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10 Second Car

dotblack — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:11:42 +0000

Out of no where straight away out of bed this “10 Second Car” came into my mind, guess I’ve been thinking a lot about horse power and drag racing. I was wondering how this phrase popped? It’s a kind of Urban word for a fast-tuned car that could do a 1/4 mile in less than ten seconds. So I had to look it up, you’ll be amazed of what I found.

Urban Dictionary, I might be in the dark (and some called me caveman too ) but this was my first time out there, thought I was gonna’ be taken to Wikipedia instead, Urban Dictionary, so here’s their definition for 10-Second-Car.

Photo cortesy of http://www.cardomain.com/ride/364548 did you notice the ride in the URL too? Now that’s the Urban I’m talkin’ about!

Outsourced Keystrokes

dotblack — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:40:26 +0000

We often relate the outsourcing to IT outsourcing, specially if you could relate in a way like being in the same industry or an IT related industry, some talk bad about it, some exploit it, some just get it to work. Even comedians got outsourcing as something that happens only in IT & Computer World, well, Mindworks gets outsourced for Copy Editing for Journals & Publishing houses. Neat!

Quoting Business Week:

In a squat, gray building in Noida, a leading outsourcing destination 15 miles from New Delhi, is the headquarters of Mindworks Global Media.

What’s fascinating is that with the rising costs of living in the Gulf in General and the Economic downs in the US, and the War economy, cutting the costs of rent, infrastructure, payroll & insurance is no more a profiting strategy but a surviving strategy. I had both my thumbs down for outsourcing back in the day, hats off now. One thing though, only processing work could be outsourced offshore, non-initiative, non-creative, basically things that do not have to be made from scratch, just rolling the wheel, no brainer right? Yet so hard to accept.

Read the full article on Business Week.

An angry follow up

A thing against Eng.

dotblack — Mon, 26 May 2008 21:04:16 +0000

My name is “Engineer XYZ“. Or you might find some who give out their business cards with their names with an “Eng.” before the name. Worse than all this is finding a CV with the same, and the worst is the name in e-mails?

Now academic degrees were not enough to start with “Eng.”?
Use it as your job title man, not in your name! It ain’t like PHD or Dr. and the hilarious thing is those who call themselves Mr. The other day I had a phone call and the guy was like “I’m Mr. ABC“. Now count your letters on this.

On staying motivated

dotblack — Sat, 03 May 2008 08:03:28 +0000

Long hours of work, vacation is never reaching, you enter an expansion phase of your start-up and you get under a pile of paper work, office relocation, and amazingly get more work to do. With all the goings, it keeps on getting harder to work, takes longer to come up with ideas, and after a while you find your work repeating itself. Not to mention mind-blocks and laziness attacks.

Friends usually ask me about how I cope up and keep doing it, it’s been a year and 3 months now 15 months of overtime if you will. But the truth is, it’s a bless to live in such a great Country, really.

A drive to Dubai is enough to get you back on track and get you motivated. Nah, not the traffic, you see the changes and how fast real estate projects are shaping up, the amount of changes in a drive to Dubai (at least twice a week) just gets you thinking about the number of people who are working around the clock to make the projects get realized.

Turn on the TV, and you actually see good shows, good movies, and just makes you think, man, even the people at TV programming have done a great job, man, they’re bringing some real wanted and fun stuff around.

I buy a “Wheels” magazine and find out the new Cars, and the designs that just lets you say, oh man, people are working so hard to pull of such great rides.

Now, motivation is solved, but with the amount of pressure and workload, inspiration and being creative all the time has become the catch. Workin’ on that with a new hobby that’s been working kind of well, building a “Car Computer” with a custom made interface built on an “iMedia” Linux build. So getting my hands dirty with wires, screws, and oh my, I haven’t done that for such a long time, specially coding and programming interfaces like “Wheel” buttons to control Audio, Integrating an iPod with the system with a touch screen interface. Okay, just thought of this, I might post the steps and updates on this project, neat.

