I Am Asif

The national election that took place yesterday, was the most anticipated event in the history of Bangladesh in many years. I'm not a columnist or a political analyst so I'm not going to write anything about it. If you're a Bangladeshi, you already know too much. But what I'm writing about here is my first voting experience. Several months back the work started to create the country's first national ID cards and the national voter list. From that point on right to the moment I casted my vote yesterday, the whole process seemed so systematic that it was almost unbelievable to many that it was happening in Bangladesh. Particularly yesterday, from going to the vote center and casting my vote, it didn't take me any more than 10 minutes, amazing huh? I went there, the whole center, which was a local school, was divided into several booths and lines so that the process gets faster. I only had to stand in my line for a couple of minutes or so. Then when I was called in...

Usually my Eids are all the same, they don't vary much from year to year. But this Eid-ul Azha was indeed a bit different due to the fact that this time we've spent the Eid without my father and big bro, as they're spending the Eid in London. They went there about ten days ago, just for visiting purposes. My family members (other than me) have many golden memories in the UK, they had spent a considerable period in London for the post graduate studies of my dad and mom. Dad wished to revisit his old connections there so, quite out of the blue, he took my brother and set off. Usually both of them play important roles during the Eid ul Azha, in coordinating the tasks of Qurbani. This time my brother in law, Dr. Helal replaced them. On the day of Eid I was busy the whole day with him. I don't know why, but I always enjoy one part of this Eid every year, getting my hands dirty with the meat! Yup, I just love it. Sorting out all the meat, putting them in plastic bags, stori...

The AUST EEE Society 's Electrical Day '08, held on November 27 on AUST campus, will always be unforgettable. It marked several milestones for AUST, our EEE department and also for me personally. For the last month or so, the students of our department have been working relentlessly to stage this event. For me, this event brought many 'firsts' . As I've written earlier, I've never participated in a project fair. This time, me along with four other pals (naming ourselves "gEEEks", i.e, EEE geeks), have tried really hard to put forward a solid project. But the project we took turned out to be a little too complicated for us, and unfortunately we couldn't take part in the competition. I felt really sorry for Pulak and Fahad in particular, as those two really worked hard for the project. But on the positive side, we have indeed gained a great deal of experience while working for the project. I'll never forget the trip to Patuatuli , (the IC Heaven...

The newly formed AUST EEE Society is arranging the first ever 'Electrical Day' on the last week of November. There's gonna be technical project presentation, cultural event, photography exhibition, magazine publication from the EEE department. I'm really excited about the event, and I've got some plans for it as well. Me and 4 other guys from our section have plans to submit a project about which we have been planning for the last couple of weeks or so. I've never actually participated in the science fairs that were held every year back in Udayan, but I was always a spectator, hehe. But this time I'm hoping to make a debut. I'm also gonna submit some of the photos taken by my to take a chance at the photography exhibition. Well, I know my photos are not probably good enough to be selected for the exhibition, but I'll still give it a try, nothing-to-lose style. Well, if somehow one of my photos get selected, that would be yet another first for me. Bu...

My big bro's suffering from two diseases at the same time. He's got himself Dengue and Hepatytis-E. Last week he had to spend more than 4 days in the hospital. He was indeed very very sick and too weak even to move around. Me and my family members did duties at the hospital in turns. I had to stay over for two nights, which were my first nights at a hospital. Day before yesterday we got my bro back home, now he has to stay in complete bed rest for more than 2 weeks I guess. May Allah bring him back out of this illness with better health and Imaan. Amin.

After a long break of one and a half month, the classes of the 3rd year 2nd semester have started from today. I have spent this break totally like a lazy boy, except for the 3 days I've spent on Allah's path. But yes, if you consider gaming to be work, then I was pretty damn busy! Last month after upgrading my PC, I've spent a hell lot of time in front of my monitor, and my fingers had started to give my pain because of excessive gaming. I've just played three games though, but thoroughly. Recently I've been playing Pure , which is probably the most exciting and fun racing game I've ever played. What does it lack? Here you get to build and ride cool ATVs (quad bikes), ride them in blinding speed through jaw dropping beautiful natural tracks, make unbelievably high jumps, and get to pull off dozens of utterly insane and spectacular tricks while you're in the air! I've just finished the game today, but I'm still gonna play this for a long time I guess,...

