Adnan's Den

Return of Dipu!

The best of friends, Can change a frown,
Into a smile, When you feel down.
The best of friends, Will understand,
Your little trials, And lend a hand.
The best of friends, Will always share,
Your secret dreams, Because they care.
The best of friends, Worth more than gold,
Give all the love, A heart can hold.

–Š Jill Wolf

Exactly 170 days later, Dipu has returned to Bangladesh from Bhutan today. Just got my Best Friend back after six months! Today spent the whole evening with him. He seems to be a little bit thin (foods of Bhutan didn’t suit him 🙂 ). Whatever it is he is just the same jolly and funny person as usual. While he was away, I realized the true essence of friendship. For the last six years we didn’t spend such a long term interval. It was really hard for both of us. But at last it has ended. I am one of the few luckiest person to having Dipu as a close friend.

Bangla Typing with Avro Keyboard

Avro Keyboard Startup Splash

Like the most of the Bangladeshi people, I don’t know the Bangla keyboard layouts. Because in Bangla scripts we’ve 11 vowels, 35 consonants, 5 modifiers and numerous consonant conjuncts. To make it more complex, there are several keyboard layouts which are differ from each other. It is a quite difficult matter for me to be handy with one of those keyboards. What a shame for me! Being a Bangladeshi I don’t know how to write Bangla in IT world! But that problem was pacified when I met with Avro Keyboard.

I received several questions from my known-circles about how a complete idiotic ignorant of Bangla Key-layouts like me writes in Bangla. Actually that’s why I must thank to Avro Keyboard. Because this keyboard supports English to Bangla phonetic typing method. That means if you write “amar sonar bangla.“ it’ll show “আমার সোনার বাংলা।“ automatically. Isn’t it fantastic! See a snap shot on how your English text is converting to Bangla using Avro Keyboard.

Avro Keyboard is a free software. Any one can download it. After installing it’ll be automatically stored in your system tray leaving a small toolbar on the top of your desktop. This toolbar indexes all the options for using the keyboard. This tool bar is also very stylish in outfits. Just look it at below.

Another exciting feature is that you can use mouse for typing Bangla like the Character Map of Windows OS. For the totally newbies (who even can’t use keyboard) this is a damn good option for writing in Bangla.

Now you all know my secret of writing Bangla in the Blogosphere or in Facebook or Orkut! But to use it on your browser first you need to set up your browser for Bangla Unicode. I prefer Firefox for that job. Read my guide for Firefox users to prepare Firefox for Bangla unicode.

My new office room.

In the new campus of AUST I’ve gotten my new office room. As a faculty member of Dept. of EEE it was assumed that unlike the previous campus, we’ll got our rooms. As due to lack of facilities, previous campus was unable to provide most of us a room (even a chair and table). We were glad that those terrible experiences are not returned in this new campus. Actually I didn’t get a whole room rather an one third of a room. I’ve to share my room with two other faculty members (Shariful Islam and Biplob Kumar Das), but whatever it is, I’ve gotten my own table and chair! 😛

I know it is childish, but can’t wait to share the fresh pics of my new office room with my readers. The room is literally neat and clean, as we have not decorated it yet! So here goes the couple of first day first show snapshots 😀

Taare Zameen Par: A movie of life time

I am neither a big fan nor a regular watcher of Hindi movies. Don’t think I am underestimating the Hindi movies. Actual reason is I don’t understand Hindi well (except some words those are similar to Bangla). So without subtitles, I don’t used to watch Hindi movies. That’s the reason why I am an occasional viewer of Hindi movies. Recently I watched the movie Taare Zameen Par directed by Aamir Khan two days ago. If I want to define the movie in one single line I’ve to say “it is one of the very touching movies I’ve ever seen”.

Taare Zameen Par

The story of this movie is about a dyslexic boy named Ishaan. Who hates school. Because of dyslexia, every subject is seemed to be difficult for him which leads him to fail in every subjects. His teachers and classmates subject him to constant acts of public humiliation rather than help him. It became worse when his parents send him to boarding school for being “excelled”. But life in boarding school did not make any change in his life as nobody there understood him. This changes however when a new temporary art teacher (Aamir Khan) joins Ishan’s boarding school. Then a wonderful story between a teacher and a student is portrayed in the movie. It is awesome to watch how a teacher can change a students life!

