« International Affairs (بین الاقوامی امور) | Main | Islam and Other Religions (اسلام اور دوسرے مذاہب) »
پیر 3 مارچ 2008Monday, March 03, 2008
How Zack Buys a New PC
I decided to build my own desktop again after my Dell laptop troubles. Finding everything at Fry's was easy and assembling it was fun.
Continue reading "How Zack Buys a New PC"
Posted by Zack at 12:18 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
بدھ 8 اگست 2007Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Dell and Blogging
Dell came through, thanks to my blogging, and replaced my laptop with a brand new Inspiron 1501.
Continue reading "Dell and Blogging"
Posted by Zack at 10:21 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
پیر 9 جولائی 2007Monday, July 09, 2007
Blog Rating
So how much bad language do I use on my weblog? Is my blog safe for kids?
Continue reading "Blog Rating"
Posted by Zack at 12:41 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 30 جون 2007Saturday, June 30, 2007
5 Years of Blogging
It has been five years since I started blogging. Over time, my blogging has become more sporadic, but I plan to continue. So today here are some statistics about my weblog.
Continue reading "5 Years of Blogging"
Posted by Zack at 12:43 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
جمعہ 16 مارچ 2007Friday, March 16, 2007
Spammy Fame
I am so famous now that spammers are referring to my blogging.
Continue reading "Spammy Fame"
Posted by Zack at 11:41 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
منگل 6 مارچ 2007Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Commenting Problems
Commenting using non-ASCII characters is not working right now. We hope to have a fix soon. Temporary fix is to revert a recent upgrade of the MTValidate plugin.
Continue reading "Commenting Problems"
Posted by Zack at 4:50 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
پیر 5 مارچ 2007Monday, March 05, 2007
محفل اور سیارہ کی فیڈ اپنے بلاگ پر
اگر آپ اردو محفل یا اردو سیارہ کی تازہ پوسٹس کے روابط اپنے بلاگ پر دکھانا چاہتے ہیں تو اس کا طریقہ کچھ مشکل نہیں اگر آپ موویبل ٹائپ، ورڈپریس یا ورڈپریس ڈاٹ کام پر بلاگ کرتے ہیں۔
Continue reading "محفل اور سیارہ کی فیڈ اپنے بلاگ پر"
Posted by Zack at 12:50 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
جمعہ 5 جنوری 2007Friday, January 05, 2007
Movable Type Security Bug
Movable Type 3.33 has a script injection bug if the nofollow plugin is disabled. Comment text is no longer sanitized as it should be.
Continue reading "Movable Type Security Bug"
Posted by Zack at 12:00 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
منگل 28 نومبر 2006Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Movable Type and Unicode
Running Movable Type natively in Unicode was not as difficult as I thought but it still required a number of patches to the code.
Continue reading "Movable Type and Unicode"
Posted by Zack at 2:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
جمعرات 9 نومبر 2006Thursday, November 09, 2006
Awards and Carnivals
Go nominate blogs for Brass Cresecent awards. Also, contribute to Carnival of Islam in the West. Include the real-time Carnival of Brass in your blog sidebar and read Muslims in the West blogs together in your feed reader.
Continue reading "Awards and Carnivals"
Posted by Zack at 2:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 30 ستمبر 2006Saturday, September 30, 2006
Geotagging Photos
Armed with a GPS and a digital camera with a love of hiking, it is time to store the location I take my photos into the images and then show them on a map. I review several software which can do this and present my workflow.
Continue reading "Geotagging Photos"
Posted by Zack at 12:30 AM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
پیر 18 ستمبر 2006Monday, September 18, 2006
Movable Type Upgrade
I have upgraded to Movable Type 3.32 and have made modifications to run it natively with Unicode. I like some of the new features (better Unicode support and tags). If there are any problems due to the upgrade, drop me a line.
Continue reading "Movable Type Upgrade"
Posted by Zack at 11:23 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
جمعہ 30 جون 2006Friday, June 30, 2006
Four Years
My weblog is 4 years old today. It has changed a lot as it has grown. It is now more a personal blog than a political one. I don't know where it's going but I do plan on continuing writing about the usual mix of topics.
Posted by Zack at 12:34 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 4 مارچ 2006Saturday, March 04, 2006
Blogspot Blocked in Pakistan
Pakistani bloggers are livid as blogspot has been blocked by the Pakistani government.
Continue reading "Blogspot Blocked in Pakistan"
Posted by Zack at 11:11 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
جمعرات 2 مارچ 2006Thursday, March 02, 2006
Urdu phpBB
We are making a public release of an Urdu translation of phpBB. It is more than a translation since we made some Unicode-related modifications to the core code and have included an on-screen keyboard for users.
Posted by Zack at 1:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
جمعہ 3 فروری 2006Friday, February 03, 2006
Brass Crescent Awards 2005
The voting for the 2nd Brass Crescent Awards for the Islamic blogosphere has started. I am nominated for best blog. Go and vote.
Continue reading "Brass Crescent Awards 2005"
Posted by Zack at 12:24 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
منگل 31 جنوری 2006Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Half A Million Visits
Yesterday, this weblog had its 500,000th visitor. This has happened in about 3 years and 2 months of this blog being public. I take stock by talking about the search queries getting people here, where the visitors are coming from, etc.
Continue reading "Half A Million Visits"
Posted by Zack at 10:16 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
بدھ 2 نومبر 2005Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Movable Type, MySQL, Perl, Unicode
Unicode is tough. Programs and languages still have issues with supporting Unicode properly. This is the story of my adventures with phpbb, PHP, Movable Type, MySQL, and Perl wrestling with their Unicode support.
Continue reading "Movable Type, MySQL, Perl, Unicode"
Posted by Zack at 12:01 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
جمعرات 30 جون 2005Thursday, June 30, 2005
بلاگ کی سالگرہ
آج میرے بلاگ کو تین سال ہو گئے ہیں-
Continue reading "بلاگ کی سالگرہ"
Posted by Zack at 3:32 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
جمعرات 23 جون 2005Thursday, June 23, 2005
Treo Blogging
I forgot to mention that the previous entry was written on my new Treo 650. Typing on its small keyboard takes a little getting used to. I typed the previous post using the standard Movable Type interface in the Blazer...
Continue reading "Treo Blogging"
Posted by Zack at 1:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
جمعہ 29 اپریل 2005Friday, April 29, 2005
Urdu Domain Poll
We are thinking of getting a separate domain for all the Urdu-related stuff we are doing. Help us decide on a domain name by voting for your choice.
Continue reading "Urdu Domain Poll"
Posted by Zack at 11:31 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
جمعرات 21 اپریل 2005Thursday, April 21, 2005
اردو بلاگز کی دنیا
پچھلے چند ماہ میں میری نظر سے کئی نئے اردو بلاگ گزرے ہیں۔ میں نے ان کی حالیہ تحریروں کو اردو سیارہ پر یکجا کیا ہے۔ اردو وکی اور ہمارا اردو بلاگ کافی کارآمد رہے ہیں۔
Continue reading "اردو بلاگز کی دنیا"
Posted by Zack at 12:17 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack
جمعرات 31 مارچ 2005Thursday, March 31, 2005
Firefox Sucks
Mozilla Firefox, while being a better browser than Internet Explorer, has a big problem. It hogs memory. It takes over all available memory and doesn't return it to the OS until you close Firefox.
Continue reading "Firefox Sucks"
Posted by Zack at 4:24 PM | Comments (75) | TrackBack
جمعہ 25 مارچ 2005Friday, March 25, 2005
Webhost Recommendations
Urdu and Unicode require better support than Perl 5.6.1 can manage. Since my web host can't install Perl 5.8.x any time soon, I can either install it in my user account or switch web hosts. Help and suggestions needed.
Continue reading "Webhost Recommendations"
Posted by Zack at 12:36 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
جمعرات 17 مارچ 2005Thursday, March 17, 2005
More Interviews
Continuing with the interview meme, here are the questions for the two remaining interviewees, Fazia and Renee. That completes my part of the meme since I have now interviewed 5 people.
Continue reading "More Interviews"
Posted by Zack at 12:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
پیر 14 مارچ 2005Monday, March 14, 2005
Interview Questions
Three people asked to be interviewed in the blog interview chain, so here are the questions for them. For Asif: How many languages do you know? How did you learn so many languages? Tell us an amusing incident from your...
Continue reading "Interview Questions"
Posted by Zack at 1:22 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
جمعہ 11 مارچ 2005Friday, March 11, 2005
Blog Interview Meme
This is a chain interviewing game for blogs. Here are its rules: Leave me a comment saying “interview me.” The first five commenters will be the participants. I will respond by asking you five questions. You will update your blog/site...
Continue reading "Blog Interview Meme"
Posted by Zack at 12:03 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
اتوار 6 مارچ 2005Sunday, March 06, 2005
Islamabad and Atlanta from Above
Asif brought Keyhole to my attention which lets you look at images of a lots of places in the world looking down from different elevations. The image resolutions vary, with the best resolution for Cambridge, MA (3 inches). A lot...
Continue reading "Islamabad and Atlanta from Above"
Posted by Zack at 12:21 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
جمعرات 17 فروری 2005Thursday, February 17, 2005
ٹریک بیک اور یونیکوڈ
موویبل ٹائپ Movable Type میں ٹریکبیک Trackbacks ایک عجب مسئلہ ہیں۔ کیونکہ ٹریکبیک یہ نہیں بتاتا کہ وہ کس زبان یا encoding میں ہے اس لئے اگر آپ مجھے پنگ کرتے ہیں اور آپ ISO-8859-1 استعمال کر رہے ہیں ...
Continue reading "ٹریک بیک اور یونیکوڈ"
Posted by Zack at 12:01 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
جمعہ 11 فروری 2005Friday, February 11, 2005
Front-end and Back-end Changes
There have been a lot of changes here recently, most of them on the back-end. Most of this work was related to having a bilingual (English and Urdu) blog along with MathML equations. This required valid XHTML 1.1 and serving...
Continue reading "Front-end and Back-end Changes"
Posted by Zack at 9:20 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
جمعہ 28 جنوری 2005Friday, January 28, 2005
Urdu Blogging Resource
I started blogging in Urdu almost a year ago. I haven’t written much in Urdu, but it has been a good experience. Two of my posts about blogging in Urdu have been among the most popular posts here. The Urdu...
Continue reading "Urdu Blogging Resource"
Posted by Zack at 12:24 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
پیر 24 جنوری 2005Monday, January 24, 2005
Brass Crescent Honorable Mention
The results of the Brass Crescent Awards are out. I didn’t win but got honorable mentions in 3 of the 5 categories I was nominated. These categories were: Best writing (I am surprised), best series, and best non-English blog (surprised...
Continue reading "Brass Crescent Honorable Mention"
Posted by Zack at 12:05 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
منگل 11 جنوری 2005Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Brass Crescent Awards Voting
The nomination stage is over and it’s voting time. And it seems you like me, really like me since I have been nominated in so many categories: Best Writing Best Single Post: Two nominations for Do They Look Like Me?...
Continue reading "Brass Crescent Awards Voting"
Posted by Zack at 11:11 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
پیر 10 جنوری 2005Monday, January 10, 2005
New Look, XHTML 1.1 and MathML
You might have noticed the new look of this weblog. It all started due to Asif and Jacques Distler. Asif just started using LaTeX formulae on his weblog and Jacques has been doing so for quite a while. Asif is...
Continue reading "New Look, XHTML 1.1 and MathML"
Posted by Zack at 12:02 AM | Comments (22) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 25 دسمبر 2004Saturday, December 25, 2004
Award Season
The holiday season has brought the weblog award season upon us as well. First came the 2004 Weblog Awards by Wizbang. I somehow got nominated for the Best Asian Blog contest there and ended up with 0.9% of the vote....
Continue reading "Award Season"
Posted by Zack at 2:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
جمعرات 16 دسمبر 2004Thursday, December 16, 2004
Ads and Donations
I had three donation links on the sidebar of the main weblog page. Amazon Honor was never used and hence has been removed. The Paypal button fared a little better but with the last donation 8 months ago, I have...
Continue reading "Ads and Donations"
Posted by Zack at 9:39 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 4 دسمبر 2004Saturday, December 04, 2004
Segregated Blogging
Via Sister Soljah, I found a post on a blog titled Blogging: an Islamic perspective. I was intrigued. The blogger divides all blogs into 3 categories: personal, topical, and a mix of the two. His criticism is directed at personal...
Continue reading "Segregated Blogging"
Posted by Zack at 10:34 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
جمعہ 19 نومبر 2004Friday, November 19, 2004
URL Alphabet
Via PhotoDude who got it from Reecie, here is an interesting meme. Type each single letter of the alphabet in the address bar of your browser and list what the auto-complete function pulls up first. Here are my results: A...
Continue reading "URL Alphabet"
Posted by Zack at 12:49 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
پیر 8 نومبر 2004Monday, November 08, 2004
Milestones and Visitor Data
Some time during my move, this weblog crossed the 200,000 visit mark. It took about 23 months since I made the blog public. The second 100,000 mark took only 6 months compared to 17 months for the first. My traffic...
Continue reading "Milestones and Visitor Data"
Posted by Zack at 1:48 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
جمعرات 16 ستمبر 2004Thursday, September 16, 2004
Google Mail
I have 6 Gmail invites. If you want a Gmail account, leave a comment with a valid email address or email me. UPDATE: The original 6 are gone, but I got some more invites. So if you want an account,...
Continue reading "Google Mail"
Posted by Zack at 8:29 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 4 ستمبر 2004Saturday, September 04, 2004
Where Have I Been?
I have been busy with my daughter. She’s now 23 days old and a much more interesting baby than she was earlier. She smiles, rolls over from her back to her side and recognizes both Amber and me. She’s more...
Continue reading "Where Have I Been?"
Posted by Zack at 9:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
اتوار 15 اگست 2004Sunday, August 15, 2004
3000th Comment
Congratulations to my sister and Michelle’s one and only aunt, Munira, for posting the 3000th comment on this weblog....
Continue reading "3000th Comment"
Posted by Zack at 7:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
بدھ 30 جون 2004Wednesday, June 30, 2004
2nd Blogiversary
I started this weblog 2 years ago with a test post on Blogger. However, I didn’t update regularly until November 2002 starting with a photograph of Allatoona Lake. Things have changed quite a lot in the last two years. From...
Continue reading "2nd Blogiversary"
Posted by Zack at 12:30 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
جمعہ 4 جون 2004Friday, June 04, 2004
Advertisements
I am thinking whether putting text-based ads on the weblog would be a bad idea. So here’s a poll for all of you to vote on it. UPDATE: I have put Google Ads up temporarily. We’ll see how it goes...
Continue reading "Advertisements"
Posted by Zack at 1:52 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
اتوار 30 مئی 2004Sunday, May 30, 2004
Wireless Network
My Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless-B Cable/DSL Router is installed and working. Working on my laptop instead of Amber’s extremely slow ancient PC is a lot more fun. After all, my laptop is more than 6 times faster and has 4 times...
Continue reading "Wireless Network"
Posted by Zack at 2:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
اتوار 23 مئی 2004Sunday, May 23, 2004
Commenters Looking for Marriage
I don’t understand how much interested/desperate some of my commenters are for marriage that they are not only looking for a spouse online, they are asking about it on a page about forced marriage. Here are some samples. SANT5OSH: WANT...
Continue reading "Commenters Looking for Marriage"
Posted by Zack at 2:19 PM | Comments (276) | TrackBack
پیر 17 مئی 2004Monday, May 17, 2004
Home Networking and Digital Camcorder
I need some advice/suggestions on two matters. I have Verizon DSL at home. It uses PPPoE. We have 2 desktop computers and one laptop. I am thinking of connecting them in a network so that files can be shared and...
