Re: Hello (from virginia.edu)

[Nadim Shaikli <shaikli at yahoo dot com>]

--- Anson David Parker <adp6j cms.mail.virginia.edu> wrote:
> Howdy, my name is Anson Parker, I am the director of the 
> RAD Lab, located at the University of Virginia in 
> Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.

Let me the first to welcome ya - lurkers are always welcome :-)

> The Arabic department was impressed too.

Is there anyone at that department that would be willing to engage
with us to see how best we can work things out (in general initially
with specifics to follow) ?

> I have been working on creating tutorials on 3D protein modeling
> for the last couple months, I am using XTAL and Pymol (both open
> source) for most of the work, and some other freeware, it's 
> actually a pretty long list... but that's not the point - I 
> want to put the Arabic Department here to work translating 
> as many of these tools as possible.

Out of shear curiosity, why Arabic and protein modeling ?  I mean its
not like Arabic countries are full of protein scientists; I certainly
don't mean that the Arab world is ignorant (far from it), but most won't
equate protein modeling with Arabs.  Don't get me wrong - I salute you
on your thoughts, efforts, plans and direction but I'm just wondering
if there is indeed a possible Arabic country or university that is
getting into this wonderful field (again, just curious).

> 4) Our goal at the RAD Lab was (a week ago) to provide 
> tutorials / tech support for the University community to 
> use these tools, however having seen you guys in action the 
> RAD Lab has expanded its goals (and its admittedly shabby 
> website) to providing these tools to the Arab / world 
> community.

Ah, I see -- wonderful then.  I most certainly have to thank you for
considering Arabic and Arabs in the forefront of your work.  I recommend
you market this opportunity to as wide of an Arabic audience as you can.

> 5) our website is currently located at 
> http://www.people.virginia.edu/~adp6j -  The website shows 
> translations that experimented with at ajeeb.com, again, 
> please accept our apologies, we're newbies, but we are 
> dedicated.

No problem.  I'm sure you will get suggestions and some help (as I'm
sure virginia.edu's Arabic department will also lend a hand).  A quickie
note - your main page contains some Arabic, but that Arabic is not
correct (the image that is).  The Arabic needs to be mirrored and shaped
(ie. joined, etc).

> 6) Are any of arabeyes.org actually in Iraq now?  How can 
> we communicate with people there? There is so much apathy 
> here, people need to understand how close we all are.

Few come and go, but we try to keep this forum apolitical as we have
plenty of things we need to work on and accomplish.  Rehashing the past
and speculating on the future ought to be left to those sitting in cafe's
contemplating "philosophical" questions :-)  In short, we rather work and
show results instead of whine and complain.

> 7) I want to start importing data in an arabic font into 
> mysql - has anyone done this? This database began this 
> afternoon after meeting with the arabic department.  It was 
> suggested that perhaps the students could do their homework 
> by putting english in one side and arabic in on the other 
> online... it isn't running yet, but it should be by 
> tomorrow... we sincerely would appreciate your input on 
> this end... hopefully you guys have a better idea.

That is all possible - make sure to look at the QaMoose project

  http://www.arabeyes.org/project.php?proj=QaMoose

it might be very helpful in getting you the structure you require.

Mr. Parker, we look forward to hearing more from you and the Arabic
department in hopes of forging closer ties between the two of us.
As I'm sure you've come to learn, we are rather short-handed and so
we can certainly use all the help we can (on all fronts - and again
we'd love to hear from that Arabic department :-)

Regards & Salam.

 - Nadim


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