Random writing of my random thoughts

So I thought I’d post as I haven’t talked to many people in quite a while, and when people have asked about what I’ve been doing I haven’t given particularly good answers. Just in case you didn’t know I finished last year and graduated. I’ve worked on a lot of different things, but so far most of my time has been concentrated on mobile application development (iPhone, Android). Outside of that, I have been volunteering for a while now. I have lived quite a sheltered life and it is definitely worthwhile meeting people who have had a much harder lot. It is important to realise that there are massive issues out there that don’t just go away if we ignore them. I would really encourage anyone reading this to come along even just once, as it can really open your eyes. I have spent an extraordinary amount of time on the Internet trying to increase my knowledge. Towards the end of university, I started regretting that I hadn’t gained a broader knowledge than I have. I’ve spent time exploring all sorts of areas from politics, history, psychology, philosophy, law, theology and even random trivia, but there is just so much to learn. There is a story I heard, that a man was out walking in the desert when a voice said to him, “Pick up some pebbles and put them in your pocket, and tomorrow you will be both sorry and glad.” The man obeyed. He stooped down and picked up a handful of pebbles and put them in his pocket. The next morning he reached into his pocket and found diamonds, rubies and emeralds. He was both glad and sorry. Glad that he had taken some and sorry that he hadn’t taken more. This analogy describes education perfectly. Even in engineering and maths, the areas I have been concentrating on studying for 5 years during university, there is just so much I don’t know. In engineering this includes: assembly language, networking, programming, hardware and computer graphics. I recently finished listening to a series of podcasted lectures on ethical hacking and I will expand my knowledge further, while keeping in mind that I need to pick an area to specialise in. In maths, I’ve been spending a lot of time on Math.StackExchange and seen that there is a vast amount of material that I have never seen. I have loved mathematics all my life. I was the kid who did math problems and puzzles for fun, but now I started losing interest in maths and ability is useless without the desire to use it. I know that if I had had access to this tool back in high school then I would literally be insanely good now. It is now so tempting to go back and study maths, but I know that programming will give me a greater opportunity to affect the world. I will therefore restrict the amount of time I spent here, so that I can focus on more important goal. At the moment, I am trying to gain a decent understanding of category theory, partially to help me understand functional programming. This is an area of maths that is abstract even for pure mathematicians. I imagine it like a hill, which I wish to climb just so I can see the surrounding terrain!

Children of Houla before the Massacre

Friday, 25 May, began like any other Friday in the Syrian town of Houla. After Friday prayer in the village of Taldou, on the outskirts of Houla, the residents of Taldou formed their usual protest marches against the regime. But then, in the early afternoon, army forces began heavily bombarding the village from several surrounding bases, at least 108 people were killed, including 49 children and 34 women, most of them murdered with hatchets, knives and guns.

 

These pics are before the massacre. The children are smiling... playing... and being children. On this night of May 25th. 2012 Assad's forces murdered more than 50 children amang 108 total dead.

Three days ago, they were playing together, and now they are dead, killed for no reason !!

I don't know if this girl is dead or alive after the massacre of Houla on May 25, 2012. but the sign she is holding says it all: "You Arabs killed us with your silence, we won't forgive you"

A beautiful town and beautiful people, they slaughtered with knives and then gunned down after their death !!

These are the beautiful children of Houleh, before the massacre. Before more than 50 children were killed in one day May 25, 2012

Kids with sense of humor, before the massacre..

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Finally it's here, my last day of college, when I wont be required to get up in the morning and rush to attend classes, I can't believe that it ended so fast. The past few weeks have been some of the most overwhelming times of my life. I got about 2 hours of sleep last night because I had two tests due today. I didn't think I would get it all done, but everything is turned in. Of course, I had bad days but those days are nothing compared to the memorable days. Sometime I spent 90-minutes lecture with the end result that I don't learn anything. Graduating is cause for celebration, but if you really think about how the senior year felt, then you'd realise that it wasn't the best year. It's about saying goodbye to the friends you've had for the last 5 years. Every day when I come back to my home I know that I will be back tomorrow but today I left my college and knowing that I won't be there tomorrow. This brought tears to my eyes. Now I have only one month left in college, I feel little bit delight but so sad to say goodbye to all of my friends. My life in college was so adventurous, so many things happened and I learnt a lot. I loved every day that I got to spend with you my friends

