Baithak - A place where Pakistani Bloggers get United.
This weekend, I got a chance to attend probably my first real rock concert (in Pakistan at least). Held at the auditorium of the Pakistan National Council of the Arts, it featured some of the finest guitarists and progressive rock artists that this country has produced.
Though most of the pieces were originals, ….. Read more
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Looking at the news headlines (using Viigo) for the past couple of days, I was relieved not to find anything about Pakistan since there has hardly been any good news the last couple of months.
It was a pleasant surprise to open the news item titled “art frenzy” and end up staring at an article about Pakistani ….. Read more
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Was reading about Blogged on TechCrunch and submitted my blog to be included in the directory (still awaiting confirmation). While poking around, I found some really interesting blogs on it, including Cracked.com (some parts may border on NSFW).
If you’re a comics and movies fan (or simply a science nerd), you’ll ….. Read more
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By Baithak.Net
I heard a distant bang about an hour back and assumed it was another bomb blast. Suddenly there was speculation that it could be in retaliation to the recent renewed offensive against militants by the Army. The news said there were two explosions somewhere around the Army House in Pindi, but nobody could figure out….. Read more
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A good friend of mine has launched another construction project by 
the name of PakHuts. Their focus is on the futuristic design and construction of huts in the beautiful mountainous region around Islamabad. The chalets are quite affordable and can be great for weekend getaways or as ideal places to live in peace….. Read more
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Playing football has been the most enjoyable thing I’ve done within the past week. Though I’ve played it on and off for quite a while, this must be the first time I’ve actually been good at it. And I’m not even talking about competing against my above-30 (and overweight) friends. These are my current and ex-….. Read more
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Today is the day Firefox 3 is released and a campaign is underway to set a new record for the most downloaded software. So far it has managed about 1.7 million downloads.
Though I may not be switching over completely yet, it looks a lot better and I’m hoping it’ll solve some of the stability and memory issues ….. Read more
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With no end in sight to the severe power shortage across the country, I was thinking about what could be done to make the darker hours easier. With the cost of generators touching the sky (not to mention the maintenance hassles, noise and air pollution and the all-time high fuel costs), other forms of energy look ….. Read more
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I recently got a call on the BlackBerry number informing me 
that I had won a million rupees in a lucky draw conducted by Mobilink and that I should call back on the same number to claim the prize.
Mobilink actually does have such a scheme for their Jazz customers, but the fact that my package doesn’t fall into ….. Read more
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Soon after this years elections, a wide-scale campaign seems to be in place to bring down President Musharraf. Ironic, considering that those fueling this campaign are the very people that were allowed to return to power by his government.
Retired generals, failed politicians and anybody with a personal vendetta ….. Read more
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Wasim Baig thankfully posted a link to the updated tzdata file that includes the updates for Pakistan Standard Time (PKST). You can get it here:
ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2008c.tar.gz
If you’re using Ubuntu Linux, updating the system is a simple procedure, just extract the file for Asia and run zic:
wget ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2008c.tar.gz tar xzf tzdata2008c.tar.gz asia zic asia
That’ll update the timezone data and you can verify it by checking your system time/date. The timezone will show up as PKST instead of PKT.
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By Baithak.Net
There was a bomb explosion nearby a few minutes ago and we felt the shock quite strongly. Though most people thought something had fallen off the roof, my worst suspicions were confirmed when we looked out of the window and saw a pillar of smoke in the distance.
It looked like some part of sector F-6 and my first ….. Read more
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By Baithak.Net
Though a common practice in much of the Western world, daylight savings time, or summer time, is an alien concept for most Pakistanis. It was last attempted here in 2002 as an experiment with little success, and is in place again from roughly 2 hours ago.
I wasn’t around the last time this was tried and may look ….. Read more
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I know, it’s been a day over a month since I last blogged. Have been tied up (not literally) with a lot of things the last one month and couldn’t get anything through so just thought I’d write a quick update.
I’ve got lots to write about so just hope I can get back to blogging soon. Take care.
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I recently followed a link to this list of spammers responsible for 80% of all spam The list includes an ex-boss of mine for whom I briefly worked for while I was in Singapore (somewhere in the mid-90s, long before spam was a problem). He had always been a dubious character, but I never thought he’d stoop this low….. Read more
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Victor was recently discussing how he couldn’t find butter in his 
Tokyo neighborhood which came as quite a surprise.
