it’s now four days since I got my new MacBook “white” after more than 2 months reading and searching to get convinced enough to do that move, and pew I did it

Let’s start with the hardware specifications, it has 13.3″ widescreen with (LED backlight technology) this extra-awesome hyper saturated colors. (I read a few articles about LED backlighting and it differs from the old CCFL screens, you can read more about that here http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/06/macbook-pro-backlight-comparison-led-vs-ccfl/ ). And it has an Intel 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo processor with 4 megabytes L3 cache, 160GB 5400RPM SATA (low-noise) disk, 2.27kg weight, 5 hours-long battery and Airport Wireless card that supports 802.11n technology with awesome reception accuracy and iSight camera.

It’s a whole new world for me, so expect the next few posts will be about it.

The most astonishing thing for now is the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard 64bit, AWESOME operating system, and I can really understand now why apple always said that it’s the most advanced operating system in the world, they are right, it’s. it’s a very well designed for a great user experience and you’ll see many snapshots in the next few posts and well. it has more than 300 new features over the previous version “Tiger 10.4″ and the main thing you’ll notice about mac is that it’s a REAL FAST.

The great news is that most of the well known and famous applications I needed are available for mac, like microsoft office and it’s open source clone open office, adobe creative suite 3, yahoo messenger, MSN messenger and iChat works as an awesome jabber chat client.

I don’t have much time now, but the first thing I’m so happy about is that I chose The white model. That’s because the surface is very finger-print catching and can be easily scratched, but happily the white color hides most of it.

Here is a photo I took using the iSight camera with background replacement effect

edit: added some screenshots

طبعاً انا ماليش في السياسة و مبحبش اتكلم فيها عشان كلها مشاكل و عشان كدة انا مش هدخل في التفاصيل السياسة للموضوع . الموضوع هو المحلة الكبرى واللي عشت فيها سنين طويلة و كان فيها اجمل ايام حياتي و كمان متجوز منها

لمجموعة اسباب متعددة انتشرت فكرة اضراب يوم 6 ابريل في مصر كلها في اشكال متعددة و على الرغم من ان محدش كان عارف هو جاي منين بس ناس كتير جداً شجعتة و قالت “و ماله، اهو حاجة الواحد يحس بيها انو مش سلبي” و انا فكرت كتير و قررت اخد اليوم ده اجازة و اقضيه في المحلة

طبعاً من الصبح و انا عمال متابع الجزيرة عايز اعرف اي اخبار عن الاضراب و هل فعلاً البلد سمعت الكلام و عملت اضراب و لا الناس كالعادة خافت من الحكومة؟ لقيت الأعلام نكتة - الأعلام المصري بيقولك كله تمام و زي الفل و القلة القليلة اللي عملت اضراب لا تمثل قوي الشعب و الباقي بيقولك ان البلد فعلاً كانت فاضية و محدش راح غير موظفين الحكومة لقلة حيلتهم

المهم بدأت احس بتوتر في المدينة و لقيت الناس بتجري في الشوارع و انا كنت عايز اسافر ف مشيت من خلال الطريق الدائري الساعة 5 يعني تقريباً بعد اشتعال الحرب بين الشعب و الحكومة، و من ساعتها و انا متابع كل الاخبار في كل الصحف و وكالات الأخبار العالمية عشان اعرف اللي بيحصل و خصوصاً برنامج عمرو اديب اللي كان اكتر من رائع من حيث التغطية

الواقع بقة ان انا اتكونت عندي صورة من خلال الأعلام ان المحلة بقت خرابة و ان البلطجية كسروا البلد و محلات البفل كلها اتكسرت و و بدأ يبقى عندي شعور ان البلد مش امان و ان بعد كدة الواحد يمشي بمسدس في جيبوا خوفاً من البلطجية اللي الكميات اللي مشوفتش زيها في حياتي من الأمن المركزي مش قادر عليها

لكن الحقيقة لما نزلت الويك اند ده لقيت البلد عادية جداً و الناس عايشا حياة اكتر من طبيعية، كل اللي مش طبيعي هو وجود كميات مهولة من الامن المركزي في الشوارع و كأن امريكا احتلت البلد و كمان البغل شغال زي الفل يادوب جزء من القزاز مكسور بس مظبط نفسة و حاطط انوار و دلع! و الغريبة اكتر كلام عموم الناس و اللي سمعتوا من اكتر من واحد و منهم ناس بثق فيهم جدا

الناس بتقول الآتي:

