Misc on Emad Alashi

Simulate Azure IoT Telemetry And Device Twin using MQTT Directly

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 09:21:28 +0000

TLDR;

In this post I show how to simulate Azure IoT device D2C (Device to cloud) messages telemetry, and Device Twin Reported Properties using MQTTX CLI.

Introduction

I have been working in several Azure IoT projects in the past 3 years, where MQTT was the preferred device/server communication protocol. In these projects, there has been a repeatable need to generate MQTT messages to simulate devices’ telemetry, without going through the Azure CLI.

M5 Atom Lite, Home Assistant, ESPHome, and Capacitive Soil Sensor

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 01:24:01 +0000

Summary

Update: Tatham had a great thread of tweets about this posts where he filled several gaps in this post, including the need of the MQTT server. Check it out here: https://twitter.com/TathamOddie/status/1357904732027637760?s=20

In this post, I describe what I did to set up an M5 Atom Lite with a capacitive soil moisture sensor, configure it with ESPHome and connect it to Home Assistant. The Home Assistant is deployed in a Docker container on my Synology NAS (DS220+), and my dev machine is a MacbookPro.

Contributing to Open Source Software with Project KEDA

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 12:54:23 +0000

Summary

This post explains my latest experience in contributing to open source software with project KEDA.

Last week, the KEDA team accepted and merged a pull request I created to support Pod Identity in the Event Hub scaler. @Simon Wight, an amazing community person, encouraged me to write about my experience (cheers for the nudge Simon :)), and this post is that.

I will explain how it all started, what I did to get it done, and all the fun and challenges that happened during that.

“Azure Functions on Kubernetes” Talk With Integration Down Under Meetup

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 05:18:44 +0000

Earlier this month I was invited to talk about Azure Functions on Kubernetes at the Integration Down Under meetup. It’s an amazing meet up held by highly regarded professionals like from all around Australia.

Below is the recording of the session, make sure to follow their channel because they post regularly. Also all feedback is welcome :).

My Twitch Streaming Setup – Part 2 Software

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 07:55:20 +0000

This is part 2 of the three-parts blog post about my Twitch streaming setup.

Hardware

Software (this post)

Humanware

As I have said before, I have learned a lot from amazing streamers like @noopkat and @csharpfritz so you will find a lot of this content matches theirs.

OBS Streaming Configuration

OBS is the main software that streams to the streaming service (Twitch in my case). I used Streamlabs at the beginning, but because it's just an abstraction over OBS, I faced some limitations when I wanted to try different plugins. So I preferred to play directly with the OBS itself.

My Twitch Streaming Setup – Part 1 Hardware

Tue, 19 May 2020 13:42:49 +0000

There has a been a lot of interest lately about home studio setup for streaming and recording videos. In this post I will explain my Twitch streaming setup, and my experience thus far.It’s been less than a year for my journey in streaming on Twitch, and I am still learning and trying things out, so take these posts with this context.

While writing this post, I realised that it’s going to be a long one, so I will break it down into three posts:

How to Fix Minikube Invalid Profile

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 14:01:56 +0000

TDLR; Minikube recent version might not be able to read old profiles. In this post we will see how to fix a Minikube invalid profile, at least how I did it in my case.

minikube profile list, invalid profile

Last Saturday, I had the privilege to speak at GIB Melbourne online, where I presented about Self-hosted Azure API Management Gateway. In the presentation, I needed to demonstrate using Minikube, and I spent couple of days preparing my cluster and making sure everything is good and ready.

Posh-git on Mac using Oh My Zsh Themes

Wed, 16 Oct 2019 10:30:07 +0000

This post explains how to have posh-git prompt style in Oh My Zsh theme on Mac.

After 4 years of using Windows, I am coming back to using a Mac. And there are so many things in Windows I am missing already. One of these things is posh-git; I loved how in one glance to your prompt you know the status of your git repo: how many files changed, how many added, how many deleted, how many indexed… just love it!