Last month something happened that I've been wishing for a long time, I've finally upgraded my PC ! Yup, I've only kept my old hard drive and DVD writer from my previous PC, and got myself a new Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53 Ghz processor, Intel DG31PR motherboard, 2GB DDR2 RAM, new casing, and most importantly, an XFX GeForce 8500GT graphics board. The graphics board is something I've been wanting to have for a long time, as I've been longing to play all the latest games. The board I got is nothing near high end, but it gives good enough graphics for a low enough price. Actually, the graphics it delivers is pretty awesome and I can't wish for anything better. So far my new PC has performed up to my expectations and I'm pretty happy with it. Call of Duty 4:   I've always been a great fan of the Call of Duty series. Before the fourth installment of the game, it has stayed with World War II. COD4 gets into the action of present day modern warfare. Since the gam...

Yes, it's that time of the year again. After one month of fasting the blessed day of Eid ul Fitr has arrived again. I'm just writing this post to wish everyone a very very happy Eid and many many returns of the day. May Allah fill this day with happiness and joy. May Allah fill our hearts with the Light of Imaan, as a gift of Eid. Well, for me, the Eids are always pretty much the same. We don't have much of relatives outside of Dhaka, so we are deprived of the joy of going to our home towns or villages to spend the Eid vacation. Our Eids are mostly celebrated in the home of one of our uncles or aunts. But still this day I always enjoy with family. Not much with friends though, particularly after coming to Uttara. Most of my friends are in downtown Dhaka and I can't join their 'addas' on Eid. Another thing I enjoy on Eid day is the emptiness in streets of Dhaka. The usually jam packed and over populated streets become totally deserted, as the thousands of inhab...

Last Friday I had Iftar with varsity pals Shourav and Kanto and three of their school friends. We went to Captain's World , a recently popular place in Dhaka. Actually Shourav wanted to gather many more friends from AUST, but unfortunately only me and Kanto replied to his sms. Anyways, the Iftar was good, we didn't take any of the usual Iftar items like piaju, beguni (it always makes me wonder, why do these food items always make an entry in Ramadaan, and disappear for the rest of the year), instead we took tanduri chicken, nun, chicken broast, kabab and drinks. The food I admit, was pretty good, and we all enjoyed the time. The three guys from Kanto and Shourav's school I met for the first time there, and they were pretty friendly people. One thing really hurt me in that place. They have made arrangements for Iftar, so that people can break their fast after having their stomachs empty for the whole day for the sake of Islam, while we were sitting there, recitation from t...

Well, after more than 2 weeks I'm finally back online. I was disconnected from the net for various reasons like modem problems, PC upgrades, room repainting etc. But Alhamdulillah I'm finally back online and blogging. Inshallah soon I'll write about my much awaited PC upgrade and a lot more. TC.

Painful. The 3rd year 1st semester was simply painful. It was annoying during the classes, it was disturbing during the PL, it was horrifying during the exams, and it still hurts after them. Particularly Linear Systems and Electromagnetic Fields and Waves were utter nightmares. Imagine two thorns stuck under your toe, whenever you walk they send gnawing pain throughout your body, and you've been living with this pain for the last 4 months or so. How relieved would you feel to get rid of those thorns, and to have the pain removed? That's exactly how I feel to get rid of Linear and EFW. At first I thought Linear would be the toughest one, and indeed it was tough. But as soon as I started to prepare for EFW, I felt Linear was like heaven. EFW was indeed the most horrifying exam ever, and I'm still not free from concern about getting rid of it. I'm gonna have to keep my eyes open for the results to make sure of that. That's why the "Hopefully" part of the post...

I first met Adnan sir back in the last days of 1-2. It was in our viva of Electrical Circuits II lab, and Adnan sir was quizzing us. Probably he joined our department just a few days ago. He was asking all the questions regarding the very basics of the lab course, and my fellow examinees was putting them mostly wrong, and I was giving the right answers !! Anyways, back in that day I never thought that Adnan sir would one day become my favorite teacher. He took our C++ classes in 2-1, which was a nightmare for most of my classmates, but programming (at least the basic part of it) seemed fascinating to me, and I followed Adnan sir's lectures with wide eyes and an open mind. His approach was a bit different from the other lecturers. From that time we found out how friendly and cooperating Adnan sir can be. Whenever we went to him to get something cleared out, he would find some time for us always. He used to put up the class lecture sheets in his website, this particular approach was...

