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

Email Privacy does NOT exist in Pakistan

Email privacy is probably the last thing on our minds in a country where Human Rights and Freedom of Speech does not exist. Take a look at a post by Yassir Suleman Memon on his Blog where he sheds some light on our agencies monitoring all email messages in and out of Pakistan.

My twsit on this issue, I seriously doubt that the agencies are so well organized to be able to filter through thousands of messages in Pakistan, how long will it last is for all of us to find out with time. I think for now we can rest easy

What are your concerns? Are you worried?

Email Privacy: No more baba....

Jahil Online

I am sure you all must know of our famous MNA cum TV personality Dr. Aamir Liaqat Hussain. For the past few months rumors have been circulating that he is a fake doctor finally I have evidence. In a detailed investigation conducted by a local newspaper 'Ummat' and recently published in South Asia Tribune, some really interesting fact have indeed come forth surely worth a NAB 'chappa'.

Dr. Aamir appears to be one of the biggest local scams of Pakistan. For the past couple years he has been the host of 'Aalim Online' on Geo TV where he brings together Islamic Scholars to shed light on the religion of Islam. I have always disliked watching the show as it always appeared as a scam, a snazzy looking Dr. Aamir preaching Islam some how irritated me, but that's just me, I have for sometime labeled his show as Jahil Online. It now appears to be entirely true. Dr. Aamir had been preaching Islam with such authority that it had the nation fooled for years including our General who has appointed him as a Minister of Religious Affairs (probably in a deal with MQM)

He has graduated from 'Trinity College and University' with a Bachelors of Arts in Islamic Studies (conferred on March 17, 1995). The next degree that he allegedly pursued was a Masters of Arts in Islamic Studies (conferred on March 15, 2002) and amazingly 20 days later was awarded a doctorate, Doctor of Philosophy in Islamic Studies (conferred on April 5, 2002). All these degrees were awarded by Trinity College based out of Spain. The going rate for these 'degrees by mail' as published on the Trinity College website (link) is

Bachelors = $ 212
Masters = $ 332
Doctorate= $ 500
Or a one time deal all three degrees for a bumper price of $ 850

Trinity College on its webpage claims the following slogans "providing degrees based on your previous life" and the best slogan "No Residency or Attendance is required in Spain Everything by Mail"

Dr. (Fake) Aamir Liaquat Hussain contested the National Assembly elections based on these degrees and successfully won, he stands to be disqualified for providing fake degrees to support his candidacy (which as you all recall was strictly limited to graduates). The Higher Education Commission Pakistan has also declare in a letter that Trinity College is not a authorized degree awarding university. How can it be since its just one of those online stores that awards these degrees. Check these pictures out as they sure are incriminating evidence.

Copy of his Bachelors of Arts in Islamic Studies degree
Copy of his Masters of Arts in Islamic Studies degree
Copy of his Doctor of Philosophy in Islamic Studies
Election Commissioner 'provisionally' accepting his degrees
Higher Education Commission declaring Trinity College as a fake
A sample degree issued by Trinity College (Side-by-Side)

Detailed report on SA Tribune
Get your fake degree --> Trinity College Website

I leave you with considerable evidence, for you to decide

Update 13th March: In a Google search of our fake Aalim I came across this interview from Daily Times

Daily Times: What are your predictions about the Pakistani politics?

Aamir Liaqat: I am really disappointed with the Pakistani politics. The biggest despondency is the involvement of Maulvis in the mainstream politics, who are raising local issues at national levels. I am not hopeful with the national politics. The politicians of my country fight only for their own interests. I request General Musharraf to give me a chartered plane, and I would take all the politicians to Iraq. Then I would ask all those who claim to be great Muslims to come out and fight against the anti-Islam forces. If I could not take the airplane to Iraq, then I will destroy it in the sea. I would sacrifice my own life for this noble cause.

I am foreseeing a bloody revolution. Sorry to say, the democracy would bring nothing better in this country. Pakistan needs a bloody revolution. A person is required here, who will eliminate all the politicians once for all, and then intelligent and young people of Pakistan will come forward to lead the nation. I fear that in revolution the geographical situation might also change.

Reverse Spamming

How many times have you, the internet surfer, wanted to ask a one-time question on a website and for that simple one-time use you are forced to register by providing a valid email address.

In your heart you know for sure that later on you will be spammed to hell for this small wish of yours. I used to pull one of my junk email addresses, coutesy of Hotmail and enter it into the email field. Then I have to go and fetch that emial from the hotmail account and click-thru to finally activate my account. The future then holds a barrage of Viagra / Phd degree spam emails that I am doomed for life (my junk email account to date recieves 200 junk emails daily). I find it irritating that spammers get to hit me later to their hearts desire, I wish I could bombard them with tons of - "No address found emails" Now I can ...... read on .....

Some creative domain owners have found a solution to defeat the spammers at their own game, they now provide you with a random email address for 24 hours this allows you to receive that critical activation link sent straight to your email account, use it and after the 24 hr time limit the address simply vanishes into thin air and now potential spammers get that Vaigra email showed up their ass. I now call it Reverse Spamming ....

Check it out on spamday.com

What is your creative idea to defeat spammers at their game?

Computer Disaster Story

It is with a sobbing heart I relate to you my recent computer disaster on one of my office computers which was the "main server" on our peer-to-peer network. The story is for you all to learn from my mistakes.

Our main server has been serving us for 4-5 years started off with Win 98 which I later upgraded to Win XP and as you all must have guessed this upgrade literally killed the speed of the processor and it now used to take ages to complete simple tasks as it had a P3 256MB RAM, so one fine day 'yours truly' decided that it is essential to downgrade to Win 98 SE, which I felt would be more generous to my aging processor.

Scenario: I have two partitions divided equally on the 40GB HD so in preparation for the Extreme Makeover I moved everything over to the secondary partition which was the D: Drive. Booted up with a boot disk CD, which I was lucky to pull out of my CD-wallet and found it also carried a copy of Win 98SE - Perfect I thought, the computer Gods must have an eye out for me, little did I know then that it was the evil eye ;)

Using that old boot-disk I started the computer searched via the DOS prompts and found only the C drive tried in vain to locate the D drive but turned up empty, I presumed it was some reading glitch and presumed that the C Drive would still exist so I continued to format C - BIG MISTAKE #1. Copied Win 98 files from the CD to the Hard Disk via the Dos prompts - MISTAKE #2

I then ran the 98 installer but it kept prompting me that there was an invalid file system, hence I jumped to FDisk found that C Drive which was being labelled as a Non-Dos file system (ofcourse I had thought then, Stupid me Win 98 does not run on NTFS) and D Drive was labelled as an Extended Dos System (See the D Drive was safe and sound - I was happy). I continued the process in Fdisk and deleted the C Non-Dos partition and re-installed it as a DOS primary partition - MISTAKE #3. Once this error was solved the Win 98 continued to do a full clean installation of Win 98 on the computer. Finally when it got done I opened up explorer and to my horror no data existed and my critical D drive which was a literaliy a clean slate apart from the Win 98 installation folder and nothing else. Shocked at the loss of all my data I was then followed up by a series of panic and heart attacks as I had literaaly misplaced 4 years of unreplacable critical data ;) 0- the old story - never thought it would happen to me.....

Analysis:After a few hours of sweating I finally figured out the problem and also my mistakes. C drive was the root folder of Win XP so it was formatted in an NTFS system while the D drive was still as an old FAT system, technically when I used the "old boot disk" which was based of a win 98 system boot disk, the computer only read the FAT system and it never could read the C Drive NTFS system so in my ignorance I clean deleted everything on the D Drive (which was being mis-labelled as C Drive). I then copied win 98 installed on D over-writing a lot of the primary data on D Drive. C Drive continued to exists until ..... I Fdisk'ed it later and now I had technically destroyred all existing data and had myself a virgin system.

Recovery: I downloaded Bart's PE Builder and also installed a *cracked* version of Getdataback NTFS and FAT version (a good data recoverng software) and ran it from the Bart's Protected Enviroment CD this ensured that all the scanning etc was done off the CD and no data got overwritten on the Hard Disk in an attempt preserve it as much as I now possibley could - too late but I needed each and every inch of the data on the Hard Disk, with the GetDataBack FAT I scanned my D drive which was FAT based and luckily found ALL the data and recovered it to my C Drive.

Moral of the story - be careful when you format hard drives pay special attention to the file systems, but if incase you accidentally do destroy any hard drive don't worry carry around a version of the Bart's PE CD (A must have for all techies) and recover data with GetDataBack it will almost surely recover all the data. Many people have told me and I again tell you critical data needs to be backed up onto CD's. I have indeed learnt my lesson ;) the hard way

Bart's PE Link
GetDataBack Link

Is Islamabad Really Dead?

I was in Islamabad for two days to visit the US Embassy for a visa so that I can go to the US to continue my training at UPENN in Microscopic Endodontics.

The visit was OK as the Gods of the INS Authorities found me "qualified for a visa", but I dearly missed the hustle bustle of my beloved city Karachi. Islamabad to me was a dead city, people appeared to be in bed around 9 or 10pm with no one around on the streets, I did get to go to dinner late night (8-9pm considered late in Islo terms) came back by 10 and the streets were dead.

Islamabadi's continued to say that its only fun if you have "contacts to parties on the weekend", but then you mean to testify that apart from weekend parties the city is technically dead. Karachi on the other hand wakes up at 10 to continue to 1 am thats my life, one does not always need party tickets to enjoy the night in Karachi, a drive around town is entertaining enough - I LOVE YOU KARACHI

Prove me wrong Islamabadi's !!!!!

Zinio is an online magazine reader where you can read the complete copy of your favourite magazine right on your computer.

To usually get a year's worth of subscription one needs to fork over some hard cash. Fortunately for us cheap folks on the net some companies offer a free 1-year sibscription to a couple of good magazines, sign up from the link below and enjoy the comfort of reading PC Magazine right on your computer for one whole year, an offer you can't refuse..

The links can be found on Fatwallet Forums

X-Posted on [G3]-TechNews

Disclaimer: I cannot tesify to the legality of this offer,
please proceed at your own risk

How to Compile Software in Visual?

As you all must know by now that I am a plain simple dentist, a little familiar with computers but not to the extent to be able to compile a source code - ;) I hear it ain't too much of a big deal.

The software that I am after is open source and the source code is freely available for anyone to compile and use but if one does not know how to compile it the company can then do it for you and charge a horrendous $200 a month for a year for this simple service - What a rip off. So understandably I'm not too keen on paying for this software (btw who is in Pakistan?)

The software needs to be compiled in Visual C# or Visual Basic (I once ran to the computer store to grab a CD of Visual but only came up with Enterprise version and that simply did not load properly, must have been a busted CD or corrupt version or something). The software is a dental practice managment software and in my opinion a very versatile software as the dveloper has worked to hard to put in all the softwares into one neat package a sort of All-in-One deal and probably better then most dental softwares in the market. In my practice I presently have 3 different softwares and it is indeed a nightmare running them all together I feel that Open-Dent may fix the problem for me once in for all but before I switch I need to mess around with the full version before I migrate into this open source deal.

The instructions are on this page Link
The download page for the source code is Link

Have a look at it and maybe someone might be able to guide me in the right direction, my goal is to learn how to compile it as the company releases updates every month or so and I don't wanna be running around trying to find help. Any help would be appreciated.