Learning a New Programming Language (Go language as an Example)

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 13:38:25 +0000

Summary

This post explains why and how I learned the Go language. Hopefully this will help you to learn it quickly, or will inspire you on how to learn new languages.

The Reason to Learn a New Language

There can be many reasons why someone would want to learn a new language, the main ones to me are: 1) To solve a current business problem 2) Learn concepts to adapt to current tools 3) For fun and passion. Of course, you can have a mix of these reasons to push you to learn a new language, or maybe just one strong enough of these reasons.

RBAC in Azure Kubernetes Service AKS on Twitch!

Mon, 18 Mar 2019 23:06:51 +0000

tldr; I will be streaming on Twitch next Monday (25th of March) at 8:30 Melbourne time (GMT+11), configuring Azure Kubernetes AKS to use RBAC.

For a long while, I’ve been thinking about streaming live development to Twitch or YouTube. Having spent some time behind the microphone while making DotNetArabi podcast, I can say there is a satisfiying feeling in producing content in a media format through which you can connect with the audience.

Productivity Satisfaction Maturity Levels

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 07:05:17 +0000

Such a fancy title ha, probably the influence of our industry (bad influence)! Well you can just substitute it with something like “These are the stages of productivity between which the satisfaction jumps in exponential magnitudes”.

Note: before we check these stages out, it goes without saying that all the “he” in this article are absolutely replaceable with “she”; it’s just that the “he/she” style is too verbose.

0. Ignorance

In this stage the individual doesn’t know what he is missing , he does not add any value to himself or the community; he enjoys “time-waste” activities, or watching TV YouTube. Indeed there is joy in being a couch potato, but it is negligible compared to the next levels, which he hasn’t experienced yet, thus explains why I gave it the number 0.

Consultant Skills: Self-Confidence

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 05:51:44 +0000

I have blogged before about some of the skills that a consultant should be acquainted with like Story Telling, Knowledge Depth & Breadth, and Having an Opinion, all of which I see very important. But in this post I would not hesitate to say that self-confidence is the single most important amongst them all!

Before we continue, what does “self-confidence” mean? my words of choice would be: “it is the belief someone has about his/her capability of accomplishing something that he/she hasn’t tried before“. Notice here that it’s a “belief”

Consultant Skills: Having an Opinion

Sun, 16 Nov 2014 00:06:35 +0000

This is the third of three posts I’ve written about consultant’s skills, check the previous posts if you like:

————-

We work in an industry where one general problem can be solved by too many ways, each emerges from a different mindset and different circumstances. But also, in this industry there is community pressure, there are “cool geeks” and “cool solutions”, there are “best practices”, and there are hypes and fads.

9 Things I Learned From Skiing

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 10:56:54 +0000

I had the opportunity to visit Mount Buller to do skiing for the first time in my life (thanks to Joshua McKinny), and the experience was UNBELIEVABLE! In addition to the loads of fun I had, I learned some life lessons that can be applied in any field, even software! and I’d like to share with you.

When in doubt, get rid of doubt.
A night before the trip, I was at the shops. I saw this winter warm hat that I thought I should buy, then I remembered I had one at home but I wasn’t sure if I still had it; I remembered one time when I needed it and I couldn’t find it, so I had doubts!
I had to take a decision, something like the following diagram:

