Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category

Pages (3): « 1 2 3 »

@ Iran: Ice Cream & Pizza!

Archives by Month:

Archives by Subject:

Categories
- .NET
- 3D Printing
- Aarau
- Aasemoon
- Academia
- Activities
- Adam Warlock
- Adventures
- Aesthetics
- Aleksi Eeben
- Amazing
- Android
- Anger
- Animals
- Answers
- Apps
- Archeology
- Art
  - Art Supplies
  - Calligraphy
    - Calligraphy Pens
  - Ink Drawing
  - Painting
- Arthurian
- Artificial Intelligence
- ASD
- ASIMO
- Augmented Reality
- Authors
  - Liu Cixin
- Baaroon
- Basel
- Beautiful
- Biohacking
- Biotech
- Birthday
- Bizarre
- BlaBla
- Blogging
- Books
- Browsers
- Canada
- Cartoons
- Cat
- Chemistry
- Chiptune
- Chocolate
- Christmas
- Climate Change
- Cloud Computing
- Coding
- Comic-Con
- Comics
- Computer Science
- Computer Vision
- Concept Design
- Covid 19
- Creations
- Creativity
- Culture
- Cute
- Data Portability
- Data Visualization
- DC Comics
- Demoscene
- Design
- Digital Art
- Digital Mars D
- Disappointed
- Disaster
- DnA
- DNS
- Doctor Who
- Dr. Ali Shariati
- Drawing
- DSP
- Economics
- Electronic Music
- Electronics
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Environment
- Erlang
- Esperanto
- Events
- Excursions
- Exploration
- Eye Candy
- F#
- Facebook
- Family
- Fantasy
- Farsi
- Feelings
- Fiction
- Firefox
- Food
- Food For Thought
- Football
- Friends
- Fringe
- Fun
- Functional Programming
- Funny
- Gadgets
- Games
  - Game Consoles
- Garfield
- Gender Identity
- Gender Politics
- Geneva
- Genox
- German
- Germany
- Google
- Graphics
- Greek
- Grotesque
- Happy
- Hardware
- Haskell
- Health
- Hiking
- History
- Holidays
- Horrible
- Horror
- IDEs
- Infographic
- Interest Networks
- Interesting
- Internet
- IoT
- Iran
- Italy
- J.J. Abrams
- Joss Whedon
- Kool
- Languages
- last.fm
- Learning
- Lectures
- LEGO
- Liestal
- Life
- Literature
- LOST
- Love
- Loved
- Lyrics
- Marvel
- Math
- Mathematics
- Mechanics
- Mechatronics
- Memories
- Messengers
- Microsoft
- Mobile
- monotonik
- Mood
- Motion Picture
- Movies
- Music
- Mythology
- Nanotechnology
- Nature
- Nerdism
- Netlabels
- New Year's Eve
- Norooz
- Nostalgia
- Notebooks
- Nutrition
- Obsessions
- Old Posts
- OpenID
- Opinions
- OPML
- Persian
- Philosophy
- Photography
- Physics
- Pictures
- Poems
- Poetry
- Politics
- Programming
- Projects
- QS
- Quotes
- Rant
- Reading
- Restaurants
- Reviews
- Richard Feynman
- Robotics
- Sad
- Satori
- Scary
- Schaffhausen
- Sci-Fi
- Science
  - Mycology
  - Psychology
- Selected Posts
- Semantic Web
- Shopping
- Short Films
- Short Stories
- Silly
- Silver Surfer
- SinQ
- Sleepthief
- Social Networks
- Society
- Software
- Somerset Maugham
- Sony
- Soundtraks
- Space
- Spam
- Sports
- St Dwynwen
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
- Stargate
- Supernatural
- Swarm Robotics
- Swiss Traditions
- Switzerland
- Technology
  - E-Ink
- Tehran
- Tesla
- Thanos
- Thoughts
- Toronto
- Toys
- Transmedia
- Travel
- Trillian
- Trips
- TV
- Tweaks
- Twine
- Uncategorised
- University
- VAIO
- Vantage
- Walkman
- Wallpapers
- Watches
- Web
- Web Development
- Website
- Weeee =D
- Weird
- Welsh
- Windows Live
- Wine
- Winter
- Winterthur
- Wolfram Alpha
- World Cup
- XML
- Yummy
- Zürich

@ Iran: Visiting… visiting…..

Author: Aasemoon

23 Oct

Thanks to my fantastic friend TanTan, I’ve been seeing more of Tehran in the past few days. One of the more “outstanding” places she showed me so far, was the “Tandis” shopping mall in Tajrish street. Wellllll words sort of fail to describe what I saw in there… aside from the fact that it was proven to me that the Iranian government no longer has a problem with foreign brands opening branches in Iran, which was the positive side of things, I also saw a whole load of faces, hairs and make ups that I’m afraid I’d neither call nice nor even remotely stylish. My only description for what I saw would be “too much”. Hey, I’m all for funky fashion [you probably know that ;)], but I have this old school idea that “looking good” should be the operative phrase at the end.

Well, it looks to me like unfortunately due to the insane amount of pressure that the gov has put on people during the past 3 years, the goal has became to simply do something that defies the tight Islamic rules as much as possible, rather than looking good. And for the love of God, can somebody please explain to me the philosophy of the / eyebrows? I mean come on people, it’s sodding UGLY! So yeah… that’s what I’ve been seeing in the streets and the shopping malls… expensive brands and pretty ugly looks. =P

I have to mention though… it’s really quite a lot of fun doing the sight-seeing with TanTan and awesome friends. =) And I had quite a bit of laughs with TanTan in this small restaurant in Tandis… since basically everything that they had on their menu, they didn’t have in reality. =P I’ll post pictures soon….. Oh, and I felt near death at some point when I was near Tajrish street… I officially no longer can take Tehran’s polluted air… I was feeling so bloody sick…

1 Comment

Filed under: Aasemoon, Iran, Life, Tehran, Thoughts, Travel

@ Iran!

Author: Aasemoon

20 Oct

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but flying to Iran and getting through to the IK Airport happened quite smoothly and without any trouble. =) I mean the whole IK Airport experience was quite unusually easy… Our luggage arrived with no delay, and our hand luggage + suitcases where only put through the scanner, all together, and no one opened ANY of our luggage.. they didn’t even tell us to take out our electronics, just the notebooks! And we just simply walked through the sensor thang, and no one checked our clothing… in fact no one even looked us in the face during the whole process! We were out of the Airport in about half an hour after our arrival!!!!! I mean… heck, when was the last time that happened in Iran?? =) Very nice surprise there….

Then Mahyar came after us and drove us [and all our suitcases, oh yeah! ;)] home. It was such a wondrous experience seeing Tehran again after 6 years.. and arriving home broke me into tears. Thanks to our beloved friends, our apartment [yes, we’re actually staying in our own home this time..] actually looked quite livable since the very moment we arrived.

Up to this moment, I’ve mostly been doing 2 things:

– Having fun with our friends who are coming here back to back to see us + going out with TanTan,

– Taking my old “stuff” out of closets, huge packages and storage… making decisions as to what will be kept and what will be thrown away, and re-packing what I’ll be sending to Switzerland… And by “stuff” I mean… all sorts of things…. from drawings of the 2 year old me, to my Nintendo games… to old pictures… to letters… to…. oh God… this part has not been very easy, I can tell you that…..

So I haven’t done a lot of Tehran seeing as of yet, and there’s a large ton of my friends that I haven’t had the chance to visit yet… but will be doing that in the coming days, and possibly after a short visit to Shiraz. =)

Will be posting updates here on regular basis [well, as regular as possible in here!], and photos will follow soon. 😉

1 Comment

Filed under: Aasemoon, Friends, Iran, Life, Tehran, Thoughts

Flying Home… Iran… Tehran…

Author: Aasemoon

12 Oct

With all the noise I’ve been making, I’m sure everyone here already knows what’s happening… yup, 4 days from now [on October 15] I’m taking a rather long trip home. I haven’t been there in so many years… and I miss everyone and everything dearly. This is very dreamy….

I’m already done with 95% of the packing. The only remaining items are ones that will be using till the last minutes… This whole thing happened quite suddenly and without much of a planning, which adds quite a bit to the whole excitement factor.

4 days left… only 4…. can hardly wait…. ahhhhh……..

