If you search Google on certain words, you will find that the second result is my article on the Dubai Snowdome. This has caused confusion for some people. Today I got this email titled "Dubai Snowdome" from Monika from Virginia, USA, who uses AOL, saying:

Which winter-sports facilities are planned? Is there anything for luge, skeleton, bobsleigh? Thank you very much.

This is yet another case of mistaken identity.

Newsweek columnist Steven Levy writes about former Apple and Microsoft executive Linda Stone, who coined a new term: Continuous Partial Attention (CPA) where attention to almsot anything is almost always partial, whether they be Blackberries, cell phones, instant messages, email, ... etc.There is a Slashdot discussion on this article.I have written a while back on this "syndrome" in previous articles, namely: Interruption Interruptions, and Life Interrupted.

2bits.com my Drupal development and customization consultancy has launched a new unique looking theme for its site. This was long in the making, but we are very happy with the end result as it looks fresh and unique. Thanks to the excellent design and artistic skills of Ivan Raszl of Creativine.com. Ivan also designed the baheyeldin.com theme.Apart from the new theme, this is a plain corporate brochure type of site, running on 4.6, with a few demos of modules I've written (all available on Drupal.org, such as stockapi, currency, feedback and sitemenu).

Here is another case of mistaken identity. One page I wrote about Alexandria, Egypt satellite images and maps is highly ranked in Google, and lots of people land on it when searching for "satellite images alexandria" (try it yourself).In this case, I am asked to supply a satellite image of Alexandria for a fee. 

Good evening,     I am [name withheld], I work in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the Alexandria and Mediterranean Research center department.

I got this email today (in Arabic).

برجاء الستفسار عن مواعيد تشغيل عرض القبة السماوية يوم الجمعة 17/03/2006 ويم السبت 18/03/2006 شكرا طيار / م 

What this is saying is

I would like to inquire on the hours of operation of  the Planetarium for Friday 17/03/2006 and Saturday 18/03/2006. Thanks. Pilot M [name withheld]

Many people in the past have confused my site for the Library of Alexandria, which also has  a planetarium.

Brian Krebs writes in the Washington Post about an online interview with someone who setup a botnet of 30,000 Windows PCs  by downloading malicious source code and making it into a worm.The main reason is unpatched Windows that lack security fixes. Slashdot has a discussion on this.

The current US Administration has made it known to the rest of the world that its military adventures abroad are motivated by values such as "freedom" and "democracy".The irony is that only one in four of Americans can identify more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution (Freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petitioning the government). This is about the same as those who can name all the five members of the Simpsons family ... 

Here is a quick guide on what you need to develop modules for Drupal, with useful links to get you started. First, you need to know what is Drupal is, and what it can do. You then need to learn PHP, if you do not know it already. After which you have to setup a development environment. You need a computer of course.

I think that Drupal as a community is now at a crossroads.

Having been at the Drupal Conference in Vancouver from February 7th to  9th, I was overwhelmed by what was happening. There are too many people in attendance, and talking about all sorts of things. Two consulting companies had a whole contingent each in attendance. These are Trellon and CivicActions.

So Far So Good

So far, Drupal's core has been contributed to by volunteers, with just Dries Buytaert and Steven Wittens as committers of patches to core. There is no influence from large shops or corporations.

Language is a complex thing, and is one of the things that make humans human. You may have seen this in your inbox:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rest can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.