Muslims world wide more than Catholics now

According to Reuters:

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," Formenti told Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview, saying the data referred to 2006.

Wow, that is big news! Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent. Of course, if all Christian sects are concidered, then that would be 33% of Earth. So not really at the top yet, but gaining.

Being a Muslim I am happy to hear this and can only hope the new Muslims practice it well and the old Muslims to stop giving others such a bad rep about us.

A dead dog

A dead dog is lying on the Sitra causeway (sh. Jaber Alahmad Alsubah) for the past two days.
Its corpse is still there at the time of writing.

Bahrain Vs. Japan: World Cup Qualifiers 2010

tomorrow at 5:30 PM, the match starts. You can see it on Aljazira sports or Bahrain Sports ground (The non satellite channel). I'll be in a final exam unfortunately.
I welcome the Japanese team, hope they play a good game.
Good luck to our national team, that is all they rely on.

PS3 redesign: loses 2KG

As you can see from the poor picture I took; T3 magazine (middle east version) reports that Sony will release a slim version of the 80G PS3 console in 2008 4th quarter. They hint at it being released in December, probably for Christmas.
The magazine says it will retain all of the bluray goodness and be 2 kilograms lighter.
This sounds odd as the console is still young in its product life cycle. But it'd be rather interesting to see if it did prove true.

The New Bahraini Dinar: First look [pics]

[Note: I wrote this a couple of days back, but was sworn to secrecy until an official announcment. Now that the news is out, here it is]


A person I know (who shall remain nameless) had samples of the new Dinar. If you noticed, last week the newspapers had printed full page colour ads announcing these.
The new notes look rather interesting, I personally liked them but of course others had different opinions.
The notes are uniform in size and are much more secure than the previous ones. It has a transparent golden strip on the back (you can see it in the pictures), holograms and really tiny security texts. It even has special markings to help the blind identify them. His Majesty the King received the first notes (serial number 1) Sheikh Khalifa got serial 2 & Sheikh Salman got serial 3. The CBB will release them for the public next Monday.
I took several quick pictures for your viewing pleasure. The serial numbers of the notes are distorted upon the source's request.

Speed Racer movie trailer released

The full trailer for the Wachowski Brothers' live-action film adaptation of the Speed Racer (aka: "Mach: GO! GO! GO!" or in Arabic: "أبطال السباق") car-racing anime series is finally released.
The Wachowski brothers are the ones behined the iconic "The Matrix". It seems they love Anime. The Matrix borrowed heavily from Masamune Shirow's "Ghost in the Shell", they even released an anime Matrix DVD later: "The Animatrix".
They are now addressing this iconic old anime series. I have my reservations about this, but..
I'll just wait and see.

Which Internet Provider? Help me choose

I just moved out from my apartment into.. another apartment. Anyway, I need an internet connection (obvously). Shall I go with Batelco again? (yuck!). Shall I move to Zain @ Home? What about all the horror stories? Hmmm. Maybe Kalaam? Lightspeed? What about Etisalcom? Hey, did Mena telecom start their services yet? oooh the choices. The crappy crappy choices.
Help a fellow out will you? To the right you will find TWO surveys. Yes TWO! Tell me which provider you recommend that I go with and which provider I should avoid at all costs. Let the net decide!

[13 March 08 - EDIT: As some of you may see, there are no polls to the right. Something is wrong with Blogger. I apologize. Please write your opinions in the comments this time.]

Arabs can't write in Arabic

This was in a Bahraini newspaper a few days ago.
What a sad day that was.

A Bahraini Poem in Calligraphy [PIC]

With the Spring of Culture in full swing, I thought I could share a bit of home made culture with you. My mother (Dr. Nabeela Zubari) is a Bahraini Poet of some renown it seems. She has 4 published books so far. Bahrain is a recurring theme in her poetry. Her cousin, Mr. Khalid Zubari is a calligraphy Hobbyist. He wrote one of my mothers poems on a Burdi sheet of paper. I thought it looked nice so I placed it on my desktop and thought I'd share it with the world. I thought I'd translate it but I don't think I have the skill to bring over the artistic symbols. Can someone else do that?

Hope you like it.

Linux Users Group (LUG) March Meeting

The next LUG meeting will be on 4:00PM Saturday, March 8th at the Belle View Apartments (for directions see LUG Location). the topic will be as follows. Please confirm if you can attend. Look forward to seeing you there.

LTSP Term 1000 PXE: Thin Client Madness

• Presenter: Hasan Al-Eid

• Presentation Type: Technical Presentation

• Summary: The LTSP Term 1000 PXE is an amazing 50BD PC. It's ideally suited as a thin client that boots it's OS off the network. Some of the machines specs are as follows:

  • CPU: Vortex86 SoC-200MHz (Fanless, x86 compatable)

  • Memory: 128MB SDRAM onboard

  • Display: 1280 x 1024 / up to 85 Hz/ 32 Bit

  • for more detailed specs

I'm inviting you to join in. If your new to Linux, want to know more about it or been using it for years, please come on in.

Bahraini blocked websites unblocked?

I frequent Mahmood's Den religiously. Mahmood has on the right hand side of his blog a list of blocked out websites. I clicked on one today, and it opened up.
!
I clicked on another, it opened up!
I went through the whole list from top to bottom, they all opened up. Even the Haaq Movment website that proudly states it is a blocked website. Some of the websites were closed like Alsaheefa, others were abandoned and take you to a parked address.
Just to make sure, can YOU visit these sites? Click on some of the examples above or visit Mahmood's Den and click on them one by one. Answer the mini poll to the right please.