One Week at Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Today marks one week on joining ICT department at Bibliotheca Alexandrina and I couldn't wish for a better start. I have been wishing to work there for 4 years now, so finally joining BA team is more like a dream come true :)

My first week there was amazing. I meet smart, funny and helpful people. I hear dozens of "Good Morning" and "Good Bye" accompanied with a worm smile everyday. It is only a week since I joined BA, but I feel as if it is a year.

I am working on Wellcome Arabic Manuscripts Cataloging Partnership. It is a partnership with Wellcome Trust, a subdivision of GalaxoWellcome, for making the collection of manuscripts they own available online.

My team leader, and also my only team colleague :D, Younos Abou Al-naga has the brightest character I ever met. He welcomed me on the team way before I officially join it. He makes work sounds very easy. He bears all my stupidity moments without complaining :D I have to thank him for making my start very smooth.

I also had the chance to meet Dr. Nikolai Serikoff, from Wellcome Trust. He is such a wonderful person. I spent a really good time with him. I am looking forward to meet him again.

At last, I enjoy every moment I spend at BA. Hope to be able to achieve the success I wish for there :)

Wish me Luck

[How To] Play Video in .BIN and .CUE file on Ubuntu 8.04

Recently, I downloaded a video as bin/cue files. .BIN and .CUE files are CD Images, similar to .ISO files. The BIN file is basically an entire CD in one file, and the CUE file stores information on the .BIN file that is needed when burning, or mounting to a virtual CD drive. A .cue/.bin image could be anything like a Data CD or a VCD or SVCD.

There are some programs that can play it in bin format as VLC media player on Linux OS and windows media player on Windows OS; but when I tried them, sound was lost of the video.

I searched for a solution of this problem.I found two solutions that worked well with me.

Solution 1: convert .bin file to .avi file 

It takes only two steps:
Step 1: download and install mencoder, it is the converter you are going to use.
To do that, copy and paste the next command into your terminal (Application-->accessories-->Terminal) and then press Enter.

sudo apt-get install mencoder

It will be installed automatically. When it finishes, move to step 2.

Step 2: convert .bin file to .avi file.
Copy and paste the following command into your terminal and then press enter.

mencoder -o MovieNameHere.avi -of avi -ffourcc DX50 -lavcopts vbitrate=900:vhq -ovc lavc -oac mp3lame -vf pp=lb MovieNameHere.bin

This step takes some time depending on the size of your .bin file. For me, it took about 10 minutes to convert a file of size 800 MB.

Solution 2: convert .bin files to .ISO then burn them as normal CD image
You can do this in 3 steps:
Step 1: download and install bchunk. Bchnuck is a CD image format conversion from bin/cue to iso/cd.
copy and paste the next command in your terminal (Application-->accessories-->Terminal) and then press Enter.

sudo aptitude install bchunk

Step 2: convert .bin file to .ISO file
Copy and paste the following command in your terminal and then press enter.

bchunk IMAGE.bin IMAGE.cue IMAGE.iso

check the documentation of this command for more options.

Step 3: Burn the .ISO image to CD.


I found the first solution easier and worked perfectly for me. Hope it can benefit you too.

MSN: Bug or Dump

After I recovered my account from being stolen (full story here if you missed it), I changed password and security questions of all my accounts (Yahoo!, MSN, Gmail).

I changed all of them in no time except for MSN account. At first, I changed my password with no problems at all. When I tried to change security questions, problems started to appear revealing a behavior that I didn't expect.

After I entered the new questions and before saving, session timed out and I was asked to sign in again. I forget my new password, so I tried to reset it again. I didn't want to reset it by using alternative email as it is my stolen account and I wasn't sure if it safe yet to use it in this (I didn't want to risk revealing another password).

I chose to use the traditional way, security questions and location information. I needed to enter them few times as I forgot them. After few trials, I was blocked from trying anymore. Till now, everything just seemed natural. 

I was upset and really in need for to access this account, so I tried IE (I was on Firefox before). The surprise was that I wasn't blocked from trying to answer the questions, and I was able to remember the right answers and successfully changed my password.