Apparently possibility D has a much higher cost compared to any A, B, and C. And the only way to avoid it is to take decision X rather than Y… I chose Y, and ended up with D!
At the end I managed, but let’s just say I was left in an embarrassing situation.
Everything has pros and cons
Between choosing Skiing and Snowboarding, I chose Skiing; the majority of opinions was that Skiing is easier and you have more control, which is better for beginners. But this came with a cost; the boots were horrific to walk with, and I had to carry two sliders and two poles all around! I don’t regret my choice, but let’s say I am a lot more aware that there are cons with every choice we make, the question is are we willing to make the most of it or not.
Listen to the experts
Josh gave us of a long list of advice beforehand; what stuff to bring along, where to get the gears from, what we should expect…, all of which made a huge difference. And whenever you fail to listen you are beaten, I will never forget a scarf when I am at the top of the mountain!
It’s more difficult than I thought
I judged Skiing too early, from the videos and photos I have seen in my life, it seemed too easy! just go in angles and change the direction once you reach the edge of the slope, and repeat until you reach the end. Guess what? Easier said than done!
Skiing literally is sliding on a slippery surface, while you try your best to control sliding; the sliders are long, heavy, and go in all directions, the amount of effort you have to give to control the sliders to go in a certain direction is big, and they don’t just listen! the angles in which you have to position them to accomplish that control is tricky, the pressure on your knees is enormous, your body’s position makes a big difference, and the slightest loss of control of the sliders your body will start wobbling, and you don’t just cross your legs to fix that! Oh and did I mention that there are types of snow, some of which makes things even harder?…ENHALES!
The idea of this lesson, don’t just underestimate and judge too quickly, anything, unless you try it out first.
**You don’t know what you are missing, until you try it. It’s loads of fun!
** Sometimes we are just too lazy, and due to our laziness (or let’s say “comfort zone”) we miss out on too many opportunities. I knew that it’s going to take me a day, and it’s going to be cold, and I have to learn skiing, and was afraid that I wouldn’t enjoy it…but…I pushed myself; I also knew that this is not going to happen again anytime soon and should tick it off my bucket list, let me tell you this: IT WAS AWESOME! Doing it myself revealed many aspect I’d never get from watching a video, the mere speed a human can reach on these sliders is of utmost thrill, let alone the joy when you really start controlling it.
It really made me think of all the things I might be missing due to the same reason, whether it was leisure or career opportunities
You are going to fall, and it’s going to hurt
There is absolutely no escape from falling, unless you are an expert, than you already have fallen plenty of times, and to the surprise, it hurts! I fell so many times: one time on my arm which ended up swollen, one time twisted my leg, and another time was displaced couple of meters away from my slider after it flew off.
These falls were necessary; I knew exactly what to do, and what NOT to do, because I didn’t only “hear” about the consequences, I lived them, and they hurt! So because of these falls I had to learn, because of these falls I became a better skier
In fact pain is part of the fun
The falls mentioned in point 5 were painful indeed, but they also were fun; it breaks the routine of the body, the monotonous experience we go through in our lives, being thrown and twisted in the air, and feeling your body going through a different experience, all of this had its flavor, it might be funny, but it really did (don’t break something while you do that).
But more important than that, these falls also gave a better meaning for success; when I slide for longer periods without falling, the feeling of success I have is deep, and meaningful. If it was too easy that success would taste like…meh.
Following instructions is important, but so is following instinct
I had a lesson by an instructor for I am an absolute newbie, the instructor gave us the instructions on how to stop and manuever, along with some other instructions, and then released us to the wild. I tried to follow all his instructions perfectly, usually I am a good student, but I still kept falling!
Then at one of the slopes I felt like I should be leaning my body in a certain angle, and press with my toes down, it was an absolutely instinctive feeling, not a trial and error thing, and guess what…it worked! the instructor didn’t mention this; maybe because he never really gave it a deep thought, maybe he has been skiing all his life, regardless of the reason, he gave me instructions that weren’t enough, I had to use my instinct that proved highly valuable in addition to the external knowledge.
Most importantly, company is everything
This, my dear reader, was of the utmost importance; Josh and Neil were extremely good company, very understanding, patient with my primitive skiing skills, easy going with suggestions, generous, and full of knowledge that filled the trip with beneficial discussions. All of which allowed me to enjoy things enough to come up with the previous 8 lessons!

Did I learn more lessons? indeed, but 9 is a nice number 😉

Consultant Skills: Knowledge Depth & Breadth

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 22:03:32 +0000

It’s a crazy era for IT! everyday new concepts, libraries, products, and even languages are introduced; so many solutions for so many problems. It is indeed the era of specialization.

