The Blog

Tex-Mex Food Recipes
Some of my personal favorites

Classic Fajitas
Zucchini, Corn, Black-Bean, and Jack-Cheese Quesadillas
Mexican-Style Stuffed Peppers
Gourmet Burritos and Tacos

Miscellaneous Tidbits from all over
A few eye catching pictures

How fascinating is this idea, eh? A virtual keyboard that displays an infrared image of a keyboard that’s not really there to enable you type stuff on a handheld PDA which is too small to have a keyboard of its own and eliminates the need to plug in a bulky keyboard. Sounds amazing isn’t it? It is. This could be answer to my worries: how am I going to ever type on them small Pocket PCs? This may take some getting used to, but it looks like its worth the trouble. If you can type using a keyboard that’s not there, there is little that’s left to the imagination. Who would’ve thought that man would reach such advances in Technology is this? Someone at work just showed me a folding keyboard that becomes so small when its fully folded that it fits in a plastic case the same size as the Palm Pilot Pocket Computer. And it is a full size, ergonomically designed keyboard! I thought it was truly amazing, granted, I am somewhat of a geek myself.
Despite all the advances man has made and the breakthrough inventions that never cease to amaze us, we see extreme poverty in cities around the world (seems like a recurring theme on my blog doesn’t it? well, I can’t help but notice the huge divide between the rich and the poor of the world-maybe it’s always been like that, but that doesn’t make it right). This particular one is from Shanghai, China, where this poor guy is hauling a load of recyclable plastic to be able to sell it for a few cents per pound. Maybe some of this plastic will be melted and made into a PDA that a rich man somewhere will use. That ought to close the divide between the rich and the poor?

My all time favorite show (yes, I love Everybody Loves Raymond, its simply too funny) maybe coming to an end. They think that the show has said pretty much everything that it has to say, and it may get repetitive and boring if they do it too much…I think they are probably wrong about that. Ray Romano is a funny man and I think he’ll have a lot more comedy up his sleeve: he’s been doing it for a lot of years, I’m sure and he’s proven himself to be truly funny…I think he’s here to stay for a while. I can’t imagine why he would suddenly dry up and not have any more funnies. The way this show is going, we should see the kids grow up, Ray and Debra grow old and Robert, the brother, finally get married and get settled. I think that’d be something.

I don’t really know what to say about this one, other than the fact that this is a great picture: it brings us India: the culture and the religion. People in most of the rest of the world would not even think of getting this close to these rodents. And yet here in this picture you can clearly see that they are not in the least bit intimadated by rats. Particularly because the little baby’s got his hands in the milk (I assume its milk) that they are devouring. I can’t say anything about the health risk involved with this, because I’m not a professional in that area, but just from common sense, it seems like a pretty dangerous situation: these rodents carry all kinds of nasty bacteria, I think. I think this picture proves the old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words.

This is pretty scary, the size of this ferris wheel. Just imagine being way on the top! What an accomplishment, eh? What humans do for entertainment! I’d love to go on this ride at least once. Just to feel the excitement it must bring. I hate rides, usually, but I think this’d be a really good one to go on. Mainly because it doesn’t try to scare you with motion, just the height of this should be pretty scary. I’d like to also see if I’ll keep my eyes open through this thing. Gotta go on practice runs on smaller ferris wheels before trying this one. Oh wait, this is in London, England, not London, Ontario

I am not sure where this is exactly. Sounds like its in Europe somewhere. If any of you know, would you let me know (too lazy to do a search on google myself, since I’m typing this at work-oops, did I say that out loud? this is my break, hence proving that I’m a geek). I love the artistic element of this and the sheer size of this stage. Some people just seem to have all the creativity, not to mention the money to make this vision a reality! Looks almost as though someone had a dream about this and they went and drew it and showed it to a rich entrapreneur and they said, sure, lets do it. Another example of what human beings are capable of once they are determined enough to do anything.

This is almost hilarious. Circumcisions are a muslim tradition (a sunnah, I believe, not a requirement). And a very sacred tradition. Usually the boys are circumcised pretty early…depends on where you are, in Pakistan I think they do it within a couple of months, usually. Imagine a scene where hundreds of little boys have just had their circumcisions done on the same day. What a memorable day that’d be, eh? This seems to be the case in this Afghanistani news item. The joy on this woman’s face, carrying her son after he’s been circumcised is testimony to the fact that this practice is an important one in this country. The Turkish army became really popular with the Afghani population since their doctors performed these operations for them. What a joyous occasion for these people!

