One of history's most controversial characters is Al Hakim Bi Amr Allah. Seen as God incarnate by some, as an eccentric "mad" ruler by others, and vilianised by yet others.

Al Hakim was a Caliph of the Fatimid dynasty of Egypt, North Africa, Palestine and Syria. Contrary to the majority of their subjects, who were Sunni, the Fatimids were Shia of the Ismaili branch. They engaged in missionary work to spread their sect's belief as wide as possible.

I have always admired the BBC as a mostly objective, neutral, comprehensive and balanced news outlet. A rare gem among the commerical monoculture dominant in America.However, I caught a few incidents lately where there was a lack of context and background. There are very uncharacteristic of the BBC, since I am used to them being very thorough and balanced. I don't know if it is sloppy reporters or editors or what.Here are some examples:1.

Something unusual happened a while back at work. While I almost never write on my web site about work, I am making an exception here for reasons that will become apparent as you read more.I came under a new manager lately, let us call him S. When I was checking with colleagues who know him better than I do, one made the comment: "He will be the most technical manager you have ever had".I never made much of this comment until I had a chance to work with S closely on a project. What is amazing was that he is really hands on to a degree that you cannot imagine. He knows where the source repositories are, knows which part does what, and will sit and debug code with you, knowing the ins and outs of development.

As the phenomenon of blogging gained more popularity, there was bound to be conflict between what is personal and what is work.

Several people indeed got fired because of what they wrote about work in their blogs. This is just one of the pitfalls of blogging.

Earlier in May, I received several pictures from my brother in Egypt of some family members, dated may 2, 2005. What struck me was how I do not recall the stark difference in climate between Canada and Egypt, and its effect on crops.In one of the pictures, my uncle is standing in a partially harvested wheat field, with ripe golden wheat ears showing up clearly. This is the first crop of the season. In most of Egypt, there are three crops per year. In another picture, my brother is below a mulberry tree, with my nephew up in its branches. The tree has white ripe fruit on it.All the people in the pictures are still wearing "winter clothing" of sorts: long sleeve shirts and jackets. If temperature there is 15C or so, it is considered really cold!

Currency Exchange is the latest module I wrote for Drupal. It uses data from Yahoo Finance, and calculates the exchange amount if you give it one. It will also provide a link with details, charts and history from Yahoo.The module also provides a callable API for other Drupal components so they can do currency exchange on the fly. This allows things like giving estimates in other currencies for services you offer, or billing customers in a different currency (e.g. ecommerce module).

The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that it would not hear an appeal in the case where a native Mi'kmaq woman was called Kemosabe, and that it is not "overtly racial". The person who said this says that he things it meant "faithful friend".

When news leaked that the U.S. State Department annual report on terrorism showed that terrorist incidents have in fact increased after the invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration decided to scrap the report, since it shows that the world is not safer after this invasion.

Now, it seems that pressure has caused the administration to release the report with several interesting statistics facts in it. Here is a very telling summary: