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Areej's Diary

Areej’s Gaza Diary
17 April 2009

Ten year old Areej Al-Rahy

Ten year old Areej Al-Rahy writes about her suffering during the recent war in Gaza and how she is coming to terms with life after the conflict. Like many other children in Gaza, Areej has been left traumatized by what she experienced. She is now one of 40,000 children receiving psychosocial support as part of an Islamic Relief project.

"On my first day with Islamic Relief all the children in the session shared their stories about the war. I remember there were difficult moments. Nobody expected it to happen. My dad, who always gives me love and hope, was not able to protect the family."

"During the war, everything was targeted including houses, schools and people. My family and I were at home, then suddenly, we became scared when an Israeli plane targeted a nearby home.
"I know that the Aldaya family home was totally destroyed. Inside the house were children, women and old people. One of the girls killed was my classmate. She was clever.

"I still wonder why"

"My dad was the only source of strength for me. He used to protect me. I won’t forget his kindness; he treated me and my brothers equally. But he was killed during the war. I still wonder why my father was killed and why my brother was injured.
"I can’t believe it happened. At night when I am asleep I dream and in my dreams they are still alive. But sadly when I wake up I don't find them here.
"I have spent many days feeling sad. I'm not sad now. I still feel sad but less than before. I enjoy being at Islamic Relief's project - I enjoy being with the other children who have also faced difficult moments.

As part of Islamic Relief’s Psychosocial Programme children are encouraged to use art, music and drama to express their problems and overcome trauma

My first session

“In the first session every student introduced themselves. I introduced myself to my new friends quickly. We drew – mostly about the dangerous situations we faced. Then, our teacher Ahmad asked us to explain our drawings. I felt shy about talking about my drawings at the beginning.
“But Mr Ahmad, encouraged me, and the students loved my drawing. After that I started explaining and talking about what I thought were the most difficult moments during the war. I talked about the death of my classmate and the destruction of our town. At the end of my talk the teacher thanked me and put my drawing on the wall.

“I feel more comfortable”

“The session today was good and I feel really happy about the activities we did. I returned home after talking about my day which I enjoyed with our teacher and my new friends.
“It made me feel more comfortable as I had heard hard stories told by the others.
“We draw what we witnessed during the war. I try to show the feelings of horror I felt. Like what happened when the electricity stopped, when there was no water, when flowers and trees were uprooted, when our neighbourhood was destroyed. Posting drawings on the wall helped us to see what everyone else was going through.

Areej is one of 40,000 children currently benefitting from Islamic Relief’s psychosocial Programme

Discovering new things

“We also did relaxation exercises. Then, we talked about our positive and negative points. I am discovering new things about myself.
“I know that other children who were affected by the war and are also getting help to forget about what they saw. I was happy to know that children donated their pocket money to help us in Gaza. I love all the children who help Palestinian children and I pray they will not suffer and lose dear ones like we did. I hope all of them have peace not war.”

Source:

http://www.islamic-relief.com/Emergencies-And-Appeals/emArticleView.aspx?emID=47&CountryID=&artID=547

أمتي فاستبشري

It's my first Arabic Poem to post..

Dedicated to :

To our  families in Palestine, telling them be patient.. Allah will never let you down

 To my brothers and sisters all over the world, work and strive, that with hardship comes ease

To my Ummah, telling her we will stand and rise up, we will return to you the pride again

إن تطاول ليلنا............ أو تمادى في الظلام

أو تعثر ركبنا............ وسط أرتال الركام

إن تضاءل حلمنا............أو تناثر في الزحام

عندها نعلي الجباه............ عزمنا أنتم مداه

للعلا نسعى جميعًا............ نحن صناع الحياة

لن تحاصرنا الهموم............فقرنا لا لن يدوم

إن زرعنا واتجرنا............أو صنعنا ما نروم

جهلنا ينزاح حتمًا............إن تلقينا العلوم

أمتي فاستبشري............وامسحي دمع الأسى

و ارسميها بسمة............ رغم آلام عسى

أن يعود الفجر فجرًا............كي يغادرنا المساء

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

This is an awesome audio lecture for Tina Seelig , Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Lecture.