Continue reading "Home Networking and Digital Camcorder"
Posted by Zack at 11:23 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
پیر 26 اپریل 2004Monday, April 26, 2004
Six Figures
Some time around 1:45pm today, this weblog received its 100,000th visitor since I moved to my own domain and Movable Type last May. It took 11 months to achieve what Instapundit and Daily Kos manage in a day. I am,...
Continue reading "Six Figures"
Posted by Zack at 4:12 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
جمعرات 15 اپریل 2004Thursday, April 15, 2004
My Browsing Sideblog
While I haven’t been blogging daily, I do put up interesting links that I find on the sidebar on the right under the title “Browsing.” It’s just below my book list. You can also get the complete list of all...
Continue reading "My Browsing Sideblog"
Posted by Zack at 11:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
پیر 29 مارچ 2004Monday, March 29, 2004
Site Outage
This weblog, along with other websites hosted by Dreamhost, went down for most of the day today. According to Dreamhost, this was the result of a distributed denial of service attack. Our apologies for the repeated outages today. It turned...
Continue reading "Site Outage"
Posted by Zack at 10:28 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 6 مارچ 2004Saturday, March 06, 2004
More about Urdu Blogging
Sorry about another process post, but there were a few issues that I didn’t get to in my last post about Urdu blogging. Win 98 issues With a default installation of Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 6.0, you cannot see...
Continue reading "More about Urdu Blogging"
Posted by Zack at 4:31 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
جمعرات 4 مارچ 2004Thursday, March 04, 2004
Urdu Blogging and Web
I am using the Tahoma font for writing Urdu. Unicode is the standard character set for such things nowadays and the Arabic script part of it contains characters for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, etc. Some other fonts provide the Arabic characters which are a subset of Urdu ones, but not all Urdu characters.
Continue reading "Urdu Blogging and Web"
Posted by Zack at 6:09 PM | Comments (54) | TrackBack
بدھ 3 مارچ 2004Wednesday, March 03, 2004
اردو بلاگ ویب رنگ
میں نے اردو بلاگز کے لۓ ایک ویب رنگ بنایا ہے۔ اس کا مقصد ان تمام بلاگز کی فہرست جمع کرنا ہے جو اردو میں لکھے جاتے ہیں- میرے بلاگ کے دائیں طرف نیچے بھی اس ویب رنگ کا لنک ہے جہاں سے آپ دوسرے اردو بلاگ جا سکتے ہیں۔
Continue reading "اردو بلاگ ویب رنگ"
Posted by Zack at 12:21 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
منگل 24 فروری 2004Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Urdu/اردو
This is just a test to see if I can make this weblog bilingual with entries in both English and Urdu . Don't worry this weblog will still be mostly in English. Urdu is my first language but this is my first time typing in Urdu...
Posted by Zack at 1:31 AM | Comments (135) | TrackBack
بدھ 18 فروری 2004Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Blog Milestone
Around 5pm ET today, the weblog passed 100,000 page views according to Sitemeter. It took 9 months since I got my own domain and switched to Movable Type. I understand that some weblogs get more traffic in a day. In...
Continue reading "Blog Milestone"
Posted by Zack at 5:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
منگل 17 فروری 2004Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Blogroll Changes
I have dropped a few blogs from my blogroll and added some. Among the additions are (in no particular order): The Manifest Border: A weblog about immigration from immigration lawyer Randy Tunac. Pedantry: A very interesting weblog by Scott Martens...
Continue reading "Blogroll Changes"
Posted by Zack at 5:03 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
منگل 10 فروری 2004Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Weblog Review
This weblog has been reviewed by a Pakistani IT magazine, Spider. They rated it among the top 5 Pakistani weblogs. Why did Zack choose to call his blog “Procrastination” and also define the term in the header? Don’t we all...
Continue reading "Weblog Review"
Posted by Zack at 12:36 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
اتوار 1 فروری 2004Sunday, February 01, 2004
Weblog Visitors
Create your own country map Amazing how much of the world I have had visitors from. Afghanistan, American Samoa, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chile, China, Cocos (Keeling)...
Continue reading "Weblog Visitors"
Posted by Zack at 10:33 AM | Comments (16) | TrackBack
جمعرات 29 جنوری 2004Thursday, January 29, 2004
Welcome, John
My friend John will be joining this weblog as an author. He has some interesting insights and I think he’ll have some great posts. I’ll leave an introduction of himself and his interests to his first post. Let’s welcome John...
Continue reading "Welcome, John"
Posted by Zack at 1:23 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
بدھ 28 جنوری 2004Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Fast Rebuilds
As I mentioned in the previous post, comment posting has been a bit slow lately. I timed it at 35 sec, which is much better than some other weblogs (where I leave for a few minutes after posting a comment)...
Continue reading "Fast Rebuilds"
Posted by Zack at 7:57 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
پیر 26 جنوری 2004Monday, January 26, 2004
Further Weblog Maintenance
When I changed the way trackbacks appear, I broke something as well. It turns out that when someone pings you, only the index templates are rebuilt automatically. Since I had the trackbacks in the individual entry pages, those were not...
Continue reading "Further Weblog Maintenance"
Posted by Zack at 7:59 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
منگل 13 جنوری 2004Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Weblog Maintenance
Several long overdue tasks are finally done. Comments now have individual permalinks. I had individual anchors for the comments for quite some time but you needed to view source to see them. Now the URL for each comment is linked...
