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2009-06-12T16:33:00.000+02:00

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Movie Review - Blood Rayne

2009-01-20T16:05:00.001+02:00

Ever wonder what you can do with weird sets of things? For instance if you have a hand watch, a match, and a needle you can GPS your location and manage to get out of a maximum security prison McGyver style. Or if you had a positron deflector and some photon torpedoes you can go and protect the human federation from alien enemies. BUT, if you had 100 bored untalented actors, lots of red paint, and a memory span that lasts 5 seconds you can make the movie: Blood Rayne.

While i was in queue to buy the tickets for the movie, there was a sound in the back of my head that was tingling and saying "No, don't do it... you'll live to regret it" but i dismissed it as another part of my paranoid life style. Little did i know that it was my subconscious trying to save me from one of the most horrible experiences in my life. As soon as the movie started i remembered that Blood Rayne was in fact a video game, and that this is a movie adaptation of the game. I immediately braced myself for the worst; we all know what game movies turn out to be, and i figured that this one won't be any different.

If you ever played the game Blood Rayne, you'll agree that It is indeed a very strange game that tried to combine too many incoherent things. The movie adaptation -which is a prequel to the game-, was no better. Apart from the already mentioned problem, it had a very.... "interesting" mix of characters. Every body's motive to conquer or save the world doesn't go beyond 5 worded sentences. There is the evil vampire Kaigen who wants to rule the world, the damphire Rayne who wants to avenge her mothers' death, the enigmatic Vladimir who is there to protect the world from vampires, the side kick Sebastian who tags along with Vladimir for the heck of it, and the venomous Cathrin who wants -along with her father- to turn the tables so that they rule the world instead.

Some interesting directive points were that any fight lasts a maximum of 15 seconds and always ends with LOTS of blood spluttering all over the place, probably a poor attempt to hide the lack of acting skills or perhaps the crappy dialogue.
I am also convinced that the director is in fact a computer programmer, because he managed to implement the round-robin method to dialogues. You would be in one place hearing two people talk, and before their conversation is over, you get yanked into another scene with another conversation, into a third one, back to the first to continue where they left off.

Everybody in the film was looking for the 3 parts of the ancient vampire "Belia", because they can endow a vampire with unimaginable powers. Rayne got 2 of them, and Kaigen got the last one, and neither one of them used it along the entire course of the movie. You might think the parts are worthless, but without them the movie would be about a bunch of people running around killing each other in gory and bloody ways.

Of course, somebody taught the script writer that day the phrase "So be it" because Kaigen (played by Ben Kingsly) keeps on using it every other line.
Kaigen: Give me the heart and i shall let you live.
Rayne: You will have to rip it out of my body.
Kaigen: So be it.

Kaigen: What news you have?
Underling: Vladimir is attacking.
Kaigen: If it's a war he wants, So be it.

over and over and over and over...

The single thing worth watching in this movie are the R-rated scenes which are almost lettered all over the place, but thanks to Jordanian theaters, those were cut out, making the entire experience so much more rewarding.

None of the characters was acting convincingly, and definitely the script didn't help. Maybe the game story sucked, but even then the director and actors could have saved face by a) doing a decent job at it. b) not doing it in the first place. A total train wreck from start to end. Hope you enjoy it as much as i did.

Palestine is alive, well and kicking (Israeli butt)

2009-01-13T18:45:00.002+02:00

This is a letter my uncle wrote to one of his friends in Canada, that were concerned about hearing disturbing news about "echoes of the crusades". Here it is in full:

The war in Gaza today is a Palestinian Stalingrad, the first major battle between Israel and the Palestinians to be fought on Palestinian soil since 1948. It is also a battle over the future of Palestine. If Israel fails to win it decisively, all its future will come into doubt. In the forty two years since its victory in 1967, Israel failed to make " PEACE". If Israel now fails to win this battle that it has waged under "Super ideal terms and conditions" unprecedented in any known war, on a bedraggled Gaza that it had kept under siege and starved of all its needs for almost three years, in spite of its overwhelming superiority in technology, fire power and numbers, the conclusion will be that it has also failed in war .

This, and many other consequences, will emerge into the light when the dust of battle settles and the fogs of disinformation are dispelled. The Israeli – American- British – European fiction of a" PEACE PROCESS" will be found lying slain on the killing fields. The Oslo Palestinians will, not before long, go with it, and the two warring peoples on the land of Palestine will collide in spiraling armed conflict intermittently interrupted now and then by increasingly shaky truces and ceasefires.

That is why, in its impotent rage, bewilderment and disbelief at its escalating failure to subdue and subjugate this proud and brave people in spite of all the power and force it and its allies have brought to bear on them in over sixty years of savage conflict strewn with intermittent massacres, Israel now intensifies its levels of brutality in its wanton killing of Palestinians and willful destruction of Gaza. It will not work, but it will bring the Israelis much closer to realizing their existensial dilemma: They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t . Nothing will save them from the coming doom of their own making, and no amount of Palestinian blood spilled, women, children, and all, can conceal the writing on the wall.

We the Palestinians have a proverb that applies wonderfully to the current Israeli incursion in Gaza. It is about the coyote that swallowed a sickle. All went well until time came for the coyote to …t.

عباس.. الأول مع مرتبة (القرف)! - مقال رفضت الصحف العربية نشره

2008-12-17T15:22:00.000+02:00

د. محمد العوضي

أضحكني بالأمس حديث استمعت إليه (صدفة) لسيادة , رئيس (الدولة) الفلسطينية محمود عباس على قناة (العربية) اتهم فيه حركة حماس بإفساد موسم حج أهل قطاع غزة، وقال إن منع الحج لم يحدث في التاريخ سوى ثلاث مرات فقط؛ مرة في زمن كفار قريش ومرة في عهد القرامطة وأخيرا في عهد حركة حماس!!

تأملت في هذا الكلام الغريب لشخص حفل تاريخه السياسي بالعديد من (انجازات الخزي) فكانت السابقة الأولى في التاريخ وليست الثالثة (كما يتهم حماس).

ودعني أذكرك يا( سيادة) الرئيس ببعض تلك (الأوائل)!! التي تمت في عهدك..

- أول مرة يقوم فيها زعيم منظمة ثورية (تحريرية) بوصف عمليات شعبه الفدائية والاستشهادية (بالإرهابية) و(الحقيرة) وأسلحتها (بالعبثية) وينسق أمنياً مع العدو لاعتقال المقاومة!!

- أول مرة يظهر فيها (رئيس) ضم وتقبيل وعناق و....!! لقتلة شعبه, وتراه ودون حياء يكيل لهم المديح والابتسامات في الوقت الذي تنتفخ فيه أوداجه حنقاً وغضباً لمجرد ذكر اسم أخيه (حماس).

- أول مرة يتجرأ فيها جهاز أمن (رئاسي) على انتهاك حرمة بيوت الله وقتل أئمة المساجد وحفظة القرآن الكريم من بلده , وما دماء الشيوخ مجد البرغوثي ومحمد الرفاتي وناهض النمر ومحمد رداد الطالب الجامعي الحافظ لكتاب الله وحبيب الجميع؛ إلا اكبر شاهد على ذلك.

- وأول مرة تتواقح فيها شرطة ( الزعران) فيعتدون على حرائر فلسطين ويخلعون عنهن الحجاب والنقاب في الشوارع والجامعات.

- أول مرة يقوم فيها مستشار شخصي (لرئيس) بتهريب 3400 جهاز خلوي في سيارة التشريفات الرسمية أثناء عودته من مهمة (نضالية)!! واسأل تلميذك المدعو روحي فتوح عن رحلة عودته من الأردن يوم 19/3/2008، حين كشفته وفضحته أجهزة الجمارك الإسرائيلية, وغيره الكثير من (تلاميذك) ومستشاريك.

- أول مرة يقوم فيها مسؤول فلسطيني بإغلاق اللجان الخيرية ودور تحفيظ القرآن وتجريم مؤسسات كفالة الأيتام ورعاية أسر الشهداء والفقراء, استجابة لإملاءات العدو ونكاية بنده السياسي.

- أول مرة يقوم فيها حرس (رئاسي) بإلقاء شخص ملتحي (فتحاوي) من فوق برج (مهنا) غرب غزة من الطابق الرابع عشر وقتله ظناً منهم أنه (حمساوي)!! وكان ذلك بتاريخ 10/6/2007 مع الشاب المغدور حسام أبو قينص؟!!

كما اعترف القيادي الفتحاوي توفيق أبو خوصة في قناة الحوار ثم عاتبته فتح على هذا التصريح!

- أول مرة يتفوق فيها (رئيس) على كل (الساديين) فتراه (وبدم بارد) يتفنن ويتلذذ بمشاهدة وسماع آلام وآهات مليون ونصف من شعبه المحاصر بالجوع والمرض والظلام في قطاع فقير وصغير تأديباً وعقاباً له على اختياره في الانتخابات للفصيل المنافس.

- أول مرة يقوم فيها رئيس بالتمسك باتفاقية حدودية مهينة ومذلة تنتقص من سيادة(دولته)، وتعطي لعدوه سيطرة كاملة على منافذ شعبه وموارد بلاده, بل وتصل به المهانة حداً يقاتل فيه كل من يحاول إلغاء وتعطيل هذه الاتفاقية.. أليس هذا واقع حال اتفاقية معبر (رفح) التي وقعها مع إسرائيل توأمك (النضالي) محمد دحلان عام 2005؟!

_ قائمة (الأوائل) في عهدك (ياريس) طويلة طويلة يعرفها إخواننا في فلسطين أكثر من غيرهم , صحيح أن الإعلام المضلل يتغاضى عنها وقد يجهلها الكثيرون, ولكن التاريخ سيسجلها لك بأحرف من (قرف) تشمئز منها الأجيال.

ومع ذلك فكل (الأوائل) في عهدك (ياعباس) قد تهون عن كونك (الزعيم) الأول في التاريخ القديم والمعاصر الذي يأمر (عصاباته) باغتيال المقاومين الشرفاء فيما يسابق عدوه إلى تقديم التنازلات له عن كل شيء بدءاً بالأرض وانتهاء (بالعرض)!!

*ملاحظة: منع المقال من النشر في صحف عربية بسبب قانون المطبوعات الذي يمنع المساس المباشر برؤساء الدول, وكان موعد نشره أول أيام العيد المبارك.

Movie Review - Immortal

2008-11-26T17:46:00.000+02:00

Well, as most of you know, usually a film has several elements. For instance, a story line, that should unravel as you go along with the movie to a climax point where the different sides collide to reach the conclusion the director sees as fit. There usually are a protagonist (the good guy), and an antagonist (the bad guy). And usually, directors try to give these and all the other characters a background and a motive to make their actions more real and understandable. And most importantly, there usally is an ending, even if it's an open one, but there is some kind of finale to the movie.

Luckily this particular movie has none of the above. The story line -if you can call that- is that Horus, the god of heavens in ancient egypt, is given seven days to save the earth or he will become mortal and die. Ofcourse the reason for such a thing is a mystery which you shall never know. He goes down to earth and enters the body of a single man, and he starts looking for a mutant -yes, the original plot of the movie contains underpreviliged mutants living with us humans. This female mutant has the special ability to reprocreate with the gods. And he keeps insisting to his human host that they should impregnate her. Also the reason for this decision is still a mystery to me.

The antagonist in this movie -luckily for him- does not exist. But in his place there are a few people who want to kill the human host for political reasons -good enough for me. However after many attempts, they unleash one mean, ugly-looking, SOB killing machine to kill him, and the beast i must admit looks like a reject from power rangers. Anyway the beast tracks down his target and then he finds him, and i go "good, finally some action". But no, Horus steps in and kills the beast in under 2 seconds without any kind of a fight. I mean, why bother with the visual effects??

The female mutant on the other hand has a totally different story. There is some doctor interested in studying her and protecting her, quite logical. And there is some weird guy without a face that she knows and loves, who keeps giving her weird advices for weird situations, and then dies for a weird reason. My guess, he just wanted to get the hell out of the film.

The film production of course, is quite unusual. It's like a cross between "Blade Runner", "The Fifth Element", and "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" in the most dull and annoying way. Not all the characters are played by actors. I guess they just couldn't find people with no self-respect enough to play the role, so these characters are computer animated. And the animation isn't that good. No emotions on their faces or anything. Not like "Shrek" or "Finding Nemo" or any other Pixar movie.

The dialogue was written by a sixth grader i believe. Because most of the dialogue is like this:
Character 1: "Are you crazy? why did you do that?"
Character 2: "Am I crazy? Do What?"
Character 1: "So, i see... well tell him not to worry"

One of the things that puzzled me is that all the killing that happened in the movie, were done by Horus, who was initially supposed to save us. But hey, he's a god, so i suppose we can let that one go.

