I Want to Buy a dSLR

I decided to buy a digital camera. Actually I used to say "Who needs a digital camera when his mobile has got one". But after seeing many wonderful shots in Flickr, I became more excited to buy one.

So, I started to compare options, prices, etc. I starting reading camera reviews, and comparisons between Point and Shoot and dSLR's. I started to visit sites such as Ken Rockwell. Then I came out with a conclusion, that I'd better get a dSLR. I like the Depth of Field effect, especially in portraits. I like to have a camera with good manual controls, and upgradeable lenses. I am not going to buy a digital camera everyday. So why not get a good one from the beginning.

Canon and Nikon are the two major players in the dSLR field. But since dSLR's are really expensive, I think I'd better buy an entry level one which has most of the needed option for someone like me, who never had a camera before. My options were limited to the following, Nikon D40, Nikon D50, Canon EOS Rebel XT (350D). By the way, my friend JPierre has got Canon EOS 350D, and he helped me a lot in this. Anyway, I think Nikon is cool, and has got more options with better price. So I ended up with the D40.

Now, the most important question, "Where can I find dSLR's here in Egypt?". I went to Carrefour, but it seems that the salesmen there know nothing about dSLR's. Then I found an authorized Nikon dealer here in Egypt, but it seems that they have an anti-phone policy, they never answer their phone. I went there to their office once on Saturday, but it seems that their holiday is the same as mine, so no way to catch them. Last week I attended a lecture in Shooting Club about DoF, and after it I asked the instructor where does he get his Nikon equipments. By the way, I think he's got a Nikon D200. Anyway he gave me the address of another dealer called El-Shennawi in Degla Street, Mohandeseen, and I went there today, but he does not have either D40 nor D50. He has D70s with about L.E. 5600 and D80 with L.E. 7000+. I also found a used Canon 300D with about L.E. 3500

PS. If you think this post is pointless, then you are damn right. I just wrote it for the sake of the links in there, and in order to share my experience with you.

PS. Canon has got their own resellers here in Egypt too, but I haven't visited them yet.

PS. If I am going to get a P&S, then I'd choose from Canon PowerShot A540, Canon PowerShot A710IS, Fujifilm FinePix F30, and Casio Exilim EX-Z850. They all have advanced controls, such as Aperture Priority, Exposure Setting, etc. And I guess anyone who wants to learn photography has to buy a camera with good manual controls.

PS. One cool thing to do before buying a camera is to go to Flickr's Camera Finder and see photos taken with that camera.

Tags: Nikon, Canon, Egypt, Gr33n Data

What I learned from Blogging

When I started blogging, I wanted to write my own thoughts here - full stop. Later on, I began to write my own thoughts and learn from others' comments as well.

Tags: Blogging, Personal, Gr33n Data

Tagetiquette

You sure have been tagged before. You are supposed to answer some questions, and then tag some other bloggers - ask them to answer the same questions - after you finish. I normally prefer to tag different people every time I receive a new tag. For me it is a way for introduce new bloggers to my readers, as well as getting to know new bloggers. I just pick random bloggers. But sometimes people are rude enough not to answer your tag nor even apologize for not answering it. That's why there should be some written Bloggetiquette out there.
Anyway, I am in the anti-blogging mood now, and you sure are smelling a silly-posts odor here lately.

Update, 24/1/2007
Advice: Never tag someone you don't know again. Sometimes they come out to be real freaks and/or a$$ holes.

Tags: Blogging, Society, Gr33n Data

Two Tags in One

Nesreen, the Sailor, as well as Bluelue, Arima, and Rasha the E-Nadaha, have tagged me. Nesreen's tag was to publish a scanned image of my own handwriting. While Rasha's tag was to write five things people don't know about me. And since I am really lazy, I decided to answer Rasha's tag using Nesressn's tag.

I will tag, Marianne, Informer2000, Injis, Sou, OpeRon, Madeeha, Cristina Banu, Deeeeeee, Bakkouz, and Moey.
Note: You may reply on any of the two tags, or both if you like.

Tags: Tag, Nesreen, E-Nadaha, Gr33n Data

Hasheesh Detained

Dr. Essam Hasheesh, used to teach us Waves in college. He is one of those great doctors that we had there, and I used to like the exams he put, as he focused more on the concepts instead of the unimportant and exhausting details. Anyway, I knew today that he was arrested by the government, in a Muslim Brotherhood related crackdown.

The Brotherhood said that those arrested on Sunday included Mohamed Ali Bashar, a member of the Brotherhood's Guidance Office which acts as its executive, as well as Essam Hashish, an engineering professor at Cairo University.
Source: Reuters Alert Net

I know nothing about his political background, but definitely it is a sad news to me.

Tags: Egypt, Engineering, Gr33n Data

iToilet

First there was iBook, iPod, and recently iPhone. But now it's time for iToilet.

Tags: Apple, Phun, Gr33n Data

Twitter

Rami Sedhom (Iknaton2), is one of those who like to discover new geek services and web tools. And Twitter is one of his newest discoveries.

I found a new social service similar to blogging but based on one question: What are you doing now? It's a new Web2.0 site that u can send ur input either directly, through mobile or through IM (GTALK).
Try it here http://twitter.com/

You just update it by what you are doing at that moment, and your friends are supposed to receive your updates. These updates can either be shown on the web site, or it can be sent to their IM's and/or Mobile Phones. It can be used as a communication tool among groups of friends too.

See my profile here.

Tags: Twitter, Ikhnaton2, Gr33n Data

Whose iPhone!?

Any five years old kid knows that Apple products have that "i" thing in their names, iBook, iPhoto, iPod,, iTunes, etc. And the same five years old kid, can guess the name Apple is going to use with their new mobile phones, yes, you are right ... it's called iPhone for sure.
But you know what, Cisco (Linksys) are having a VoIP (Voice over IP) phone, and they call it iPhone too. They are real jerks I know, and guess what, they are going to sue Apple for using *their* registered iPhone trademark.

On Wednesday, Cisco announced it had filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Apple, Inc., which it said seeks to prevent Apple from infringing upon and deliberately copying and using Cisco's registered iPhone trademark.
Source: Internet News dot Com

I think the whole iStuff thing is registered to Apple in the first place, and Cisco are the ones who are supposed to call their product anything else.

Tags: Apple, Cisco, Gr33n Data

Egyptian Email

Egyptians have their very own definition to Emails.

Tags: Egypt, Humor, Gr33n Data

Ashwakii

People always ask me about the banner I am using in this blog. Here in Egypt, in most of the poor districts, houses are unpainted. Simply, people there don't have enough money to paint them. The scene itself became so-Egyptian, and may be that's why I am using it here. Also one of my dreams is to be given paints, brushes, and the right to draw on those houses. I am not talking about painting them. What I really want to do is to draw, may be comic characters or whatever, on them. For me they are a big drawing surface that spans multiple buildings.

Tags: Egypt, Art, Gr33n Data

Farida, Walaa, Rabab, and Dalia Go to Hell

Seems that the Egyptian companies have decided to enter the spamming game. Everyday I receive mails from people with Arabic names - Farida, Walaa, Manal, etc. - with spam contents. They almost have the same content, it's about Seminars and Courses, and the Mail subject looks like this, "(Cairo) January 13 - 18 , 2007".

Those bastards decided not to write a single word in their Emails, just banners and images in order to deceive the Anti-Spam softwares.

Here you are my revenge. I'll write the mails of the companies they are doing advertisements to here, and let the other spammers kick their ass!

info@settecltd.com

If you get any of these nasty spam, please allow me to add their email addresses here too :)

By the way, Cisco has decided to acquire IronPort for $830M. IronPort is a leading provider of messaging security appliances, focusing on enterprise spam and spyware protection.

Update: Mahmoud Kassem has some useful info about SETTEC-Spam.

Tags: Spam, Email, Gr33n Data

Egyptian Police Brutality

Seems that we are going to see more videos regarding the unstoppable Egyptian police brutality this year.

Get away with it.. If you're one of them...you can get away with it easily ;)
Them...stand for ...them...you know!!
And it...stands for any thing from a parking ticket that will be torn to pieces...up to any hit and run accident...
Wanna live that free...guiltless...powerfully?? Simple... If your dad is not one of them...you can!!
Join the academy...or any of their forces and starting your first year there you'll be having some influence around their departments...
See how simple it is...
ohhh...can't pass the physical? too short?? Something else?? I have a solution for that...get yourself hooked with one of their girls...but shoot high...let her be the daughter of some big shot captain or something...
Here...
I gave you all the tips...
Will you take care of my driver's case?? you know...the drugs weren’t his!!
you will? :D..
From: E-Nadaha/Paradigm-Shifters

Related Posts:
Ibn Abdel Aziz, They are torturing women in Egypt now
Memo, Woman being tortured in Egypt
Ikhwan, Torture for Everyone
Ahlawi, Embaressed to Post This
Sandmonkey, Another Egyptian police brutality video
Al Nahr, Egyptian police torturing a woman
Mamlaket El Motasharedeen

Update, Feb 2007.
There are some rumors that this specific video - the one included in this post - is fake however the other videos are not.

