freaky...

someone sent this link to one of the mailing lists i read. man is that scary… if you search for yourself and it doesn’t find you, try searching for your parents or your friends’ parents…

on moonsighting for ramadan...

our masjid here announced the dates for ramadan and 3eid being this saturday (9/23) and monday (10/23) respectively. this is based on the fiqh council of north america’s decision to use calculation to determine the dates for ramadan and 3eid.

something about this struck me as odd, determining the dates of both ramadan and 3eid this far in advance. i used to think that basing the moonsighting off of calculations was a good thing, until i found out that calculations could be wrong. i found this out when i read sheikh isam’s excellent answer to this question on islamicnetwork (link courtesy of OK, jazahAllah khair).

in my personal and non-scholarly opinion, i would figure that since the world is so small today and news can travel from one part of the world to another within seconds, that if any trustworthy people say they saw the moon, then we should all fast, and if no one sees it, then we should wait. but of course there is difference of opinion on all of this, and its from the mercy of Allah on us, and of course as always, Allah knows best.

namazTime update

soner eker emailed me some beautiful graphics and a redone ui for namazTime, so i redid the ui based on what he sent me. you can see the screenshot here.

a neat tip for gmailers

this is a priceless tip that could prove useful to some of the gmail users out there…

about the facebook feeds...

today, the facebook “gets a facelift,” in which they add feeds and such. here’s a screenshot.

so as you can see from the screenshot above, it basically gives you detailed information about almost everything that all your friends are doing - you know when someone has added a friend, joined a group, left a group, changed his or her status or profile, and so on.

while facebook was never really that private (any of your friends could look and see these changes if they wanted to, but it would take time and effort), i think that this will cause me to be a bit more cautious about what i change and when i write on people’s walls and so on. in some ways, i can see how this may increase interaction (if you’re just logging on real quick to check messages, you may see a friend’s update that may cause you to react in some way (post a message, etc), which you otherwise may not have seen), but at the same time, i can see how it would cause people to be cautious.

it is interesting to see the reaction of people to these changes - i think the screenshot above suffices in explaining what i am trying to say…

update - check out mark zuckerberg’s reply to all the negative feedback on the facebook. check it out here on the facebook blog.

pier 39

my mom came to visit me for the break, so being that it was her last full day, i took her to pier 39. really nice place, beautiful view. i stayed up till 3 am playing with flickr and uploading some pictures there and playing with geotagging and all. neat stuff :) i was a little irked at the fact that my camera’s date has been off by a few days, resulting in the pictures having wrong dates…

google encourages people to swim...

i found this picture the other day… pretty funny, the poor guy has to swim to get to his destination.

how the years go by...

2002 was only 4 years ago… its unbelievable how time flies, how things change, how many things, people, and memories we remember and how many we forget… sub7anAllah… its amazing how many memories come back when seeing pictures or watching movies…

reminds me of this verse (18:49):

و وضع الكتاب فترى المجرمين مشفقين مما فيه و يقولون يا ويلتنا ما لهذا الكتاب لا يغادر صغيرة و لا كبيرة إلا أحصاها و وجدوا ما عملوا حاضرا و لا يظلم ربك أحدا

on a slightly related note, can someone suggest some open source or freeware software for taking an mpg (that is made of just still pictures and some video clips) and pulling the pictures and videoclips out?

a quranic aim bot

so i was a little bit bored today, and i wanted to write a simple quranic aim bot just for fun… so i took a look at Net::Oscar off cpan and at a sample bot, wrote a sample alpha api to allow searching over quranic realm, and the result:

(02:06:20) ahmed: 3:1

(02:06:21) chisaikaruma: match: ayah=“1” Transliteration: Alif-lam-meem Sahih International: Alif, Lam, Meem.

(02:06:23) ahmed: say if you love Allah

(02:06:24) chisaikaruma: match: sura=“3” ayah=“31” percent=“100” Transliteration: Say (O Muhammad SAW to mankind): “If you (really) love Allah then follow me (i.e. accept Islamic Monotheism, follow the Quran and the Sunnah), Allah will love you and forgive you of your sins. And Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” English: Qul in kuntum tuhibboona AllahafattabiAAoonee yuhbibkumu Allahu wayaghfirlakum thunoobakum wallahu ghafoorun raheem

(02:06:42) ahmed: bismillah alrahman alraheem

(02:06:43) chisaikaruma: match: sura=“1” ayah=“1” percent=“84” Transliteration: Bismi Allahi arrahmani arraheem English: In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. match: sura=“27” ayah=“30” percent=“84” Transliteration: Innahu min sulaymana wa-innahu bismiAllahi arrahmani arraheem English: “It is from Solomon, and is (as follows): ‘In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful:

i am not quite sure as to whether or not i can send utf8 strings over this or not… i couldn’t get arabic results to work from the tiny bit i tried. it still needs some work, but its just a for-fun prototype/proof of concept. i think the greatest benefit was being able to put together an alpha version of an quranic realm api for future use.

i’ve taken it down for now… and by the way, for those of you wondering about the name, “chisaikaruma” comes from “chisai karuma” (ちさい かるま) in japanese, which means “small car.”

some people frustrate me...

while working on y! answers, i sometimes go to the homepage and have a particular question catch my eye. sometimes, i can’t help but wonder, “what are these people thinking…”

here’s one recent example: . can a muslim be a good american? – totally ridiculous question, read it through and you’ll see what i mean. the guy lists a bunch of stereotypes and unresearched ideas to reach a conclusion at the end that:

“Therefore after much study and deliberation….perhaps we should be very suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country. They obviously cannot be both “good” Muslims and good Americans. Call it what you wish….it’s still the truth..”

yeah…