All this made me think: How was I able to enter the answers on IE while I was blocked on Firefox? I tried Firefox after using IE and I was still blocked on it !!
The only explanation, I could figure out, was MSN depends on History and Cookies saved in the browser to check whether I am blocked or not. 

I was confused and didn't want to make false conclusions, so I deleted History and cookies in Firefox and gave it another try. Well .. Guess what, I am not blocked anymore !!

I thought it may be normal .. and it is only me who don't know that, so I tried to do the same on Yahoo! account. For my surprise, I was blocked for about 24 hours from trying on all browsers I tried and even after I deleted History and Cookies on them. The same message always appeared:

Clearly now that it is a design issue in MSN, I don't have a lot of experience in security field and I having these questions that I can't find an answer to or my answers seem illogical:

• Is it acceptable to make something important; like verifying identity of account's owner on things that anyone can change in with simple programming code lines ?
  

• Is it an issue that was missed along the road, or is it supposed to be like this ? 
• If it is supposed to be like this, Why don't other accounts' providers do the same, especially it would be easier and would reduce the load on the server ?
• If it is supposed to be like this, How can MSN prevent thieves from trying thousands of time till they got the right answers and eventually stealing the account ?
  

• If it is a major issue (or bug), I don't think I am the first to discover it. Why isn't it solved till now, especially that MSN is one of the oldest accounts' provider ?
  

If you can help and answer any of the above questions or give any clarification on this point, feel free to comment below.

10 Simple Ways to Protect Your Account

An hour, my account was stolen. Someone got my password and added his email to my account information as owner. Thanks to Allah, I noticed it once it happened and changed my password and security questions on all my accounts.


May be you are wondering how it happened. Well, one of my contacts (I know her in person) started a chat with me. Talk was very usual (Hi , how r u?, fine, ..etc), I knew later that it was the person who tried to steal my account. Then, he asked me to check some link for him. I was busy talking to other and doing different things, I didn't pay attention to the URL. I only noticed yahoo.com in it, so I though it was a harmless link. It opened a Sign-in page similar to Yahoo! Sign-in page, but of course with different URL that I didn't notice. 

Bottom line, I handed him my email with its password just because I didn't pay enough attention.



As it is the first time to go through this, it made realise few things that most of us simply miss. So, here are few teps:

Before your password is stolen:

• Always change your password from time to time. Don't keep them for more than two months at most.
  
• Always check any URL you click on, especially if you got it in an email or something similar. No matter how busy you are, always check URLs.
  
• Create a home email for your account. A home email (or alternative email) is an email you set so you can receive through it updates about your account. Set it to an email that is different from the main email.
  
•  Make sure you set security questions, it can be helpful in retrieving your password.
• Don't keep sensitive information about you on your email; e.g. credit card numbers, paid accounts, social security numbers... etc.
  

 After your password is stolen:
Well, it depends on how fast will you react on this. These are simple ways to do only if you reacted faster that the thief.

• Change your password as soon as you can.
• Remove thief's account from your account information.
• Change your security questions. Try to make the answers different from the old ones.
  
• Change password of all other accounts that you keep their passwords on the stolen account.
• Change password of other accounts that have same password as stolen account (if there are).

 If you know other ways that help in protecting our accounts, please feel free to share them with us and post them in comments below.

Fun Theory

I found this post "Have Fun and A Community Will Follow". It made me think that the more natural you become, the more things will be easier. The more fun you have, the more relaxation you will have.

From my point of view, I think "Fun Theory" is so true. If you are doing something that you won't get paid in return for, then having fun while doing it will be the best return.
Doing things your way will help you to have more fun, and this what I am doing while writing. Sometimes I posted things that sounded crazy or even silly, but I never regretted doing that because I had fun while writing them.


I always try to have fun in my every day life. Although I am known with being rational and sober-minded, I admit doing the most foolish things ever, but it was fun. I work the best when I am having fun.


I invite you all to do the same, Having Fun is fun :D
Have Fun, nothing worth it. Everything will differ, you will be more relaxed and happier. Stop worring about everything and have fun. We only have few years to live and every second counts.

ACM National Contest Held By Alexandria University ACM Student Chapter

Today (or practically yesterday as it passed midnight now :D), we had the last activity for this year in our beloved chapter "Alexandria University ACM Student Chapter" as we will start a new year after a week.
As a closure for this year's activities, we held a practice National contest. We invited teams from Egyptian universities and 17 teams of them came today.

We had been preparing for this contest since months, it was delayed few times but we could held it at the last.

It has been a long day with a lot of work. It started at 8:30 am and finished at 8:30 pm. It started by making the last arrangements and the final touches. Teams arrived on the registration hour from 10:00 till 11:00. Then there was a session to make the rules clear and say the needed notifications. Then a coffee break at 11:30 (I missed this one but I made my own coffee break later on the day :D).

At 12:15, we started a practice session in the lab. Its duration was an hour and a half. In this session, contestants are required to solve two problems. The purpose of it is to get used to IDEs they will use in the main contest to avoid problems during the main contest. This was the practice session for the contestants. For me, it was the time to have my own coffee break after I missed the first one .. :)

At 2:30, we started the main contest where each team is given 9 problems to solve in 5 hours. The starting of the contest was when every thing went crazy. We had the first right solved problem after two minutes only from the start and for the next two and half hours, non of us (the organizers) stopped running from the contest lab to the judgment lab answering questions for the contestants, bringing papers they printed or blowing up BALLOONS and sticking one for each right solved problem (I will talk about balloons at the end as it was a special part of the day :D). After half of the time, craziness started to be a bit stable and we could catch our breath for a bit.

The contest finished at 7:30, all teams headed back to the hall where we started the day to announce the results and teams ranks. Our university had three teams competing in the contest, they came in fourth, seventh and twelfth which was a good results.

Now, lets talk about BALLOONS. :D I admit that we had fun with them but they weren't made for our fun. Balloons are a simple way for contestants to know problems solved by each team in the contest. It goes like that. Each problem has a color dedicated to it. Each team submit the right solve for any problem, a balloon with problem's color is stuck on this team's PC. This way a simple look to all PCs around you, you can figure out which problems are most solved.

I know it became a long post but it doesn't end here :D
All the previous was the exact facts and details of the day as it happened. Now here is what I think.
This was one of the best and most important events I had ever organized. It was that important as all the teams are experienced in such contests and each one of them ranked in first places in many previous contests. This is why their opinion really matters for us as it was our first time to organize it.
From what I noticed after the contest and even after the results are knows, I think teams got back home happy and pleased with the whole organization. I think they will like to come again in case we arranged another one.

If I got today's pictures, I will dedicate a special post for these pictures to comment on it as much as I can. We got pictures that worth thousands of words. :D Wait and See.

I know that if I kept talking, I will keep talking about this contest FOREVER. So, the last words will be a "THANK YOU" to everyone helped in this contest to make it as good as was.

Google SideWiki: A new level of sharing information

Last week, Google lunched a new way to share information over the web. It launched "SideWiki".

SideWiki is what I was missing. As a computer engineering student, I live most of life surfing the net, searching here and there and looking for new stuff. Each time I visit a web page, I wonder how good is this page and what others think about it. And here is where SideWiki came. It is the simplest way to find out what others think about what you are reading.

It is true that I didn't find much entries on pages I regularly visit, but I think it needs some time to show its power.

The most thing I liked in SideWiki till now, is the ability to post to my blog directly from it, just as I am doing now :D. I am a bit lazy to open my blog and start a new blog. I also spend most of my posting time checking the font style. All this cause me to post only when I found something that I am dying to write about. I am sure SideWiki will make me post more, no more excuses for me.
It also allows you to publish the same post on many blogs by one click. By simple HTML tags, you can style your writing as you wish. It is makes it better when you are writing a post about a page that you just read. You can write your blog from this page's SideWiki and a link to that page will appear at the end of your post (as you will find in my post down).

Till now, I am a new fan of SideWiki. Try it, you won't lose anything.

Good night everyone. Posting live from Google SideWiki. :D

in reference to: Blogger Buzz: Post to Blogger with Google Sidewiki (view on Google Sidewiki)