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:

This spring has been quite unusual weatherwise in Southern Ontario. We had two instances of freak snow storms.

Too often, people do not receive the recognition they deserve for acts they did in a timely manner. In this article I wish to write a tribute to my mother, Elham Abou Youssef إلهام أبو يوسف, in order to thank her for what she did.My mother's saga started with my father's prolonged illness and battle with chronic liver disease. This illness caused him not to be able to work in the last few years of his life. When he finally died, he left me (six years old) and my brother (two years old) in the care of my mother.Although she was in her early thirties then, she never thought of remarrying, nor to send the boys to their paternal grandfather in the rural village of El Sakakra. Instead, she went back to work in order to provide for the two young boys.

As I wrote in another article, Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Spamming are two different things, yet technologically very close.

I had my own brush with Search Engine spammers on two different occasions.

Although Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a cottage industry with many companies claiming they can help your site acheive top rank, it still means different things for different people.

For some it means just how to make your site get better ranking in search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and others. For others, it means how to do so by shortcuts, tricks, ethically questionable methods, and other less savoury means.

Basics of Search Engine Optimization

First, we should start by seeing what Google, the current leading search engine, has to say about the topic. They clearly state what is acceptable and what is not. They also have a facts and myths page.

Google Maps is another technological innovation by Google. Sites with maps have been around for a long time, including Yahoo Maps and MapQuest, and others.

The interface to Google Maps is very clean and simple, yet very functional. You double click to center, you slide the bar to zoom in or out, and you can drag the map.

You can search on an address or a business, and get driving directions.

Recently, Google added Satellite Images to the maps as well. They also expanded to UK and British Isles.

A new approach that is gaining in popularity among web developers is using XmlHttpRequest with Javascript.

This is not a new approach since XmlHttpRequest has been around for some time. What is new is that (a) it is being widely used by Google, and (b) a new name was coined for it recently.