Continue reading "Weblog Maintenance"
Posted by Zack at 6:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
اتوار 11 جنوری 2004Sunday, January 11, 2004
Asia Weblog Awards
Flying Chair has the results for the Asia Weblog Awards. Here are the winners: Hong Kong: Gweilo Diaries Mainland China: Enjoy Code Taiwan: 3Q2U Singapore: XiaXue Malaysia: sultanmuzaffar Thailand: Thailand Life Indonesia: Kambingjantan Japan: Kind of Crap Korean: The Greatest...
Continue reading "Asia Weblog Awards"
Posted by Zack at 3:21 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
بدھ 10 دسمبر 2003Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Asia Weblog Awards
Flying Chairs is hosting the first Asia Weblog Awards. Categories include best weblogs from a number of Asian countries and also by subject. You can nominate weblogs as well as vote for existing nominations. Phil has put in a...
Continue reading "Asia Weblog Awards"
Posted by Zack at 8:58 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
پیر 8 دسمبر 2003Monday, December 08, 2003
Blog Milestones
Congratulations to Conrad Barwa for the 1500th comment. Also, my weblog now has had visitors from 100 countries. (Probably not technically accurate since I determined that by the top-level domains in DNS lookups of the IP addresses.) The latest two...
Continue reading "Blog Milestones"
Posted by Zack at 8:06 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
بدھ 29 اکتوبر 2003Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Browsing List
You might or might not have noticed my browsing list on the sidebar. It is just below the list of books on the right. This “browsing list” will comprise of any interesting stuff I find net-surfing. Putting a URL on...
Continue reading "Browsing List"
Posted by Zack at 10:52 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
پیر 27 اکتوبر 2003Monday, October 27, 2003
MT-Blacklist
Jay Allen has come up with version 1.5 of MT-Blacklist to combat spam in comments and trackback. I have installed the new version and it works great. No more errors that I got with version 1.0beta and no slowing down...
Continue reading "MT-Blacklist"
Posted by Zack at 8:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
جمعرات 23 اکتوبر 2003Thursday, October 23, 2003
Blogosphere Ecosystem
Looking at the TTLB Blogoshpere Ecosystem, I have been a slithering reptile for quite some time. This designation is based on the number of incoming links to my blog. I am currently ranked #1226 with 29 incoming links. What is...
Continue reading "Blogosphere Ecosystem"
Posted by Zack at 1:55 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
بدھ 15 اکتوبر 2003Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Spam and Blacklist
I have been getting regular spam in the comments recently. Therefore, I have installed the MT-Blacklist plugin to prevent posting of spam comments. If you encounter any problems with comments or trackback, please let me know. Also, the plugin allows...
Continue reading "Spam and Blacklist"
Posted by Zack at 3:59 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
جمعہ 3 اکتوبر 2003Friday, October 03, 2003
Popular Posts
I have added two different ways of looking at popular posts on the sidebar. One looks at my webserver logs and selects the posts who individual entry archive pages have been visited the most in the past 3 days. (Extension...
Continue reading "Popular Posts"
Posted by Zack at 10:13 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
منگل 30 ستمبر 2003Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Blog Visits
Visits Per Month September 2003 is the first month I have gotten more than 5,000 visits. The number of visitors to my weblog has been increasing a lot recently. I switched to Movable Type in mid-May and it was then...
Continue reading "Blog Visits"
Posted by Zack at 10:01 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
بدھ 24 ستمبر 2003Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Blogging and Politics Paper
Dan Drezner and Henry Farrell are writing an academic paper on power and politics of blogs. They are soliciting some help. If you’re a journalist, columnist, commentator, producer, or editor for a newspaper, magazine, or television station, we’d appreciate your...
Continue reading "Blogging and Politics Paper"
Posted by Zack at 12:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 13 ستمبر 2003Saturday, September 13, 2003
Comment Milestones
Congratulations to Godless Capitalist for the 1000th comment. And it seems I am famous now since I got my first real hateful comment against Muslims (I have had antisemitic comments before but they were more about conspiracy theories than direct...
Continue reading "Comment Milestones"
Posted by Zack at 11:08 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
بدھ 10 ستمبر 2003Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Weird Comment
Mr. Samiulhaq, apparently from Saudi Arabia, reached my weblog by searching for samiulhaq. He got to my post on Activist Islam in Pakistan and commented: send me photo Now, if only he had looked around on my weblog, he would...
Continue reading "Weird Comment"
Posted by Zack at 4:41 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
منگل 2 ستمبر 2003Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Spam in Comments
Another blog milestone today: I got spam! Somebody left a comment for enlarging certain parts of male anatomy....
Continue reading "Spam in Comments"
Posted by Zack at 6:48 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
A Dervish's Dua
Via my referrer logs, I noticed a new blog “A Dervish’s Dua” by Maryam. She has a good post on Muslim feminism as well as a good debunking of Amir Taheri’s claim that hijab is an invention of the 1970s....
Continue reading "A Dervish's Dua"
Posted by Zack at 2:51 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
بدھ 27 اگست 2003Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Book List
I have changed the way my reading list appears. It now shows the cover of the book from Amazon. Thanks to Yaser for his technique of easily doing this. Also, thanks to Anders Jacobsen for how to do this using...
Posted by Zack at 8:47 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
منگل 26 اگست 2003Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Blog Milestone
Some time in the last couple of days, the number of visitors here passed 10,000 since I moved to MT in mid-May. As I had a total of around 10,000 visitors on my old Blogger weblog, it means that I...
Continue reading "Blog Milestone"
Posted by Zack at 1:31 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
جمعہ 22 اگست 2003Friday, August 22, 2003
Vanity Googling
This weblog is now #5 on the Google search for Procrastination; #1 for Zack Ajmal; #4 for Zack; and #2 for Ajmal. Also interestingly, I am the #10 search result for “fair and balanced”....
Continue reading "Vanity Googling"
Posted by Zack at 12:00 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
پیر 18 اگست 2003Monday, August 18, 2003
Doing Website with MT
I like Brad Choate’s idea of using Movable Type to write the static parts of one’s website. I have been extremely lazy about developing the rest of my website and even my school web page is a few years old....
Continue reading "Doing Website with MT"
Posted by Zack at 8:17 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
جمعرات 14 اگست 2003Thursday, August 14, 2003
Disenvowelment
I have installed the disenvowelment plugin by Bryant of Population:One because of an abusive antisemitic visitor. This is as good a time as any to come up with a comment policy. Anything I find rude, abusive, offensive (or just dislike)...
Continue reading "Disenvowelment"
Posted by Zack at 1:30 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
پیر 28 جولائی 2003Monday, July 28, 2003
Far and Wide
It seems like visitors to this weblog come from far and wide. Here are the countries represented: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany,...
Continue reading "Far and Wide"
Posted by Zack at 5:09 AM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
اتوار 27 جولائی 2003Sunday, July 27, 2003
No Comments
This post is for the visitor who viewed 16 pages on my weblog last night. Why couldn’t (s)he find anything to comment on? Please, visitors, comment on my posts. Tell me what you think. Tell me I am wrong (or...
Continue reading "No Comments"
Posted by Zack at 11:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
جمعہ 18 جولائی 2003Friday, July 18, 2003
Comments Imported
You might have noticed that the “Most Comments” on the sidebar have changed drastically since yesterday. That is because I was finally able to import all my Haloscan comments. Gabriel Misura has written the Perl code required to import comments...
Continue reading "Comments Imported"
Posted by Zack at 7:25 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
منگل 15 جولائی 2003Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Ideofact
Bill Allison of Ideofact has moved to nice Movable Type digs. The best thing about his new site is the commenting system. His thoughtful and interesting posts have always provoked some response in me but I am too lazy to...
Posted by Zack at 1:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
پیر 14 جولائی 2003Monday, July 14, 2003
Weird Searches
Someone visited my blog looking for “erotic vaccination scars.” Another visitor was looking for Hotmail IDs of Muslim girls. And to the guy who came looking to confirm that “love marriages are more successful than arrange marriages,” I say your...
Continue reading "Weird Searches"
Posted by Zack at 11:20 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
پیر 30 جون 2003Monday, June 30, 2003
Blogiversary
I started this blog a year ago today on Blogger. So technically today is the blog anniversary. However, I didn’t make the blog public or post regularly until November 2002. My first post was just a test. So I am...
Continue reading "Blogiversary"
Posted by Zack at 2:34 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
منگل 17 جون 2003Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Weird Search Results
I am sorry to disappoint the visitor who came here by searching for “sexy in islamabad email address”. I am sure there are sexy men/women/?? in Islamabad and they might even have email addresses. You just won’t find them on...
Continue reading "Weird Search Results"
Posted by Zack at 11:57 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Miscellaneous
I was going to post a review of Taylor Branch’s book “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63” today but I have to grade some homeworks. It will have to wait till tomorrow. I am posting this using...
Continue reading "Miscellaneous"
Posted by Zack at 7:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
بدھ 11 جون 2003Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Personalized Nigerian 419 Scam
An interesting twist on the familiar Nigerian 419 fraud: declaring me an heir to someone with whom I share a last name. Dear Ajmal, Before I introduce myself, I wish to inform you that this letter is not a hoax...
Continue reading "Personalized Nigerian 419 Scam"
Posted by Zack at 9:57 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
منگل 10 جون 2003Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Teen IM
A nice story from the Washington Post: As undercover assignments go, posing as a teenage girl online to catch pedophiles has its share of challenges for the typical FBI agent. Should he ever capitalize words in instant messages? Is it...
Posted by Zack at 3:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
منگل 3 جون 2003Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Trackback Problems
I have “Trackback Auto-discovery” switched on for my blog. It was working fine in automatically pinging the weblogs I referred to. But it is not working any more. It does not even find the URLs to ping. Specifically it did...
Continue reading "Trackback Problems"
Posted by Zack at 4:01 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
The Poor Man at his best
The Poor Man is supposed to be on semi-vacation working on his thesis (like me), but he is at his funniest and snarkiest posting loads of material. I can excerpt it, so I am linking to all his recent posts....
Continue reading "The Poor Man at his best"
Posted by Zack at 3:43 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
پیر 2 جون 2003Monday, June 02, 2003
Salam Pax
Salam Pax was already a famous blogger. Then we heard that he’s becoming a columnist, writing biweekly for the Guardian starting this wednesday. And now Peter Maass tells us that Salam was his interpreter for a couple of weeks in...
Posted by Zack at 10:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
جمعرات 29 مئی 2003Thursday, May 29, 2003
Publish your Credit card
Welcome to my Credit Card Details Why keep your credit card numbers to yourself, when you can let everyone see them? No other website will give you the chance to show everyone your credit card numbers (including your pin number)...
