I was thinking if it turns out to be serious, then… I don’t want to die

I want knowledge! Not faith, not assumptions, but knowledge.

This is a dialog from The Seventh Seal, one of the best movies I have ever watched. I can quote so many lines that are just close to my heart. I highly recommend you to watch this. What wikipedia has to say about this movie is:

The Seventh Seal (Swedish: Det sjunde inseglet) is an existential 1957 Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman about the journey of a medieval knight across a plague-ridden landscape, and a monumental game of chess between himself and the personification of Death, who has come to take his life. The film has long been regarded a masterpiece of cinema.

And here are some more lines from the movie:

“I met Death today. We are playing chess.”

“Love is the blackest of all plagues… if one could die of it, there would be some pleasure in love, but you don’t die of it. “

“I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams. “

“Have you met the devil? I want to meet him too. I want to ask him about God. He must know. He, if anyone. “

Morning In Islamabad

The Birth of Ideas Hut

Once upon a time, I had a 5 word faecbook status “make developers network of pakistan”. I would have changed that status and ahead the next day. But Fariha saw it and started bugging me We discussed and groomed the idea with each wall-post. Better put, it was she who groomed the idea, I was simple replying to what she was throwing at me . And I felt what we are discussing is important and should be shared with the world. And more people should participate in the process. So I setup a rough version of Ideas Hut and sent her the link.

That started yet another brainstorming session over IM. We made a road map for Ideas Hut, how it can benefit everyone, what features it should have to be really useful and all that. I was impressed by her planning abilities and vision. The first idea we have at Ideas Hut (IT-Professionals-Network) is in fact a result of her brainstorming. To be faithful, she has bigger part in start and growth of Ideas Hut than I. And that makes her our CEO.

Ideas Hut is very dear to us. We have big dreams about its future. its not really launched and is still in beta. Many things from our first board meeting’s minutes still need to be addressed. Stay with us, you will see something very interesting from the two mad Pakistanis. May be you see us on Wired’s cover some day for the startup we launch taking an idea from Ideas Hut

Zong GPRS Plays Youtube Videos Very Well

I’ve always been a heavy data-user on my mobile service. But since I got unlimited data plan (a day ago), I’m not hesitant in opening heavy sites, allowing images & javascript and all. I am on Zong network. The procedure to get the unlimited GPRS can be made more simple. Their call center representative told me to get a balance of 460+ and then call him back. I did and then he filed my request in some queue telling me that my unlimited gprs will be activated within 24 hours (“if you maintain your balance to 460+”). So thats how I got unlimited data plan.

Now my youtube experience with Zong GPRS: Last night when power was out and I was laying in bed. I thought to visit that youtube mobile portal. And clicked on one of the featured videos from home page and then “Watch Video” and WOW, it streamed very smooth without a single second pause. I never thought a gprs connection can do this for me. Thanks Zong. I’ll be waiting for when you offer EDGE (and 3G). I guess, I will abandon my exile then

UPDATE: Now its easy to subscribe to this package. Just dial 905 from your phone and select the package. In addition to this monthly package, you can also subscribe to the hourly package that will cost you Rs 15 / hour. And the billing will be for the minutes you have used not for the whole hour.

Testing wordpress mobile client

Hello all, i’m writing this post via a wordpress client for symbian os. Hope it works or i’ll write my own.

update: so it worked! The client is Scribe. Its written in python. I had to install python for symbian before installing this client. Its quite slow, may be because its not native symbian code.

As my mobile sees me

I just took this pic using my cell. And with just one click on my mobile it was on flickr. And with some more clicks i’m blogging it.

Will You Share a Business Idea?

Two mad Pakistanis have created a service where you can roll out startup ideas. Everyone will discuss them. They will get improved. And someone will implement them. Sounds interesting or stupid :S

Lets see why would someone want to share business ideas after all: Because we are already doing it anyway! Do you remember last time you tried to find an online service but could not find it? Did you read the other day a fellow blogger asking for localized services for Pakistan? Do you want to see an idea implemented but you know you are too busy to do that? These are the situations when you do want to share ideas.

And that’s why we created Ideas Hut. Now, we have a place where we can roll-out & discuss ideas we care about and want to see alive. The mantra is simple: we share and discuss an idea and we get the service. Isn’t it great? Go check for yourself: http://ideashut.com

Oh, by the way, the mad Pakistanis are Fariha and Me.