Saleh Blog

I got 96% in the geek test! I was like what the hell… Go ahead and do the test. But don’t forget to let me know your result 🙂

After thinking for few days, I finally decided to use Google Read to read my subscribed feeds. I was using IE7 to read feeds but I’m facing some problems reading my feeds anywhere I want. I had to get my laptop and open it even though my college is full of computer labs with high speed internet access. I was surprised on the number of feeds I’m registered on. 183 wow… I didn’t know I was subscribed on more than 50 feeds!! Those are the feeds I read every day!

74%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

As the picture says, I’m 74% addicted to blogging… never imagined that I’ll be that much addicted! But I don’t mind at all since I get so much benefit when blogging.

Finally my two books from amazon arrived yesterday! I ordered four books two weeks ago from amazon.com, and two of them arrived yesterday which are Worx’s Adobe Flex 2 Professional and ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook. I can’t wait to read it.

Three weeks ago I had a week off. It’s the week between second semaster and summer. I finished reading two books on that week (I wish I had more of these weeks), which are Friends of ED The Essential Guide to Flex 2 With Actionscript 3.0 by Charles E. Brown, and Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird.

The Flex book is pretty good for Flex starters, but it isn’t good enough for advanced users and for reference. The web design books is about what you should think about before designing a web page. However, you don’t need any experience on designing a web page to read the book before begining to design a website. In addition, the book is very good for web design experts. It describes some concept which doesn’t cross your mind even after years of experience on designing web pages. It goes deep to talk about the concept of layout design, colors, fonts, and textures… etc.

What’s next?
Well, I’m currently reading two books and already half the way throught the first book. The first one is Object Oriented PHP Concept and Code by Peter Lavin which talks about OOP way to code on PHP5. Inspit of my experience on PHP4, this book is pretty good for who wants to upgrade to PHP5 and design web systems that uses OOP heavly. The second book (Still at early stages) is Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Making Things Moves by Keith Peter.

I have been reading lesser last two week because summer semaster is consuming alot of my time. I hardly can find enough time to read. However, I’m also playing some games (as always) but just few hours a week. I can’t wait to finish these books to start reading what I ordered from amazon!! (There are still two books I preordered on the way! damn!).

Yes, I’m trying my best to practice for that coming compitition. I’m tired of losing all compititions I have been participating. From high school’s International Olympiad in Informatics 2002-2003 to International Computer Programming Contest 2006-2007. I always get bad results on the compitition.

I got few online judges and problem sets websites I’m practicing on. One of them is UVA online judge which has thousands of problems. The other one is USACO TRAINING PROGRAM GATEWAY. I bought a programming trainning book made especially for ICPC and IOI to train my self. I also downloded the Art of Programming Contest book from UVA website.

With all those facilities available on the giant web some people would says that it is enough to get a good rank or even the first place. However, I am sure that most of the competitors, if not all, are using almost the same facilities to train. Therefore, there should be other factors helps the compititors to get better. I think one of the factors and important factor is the support of the coach and professors in the intitution. Another factor is to provide a good environment to train us for the compitition.

In the other hand, in my university, Kuwait university, there is no support AT ALL. We didn’t have any training nor much interest from the head of the college. How do they expect us to win the compitition if they don’t even give us trainning or atleast make a team early enough to have time so the team will coordinate and do some trainning in their own, IN THEIR OWN…

In 2007 ICPC for the arab region, my university’s 2 teams participation was cancelled by the college or university administration just 1 week before we travel!. I don’t know the details, but that let us down and shows us how much NOT interested the administration are for us to praticipate in the compitition. But in last 3 days, 2 girls from the other team (thanks to them) payed a visit to the university’s president and explain the situation. The university’s president then did the required paper works to make the trip possible.

Its been almost a decade since the c++98 standard was released and more than 2 decades since the first release of C++ made by Bjarne Stroustrup. The new highly anticipated C++0x is under development. Many new features are expected to be seen. Nevertheless, the new standard will be 100% compatible with the old c++98 standard codes. Therefore, it will be the same C++ we all know for many years, but more facility will be added to improve the language. There will be improvement on core language, but mostly on the library. There will also be more support for threading and smart pointers. However, smart pointers will be supported only through the standard library (as been said so far). Even more improvement in generic programming when developing the language which can be called ‘concept’. Developers are trying their best to include garbage collector with the C++0x compiler as compulsory rather than being compiler optional like in C++98. Many informations are available in the following URLs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B0x
http://herbsutter.spaces.live.com/?_c11_blogpart_blogpart=blogview&_c=blogpart&partqs=cat%3dC%252b%252b
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/
http://www.informit.com/guides/content.asp?g=cplusplus&seqNum=216&rl=1

Yeah, I’m trying to learn japanese… its fun. Last few days I have been trying to learn japanese with japanesepod101 on my little small spare time. That website uses podcasting to teach how to speak japanese, it also has some notes for every lesson for reviewing and learning kanji. Here are ‘some’ of the words I leant so far:
Osamimasen = execuse me
Hijamimashite = How are you? (first time to see you)
Konban wa = Good night
Konnichiwa = Hello
Ohayo gozaimosu = Good morning

I have been really busy lately. I got 16 credits on this semaster, writing c++ arabic tutorials, programming for a profissor, and lots of studies and HWs. I haven’t been able to write much and I think this will continue antil the end of the semaster (3 months left). I’m rethinking about going back to play Final Fantasy XI Online (I have NIN75, DRK61, BRD60). So my life is packed right now and too much stress.

Hello everyone,

This is my first time to blog. It might be my first time to write english contents extensively. Anyway, my name is Saleh. I’m a student in Kuwait University and my major is computer engineering. I don’t like to talk about my life too much, so I’ll stop here.

At first I thought blog is pronounced “bee-log”, but today I read on wikipedia that it is pronounced blog, as one word.

My favourite hoppy is programming (or working on PC generally). I start learning programming since I was about 12 years old with actionscript language which is used ob Macromedia Flash 4. I fell in love with flash and programming since that time. My second language was Visual Basic on its version 6, I can recall that time, I was on UK on vacation while my dad is doing his PhD there. I went with my dad to the university library to borrow visual basic 6 book. That time Flash 5 has released and I was extremely excited when I read the news about it.

My 3rd programming language, although it is not really a language, is HTML. I start learning it from an arabic website back when I was about 13 years old. My 4th language is C and C++. I learnt it from two good instructor back in high school to get prepared to participate on International Olympiad in Informatics IOI. I participated two years on row IOI2003 Korea and IOI2004 USA. I’m was hoping to participate in IOI2004 on my last year on high school, but I didn’t have time since it was last year in high school and I needed keep my attention on study.

 In my 2nd and 3rd year college I participated on ACM ICPC Arab Region, which is programming contest for college students.

Gaming is my second favourite hoppy. I start gaming since I was like 3 years old with Atari, then Nintendo, Sega, PC, Playstation 1 & 2… 90% of my gaming was on PC. I love high quality graphic games.

Why blogging?!

Well, I admit I don’t have much time, especially with lots of college study to do everyday and lots of projects. One of the reasons is to write on PC… I like to use computers. Another reason is to show people my opinion on computer and internet world, politices, and anything on life. The third reason is to learn since blogging for a certain topic sometimes need research and reading. There are more reasons but they are not clear on my head (What I’m talking about!).

Wow this is my first topic and I already got you all bored… I think I’ll stop here.