Arthur C. Clarke dies at age 90.

Arthur C. ClarkeWhile it is just the day before the new Persian year of 1387 and also spring, I get a bad news for Sci-Fi world and all space enthusiasts.  The very respected pioneer in Space, Radar, and Sci-Fi writings, Arthur Charles Clarke died at age 90 today morning.

I was always a fan of his, and while volunteer at project SETI, I could see how strong this man is, still help SETI sending emails to people to support the project in any form they can.

He was part of Radar development project, he was the man who worked on now called Clarke Orbits, actually making sending satellites to the sky possible.

His latest three wishes at his 90th birthday back in December 2007:  Extra Terrestrials be found some day, The civil war in Sri Lanka ends, and the world to go for cleaner sources of energy.

After a work on Great Barrier Reef, he moved to Indian Ocean and stayed in Sri Lanka till the end.  He also remained an scuba diving enthusiast; “I’m perfectly operational underwater,” he once said.

Peace be Upon him.  World very rarely gets men of such quality.

Yahoo! news article.

Washington Post Article.

Paymaan.

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FireFox 3 is much faster than rivals!

Recreated FireFox 3 logoJust read the news on the new Mozilla FireFox 3 Beta 4 and how it is faster than all rivals (3 times than IE7!!!), downloaded it as my first Beta of version 3. I guess soon V3 will be stable enough for all to upgrade, but in case you too are well confident in using the new Beta as I am, then try downloading it at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Enjoy using the world’s best and fastest Open Source web browser!

Paymaan.

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What we need to know, to go Fishing?!

Steelhead Trout

For some long time I had nothing in my brain at all, what about some overflow 🙂 but today I really felt like writing, and I am going to start some basic discussions about fishing. Just keep in mind I am an amateur myself with absolutely no catches at least during the year 2007, So I am trying to give hints on what I already know, and what I have studied and learned through web, Chasse Et Peche channel, and hints I have learned from experts.Ok, Enough of scaring you of lack of my expertise, let’s see what things an average fisherman needs to start fishing. Consider you can catch fish using almost nothing other than your hands or a piece of wooden hook and a line, but we are not talking of survival skills, we are talking about some kind of average sport fishing.

Tools you need include basic fishing tackle, things like:

  • some kind of fishing rod, to be able to cast and handle your line and play/fight with fish.
  • fishing line, of any suitable form
  • hooks, again of a suitable form for our purpose
  • some kind of reel to hold your line, sometimes to help you fight fish as well
  • some bait to attract fish to bite the hook, normally fish food, lure, bread, etc. etc. but I have seen people catch huge pikes using AA batteries as bait!
  • Something to use as weight, to keep your hook underwater, in some types of fishings. These are normally lead or other metallic weights, but every other heavy enough thing would be ok. Sometimes bait is heavy enough, sometimes you need reverse weight, I mean something to bring the bait up, some kind of floating weight. You may even use your friend as bait and weight for catching huge fish 🙂
  • sometimes you need floats, these are tools to keep part of your line out of water, so the other part will stay on some specific depth of water.

Then you need some skills, some are more needed, some less, but be sure, the more you have these skills, it will be more professional, and it will be more fun!

  • First of all, it is much better to know the fish species you are trying to catch. Every kind of fish has its own habits, diet, feeding time, strategy etc. etc.
  • Ability to learn and tie some fishing knots. If you don’t know how to tie a hook to a line, your fish along your hook will escape easily. Even some kind of small fish are more powerful than knots you regularly know!
  • If you want to practice Catch and Release, you have to know how to handle that species of fish. Carp stay a lot more alive outside water than trout. and then Catfish does much longer than the others! If you do it wrong, even if you release the fish, it may die
  • Ability to choose suitable hook, rig, line, knot etc. for each species of fish, and to choose somehow what size of fish you plan to catch. Some fish have small mouthes, some have big ones (say Pikes, my favorite fish 🙂 ). So you have to select the correct things.

So you see, while you can still put a hook on a line and put the line on a branch of tree and put a worm as bait on the hook and catch fish just like Pink Panther does, there are lot more to it. Every of those needs I mentioned have a huge variety to select from, and each are better for some specific fishings.

I will start to talk about them one by one in the following articles, and I hope you enjoy.
Paymaan.

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Middle East internet connections are back again!

People, it seems the almost 2 weeks problem over internet cables in Mediterranean sea is almost resolved at the moment.

Since yesterday, I can surf the web and manage my sites as usual without getting disconnections and half loaded web pages.

But the question still remains the same, why everything is so fragile at this time of so called hi-tech era?

