We have moved

This post is to announce that Teeth Maestro's blog has now officially moved to

teeth.com.pk/blog

Please kindly update your bookmarks

Conversion almost complete

Friends: I aplogize for my protracted absence from blogging, especially since Blogger as been a pain in the ass for the past week. Last night when I tried to post, frustration almost made me pull my hair wild. I have my fingers crossed if this post goes through on the first attempt.

My move to Wordpress is almost in its final stages, I finally have a hosting service and hope they will have me setup soon, once fired up, all I need to do is transfer my testing site to the new host that should be easy. BUT then I have my fingers crossed with blogger.com if it will allow me an uneventful FTP transfer. Hopefully the next post on this site would be to announce the new URI of my blog.

Pakistani Tech Forum by KO

I would like to draw your attention to a new forum created by KO which will discuss Technology issues in Pakistan. It is a MUST visit forum to stay abreast of the latest developments in our country

Check it out @ Ko.offroadpakistan.com/forums

Karachi and Chicago - Sister Cities

According to a report appearing in Dawn, at a meeting held in the office of Naib Nazim Tariq Hasan, Tariq G Malhanens, the representative of Chicago City Government, said that on Hasan’s desire, Karachi and Chicago were being declared as sister cities.....

I am at a loss for words..... What the........

@ Dawn.com

My Birthday too

Isn't it surprising when you accidently find that some other person happens to have the same Birth date as yours. Well I was surprised to find that Shirazi and myself having the same Date of Birth which is 5th April [mind you I have no idea if our year coincides; PS- dont wanna know as I think one of us; more likely myself; might end up to be older ;) ]

This reaction is strange as there are a few billion people on Earth and only 365 days to be born on so I wish the rest of the couple million or so folks having the DOB on 5th April a very Happy Birthday.

Wish Shirazi a Happy Birthday at this link

A Project worth Supporting

Poverty breeds the evil in our society; it brings out beggars and also the thieves out onto the streets to survive. Thatta Kedona (Village Dolls) is an organization which I feel is a remarkable achievement of a select few visionary individuals to be able to realize this problem and have come together to create change for the poor living in Pakistan.

This organization simply allows the poor to be creative and use their limited skills combined with the limited resources around them to create a piece of art. These beautiful toys and dolls are dressed in traditional Pakistan clothes and are simply spectacular.

Have a look at Thatta Kedona to better understand this noble cause.

Blog Development

Friends - For now I have only designed the banner header and have not worked on other items but I would really appreciate if you would be kind enough to look at the new banner and the theme? I feel it is important for me to get feedback from my blogging friends, does it appeal or would some other banner/theme would be better suited.

I would appreciate if you would be honest and comment sincerely, I may or may not heed to the comments ;) but still would love to hear them and maybe it might help me evolve the new blog.

Testing site @ teeth.negimaki.com

2nd update - Blogger to WordPress move

As you might have noticed I have gone MIA (Missing in Action) for the past few days, the reason being I am in intensive development stage (I am well past puberty so its not growth development) It is development of my WordPress blogging site. Here is the update

I have obtained a testing site at "teeth.negimaki.com" the hosts at negimaki were generous to offer me 1GB space + a gallery with an unlimited bandwidth. This site is my work in progress until I get hold of some good hosting service - will update you of the change on this blog.

Domain: I already am an owner of the domain teeth.com.pk which was basically registered to be used by Alvi Dental Hospital, I plan to use a subdomain either blog.teeth.com.pk or teeth.com.pk/blog, I await your input on the better subdomain to use.

WebHosting: The domain teeth.com.pk is hosted on Nexus.com.pk servers who have been my registrars for the past 4 years they until now provided me with mail + 15MB hosting + 2-yr domain registration for an unbeatable price of Rs. 2,300 (a good deal). When I move to WordPress it requires PHP and MySQL, nexus does not offer these services in its basic package. On a detailed hunt I found many cheap sites but seems like I will stick with Nexus for Rs. 5,000 for 1 yr Unix Lite hosting (do you think its a deal I should take or is there anything cheaper, but still reliable host)

WordPress: Installation is a piece of cake, the 5-minute install script is indeed good if not quicker. After that its onto the world of customizations, you can install from a selection of hundreds of themes and numerous plugins available freely on the web (but to install each plugin you need to upload them physically via FTP and ensuring that the CHMOD settings are ok?)

Design: Honestly I ain't an expert designer/ programmer that I would come up with an amazing unique idea so honestly I am gathering stuff from all over, but when you look at the html code its all in PHP code and PHP to me is like reading French, but something which you can learn, so this dentist here is busy studying PHP code ;) - fret not I'm up for this computer challenge.

Move from Blogger: I would love to move away from blogger as the quality of service is on the downhill, an outstanding tutorial was specially written for me by Yasir Memon (thanks) I found a few others at Catstutorial which uses Andy Skelton's Importing tool (PS if someone has this tool please email it to me as somehow my computer refuses to open Andy Skelton's website) also give a step-by-step pictorial guide to help move to wordpress. The biggest problem is how to tell your followers to update their bookmark - Honestly it is not easy and I also shall remain grateful to all for their understanding.

Will keep you all posted hopefully on a daily basis, I would like to thank Shirazi for pushing me to maintain an open journal putting pen-to-paper all my hurdles during this stage of development, this may also serve as a point where we all can discuss problems during this stage of development.

Led Zeppelin playing Satanic Messages

Conspiracy theorists have created stories about each and every issue of our normal daily life. I myself grow tired of these claims, which I feel are just pure coincidence. I am sure many of you recall the $20 bill fold a few times showed the world trade center, heck if I folded the $100 bill a million times I might even get a million dollars

Of all people Led Zeppellin being blessed by satanic powers (hmmm think about it maybe?) His famous track Stairway to Heaven if played backwards reveals a satanic message.

What do you have to say in this satanic conspiracy theory?

Check this link out on Jeff Milner

Courtesy Omar Q

It's my Country Too

Just recently BBC aired a documentary by Salman Ahmed on the conditions faced by the US based Muslims in the post 9/11 era.

A few sections were interesting especially when Salman talks with Dr. Hassan's family, a millionaire muslim family who is now a staunch supporter of Bush Jr, it is documented that he considerably supported the Bush campaign and also funds the website Muslimsforbush.com. A few excerpts form the documentary.

Salman talk with Seeme wife of Dr. Hassan

SALMAN: ... you know, a lot of the Muslims in the world feel you know, scared, that hey, my, my Muslim country might be next.

SEEME: Personally I wanted to invade Iraq, because I think if there is a country that will not allow us into its borders and has the money and the reasoning to attack United States, then we have to go in, because -

SALMAN: With force?

SEEME: Yes. Absolutely, because – look what one 9/11 did to us American Muslims. I don’t want a repeat.

SALMAN: I mean if you disagree with the United States, it gives the United States the right to go and blow up your country?

SEEME: So sooner or later they were going to go in, I mean it just happened that it got linked with 9/11, but sooner or later it was going to happen, I mean Saddam was asking for it.

Excerpt of discussion with Aliv - cousin of Seeme, the media junkie and the key person behind the website Muslimsforbush.com

ALIV: I was asked off an, off of an aeroplane. Aliya was with me, so we both had to leave the aeroplane.

ALIYA: I mean we were treated very well, and it was awkward to be taken off the plane and everybody looked at us, and we came back and everybody looked what’s going on.

ALIV: The bigger incident was I was checking into a plane at LAX, in Los Angeles, and I was surrounded by four LAPD officers. They read me Miranda rights, and then they said if you’re the terrorist that we think you might be then we’re going to take you down to the station, and I had to wait there in that terminal with four LAPD officers around me, while everybody was getting their tickets for one hour, and then the FBI agent showed up.

SALMAN: Cat Stevens, also known as Yusuf Islam, was deported from the airport, so I was trying to figure out, these people, how can there be a questionably on their -

DR HASAN: Under the same programme under which Cat Stevens was deported, Senator Ted Kennedy was denied boarding of a plane because he was on a terrorist list. Now who in this country does not know Senator Edward Kennedy?

SALMAN: Except that he’s a Democrat.

DR HASAN: It doesn’t matter. I’m telling you, we never had a training to be an imperialist or a police state. So anything to do with enforcement of the law is done so poorly, because this is not part of the fabric of this society.

ALIV: Those incidents happened pretty close to each other and I told Mum and Dad, and Mum and Dad, Dad, told the administration, and they listened to it seriously, they took it very seriously, and from that point on I haven’t been interrogated again.

I was shocked to hear such comments from a spoilt rich family. I am saddened to hear that as muslims they still believe that the invasion of Iraq was necessary read Seeme's comments when Salman asks her about the Invasion.... Ruthless.

Secondly it irks me when the family openly claims to have used contacts with the White House, where is the so-called justice or does the Patriot Act allow such things to happen.

I anxiously await your comments on this development....

Text Manuscript of the documentary (Link)
BBC - This World (Link)
Muslimsforbush.com

Shut the Fox Up

Frequent visitors to this blog must know my feelings about Fox News, just don't get me started on this biased news channel. I simply hate their gutts, I can bitch about it all day, who the F**K cares, but my opinions remain my fundamental right and I simply like to rant on Fox News and their biased reporting style. Check out FoxBlocker.com a dedicate website for Fox-hate fans.

Personally I think its taking it a bit too far....

FoxBlocker.com

Bluetooth Virus coming to a Cell Phone near you.

Savvy cell phone users be aware of a virus slowly traversing the world. Bluetooth enabled cell phones are at risk of getting screwed big time.

Read in detail the article on slate.com where a certain paragraph caught my attention

Once smartphones have complex enough operating systems, it won't be hard to write a worm that burrows in, harvests all your info, and squirts it out to a mailbox in Pakistan. That's precisely what virulent computer worms like Sobig and Bugbear do.

Pakistan is no doubt famous thanks to our Brain.net brothers. On a side note cell phone users Beaware !

Read on Slate.com Perfect Worm: Coming to a cell phone near you

Pen & Paper Essay - DUH !!!!

Gone are the days of classical essays, where emphasis was on composure, spellings and punctuation. In comes our new generation which is fluent in computer based word processing, replacing the classical pen and paper. It seems 'that old style' is to cumbersome.

How do you still fare on the pen and paper method of writing compared to computer based essay writing?

World Jump Day

People at World Jump Day organization (WJD) want all humans to jump at the precise co-ordinated time on 20th July 2006 at preisely 11.39.13 GMT on any concrete surface so that a worldwide unified effort would then change orbital path of the earth. This will then have a favourable affect on global warming, extend daytime hours and create a more homgenous environemnt. Read more at WJD website (link)

Asia, Australia, Middle-East incuding Pakistan is not listed in the timezones for a coordinated jump, so I dont know if we, on this side of the world are allowed to take part in the world changing jump or not. On second thought maybe we could start an Anti-Jump Day co-ordianted exactly with them to negate the effects of WJD and we could counter argue to ensure that our deal 'ol earth stays on its original course ..... How dare they leave us out ...

WorldJumpDay.org

Do you believe that WJD can impact the orbit, and if Pakistan is not listed for WJD would you join an effort for an Anti-WJD ?

Contemplating to Move to a Domain

I give full credit to Blogspot to have completely captured my attention and I am now whole-heartedly stuck to blogging, long gone are the days where I used to idle aimlessly on the web, the world of Blogging has my undivided attention. The passion has gone to such an extent that my family need not talk to me, and can check my blog to know my whereabouts.... Is this a disease????

Taking the passion a bit further, I am in the process of jumping away from blogspot, When? You you might ask, I can't exactly say when, but I have been seriously thinking of having Teeth Maestro starred on www.teeth.com.pk/blog (I already own the teeth.com.pk domain) that way I can then take this new found passion to another level and use WordPress in all its glory. I am aware that the transition is going to be bad, for that reason I have to be very meticulous ensure the new blog is up to speed before I actually hop onto it. If that day does come, I know you all will be understanding. I would also appreciate any recommendations or past experiences in this transition.

What do you have to say, Would you move away from blogspot and be ready to take your chances on a seperate domain?

Update 15th March: Check out the post by Yasir Memon where he describes the best way to migrate slowly from the Blogspot address to your own domain.

Yasir Suleman Memon : Migrating your blog from blogger.com to WordPress, BlogCMS and others