Poetry
When AI Meets Bedil: A Conversation on Poetry, Meaning, and Machine Insight
But beneath all that, a profound reality is that we’re building tools that can engage in subtle, reflective, and culturally rich conversations.
Randomness
Why I Ghosted My Blog (And What Brought Me Back)
It’s been quite a while…. such a long time that I can’t think of how to begin anymore. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d blog again. It wasn’t because I did not have anything to say. Somewhere along the way, life got busier and platforms got louder. At some Read more…
Afghan politics
Marx, Engels and Lenin in Pul-e-Charkhi Prison
With all the hype about Marxism and Socialism, I remembered this story. Someone in my family back in the 1980s spent some time in the infamous Pul-e-Charkhi prison. They had taken him because of suspected links to anti-government elements. There were certainly more than one in every family who the Read more…
Holiday
Maximising your layover in Doha: A personal guide
Having lived in Australia, I’m no stranger to long-haul flights. If you’re going to be stuck on a plane for over 15 hours, why not break up the journey with a layover that feels like a mini-holiday? For travelers between Europe and Australia/New Zealand, a stop in the Middle East Read more…
Computing
Volunteer Computing
Volunteer computing is an arrangement where volunteers provide or donate their computer resources to projects. That way, these projects are able to do really advanced and time-consuming computations. Most of these projects are scientific trying to solve different problems. Some are run by universities and other not for profit foundations. Read more…
Islam
A Shared Ramadan Experience
We are only two Muslims in our workplace, but every Ramadan almost everyone else fasts one day to share the Ramadan experience with us. Our work organises a dinner for those who fast. This year, one of our colleagues emailed us the following and with her permission I decided to Read more…
Computing
AWK One‑Liner: Total a CSV Column in Seconds
Imagine you have a file with multiple columns and you need to quickly get the total of a column in command line in UNIX. The easiest way is to use AWK in the command line. Let’s take the following file: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2 Read more…
Afghan politics
Afghan War: A popularity contest for Western Leaders
Ever since NATO invaded Afghanistan under the guise of fighting terrorism, the poverty-stricken country has served as an election-winning tool for leaders of the involved countries. Every time election gets closer, the leaders of these countries make an announcement that could potentially win them votes. Julia Gillard’s announcement of Australian Read more…
Programming
Adding Code Formatting Tools in Notepad++
I am a big fan of beautiful code, not only in terms of quality of programming but also formatting the code nicely so that it is easy on eyes. If you are using a full-blown IDE, they come with their own formatting facility, but if you are using a multipurpose Read more…
Programming
PCL – Centering Variable-width Text (Still Stuck with PCL? Read On.)
If you’ve ever had to deal with PCL (Printer Command Language), you’ll know the pain: there’s no command to center text. Some printers support HPGL commands embedded in a PCL file, but not all. If you’re printing predefined text, you can work out measurements and use absolute positioning. Easy enough. Read more…