I talked to a very knowledgeable person from Renesys.com about the problems and he helped me to understand why while Iran is not enlisted as disconnected due cables problem, we still have such problems, and it seemed it is a matter of routing schemes through countries, and the fact we use a Turkish network (only, possibly) to connect to the outside world.

Lot’s of technical talk, so don’t bother, unless you are a network engineer 🙂

Paymaan.

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Again about data (in-)security!

I guess the last week’s Wednesday-Thursday events is some kind of proof to my last post about data insecurity in digital age.

Last week, 2 data cable out of 3 which connect Middle East from Egypt to central Asia like India, were simply damaged by possibly ship anchors at somewhere near Alexandria port in Egypt. Almost all of internet connection of this part of world has been blacked out since then, and companies have told it will take a few days (to a couple of weeks) to repair the problems.

Even worse than that, yesterday another cable around Dubai, UAE, was cut off to worsen the problem even further. I have had even huge problems with updating this blog, almost 100% of data is being lost, and all data is being rerouted through Japan to US, possibly on very slow and bad networks.

You see, in digital age we are related on 2 inch cables placed at sea bed, and if a shark tries to brush his teeth with them, half of the world will lose billions of dollars of funds.

So let me be scared that much, we are walking almost on hair-thin ropes, and be prepared, we may lose everything so easily we may not gonna believe ever!

Paymaan.

P.S. I am still having problems sending this post, this is third time I am trying, so the problem is real!

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Will an EMP threat lead to a paper crisis?!

I was not in the right mood and this came to my mind, it is digital age, huge amounts of personal and business data are stored on Hard Disk Drives, Flash Memories,  DVDs and CDs.

100 years ago, people would store their images and documents on paper. Either normal paper or photo papers. I still have photos my father has taken back about 50 years ago, and they are all remained intact. AS long as they are not under direct sunlight, humidity or something similar, or if they burn.

For DVD, almost all of those problems, also heat, shock, and like that. DVD are much sensitive than paper, and a little may make lots of data unrecoverable.

Worse than DVD, are hard disks. They might look a little more secure, but those are even more sensitive, and problems include mechanical failures, and Magnetic interferences.

Personally, I am always scared of losing my data, family images, documents and a lot more of electronic design and software work. That’s awful. I have lost data before, and every year, my data has grown 10s of times from the year before, and now I have started to feel very insecure.

Now imagine some military shows it has some kind of EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) ordnance. If people, those like me specially, feel their data is unsafe, what will they do? Better to ask myself first, what will I do if I am scared of losing data due an EMP attack around me?

Maybe I make copies and put them around the world? Then what? is that enough? I say no. The cost can be too much and useless, because you don’t know where in the world there will be safe place.

Another method will be to put your data in some secure environment meters under the ground, but it will possibly make no difference, how many people can dig a 100 meter or even more bunker? I cannot for sure.

Then what if I store some of my data, at least the most important ones on paper? sya printing images and documents and designs and sources on paper, just like they did for hundreds and thousands of years since this last decade?!

Although it takes a lot of space, but it is not that costly, it is viable, and will not be easily lost, as digital data does.

Then imagine part of people think like me, and imagine they are really scared of losing their data, what will happen to the world? people may rush to buy paper, lots of it, huge amounts. What will happen to the world?

I say it might lead to a chaos, to a crisis. Just like what is happening to the oil. Price of the oil is raised from about USD 14 a barrel a few years ago to more than a hundred USD, and it is awful.

Just a simple thought.

Paymaan.

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Complexity of Human mind

This human brain is really something, I think. It always makes me surprised, you see people think about things you can’t believe, you see you can’t remember things when you need them, but at the same time, you remember or find things using the same brain which makes even yourself surprised.

Yesterday, I got nostalgic (again, I know) and tried to remember a song from W.A.S.P I used to listen back in early 90’s. Anyway, I got a copy an hour ago and it was “The Idol” from “The Crimson Idol” album. The song or even lyrics are not that important, it was the acoustic nature of the song which grabbed me. Ok so you say why in the hell you liked heavy metal, when you liked their acoustics?! Don’t ask me, my brain is as complex as yours, I just listen to what I feel I like.

Then listening to that song, made me remember something else, I don’t know how, again 🙂

I normally don’t believe I have done enough back in my life to be proud of, but sometimes even small things makes you happy. I remembered I designed a hardware dongle for a friend (and money of course), which nobody could unlock, it helped him sell some hundreds of his “IRANA” persian/farsi writing program for Amiga computers, and that made me very happy. The friend was “Ali Aarefi”, in case you or himself are curious 🙂

I have not revealed the design in more than a decade, but you’ll be amazed for sure, if you know what it was. I even prevented telling friends and competitors that I was the designer, taking any chance from them to even try to guess the design based on my style.