اللي حصل في الحقيقة اكتر كتييييير من اللي ظهر في التلفزيون و الضرب كان للركب، و الكلام اللي بيتقال ان عدد المصابين اكتر كتير قوي من اللي بيتقال

اللي بدأ بالشغب هوا الأمن و الناس كانت ماشية في حالها لكن الأمن بدأ بضرب الرصاص المطاطي على طول بعد ما عدد الناس كتر و ده اللي استفز الناس و طبعا البلطجية مقدروش يسكتوا و اشتغلوا في الهيصة

اللي أغرب بقة ان كل الناس مبسوطة و ده بقة اللي فعلا مدهش، الناس مبسوطة ان الضباط اتضربت و ان صورة الرئيس اتقطعت و لا كأن العلم الأسرائيلي هو اللي بيتقطع

اللي واضح جداً و مش محتاج اي ذكاء ان الأمن كان مش قادر على العيال دي او حسب رأي ناس تانية بتقول انة كان سايبهم عشان الناس بعد كده متفكرش تعمل اضراب او اي مظاهرات و كلة يقوللك شفت المظاهرات عملت ايه في البلد. و اللي واضح برضو ان الناس جابت اخرها و انا لو من الحكومة ابدأ افكر في الشغلانة اللي هاشتغلها بعد من الناس تنفجر و يشيلوا الكل من الكراسي أو يصلحوا مع الشعب و لو ان ده صعب عشان الناس مش متقبلة ده

ده انا هاقوللوكم قصة غريبة عشان تعرفوا ان الكل مهموم، انا بعد معرفت تفاصيل قانون الضرائب العقارية المقترح حلمت بأن الحكومة هتاخد 10 جنية و 30 قرش على كل صلاة نصليها، و طبعا انا مش عارف سر ال 30 قرش دول بس ده اللي حصل

يعني الموضوع وصل للأحلام بليل و الواحد على الرغم من انه الحمد لله دخله كويس لكن برضو حاسس بالضيق

ربنا يفرجها

ملحوظة: انا مش بعارض و لا بأيد الأضراب و الموضوع كله بعيد عن وجهه نظري الشخصية، الموضوع كله عبارة عن سرد للي سمعتة من الناس و مختلف وجهات النظر المطروحة، يعني انا مش بشجع على الأضراب و لا حاجة عشان الناس ماتفهمش غلط

السلام عليكم جميعا…

دا أول بوست لي أكتبه من بيت الزوجية

انا و أحمد اتجوزنا يوم الخميس 31 يناير 2008 , والحمد لله كانت ليلة جميلة جدا عقبالكم جميعا ان شاء الله

بعد الفرح سافرنا يوم الجمعة للغردقة و قضينا هناك يومين بس اييهه دلع دلع على الآخر

الفندق كان وهمي ماشاء الله و تحس ان هم مش وراهم حاجه هناك غير انهم يضحكم في وشك و يريحوك

الغردقة مدينة جميلة للاستجمام فعلا, لكن اللي كانت ممتعة جدا بجد هى شرم الشيخ

سافرناها يوم الأحد ورجعنا الخميس

شرم بقى مدينة جمييييلة جدااااا فى شوارعها وخضرتها و فسحها

بس لو سألتم أحمد هيقولكم ان أجمل حاجه شرم هي الروسيين وانه كان نفسه يروح شرم مرة قبل الجواز رغم اني والله كنت سايباه براحته

اصل هناك مفيش مكان تقدر تغض فيه بصرك والاظرف ان احنا كنا الفرجة بتوعهم يعني خلال الاسبوع ماشفناش اكتر من 3 أسر مصريه والباقى ربنا يسهلهم بقى

هناك رحنا سفارى و كانت جامدددةة و عملنا

snorkling

أو بمعنى أصح أحمد بس اللي عمل وانا فرجت عليا الأجانب عشان مش بعرف أعوم وجالي حالة ذعر لما نزلت المية لدرجة انى كنت هغرق أحمد معايا

المهم رجعنا الحمد لله يوم الخميس على بيت الأسرة في المحلة عشان نقضي اسبوع معاهم والحمد لله رجعنا امبارح لشقتنا في القاهرة والنهاردة يعتبر عمليا أول يوم أتولى فيه زمام الأمور في بيت الزوجية

يعني من الأخر بدأت أطبخ واغسل , و دعواتكم بقى

انشاء الله احنا طالعين رحلة الكات يوم الجمعة 22 فبراير اللي هتروح دريم بارك

انا المرة الوحيدة اللي رحت فيها دريم بارك كنت في تانية ثانوي وكانت أول مرة أشوف أحمد واتكلم معاه