The movies end was that the seven days finished, Horus went back into the pyramid. The female mutant gave birth to another mutant and lost her memory -lucky bitch- and the human host is free to walk around. No climax during the two hours of suffering i had to endure, and no meaningful ending.

My advice to you is to NOT watch it unless somebody is holding a gun to your loved ones. Because if the gun was pointed at you, just ask him to shoot and get it over with. But hey, i discovered two words that would make sense of all this crap that goes in the movie, i mean i was surprised why i didn't think of them earlier. The words are:

FRENCH PRODUCTION.

Flash Streaming For RoR

2008-09-01T09:36:00.004+02:00

I was fiddling with some video flash streaming code the other day, and came across a great script by Stefan Richter that would allow you to seek to any position in the video without having to wait until that part is loaded first.
I have managed to port the code to work on Ruby on Rails. So you can get the flash player from Stefan's post, and if your server is running RoR, here is the server side code to get the job done.

مثل ما ودّعت تلاقي

2008-08-26T13:06:00.003+02:00

Disclaimer:
This article was not authored by me. I got it by email and thought it is worth sharing. If anybody can help me track the original author, so I would cite him/her and add a link to them here, please do.

''عادة'' أمارسها دون داعٍ، أخرج من بوابة بيتي كل مساء، أتلفّت يميناً وشمالاً، أراقب حركة الشارع، ثم أغلق الباب بهدوء، وأحياناً أتأكد بطريقي من ساعة ''المي'' لأطمئن أن الحنفية مقطوعة، أو أطارد قطاً غريباً لا يعجبني منظره.

بالأمس مددت رأسي في العتمة قليلاً، فشاهدت ''اللمبة'' الخارجية لبيت أبي يحيى مضاءة، وهذا يعني أن هناك ضيوفاً لدى الجار العزيز، سمعت حديثاً غير مفهوم يتخلله صمت مفاجىء، قلقت على الرجل، لبست ''دشداشتي النصّ كم''، طرقت الباب وجلست مع الجالسين تحت معرّش العنب:.

أنا- الله يمسيكوا بالخير.

الحضور: مسا النور.

بعد ثوانٍ قال الحضور: الله يمسيك بالخير.

فأجبتهم فرادا: الله يمسيكوا بأنوار النبي، ورفعت يدي لكل شخص راداً التحية..

الحج محمّد لأبي يحيى: مثل ما ودّعت تلاقي!!.

ابو يحيى وعينه في الأرض: تلاقي الخير!!.

جوز فزّة: مثل ما ودعت تلاقي يا خالي.

ابو يحيى يتنهّد ويده على خده: تلاقي الخير خيّوه.

محمد القاسم: يا رجل ليش زعلان كلها شهر وراجع.

طايل محاولاً التخفيف : غمض فتّح ولاّ هو راجع بالسلامة،مالك يا رجل.

احمد الصالح: الله يعين قلبي لعاد.

صمت مفاجىء، كسره صوت رنين ناعم قادم من بعيد، يأتي شلاش ومعه صينية مليئة بأكواب الشاي يطوف بها على الحاضرين..آخذ كأساً وأنا أطوف بعيني على الحضور لألتقط خيوط الموضوع دون جدوى ..وضعت كأسي أرضاَ ثم شاركت كالآخرين..

*أنا- مثل ما ودّعت تلاقي يا ابو يحيى.

* أبو يحيى: تلاقي الخير.

* أنا:- اميت تسهّل يحيى؟.

* ابو يحيى: يحيى ما سافرش!!.

* أنا: عايش؟.

* ابو يحيى : ولا عايش!!.

* أنا: لعاد عن مين بقولوا مثل ما ودّعت تلاقي من أول القعدة.

* أبو يحيى : قصدهم عن الراتب!!

US Presidency: We already lost!

2008-04-17T08:43:00.002+02:00

Both [Clinton and Obama] said they would commit U.S. forces to defend Israel, with Senator Clinton saying she would use "massive retaliation" to counter a nuclear attack on Israel by Iran and Senator Obama saying he would favor taking "appropriate action."

The interesting part is committing forces to defend Israel. Defend it against what? a rag-tag opposition with make-shift weapons that are embargoed in Gaza? or a militia with inferior weaponry -albeit superior determination- in southern lebanon?