Degrees or Lastnames?

dotblack — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:47:00 +0000

No I ain’t talking about Wasta or anything of that sort, I just read this on Arabian Business, a comment on one of the articles, Name reads as follows: Firozali Mulla MBA PhD.

Couldn’t not post it here, that’s pathetic. I remember an e-mail address that read like some_name_mba@domain.com. I mean, ah, weirdos! Maybe, a Dr. or an Eng. or whatever on your card, but on a comment form? And degrees?

And it happened, Facebook Blocked

dotblack — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:29:58 +0000

1:12PM, Update: And it’s back!

11:41AM, Update: Facebook works on Mobile by dialing http://m.facebook.com but guess what? Only using GPRS connection and on a Mobile browser!

I was told it was gonna’ happen, and it did. This is the end of Internet social interaction in U.A.E. That’s it. And for those of us who capitalized on Facebook for Ad Spaces, and for many of us who are running campaigns over Facebook, a huge media selection gap and emptiness.

One word, outrageous! A lot, I’ve said plenty of words on Censorship and the sites that were blocked, now, I can only feel bad, quietness is the real deal in this case, but most of us won’t, and a flood of press articles will be read, and it will reach the media faster than ever, this is a website you don’t mess with, it’s a base for social interactivity, a lot will happen, and I’m so sure it’ll be back so soon!

Instead, only the inappropriate(in the eye of Etisalat) pages will be filtered and banned/blocked, just like YouTube, my word! It’ll be back!

Back in Jan 08

dotblack — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 06:52:02 +0000

As you’ve noticed there haven’t been much of updates nor posts coming up on dotone, all due to lack of time and disorientation, trying to focus back under the piles of work and expansion at d&l.

I’ll be back!

Review: The Kingdom

dotblack — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:41:10 +0000

Saudi is a Kingdom, UAE is not. And for sure, Abu Dhabi is not Riyadh. The Kingdom, the Movie, was mostly showing Abu Dhabi areas. Specially Emirates Palace, Airport Road, Adnoc Gas Stations, Hilton, man, it was so terrible imagining the city you live in going that scary and full of terrorists.

No comments on acting, not a word on’em, great ones, but the story? Settings? And most importantly the message?

To me, after finishing the movie n’ walkin’ out of the theatre all I could think was the fact that this movie is not made for this region or for the ones living in this region, it’s just made for the ones who haven’t seen or know how people are in this part of the world. And to be honest, it wasn’t so true and did not do no justice specially making the Saudi’s look like cawards and having to wait for only Four special agents to do what the whole security team and army of Saudi could not do, now c’mon man! That’s a wrong message to send out!

Moreover, making an ambassador looking weak infront of an FBI agent? Now c’mon! Sending the wrong message out again! That’s an insult!

Now smell this

dotblack — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 04:33:29 +0000

Ever wondered how many perfumed products we use everyday? I just counted them for curiosity, weird how many of them are out there for us from the time we wake up ’till we sleep. Start with the toothpaste, then shower gel, come hair shampoo, then anti-deodrant, then shaving foam, then clone, and then the perfume. All that mix, straight from the morning. Oh and I forgot the hair gel. All these perfumed material, man!

On the other side of the story, you run for work, you enter the elevator, and your neighbors which happen to be ladies most of the time, come in and out-perfume you, you feel normal again and thank god you’re a guy.

P1 was out, and now P3i rumors

dotblack — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 14:17:15 +0000

It was just a few days ago when SE P1i was launched in UAE, and a week earlier on the global scale. iPhone was released on June 29th, who can forget that date?(I had it on my calendar). Now imagine an SE P1i in iPhone style? That’s what the upcoming leaked P3i is going to be.

Here’s the leaked photo, note the SE 123, the same label was put on the P1i when it leaked out.

*Source

Let me put it out here again, a fully touchscreen phone with a sliding QWERTY keypad, add UIQ to that, now think what that beast is to be.