13
Jun

Baalbek Trip

   Posted by: abdallah   in Blogging

I’ve been sleeping in till noon every Saturday. And that was hurting our weekend activities plenty. So today we left home as soon as I woke up and took off.
We did not have a destination in mind. So we stated off with a quick breakfast at B2B in Jdeideh. Then I went southbound from there, since the roads to the north were blocked with traffic!
Last week I asked my wife to make us some fried frog legs dinner. Since Pia never tasted that dish before, I thought about a restaurant specializing in that kind of things in the Bekaa: “Reymond’s Place” near Ryak military base. So I didn’t say anything and headed that way.
Once we got to Ryak, we were not that hungry. So we kept on going until we got to Baalbek. It seems Pia’s last visit to the city was over 15 years ago. So we parked there and went to check out the Roman ruins.
The place is huge, as many foreign tourists noticed. You just don’t grasp the size of it from the outside.
We took some pictures with Pia’s sony/ericsson phone. Not bad. But we agreed we have to go there again once her new Nikon D90 arrives :)

2
May

Instant Gallery (php-jquery-galleria)

   Posted by: abdallah   in Coding

It’s been a while, I’ve been busy!

Here’s a quick/small drop in collage to build an instant image gallery using a couple of lines of PHP and the excellent jQuery plugin “Galleria”

File attached, just extract it in a directory with plenty of pics and enjoy :)

Download

PS. There’s a lot that could be added to the script, I just don’t have time for it right now, and that’s not the purpose anyway!

3
Nov

Auto-bcc with Exim/WHM

   Posted by: abdallah   in Work

It’s not really auto-bcc (a la postfix) but should give you the same results. Please note that you would be making changes to the exim configuration files, so it’s best to take a backup before doing that:

if first_delivery
and ("$h_from:" contains "info@example.com")
and not ("$h_X-Spam-Checker-Version:" begins "SpamAssassin")
then
unseen deliver "sales@example.com"
endif

The recipe above is taken from http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?t=83277

28
Oct

Trip Preparations

   Posted by: Paypouy   in Prague/Vienna

So far, we have done the following:

  • We bought a couple of books to get started: 40$
    • Eyewitness Travel Vienna (12.99 GBP)
    • Eyewitness Travel Prague (12.99 GBP)
  • We grabbed two pairs of light water proof GEOX boots: 350$
  • Rain jacket: 50$
  • We contacted a friend of a friend (foaf) in Prague. We’re carrying some books for him, and hope to meet him and his wife there.
  • We found our way around Vienna and Prague using Google Earth. Apparently we can go around town easily using Metro and Tram.


Things to do:

  • Reschedule our itinerary on Google Calendar.
  • Buy scarves, gloves and hats.
  • Get another travel bag.
  • Quick dry travel gear.
  • Money belt.

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29
Sep

Create Rails Test Application (with everything) Recipe

   Posted by: abdallah   in Coding, Work

Here’s a quick recipe for setting up a rails app with the needed mongrels and such

  1. #!/bin/bash
  2. echo "Please enter domain name: ";read DOMAIN
  3. adduser $DOMAIN; passwd $DOMAIN
  4. mkdir /home/$DOMAIN/htdocs/
  5. cd /home/$DOMAIN
  6. su$DOMAIN -c ‘rails test’
  7. cd /home/$DOMAIN/test
  8. echo "Existing mongrels: "
  9. netstat -tlnp | grep ruby
  10. echo "Please enter port to use: "; read PORT
  11. echo "How many mongrels: "; read MONGRELS
  12. cd /home/$DOMAIN/test/
  13. mongrel_rails cluster::configure -e production -p $PORT -a 127.0.0.1 -N $MONGRELS -c /home/$DOMAIN/test/
  14. ln -s /home/$DOMAIN/test/config/mongrel_cluster.yml /etc/mongrel_cluster/$DOMAIN.yml
15
Sep

Working with Dad

   Posted by: abdallah   in Blogging

نعمل الآن مع والدي على تركيب مدونة جديدة لمذكراته

coming soon :)

7
Aug

100 push-ups

   Posted by: abdallah   in Blogging

I’ve been neglecting myself lately and becoming more and more a couch potato. I even slide to sit on the floor when I want to cool down a bit. Comparing myself to the grace The Boss moves with when accomplishing the same endeavor fills me with shame!
So I decided to use this “one hundred push ups” program to regain some of my upper body strength. I used to do about 60 push ups straight before, so getting up to 100 in 6 weeks as the program promises should be interesting.
I’m looking for some info on exercises one who spends so much time sitting down should do … if you know of any, feel free to drop me a line :)
Day 1, 3rd column, level 5 => 12 pushups

20
Jul

Sabah in Narnia!?

   Posted by: Paypouy   in Blogging

‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’, is a fantasy movie that describes the adventures of four children in the fictional realm of ‘Narnia’. After watching the first film of the series, you find out that it is a place where animals talk, fantasy creatures live, and where magic and battles are common…
What was surprising though, was hearing the famous Lebanese folk song : ‘Dakhel 3yoonik Hakina’ of the Lebanese legend Sabah in one scene.
We couldn’t believe our ears! We had to go and check the scene again on youtube:
Sabah in Narnia!

The scene: a hag who attempts to resurrect the White Witch by keeping prince Caspian inside a magic circle and chanting what is obviously the words from Sabah’s song. The words translate roughly to:

Please talk to us (lit. For your eyes’ sake, talk to us)
We only came because of your eyes
You got us half way there, (lit. helped us half way out of the well)
Then let us go (lit. cut the rope)
Wayleh [interjection meaning I'm doomed!]

I believe Sabah should be asking for her copyrights, or at least someone should tell her! Better not perhaps, considering how ugly the hag was? Or …

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16
Jul

The Boss’ new bed

   Posted by: Paypouy   in Cat

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23
Jun

Generate a random password in bash

   Posted by: abdallah   in Coding, Work

Here’s a quickie that Feliscimo sent me:

  1. < /dev/urandom tr -dc _A-Z-a-z-0-9 | head -c8