I guess having mercava tanks, F-16s, Apache attack helicopters, nuclear power, commando and strike forces, and smart bombs are not enough to defend poor helpless Israel.

So much for justice!

Choose Your Own Adventure - Part 2

2008-03-16T01:18:00.002+02:00

Continued from this post:

Page 37:
You take a deep breath, and jump towards that prize holding cliff, only to discover it was a mirage and you plummet the rocky cliff. As you smash against the rocks, shattering every bone in your body, you begin to wonder if it was worth it.
Some passing by travelers discover your mangled body, and take you to a hospital, nurturing you back to health, but never the same as the man you once were.

Choose Your Own Adventure

2008-03-13T15:47:00.002+02:00

Inspired by this post:

You work for a great company, you are friends with your colleagues, and your peers respect you. You love and enjoy your work, and make good income in the process. However, during the last six months, an urge for some sort of drastic change has been tingling, and you see a chance to effect that change, which most probably would take you back ten steps in your professional life and completely remove you from your comfort-zone.

If you remain in your current situation, having your peers respect and the work you love go to page 12.
If you decide to make a leap of faith towards change, go to page 37.

Dwwen is live :)

2008-01-15T12:51:00.000+02:00

Finally, after a very insane week, and unbelievably insane final 2 days, Dwwen is live with a fresh new look and a host of new features that will knock your socks off.

First things first, I am glad to announce that I joined the great family of Dwwen as a developer. So if you like the new features, you're welcome. If you don't, it's the managements' fault :-p.
Seriously, It was a great opportunity for me to work with Dwwen's team. The flow of ideas was astounding, and all I have to say now is, stay tuned for future updates ;).

With this new version, you can now keep a list of your all time favourite posts, or specify which blogs you don't wish to follow up on anymore. All this and more is available after creating an account with us.

Anyway, hope you like the new features. Keep us posted with any feedback you have. And we are glad to have you as a subscriber. Now go on, go create an account.

Compiz-Fusion on Thinkpad

2008-01-06T12:40:00.000+02:00

I've had my Thinkpad R61 laptop for two months now, and tried to enable my 3D desktop with no success. I thought that my video card does not support it so I gave in to the harsh reality of having to work using a 2D desktop :-(

Anyway, last night, I was installing Linux on a friend's laptop, and he has the Thinkpad T61 which I am sure has a video card that supports compiz-fusion. Yet when you try to turn it on, it refuses.

Apparently, the problem is not with the video card, but with the motherboard chipset. The i965 chipset is blacklisted because it does not support something that is required (didnt' bother with reading, so don't know the exact details).

The good news is that you can force compiz to run :-D. You simply need to create a simple file that contains the following two lines
#!/bin/sh
SKIP_CHECKS=yes compiz --replace

Save the file, and run it, or add it to your startup programs and you'll have compiz-fusion running on your i965 motherboard machine. Now my colleagues envy me on my awesome 3D desktop. It kicks ass :-D

English -> Arabic Editor??

2007-12-09T16:33:00.000+02:00

Well, this is one great site that i just can't pass without writing about. If you go to Yamli, and click on their Yamli Editor link, you can simply type arabic words using letters, and the editor will convert your input into correct arabic words !!!

For instance, typing "marhaba ana ismi faisal", would result in the text appearing as مرحبا أنا اسمي فيصل.

I have no idea how they do it, but it's amazing!!

Dwwen Widget Is Here

2007-10-18T09:29:00.000+02:00

Dwwen just keeps on improving, as if their service isn't brilliant enough already, they now released a widget that you can incorporate on any webpage you have (hmm, your blog maybe :)). Simply copy the code to your page, and voila, you'll have the latest and greatest from Dwwen articles on your page.

Now go along, copy it already, and enjoy :)

Around The World

2007-08-25T10:44:00.000+02:00

I was feeling a bit retro this weekend, so i went to youtube to check some of the hits from the good old days. Things like "King of my castle" by Wamdue Project, "Ayerodynamic" by Daft Punk, and "The Launch" by DJ Jean.

But the real show stopper was "Around The World" by Daft Punk. I never realized how awesome, how perfect the choreography of that video clip is, and i am completely blown away by the minute details that are embedded in the dance. Definitely one of my all time favourites.

Click here to check it out on youtube.

Karazhan Here i Come!!!

2007-08-06T08:18:00.000+02:00

After a battle of epic proportions, fighting beasts from other realms, and vanquishing demons that have come to disturb the time flow and alter reality as we know it, I emerged victorious. And now, i hold the master's key to Karazhan.

This weekend, i'll be going to Karazhan. Anybody on Magtheridon is welcome to join. /w blymoth for further details.

PHP 4: End of an era!!

2007-07-14T00:42:00.000+02:00

Well, it's official folks... PHP 4.4 is over. Yesterday was the 3rd birthday for PHP 5, and the PHP folks announced that by the end of this year, PHP 4.4 will stop getting any releases, fixes, and the lot, except for critical bug fixes... and those will be terminated by August 8th, 2008.

So, this means you need to freshen up on PHP 5, prepare for PHP 6, upgrade all your code that operates on 4 to be PHP 5 ready, and brace yourself. OR (and i think i'll be taking this option) change your entire career.... farming looks good !!!

الله يلعن إلي في بالي

2007-07-03T14:44:00.000+02:00

OMG, this is just unbelievable... i have spent the last 3 weeks fixing some stupid work by a stupid person who has an overestimated rating of himself. And he dares call himself a programmer.. PAH, he shouldn't be even connected to anything that runs on electricity!!!

Stupid naming scheme, no standards compliance, zero understanding of coding procedures, and of course a LOT of unjustified arrogance... a complete ****ed up mess!!

Seriously, this is one of the marks of the end of time, when the worthless start voicing their opinions as if it matters.

Blog Addiction

2007-07-02T09:23:00.000+02:00

After reading this blog post by salwa, i decided to take the test myself. Here's teh result:

47%

Mingle² - Online Dating

Apparently the blogging bug didn't catch me yet!!

Parallel Earth?

2007-06-30T07:54:00.000+02:00

Apparently, the American Department of Defense (DOD) is building a virtual earth with a node for every single man, woman, and child. This is done to aid in the process of predicting the output of certain scenarios such as how would "you" react if food was cut off, or if "you" were shown a piece of media with some propaganda in it.
We know that they've been running simulations to predict outcomes, one famous simulation is that the americans nationalized the suis channel in their simulations even before Jamal Abdel Naser did that. But this is taking it to a totally new level.

Hmmm, but i found a way to break the system!!! I'll run a simulation of their system, and so, they will simulate me simulating them simulating me simulating them ... and the system will just explode !!! ;-D

Full article can be found here: http://www.theregister.com/2007/06/23/sentient_worlds/

!!سلبطة عيني عينك

2007-06-26T11:09:00.000+02:00

معقول يا عالم؟
و الله صرت خايف ييجوا يتملكوا داري عشان العبدلي!!

حسبي الله و نعم الوكيل

Wise quote... or not!!

2007-06-24T01:05:00.000+02:00

Give a man a fire, he is warm for a day.
Teach a man how to build a fire, he is warm for the rest of his life.
Set a man on fire, he is warm for the rest of his life, and a few hours after!!

Experience with MySQL

2007-06-18T10:15:00.000+02:00

While working on a project the past two weeks, i had to deal with a rather large database to import and query. What follows is my experience in this project and some interesting trivia about how MySQL server works. My computer machine is a bit ancient, i have a P4 2.8HT CPU, 512 MB DDR RAM, and a SATA harddisk. My operating system is Ubuntu 7.04, and the only other process that was running was firefox (to pass the time reading bash :-p), Database server is MySQL 5.0.22, default installation (except i changed default charset to utf8). All queries were run using the MySQL terminal client.

Here's the database structure:
Table A:
id int(11) primary key not null
num int(15) unique
contains ~ 1 million rows

Table B:
id int(11) primary key not null
A_id int(11) references Table A, id not null
attribute int(5) (contains around 130 distinct values)
contains ~ 13.5 million rows

Now the idea is that based on user input i need to get Table A.num, filtered by whatever the user selects in Table B.attribute. My first reaction was to do a join between the tables:

SELECT DISTINCT a.num FROM a, b WHERE a.id = b.a_id AND (b.attribute = x OR b.attribute = y OR ...) ORDER BY rand() LIMIT z;

After two and a half hours of hogging the CPU at 100%, i killed the process and decided it wasn't such a good idea. The problem here is that a cartesean product was calculated first before starting to filter, which would generate a temporary table with 13,381,664 * 991,483 rows, followed by recursing over the entire temporary result set to check for my filter. After which, the result would be ordered according to a.num and duplicate values would be emitted according to the distinct rule, followed by re-ordering the result set randomly, and finally selecting LIMIT number of rows to display.

So i decided to find another way, asking some friends i learned that rewriting it as a nested query would give me better results so i changed my query to the following:

SELECT a.num FROM a WHERE a.id IN (SELECT DISTINCT a_id FROM b WHERE b.attribute = x or ... ORDER BY rand() LIMIT z);

The idea here was to work on table B by itself, filtering the data, getting a subset of rows that is z rows long, randomly ordered, and is filtered according to my criteria, and use it to get the data i required.
First I was surprised here to find out that my database server version does not support order by or rand clauses in the nested query, which would force me to move them to the outer query. This would make the inner query generate a much larger result set, which would be used to to filter the outer table then randomizing them and getting the number of rows i wanted. Needless to say this is slower than what i wanted but since it simply wasn't possible to do it the way i wanted to i rewrote it like so:

SELECT a.num FROM a WHERE a.id IN (SELECT DISTINCT a_id FROM b WHERE b.attribute = x or ...) ORDER BY rand() LIMIT z;

After about an hour and twenty minutes, the query finished and a result set was presented. I did a little victory dance, but i knew this huge delay won't be tolerated, so i had to think about how to hasten it even further.

Now, i've heard a lot about indices, but never actually had to use them. Other than my primary key, or unique constraints, i never created an index. So, i decided to try this index thing, thinking that it wouldn't help much... but what the heck. I created an index on the attribute field in table B. The process took about 3 hours.
Re-running both of my queries. I was extremely surprised to see the first query (join) was actually FASTER than my second query (nested). The only thing i managed to conclude was that MySQL doesn't support indices in inner statements (not sure, if you have a better explanation, please do share). The nested query took about the same time to finish (a few minutes faster, but since i only ran it once it might have been a fluke), while the join statement was reduced to a whooping 20 minute execution time.

Getting high on the results, and gaining some new found respect to indices, i decided to create a second index, this time on the fields (attribute and a_id) in table B. Creating this index took a LOT of time, like 6-7 hours, but the results were worth it. Now my join query finishes in about 40-50 seconds. creating the index on a_id actually makes a difference because in my query the first condition is "a.id = b.a_id", and it gets evaluated first, so when we get to the filtering part, we don't have a cartesean product, only the rows that are related.

I'm at this stage now, still looking for ways to make even faster, however i gained a lot of respect to indices. I still have no idea how google manages to finish our search queries in a fraction of a second, i know they have WAY better hardware, but they also have WAY more information in their servers. One thing though, is that they have the ability to tune their DB server, a thing i can't don't have access to. Also, when you have a read only database (like my case), indices are a VERY good investment. Also, understanding how your DB server works, and how the query gets evaluated could give you a huge advantage.

Special thanks goes to my project manager, Ghassan Noubani, for rewriting my join query to its present form, and suggesting the second index.

Still Alive

2007-05-09T23:02:00.000+02:00

This is just to tell all the people who care that i am still alive, but unfortunately buried under a ton of work. Special thanx goes out to Z3tr for checking up on my every once in a while.

I am beyond busy these days... I have a project ending in late may, so i hope i get back to blogging then...

Until such time arrives...

DRM Free iTunes

2007-04-05T08:13:00.000+02:00

Apple systems in cooperation with EMI announced yesterday that they will start offering DRM free songs on the iTunes music store starting in May. The songs will be encoded at double the current bit rate, and -since there is no DRM- you are free to do with the songs whatever you see fit. You can use it on as many computers, iPods as you want, or you can even copy it to a different MP3 player. This is good news for those people who have more than one MP3 player and were forced to buy the song more than once to have it on their different machines.
The songs will be priced at $1.29 against the curernt $0.99, but i guess having 256K bit rate instead of 128, plus no DRM is worth the extra 30 cents. Also, you can upgrade any songs you have from the EMI catalog for just 30 cents.
Apple is hoping that by the end of the year, more than 3 of the 5 million songs in its store will be offered in both DRM and DRM-Free formats.