First snowfall of Winter in Germany - too much snow

Last Thursday, it started snowing for the first time in this winter. Overnight there fell a lot of snow. On Friday morning, everything was covered in snow. The city's snow cleaning services were working and clearing snow from roads and footpaths.

But Friday afternoon, it started to snow again. Till the evening it got very bad, so that the city had to restrict its bus system. All buses going on hills were stopped. My city lies on hills, that means many destinations were not reachable through public transport. My university has many campuses around the city. The campus where I work is on a hill. So no bus was coming to my campus as well. A colleague was nice enough to give me a ride home in his car, otherwise I would have to walk down the hill and up another hill to my home.

It has been snowing almost everyday since then and the little snow that melts during the day is replaced by new snow overnight.

Won a robotic competition in Germany

On 2nd October, one day before the national day of Germany when East and West Germany got united, we participated in a robotics competition for which we were preparing since last year. The competition was organized by a renowned German company building laser sensors and other stuff, called SICK. The competition is thus called SICK Robot Day. It comprised of a circular area with numbers drawn on big posters and hanged along the boundary of the arena. Within the arena, multiple obstacles are placed at different places on the ground. Each robot has to recognize the numbers and drive to them in sequence while avoiding the obstacles.

There were 12 German and 4 European teams. Our robot (called "Attempto") completed the whole task in 3 minutes. Our robot hit some obstacles, so including the penalties, our task time was 3:18 minutes. Each robot was given a time of 10 minutes to complete the task. The robot at second position completed the task in over 6 minutes. No other robot was able to correctly complete the task. One other robot completed the task, but it misjudged one of the numbers. Here is the video of the successful run of our robot:

Slow Tsunami - worst floods in Pakistan

These are the most destructive floods in Pakistan's history. After the flood, the real destruction starts, as the crops are destroyed, livestock killed, roads and bridges dismantled, houses unusable, and worse, diseases spreading from standing water.

United Nations is repeating calls for aid. Please help.

Google Blogaward for my Blog

Since a couple of days I was receiving comments on my blog congratulating me for winning the Pakistani blog award. I checked the section of the Google+CIO award website containing my blog, but there was no announcement there, and my blog still had less votes than some others. So I thought of these comments as spam.

But today I received congrats on an email forum of old students of FAST-NUCES, which made me very curious. I went to the home page of the award website and there I found the announcement. It was a pleasant surprise for me since I entered my blog very late in the competition and thus it had received less votes.
http://blogawards.pk/

It was a beautiful 5-hour event and I missed it :(

Country Manager of Intel Pakistan (Ashar Zaidi) was the judge of my category, and hear his flattering comments about it:



They even made an animation about my Blog Award on youtube :)




More details of the event:
http://ciopakistan.com/2010/05/1st-annual-pakistan-blog-awards-new-media-unconference-2010/ 
 

Solution of Pakistan's administrative problems?

Recently, there has been much talk in media of increasing the number of provinces of Pakistan to solve the many administrative problems. Both politicians and TV anchors have repeated this plea. Now that the constitutional reforms have been agreed upon, maybe the Government should focus on this issue. It is often said that the provinces of Pakistan are too big to manage, either population-wise or area-wise. This has resulted in the focus of govt resources on provincial capitals and around. Creating new provinces will also solve the problem of separatists and smaller provinces complaining about bigger provinces. No province will then become the center of power. All the developed countries of the world and neighbours of Pakistan have many more provinces or states than us.

So how should new provinces be created? There could be many ways and the parliament would know the best. But here are two scenarios that come to my mind:

Scenario 1: Divide each of the provinces into two parts. Since Punjab is the biggest, it may be divided into three parts to get a balance with other provinces. Then we would have 9 provinces: Quetta, Kalat; Hyderabad, Sukkur; Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan; Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan Divisions.

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/modern/pakadmin/pakadmin.html


Scenario 2: Another scenario presented in the media is to convert all the previous divisions into provinces. This scenario has two potential subscenarios: First is the divisions before 1990s. Then we would have 20 provinces:
Quetta, Kalat, Sibi, Makran,
Hyderabad, Sukkur, Karachi,
Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Hazara, Kohat, Malakand,
Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Gujranwala, Dera Gazi Khan, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Bahawalpur.

The second subscenario is the divisions that existed till 2000. These were 26 in number, thus creating 26 provinces:

Quetta, Kalat, Sibi, Makran, Naseerabad, Zhob;
Hyderabad, Sukkur, Karachi, Larkana, Mirpur Khas;
Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Hazara, Kohat, Malakand,
Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Gujranwala, Dera Gazi Khan, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Bahawalpur.

Many people complain that only 5 cities are being heavily developed, and most provincial funds are spent on the provincial capitals. Creating 26 provinces would give an immediate benefit that instead of 5 cities, we would have at least 27 cities which would be developing fast.

Final solution to my slow notebook: parts replacement by Dell

This weekend, my laptop came down to an agonising slow speed. It was getting heated too much. The voice of the fan had also slowed a lot. I decided it was time to call Dell again. So I called them Monday and explained the problem with my Dell Inspiron 1521. The guy agreed to replace its motherboard. The next morning, a technician came with a motherboard, fan and heat sink unit. He laid out a rounded sheet and plugged its wire to the power output. He wrapped another of its wires around his wrist. I asked if it was a protection against electric shock, but he said that it would protect the notebook against any static charge. he opened up the complete notebook and replaced the three parts. I asked him many questions. He mentioned that the typical life of a notebook is 6-7 years. He also showed me a ball of thready dust (about the size of a big cherry) that was stuck in the fan. He told me that the notebook has a protection mechanism such that it reduces the processor and graphics processor to reduce the heat, if fan or heat sink is not working. If that doesn't work, it shuts down the system.

After that, i turned on the system and I was able to watch youtube videos in fullscreen again. My warranty would expire this year. I guess I'll renew it to get my notebook parts replaced often :)

Kashmir Day

Today is Kashmir day. The day we show solidarity with the Kashmiri people suffering decades of violence and occupation. It all started in 1947, when the British left the Indian subcontinent and gave the option to all states whether to join India or Pakistan or stay independent. The population of Jammu and Kashmir was Muslim majority and naturally wanted the join Pakistan. However, the ruler of Kashmir was a Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh. He wanted to remain independent. People revolted in western Kashmir to overthrow the Raja, and their neighbor tribesmen crossed the border to help them. They were advancing fast towards the center. The Hindu ruler asked India for military help to save his throne, but India refused to help unless he joined India. So he joined India and India invaded Kashmir.

Later, India took the issue to UN in 1948, which passed a resolution asking for a Plebiscite so that the people could themselves decide upon the fate of their state. Both India and Pakistan agreed to this. However, the plebiscite never took place. Pakistan has repeatedly called for the plebiscite according to UN resolution, but India refuses and claims that Kashmir is a part of India. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 47 on April 21, 1948, which stated "that the final disposition of the State of Jammu and Kashmir will be made in accordance with the will of the people expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations". The cease fire took place on December 31, 1948.

The UN Security Council later passed four new resolutions, revising the terms of Resolution 47 to include a synchronous withdrawal of both Indian and Pakistani troops from the region, per the recommendations of General Andrew McNaughton. Uptil now UN arbitrators put forward 11 different proposals for the demilitarization of the region - every one of which was accepted by Pakistan, but rejected by the Indian government. Let us hope and work to get this plebiscite done in Jammu and Kashmir and let the people decide. Pakistan says that it would accept any decision from the people of Jammu and Kashmir. However, this is not acceptable to India.