2 Comments

Filed under: Aasemoon, Iran, Life, Travel, Weeee =D

Evolution of a Revolution: Visualizing Millions of Iran Tweets

Author: Aasemoon

25 Jul

An article I just came across on ReadWriteWeb… very very interesting!

“The proliferation of real-time search engines and trend monitors (sometimes referred to as “listening platforms”) has thus far done little to address problems of this scale and importance. This is because they fail to provide context — i.e. show how a new piece of information is relevant to what we’ve seen before and where it fits in the space of possibilities and relationships. For instance, if you are a programming director at CNN trying to discriminate between significant news and Internet memes, simply knowing that #iranelection is a trending topic doesn’t tell you its relation to other topics or which communities are driving it — both critical factors. One promising area is data-oriented user interfaces: data and algorithmic analysis in the back-end and direct visualization and navigation in the front-end. This the next stage of social information, slicing and dicing, mixing and matching, interpreting and analyzing, completely on demand. In this new landscape, the data is the interface. It’s not just about sitting back and looking at pretty pictures. It is about setting aside stale UI metaphors and getting as bare-to-the-bone a human interface as possible for computation. The recently launched Wolfram-Alpha applies this principle to structured data. (Disclosure: I was a member of the core Wolfram-Alpha team and may continue to consult with Wolfram Research.) Real-time data streaming offers similar possibilities and opportunities. In this vein, let’s outline some basic ideas and methods for giving context to the streams.”

Check out the complete article here: Evolution of a Revolution: Visualizing Millions of Iran Tweets

0 Comments

Filed under: Amazing, Interesting, Iran, Math, Technology, Web

Bitter Sweet…

Author: Aasemoon

25 Jun

A couple of nice cartoons I bumped into a few times today and yesterday.

By Morten Morland

By Walt Handelsman

1 Comment

Filed under: Comics, Funny, Iran, Politics, Web

Iran – The Days To Come….

Author: Aasemoon

20 Jun

Ideas have been brought to light. Actions have been taken. Words have been said. Covers have been blown. I can’t help the feeling that many people are now beyond the point of no return. If a change doesn’t come now…. well, I don’t even want to imagine the kind of Iran we’ll see after this. It would be a true nightmare.

The threatening speech from the supreme leader today indeed sounded like an ultimatum. I fear the shape of things to come, but I prefer not to think about the fear. I have hope……I still have hope.

I take a great deal of comfort in the fact that we’re not alone……

The Pirate Bay really does rule! =) Check out the current logo!

3 Comments

Filed under: Iran, Thoughts, Web

Happy Norooz 2568 [1388] =)

Author: Aasemoon

19 Mar

Tomorrow morning @ 7:44 Toronto time, the new Persian calendar year 2568 [1388] begins. Apparently this will be a year of the “Cow”, which supposedly means that it’s going to be a good year. =) Well I really do hope so! Cause from what I see… some very important events may occur in this year! 😉

Happy New Year Everyone, with all the best wishes from your little blue friend. =)

6 Comments

Filed under: Iran, Life, Norooz, Weeee =D

Iranians forced to register their websites? What in the heavens name is this?

Author: Aasemoon

7 May

As probably obvious by the title, I’m currently somewhat confused and you could even call it somewhat ticked off. Last night a Persian speaker friend of mine sent me a link to an article in a Persian weblog that he found amusing. Well honestly the article itself didn’t take as much of my attention as the little banner on the corner of the page did. Yes, it’s similar to the one I’ve posted here. I had a feeling that I had seen the same banner before on possibly another Persian weblog. I clicked on the banner and was directed to THIS website, where I got a bit of an explanation as to what’s cooking, and I also found the link to THIS OTHER website, where I got the complete and full version story.
So, as far as my understanding is, this is what’s going on. The 2nd website is the homepage for an Iranian government organization who’s name translates to something in lines of “The Iranian Website Classification Organization”. To make the long story short, this organization’s soul purpose is to classify and register all the websites or weblogs owned by Iranians, so that [obviously] they can take their nasty acts of censorship and harassment of the Iranian internet users to it’s next, simpler step. The organization’s expectation is for every single Iranian domain owner to go ahead and hand them all information about their websites, weblogs and whatever other sort of online identity that they have, which in turn will make it a lot simpler for the Iranian government to either annihilate whatever online content they don’t find to their liking, or make them inaccessible from Iran. How bloody bizarre is that? I wonder who’s unholy idea this is, to take away the smallest peace of freedom of speech that may be left through the internet, using this new, enhanced and completely idiotic tactic? And I really do mean idiotic: what on earth makes them fancy that people will just go through with this? Hence the first website I mentioned, and the banner…. that’s the big “NO” for the answer. Thank you very much!
But you know what bakes my noodles even more? Just out of pure curiosity I had a look around the organization’s website and came across their website registration form. And guess what. It’s applicable to Iranians everywhere, not just in Iran [you can select whatever country you’re in]. Yeah. Bloody right. I wonder how far they think they’re going to get with that one….

