Firefox all the way!

Browsing blogs became a daily habit for me or even more than that. Wandering through blogs now accounts for about 5-10% of the time I spend daily on the internet. Yet, even though I am interested in blogging, I am not able to catch up with my blog that I started last May. Not only that but I decided couple of months ago that I will be looking after two blogs, one academic and technology related with respect to me and the other is personal. It is obvious now that keeping one blog is enough for now so the following piece of news will be placed here not the other blog where it should belong to.

FUTURE SEEMS TO BE FOR FIREFOX

The new thing is that I started using firefox more frequently. I downloaded firefox as soon it was released and started from the very first released version. Notice the repition in the last part of the latter sentence, it is not meant to show off that I am a firefox veteran but I just want to tell you I gave firefox a real shot so that those open source maniacs don't give me that nasty look in their eyes. I kept firefox since then dormant on my computer. I used it a couple of times to be honest and the tabs thing impressed me. However, there were some drawbacks in dealing with websites to be specific those php bulletin boards. Also some websites refused to show me their picture assuming I was leeching them. I kept giving it a try whenever I wanted to feel a bit tidy. This was like once every two weeksThis was a bit less than a year ago.

After six months, things started to change . I started using it more frequently. Untill last August I was using it like once every other day because I found out that its more stable, doesn't crash as often as the IE and it is friendly to my PIII - 700 MHz computer with limited SDRAM memory. The crashes of IE are becoming a constant pain in the ass. Don't tell me I have shitty adware/spyware because I don't and I have a clean installation of it + all patches. Don't also tell its its those lousy people who still write overcode their websites or use incomaptible tools/components.

Anyways, when I started using Linux, the Fedora Core 3 distro at university, firefox became a good friend. Not the only browser I use on linux but I am using it more frequently on windows. I read the newspapers always on firefox, done my last research for the paper using firefox although I had some compatibility problems but I have to report those myself to them. Overall, I can say the ratio will soon exceed 50-50 on the daily usage between firefox and IE. I think the new IE 7 will be even worse even though it will support the tabs feature. It will not run smoothly on my outdated computer as Microsoft don't show respect for them anymore. I am not an anti Microsoft person yet not because "kherhom 3alaya" (have been generous to me).

In the end I have to say that I have written this post using IE.

Elections

Been quite a long time since my last post. It seems I am not of that type of those active bloggers. I am interested in blogging but don't have time to do so. Well, I will make a quick recap of the important events that have taken place in the past 7 weeks since my last post. wooosh!

• Egypt's Presidential elections
• Being food poisoned
• Accelerating semester

1. I participated in the elections that took place on the 7th of September. On the contorary to my experience in the referendum that tool place last May, I faced the real ugly face of our regime. I was wrong in May. I thought I was living in a country that started to show signs of respect for human rights. I was wrong. We live in Egypt, the country of abused rights, the country of torture and injustice and the most important of all, the most corrupted country. I was denied voting with my voting card in 2 voting centres in my area opposed to the law that even gave me the right to vote with my ID not my voting card. I went to the police station and got the address of the voting centre that had my name registered in. I went there twice, at 3pm and 7 pm and there were hundreds of Mubarak supporters crowding the place and i heard a guy saying that ther were waiting for the buses of the Party. As a last resort, I went to a school in downtown in Falaky street where I voted there using my voting card while in my area they refused!!!
The disgusting thing is that those who vote had to immerse their fingers in some kind of a pink ink. The man voting before me refused to do so. I don't know why I did so (may be because I like to show off) I immersed two fingers in the ink. Ahh, I remembered, I wanted to tease the clerks there and i wanted to have my fingers ready for a picture that my dad would take shortly after I return home.
My next encounter with our ugly ruling regime will be in the parliamentary elections after two weeks. I will dedicate a post for that later on.

2. For the first time in my life, I tried the experience of being food poisoned. It started with some abdominal cramps and light diarrhea for the first day then severe diarrhea accompanied with a fever for 3 days. The diarrhea lasted for about 10 days. I lost about 4 KG in the process and was absent from university for 4 days in additiong to an official holiday and 4 days of weekends. It was because of drinking a pomengrate that was left outside in warm weather for 2 days.

3. I started the new semester fresh and more determined to do well this time. I started studying more frequently and didn't let things pile up on me. However, I am only concentrating on 3 subjects and almost not studying the other 2. I am taking Arab History, Software Engineering, Operating Systems, Analysis of algorithms and Micro Economics. I am neglecting the latter 2. The problem is that I am only suffering with the algorithms course that i think will make a new record low grade. Yes, I think i failed the first midterm. I am not troubled anywyas. The real problem is that I lost my enthusiasm for studying after spending about 10 days without studing due to my illness and lack of self motivation. Then came Ramadan and the TV series during the last days of my illness during which i was supposed to start catching up on the material that I missed. I wasted more time. Now everything accumulated and 4 mid terms are coming up in a week and the old story is repeating itself. This is not bothering me anymore though. Life will go on.