18Jan 2010 by Asim Zeeshan 1 Comment

GoDaddy.com down

Thoughts
Just 6 hours ago, I was using Godaddy.com to manage some of my domain names and register new ones and just now it says I never heard / saw any notice of such maintenance :S It also begs the question about the availability and reliability of GoDaddy.com services
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09Jan 2010 by Asim Zeeshan 2 Comments

To update or not to update?

CentOS, Linux, Thoughts, Ubuntu
All my technical life, I knew and followed this simple rule New updates to any application or component are meant to improve and fix the bugs present in it. Downloading new updates ensures that you system is up-to-update, has fixes to all those bugs you have been getting annoyed with and more stable. Unfortunately not every IT department thinks that, especially the one I am facing at work. According to them, the new updates should only be applied IF and only IF they offer some new functionality (duhh!). Hello! what happened to the bug-fixes that are promised with these updates? (more…)
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06Jan 2010 by Asim Zeeshan 5 Comments

Kohana or CodeIgniter or CakePHP?

Personal, PHP, Thoughts
I am going to start on a small system for internal use and I wanted to re-think my choice of CodeIgniter because it does not have templates or ORM. Guess what, I landed with KohanaPHP. It sounds very tempting that a new MVC Framework based on CodeIgniter with new features (especially ORM) is here but the documentation is really really poor. I tried googling for a book or tutorial and I was really disappointed to have found none. I tried Amazon.com for a book but no books. Looks like I have landed in some weird space that might be good looking but I need to get my hands dirty in the code to learn it and at the end of the day, it may seem that I have lost a…
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14Jul 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 1 Comment

HashPakistan needs an admin panel

News, Pakistan, Personal, Thoughts
Well, my initial estimates were wrong. I thought I could retweet the posts and Twitter would give me accurate results. The problem is with twitter results. They are giving me wrong and irrelevant results. Also, when I ask Twitter to only send me "positive" tweets, it sometimes does not mark most of the positive tweets as "positive", in fact they are not marked at all. So there are the "positive" tweets, "negative" tweets, "questions" and "unknown" (or "unrated") tweets. A quick look at these tweets and I can see many of them as good ones that should have been retweeted but they were not. To get over this situation, I need to have an admin panel where I can see statistics and possibly "approve" the negative / unrated tweets. Having…
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17Jun 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 1 Comment

Cash Deposit Machine (CDM) or Can’t Deposit Machine? Weird experience

Pakistan, Thoughts
My salary account is HBL (I hate this bank) and I use Dubai Islamic Bank's services which I am very satisfied with. So last night after work, I thought to move balance from HBL to DIB, tried the inter-bank transfer (which should be great if it is working) but invain. So I went straight to DIB Main Bulevard, Guberg branch. I took out the cash from one ATM and tried to deposit it via DIB's CDM (Cash Deposit Machine) into my DIB account. Either the machine was acting weird or the time-waste was inevitable. The machine deposited half my cash and reject the other half. I took a look at the other half that was rejected, the bills were clean and new. I could not find anything with the naked…
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15Jun 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 10 Comments

Domino’s Pizza in Lahore – A bad experience

Personal, Thoughts
I thought it was a good news for pizza lovers like me but it wasn't. Me and my friend visited the Domino outlet in Link Road branch on 06th June 2009. Let me give you an account of what I saw and went through there. Four tables and chairs similar to those in Kindergarden. Plus there was no one to show you the way AND all tables were pre-occupied. So as soon as one table got free, I jumped in while my friend was still at the counter ordering the pizza. We always ask for less vegetables and extra chicken topings. We did the same here too. After 15 min someone called my friend's name if his Parents were here to pick him up from school (lol, yeah!) and he…
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06May 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 4 Comments

Getting Started on CodeIgniter, the lightening fast PHP Framework

OpenSource, PHP, Reviews, Thoughts
Today, I have started on CodeIgniter, one of the powerful PHP frameworks recommended by Rasmus Lerdorf CodeIgniter is most often noted for its speed when compared to other PHP frameworks. In a critical take on PHP frameworks in general, PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf spoke at frOSCon in August 2008, noting that he liked CodeIgniter "because it is faster, lighter and the least like a framework". Read more about it here. So far what I can tell you is that it really is FAST. I have been coding in CakePHP and Zend Framework, but this framework is very fast. Truely speaking I did not felt any difference using it. I will keep posting about my experience of CodeIgniter.
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01May 2009 by Asim Zeeshan 4 Comments

AboutUs Lahore Office

Pakistan, Thoughts
I was surprized to know that AboutUs has a Lahore Office. Their website quotes While AboutUs is based in Portland, Oregon slightly more than half our staff is in our Lahore, Pakistan office. I do not know where their office is in Lahore, Pakistan but if any of you know, I would definitely want to know their whereabouts.
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