General

Recently I have been buying a lot of domain names for resale and I have had to provide contact information that is publicly accessible in the whois database. This database is widely used by spammers to harvest email addresses. But I figured out a way to make my email address public whilst limiting the number of spammers that harvest it. The key is to create an email address with the words "nospam" in it.

The idea behind this is simple. Lots of users disguise their real email addresses by adding nospam to it. Then they instruct their friends to remove nospam before using their email address. In fact this technique is so common that spam software has adapted to it and it automatically removes "nospam" from any email address that contains it. So by creating an email address that does contain "nospam" in it you are fooling spammers into using the wrong address. For example my domains carry the email address domain-nospam@abdussamad.com . Spam bots harvest it as domain-@abdussamad.com which is non-existent. Of course I do remind humans that the email address is to be used without modification by making that clear in a note in the address field. How well has this technique worked? In more than a month since making this email address public I have recieved only two spam messages. In my book thats not too bad.

America's lap dog Israel is at it again. Massacring Lebanese citizens by the hundreds. It has already ventured into one Lebanese town and I think a full scale invasion is not too far away. I think Israel is simply following America's orders. America wants to destroy Muslim countries and this is just one more step in that direction. They are targetting shia countries first fully aware that sunni countries will not risk a war for shias. Iran is almost certainly going to be next. And then they'll target the sunni dominated countries like Syria.

By attacking Lebanon they are trying to provoke Syria and Iran into joining the conflict thereby giving the Americans an excuse to attack them. Bush's greed for oil wealth seems neverending. What's amazing is that the leadership of the Muslim countries is fully aware of this and seems to be unwilling to defend their countries. Are they just to going to lie down and roll over? Or are they going to unite and fight?

After some unfortunate delays I have finally moved my blog/website to my own domain - abdussamad.com . It feels great to have my very own domain and be able to post anything I bloody well feel like!

One thing I learned during this move is that, in practice, sqlite databases are less portable than mySQL ones! This is because few webhosts support sqlite databases. Most webhosts still run php 4 and they do not bother to install the sqlite extension. I think the reason they do not upgrade to php 5 is that it may require them to upgrade their legacy linux installations as well. On the other hand, almost all *nix hosts support mySQL. So I had to migrate s9y from a sqlite database to mysql. Despite my best efforts I couldn't do this migration via SQL dumps. Instead I had to import my entries using RSS. However, I took the opportunity to upgrade to the latest stable version of s9y - 1.0

A never say die attitude by Sri Lanka forced a draw in the first test with England at Lord's. 7 half-centuries out of 11 Sri Lankan players is nothing short of brilliant. While England certainly bowled well the Sri Lankans batted even better, defending stoutly when neccessary and attacking at the opportune moment. I have never rated England very highly. I have always thought that the English cricket team is not upto the mark when compared to the three asian giants. In my opinion Sri Lanka should always beat England. Their performance in the second innings just proves my point. They showed heart and try as they might England could not get them out.A lot of commentators have been belittling the SL performance on the grounds that England dropped 9 catches. They say that the dropped catches were the chief cause of the draw. So what? If England dropped 9 catches then they made mistakes - more so than Sri Lanka. So how does that take away from Sri Lanka's performance? England couldn't take the pressure while Sri Lanka could.What's more England enjoyed there own share of lucky breaks in the first innings when 4 pretty good LBW appeals were turned down by the umpires. People just don't get it do they. The Sri Lankan team continues to be underrated and underestimated by the rest of the world.Farveez Maharoof's performance in the second innings is just a continuation of his good batting form from the series against Pakistan. I am glad to see that a Muslim has made a mark in the Sri Lankan cricket team. Jehan Mubarak, on the other hand, continues to fail as a batsman and will most likely be replaced with Jayasuriya in the next test starting on the 25th. England are really going to get it at Edgbaston.

A google mirror with a difference