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An Introduction to the Fragments of Self

Me.

I don’t usually post many stuff about myself online, I will try to set this page as a way of making up for this. I don’t like the aspect in general to have a virtual life, this was why I didn’t care much to post details about me online. However, this tended to make people presume things about. I hope that this page will help reducing the severity of unsupported thoughts about me.

Occupation

I’m not currently certain about listing my profession, despite it being self-explanatory from many posts here and my general online activity, however, I do not like to be defined by it at all, and any other professions in which I may get involved forthcoming.

This to imply to you my view of what is ’professional’, if I ever had the opportunity of being financially independent I’d definitely be. I’m not the kind of “I love my job” people I might have to say that I also dislike this kind of lifestyle. , however, I do love my job, but it’s a love that means to an end: not to starve to death I’ve always thought about how obvious this should be, unfortunately my field is one of the most domains that get people who are “in love” with their job or what they’re doing, that’s why I thought I needed to put this clear. .

This is also to say that I don’t like spending my time out of work doing, thinking, reading, discussing, or —God forbid— studying anything that is related to my profession. I’ve many other Interests to spend my time on rather than whatever I do to make money.

TODO Religion   @write

I’m Muslim. I do I disagree with the mainstream definition of Islamic faith, this includes my views of the early history of Islam, caliphate and Shiism. I plan to write about that soon on this website.

Music   @write

I used a proprietary music tracker for a while, which informed me that my top music artists are:

  • Matt Elliot
  • Leonard Cohen
  • Death In June
  • Fairuz
  • Johan Sebastlan Bach
  • Black Hill
  • Elliot Smith
  • Stranger On a Train

I enjoy classics. These are my favorite pieces:

From Bach: 

Johann Sebastian Bach - (1704-1750) Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.mp3
Johann Sebastian Bach - (1704-1750) Air on the G String.mp3
Johann Sebastian Bach - (1704-1750) Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major, BWV 1048 (Allegro moderato).mp3

From Mozart: 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - (1785) Piano Concerto No. 21 KV.467 (II.Andante).mp3

From others: 

 Ludwig van Beethoven - (1801) Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor for Piano Op. 27 (No. 2 Moonlight; Adagio sostenuto).mp3
 Ludwig van Beethoven - (1810) Fur Elise Bagatelle No.25.mp3
 Ludwig van Beethoven - (1824) Symphony No. 9 In D Minor, Op. 125 Choral (II. Molto vivace; Presto).mp3
 Gioachino Rossini - (1828) William Tell Overture (excerpt).mp3
 Johann Strauss - (1864) Marche Persanne, Op. 289.mp3
 Gabriel Fauré - (1887) Pavane, Op. 50.mp3
 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - (1899) Flight of the Bumblebee.mp3
 Francisco Tarrega - (1908) Recuerdos de la Alhambra.mp3
 Antonín DVOŘÁK - (1893) Symphony No.9 in E Minor, Op. 95 (From The New World, IV. Allegro con fuoco).mp3

I rarely enjoy opera; 

Léo Delibes                             3. (1883) Lakmé (Flower Duet)

TSU! - Prince of Gumbay For me, this is the most peaceful piece of music I’ve ever heard.

I do not use Spotify or any other music proprietary platforms. I download and stream music offline on my computer machine. cmus is my music player. See Planned for my plans for building a music player.

Currently, I’m not interested in exploring any new types of music, I prefer to stick to the collection I already have.

Leonard Cohen

There’s truth that lives
And truth that dies
I don’t know which
So nevermind

My first time of experiencing Cohen’s music was from opening one of my colleagues Spotify accounts, I was in high school back then, when I listened to the music, which was Sing Another Song, Boys, the seventh song from Songs Of Love And Hate (my ever favorite album of his by now), I didn’t like it initially, but I felt that it was very different from anything I’ve ever listened to (and I still believe that it’s indeed a unique work of music).

I remember that I spent days listening to it, I was back then possessing some interest in pursuing a biotechnology degree and I was studying a biochemistry textbook; I still get some intrusive chemical formulas into my head every time I play the song, because I used to study that book while listening to it on repeat, though I do not mind it at all.

I didn’t play any other songs by him since that, so I can say that the real time for me to learn about Cohen was from the movie Exotica (1994), since then I fell in love with his songwritings, following are my favorite works from him (not sorted):

  • Songs Of Love And Hate - 7. Sing Another Song, Boys
  • Leonard Cohen - Thanks for the Dance - 6. The Goal
  • Thanks for the Dance - 1. Happens to the Heart
  • You Want It Darker - 7. It Seemed the Better Way
  • Cohen Live - 9. Who By Fire? - Live in Austin, 1988
  • Live In Dublin - 8. Amen - Live in Dublin
  • Various Positions - 6. The Captain
  • Death Of A Ladies’ Man - 1. True Love Leaves No Traces
  • Songs Of Leonard Cohen - 9. Teachers
  • I’m Your Man - 3. Everybody Knows
  • Ten New Songs - 4. Here It Is
  • Recent Songs - 2. Humbled in Love
  • Recent Songs - 10. Ballad of the Absent Mare - Longer Version
  • Songs Of Love And Hate - 1. Avalanche

TODO Matt Elliot   @write @later

My Matt Elliot story is as just as special to me as Leonard Cohen’s, but it’s still ongoing. Someday, I will write about it. I hope it will be soon.

Nostalgical Music

I’m easily stirred by music that brings nostalgic melody. I don’t dislike it, but it extremely affects my mood I was told that I’ve a nostalgia issue and that I usually suffer from nostalgic depression, which might be related to my mild Plyushkin’s disorder. Related: Nostalgic Bibliography. . Thus I tend to avoid having or listening to any of this genre. Some songs that gives me this kind of vibes are: Perhaps every Ahmed Mounib and Hamid El Shaeri songs are qualified here.

  • Ya Waadi Aal Ayame, Ahmed Mounib Which made me write this list. As of [2024-09-28 Sat 00:14]
  • Dayret El Rehla, Ahmed Mounib
  • Eh fi amal, Fayrouz
  • Bageelek, Hamid El Shaeri
  • Ouda, Hamid El Shaeri
  • Hamid El Shaeri
  • رماد حلمَك | مرثية لـ نجيب سرور I’m not sure of the author: https://soundcloud.com/johnny-singer-81
  • Ahmed Mounib, Salma
  • shbbet thaw al thkryat, Omar
  • مع السلامة لو نويت تروح - من تراث السّويداء https://soundcloud.com/user-645622529/xotaoghzb0fh
  • Nesmet Saba, Hamid el-Shaeri
  • Long Long Time Ago, Javier Navarrete
  • Ana Raga Ashofak, Talal Maddah
  • A Vava Inouva, Idir
  • Bektob esmak ya habibi, Fairouz
  • [2024-10-30 Wed 19:20] No Clear Mind - Dream is Destiny - 8. a new sun

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture Finale”.

This piece is a one of my very few specials. I remember learning about it for the first time from the movie V for Vendetta (2005), which is one of my ever favorites, but I didn’t pay much attention back then, and I think I only learnt about it by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It affects me very much, and it gives me vibes from Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov, 1965). I only listen to / play both in special occasions, due to their great effect on me.

Interests

I’m interested in the following fields: computer programming, cognitive science, linguistics, history, scientific socialism, propaganda and media studies, moral philosophy and philosophy of mind, Islamic philosophy, Islamic biographical evaluation and modern Takhrij studies. I’ve developed a growing interest in the following fields: chemistry and economics.

Other interests are implied in my Books list.

I consider myself to be an intermediate chess player, my peak rating (Glicko) was 1950, my current rating on my only active account is 1808 (after a long strike of losing). For my thoughts on chess, see the post Thoughts on Chess.

Generally I think chess is one of the few games that I’d like to play (I think gaming is a great waste of time in general), the game GO seems interesting too.

What I like about this kind of games that it is free of anything but the free will of one’s decisions. See more on that on A View on Chess.

Personal preferences

Olive is my favorite food, most of my favorite recipes contain olive. There is no -generally speaking- any kind of food that I would refuse to eat, however I do refuse to consume any food that contains any form of artificial sweeteners (raw sugar, refined white sugar, etc..).

My favorite drink is tea. I do consume lemonade regularly too. My consumption of coffee is high as well, however I do not really prefer it and I only drink it for my need of caffeine. If I can find someday a caffeine substitute (that is comparable to ground coffee) I will quit coffee. I drink only ground coffee. I try to avoid manufactured instant coffee for health concerns (also most instance coffee products do not have approximate amount of caffeine that ground coffee posses).

