Pixsense Pakistan closing down its operations
February 11, 2010
It has been confirmed that Pixsense is closing down its direct presense in Pakistan. Pixsense has already let go 60% of its employees.
Talks are underway to move the remaining former PixSense team under another leading software company in Karachi. Any guesses :P
JQueryUI Date Picker Widget IE Jerk
November 27, 2009
I was having trouble showing the JQueryUI’s DatePicker widget properly in IE while working on one of the projects. I kinda got frustrated as the datepicker was not animating properly and then once we selected the date, it got a jerk once selected, which was not really liked by the client. So I got hit by the idea of HTML doctype declaration – as IE (and other browsers) affect the rendering of the elements a lot when using different doctypes. These are famously known as “browser modes”, those that I recall are ‘standards mode’ and one called ‘quirks mode’ but anyways… enough theory, let’s talk about the solution:
I had a doctype similar to the following:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
I changed it to that of the official URL of the demo:
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
And once I did that, it started rocking in IE ;) and the client was happy ;)
Life…
November 19, 2009
Life is only action and reaction. The rationalizations are added later – Ibn-e-Safi
Happily Married
July 10, 2009
Hi Fellaz, I have a news for you. I got married on 4th July. I married Madiha, she is an excellent person, super cool bandi and would you believe it, an awesome software engineer. I *might* be posting some pictures real soon. These days I’ve been trying to follow up with work and the usual shadi chores.
Workwise, it’s been going nice. Ciao.
Effective Software and Team Work
June 25, 2009
The following paragraph is a book excerpt taken from the really cool C++ in Action by Bartosz Milewski and I think I like what he says :-)
“There is a popular unflattering stereotype of a programmer as a socially challenged nerd. Somebody who would work alone at night, subsist on Twinkies, avoid direct eye contact and care very little about personal hygiene. I’ve known programmers like that, and I’m sure there are still some around. However most of the specimens of this old culture are becoming extinct, and for a good reason. Progress in hardware and software makes it impossible to produce any reasonably useful and reliable program while working in isolation. Teamwork is the essential part of software development.”
I have to say, Milewski’s book is one of the rare few books that are actually free from any marketing deep shit and feels very much like a friendly and common sense conversation between the author and the reader. Most books go through extensive editing I believe (to try and make it more sellable and pricey, which is rhetorical), but this one’s not and I love it for that reason! Go read it and have a good doze of fun and knowledge! ;)
Buddhism
April 8, 2009
Eram, who is one of my good friends posted this on facebook and I liked it, so sharing here =)
The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.
by Atisha
Howdy!
April 8, 2009
Hey fellaz! I noticed that I’ve been away from Blog since a looooooooong time now and I thought I have to post something. I got an email telling me that Umem aka the Dinky Mind has tagged me – which is so nice of her. I’m actually up to quite a bit these days so I get little motivation for blogging for some reason. But well, I’ll definitely come up with some posts in a day or so – the one for the picnic trip to Hawks Bay and one for Dinky Mind’s tag! =)
phpize: not found
March 18, 2009
I was installing xdebug in Linux and I had PHP setup nicely with pear. While onto it I got this error that you see in my post’s title. So I figured after a little research that php5-dev is needed (which is the devel package for php5) to go forward with my journey of installing xdebug.
So, I did this in my console:
sudo aptitude install php5-dev
of course, you need to change the above to your particular version of php. The php-dev package lets you compile dynamic extensions to PHP, in our case XDebug.
Once I was done with that, I simply asked the console to execute this command:
sudo pecl install xdebug
and wooh, it works! ;)
Ubuntu boots into BusyBox instead of starting up normally
March 18, 2009
If that happened to you, don’t panic. I’m using Wubi i.e. the Windows based Installer for Ubuntu 8.04
Whenever you get this kind of an error on startup, just reboot your computer (using the reboot command in busybox or) by hitting ctrl+alt+delete and boot into Windows. Once you have booted into Windows, just do a little disk check on your Ubuntu drive for errors. After making sure it’s clean, just shut down Windows and then load Ubuntu and this time it should boot normally.
Zend is going the Wrong Way I think
February 20, 2009
Zend, the so called PHP Company is heading towards an unfriendly, commercial direction which I don’t like. I mean, PHP was supposed to be an open source project, I see more focus from Zend on marketing and selling their commercial development tools, certifications and training kits, and less towards creating a free ecosystem that helps in making PHP a more accessible platform for everyone.
I am aware of the fact that the Zend guys have to find some way of making money, but really, you can’t place a gun on an open source app and pull the trigger. Apart from that, I am pretty sure that people behind Zend are smart enough to make money off some other thing instead of claiming to be THE company for PHP – folks, PHP is an open product, Zend’s offerings are NOT, which is no spirit lifter for me.
Today, I received an email from Zend telling me that they’ve launched this ‘Zend Application Server Beta‘ that is another of Zend’s commercial products with a limited feature Community Edition. When I read the FAQs, my conviction was re-enforced that Zend is indeed now a commercial company with marketing people who care less to do something meaningful and more on increasing the sales count of their average products.
Here is one FAQ that I’m posting for your sake of wanting to have a little laugh:
The most fundamental difference is that Zend Server CE was designed from the ground up to run in production, and is supported by Zend, the PHP Company.
Additionally, Zend Server CE provides an all-in-one installer that deploys a certified PHP distribution, Zend Framework, and integrates fully with Apache and IIS; Zend Server CE also provides an integrated Web administration console.
And another one here:
Zend Server Community Edition (CE) is a free, complete Web application server that is ideal for developing and running non-critical applications, while Zend Server is ideal for business-critical applications that require high levels of reliability, performance and security. Learn more about the differences between Zend Server editions.
See the contradiction? In one of the answers, they say that the community edition is just a thing for running non-critical applications and in the other FAQ, while comparing it with the excellent XAMPP, they say the Zend Server community edition ‘was designed from the ground up to run in production’. I think, for any reasonable business, any application running in production is critical, Zend thinks otherwise.
The Zend Community Edition is not even open source, so you do not have the source code with you.
Zend products like the once powerful Zend Studio, is now an Eclipse-based bloat – I get the feeling they moved to Eclipse to reduce development efforts and spend more capital on marketing :D I know I’m kinda little over the top on this point, but why did they moved to the stupid and unfriendly Eclipse platform – atleast I don’t like Eclipse, and I know many people who dont like it either, so just in case you are an eclipse lover, kindly ignore this point ;)
Then there is this Zend Core and Zend Platform, which are full of marketing claims – please people, Server administrators can get those things easily with the open source PHP for free.
And I wouldn’t want to miss the Zend Framework. Given the press coverage the framework has received, I think the framework could’ve done better. It has a sloppy quickstart, and a lot many people do not like the documentation that it has – nothing cool for someone who is just starting out with the Zend Framework. So the only reasonable way to learn the better way is to purchase Zend’s training products. Plus, the Zend Framework is slow – and I really mean slow. if you don’t trust me, look at what Rasmus Lerdorf, the father of PHP has to say in this DrupalCon 2008 keynote (presentation slides can be found here).
I think Zend has lost the open source spirit, which is bad for the PHP community. Zend should be looking to do good to the community instead of doing good to themselves by trying to sell their stuff, or perhaps they should find a better job or maybe rethink about themselves being ‘the PHP company‘.
Sorry about the rants, I like Zeev and Andy, but I just don’t like the direction their company is going into.