Tags: Egypt, Police, Torture, Gr33n Data

Hosni Abdel Rabbo is Smart

Don't you think Hosni Abdel Rabbo is smart!?
Let's see Google's point of view about this.
Click here

Tags: Gooogie, Humor, Gr33n Data

Fake Memories

Last year, in my birthday, I got this memory stick as present. I don't know if the image above is clear enough, but SONY's logo is printed on it, and it is written that it can store up to 8Gig's. I couldn't believe that such huge storage exists, but when I plugged it in my PC, it was clear that what they wrote about its storage is true. I used it to store small text files and it worked fine, till I tried to backup my Emails (2Gig's) on it. It stopped working then. Later on, one of my co-workers offered to fix it, and guess what, it came out that its capacity is only 64Mig's, and it is not manufactured by Sony as well. And the Chinese company that made it, added a software there in order to fool the user's PC and appear as if it is 8Gig's.
Really mean Chinese apes!!

Tags: Sony, China, Gr33n Data

Sectarian Stupidity

During Saddam's execution there were some voices heard cheering with stuff like "Go to hell", and "Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!" in reference to the Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr.

Muqtada El-Sadr has a great influence in Baghdad, especially in the poor areas there. He has inherited such popularity there from his father which was Executed by Saddam Hussein. On the other hand, the Sunni scholars issued fatwas earlier asking Sunni people not to join the Iraqi police nor Army, and the result was the presence of many Mugtada's supporters in the Iraqi police especially in Baghdad where the execution took place.

Also, as you all know, most of police soldiers everywhere are uneducated. You can see this video of an Egyptian soldier who wasn't able to answer questions such as, "When was the war of 6th of October 1973?", and "Who are the two countries that participated in the war that was between Egypt and Israel?". But wait a minute, I don't think those guards have to be super smart to know that it is inappropriate to cheer with such stuff during the execution. They don't have to have Phd's in order to know that, as a members of the Iraqi government, they are supposed to be loyal to Iraq and not to a specific movement or party there.

"I don't know but in all ways the execution of Saddam will enrich more the Sectarian division with the "Muqtada" cheer leaders ,I think that leaked video reached out to the Internet in order to make things worst in Iraq , create more cracks and holes in the unity of Iraq between the Sunni and Shiite", Zeinobia

ِAnd that's why the Iraqi government decided to open an investigations regarding this.

Sami al-Askari, a political adviser to Mr. Maliki who attended the hanging, said in a telephone interview that the committee would question everyone present at the execution. He said those who used their cellphones to record the event would be one focus of the inquiry. He said his own observation was that the worst sectarian taunts had come from a guard he described as a poorly educated Shiite man with a thick Arabic accent. "It was horrible, it was terrible, it was a mistake," he said. "We were supposed to sit there quietly, just looking at what’s going on."
Source, New York Times.

On the other hand, another stupid move, but this time from someone who is supposed to be educated. It was top Saudi cleric this time, Abdul Rahman al-Barak, who issued religious edict declaring Shiites to be infidels. By the way, Is Abdul Rahman al-Barak related to Ehud Barak, or it is just similarity in their names!?

"A top Saudi Arabian Sunni cleric on Friday declared Shiites around the world to be infidels who should be considered worse than Jews or Christians, the latest sign of increasing sectarianism in the Middle East", International Herald Tribune.

Mr. Barak was smart enough to kill two birds with one stone as you can see. First of all this edict, Fatwa, is considered as a green light for the Iraqi Terrorist group to kill Shiit people there.And guess what they will be defending their religion from its *enemies*, by killing innocent people everywhere. On the other hand, you sure can see the effect of a phrase such as "worse than Jews or Christians", especially on those countries inhibited by Muslims and Christians like Egypt for example. Hey you Egyptian people, you don't have much Shiits here to kill, but you can kill the Christians, because Islam is in real danger! So smart, huh!?

Tags: Iraq, Islam, Christians, Saudia, Sunnis, Shiits, Sectarian, Saddam, Gr33n Data

Blue07 Tag

It started with Marianne's mail on the group, then Blue and Nesreen decided to tag me. So here you are.

Something to achieve next year
Personal: Move to a better position at work, and find my better half, or halves :)
Political: Achieving further moves towards democracy in our region.

Something impacted me last year
Personal: My grandfather passed away.
Political: Lebanese-Israeli war.

One thing I enjoyed in the group
Personal: Whatever, whenever the time is, you can simply find someone talking on the room, or sending an email. I also think I made many friends from there.
Political: N/A

What I'll miss about 2006
Personal: Nothing, I guess.
Political: Nothing.

Allow me to tag people I don't know - most of them - this time, however I like their blogs.
Forsoothsayer, Fonzy, Hilal, Sugar Cubes, Qwaider, Maxxed`ouT, Houdou Nisbi, LinaE, Carmen, Fluent Thoughts, E-Nahda, Donzella, and Hammorabi.

Tags: Personal, Tag, Gr33n Data