There is absolutely no way to grasp all this knowledge, specialization and concentration of knowledge has to occur, and we must choose a technology to specialize in. But… (You knew this was coming, didn’t you)… this is not good enough!
Before you jump on me and start yelling “But you just confessed; it’s impossible!”, let me explain.

Develop without Googling

Sat, 11 Jan 2014 10:21:38 +0000

Yesterday I was playing with Kudu, the Azure websites deployment engine, and it was all fun and joy.

While I was happily hitting the key strokes of joy enjoying the new cool stuff I implementing, I got an error, and shamefully the minute I saw the error I copied and pasted it to Google!
For my bad (and later good) luck, after opening two links from the search results I discovered that I am late; I have to hit the road, so I instantly closed my laptop, pushed it in my bag and ran.

Speed Reading Is Nice…But

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 08:29:13 +0000

If you are in the software industry, you HAVE to read, read, and read; and it’s not only the “of course reading is essential”, it’s a matter of life and death…of your career!
And there is tons of material every day: books, blogs, news, articles,….etc., so how to manage? of course is Speed Reading.

Once you master it, yes…you will use it for every reading situation, and at this point, my dear reader, you start doing it wrong!
It is a tool like every tool we have; suitable for some scenarios, and not suitable for others!
For example, it’s good for the following scenarios:

Working with Windows 8 on Parallels 7

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:46:50 +0000

I have installed the latest Parallels update and created a new Windows 8 virtual machine.

Being in all-touch universe right now, the guys behind Windows 8 decided to use corners of the screen to do certain actions like showing Start, active applications, or the settings flay-out.
The issue is that I couldn’t use these corners because Parallels menu would pop up the minute your mouse touches the top edge!

My work around was to enable “Active Screen Corners” on Parallels for my virtual machine and then assign them to nothing, access it by going to Configure > Full Screen. Check the following screen shot:

Html.EditorFor, Model Property vs RouteData Value

Sun, 13 May 2012 15:41:40 +0000

The ASP.NET MVC team made our lives easier when they created the Html editor extension method Html.EditoFor(); you just pass the model property and it creates the right editor, filling it with the property’s value…but not always!

Let’s consider that we have the conventional route definition:

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default", // Route name
    "{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional } // Parameter defaults
);

and this simple action method:

The Magical Effect of Simple Encouraging Words

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:16:14 +0000

Recently I had to go through some health checkup that included tests for my eye, one of these tests required from me to keep my eye open for a long period of time concentrating continuously into an extremely strong and annoying light.
During the test I kept receiving encouraging words from the examining doctor every couple of seconds: “Bravo Emad! very good concentration, keep it up, that’s it”.
Even though it was a simple task and me being in my 30’s!… I still had a strong feeling that I was doing something right! and that I should keep doing what I was doing, to give more effort no matter how annoying and hurting this intense light was; and all of this was due to his words! the more he encouraged the wider I opened my eye and concentrated.

Criticizing Google Reader’s UI

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:29:45 +0000

Since Google changes the look of its products very often, most likely this post will be out of date soon, nonetheless I believe it’d be a good to share my thoughts about Google Reader’s current UI… with a little rant.

Lots of real-state waste: All the areas surrounded with yellow borders are wasted, especially that I have no control over hiding or showing them (click on image to see it real size):

“AmmanTT: Developer Edition” presentation and slides

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:46:14 +0000

It was a very interesting event “AmmanTT: Developer Edition” which took place last Tuesday; the team did a very good job putting it together, it is really great seeing this great effort put into such fruitful events; moving the community steps forward, so thank you AmmanTT team, you rock.

Hereby I post the slides I presented in my talk:

Software Life Cycle, Humans & Code

HTML5 and IE presentation on Microsoft Open Door

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:32:14 +0000

And it’s over, the Microsoft Open Door event is behind us now, and so was my presentation about HTML5 and IE; all praise to god, the feedback was great and I am humbled by the nice compliments.
If you were among the audience and you have any comment, question, or critique, you are most welcome to contact me anytime.