Continue reading "Publish your Credit card"
Posted by Zack at 5:09 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
منگل 27 مئی 2003Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Volokh Conspiracy
The Volokh Conspiracy has moved to http://volokh.com. Adjust your bookmarks accordingly....
Continue reading "Volokh Conspiracy"
Posted by Zack at 9:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 24 مئی 2003Saturday, May 24, 2003
Haloscan Import
As Miranda noted in a comment to this post, Haloscan has an RSS/XML version of the most recent 10 comments available. If I save the XML file and then delete those comments, I’ll have the previous 10 comments and so...
Continue reading "Haloscan Import"
Posted by Zack at 3:40 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
جمعرات 22 مئی 2003Thursday, May 22, 2003
MT Plugins
I have installed two Movable Type plugins. Smarty Pants shows curly quotes (“”), en-dashes (–), em dashes (—) and ellipsis (…) to appear correctly. Textile makes text formatting much easier and also creates ™, ©, ® and the proper times...
Posted by Zack at 2:55 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
منگل 20 مئی 2003Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Importing Comments
Checking Haloscan forums, I have found out that exporting comments from there is not possible (other than manually saving each comment, something only Jonathan has the patience for). However, according to them, This is currently impossible. It willl likely be...
Continue reading "Importing Comments"
Posted by Zack at 9:00 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
New Home
There will be no more postings on my Blogger-based weblog (http://zackandamber.blogspot.com). Please change your links and bookmarks to my Movable Type weblog at http://www.zackvision.com/weblog/....
Posted by Zack at 4:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Weblog Move
The move seems to have mostly smoothly. Importing Blogger entries was not difficult. It helped that I used the bold tags for the post titles, otherwise editing the titles would have been a pain. I am working on categorizing the...
Continue reading "Weblog Move"
Posted by Zack at 2:52 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
پیر 19 مئی 2003Monday, May 19, 2003
Movable Type
I am moving my weblog to Movable Type. Things are in transition right now, so I’ll be updating both my Blogger site and my new Movable Type site....
Continue reading "Movable Type"
Posted by Zack at 7:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
جمعہ 16 مئی 2003Friday, May 16, 2003
Hiatus
I am extending my hiatus to another week. I should be back by Memorial Day....
Posted by Zack at 6:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
جمعرات 3 اپریل 2003Thursday, April 03, 2003
Haloscan and Donations
Haloscan is down again: I’m working on the server scripts so for around 1 hour comments will be unavailable. That was definitely more than an hour ago. I don’t understand why they go down for maintainence so often. I’ll probably...
Continue reading "Haloscan and Donations"
Posted by Zack at 1:13 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
بدھ 19 مارچ 2003Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Haloscan Again
Now Haloscan has restored the missing comments from March 13-14, but in the process lost the comments since. This is getting really frustrating. Here is what the Haloscan admins say: Yes, we’ve noticed that a few user accounts didn’t sync...
Continue reading "Haloscan Again"
Posted by Zack at 8:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 15 مارچ 2003Saturday, March 15, 2003
Haloscan Acting Up Again
Haloscan has not been reliable as a commenting system recently. They have too much down time for “maintenance”. Same thing today: Server work in progress We’re doing some routine maintenance on the server. We will have the commenting restored later...
Continue reading "Haloscan Acting Up Again"
Posted by Zack at 11:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
بدھ 12 مارچ 2003Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Blog Talk
In the past two months, the rank of this blog on Google search results has improved from #19 to #9 for Procrastination, #2 to #1 for Zack Ajmal, and from #56 to #11 for Zack. In other blog news, I...
Posted by Zack at 10:36 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
بدھ 5 مارچ 2003Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Talking Dog's Dog Run
The Talking Dog has been going through the massive project of commenting on every single one of the links on his blogroll, the Dog Run, and assigning a dog breed to each one. His blogroll is long and extensive and...
Continue reading "Talking Dog's Dog Run"
Posted by Zack at 2:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
اتوار 23 فروری 2003Sunday, February 23, 2003
Nigerian 419 scam takes a life
A Nigerian diplomat in the Czech Republic was murdered by a man who was fooled by the famous Nigerian email scam. A notorious e-mail scam has resulted in the murder of a Nigerian diplomat in the Czech Republic. Fifty-year-old Michael...
Continue reading "Nigerian 419 scam takes a life"
Posted by Zack at 1:10 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Blog Talk
Some time on friday, the 5000th “unique visitor” read my blog. That’s after approximately 3 months of making the blog public....
Posted by Zack at 1:06 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
منگل 18 فروری 2003Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Welcome, MSNBC Readers
I hope you like my weblog. Please look at the archives as well and visit again. Thanks, Will Femia of MSNBC Weblog Central for putting me on the Best of Blogs list. Here are some of my posts that you...
Continue reading "Welcome, MSNBC Readers"
Posted by Zack at 8:02 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
جمعہ 7 فروری 2003Friday, February 07, 2003
Additions to the Blog
I have added an RSS feed for my blog, thanks to David Janes of Janes’ blogosphere. You can also search the archives with the Google search box on the sidebar. Another addition is the list of books I am currently...
Continue reading "Additions to the Blog"
Posted by Zack at 8:39 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
جمعرات 6 فروری 2003Thursday, February 06, 2003
Visits and Page Views
Yesterday I passed 5,000 page views and today crossed 4,000 unique visits. It has taken me about 2.5 months....