Quite an accomplishment by an Iranian Muslim Engineer, designing this state of the art Electric Car. In country that most people think to be recovering from the long Iran-Iraq war, where fundamentatistic values rule (I am just babbling, I don’t know much about Iran-if you do, leave a comment and enlighten us all) this must be a very big achievement indeed. I know Pakistan hasn’t come close, although the scientists there have successfully developed their own nuclear weapons. A lot of Muslim scientists in the west (North America and Europe), I’m sure are on the cutting edge in their fields, but creating a possibly revolutionary innovative, good looking Electric Car within Iran, that’s incredible. A lot of reason for the Iranians to be proud of.

I don’t think an asteroid that’s less than 2 miles in diameter will be able to do that much damage, especially if it lands in the pacific ocean for instance. What do you think? I was an excellent Physics/Math student, but I have totally lost touch with velocity/mass/momentum calculations and definitely don’t remember any equations/constants. I think that anything can easily cause the destruction of this planet. We are but a small dot, hardly visible, on the map that’s the Universe. A slight change in the position of the Sun or Jupiter in our own solar system or a slight change in nearby galaxies can easily cause the complete collapse of the system that’s made by Allah to sustain life here on earth. Life is so unreliable, don’t you think?

Cool A$$ painting…This painting describes visually what the above diagram is trying to explain. This is probably a very realistic, scientifically-God forbid if it hit anywhere near a city, the result will be worse than any nuclear bomb, to say the least. But I still think that this asteroid is not sufficient enough to destroy life as we know it on Planet Earth. If infact the size is around 2 miles in diameter. Besides, scientists are monitoring this thing, surely doomsday will come when we won’t know what the heck hit us? The last time an asteriod came close to colliding with the earth, the astronomer geeks saw it 3 days later. That’s kinda funny. What do you think!?

This is totally freaky: a fish that not only swims in water, but it also walks on land, like a damn water snake. I didn’t know this creature existed in Asia. Now some crazy people have brought it to North America and it may threaten some the ecosystem here since it eats other fish and other small animals on land. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh! That’s crazy, I tell you. People make soup out of this thing. That’s NOT funny. This looks dangerous. I love fish, but this is not what I call your typical fish. It’s worse than eating squid or octopus or shell fish. This fish can actually walk or slither like a snake on land. Fish die when taken out of the water. This is too weird. Ain’t gonna eat this fish. Ever!

Ideas from the Islamic Architecture chapter in Islamic Art and Spirituality:

sacred architecture is an ordering of space…so that we may enter into the presence of the Divine (consciously i think) by making an area sacred, purely for worship.
In islamic architecture and art in general there is a central significance of the VOID…”the emptiness of the mosque, even the most richly decorated, is related both to the idea of spiritual poverty (faqr) of which the Blessed Prophet (saw) said, ‘spiritual poverty is my glory’ ( al-faqr fakhri ), and the identification of the invisible and unmanifested with the spiritual in the Muslim mind”.
so, the emptiness of the mosque brings to our minds a connection with the Unseen, and we come face to face with the idea, i suppose which strikes at our hearts, of the spiritual world which we cannot apprehend with our gross, physical senses.

the muslim home may be considered an extension of the mosque…”uncluttered by furniture, with emphasis upon the floor which is kept ritually clean…(evoking a ) sense of the sacred through the very emptiness…the very emptiness of the space draws attention to the Invisible.”


i like the minimalist idea, which can be beautiful and lead you away from the consumerist mentality of the world at the same time!

Let the studying begin
Installation of compilers

I just finished installing the Java IDE called Forte for Java, which I recently downloaded from Sun Microsystems web site for FREE. The interface is pretty good. But there is one major drawback: performance. It is freaking slow. I think I’m going to have to get more memory if I’m going to use this thing. I’ve been using just a text editor to code my Java programs and then compiling them with the JDK, also from Sun. But that feels ancient since its command line. I have tried a 3rd party application called JCreator that provides a pretty good Windows GUI while utilizing the JDK engine. It’s pretty good too, but I want to try to stick to what Sun provides, since Java is their creation, I want to familiarize myself with everything that is related to it and Sun.

I also installed an old copy of VB that I had from my previous job (its a lite version) that I will practice my VB with. It took a long while to get VB to install and configure the way I like. Now, I should be in business

My Bloginality is INTJ!!!