Below is the presentation slides as I promised:

HTML5 & IE

If Crashing Gracefully Is Nice, Recovering From It Is Awesome

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:54:31 +0000

Last Saturday we had a SharePointSaturday event here in Jordan, in which I had the pleasure of interviewing Joel Oleson and Michael Noel for DotNetArabi.

At the end of Joel’s valuable interview, which can happen only in a life time, I stopped the recording by hitting the “Stop” button, simple. Surprisingly, instead of stopping the recording, Audacity just froze! I could hear myself screaming inside “NOOO!!!”, I guess even Joel heard that! the whole machine stuck that I had to force it to a Hard Shut down.

DotNetArabi Podcast Equipment

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 19:14:22 +0000

After publishing 8 episodes of DotNetArabi, I think it would be nice to share on this blog how it goes and what equipment needed in the process. But before we begin, dear reader, note that I am not an expert, I am still in the beginning of the way, though it’s going good so far.

My working machine is HP dv 6700 laptop, my first trials with recording was with simple microphone like the ones you use for chats; recording in winter made things smooth, but when summer came a long the heating problem became obvious in the low quality of the audio recorded, in addition to the higher target I needed anyway, so a different measure had to take place.

Communication Skills Session at MSP – Jordev

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:24:03 +0000

I just finished a session about Communication Skills one-to-one for the MSP program with Microsoft and Jordev. As I promised the audience, here are the slides shared on the very good site SlideShare:

Communication Skills one To one

View more presentations from Emad Alashi.

Basics Of Successful Communication

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:32:20 +0000

It’s a waste of time trying to explain how important communication is in life, whether it is at work or personal life. So I will start immediately in group of points I find it to be basics when it comes to successful communication in general, and verbal communication in specific.

Here is the list of actions you need to take in order to explain your thoughts as clear as and descriptive as possible. I tried to put them in their proper order considering the communication process, though they can overlap:

DotNetArabi Episode 4 دوت نت عربي الحلقة الرابعة

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:48:49 +0000

I ~~just~~ published episode 4 of the DotNetArabi podcast on www.dotnetarabi.com.

This episode was with guest Mohammad Zayed, he works as Strategic Technology Specialist in Microsoft Jordan. he worked on different Microsoft technologies ranging from Windows Forms applications, Web Forms and Mobile.
Mohammad talks in this episode about Sharepoint, the in’s and out’s, the benefits and the challenges.

لقد تم نشر الحلقة الرابعة من دوت نت عربي على www.dotnetarabi.com ، التي كان الضيف فيها محمد زايد. يعمل محمد زايد حاليا كمتخصص تقنيات استراتيجي لكبار العملاء في مايكروسوفت الأردن. و تكلم في هذه الحلقة عن الـ Sharepoint: ماهيته، و ما يلزم لتثبيته، و تراخيصه، و نقاط قوته، و نقاط التحدي فيه، و الكثير من المعلومات القيمة.

JIT compiler and "Method Not Found" error

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:22:06 +0000

Actually it can be “Could Not Load Type” too, but the reason is the same: you are referencing the wrong DLL version.

well, this is totally understandable; of course you are going to get this exception when you use an outdated DLL that lacks the new extra parameter to THAT certain method. But the interesting part is it will not happen when you first run your application, and neither when execution reaches the changed method; it will happen when code-execution reaches a place that REFERENCES that changed method.

“طور نفسك برمجيا”…موجة من عمر قعدان

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:41:08 +0000

قبل أيام، كتب أخي عمر قعدان في مدونته مقالا بعنوان “شيفرة مصدرية للقراءة” و في آخره استعمل أسلوب “الموجة” في المدونات و هو أسلوب مبتكر في عالم التدوين يقوم صاحبه بكتابة مقال، ثم يطلب في آخر المقال من مدونين معينين كتابة المقال نفسه لكن من تجربتهم الشخصية، و بدورهم يفعلون الأمر ذاته مع آخرين إن أرادوا.