Omnia, I've known you for a good 4 years, we've done a lot of retarded things, you will always be my sister, thank you for always being there and standing by me. It means so much that I'm proud to call you my best friend and more.
Youmna, well, you've always been taller than me by only like half an inch and also known you for 4 years. It wasn't the longest friendship but I enjoy our good times together :P
Asmaa, I will always remember your smile and the way you cheered me up in class. I love you always.
Eman, thank you for big hearted, I will never ever forget your loving and caring nature for everyone who was around you.
Ayat, you taught me so much, and really made me believe that I can do anything. I love you so much.
Shaymaa, since we first met, you've had a special place in my heart. And I hope you have the same for me.
Suzan, I haven't known you for that long, but still, I feel like I have known you my whole life.
Zaynab, I'm sad to say I've only known you for 2 years. I wish it had been more.

I'll miss you all. You have all gave me 5 brilliant years. I'll always look back on our memories, never to be forgotten.

#Jan25 : A Real New Hope

The voice of the Egyptian people was never louder. In fact, people have been silenced for years and years just to think in opposition to the ruling regime. (January 25, 2011) will be remembered as a historic day for all Egyptian. That morning, the country seemed so quiet. Not the serene sort of quiet.. It all started peacefully and without leaders. Three Million individuals choosing hope instead of fear and braving death on hourly basis to keep their dream of freedom alive. Everyone knew, in the bottom of hid heart, that the 25th of January would be something special, and by God, it was.
That what I have seen by my own eyes and heard by my own ears. If millions were at their homes , other millions , real millions took the streets across the country. It started with Facebook invitation and other Social Media like Twitter. The cry of the people on social media was getting serious attention more and more to be ignored by the international community. Social media has played an incredible role in this revolution in Egypt. So let’s have a quick look at some random statistics:

Google Results for "Jan 25 Egypt":

• 122 Million (Everything)
  
• 31 Million Images
  
• 9,440 Videos
  

Twitter Hashtags #:
(Stats reflect tweets from the 28th of January till the 3nd of February)

• #Egypt: 39,687 tweets, 19,943 contributors, 5,669.6 tweets per day, 63.5% are retweets
  
• #25jan: 72,881 tweets, 22,747 contributors, 10,411.6 tweets per day, 74.9% are retweets
  

Youtube search results for:

• Jan 25 Egypt: 6,450 videos
  
• Egyptian revolution 2011: 7,310
• Popular Video “The Most AMAZING video on the internet #Egypt #jan25” Views: 1,683,071 / Likes: 20,825 / Comments: 10,978
  

Some Dedicated Twitter Accounts:

• @25Egypt: 4,394 Followers, 233 Following, 3,242 Tweets, Created: Sun, Jan 23, 2011
  
• @Jan25voices: 7,809 Followers, 13 Following, 927 Tweets, Created: Fri, Jan 28, 2011
  

Some Dedicated Facebook Pages:

• R.N.N: Likes 395,422 / Links 114,974 / Videos 59 / Photos +21,000
  
• كلنا خالد سعيد: Likes 574,183 / Links 2,026 / Videos 61 / Photos 968
  
• Egypt Revolution Videos: Likes 2,046 / Videos 390 / Photos 34
  
• Egypt 25 Jan: Likes 15,687 / Links 1,075 / Videos 21 / Photos 692
  
• Egypt’s Protests 25-Jan-2011: Likes 3,257 / Links 857 / Photos 183
  

On Monday, (January 27, 2011) after one day of complete communication blackout at Egypt, Google announced that anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196, +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt without internet connection."
No wonder they were very keen in shutting down all internet communication (Five days with out internet access resulted in a loss of more than $90 million). Really these figures are scary. You can run, but you can’t hide! You Can't Silence FREEDOM "Think About It!"

Google PageRank

PageRank is one of the most important algorithms ever developed for the Web used by Google that is based on link assessment "the position of your page in the Google search results". The link assessment checks the key word density and the cohesiveness of the data carried by a web page. Each web page is reached using a link, and the link assessment algorithm assesses the presence of keywords that a particular hyperlink points at. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d ( PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn) ).

That’s the equation that calculates a page’s PageRank and the original one that was published when PageRank was being developed, where

‘t1 – tn’ are pages linking to page A
‘C’ is the number of outbound links that a page has
‘d’ is a damping factor in the range 0 < d < 1, usually set to 0.85

The maximum PageRank is increased by inbound links and decreased by outbound links. For instance, A Web page with ten outbound links sends one tenth of the total available flow to the receiving page. A page linking to only one page sends all of the available PageRank transfer to the next Web page.
The core Google PageRank algorithm “distributes” it’s established PR across all of the outbound links. It's not a series of equal steps. It is logarithmic in its
calculation (log base 10). It takes one step to move from a level to another. For instance, it takes one step to move from PR0 to PR1, it takes a few more steps to PR3, it takes even more steps to PR4, and many more steps again to PR5, and so on up. Each level requires increasingly more high value incoming links than did the previous level.
The pagerank prediction tool is another smart program that can provide a rough estimate of the page rank that a web page can actually reach. It works as really smart way to ameliorate the page ranking of any web page. It's mostly used by the search engine optimizers to get an idea of the future ranking of their web page. By getting the future rankings they can rearrange and manipulate the present backlinks and data, so that improve the further ranking.

Search vs. Social

Last week comScore showed Facebook had passed Google in terms of time spent online. There is no doubt that Facebook is the web’s biggest time sink, also if you take a look at the numbers released by Hitwise you can find web surfers spending more time socializing on Facebook than searching with Google. Of course, comScore and Hitwise only counts users from the U.S. but that thing prompted a wide variety of people to think that “google is dead” and “facebook will become the internet” or something similar!! But the reality is that Facebook and Google are moving in two different way, Google is manage the world's information not a social site!
The concept of “usefulness” is at the core of the famous PageRank algorithm, it uses the importance of links and connections “most likely” by measuring its relative importance within the other pages, and mixes in the background information to create potential links that maximize the probability that someone searching will go through and find something that is. By this way, the user will come back to Google to search something. While the value of Facebook is in its inclusiveness because the updates of wall are mostly interesting for only users in the same social circle!
When two companies are competing head to head with similar products and similar strategies, whoever executes better will likely win. Not two companies are betting on entirely different distribution channels!! Well, they’re comparing Facebook – where you can do lots of stuff, like chat, see pics, watch videos, leave status updates, do Facebook private message, etc – to only Google’s search engine!! I think if you add up all the Google properties in this top 20 list – Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps – Google still clearly comes out on top. It’s hard to imagine anyone will ever choose Facebook over Google!!

When I Was a Twin

Just last night, while watching a TV show, I saw twin sisters hugging and laughing. It brought tears to my eyes that I never being able to do that again. When I lay down for bed at night I couldn't fall asleep, I couldn't stop myself thinking of my twin sister, I lost her in a car accident, she was the only one to die in this accident. She used to sit beside the window and I sat next to her, but all what can I remember that my sister hit the ground real hard and rolled over. I found out that she was not going to survive and she was the only one who died in this accident. It was hard to play that video in my mind over and over but by the days I was able to deal with those images and thoughts. Like many twins, I had assumed that as we had been born together we would die together. I never knew that I could miss someone so much. Losing her was awful because she was the first person I ever lost. She meant everything to me, she was my world and I never felt alone with her.
You don't know how hard birthdays, occasions, anniversaries and holidays can be. Sometimes I just feel alone in my pain and that no one else knows how I feel even the closest friends, they don't understand my pain and loss because none of them have lost anyone close... I can't talk about this with my parents because it makes them so sad. So far I have tried to stay busy and replace my feelings of grief with happy memories... sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't... some days are easy.. some are really hard. I lost my sister but the pain that I go through everyday is different and sometimes I wonder why I lived and why she had to die, Why can't she still be here? sometimes I wish so much that I could see her one more time I always ask myself why.. why did I have to loose the only person that was my best friend I need her the most now and then remember that Allah will not give us more than we can handle and that it was Allah's plan and not to question it. I always had faith in my life, but never like in the last years. These circumstances have brought me closer to Allah. I realised that I could only do what I was capable of doing to the best of my ability and leave the rest in Allah's hands. Now I can see that I am here for a purpose. Perhaps, Allah wants me to reach out to what is required of me and to see me how short life can be and how little I really control, but it took me a long time to understand this.
Like now, sometimes I feel guilty about a lot of things like that I am still alive while she's not and I am the one who will be with her at the college campus for her first day, that I am the one who will see her fulfill her dreams of becoming a programmer, that I am the one who is going to see her graduate, that I am the one that will help her pick out her wedding dress and plan her wedding, that I am the one who will be at the hospital when she delivers her first baby... I just feel guilty!