Continue reading "Visits and Page Views"
Posted by Zack at 6:24 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
بدھ 5 فروری 2003Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Comment Problems
Haloscan seems to be having problems. The comments have been off and on since yesterday. Now they are working but some recent comments are gone. A notice on the Haloscan website says that server work is in progress. Hope they...
Continue reading "Comment Problems"
Posted by Zack at 11:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
پیر 27 جنوری 2003Monday, January 27, 2003
Blogroll
Recently, I have added some weblogs to my blogroll. So I should probably mention them: Path of the Paddle is Ikram Saeed’s blog who can been present in the comments section here and on a lot of other blogs. Now...
Posted by Zack at 2:15 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 25 جنوری 2003Saturday, January 25, 2003
Denial of Service Attack
It seems that some virus/worm is making its way through the net. Access to anything on the internet has been sporadic for the last few hours. My firewall log contains lots of blocked UDP accesses on port 1434. Looking at...
Continue reading "Denial of Service Attack"
Posted by Zack at 4:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
جمعہ 24 جنوری 2003Friday, January 24, 2003
Email me from Mt. Everest
A very interesting endeavor: If the 25-below-zero temperature, howling wind and grim effects of altitude sickness do not make most of those trying to scale Mount Everest feel a world away from home, the near-complete lack of communications on and...
Continue reading "Email me from Mt. Everest"
Posted by Zack at 12:59 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
بدھ 22 جنوری 2003Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Comments and Visitors
Thanks to Ikram Saeed for the 100th comment on this blog. He has been the most prolific commenter here. According to my counters, I have had about 3257-3306 “unique visitors” since around Nov 21 last year. More than a third...
Continue reading "Comments and Visitors"
Posted by Zack at 1:24 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
بدھ 15 جنوری 2003Wednesday, January 15, 2003
The Reach of the Internet
Even though the large majority of my readers are from North America, I was surprised to find such a large number of countries represented among my readers: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, New Zealand, South Africa, Belgium,...
Continue reading "The Reach of the Internet"
Posted by Zack at 12:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Online Newspapers
Newseum is a very cool site containing the front page of newspapers from around the world in the form they are published on paper. (Found via CalPundit.)...
Continue reading "Online Newspapers"
Posted by Zack at 12:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
پیر 13 جنوری 2003Monday, January 13, 2003
Blogger Problem
I missed one closing quote in the link to Jim at the end of the last post. Now I can’t edit the post, not even in safe mode. Does anyone have any solutions? UPDATE: Fixed by copying the link for...
Continue reading "Blogger Problem"
Posted by Zack at 6:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
اتوار 12 جنوری 2003Sunday, January 12, 2003
Welcome, Insta-readers
Welcome, new readers. Here is the post about my impressions from Pakistan. While you are here, please take a look at my other posts as well and leave comments. I hope you would like to visit this blog regularly. A...
Continue reading "Welcome, Insta-readers"
Posted by Zack at 2:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
جمعرات 9 جنوری 2003Thursday, January 09, 2003
Google Rank
I am the #1 result on Google for zackandamber. For Procrastination, I am #19. For Zack Ajmal, I am #2 as the #1 result is Virginia Postrel’s The Scene who has me on her blogroll. This site is #56 on...
Continue reading "Google Rank"
Posted by Zack at 11:43 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
بدھ 8 جنوری 2003Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Blog Talk
I have been getting quite a few of my recent hits from search engines. The most common keyword is “Procrastination,” though I have no idea whether these people were searching for my weblog or for info on procrastination. After all,...
Posted by Zack at 5:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
منگل 7 جنوری 2003Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Nigerian 419 Scam Variation
I have received quite a few emails from the well-known Nigerian 419 scam artists. Today I received a Brunei variation: My name is Haja I am a 23 years old and a British citizen who was taken to Brunei by...
Continue reading "Nigerian 419 Scam Variation"
Posted by Zack at 12:29 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
منگل 10 دسمبر 2002Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Paging Atlanta Bloggers
Other than myself, I only know Reid Stott of PhotoDude who lives in Atlanta. If you have a blog and live in the Atlanta area, please leave a comment or drop me an email....
Continue reading "Paging Atlanta Bloggers"
Posted by Zack at 7:35 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
ہفتہ 7 دسمبر 2002Saturday, December 07, 2002
Coming Attractions
Comments on the article “Wrestling with Islam” via Aziz Poonawalla. Comments on Aziz’s latest in the silence of the media series. More comments on the Israel-Palestine problem, especially discussing this NY Review of Books article via The Poor Man....
Continue reading "Coming Attractions"
Posted by Zack at 4:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
پیر 25 نومبر 2002Monday, November 25, 2002
Look of Blog using Netscape
From my logs I have noticed that a number of my visitors are using browsers other than MSIE (Netscape, Opera, etc.) I would appreciate comments on how this site looks in those browsers? Please leave comments or email me....
Continue reading "Look of Blog using Netscape"
Posted by Zack at 12:35 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Comments
I have added comments using Haloscan. Please let me know if there are any problems with the comment system....
Posted by Zack at 1:25 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
اتوار 24 نومبر 2002Sunday, November 24, 2002
My First Link
Thanks to Bill Allison of Ideofact for linking to me. He is very kind and is trying to motivate me to write about Pakistan. However, this being close to the end of the semester, I should better do some work....
Continue reading "My First Link"
Posted by Zack at 1:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack