raah-e-imaan ko laashoN se
Dec 27, 2006 My Urdu Poems, Poetry
My second Ghazal ended up being about an issue that really boggles my mind at all times. The Ghazal was written after the Muslim-Hindu riots in Gujarat and reflects my thoughts about this plague that affects our home countries and perhaps the whole world.
raah-e-imaan ko laashoN se sajaate kyoN haiN?
log “bhagwaan” ko “shaitaan” banaate kyoN haiN?
saari duniyaa ka agar ek hi Khaaliq hai to phir
ye mazaahib hameiN aapas meiN laRaate kyoN haiN?
[mazaahib = plural of mazhab, religion]
ik kahe “Raam” to dujaa kahe “Allah Allah”
ek maqsad hai to phir teGh uThaate kyoN haiN?
[teGh = sword]
sar jhukaate haiN jo sijde meiN tire aie maalik!
josh meiN aake vo sar apna kaTaate kyoN haiN?
[sijde = prayers]
jis taraf dekhiye haNgaamaa hi haNgaamaa hai!
khoon insaan ka insaan bahaate kyoN haiN?
tuu bhii kuchh soch zamaane ko banaane vaale
teri duniyaa ko tire bande jalaate kyoN haiN?
log poochheiNge in ash’aar ko paRh kar ‘tanhaa’
tujh ko is tarah ke afkaar sataate kyoN haiN?
[ash'aar = plural of sh'er, couplet; afkaar = plural of fikr, thoughts]
11/2002
Tags: ghazal, my poetry, urdu poetry
And its a white day-after-christmas!
Dec 26, 2006 Thoughts and ramblings
So it finally snowed in Montreal. Everybody is telling me, why do you want the snow so badly, but I was damn worried about the fact that in the last 20 years that I have been in Montreal, I have never seen a non-white christmas! But like they say, better late than never…..
Tags: Thoughts and ramblings
world of warcraft
Dec 20, 2006 Gaming
Ok, so wanna play World of Warcraft? But don’t want to pay all that money to Blizzard? I mean, it’s great, I love it really, I don’t mind paying, but sometimes, you just need a month to play for free 
so how about trying those free-servers out there. 
Two places you can find them, at wowstatus.net and at Ragezone Forums.
And instead of screwing around with the install that works with Blizzards servers, try this, do a second install of WoW and patch it to the version 1.12.2 (the version most of the free servers work with). You can find the patches here: strategyinformer.com or at the ragezone servers, there are links to download the patches as well. I’m not sure whether the patches are available for download at the Blizzard’s site, but they should be.
Incidently, if you don’t have WoW and want the installer, you can, I believe, download from Blizzard’s site or here’s one for ya (a full whopping 5GB file): WoW client installer
Before doing the install, clean up the regkeys that Blizzards DVD installer made for you. According to “kath-nukem” from #wowstatus on irc, these are the steps you need to take to clean up the registery so that you can do a second install of WoW as apparently, the keys are not needed after the game is installed to play the game:
- Click on Start (on Windows) and select Run
- Type “regedit” without the quotes
- Scroll to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
- Then go to Software
- Look for Blizzard Entertainment
- You will see two keys there GamePath and InstallPath, delete them or just delete the whole Blizzard Entertainment section
- Install the client in a different location from the one you had installed it in the first place.
Once the game is installed, run the two patches, the 1.12 patcher and the 1.12.1 patcher (available here)Next step is to modify the realmlist file. In the new WoW install directory, you will see the file called realmlist.wtf. Edit that using your favourite text editor (like notepad on windows which is a really poor choice of editor, but who am I to judge your software usage, haha). Delete the server address in the file and replace it with the server of your choice. Make sure to register an account at that server. Ragezone forum and the wowstatus.net page has the server addresses as well as locations to register accounts for these servers. Now simply run WoW.exe.
For the ragezone server, change the realmlist page to this entry:
set realmlist 38.114.169.172
And make your free account here: http://warcraft.invisiongaming.net/
That’s it. Now, I love Blizzard servers, they are fast, there are a lot of players there and I really don’t mind paying to play the game, it is expensive, but if you really didn’t want to play WoW and pay for it, you could always go for alternatives such as Guildwars. Anyway, sometimes, you just don’t have the cash to pay and want to keep playing your favourite game, free servers can always be an alternative, albeit temporary, but they can be an alternative.
