Personal on Emad Alashi

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.

“Cloud-Ready Web Apps With ASP.NET 5” – Ignite Australia

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 00:17:18 +0000

It was a wonderful week last week spent in the beautiful Gold Coast after a very interesting Microsoft Ignite conference. I got the opportunity to present on how ASP.NET 5 is designed to be suitable for being hosted on the cloud, the following is the recording of my session:

If you missed the event you can catch up with recordings of the sessions on channel 9, videos are still being uploaded.

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”

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 😉

Working for Readify

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 22:34:14 +0000

And finally I have the time to post about my new job, yes I changed jobs and now it’s Readify.

I have never seen anything like it! Readify’s consultants are the top professionals in the IT industry working on the Microsoft stack; when I step in the office every morning, I sit in a room in which there are two MVP’s (of 12 MVP’s work in Readify already!), two book authors and user group leads, couple of speakers, and many silent geniuses. And I am drinking knowledge from a fire hose!

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.

Speaking at Microsoft Open Door

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:13:44 +0000

I will be speaking at this year’s Microsoft event Open Door; the session will be about HTML5 & IE, including highlights on the main new specifications for HTML5, and how Microsoft is approaching it through IE and some of the dev tools.
It will be on Day 2, Track 3, at 3:00 PM.

Check the event details and agenda here, catch you there hopefully.

My MVP Award Dedication

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:36:09 +0000

Couple of days ago I received the wonderful email from Microsoft telling me that I was awarded the MVP; it really feels nice when you achieve results. But the best part of all this is my friends’ reactions, the congrats, and the big smiles on the faces (not mentioning a generous gift from my colleagues ), to all these true friends I say big thank you!

Continuous Integration Book Review

Sat, 21 May 2011 13:05:07 +0000

To be frank I hesitated a bit to review a “a Martin Fowlers signature book”, but I have to share this review with others; to set expectations.

The book “Continuous Integration” is ok, but it’s too general, that’s it!
I have read several articles about Continuous Integration and posts here and there until I thought to myself “that’s it, it’s time to get the book, it’s time to delve deep into this”, to my surprise the content of the book was too general and it didn’t add much to the articles I read.

Reflections on Jordev Web Camp

Mon, 16 May 2011 22:11:05 +0000

Last Saturday 14th of May 2011 we had the first web camp in Jordan among Jordev’s activities, and it was great!
check my presentation slides at the end of this post.

The event was like the following:

8:30 AM – 9:00 AM: Registration
9:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Four 50 minutes sessions with 10 minutes between each for breaks, there was a few attendees at the beginning so we delayed the first session for couple of minutes (yes we have a morning problem here). Sessions were “Entity Framework 4.1”, “ASP.NET MVC One Step Deeper”, “Dynamic Data”, and “jQuery”
1:00 PM – 2:15 PM: lunch break, where people went to the near market and had their lunch there.
2:15 PM – 4:30 PM: free coding session.

Things went great:

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.

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

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.

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!

When a family dies in a car accedent!

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:14:46 +0000

On friday, my mothers cousin died in a car accedent on a highway; he, his wife and one of his 3 kids died in the accedent! the 2nd child is in comma while the 3rd survived.
It was shocking! the last week he was enjoying the holiday at his family’s place with his three kids!

The more we live, the more it’s obvious how iferior this life is! the things you loved most could very easily disappear in one glimpse, and in a so hurting way! that’s why we should not cling to it at all, of course we do our best to live it right, but not make it our goal at all. Paradise is there waiting for those who submits to Allah and live through the path he showed by prophet Muhammad.

New laptop

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:10:35 +0000

This is my first post from my new laptop HP Pavilion dv 6755ee 😀

Overall, I am happy with what I am experiencing till now, except for:

1- The fans opening is placed at the bottom of the laptop, which causing it to go on high temperature fast!
2- There is something wrong about the text in some applications in Vista (like visual studio 2008), it’s somehow blurry, I googled it and found some posts that didn’t help; suggesting to take off ClearType or set a dpi option that is already checked!

Using FeedBurner

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:26:00 +0000

I have been trying to figure out how the stats that WordPress provide works while hosting my blog, I FAILED!…or did they?

It was not a straightforward thing, I would click on a stat number that says I had certain number of views on one post today, I would click on it to see the chart is empty :S.

Anyway, I am using FeedBurner now to see if things get any better.
So if by any chance you have subscribed to my blog, please change the feed address to the following: