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in my previous blog post, i briefly talked about syncing an android phone with icloud instead of google contacts. in this post, i’ll talk a little bit about cleaning up your google contacts. so if you’re like me, you may not be quite ready to erase everyt…

google is a great company with useful products. however, due to its very business and monetization strategies, it has slowly lost some of the trust it once had with people. i won’t go into details here since many people have written on this topic in great…

so looking back at it, i’ve been blogging since 2004. unfortunately, as time went on, i have pretty much ignored this blog. so in an effort to start writing more, i’ve decided to make some changes. first, i’ve switched the domain - if you notice, you’re n…

i was inspired by salem’s tweet from yesterday to play around with ios 5 a bit. i discovered this library, which makes it pretty easy to hook into siri. i found out that a brother (by the name of Bilal Ahmad, may Allah reward him) had beaten me to the idea

bismillah alra7man alra7eem. on february 12th, we released quran android 1.6. this version was mostly intended as a bugfix release, but a few new features got in as well. some notable ones include search, repeat mode for ayahs, night mode for pages, and m…

i decided to merge the old masr.whatstheplot.com entries here into this blog since updating two blogs is more difficult than updating one :)

just for fun, i had written this (really simple) game for Android not long ago. i decided that i should release it rather than keep it on my hard drive doing nothing. it is really simple, but still, it is fun enough to try :) if you have an android phone,…

ramadan kareem!

so it’s been nearly 6 years since i posted here about pyboids… and since i love the idea of the boids algorithm so much (and was trying to play with core animation), i decided to try to write boids using core animation. it’s imperfect, but it works (and,…

dstar (well, death star as @wnafee chose to name it instead) is a simple puzzle game from the ti days. i posted a link to an html5 version a few days ago, and today, we’re releasing an ad-supported android version (just for fun). it was done by @wnafee and

wanted to play around with html5, so came up with this html5 version of dstar. it’s less than 100 lines of code (not including the levels and simple html). it’s based on the ti and hp48 versions of the same game. this version only has 2 levels. graphics by

if you don’t already use alfred on osx, you really should!

al7amdulillah, quran android 1.3 has been released!

as people in egypt know, dst was cancelled in egypt: “…Egypt’s interim cabinet decided on Wednesday to cancel daylight saving time after a poll posted on its website showed the majority of Egyptians would approve the cancellation.”

in case you haven’t seen it, check out version 1.2 of quran android (released on december 23rd). you can see screenshots and a more detailed change log on hussein’s blog. more features and improvements are in the pipeline. feel free to check out the code…

uh… yeah. so egypt (like many other countries apparently) requires military service from it’s citizens. as a dual citizen, you are exempt from egyptian military service. i won’t get into details of how to prove this and get your military pardon, but let’s…

just for fun, here’s an ios universal version of the quran search application. screenshots: ipad: 1 (shown above) and 2. iphone: 1 and 2. you can find the source code here (update: added a link to a tar download and removed the code from github since i am…

just for fun, i hacked together a simple prototype of quran search on android. in reality, it’s more close to the autocomplete transliteration demo that i did some time back. for now, it’s only transliteration search, but later on, it can be expanded to s…

here’s the second edition of the list. see if you can translate these to english, and look out for the answers to this list and the first edition of the list soon insha’Allah!

i got in a taxi to go a short distance a few days ago. while driving, the man said to me: you know, today, something strange happened. i just dropped off my nephew to the airport where he’s traveling to qatar. i am subscribed to a “du3a a day by sms” serv…

i almost died yesterday… again… sub7anAllah. it was around 1am and i was really tired and sleepy… i was trying to cross the street from the maw2af to get to the other side and find something to ride home. i guess i really wasn’t paying attention and was t…

i stopped a taxi that had just picked up some people and was going the same direction i wanted to go in. he asked the others if he could drop me off on his way to their destination. because i was in a rush, i said, “if not, if you may please just drop me…

today (well, yesterday actually) - was quite a busy day!

in egypt, you may encounter stores with large “open 24 hours” signs. don’t believe what you read.

a few days ago, i had to wake up extra early to go to work, and it so happens that i also ended up sleeping really late that same night. i woke up and was really spaced out. i went to take a “mashroo3” (minibus) to work. first off, i got on the wrong one…

i took a metered cab in cairo to the train station a few days ago. the driver and i started talking, and amidst our discussion, i told him that i lived in the us for the greater part of my life. he asked, “what on earth are you doing here?”

it’s nice to have directions (walking and navigation) in egypt - quite useful (albeit imperfect).

in the words of wael: “he is sheikh-ul-mashaAllah.”