Last thursday my mom and dad left the country for Saudi Arabia to perform The Umrah and visit the two most beloved cities of the Muslim world. At first they've gone to the golden Madina Munawwarah, where they are performing their Salaats in Masjid e Nababi, the beautiful mosque which was the mosque of Prophet Muhammad (S) in the dawn of Islam, and they are conveying their Salaam to our beloved Nabi (S) who is lying there. After about a week inshallah they'll head towards Makkah Mukarrama and perform their Umrah and dazzle their eyes with the site of The Holy Kaaba. I'm really happy that my mom and dad have taken a break from their busy lives and went to the two most peaceful places on earth. But honestly speaking, I'm really disappointed and jealous that I'm not with them. We all went to Umrah back in 2002, and those five days were the most memorable days of my life, and the most pleasing. I always thought that whenever again my parents would go there, they'd...

The semester finals start in less than 48 hours. Saturday's exam is Electrical Machines III which is a lot easier compared to the other courses in this semester. DLD II can be tricky, Linear Systems will need a lot of hard work in the six days of break before the exam to get a respectable mark, Electromagnetic Fields and Waves can be a terrible pain as it depends A LOT on memorizing , which of course, I'm horrible at, same problem goes for Sociology, but hopefully Accounting won't be much of a problem. So now I'm taking a deep breath before the plunge, don't know if I can hold my breath long enough. I just hope that August 26 comes as soon as possible, when the exams of 3rd year 1st semester will be all over, as this is definitely the most disturbing and uninteresting semester so far. Remember me in your prayers .

Finally the classes of the 3rd year 1st semester are over. Classes ended with an expected cargo-load of exams in the last week. Thanks to Allah, the finishing was better than expected. This semester has been the most un-interesting one so far. The subjects were pretty much unattractive. Most of the students are particularly concerned about Linear Systems, which is a tricky course and consists of a lot of concepts from mathematics, at which I'm always horrible. I'll be very happy to get over this semester with the upcoming finals starting from August 9.

It's finally official , Mozilla Firefox 3 now holds the Guinness World Record as the most downloaded software in 24 hours. Firefox 3 was launched on June 17 and Firefox fans from all over the world pledged to download the browser on that day, to help set the world record. On that day, a staggering 8,002,530 people downloaded their copies of the software! It took about two weeks for the guys at Guinness to verify and confirm the result, and the day before yesterday I got an email from Firefox informing me that the record is now official. Here's what the Download Day 2008 page says now: "Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we now hold a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3 and are now enjoying a safer, smarter and better Web." I'm glad that I'm a part of the record myself, as I had also downloaded my ...

Should have written about this earlier. About a month ago, I had developed the website of Fuljhury , my uncles' company. Fuljhury is a 100% export oriented knitwear manufacturer. 2 of my uncles and an aunt hold the topmost positions of the company. The website is a very very simple site consisting of basic info about the company and its production. The site was created in Google Pages and customized with Photoshop and Flash. Out of all the sites I've created, this one is the closest to professional, as this time I had to deal with DNS (Domain Name System). Fuljhury already owned the domain www.fuljhury.com , and I had to point the domain to the Google Pages site. In order to do that I had to learn the basics of DNS, how it works and had to provide the necessary information to Fuljhury's domain hosts about the modifications that needed to be made to a couple of CNAME records. This was indeed a good experience. The site is under construction still, and Inshallah in the future...

Let's start with the good news. The merit list for the second year second semester (last semester) was out a couple of days ago, and Alhamdulillah I found my name in the seventh spot. That means I've been included in the merit list for the third time so far. Being among the top eight also means that I would soon receive 18000 bucks as weaver Inshallah. All thanks to Allah. Now let's get back to the present, which is in striking contrast with the past. The current semester seems to me to be the most disturbing so far, none of the subjects seem interesting to me. Particularly the subject Linear Systems, which is considered to be one of the toughest courses of the whole curriculum, is causing much disturbance. Digital Electronics-II is probably the only subject which seems a bit fun, although not as much as it predecessor, as this one is mostly theoretical and brings back the gloomy memories of Electronics from 1-2 and 2-1. Electrical Machines-III was supposed to be interestin...