On the web

I exist in other places on the web. I’m on Stack Exchange network. Especially: Skeptics SE and Islam SE. I also exist on HN. I don’t use social media to connect with people. Even when I do, I do not appreciate people who I don’t know in person communicating with me there.

If you want to know me

This gets me to another point. Some people think I’m avoidant for new people. I’m not at all, if you find that we share interests, I’d be glad to know more about you. The best way to communicate with me can be found on the footer of the home page.

Projects

  • statusless. A dynamic, programmable, user-defined status bar for dwm (and other window managers that use xroot) that follows suckless philosophy.
  • bo. Bin organizer using trash-cli as a backend. [2024-11-03 Sun 23:47] I stopped using/maintining bo
  • euler. solving project euler.
  • ps. other problem solving.
  • tadwin.el. Emacs publishing blog system (tightly coupled to my org-roam setup) using org-mode. It’s used to make this website.
  • agenda-notifier.go. agenda-notifier.̶e̶l̶ go is a basic notification daemon for org-mode agenda. Last time I used it was years ago.
  • rssc. real-time, self-hostable regex-oriented customization service for atom, rss and json feeds. Many people are using it, but I stopped using it and moved to r2e eventually.
  • RedditorDump. An open-source intelligence tool to get all the subreddits a reddit user was involved in.

TODO Planned   @idea

Projects that I’m considering to get into next.

  • musql. I’d love a queryable music player that would support generating sets of music using a complex tagging system. Let’s say that you have a playlist for sad songs and another one for you when you feel proud. What if you feel both? like a success depression. A possible solution would be creating a new list that includes both. However, what if you need a list that contains only the sad songs that are not about love? It will be impossible with that linear system to do it without manual intervention.

    But if you were able to tag each song as “sad, love”, and you had a DSL language for querying (let it be even just SQL), such scenario is very feasible.

    I’ve been thinking about this idea for a fairly long time. But I’m horrible at designing/implementing UI ends. If you can help, contact me.

  • (as of [2024-10-17 Thu 18:15], I’m no longer interested in this) cblocks. I started this project as an exercise for my C fluency and because I needed an alternative for the dwm bar I’m using, with more flexibility. This project was successful (it reads a compiled C module, load, evaluate it and update the status bar with the evaluated string), however, I wanted to add concurrency which is an essential feature for me. Sadly I totally forgot how hard was it to work with concurrency in C. I think I might rewrite it in Go, but I’m not sure who to implement the dynamism in Go.
  • Chronological art browser.
  • Gustave Doré Arabic Divine Comedy. Basically something that shows Doré’s work on the divine comedy, with verses in Arabic, showing various translations.

My favorite animals

واعلم أن الحيوان هو آية الكون وسِحره؛ وإنّما أنتَ استثناء. — عباس ابراهام.

I like to read and study animal behavior. We humans have many intersection points with them, you can notice that while contemplating other mammals behavior. Desmond Morris was the first one to get me interested in reading about animal behavior, after I finished his magnum opus (the naked ape) I was looking for more by the same author. I like these animals because I admire some of their manners: Hare, Python, Jugar and Greyish eagle-owl. I never owned a pet.

Languages

I speak Arabic and English. As my course of learning linguistics, I’m learning another language, it’s supposed to be German (as of [2024-02-29 Thu 01:05]) but I’m considering moving to French.

Footnotes:

1

I might have to say that I also dislike this kind of lifestyle.

2

I’ve always thought about how obvious this should be, unfortunately my field is one of the most domains that get people who are “in love” with their job or what they’re doing, that’s why I thought I needed to put this clear.

3

I was told that I’ve a nostalgia issue and that I usually suffer from nostalgic depression, which might be related to my mild Plyushkin’s disorder. Related: Nostalgic Bibliography.

4

Perhaps every Ahmed Mounib and Hamid El Shaeri songs are qualified here.

5

Which made me write this list. As of [2024-09-28 Sat 00:14]

6

I’m not sure of the author: https://soundcloud.com/johnny-singer-81

7

https://soundcloud.com/user-645622529/xotaoghzb0fh

I seek refuge in God, from Satan the rejected. Generated by: Emacs 29.4 (Org mode 9.8). Written by: Salih Muhammed, by the date of: 2023-06-22 Thu 13:00. Last build date: 2024-11-17 Sun 23:52.