Disclaimer: I do pay to play at Blizzard servers but with my second install, I also try and play at the free servers every now and then.
Hope this helps
Tags: world of warcraft, wow
Morality
Dec 19, 2006 Sci-Fi, Thoughts and ramblings
Recently, I have been really enjoying the Stargate seasons on DVD. When the show initially came out, I was in love with it because I loved the movie and all things “sci-fi” always tickle my fancy. Star Trek for example has been my all time favourite TV show, whether it was TNG, DS9 or Enterprise (although Voyager really tanked on my list of ST shows because, well, the acting was terrible, especially from their captain, and no it’s not because she was a female! And TOS? well, it was great, but nothing compares to TNG!). So now that we established that I love Star Trek, getting back to Stargate (SG-1), I have really been enjoying watching seasons after seasons, a great concept, you get to learn a lot about mythology because the writers of SG-1 did a great job of looking up the mythical legends from human history scattered throughout the world, regardless of the culture and putting them in their show, but every now and then, I can’t understand the issue of “morality” that comes up in the show. What is it about humans to judge everybody from their own moral standards? I admit, this is all fictious, but the question stands very much in our current world as well, why do we always judge people from our moral standards?
Let me give you an example based out of SG-1. So the episode in season 3, titled “Learning Curve” where SG-1 visits a planet where knowledge is harvested through its children. The way they do things is simple, they put 
nannites into the brains of some chosen children and these children have increadibly superiour learning capabilities because of these nannites. At a certain age (the consensus seemed to be around 11-12), these nannites are “harvested” from these children in a ceremony called the Ovarium and these kids themselves feel honored to be part of this ceremony in order to help their civilization grow. Then the people on their planet receive one of these nannites and hence, whatever the kid learned becomes part of everybody receiving these nannites. Once the nannites are removed, these children are back to their normal self, of course not knowing everything that they learned while the nannites were in there and they are well taken care of by their society. So, SG-1 comes in, raises the moral issues about how this is not how humans deal with their children and we don’t do anything to harm them at all. The people on this planet insist that they don’t harm their children at all and this is how their society grows. As a matter of fact, the spokesperson from this planet had his own son go through “Ovarium” during the episode and said he was proud of his son. Point being, why did we have to judge what they do internally based on how we do things? Yes, I agree it’s fiction, there is no planet like this, there is no inter-planetary travel and there is no judging any other race…. ah wait a second! There is judging of “other races”, right here, on our little blue ball of marvel, yes, the planet Earth that is. But why? What makes us think we are morally superior than any other race? What makes any race say that? On what scale, level, balance are these things being judged and by whose authority? And then again, who says this authority is a valid authority?
Tell you what, I have no answers for this. Just my mind bumbling through some thoughts.
Tags: Sci-Fi, star gate, Thoughts and ramblings
kis se poochheiN k maajra kyaa hai?
Dec 15, 2006 My Urdu Poems, Poetry
My first Urdu Ghazal, written in the same meter as Ghalib’s favourite ghazal ‘dil-e-naadaaN tujhe huaa kya hai’. As a matter of fact, the Ghazal is written in the same ‘zameen’, meaning the same ‘radeef’ and the same ‘qaafiya’. I intend on posting articles on my blog in my own words about my understanding of these concepts in Urdu poetry as a lot of my friends always ask me for guidance when it comes to writing in meters. For now, enjoy the Ghazal, which I think, for a first one, was not so bad.
kis se poocheiN k maajaraa kyaa hai?
ye sanam kyaa hai? ye Khudaa kyaa hai?
maiN to aashiq huuN mujh ko kyaa ma’aloom!
ye fanaa kyaa hai? ye baqaa kyaa hai?
[fanaa = mortality, baqaa = immortality]
bas tira Gham hii zindagii merii!
aur duniyaa se vaastaa kyaa hai?
maiN tiraa dost bhii, pujaarii bhii!
aa mire dil meiN! sochtaa kyaa hai?!?
chaNd lamhe haiN aakhir-e-shab ko
zikr-e-waslat meiN yuuN rakkhaa kyaa hai?
[aakhir-e-shab = the end of night, zikr-e-waslat = talk about meeting]
bevafaa! tujh se kyaa shikaayat ho?
zeest ne bhii mujhe diyaa kyaa hai??
[zeest = life]
raaz-e-hastii sa ban gayaa huuN maiN
merii aaNkhoN meiN DhuuNDataa kyaa hai?
[raaz-e-hastii = existence's secret]
dekh “tanhaa” ko kaise phirtaa hai!
kaun jaane use huaa kyaa hai??
Date September/2002
Tags: ghazal, my poetry, Poetry, urdu poetry
Vie
Dec 15, 2006 My French Poems, Poetry
This was my first French poem ever, written on 07/May/1992, sitting in a french class while looking at a really pretty “Quebecoise”…. Considering I was writing a poem in French while the teacher was talking makes it ok, at least I was doing something to improve my French. Here ya go:
Les cheveux comme les fils de soie
Les yeux contenant la vie et la joie
Les lèvres comme les feuilles de fleur
Que tu soit contente ou en malheure
Je serai tousjours en amour avec toi
car tu représente la vie pour moi
Tags: french poetry, My French Poems, my poetry, Poetry
Toi
Dec 15, 2006 My French Poems, Poetry
My second French poem, written while sitting in the college cafeteria in September 1993… what else there is to do when you are sitting in the cafeteria right?
Toi
La lumière de l’astre des nuits
la flamme de l’astre des jours
la couleur de la nuit sans lune
tout est contenu dans tes très beaux yeux!
Dans l’ombre de tes cheveux soyeux
la noirceur du soir est heureuse
sur ta main comme celle d’une princesse
la délicatesse, je la voit sans cesse
La solitude: je le sens pas avec toi
j’oublie le monde quand tu es avec moi
ta simplicité: c’est ce que j’adore le plus
tes rêves m’envahissent de plus en plus
les fleurs sont gené devant ta immense beauté
même la très belle lune n’est rien à côté
laisse moi t’emmener loin de ce monde
ou la peine et le chagrin ne sont pas dans les ondes
Tags: french poetry, My French Poems, my poetry, Poetry
Sang
Dec 15, 2006 My French Poems, Poetry
I figured, while I’m just filling up my blog with stuff, let’s post more of my old French poems, they do need a place! So here’s another poem that differed greatly from my normal style of writing, which usually includes love poems. The poem was written on 13/Sep/1994, during my college days. Sang (blood) was a good metaphor to be used for such a subject.
Sang
Sang. Sang qui circule
Dans mes veine bleus
Sang. Sang qui coule
Comme les larmes de mes yeux
Une lame du couteau
foncée dans mon ventre
rouge foncé, pas de l’eau
qui s’échappe et non rentre
Sang. Sang, oui je le vois
Qui est présent partout
partout autour de moi!
Sang. Qui me plais, surtout!!
Non, non! ne me toucher pas!
Laissez le sang sortir de là!
car cela me donne la sensation
que je n’ai pas de couleur
ni de nation!!
Tags: french poetry, My French Poems, my poetry, Poetry
Questions
Dec 14, 2006 My French Poems, Poetry
This poem was written in 1994. The poem represents some of the questions my mind still can’t find any answers to. However, the search is on. I stopped writing French poetry in 1995 and this, according to me, is one of the best poems I wrote. Although, I’m being extremely subjective in my assessment and I’m certain that anybody with any knowledge of French poetry will say, what a load of “crap”, but hey, I can’t help but like it. Anyway, entitled “Questions”, here’s the poem:
La mort, est-ce que c’est vraiment la fin?
ou commencement d’une vie aupès du divin?
La naissance, est-ce que c’est vraiment le début?
ou fin d’une vie qui va devenir notre but?
Ô mortel humain! pourquoi pense tu celà
que la vie existe dans le ciel et l’aù-delà?
Est-ce que c’est pour diminuer la peur de la mortalité?
ou pour avoir un pouvoir, une fausse immortalité?
“J’ai un ‘double’ qui va rejoindre le dieu”
disait le néandertale, “Je vais allais aux cieux!”*
sa conscience lui disait qu’il n’existera plus
donc il a inventé un concept qui lui a plu!
Mais est-ce vraiment une invention ce concept de dieu?
Ou quelque chose existe et ne peut être vu?
La science nous explique qu’il y a eu une explosion**
c’était condensé dans un point, et là, c’est en expansion
mais, d’où venait donc ce point infiniement dense?
qui nous a donné cet univers dans lequel on pense***
Dostoievski disait que le dieu est essentiel****
s’il n’existe pas, tous nous sera permis
Sartre supposa qu’il n’y a rien dans le ciel*****
et l’homme fait ce qu’il veut faire avec sa vie
Mais est-ce vrai que la vie est controleé par l’homme?
et que nous décidons qui nous serons et qui nous sommes?
Sortons de doutes ces notions de dieu, âme et vie!
assurons nous sur l’origine de l’univers de de la vie!
en cherchant les réponses à ces questions imposantes
Mais sera-t-on capable de les répondre sans mésententes?
Notes:
*Homo néandertalis : It is supposed that when the neandarthal acquired consciousness and became aware of death, he thought about life after death and invented the aspect of “double” or spirit. Evidence exists that the Neanderthal used to bury their dead along with materials to help their dead carry on their new journey.
**A reference is being made to the concept of Big Bang at this point and the fact that universe started with an explosion of an infinitely dense point. The universe is currently in expansion according to the widely accepted theory of Big Bang
***“To think is to exist” – (Je pense donc je suis – Descartes)
****Fedor Mikhailovitch Dostoievski (or Fyodor Dostoyevsky), a russian philosopher. he said: “If God doesn’t exist, there is nothing that can be termed immoral!”
***** The theory of “Existensialism” by Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher
Tags: french poetry, My French Poems, my poetry, Poetry
Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1
Dec 14, 2006 WinXP, techno-babble
If you have a SB Live Platinum 5.1 with the IR Drive in front and you got it when the CD that came with the sound card had only Win 98 drivers, well then you are like me! Everytime you need to do a reinstall of Win XP (and you know, this thing happens more than you can ever imagine) then you know that it’s a pain! Install all the software from the CD first, while Win XP gives you all kind of errors about the software not passing their so called quality tests, etc.
I’ll give you a simple solution to do that… without using the Live install CD or application CD. So what are the main components you need?
Drivers, Play-Center, Remote-Center– right?
Drivers: Creative has been kind enough to put the driver pack up on their site without requiring you to install the drivers from the CD. So download the file: Sound Blaster Live! – LiveDrvUni-Pack (English) from the Creative website for your Win XP. Click here for Live Platinum 5.1 + Windows XP combination.
Play-Center: from the same link above, download Creative PlayCenter Download for Creative Sound Blaster Live! series audio cards version 3.02.70. Now I know that their requirements say that you have to have a previous version of PlayCenter installed (which means putting in their old Application CD and upgrading and all that hassle that won’t let you do a clean install). Ignore that requirement. Make sure you have winzip 9.0 or above installed on your computer. Once the file is downloaded, right click on the file and extract it to a directory that you know. After the files have extracted, navigate to the directory. In there, you will see a directory called “install”. Open the “install” directory and look for a file called Version.ini. Edit the file with Notepad or your favourite text editor (which for me happens to be gVim).
Towards the bottom of the file will be a [VersionCompare] section like the one below.
[VersionCompare]
Lesser = 1
Equal = 1
Greater = -1
Set the listings under the [VersionCompare] section to:
Lesser = 0
Equal = 0
Greater = 0
Run the software and it won’t require a previous version being installed anymore.
For Remote Center, download the file Sound Blaster Live! – Remote Control Center (English) from the Creative site link I provided above and follow the same instructions as for the Play-Center. And if you like Creative Recorder, do exactly the same for Creative Recorder by downloading Sound Blaster Live! – Creative Recorder (English) file and changing the [VersionCompare] section in the Version.ini file.
There you have it, a clean install of all SB Live Platinum 5.1 Software and drivers.
Tags: drivers, sound blaster, sound blaster live platinum 5.1, windows xp