يطلق على هذا الأسلوب في الإنجليزية كلمة “Tagging” و برأيي أن أقرب مرادف لهذا المعنى في اللغة العربية ضمن هذا السياق هو كلمة “موجة”. و ها أنا أستجيب للموجة التي أطلقها أخي عمر.

DotNetArabi Episode 3 دوت نت عربي الحلقة الثالثة

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:42:37 +0000

I just published episode 3 of the DotNetArabi podcast on www.dotnetarabi.com.

This episode was with guest Mahmoud Alamanasrah, who have 7 years of experience on data-driven web applications with SQL Server. The episode was about the new features of SQL Server 2008, great for all developers who interact closely with SQL Server.

على موقع www.dotnetarabi.com تجدون الحلقة الثالثة من “دوت نت عربي”. موضوع الحلقة هو الـ”إس كيو إل سيرفر 2008 SQL Server”، عن آخر المستجدات و بعض النصائح العامة.
كان ضيف الحلقة الزميل محمود المناصرة، و هو عضو نشط في مجتمع مطروي الـ”دوت نت” في الأردن Jordev، لديه 7 سنوات من الخبرة و يعمل حاليا كـ “Technical Team Leader” أي قائد فريق مبرمجين.

Got a GPS? …Lets Play Geocaching

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:54:05 +0000

The other day I was roaming the Internet; link here link there, tweet here tweet there, and I stumbled upon a very nice game called Geocaching.
Geocaching, simply, is a game in which players hide items in any place in the world, and the other players should find, yes…Treasure Hunt. But the fun part is it’s Global, and the GPS is your primary tool!

The players who want to hide an item, should first label it and give it a unique identifier, then record the coordinates (longitude and latitude) of the place they hide it in, and finally they should post the information along with the coordinates on the game’s website www.geocaching.com.

Technical Team Leader…Who Is Not

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:19:50 +0000

When I started this blog my goal was to make it a technical one, in which most posts would have code, samples, screen shots, architecture…etc. This was the primary goal, though it is totally fine with me to talk about software life in general.

The issue is that I get the ideas of my posts from my real daily life, which is mostly code challenges at work. I do write code in my leisure time, but for sure it is not as thorough as the thing at work.
And since I haven’t posted any technical stuff lately…the simple conclusion is I DON’T SEE CODE ANYMORE!

Fear and Humbleness…Obstacles in The Way of Success

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:43:30 +0000

“Oh no, I won’t go into that code; I am not that intelligent!”
“oh no, I don’t want to try this software…I don’t know what it will do to my machine!”
“Oh no, I can’t write such a unique blog post!”
“Oh no, I will not twiply to that celebrity…come on…he is a celebrity!”

These phrases kept chasing me for a long while in my life, and sometimes still does. It had the worst effect on my progress, I couldn’t move an inch forward; by a deep feeling I didn’t confront, I was afraid of failure, mixed with a feeling of negative humbleness.
But that was it, I couldn’t stay as a prisoner to these chains, and leave these cookies of success to people who might have less resources and powers.

Gaza, Starvation For 18 Months And a Massacre Today!

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 15:09:38 +0000

Update: death toll rate reaches 470 and 2400 injuries, and I will stop counting.

After a 20 months siege during which there was no water, food, medicine, gas, oil, and electricity…today Israel thinks that’s not enough…and starts a massacre; 160 dead, 200 wounded by 40 rockets hit Gaza and still going.

Photos From the Massacre Taking Place Today

English news: here
Arabic news: here

Photos From the Siege

English news: here
Arabic news: here, and here

Travians be Warned…Rapacious is Rising

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:55:04 +0000

I don’t know whether to thank or scold my good friend Omar Qadan for introducing me to Travian, a strategy game played online.

It’s amazing how a simple, web-based, HTML-front game can be so rich and vast entertainment-wise. It’s a real strategy game where you build villages, resources, armies, embassies, and conduct trading, diplomacy, wars, and alliances—all through simple images, numbers, and text.