I talked to people about how that dongle was, and people continued to tell me yes that is a simple dongle and I can unlock it if I want etc. etc., but nobody did, and in that market full of pirates, it was a good thing I did, I feel. I myself have always been a victim of software piracy and I almost lost a full luxury life to it, so I know I did something good to a friend.

ok, so what was the dongle?! I am revealing this secret here:

Amiga computers’ hardware is something amazing, I can never forget it and I still have my A1200 and I love it. The joystick ports of Amiga, also have an analog input, unlike other computers of those times. My dongle idea was simply this, I used a high tolerance resistor on that port, inside a joystick connector, software would read the analog port, and if the proper voltage exists it worked, it was that simple!!!

A piece of code, would read the ports, about 3 or 4 lines of C, because it was Amiga and programming was a pleasure rather than a torture. Ali Aarefi would embed the code somewhere in his program, and I also filled the connectors with epoxy, so nobody could reverse engineer it.

An small success, still something you feel good when you remember it, it even made today a good day to me 🙂

Paymaan.

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A few plants here, a few there…

Our earth lives as green plans exist, there is no doubt about this simple fact. One of the reasons this earth is alive, and living things exist on it is because of those green colors, or better say, green plants.

I love nature, plants, animals, most of them. Actually there are not many animals I dislike, I believe every existence has a reason to exist, and all should exist. I can’t set a preference here, but I surprisingly like the giant animals a little more. Mostly those have lived the earth for millions of years, like crocodiles, turtles, whales, and especially Rhinos!

Well, I am not like Hagrid, but those animals lived the earth so long I believe they own the earth more than we do.

Anyway, I like plants, and I like planting. I have no private land, and actually not even an small yard (live on 2nd floor actually 🙂 ), so since three years ago, I plant in containers.

I have about 20 to 30 containers, all in my balcony, I plant vegetables in them, yes you heard it right, vegetables in containers!!! and those produce real vegetables, in quality much better than those you buy at market!

The story is like this, you buy a few 8 liter containers, fill them with good and light soil, buy some quality seeds, and take care of them. You see for yourself how they cultivate, grow, flower, and produce real vegetables.

Plants are also so beautiful they double as decoration, and just imagine how pretty they can be having red tomatoes or green bell peppers hanging from them. Last but not least, you can’t believe how good peppers smell, even if they are not yet any peppers on them.

To make it healthier and more fun, I only use natural heirloom seeds. By heirloom I mean seeds which are original types, NOT modified genetically and are really natural. This way, fruits taste natural, smell natural, and you will notice the huge difference between them and those tasteless ones you buy from market.

In this category, I would like to talk about these kinds of stuff, and we may have some interesting discussions for every other nature enthusiast, so be my guest, and tell me what do you like to hear!

Paymaan.

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Passion for sport fishing!

The reason for this category to exist is my personal passion for fishing. Once upon a time, I tried fishing in my childhood and it attracted me so much. Spring 2007, again I fell for this passion and since then I have tried to gather my equipments so I can be prepared for any possible opportunity to go fishing.

Actually, I guess it is a great sport, and most of the times it gives one a relaxation, the feel of nature, and lots of knowledge of insetcs and marine life.

Believe me, it is a nice hobby, and almost everybody with access to a pond, river or dam can easily enjoy it.

Anyway, in this category I would like to talk my opinions about nature, fishes, fishing holes, different kind of lures and baits, different techniques and equipments etc.

So, you too share your opinions about this and let me know if I can give any advices etc. Just consider I am an amateur fishing enthusiast, trying to explore things on every opportunity, I am not an expert, and I too watch and read and study what experts say, to learn, on a day by day basis, my comments might not be as accurate as of those of expert fishermen.

A lot more on this later!

Paymaan.

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A new blog is being born!

It’s me looking so serious!Hello everybody!

It took me several years before I finally decided to have my own blog, not because I am new to this, but because my mind has always been filled with a lot of things, and while I am absolutely a problem resolver, deciding on my own projects sometimes gets so difficult.

This time, it got several years before I assure myself I really need to give my thoughts out on a blog, and to share my ideas with others and benefit from those many great minds out there. But it seems I am finally in a position to actually begin it.

I am not much excited yet, but maybe this work turns to something real good, so I collect all my hopes and will try my best to make something mutually useful.

I want to give my ideas on almost everything. I am very fond of personal R&D and have passed most of my life doing this on almost everything I have found interesting, I will try my best to continue this, because this is a field I like so much, even considering how hard it is to put your own money on some costly research, without any sponsors, almost no support and sometimes even lots of objections from those who don’t believe or those who don’t see any monetary results, or even those who simply are used to let others do their works.

So, let’s start and hope we will do fine.

That’s all for now, and let I do some fine tunings to my Word Press environment.

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