5 years later, I'm going pro

It's the season for thinking back, and looking forward. Palm celebrated their 10th anniversary earlier this week, and tomorrow (1st April), Apple will turn 30. This blog's anniversary is also coming soon - I wrote the first entry 5 years ago, on April 17th 2001. A lot of things can change in 5 years. I have changed jobs twice. I now have a son (who is 4 years old) and a kitten (who is 4 months old). This is a scary and exciting time. A month ago I tendered my resignation at my current place of employment. I have two months to go out of a 3-month notice. I get asked a lot now - "where are you going?" No one seems to believe me when I tell them. You see, I have decided to stay at home, and blog full time. I have three flagship blogs, and a number of smaller projects that I am working on. They all have multiple revenue streams and I am making some money from them now. Honestly, I don't expect to be rich doing this. I intend to make a liveable income - just enough to feed my family. The upside will be a lot less stress. No more traffic jams, no long hours away from my family. I get to eat healthier. I may even get to exercise (but don't hold me to it). I've been an observer of the Internet culture and business for more than 10 years now. I've been in the telecommunications and multimedia industry throughout, and I have seen the boom, the bust, and the new boom. I hope to take a more active role from now on.

The Joys of DVD writing

Last year, I struggled with the choice between getting an external hard drive and a DVD writer for my storage and archiving needs. At the time, the hard drive option won on a cost basis. Two weeks ago, I re-looked at the decision and this time, the DVD writer won out. Just how economical is the DVD writer nowadays? I bought my Imation brand DVD writer for just below RM200 (US$54). The clincher was the price of DVDR media - I bought a spindle of no-brand 50 discs for 80 sen (US21 cents) each. Prices for the DVDR has fallen lower than CDRs, on a megabyte-to-megabyte basis. So I've been spending my time converting my CDR archives into DVDRs. At a 6 to 1 ratio per disc, I'm looking at saving a whole lot of (physical) space. The high capacity is very convenient, too - I can fit a whole season of a TV series in just 2 discs. I have bought one (1!) DVD+RW disk to experiment as a straight work backup disk, but I don't expect to use it much at this point. The 160GB hard disk I bought earlier has found a new home as the main disk in my home computer. DVD writer

How Islamic inventors changed the world

The Independent newspaper has a report on 20 most influential innovations from the Muslim world. You would be surprised what the inventions are - ranging from coffee to windmills to modern surgical instruments. It's high time for modern Muslims to get their act together and work towards making the world a better place once more. Muslim Inventions