On the other hand, I can’t ignore the programming part of the game (being a developer that is). It must be big, fun, and tiring; think of all these rules and the simulation algorithms the game is built upon, the server handling thousands of players, and scripts (yes, lots of hacks! 😄). Even the hacking idea itself is so delicious (programming-wise only 😄), a true heaven for developers. Also, the makers of the game are on the right track of providing developers points through which they can access the game and display information on other sites or applications. For now, it’s only exporting database tables of statistical information about the game status, but still I consider it a cool step toward supplying nice endpoints for developers, maybe Web Services in the future.

Introduction to NHibernate Session at Jordev Was Good

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:29:47 +0000

The feedback was very good, and I was glad that everybody liked it. Jordev is really moving ahead, and I am very excited being part of it 🙂

Below is the slide show (it’s an enhanced version from my previous one):

Introduction To NHibernate (SlideShare)

Code is the same of the previous one which you can download from here

My First Talk at JorDev .net

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:31:49 +0000

JorDev .net is a .NET user group founded by enthusiastic Jordanian IT professionals. On Wednesday, November 26, I will be doing my first session in a series about NHibernate.

Talk Details

Overview: NHibernate is an object-relational mapping (ORM) solution for the Microsoft .NET platform. It provides an easy-to-use framework for mapping an object-oriented domain model to a traditional relational database. Its purpose is to relieve the developer from a significant amount of relational data persistence-related programming tasks. NHibernate is free open source software distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
Target audience: .NET developers, software designers, software engineers, and software architects.
Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2008.
Location: MIC (Microsoft Innovation Center, Royal Scientific Society Building, 3rd Floor).
Time: 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm (Amman, Jordan local time).
For more info:
- Mohamed Saleh: 0788716457
- Ayman Farouk: 0795727344

Reminders

The Story of a Winning Frog (a story we all know, and few comprehend)

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:42:12 +0000

If you don’t know it:

Once upon a time there was a group of little frogs, who decided to go through a competition to climb a tower. The tower was high and difficult, and no one of the spectator frogs believed that any of the tiny frogs can make it to the top.

Little frogs started climbing, while spectators yelling:
– “oh my, it’s too high…I don’t think they can make it!”
– “they are too young, how possibly can they reach the top?! that’s insane”
.
.
Shouting and yelling continued, while the little frogs surrendering one by one, except for this one little frog who kept going and going, climbing up further and further more. Surprising everyone, that frog made it to the top and he won the race! well…the only reason for his success that…HE WAS DEAF, he simple couldn’t hear the negative shouting of the spectators!

Successful Meetings Is The Responsibility Of All

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:02:24 +0000

Through all the meetings I had in my life (the voluntary and the professional), all meetings shared key points that made it either successful and constructive, or a complete disaster and waste of time!

These key points can be summarized into:

Meeting is conducted to achieve certain target , a solution to a problem, Keep the focus on that goal
Time is valuable, and the participants will be very annoyed when they see their effort and time is wasted on a subject different from the one they originally agreed to sacrifice their time for. if the meeting was anything except resolving the original subject, it is a failure.

Changing Jobs

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:47:40 +0000

Yesterday was my last day in estarta, marking the end of nice period full of experience, knowledge, and amazing friends who have been like a family.

And now it’s time to move on, as a Technical Team Leader in esense. The excitement increases as time goes by (since I haven’t started there yet), I have only one week of preparations to step back into this role (yes, I have been TTL before) in this new environment, can’t wait.

في أي يوم العيد؟

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 19:53:50 +0000

في السنوات الأخيرة، كثر الحديث عن رؤية الهلال، و تحديد بدايات الأشهر القمرية، و لا سيما شهر رمضان و شوال لأهمتيهما. و احتار الناس بين البيانات الرسمية الصادرة عن المؤسسات الحكومية من جهة (نتيجة إدلاء شهود برؤية الهلال)، و المؤسسات الفلكية المتخصصة من جهة أخرى.