At the beginning of this post I used the word “touching” to demonstrate the genre of this movie. After watching the movie you can’t just hold your tear. You’ll feel a new of you in side yourself. Thanks to Aamir Khan for filming such a mervellous movie.

Bangla Jokes

এই কৌতুক দুটো বাংলায লেখা। একবার ভেবেছিলাম এগুলো ইংলিশে ট্রান্সলেট করে দিই, কিন্তু পরমুহর্তেই মনে হল এইগুলো বাংলাতেই পরতে সবচেয়ে ভালো লাগছে, ইংলিশে ট্রান্সলেট করলে আবেদন নষ্ট হয়ে যাবে। তাই এই পোস্টটা বাংলাতেই করলাম।

চুট্‌কি # ১

প্রশ্ন: চাঁদে একজন রাজাকার। এর মানে কী?

উত্তর: সমস্যা।

প্রশ্ন: চাঁদে দু’জন রাজাকার। এর মানে কী?

উত্তর: মহা সমস্যা।

প্রশ্ন: গোটা রাজাকার সমাজ চাঁদে। এর মানে কী?

উত্তর: পৃথিবীতে সমস্যার সমাধান!

চুট্‌কি #২

প্রশ্ন: রাজাকার আর এক বালতি গোবরের মধ্যে পার্থক্য কোথায়?

উত্তর: ঐ বালতিটা।

Bangla Unicode Fonts in Firefox 2.0

Update!

Just a several months back like many people, I used to browse the Bangla sites (specially the Bangla news papers) with Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). Because Firefox (FF) couldn’t handle the Bangla fonts. Bangla fonts appeared in the Firefox was scattered and broken. Though as a browser FF is always my first choice, for the Bangla sites I stucked on IE7. Recent days I am able to handle the Bangla sites with FF smoothly. But I am hearing many complains from various persons regard the problem I’ve faced earlier. For this purpose, I decided to write an article which will guide anyone to fix this problem. This article is going to guide you for setting up FF for viewing Bangla unicode fonts. For writing this article, I took help from Bokaader Poddyo.

Continue reading Bangla Unicode Fonts in Firefox 2.0

Joke: Mind your accent

Root of problem is the chinese names: Annie Wan, Sam Wan, Noel Wan, Avery Wan, Saw Lee.

Caller: Hello, can I speak to Annie Wan? (anyone)

Operator: Yes, you can speak to me.

Caller: No, I want to speak to Annie Wan!

Operator: You are talking to someone! Who is this?

Caller: I’m Sam Wan (someone) And I need to talk to Annie Wan! It’s urgent.

Operator: I know you are someone and you want to talk to anyone! But what’s this urgent matter about ?

Caller: Well… just tell my sister Annie Wan that our brother Noel Wan (no one) was involved in an accident. Noel Wan got injured and now Noel Wan is being sent to the hospital. Right now, Avery Wan (everyone) is on his way to the hospital.

Operator: Look if no one was injured and no one was sent to the hospital, then the accident isn’t an urgent matter! You may find this hilarious but I don’t have time for this!

Caller: You are so rude! Who are you?

Operator: I’m Saw Lee. (sorry)

Caller: Yes! You should be sorry. Now give me your name!!

First Day First Show

Now, AUST has moved to its’ permanent new campus. Today was the opening of that campus. Students were all in a festive mode as they became a part of a history. It was just awesome! But there is some scarcity of facilities. In EEE department, faculty room has not been decorated at all! As I said earlier, laboratories are still incompleted. And we are lack of one lab, that is Simulation Lab. It surprised me when I found out that faculty spaces for all other departments has allready been decorated except EEE department. Ever since I joined in AUST, I found that EEE department is always been suppressed by the authority, though it is the largest department of the university with the large number of Faculties as well as students. But the authority does not take care of this department at all though a majority fund is come from EEE departemnt.

However, it is all our desire that this movement to a permanent campus will help AUST to increase its’ reputation in Bangladesh and aboard.

Following is a picture, where VC is giving speech today at 10:30 am as a part of the opening ceremony of the new campus. Sorry for the poor quality [as I took this one by my mobile phone].