عسل و طحينه

salam 3alaikum - first off, belated ramadan mubarak. i wanted to take a moment to write a bit about ramadan here in egypt. the first note is that about the ambiance and overall mood - apartment buildings, masajid, and streets are all decorated for ramadan.

i spent the night at my aunt’s house in cairo yesterday, and had a ticket for the 8am train to alexandria. i figured, “rather than hassle with n different modes of transportation, especially while fasting, why not call city cab?”

ramadan kareem!

(well, in reality, today is friday). in santa clara, sheikh mohamed used to give a short 3 minute reminder after isha on thursdays. each time, this reminder would start with the phrase, “tomorrow is friday,” after which he would remind us the virtues of s…

#!

something interesting always happens whenever i make the trip from alex to cairo. the past two times i went, i encountered some sort of major discussion over the fare of the mashroo3 (micro bus). during the first incident, i was leaving from sidi gaber -…

in the us, you can have an unlimited data plan with most of the mobile carriers (well, there’s now a 200 mb (or 2gb) cap on at&t (depending on how much you pay)). since i didn’t use my phone for tethering in the us, my monthly usage usually didn’t exceed…

there are two types of people in this world… masha’Allah (points to those i know), and astaghfurAllah (points to self).

my machines typically have had some sort of video game related (and specifically, rpg related) names. some names i’ve used in the past: meribia - a town from the lunar rpgs weltall - a “gear” name from xenogears termina - a city from chrono cross zanarkand

yesterday after 3isha (friday) i attended the “writing of a book” (katb kitab, aka “nikkah,” aka “marriage contract,” aka “engagement”) of one of my friends (mahmoud) here in alexandria. the gathering was done at masjid 3omar ibn al khattab in alexandria.…

my 5th khutbah in alexandria was with sheikh 7atem farid. sheikh 7atem is famous for his beautiful recitation of the quran. it is said that during ramadan, an incredibly massive number of people come and pray taraweeh behind him, especially on the 27th ni…

masjid al salam is the masjid next to the place i am currently staying. most of the people who go there are the people who live or work in assid, where the masjid is located. i am not sure if the masjid has a full time imam or not, because the same subset…

i recently had to look at the blackberry sdk for something. to my disappointment, the blackberry sdk is only available for windows - no linux or mac versions in site. my first attempt was to run a windows vm under virtualbox, but that brought my system to…

versus

an interesting thing happened a few weeks ago… i was walking with my friend heading to the excellent restaurant, dahab. on the way, we heard the adhan for maghrib and decided to stop and pray. we saw a sign for a masjid, so we started walking in that dire…

electricity is human too, you know. it works really hard, so it deserves a break. let the people walk up n flights of stairs (where 0 > n > 14) in the pitch dark. i asked someone at a store, “why is the electricity cut off in this entire area?”

today is friday… and in just 2 hours, i’ll be attending my 5th khubah here in alexandria insha’Allah. unfortunately, i only mentioned 2 of the prior khutbahs in a previous blog post, and still haven’t talked about the other two yet. so the 2nd khutbah i a…

over a year ago, my ex-roommate and i published a link, entitled “Lughat ul Arabiyya fi asrina” - today, over a year later, i am happy to announce a new set of words and phrases to add to the given list. most of these, mind you, have come up in the past 5…

when i came to alexandria, one of my newly made friends suggested that i come with him for jum3ah rather than go to the masjid near my home, and offered to pick me up - may Allah reward him!

place names in alexandria are eccentric to say the least. many places here have names that are not arabic in any way possible. here are some examples: abou quer - you can see this famous and large road on the map in the previous post. because egyptian sla…

on may 17th, 2010, i left for alexandria. comparing it to cairo, girls seem to be slightly more conservative (in terms of the way they dress), people seem more religious (at least in terms of “outwards” religiosity - there are more bearded men to be seen…