الموضوع -على عقده- بسيط؛ فلتحديد بادية هذه الأشهر الحساسة تعتمد المؤسسات الحكومية على شهادة مواطنين شهدوا برؤية الهلال، و هذا أمر طيب. لكن المشكلة أن لخمسين عاما خلت من الآن، كانت معظم تلك الشهادات خاطئة و ليس لها أساس من الصحة (و ما زالت)! لم يكن بالإمكان -من خلال الوسائل المتاحة للمؤسسات المسؤولة حينئذ- أن تتأكد من صحتها. كان يكفي أن يكون مسلما عاقلا بالغا راشدا، و لا يزال الأمر كذلك.

Free Collaboration Software

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:07:10 +0000

My previous employer Rapsyx decided lately to publish the light version of it’s prime product RapidOne as free software.

RapidOne in short words:

RapidOne Team provides a single application to handle communication, workplanning and resource sharing across the organization with a highly innovative storage concept organizing your data naturally

With the ability to add a whole set of CRM components depending on the version you choose.

Interesting? have a look at the free version here

Software gadgets

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:18:20 +0000

In the early days when the Internet was Blog-free, my machine was light and clean, it was barely Visual Sutdio, SQL Server Express (then it was called MSDE) , Office, MSN and IIS. I always believed in the light clean machine, no goofy software around.

Then Blogs started to appear, and more interesting blogs had my attention like Scott’s and Omar’s, and with it I started to learn about new software gadgets. From that day, I am addicted!

رمضان كريم …Happy Ramadan

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:03:29 +0000

Happy Ramadan all, I hope you all get the best out of it, and may Allah grant you his acceptance and blessings.

نعام

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:22:33 +0000

ذات يوم خلال الأسبوع الماضي، صدف أن استضافني صديق لي في منزله. جلسنا أمام التلفاز، ثم بدأت عملية القفز العشوائي التي اعتدناها – نحن كمجتمع – بين محطات اللاقط.

و في خضم المتعة العشوائية، استوقفت مضيفي محطة معروفة، كان يعلو منها حينها صراخ و عويل. و بنظرة منهكة، توجه إلي صديقي و سألني: “هل تعرف ما هذا؟” لم تكن الصور صورا إخبارية حقيقية، لكن كانت صورا من مسلسل…ثم سأل متنهدا :”هل سمعت عن التغريبة؟”، كانت علامات الاستغراب التي اعتلت وجهي جوابا كافيا له. فاستطرد قائلا: “إنها التغريبة الفلسطينة…تحكي قصة ضياع فلسطين!”.

How we decide what to have for lunch

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:09:26 +0000

Do you go through the same, time-consuming, frustrating discussion with your colleagues when you want to decide what to have for lunch? well…this is exactly what we have been going through where I work.

To solve the problem (partially, because humans can never totally agree! ), I made a small, quick and dirty web application; LunchPoll.

The user (Active Directory user, it works on Windows Authentication) would go to the home page, select the available poll:

Track your financial status

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:25:55 +0000

Lately, I have been living a financial chaos; I couldn’t tell how much money I had in the bank, lent to friends or in my Pocket! (ok the last one was exaggeration…I could count it anytime :P).

I decided to put an end to this, so I started looking for a software to track my financial status; went through many solutions starting from Excell sheets passing by GNUCash, AceMoneyLite , and ending with Microsoft Office Accounting Express (the latter makes me want to start my own business! wow).
Nothing seemed to meet my simple requirements of …just…tracking my money!

In the memory of Srebrenica genocide

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:32:29 +0000

Can the mind imagine how brutal the man kind can be!!

The last couple of days was the memory of one of the ugliest genocides took place in the recent history, with 8000 people killed mercilessly in couple of days!

The frightning side of the story is that it was under the supervision of the so called “The United Nations” (UN)!
Is it surprising? I thought so at the beginning, but after the spread of the news about UN forces abusing children all over the glob , it isn’t any more!!