While I was there, I don’t recall many edible things that couldn’t be found in Japan (only licorice comes to mind). Certain things that we take for granted elsewhere (like fresh herbs, fruits etc….. Read more
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I keep getting strange messages on my Yahoo instant messaging account (also my first email account, by the way) with funny characters and a strange link. Knew it had to be someone infected in my really old contact list so didn’t pay much attention to it. Today however, I decided to message the person it was coming ….. Read more
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Haven’t had any time to blog lately, but this was just too good to pass up on. There was a lot I wanted to write about all the bad things that have taken place recently, but maybe it’s a good thing I couldn’t. Here is an interesting article on Gulfnews that describes the emergence of Pakistan as a market winner. From the article:
Pakistan is firmly bucking the trend. This year, the Karachi Stock Exchange 100 has gained 7.4 per cent, making it the best performer among major emerging markets indexes….
The articles talks about more than just the stock market performance. And this growth isn’t a recent phenomenon either. We’ve been seeing it for at least the last 5 years, through troubled and better times.
Most people usually point out everything that is wrong with this country. To me, the best thing is that we keep ….. Read more
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A lot of people probably already know this, but I just found out. We often mix up email addresses just because they do or do not have a dot (.) in them. For example, I might have ahmedsajjad@example.com, but people will often email me at ahmed.sajjad@example.com which normally would fail.
It seems that Google had ….. Read more
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By Baithak.Net
In an earlier post on bandwidth and mobile prices around the world, I predicted that increased competition would bring down broadband costs in Pakistan. It seems that “drop very fast” was an underestimation and we are witnessing a full-scale price war.
It started with PTCL (yes, the same guys who brought down ….. Read more
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It is still February, yet even in the evening, the cooling fans have come on and I’m down to a single t-shirt. During the day, it feels as hot as summer which officially is still almost half a year away so the actual hot season may be the hottest I’ve ever seen. We’ve even started thinking about the air ….. Read more
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As of this morning, YouTube is opening fine on the different connections that I have tried. The ban has been lifted and the offending video(s) have presumably been removed (looks like they could have just asked YouTube to remove the objectionable content).
Whatever the motives of the ban were or what long-term ….. Read more
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By Baithak.Net
Before reading this excellent piece, I didn’t realize how endangered my species is becoming. The first few sentences sum it all up and nicely describe the peril that our dwindling numbers face:
There is a sad truth to the world today. I am part of a dying breed of people known as “shell users.” …… We use ssh, ….. Read more
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By Baithak.Net
I have never voted before. This is mainly due to never being around in my home country of Pakistan during election time. Have never even seen a ballot paper before. This time around though, I have a chance to see what the fuss is all about. On the 18th February, when Pakistanis go to the polls, I’ll play my part ….. Read more
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By Baithak.Net
Tata Group has just unveiled Nano, the world’s cheapest car, which is about half the price of the cheapest existing cars on the market. At about Rs.100,000, or $2,500, this is quite an awesome achievement.
Air conditioning, automatic windows and powered steering can be considered unnecessary luxuries when it ….. Read more
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About a year back, I gave up the never-ending game of upgrading to the latest and greatest mobile and besides being a waste of money, one of the reasons was that all mobile phones suck. You may get used to one and might even start to make use of all its functions, but there will always be something missing. This is….. Read more
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It was about 2 and a half years ago that Pakistan’s only major link to the rest of the world, the SMW3 cable, was cut just off of Pakistan’s coast. We suffered cripplingly slow Internet connectivity for over 2 weeks and it was a major setback to the growing call center market and the young hi-tech industry of the ….. Read more
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Amazingly, a fifth breakdown in the Middle East’s Internet connectivity has occurred within the span of just a week. This is far from a simple coincidence and can only mean that something big is going on.
It all started with the two undersea cable cuts on Wednesday, last week, and this was followed by a series ….. Read more
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Saw this a couple of days ago. Scientists have created the darkest material ever seen (or unseen) out of carbon nanotubes. This material is the closest thing so far to “perfect black” which would absorb all types of light, at every angle.
On the left is the previous measurement of blackness. And on the right, is….. Read more
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Over the span of the last few years, we have seen email, a once useful means of communication, transform into a hideous monster that appears to have outlived it’s usefulness. We humans have a tendency to quickly get over something good that has happened to us, while even a small affliction can continue to torment ….. Read more
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Thank you Arsalan for forwarding this great piece about Pakistan. From the article:
When you watch television or pick up a newspaper everything is blood and gore,…. When you go to the country and you do your homework, you see that it’s a fantastic economy, growing 6.5 to seven percent
The best thing is that it ….. Read more
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