واديني بعد 9 سنين هروحها تاني وانا معاه بعد ما ربنا اكرمني و حققلي حلم عمري و هو اني أعيش بقيت عمري معاه

ربنا يخليهولي يا رب دايما

عقبالكم جميعا يا رب

It’s 11:00 pm now, it’s only one hour till midnight which will start a brand new year 2008

so, Happy new year to all of you,

and let us all wish that this coming year will be a better, blessing year, full of joy, happiness and great achievements isA.

as for me, the past year 2007 was a move point for me, may be i didn’t make or reach huge goals, but during it, a huge change in me personal and in my life in general has happened.

joining MCIT was one of those changes,  AND i got married to ahmed (half married ya3ni ) and this was the greatest thing ever for me.

so, i thank ALLAH for everything he gave me in this year, and the whole passing years, and wish the best for the comings isA.

any way, it’s not only about the new year, but it’s Ahmed’s birthday, which i wait from year to year, to celebrate it with him, i love birthdays

I wish him, a very happy and delighted birthday, and i pray for him every second, to find the right way he seeks and reach the perfect decision in his career YA RAB.

we yarab all the coming birthdays to be better and better as we’ll be together isa

so… Happy birthday My loving husband and thank you for everything you gave me, truly you light up my life

and happy new year for all of u

This topic isn’t related to CAT series, it’s about me (directly me).

Guys, I’m really having hard times deciding whether I should resume my career life as a developer mainly or administrator. It’s really a hard choice and if you saw my “Resume” in the about section you’ll somehow understand why I’m confused about it.

My past experience and knowledge are hybrid between development (high-level and low-level), systems administration (Linux mainly) and Software Engineering/Architecture.

I always thought that it’s good to be a “joker” that can fit anywhere in the business market but nowadays I feel wrong, I need to focus on one thing, ONLY one because of the business requirements you must be devoted to one topic. Thank Allah that I’m not lost between different areas of science, but I’m lost between several field in IT.

My ultimate dream is to work as low-level systems programmer (kernel, drivers) and/or software architecture that works at awesome company like “Google” or “Sun Microsystems” (while I like google more ).

Maybe soon I’ll start my first step and it’ll be announced publicly as part of my plan to go to google or any interesting company.

Please share my with ideas, suggestions and if you can find a good mentor for me please advice….

Right after “About Us” session, things went bad and I think that it was the last “well-organized” event CAT has ever managed and launched. Many people left and we wanted to run more activities to let CAT survive.

I think that’s when I suggested to change the coordinator and I didn’t want to lead as previously because I was too busy for it but we found that if I and Abdalla collaborated to be “A&A” coordinator that would be much better as I may have some management skills and I may have some creative ideas, and he has the time and spirit/patience to follow up.

That idea turned out to be awful for many reasons. Let me tell you how….

I was completetly busy managing the current tasks and my business life and of course my education and it turned out that doing something in CAT takes enormous time, because people are not well organized and they have responsibilities as well. That what made things go terribly wrong and it ended up like this http://www.ahmedsoliman.com/2006/08/03/im-sorry-cat/ wanna know why? Wait me tomorrow

One thing I have to mention separately, meeting “Yara”…

It was on the first meeting for me with the CAT guys, she was there and it’s unusual to find girls interested in that field and real astonishing is to find them active and brilliant. But “yara” was and she grabbed my attention directly because of her well organization and she is extraordinarily smart. I got to know her more by the time and she was the best work companion for me ever, she was effective in every idea or cooperation she does. I even thought that she was the best girl I’ve ever “worked” with or will work with.

If I made my own business, I’ll love to have her working for me because she is really an added-value for any company, may Allah bless her and show her the way to success ever after isA.

So, After having some courses plans to be launched in the college I got a rising demand for Linux courses at “Origin” and that was great because it helped me develop excellent relationships and helped me deliver my “freedom” message through an enormous number of courses. By this time I got busier and busier because I was managing too many things at the same time (as usual).

Read the rest of this entry »

We have launched CAT Scope 3 and it was pretty successful, we had many presentations and I can’t remember all the presentations’ titles but I can remember a few.

1. About CAT Reloaded.
2. Ahmed Soliman: The Open Source Approach - It was a sponsored presentation by Origin IBM.
3. Hesham ElSawi: IT Training, it was a very nice presentation about IT training in generally - It was a sponsored presentation by Origin IBM.
4. Abdel Rahman Za’za: USB Technology.
5. Hatem Mohammed: FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) Technology.
6. Hassanien Mohammed: What does graphics mean?