13 Comments

Filed under: Grotesque, Horrible, Iran, Selected Posts, Web

Self Destruction? OR NOT!

Author: Aasemoon

5 Sep

I don’t quite remember when I first received the news regarding the the Sivand dam [Iran – Fars] reconstruction and how it could seriously damage Iran’s archeological sites, but I do know that now I’m completely sick and tired of my mailbox and Orkut scrap book getting filled up with all the emails and messages on the topic, which oh, yeah, happen to be ALL BLOODY LIES!
So here’s the story: The Sivand dam has been an important part of an on going 10 year plan to provide irrigation water for the farmers in the area, and now that it’s nearly complete, some very disturbing rumors have been spread around which have managed to cause serious concerns for a whole lot of people, including myself for a short while. [If you didn’t know already, I’m Persian. At least to a large extent.] The rumors have it that the flooding of this dam could cause the total destruction of some of Iran’s most important archeological sites including Pasargadae, the city built by King Cyrus the Great, and the King’s tomb. So these are the rumors that everyone has been receiving and damn well spreading without the smallest bit of research and any actual credible information.
Now here’s my question to whoever’s been spreading the rumors thinking that they’ve been doing a fine job opening the eyes of the world to the truth: HOW GULLIBLE CAN YOU POSSIBLY BE? Why won’t you go and learn the truth for yourself instead of getting so fizzed up over a bunch of spam mails? When are you going to wake up and see what’s really happening, and what role you’re actually playing here?
Last night I received an email saying that the flooding has started, and the tomb has already gone under, and HEY it included bloody PICTURES believe it or not. That’s it, I’ve had it, my folly taking capacity is officially over. I’ve decided to post a little piece of authenticated truth here, so “you”, rumor spreaders, might consider going and talking to the right people, or even better, taking a little trip and seeing things for yourself if you can. And of course I hope this helps anyone who would like to have some knowledge of what’s been happening.
The Pasargadae and King’s tomb are in fact kilometers away from the bloody dam. There’s even a few villages in between, which means what exactly? Are you telling me that all those people have been drowned for cryin’ out loud? Of course not, you didn’t even think of that did you? In addition, you seem to fail to realize that the archeological sites of Iran don’t just belong to Iran, they belong to the world nation and therefore they’re all under protection of UNESCO. The Persian government doesn’t do any kind of construction work around any of Iran’s archeological sites without the permission of UNESCO. On the other hand, a Persian-Italian archeological research team has just recently unearthed another huge site in the area, which is being explored right at this moment. Makes me wonder, did they drown too? Or are they doing under-water explorations now?
The only actual concern that has been brought up so far, is the effects of the possible increase of steam in the air. As it turns out, in comparison with the amount of rain that the sites receives each year, the steam problem is totally negligible. I also have to mention that some interesting solutions are being discussed currently for the rain problem. I also have another little hint for the rumor spreaders: You might want to start thinking in lines of “what effect these rumors have on the international view of Iran”, and how many more examples of similar problems we’re dealing with currently, which have to do with certain political matters that I’m just too sick of them to get into them here anyway.
And now for some laughs, I’d like to share with you the very amusing [or not] photoshop works that I’ve just received, displaying the supposedly flooded tomb of Cyrus.
If you have some additional news, photos, or anything to contribute to the article, or for some discussions or questions, please either ICQ, MSN, or Yahoo me. Thank you.