Got my first Panther Kernel Panic at 2:30 a.m. When I saw that blue screen of death, my heart nose-dived straight into my stomach and stayed there … had a flight to Islamabad at 5:30 a.m. – so it wasn’t pretty. Thanks to my non-functional CD drive (that’s another story altogether), couldn’t boot up with the System CD either to fiddle with the system. Tried verbose startup and diddled with some arcane Unix commands to no avail. Finally, jumped in the car, went to office, grabbed a Firewire cable, came home, mounted my laptop as an external hard disk on my mother’s iBook and undid the foolishness that caused the kernel panic. If there are any Mac OS X users out there, DO NOT mess around with the damn dock. Was back in business within 10 minutes … of course, being a Mac geek helps but much as I hate to admit it, luck was the main factor. Have had kernel panic once before, for no apparent reason … and had to reinstall. This time, though, TransparentDock and Unsanity’s APE Manager/ClearDock clashed very badly and screwed up my life.

Strangely, this evening, my Sony Ericsson phone suffered from what appeared to be kernel panic – also a blue screen of death. Am I missing something here? Is it the time of year for all gadgets to single-mindedly cause grief to their owners?

Anyway … am in glorious! Islamabad – yayaya, the weather’s ‘nice’. Had a full day WSIS session (I know I am terrible, I don’t hyperlink) … World Summit on the Information Society … it was very charged up most of the day but by 3:00 mostly everyone was zoning out. Tomorrow, we will work in groups … I will be working on ICTs for Community Development.

Ejaz, did u ever get my response to your rant about the state of web design(ers) in Pakistan? Is it bad form to ask people questions on a public blog that refer to private e-mails? If so, I am sorry but too zonked to do anything about it. Won’t ever do it again though.

Just installed Panther – Apple’s latest upgrade to Mac OS X (V. 10.3 for the initiated) … a few weeks ago, my SuperDrive died and when Panther was released, I couldn’t install it. After suffering deep depression for a few days, I grabbed a friend’s Powerbook, hooked mine up to it via Firewire and seamlessly installed Panther. Everything works like a faster dream … love Expose, Preview’s speed, and other refinements to the core OS. Thank you Steve, for giving us back Labels, something you shouldn’t have ever taken away in the first place, make that 149 new features … Unsanity’s ClearDock died on me, even though I installed the new Pantherized version. Have now switched to TransparentDock – which has a bunch of other nifty features … The other thing that died – major regrets, was PTHClock, a nifty piece of freeware, hugely superior to Apple’s menubar clock. Anyway, am trying FuzzyClock which says ‘fuzzy’ things like “five past one”, “nearly two”, etc.

What else is up? Going to the city just outside Pakistan, a.k.a. Islamabad, for a workshop … The World Summit on the Information Society … hoping fervently for engaging dialog on the use of technology in education and for the development of civil society.

Am drowning in a sea of reading material … can’t remember the feeling one used to get after finishing a book. Anyway, in my bathroom and on my bedside table are the following … (here comes the inevitable list)

1. Branded
2. The ClueTrain Manifesto
3. Fortune – last two issues
4. Understanding Comics – The Invisible Art
5. The Scientist in the Crib
6. Take It Personally – How to Make Conscious Choices to Change the World
7. Polaroids from the Dead
8. Shampoo Planet

Have lived a lifetime over the last few weeks – my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and between doctors, hospitals, labs, and whatnot, each day has presented a never-ending stream of emotional, physical and mental challenges. The saga continues and life goes on …