My presentation “The Opensource approach” had the award of the best and the most popular presentation (it’s not award but it’s a nomination after surveying the attendees). And things went perfect and we started to organize things to become more smooth and smooth.

The problem was that all the guys were beginners and they knew nothing about meetings and discussions and Allah knows, it was a mess!. I could manage to cope and manage to run the meetings as good as it’s possible while many people couldn’t cope and “Ahmed Abdalla” (as I remember) spent all his efforts trying to educate people how to talk in a meeting or how to brainstorm (while I believe that he himself didn’t know a solution, but he couldn’t cope with the situation because he barely can speak - that’s why he was trying to educate). He later discovered that my advices about leaving people and trying to guide their conversations into useful ones is more efficient than leaving the whole topic and talking about how to talk in a meeting.

Anyhow, those days were nice and binGo and psycho specially were growing up fast as they are really talented but they needed some guidance, I think they had a good opportunity really and they used it very well.

Ahmed Abdalla was then elected as the CAT coordinator and I didn’t apply for being coordinator because I was too busy at Origin with the IBM scholarship I was teaching and I had a very important project to manage along with my educational studies.

Let me say this, abdalla was a great guy but he was very lousy and he was losing control and things went sleepy, so CAT had a sleeping period they we have suggested opening chances for CAT-driven courses to be launched in the faculty for free for a selected number of qualified students. I was about to start a Linux course and we had many interviews with students applying for that opportunity and we were criticized hardly because people thought that it’s not fair to choose the qualified only. However we thought that it was the best idea at then because we didn’t want people to rush into the courses and being unqualified will definitely ruin the course quality.

However, we canceled the idea and the only one who have started a course was me and it was never completed…

Let me resume tomorrow…I’m at work now

It’s a very long story to tell, if you have time only start reading now because it might take a few minutes reading the whole story.
CAT is Computer Assistance Team, a network of talented students in the college of computers and systems engineering - Mansoura University started to form a family under the name “CAT” to provide intensive information and to open up students’ eyes to the computers world earlier on 1996. At ths time computer knowledge merely existed and a few people who could really say that they have ever used a computer. The team contained many people whom I don’t know all of them but I hear names and I met a few of them. People like “Hesham ElSawi”, “Ashraf ElRefaey”, “Mohammed Ezzat” and etc.

That family achieved alot and they launched 2 conferences under the name “CAT Scope” and that was from 1996 to 1999, then things died and no one had more power to revive that dream.

After a few years, some students in the same college had the same dream once and they started to communicate with Eng.Mahy (Research Engineer in Communications Department). She was contacted by “Abdel Rahman Zaa’za” who was very ambitious and excited to create a team excellent in IT (Information Technology) and they started to contact Hesham ElSawi again and they’ve held many meetings to organize how things are going to work.

At this time I was working as a part-time instructor at Origin-IBM (Authorized IBM Training Center) which was managed and partially owned by Hesham ElSawi. And then he told me that he wants me to help them and join the team. Firstly they started with the name “Smart” and that was the suggested name, then hesham proposed “CAT” to be named after the old CAT family as a continuation to the idea, then finally we decided that it’ll be “CAT Reloaded” - I think it was Ahmed Abdalla’s suggestion as he is a fan of “The Matrix” series”-

At this time I was superior to the team, I had such a great computer history and had achieved many success stories while I was near to their age. I was afraid because I had such bad days meeting people who had hated me for being better or smarter rather than trying to compete me. But luckily things went perfect and they guys respected me very much and I started to help arranging everything. The first event for this IT addicted family was to arrange for CAT Scope 3 and try to face the college routine to achieve this goal.

I started to know everybody more “BinGo, Psycho, Biko, Ahmed Abdalla, Hassanien, Ahmed Nassar, Samer and etc.”, some of them I knew earlier like “Hassanien and Ahmed Nassar” but CAT helped me to know them deeper and deeper.

Generally, we have achieved much and CAT started to take much out of my time and I could barely manage the college/education, work and CAT…starting from here the story I’m telling is beginning…

This is the story you didn’t expect to hear, the impact of CAT to me and how did it affect my career life and my choices.

Let me tell you…in the next post

A very interesting question I was asked while applying for a position, “How nice is it to be you?” - it means “How nice does it like to be you?”

Well, I started to think immediately “Is it nice in the first place?” and if I feel that I’m very well, can I be any better?

very interesting and I want to share you that question, how nice is it to be you? and also is it nice to be me?

This question will help knowing yourself more and will help me knowing myself more, understanding my/your advantages and/or drawbacks….

please help…