It has been some time since I blogged. There are a couple of reasons for my absence and lack of posting. The most important one being: Wateen’s screw up!!

Wateen, the only WiMax operator in Pakistan, had been working quite well for me since I subscribed to their services at the start of this year, so much so that I had been all praise for it off and on amid a plethora of criticism against them. But all of that changed come 6th of September.

I was out of town from the eve of 5th September till the eve of 7th September (weekend). Upon my return, when I tried to get back on the virtual world from my home through Wateen, I started getting “User is Invalid” message. That marked the start of a 5 weeks period, during which I called their support center so many times and was only given complaint #’s after complaint #’s (with a few reassuring words) but without any solution.

The problem was: A humongous telephony bill that was laden with a three days spree of bogus calls amounting to a whopping 12000 rupees!!

According to the bill that they sent me after my inquiries into my disabled account, I came to learn that numerous bogus calls had been made from 4th to 6th of September from the telephony number allotted to me. Mostly to international destinations! The funny part is: my Wateen telephony service had been disabled since May 2008 and I had only been using their Internet service since then!

The hardest part in this fiasco was communicating these facts to their call center reps! They merely (1) lodged the complaints, (2) assured me that I don’t need to worry and (3) told me that their CS department will contact me in 24 hours; and they did call … only half the times. During the four weeks following my account’s disablement, I was given around 8 complaint #’s for the same issue. I had also approached their franchise offices, but they said that they were helpless in this regard and they can’t do anything about it! Isn’t that great!? I emailed them too, but that didn’t bear any fruit either. Nonetheless, email seemed to be a better option for explaining my billing problem in clear details, as the response was far better than that I received when I complained at the call center.

On top of all that, it was the month of Ramadan, when working hours are reduced and people perform much less work than they would in normal days. Follow that with a 5 days Eid holidays and my issue remained unresolved till the second week of October.

Then I emailed them once again. And to my luck, someone was actually being attentive to the details that day as I received a call from correspondence department the next day, by a sweet sounding female voice, and thankfully, she grasped the issue really well. And guess what … the next day I received another call from Wateen telling me that my connection had been restored and amount of 12000 rupees had been adjusted/credited back into my account! Hurray!! Finally!!

Though it took one more day of complaints and email since they forgot to actually restore/reopen my account that day.

Now it’s working again, in all its WiMax glory!

Points to remember:

• Emailing the customer support is a better option if your problem is not trivial
• Calling up the support/call center is a better option if your problem is trivial and you don’t have to provide much details
• The folks at the call center, support center and correspondence are helpful people, who are there to help you. Shouting, yelling or misbehaving with them just because you are aggravated is not going to help your cause anyway. So be nice, and treat them as good fellows, and not as if you own them.
• Make sure you inquire about your bills, and check them in detail when you are sent one

Tell me your story in the comments below if you have ever been aggravated or faced any such screw ups, from Wateen or any other provider.

Sean Effel  from Drupal Therapy has an excellent screencast on how to utilize the CCK, Filefield and jQuery Media modules to upload and play inline media files attached to a node.

List of Drupal Modules Used:

1. Content Construction Kit (CCK)
2. FileField
3. JQuery Media

More to discuss at the original post.

A Pencil maker taught the pencils five important lessons:

1. Everything you do will always leave a mark.
2. You can always correct the mistakes you make.
3. What is important is what is inside you.
4. In life you will undergo painful sharpenings which will make you a better pencil.
5. To be the best pencil you can be, you must allow yourself to be held and guided by the Hand that holds you.

The pencil is you and the hand is that of your Lord.

[Received as a text message.]

Problem:

There’s this annoying little bugger in Firefox, where, out of the blue and just so randomly, the address bar stops responding to the Enter key after you have entered the website’s URL!

No matter what you do: press Enter, Ctrl + Enter, click the (Go) Arrow button … Firefox would sit there idle, as if it’s ignoring the Enter key, while the cursor keeps on blinking in the address bar as it is.

Read the solution after the jump.

Cause:

I have tracked the bug down, and have confirmed it by searching it over the net, to the official Delicious extension for Firefox.

Solution:

If you are having this same problem, first try updating the extension (for a new version might have been released that resolves this issue). If that doesn’t work, simply disable/uninstall the Delicious extension.

Being in the field of IT (Computer Science), it’s necessary to keep pace with the changing landscape, otherwise you would end up rendering yourself obsolete. It’s no different with web development/programming: The landscape keeps changing, either on the user interface front or the browser side or the website back-end.

As of now, we are moving through the era of web application frameworks. That’s the landscape we are surrounded with. Plenty of frameworks have been built during these years broadly categorized under software frameworks, web application frameworks and JavaScript frameworks (or libraries), and plenty more are being developed.

So better learn one now, before you are rendered obsolete.

I am considering the following frameworks:

Read more about the most popular web frameworks that I am considering after the jump.

Which Web Framework to Learn as a Starting Point?

I have been a Drupal developer for over an year now. After working on two projects based on Drupal, one of them being my own site Jhoom and another an upcoming local community-based site, I am now planning to expand my open source development skills further by learning a web framework (’another framework’ if Drupal is considered as a framework too).

But the question is, which web framework to go for? There are so many of them now! Which one shall one start with?

The Web Frameworks

I am considering the following frameworks, and one lucky framework out of these will have the privilege to be learned by me (before the others)!

• CakePHP
• Code Igniter
• Symfony
• PRADO
• Django
• Ruby on Rails

Four of them are PHP frameworks - CakePHP, Code Igniter, PRADO and Symfony; while Django is a Python based framework; and lastly Ruby on Rails,which is based on Ruby.

PHP Frameworks

Going with a PHP web framework would be relatively easier if, like me, you are experienced with PHP as well. Also, you won’t have to spend your time learning a new language, rather, you will be strengthening your PHP skills further. Knowing PHP already will also give you more time to focus on understanding the concepts behind the terms MVC - Model, View, Controller and Rapid Application Development.

The PHP frameworks that I have short-listed - CakePHP, Code Igniter, PRADO and Symfony - are those that are mostly referred to and have a good community following. I haven’t really researched them thoroughly yet to assess the difference between them (that’s for a later post).

Python and Django

Python was love at first sight for me! If you are comfortable in Java and OOP concepts, Python would be like a thing of beauty. Learning Django would simply help in learning Python more and it will add to the skill set as well.

Ruby on Rails (ROR)

Aah the framework (that I thought was a language, and not a framework, until just recently) that owes much of its popularity to its Rapid Application Development (RAD) of AJAX based applications; it was thought of as THE ‘language’ to create AJAXified applications. It has remained true to the hype though and it has sustained its position as a viable alternate web language to the most popular ones - PHP and ASP .NET.

I really want to learn this framework as there is a dearth of Ruby on Rails developer out there. The only issue is that its syntax is much different than any other programming language that I know. But I believe one will be able to adapt to Ruby’s (on Rails’) way of coding, since it is often termed as quite easy to learn and implement.

Ruby on Rails is quite in demand and lots of sites are being built in it. So, even if the learning curve is relatively steeper, one just can’t go wrong by learning ROR; it’s a good investment of your time.

Conclusion

I would love love to go with Ruby on Rails, or Django, for I love learning new stuff, and then there is a dearth of Python and Ruby on Rails out there. But then I am also planning to build a couple of web sites soon, utilizing the web framework I wet my hands in. So going with either ROR or Django would probably take more time, since the learning curve would be relatively steeper than going with a PHP based framework.

But then again, I haven’t yet researched these frameworks in detail. That’s the next step!

Until then, I would like to know what’s your framework of choice? Which one did you learn first? And which one do you find the best to work with? What are your views on the frameworks I have short-listed?

David Ogilvy, regarded as the father of modern advertising, had something excellent to say to companies, and their bosses, about how to make a company, a company of giants:

The choice is obvious, but do we/companies/bosses make this obvious choice? I doubt it. No wonder most companies end up as those of dwarfs.

Ever wanted to have an “Add to Google” button like for your blog or website so that your visitors can easily subscribe to your RSS feed through Google Reader or Google homepage?

It’s actually quite simple. Simply head to Add to Google Button - Information for Publishers and follow the simple wizard: choose the type of content and button style, and provide your feed URL and generate the HTML code. Viola!

I just got mine! Go ahead, try out how it works by adding my feed to your Google .

Or get your own: Add to Google Button

Finally, there is a Firefox theme, which is not just pleasing to the eye with its subtle color theme but also, everything in the theme, every detail of Firefox has been worked upon with outstanding finesse.

The theme is called Silvermel. Here are two screenshots from the official site, showing Firefox and Thunderbird versions of the theme:

Looks great, no? The Silvermel theme fits perfectly on Firefox 3. Download it from here.

More screenshots after the jump …

Since I couldn’t find anymore screenshots on the web, I decided to get some of my own. Here, witness the finesse and attention to detail of this theme:

Silvermel: Firefox Downloads Window

Silvermel: Firefox History

Silvermel: Firefox Options Dialogue Box

Silvermel: Firefox Page Info Dialogue Box

Silvermel: Firefox Extensions

Silvermel: Firefox Themes

Silvermel: Address Not Found Page

Every detail has been worked upon in Silvermel, making it the most complete, usable and great looking theme for Firefox. I am definitely rating it as the Best them for Firefox yet!

Get Silvermel from the Firefox add-on site or from the official Silvermel website.

Download 1 | Download 2

Today, I headed to Extreme Tracking to get a stats tracker for this blog of mine. Yes, I am one of those who can never have enough of stats; I want more!

I have been an Extreme Tracking user since almost a decade now (no I am not that old, I just started out young on the web).

But as I headed for registration, I got this message:

Unfortunately we closed down our sales in Pakistan.

Say what!?

Since when did that happen? And why would an online firm, that deals with tracking website stats and provides free tracking services, would block its ’sales’ in any country?

It’s obvious that they blocked me from registering by tracking my IP address. I thought about emailing them and asking why they have blocked users from Pakistan to register for an Extreme Tracker? But first, I wanted to register, and so I did … by using a proxy server.

Once I passed their ‘IP’ check and entered their registration page, look what I found:

Wow! Now here, they not only have given ‘Islamabad’ as a choice in city selection, but I was also able successfully signup by choosing ‘Islamabad’, without getting told that I am not allowed or something.

The question remains though that why have they blocked Pakistani users from getting a website tracker with them?

Is it because they are a Netherlands based firm (as seen from their given address in the first screenshot), and thus the cartoon controversy and the movie on Islam controversy, is playing a part here?

Aah … that’s probably it! Or am I just being paranoid?

An interesting, and funny, cartoon was published in The Nation a few days ago:

And Samad Khurram, whose claim to fame was his refusal to accept Harvard scholarship certificate from the US Ambassador to Pakistan, takes the lead in popularity! w00t!