I don't know how to start writing about this, so I'm just gonna start. A lecturer of our university, of our EEE department, was so far known to be a one of a kind talent, a genius . In the notice board of our university, in our website, there were appreciation letters which were claimed to be sent from foreign universities, praising this lecturer for his outstanding research and stating that he had won awards from IEEE for his works. From other teachers of the faculty, his colleagues, we got to know that he was a genius, who is under contract to work for IBM , and have been offered to perform researches at MIT. Recently I heard from some of my classmates that there was some trouble going on regarding him. I didn't know what the problem was, until yesterday. In a post in the popular Bangladeshi group blog, Somewhere in... , it was reported that these letters of appreciation which were claimed to be sent from renowned foreign universities, were nothing but fake. The eviden...

After coming to Uttara, whenever its raining in daytime, and I'm at home and have not taken my shower already, then you wouldn't find me in my room. Instead I'd be on the roof, taking a shower in the rain. That's why a couple of days ago when it started to rain pretty heavily at noon, I went straight up. I don't know why, I just love the feeling of the rain on my body. Many of us believe that walking in the rain will cause fever or cold. I had the similar idea many years ago. I had a home tutor who used to teach me math, he said that this concept is nothing but psychological. Because thousands of rickshaw pullers in street are getting soaked in the rain all day, but they don't catch cold, otherwise there would be no rickshaw pullers to be found on the street the following day as they would all catch fever. They don't catch cold cuz they are not concerned about it. Since then, my fear of catching cold in rain was over, whenever I had a chance, I got myself so...

For the last six days or so I'm happing some real trouble with my internet connection. I'm currently using Grameen Phone 's internet, which so far has been very satisfactory. I called GP to know about what was going on, and they said that they have been informed by BTTB that there has been some disruption in the undersea fiber optic cable in Singapore, which is the reason for the current hampering of the internet connection. BTTB could not inform them about the possible time for the problem to be fixed. Even after six days the connection is no where near normal. This has really made me wonder, that in the current age of our extreme dependence on the internet, how come that the net is so damn vulnerable, that every now and then this hyped up high speed cable gets cut somewhere, and the internet service in several countries are hampered together? Only a few months ago a major disruption occurred in Egypt, and it happened countless times in our country. Shouldn't this ser...

The last seven days saw the students of AUST on strike, again, abandoning the classes. This outburst was expected since the authority increased the semester fees of the bachelor courses by three thousand bucks. You may think that it's not a lot, and it is obvious that the expenditure of the varsity has increased as it has moved to its new campus and all, but honestly the authority doesn't have the right to increase a single taka, as the students were given specific figures about the cost of the total course. New students may be charged as they please to, but old students definitely don't deserve this, and it violates the commitment which were made to us when we were admitted. So, this strike was totally on the menu. That's why for the last seven days, students of all our departments have been shunning the classes and taking part in the 'Andolon'. In our varsity, strike doesn't mean blocking up the streets, burning cars and stuff like you see the students of...

The 1st, 2nd and 3rd May were the dates fixed for the 3 day Jamaat (of Tabligh ) from our mosque. It was actually due for the last week of April, but we couldn't get our Jamaat ready. Our destination was a village called Diabari. You might be thinking that it's so far away from Dhaka, instead it's just a 15 minute rickshaw ride away from our home. That's right, there are quite a few villages very close to Uttara which may one day become part of the city through urbanization. This village is located to the immediate west of sector 12 of Uttara, beyond the vast sands. The sands are the future site of the proposed new sectors of Uttara Model Town . Anyway, I went with the Jamaat, couldn't stay though, as my classes were on. On the second day after the Maghrib bayaan, me and some other brothers were just having a chat on the veranda of the mosque, while preparing our dinner. And then, within just a few seconds, out of nowhere came the storm. As I've already ment...

