veiled4allah

privacy on the web

In the Newsweek article on blogs, there was an anecdote about a teenage boy whose mom found his blog and wasn't happy about all of what she read in it. This illustrates an important lesson. Unless you password protect it, anything that you put up on the web is potentially visible to everybody. You may not tell anybody about your URL, but given a month or so, Google will find you. And then a perfectly random search query could turn up your site.

If you really want to keep it private, you need to use password protection. This will prevent Google or other search engines from finding you and even if someone does get your URL somehow, they will need to know a valid username and password to actually view the page. A free site that allows you to create a password-protected blog or diary is Diaryland. If you have your own webspace you may be able to use something called an .htaccess file to create your own password-protected directories (you can also do lots of other cool things with .htaccess files). Here's a good introduction to .htaccess files if you'd like to learn more.

sigh

While I was visiting with my mom yesterday I was looking at an article in The Economist about Christian fundamentalists and their influence on American politics. I mentioned to my mom that I thought the Christian fundamentalists had some weird beliefs (in this case, about the end of the world). She said "they would probably say the same of you." :deathstare:

Actually, it's true that Christian fundamentalists might think that I have strange beliefs since many leaders like Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson have said publicly that they think Islam is evil, etc. And it's not like my mom believes in that stuff. Still, I was a bit taken aback. Does she think that mainstream Islamic beliefs are "weird"? Or maybe she was thinking that my ideas about veiling are "weird".

May Allah SWT guide us all.

family matters

My mom is going to Minnesota next week to visit her mother. My grandmother recently turned 94. It's really amazing to think about how much the world has changed since she was a girl. My grandfather died four years ago. Everybody thought my grandma would sort of fade away, but she's still hanging in there :)

My grandmother is a very devout Catholic. I'm not really sure what she thinks of my being a Muslim. I'm not sure how much she remembers it most of the time, which may be just as well. I don't think she knows a lot about Islam. I hope that Allah SWT will be merciful in His judgment of her and reward the good that she has done in her life and her faith in Him. It's really hard sometimes when family members are of a different religion.

now, that's a really long word!

Awhile ago, Umair had a post in his blog about really long words. I mentioned one that I had learned back in a high school English class. He asked me if it was a real word. I ran a search on Google for it. Follow the link to view the results of the search.

Google Search: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis

;)

has blogging become trendy?

There was an article recently in Newsweek about blogging. This must be the first time that I've actually been involved in some trend Newsweek says is the hot new thing, lol.

Newsweek is really annoying sometimes. Instead of reporting on actual news it seems to spend most of its time reporting on the latest trends among baby-boomers :rolleyes: My mom finds it so annoying she says she hardly reads it anymore.

new way to subscribe to me

There's a new way to subscribe to Al-Muhajabah's Islamic blogs using Bloglet. Here's what to do:

1) Go to www.bloglet.com

2) If you are not already a Bloglet member, register; otherwise, sign in

3) You will see a box that says "account manager" and one of the options is "your subscriptions". Click on this link.

4) You will see a section that says "To subscribe to an RSS feed enter the feed URL below" and there is a form field.

5) Enter http://www.muhajabah.com/islamicblog/index.rdf in the form field and click the "subscribe" button

6) You are now subscribed to Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs. Wasn't that easy!

Addition: Thanks to the tip in the comments from Monsur of Bloglet.com I have added a Bloglet subscription form to the sidebar for all you Bloglet fans. If you're not sure which subscription service to use, click on the "more" link below to read more about the two subscription services. Please contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions about subscription. Jazakallah khayrun.

panic! panic! ... no, don't panic, it's OK

That's what happened to me this evening. I got an email from my webhost that said I had a mail script on my site that had a security hole and they wanted it removed. Then there was a second message saying that the first message had accidentally been sent to all DreamHost users instead of only to the people with the problem. But then I got a third message later with the same warning so I assumed that it really was directed at me.

The only thing I have installed that sends mail is my MT install, which has several mail scripts. So I started wondering if that was the problem and even posted a topic to the MT support forum, then I sent an email to DreamHost to ask them if the MT mail scripts were the problem.

But it turns out that the second message was also accidentally sent to all DreamHost users and they've resorted to putting codes in the subject header to indicate which ones are the real messages and which ones are being sent to everybody due to the glitch in their own mail program. My message didn't have the code. Phew!

I'm actually really impressed with DreamHost. They admitted right away that they were the ones that made the mistake. I've been very pleased with them as a webhost. They always respond promptly to support questions and like in this incident are very upfront about errors and problems on their end. I'm glad I'm hosting my site with them. Good service is so hard to find these days.

year at a glance

I have to admit that I think the calendar I have in my sidebar is one of the cool features of MT, since it shows at a glance what days of the current month I've posted on.

I've now created a full yearly calendar for 2002. If you're bored, you can check it out, inshallah

please visit this special website

Touch of Hope - Helping children with serious illnesses such as cancer.

When I read the stories of little kids with cancer or other illnesses it makes me cry. So young and yet so brave, coping with things that are difficult even for adults.

school daze

Just a month now until my paralegal classes start. Hopefully I won't have too much trouble adjusting to being in school again. It's been seven years since I was last in school. I didn't always have the best study habits back then I would tend to put things off until the last minute and then pull an all-nighter to get it done. When I was in high school most of my classes were so easy that I could get away with that, but in college it would sometimes get me in trouble.