Saleh Blog

Ajaxian has posted a book for Adobe AIR developers called “Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers”. The book is under Creative Commons license so it is free. The book has been out for sometime but this one is updated for AIR 1.0. You can get it here.

I never ever witnessed such a storm in Kuwait! Watch until the end of the video and you’ll be shocked. It happened last Friday! Watch the video:

Me and my teammate are suppose go out that night and take some video shots of pollution in our environment for the Imagine Cup competition. Well, it came right on us like hell. Shit, I never imagine something like this can hit Kuwait! So I picked up the phone and called my teammate to take a video shot.

Mother nature is pissed! What have we done? What have we done! Climate change is affecting the whole world, even here in Kuwait.

This storm lasted for like 10min but lots of damage left behind. Next year, maybe a freaking tsunami hurricane or maybe volcano! Who knows! Shit happens when it is unexpected.

More videos of the storm can be found here.

Of the top ten winners at the 2008 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC) competing to be the best computer programmers in the world, four teams were from Russian universities, one was from Ukraine, a former member of the USSR, and three were teams representing universities in North America, including Canada and the United States. First place went to St. Petersburg University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics (Russia), followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.), Izhevsk State Technical University (Russia), Lviv National University (Ukraine), and Moscow State University (Russia). Also among the top ten finishers were teams from Tsinghua University (China), Stanford University (U.S.), University of Zagreb (Croatia), University of Waterloo (Canada), and Petrozavodsk State University (Russia). This international competition, now in its 32^nd year, is hosted by ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery), a society of 88,000 computing educators, researchers, and professionals worldwide.

Read the press release.

You can see videos and photos of the event available here. You’ll notice that the interface of the web site has changed 🙂

Dr. Craig R. Barret, Intel’s CEO, has visited Kuwait University last Thursday April 10th, 2008. He was hosted in a Q&A session arranged by CS Club and Computer Science Department in Kuwait University.

In his talk he focused in how to establish a good education system that can be compared to education systems around the world, not only in the Middle-East. Three characteristics have to be available to create an excellent education system which are: smart people, smart ideas, and good universities to provide a good environment for smart people to look for smart ideas.

Smart ideas can be found when doing basic researches, not in developing ideas. Companies like Intel spends millions of dollars in developing, however, Intel cooperates with universities to conduct basic researches. Stanford University in Silicon Valley is a good example of a university that spends millions in basic research. Intel spends 6 billion dollars in research yearly, but only 200 million in basic research.

We do not need a huge research budget to create a good idea, what we need is passion, training, and good universities.

Dr. Craig Barret will continue his trip to visiting Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Abu Dhabi. His goal on the trip is to see what’s happening in the ground with his own eyes and visit some technology professionals in universities in the Middle-East.

The session was so informative, and I am so happy to attend it. I also have to say that not even 1 instructor from our department, computer engineering, was there, how pathetic! That’s not like it wasn’t expected. However, a faculty member from electrical engineering has been sighted there!

I’m also glad that some of my friends had shown up.

Best Scene: Miss. Clinton Slaps Mrs. Clinton

Does this mean the beginning of the end? Will robots replace human beings? Only time can say…

Good news, it turns out that robots have no feelings after all. I can now kick and destroy this worthless giant piece of machine which was my wish for ages.

Want to be one of the first Mars settlers? Project Virgle, a combinational effort from Google and Virgin to go to Mars and live in an alien planet. Be the experimental rate and enjoy a new life away from Mother Earth!

April’s Fool!