A couple of weeks ago I posted my first video on You Tube , called ' Mustang-Cam '. I had connected a camera on the back of my remote control Ford Mustang model, and shot the video while I took the car for a ride through my home. A few days ago, some guys from America, seeing my video, decided to make their own version of 'Mustang-Cam'. They've made the video as a video response to my one! The video's description runs, " Here's our Mustang Cam and it's been engineered to beat your Mustang cam. It's team USA vs. the Bangledeshians" !! Haha. Well they've done a good job because they've got themselves a fast car, and a good camera. But they've lagged behind in the style department. They took off the upper portion of the car (I don't understand why), took another car, rubber-banded a handy-cam on top of it, and hooked it up behind the remote control car. Instead of giving a cool third person NFS-like view as in my video, they...

Today, 19 April 2008, is indeed a long awaited day for Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology (AUST). It marks the beginning of a new era for the already well known and established institution, as the new semester starts in its elaborate permanent campus. It is also historic in the context of the educational institutes of Bangladesh, as AUST becomes the first among the private universities of the country to move to its permanent home. The campus was inaugurated by the President of Bangladesh and Chancellor of the University Prof. Dr. Iajuddin Ahmed on 31 March. The new campus is not only huge in size, but also exclusively designed and spacious, promising all the facilities required for a university of international standards. The visually pleasing edifice is divided into four separate blocks, and the 10 story building including 2 basement levels has more than 4 lac square foot area as a whole ( Click here for details). The students of the university has been demanding the mo...

My father has an attraction for gardening, and since coming to Uttara, driven by his enthusiasm for it and with the help of a gardener, he has utilized our roof and some portion of land on the front of our house to grow all sorts of flowers, fruits and vegetables, all thanks to The Almighty Allah. The latest addition to the wide array of stuff that our garden has produced, are grapes! I don't know much about gardening, but I know that growing grapes is not an easy thing to do. But Allah's bounty seems to be abundant for my Dad's garden, and now quite a lot of grapes are growing and they seem pretty healthy. I took some high resolution photos of the garden yesterday which you can take a look at. This is not the season for flowers, but you can see some photos previously taken of the beautiful flowers which grew in the proper season, although not so high quality. Click on the images to see more.

You probably know that I'm a huge fan of the Ford Mustang . A couple of months ago my big bro gave me a cool remote control 1967 custom Shelby Mustang model. Since then I've been planning to make a video with it. What I wanted to do is to create a sort of carriage to attach the camera to the back of the ride, and then shoot the video while I control the car, which would give a NFS-like view. To hold the camera (Nokia 3250 in this case), I made something more like chariot, I named it 'Cam-Chariot', and attached it behind my Mustang. The Mustang with the Cam-Chariot Look what I've used for wheels under the Cam-Chariot, that's right, two tiny cars! Now the only thing left was to drive it with the camera chasing it, and that's what I did. The video also featured some cars and bikes from my bro's collection. After shooting the video I went one step further, putting it up on You Tube . This is my first video on You Tube so I was pretty excited to s...

Too long have I been disgusted by the horrible tangle of cables on the back of my PC desk. Can't blame the cables though, as I have to connect my monitor, keyboard, mouse, speaker, 2 printers, scanner, USB hub and the power cables. The cables seem to have a spontaneous tendency to entangle themselves together. The intricately tangled cables gave a disturbing view e ven from the front of the desk. I've been waiting for a chance to dig in and sort out the cables permanently. It's been one of my targets after the exams have finished, and yesterday I took the courage to carry out the job. It took me quite some time just to free the cables from their love-bonds. As the wires remained in this state for a long time now, the floor has also been inaccessible for cleaning. As a result, I found myself having to clean a bit of a pile of dust and other annoying dirty stuff that I can't categorize. While cleaning I was feeling a bit like Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs , hehe. I used some...

On the 26, 27 and 28 March, I've been out on a 3 day Jamaat of Tabligh. I've been on a Jamaat before, but never for 3 days completely. My father wouldn't allow me to stay over because he cared a little too much for me. This is the first time I've traveled on the path of Allah with my bed on my shoulders and slept in the mosque. The independence day of our country have marked a different sort of independence for me. I've wondered how much difference there can be in staying over and not. Well, I've just found out that there's a huge gap. Whenever you want success, in any aspect of life, there needs to be some sacrifice, the more the sacrifice, the more closer you get to your goal. It goes for studies, profession, everything. Same theory applies for Imaan as well. The more hardship you go through for the sake of Deen, the better is your Imaan and steadfastness on the guidelines of Islam. There needs to be a great amount of hardship and sacrifice to attain the I...

Alhamdulillah, I'm happy to announce the publication of my new blog Sunnah 24 . It's about the customs, practices and characteristics of the Noble Prophet Muhammad (S), i.e. the Sunnahs which are to be followed by humanity for success in this life and the next. I had planned this blog during my exams and have been waiting for them to finish so that I can get to work. Honestly speaking, I never thought I could get this blog up and running in just 3 days. Thanks to Allah, my work on this blog so far seems to be filled with Barkat. I'm glad that I got off to a productive start to my semester break. The blog has of course just started, and inshallah I'll update the blog frequently. The book I'm using as reference for the Hadiths in this blog is an electronic version, so that makes my job a lot easier. I hope everyone will be privileged by this blog and try to attain the blessed Sunnahs of the Messenger (S) of Allah in everyday life. Visit Sunnah 24 About Sunnah 24

Yup, the long awaited March 19 arrives, and the semester final of the 2nd year 2nd semester is over! Well, it's not that I've been very much restricted due to the exams, because I don't study much (about which my friends will object, but it's true), and I'm always kinda not too bothered about the outcome of the 3 hour exams, but, you know, even for the sake of keeping the 'exam environment' you can't do what you want while the exam is going, right? But now that the exam is over, you can do what you want. So here I am writing again. While the exams are on I always have so many big plans made for the break, but when it's over, I always kinda lose interest in them. Does it happen to you too? I've got some plans regarding the web though, which Inshallah I will go through with. I'm planning to start writing on my Islamic blog again, which has been a project which never found full swing. I also plan to make a new blog about the everyday Sunnahs t...

My mom went through a surgery on her left eye today. It was a procedure known as Phaco , a cataract surgery, which is common these days. So she's wearing an odd-looking huge eye patch over her left eye. Fortunately tomorrow she has a check-up scheduled, and the doctor's gonna take of the patch. But she'll have to wear shades for about a week. After a few weeks the other eye will go through the same surgery. My mom's been having trouble in vision for quite a long time, Inshallah after all this is done her troubles will be gone. Pray for my mom so that everything goes well.

The Semester final is under way and I've completed two out of the five exams, Digital Electronics and Numerical Methods. Both of those exams went good enough actually, Alhamdulillah. I'm just pleased that I could answer the full question in both cases, which is, at least for me, a rare achievement. Well, can't say how much of the answers are correct, but the advantage of answering the full script is that you can at least hope for partial markings. The next exam is a week later. But the problem is, it's mathematics! And even disturbing is the fact that not less than 70% of the course is still untouched! I had a session with my math guru Shuvro after the exam today. He gave me an express lecture on the topics, based on his own notes (obviously). I admit that the course doesn't look that tough, but what you need to do well in maths is practice, and that's what I don't have time for. I'll be glad if I can run my eyes through the syllabus at least once. Anywa...

Remember my trip to Tangail last year? Yesterday I revisited my uncle's house over there, this time with my family in a sort of a family picnic. The trip was pretty similar to the last one, only this time I had a lot more fun as my little cousins, Ahnaf, Zian, Tiana, Nusrat and Nuzhat (Chhutti) was there with me. I spent a lot of time walking around the beautiful typical rural landscape, and taking photos. This time I took a lot of pictures of the sceneries, and with a slightly better camera. You can check out the photos in my PicasaWeb Album . I've also put up a slideshow right here. The lunch was mouth watering. Especially the beef and mutton were rich with Masala and tasted as good as they looked. After lunch we played cricket on the roof. On our way back to Dhaka we visited my uncles' garments factory, Knittex Industries at Gazipur. I've been here about six months back. The facility has undergone huge improvement by this time. The factory is a full fledged pro...

