whistler’s blog

Computers really have to break down at the most critical moments. Right when the math coursework is due in two days, today something really weird happened to my PC. At first I thought it was windows that is causing problems, but then it seemed that one of the PCI cards are misbehaving, but after removing all them, i thought it was the CD-RW drive.

Yeah and finally it turned out that the motherboard is the culprit. So I had to replace it, I put in my sister’s which was not being used at the moment. I don’t even know where to connect the power and hard disk LED connections as I don’t have the manual for it.

Any ways the good thing is I have a minimalist working computer. The new install of windows will hopefully let me do my coursework without any worries tomorrow. I have a lot of tech junk lying around my room, have to figure out where to store it. Probably wont go back inside my pc until i need it.

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I finally got my guitar last thursday, its a strat copy. Black colour. Although the original Squier Stratocaster sells for almost the same price(i checked on froogle) i bought my electric guitar, it would have been hard to find it here.

I needed it quickly so I can get to practice what i learn in the lessons and I didnt want to get stuck in Dubai traffic. I guess the thing is pretty good for a first electric guitar. I learn using a classical one at school so metal strings are quite painful for me.

Uptil now i know only a few chords, right now im learning all the notes. My teacher gave me sheets on how to play a spanish song and “Bouvelvard of Broken Dreams”, but when I play the later it hardly sounds like it.

No post for a long time, I have been quite busy and am trying to reduce the amount of time I waste using my computer, i.e. being carried away browsing sites which are irrevelevant to any of my IB assignments.

A little update on my life, I have started taking guitar lessons, and have to buy a guitar, just that I cant find any time to go to some place to shop for it. Finally my extended essay is beginning to take some shape but still far from complete, instead of doing lab experiments I want to create a computer simulation for the essay. I am making some progress catching up with the french class, but really need to work on my vocabulary.

I am still quite screwed with work, have to cover another 45 CAS hours, do courseworks, revise previous things, get done with university applications, so I dont think I will increase the frequency of blogging, particularly when I dont get much comments or hits.

Over the course of Ramadan I have mastered the art of sleeping in the bus, now I am aware of several postures that are suitable for sleeping. I had got a backache from the way I used to sleep before. One Thursday my phone and watch slipped out of my pocket while sleeping and I had to wait till Sunday to get them back.

Some interesting things from class. Economics period. We are missing a teacher, so there is a substitute but he stays outside the class and we are engaged in various activities. Suddenly he comes in and asks why are some of us listening to music. Somebody says: “Im not listening to music, im learning spanish!” *pause* “Como se llama, bonita, mi casa, su casa “. Really good excuse!

Math class. We are finding determinant of a 3×3 matrix on the board with teacher. Somebody says the wrong answer for the step, teacher (writing the right answer) says: “Who’s your teacher?”, next step the teacher calculates wrong, Lina to teacher: “Who’s your teacher?”.

When I agreed to set up the new shelf of my sister from IKEA we were bringing in all the stuff to her room, Mariam: “Where is the recipe for the shelf?”

Well yeah everything was pretty abrupt and random but dont have much time, I’ll post about our Group 4 project sometime.

Today a friend, Saad told me that Flickr in UAE is ublocked which turned out to be true, I also tried orkut.com which works as well. I don’t know of many other sites filtered by the Etisalat proxy so I have no clue if all has been unblocked. Surprisingly I did not find anything mentioning this change when I searched on google. As expected Skype is still not working. I just hope they don’t block flickr again and unblock VOIP soon too, I have no idea why they would do that but I just want that to happen. I guess our prayers are being heard during Ramadan.

A friend in need is no friend of mine

After spending a few days working in an accellerated pace including sometimes keeping awake overnight, I am now in a somewhat better situation. I have finally finalized my extended essay idea and am going to start working on the experimental part of it during breaks. I need to get in to some sort of activity, probably music classes to cover some CAS hours. I have to do my world lit essay before the end of ramadan, so i can prepare for my english oral presentation and TOK presentation in the eid holidays and also complete a math coursework. I badly need extra french tuition, I seem to know nothing compared to others in the ab initio class. Have to work during breaks on french sometimes but that is not sufficient. I lost my TI 83 on wednesday so doing math work has become painful. Almost forgot I had to buy lemons for group 4 project tomorrow.

I totally hate Etisalat, the telecom monopoly over here in UAE, they have blocked VOIP and sites like orkut and flickr. I guess some of the blocks have a good reason behind them but many are totally useless. Whats with blocking a perfectly cool picture sharing service. With hi5 blocked aswell im getting worried about the flickr substitute zooomr i am using now. Its unfair how they are making so much money by blocking calls over the internet so that everybody has to use there service to make overseas calls. With Etisalat also controlling PTCL, Pakistanis dont look very happy with it either.

Regular visitors would notice this blog gone back to a previous date. Well the server got hacked and I had no recent backup. I had just done a lot of updating recently because I know I will not find much time for this in my final year of IB diploma.

Life is tough, have to wake up early in the morning for school, school is a long distance away and traffic in Dubai is a big headache, There are all kinds of deadlines to be met for IB. At TIS we wasted a lot of our time, over here at EIS it is acadamically tougher but people, both teachers and students have been very friendly and helpful so far. Have to catch up on all the work and get where the rest of the students are.

Well some people told me that people in UAE dont really study, but here at EIS i think they are very good at that. Its the first weekend after the start of school, spent my day after school at mall of emirates and had fun with my new friends but the next two days are going to be serious work.

I am working on this new blog where I am going to post about useful freeware J2ME applications and some other cell phone related information.

I had been planning to create a site with such content with ruby on rails, but using a wordpress blog instead, I would be able to focus more on the information I am going to provide rather than website design and maintainance. If I get enough hits, I’ll upgrade it to a proper site.

Please take a look at mobware and give me comments and suggestions.