Find the whole Movie here : http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1464

You might also be interested to get her book:



http://www.amazon.com/What-Wish-Knew-When-Was/dp/0061735191

MathML

MathML (Math Markup Language) is an XML vocabulary for marking up mathematics, and it contains two sub-languages: presentation MathML and content MathML.


 Presentation MathML is primarily concerned with describing the layout of a mathematical expression). Content MathML is primarily concerned with marking up some aspects of the meaning, or at least the mathematical structure, of expressions.


MathML deals not only with the presentation but also the meaning of formula components (the latter part of MathML is known as “Content MathML”). Because the meaning of the equation is preserved separate from the presentation, how the content is communicated can be left up to the user.


Presentation MathML

Presentation MathML focuses on the display of an equation, and has about 30 elements, and 50 attributes. The elements all begin with m and include token element: x - identifiers; + - operators; 2 - number. Tokens are combined using layout elements that include:  - a row;  - superscripts; mfrac - fractions. The attributes mainly control fine details of the presentation. A large number of entities are available that represent letters π, symbols → and some non-visible character such as ⁢ representing multiplication.

Thus, the expression ax² + bx + c could be represented in a valid MathML file as:

"Sorry for the snapshots, I couldn't write the code in the blog post "

Content MathML

Content MathML focuses on the semantic meaning of the expression. Central to Content MathML is the  element that represents a function or operator, given in the first child, applied to the remaining child elements. For example x represents sin(x) and x5represents x+5. The  element represents an identifier,  a number, and there are over a hundred different elements for different functions and operators. Content MathML uses only a few attributes.

The expression ax² + bx + c could be represented as:

However, particular areas where MathML could be strengthened were identified, resulting in the production of the MathML 3.0 draft specification. The basic structure of MathML 3 is the same as that of MathML 2 and many users will probably not notice the new features, except maybe automatic line breaking, which is the main new feature to affect existing users. MathML 3 adds functionality, however, to support communities where MathML 2 was found to be weak. 

This includes support for right-to-left languages, with a particular emphasis on Arabic scripts, and explicit support for elementary math layouts, which helps both educators to mark up examples and also greatly helps produce accessible non-visual versions of the formulae.

Use of MathML in a browser

A major aim of MathML from its first design phase has been to enable mathematics to be used in Web pages as text, not as images or opaque plugins, to allow searching, the resizing of text, and so on. Currently, this is still harder than it ought to be to serve XHTML as opposed to HTML to a general audience. XHTML is the reformulation of HTML as an XML vocabulary. The original intention was that this, with more rigorous XML parsing rules, would gradually replace HTML as the preferred markup language for the Web. However, browser manufacturers and Web users have shown some reluctance to switch, and in particular the dominant browser, Internet Explorer still has no native support for XHTML.

For a large range of (MathML2) presentation MathML constructs it is possible to mix XHTML and MathML together in the same document. The simplest way to achieve cross-browser support for such a document is to follow these simple rules:

1. Serve the document as well formed XML, with HTML elements in the xhtml namespace (http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml) and the MathML elements in the MathML namespace (http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML).
2. Use the mime type: application/xhtml+xml
3. Ensure that the MathML namespace is declared near the top of the document, most simply by having the namespace declaration xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" on the html element.

Firefox (all versions) will render such a document natively, although the reader must have previously installed suitable math fonts (see Resources for a link).

Internet Explorer (version 6.0 and later) will render such a document if the reader has installed the free MathPlayer component from Design Science (see Resources for a link). (Note: This use of MathPlayer to get Internet Explorer to render application/xhtml+xml documents should be more widely known, since it's useful even if there is no mathematics in the document.)

Opera, Safari, and other browsers without explicit MathML support can still render a range of such documents by the use of a suitable CSS stylesheet.


 MathML document rendered in the Firefox browser





Arabic Mathematical Notations

An extensive research has been done by Azzeddine Lazrek, with Mustapha Eddahibi et al , 
to analyze potential problems with the use of MathML for the presentation of mathematics in the notations customarily used with Arabic, and related languages. 

Find the full resource document here , but I will only include a citation from there work:

Here, the most striking difference is that the overall mathematical layout is the mirror image of the preceding examples, that is, the mathematical directionality is RTL. Further, some symbols (eg ∑, <, ∈) are mirrored as well. Thus, we need a means of specifying the mathematical directionality, and assuring that the appropriate symbols are available in Unicode and are marked as mirrored.
The remaining differences are due to a more pronounced use of Arabic symbols: DAL  (as the initial of  = "function" in Arabic); the Arabic letter BEH , and the letters of the function name abbreviation  for tangent (without dots). Again, these differences fall into the category of localization, but reinforce the idea that the Unicode bidirectional algorithm, along with glyph shaping, should apply individually to token elements.

As the final Arabic example, we consider the Machrek style generally used in the Middle East.

Style	Image	MathML
Machrek		Not yet attempted

This was just an introduction about MathML, I've not heard about MathML before so I was interested to share my findings with you.. hope you've enjoyed it :) 


References:


http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-mathml3/?S_TACT=105AGX54&S_CMP=C1217&ca=dnw-1048&ca=dth-x&open&cm_mmc=6560-_-n-_-vrm_newsletter-_-10731_144029&cmibm_em=dm:0:16458161


http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML3/


http://www.w3.org/TR/arabic-math/


http://www.w3.org/Math/XSL/csmall2.xml


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MathML

The Shameful Boarder !!

The Egyptian government has begun construction on a subterranean steel wall along the country’s border with the Gaza Strip, according to reports from the border.


The BBC reported on 9th of December that the wall, which was designed by the US military, will reach about 18 meters into the ground in order to block as many as 1,000 tunnels that now allow goods and people to flow from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, which has been blockaded by Israel since 2007.

With American encouragement and financial support (to the tune of $23 million) and with the technical input of the US Corps of Engineers, Egypt has begun building a 6-mile long Wall along its border with Gaza.

According to news agency reports, this Wall will have a steel section, which would be impossible to penetrate, and will be sunk 20-30 meters below ground. The intention is to block all tunneling activities by Gazans aimed at creating  links between Gaza and Egypt for the passage of their much needed daily food supplies. These underground links are considered a lifeline for the Gazans in the face of Israel's inhumane and illegal blockade of the Strip.

The Wall will reportedly take 18 months to build thus sealing the Gaza Strip completely. This shameful project must be condemned by the international community especially as the one-year anniversary of the criminal Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip approaches (27 December 2008 - 18 January 2009).

Did they forget the  thousands of innocent civilians who were killed last year ?

Did they forget the thousands of children and women who were injured ?

What about the white phosphorus bombs ? and the homeless people whom there houses were flattened ?

It's a real shame for Egypt to accept this .. to get money from enemies to defy your brother .. a real Shame

The scandalous actions of Egypt towards the people of Gaza, will lead to a tragic end , and to warn everyone with what would lead to ..!! This  injustice and oppression of those people who have no guilt except that they are defending their land and honor.

To the Muslim and Arab World :

Where is your Conscience?

Where is your Identity?
 Where is your Dignity?

Are you Deaf, Dumb or Blind ..?!

http://www.1948.org.uk/news/2009/12/11/egypt-builds-6-mile-wall-along-rafah-border.html

Google Calendar SMS

Yesterday I was discussing with one of my friends, my need to an effective & alerting calendar ,& whether  I should buy one of those so called smart phones rather than my first generation cellular phone ...

She showed me how she is using Google calendar with her phone, and showed me a pretty easy setting that let Google calendar sends you an alert SMS about specific event in the Calendar. The good thing is that it worked on my old traditional phone and no need to buy a new one :) ..

Just go to your calendar settings , then you will find a tab called "Mobile Setup":

- Select your country and add your mobile number "Do not forget to add your country code"

- Press on "Send Verification Code" button, if the feature is compatible with your phone, you will recieve an SMS with a verification code to enter in the next field.

- Then press on "Finish Setup" button.

-Voila ,  If it passed successfully, you will recieve another confirming SMS, then the status will be changed to "Phone number successfully validated"

After setting your calendar, whenever you've an event that you need to be notified using SMS

Just select the feature and the time you wanna be alerted at :

"Click to enlarge"

Another great thing about Google Calendar and this feature, that you can share a specific event with your team for example and let them be alerted via SMS too, rather than calling on each team member "I used to do so", because I knew that most of them won't check their emails before our meeting ..

However, I'm wondering if there is an option that allows me to merge phone calendar with  Google calendar ??  If so, it will be great to tell me how :)