Recently I've made some bold changes to my blog. The first thing to notice is that now the template has three columns, and the whole blog has a much wider interface. The label cloud is something that I wanted for a long time, but blogger doesn't provide the widget by default. So I turned to the blogger gurus. I found exactly what I'm looking for at phydeaux3's site. The Recent Comments widget was acquired from another great blogger hacks site, Beautiful Beta. The blog timeline widget at the bottom seems superb to me, it's visually pleasing and easy to use. I snatched it from Widgetbox. Another nifty hack I added is the post title icon. The 'I Am Asif' icon now appears with the post titles. Thanks to Dummies Guide for that hack. I also got rid of the 'AddThis' button for feed subscription, and implemented blogger-in-draft's own subscribe button. I'm pretty happy about the changes I've made to the blog. I think it looks much better than...

Took me two days to get my PC back on track. Recently it has been a victim to a malicious software attack, I guess a spyware. The problems was, whenever I was getting online, after a few minutes an error message pops up saying "The Generic host process for win 32 has encountered a problem and needs to close", with the "send error report" and "don't send" buttons. I guess those two buttons and The Blue Screen of Death have become partners-in-annoyance since the arrival of XP. And then internet stops working, and so does my sound card. After trying various anti-spywares and my so-far-trusted AVG anti virus, it was still not working. I checked out the security updates for windows and they seemed to have an update specifically for this issue. Tried it, but didn't work as well, because that update is probably a preventive measure, not a curing one. In the end I had nothing to do but to format my hard disk, two of my hard disks in fact. I've searche...

I just found this unbelievably cool video on You Tube . It shows the size of The Almighty's creation, from the very large to the very small. From a couple having a picnic at the park, the camera keeps zooming out until it reaches the outskirts of the galaxies, then zooms back in until it arrives inside a singular carbon nucleus! I don't wanna give you anymore ideas about it, just watch this amazing video. This awe inspiring piece of work was created in 1977 by Charles and Ray Eames for IBM. If you're thinking how to download this video for watching again, use Real Player 11 , cuz this video is worth watching a thousand times.

Yesterday I had to complete the painstaking and grueling task of the Electrical Design and Drafting assignment. I admit the task was given to us several weeks ago, but as is our custom, we always do it at the 11th hour (actually we do it just before the 12th). The assignment was to design the necessary layouts for planning the electrical connections of a one storied house, the floor plan was provided. We had to design the Fitting and Fixtures layout, which shows the positions of the various electrical appliances i.e. light, fans, sockets etc. Then there was the Conduit layout, which shows the wiring and the conduits (conduits are the concealed pipes through which the wires are connected across the floor). We also had to draw switchboard and distribution board connection diagram. None of the diagrams were difficult to draw, but the disturbing part was that we had to draw them on art paper (22" X 28"). Working on such a huge piece of paper was totally discomforting. It took me ...

The days of Ijtema are the most eagerly awaited days of the year to me. Since I came to Uttara I didn't miss attending this grand event. It's a huge opportunity to listen to the elders of Tabligh who come here from all the corners of the globe, inspiring us to work on Allah's path, spread the words of Quran and Sunnah. This year I knew I wouldn't be able to attend all three days, as the classes and exams were too heavily scheduled as we are heading towards the end of the semester. But man desires and Allah decides. Due to continuous rain and chilling winter cold, the Ijtema was cut short into just one day. I saw a glimpse of the misery of the people at Ijtema on Thursday. I went there at Asr and the scenario was totally miserable. It was raining from above, the water dripping down through the canopies. The clay roads were all muddy, making it a huge task to move around. People were finding no place even to put their luggage. At several spots I saw men removing mud usin...

Finally ! AUSTronics goes public. For those who don't know yet, AUSTronics is an online magazine for the students and teachers of the EEE department of AUST . Me and some other guys from our semester, under the supervision of our boss Adnan sir , have been working on this site for the last couple of months or so. The site was ready long before and today we decided to go public, which generally means putting up posters announcing the site. Honestly speaking, this site is not a very huge project. It's a blog which we are using to post articles. But there were quite a lot of work that had to be done in building up the complete site. Let me just try to give a brief summary. The Idea: AUSTronics is the brainchild of Adnan sir. He initially discussed this plan with me and Kanto , and asked us if we were interested. We were always eager to spend some time in the net (whether for something productive or just wasting time). Me and Kanto also had gathered some experience in amateur w...