Affan Shahab

03/23/2024

Introducing https://shahabnamay.com
And a small gift for Dr. Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani if he chose to accept it.

Since I started شہاب نامے - Shahab Namay, I started taking a backup of videos in cloud storage, for just in case.
After what happened to the channel of Dr. Zeeshan, I wondered what's the alternative.
So I spent some time and built this small website which has all videos as of my youtube channel.
Videos in there is being streamed by my own storage and CDN.
Own as in I have set it up and paying for it.
Currently this website is open to public and content is publically viewable. As you play the video, it will be in lower res but will keep getting high res depending on your network connection.

This is work in progress and there are alot of hard coding in there. Trust me building this is not any rocket science, pretty much everything was there available open source, from backend infrastructure till the frontend website. I have just put them together and deployed with some customization. filled some gap using chatGPT.

Website resembles the famous movie streaming website.

For Dr. Zeeshan, if you would like something like this, once I finish setting up mine completely, I would love deploy one for you as well if you accept it. A small token of appreciation for all the good work you are doing with your channel.

For all: I need some suggestions too, originally I just wanted to keep video in cloud for storage and didn't want to do anything like this because why reinvent the wheel when youtube is there but after the incident I felt the need, thought of it sounds good but it has operational cost too.

For now I have set it up but for its future, I am not sure how far it can go. Is it something other youtubers would be interested in paying for? Like just sell them as for their own backup and a personal website?
Experts please suggest, can the operational cost be covered up by Google Adsense?

Or maybe make it more like a youtube where anyone can signup and upload videos. This is very much doable but has way much more operational cost because once open to public, there could be huge influx of video content, hence processing and storage. Also if open to public, there are regulation aspects and also video needs to be sanitized for graphic contents.
Still doable...

I will post the architecture and technologies used in this in a seperate post.

Please share feedback.

02/15/2024

OpenAI just announced text-to-video tool. This will be a ground breaking feature (to be honest what is not bu OpenAI).
Saw this on their twitter feed.. check their website for some demo. Right now they have opeend it up only for select artists and designers.

Check:

We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction.

02/05/2024

Next quick video for شہاب نامے - Shahab Namay is on tree. Had to reach there very early in the morning to be able to take a picture like this and record a video otherwise you have to queue up for upto 30 minutes and hour before it is your turn to take picture.

This is currently the world’s largest tree. It is the most heaviest and most biggest in volume. This tree is approximately 2200 years old.Yes you read it right. Experience of being among these giants is not fathomable. Trust me, you only realize the giantness of these treasures when standing next to it and looking up. Thought of it’s existence is amazing, it was standing there when the history of this world was shaping. Imagine what the world was 2200 years ago. Allah knows what it will be hundreds of years after. This tree probably existed at the time when Prophet Essa A.S was born and lives through, whole period of rise of Christianity, then it was there when Islam came into existence as we know it today, when Angels dawn upon this world and Prophet PBUH and his companions walked this world, it was there when wars were fought, when miracles happened, when rulers ruled, when empires fallen… Wow.. the history this thing may have seen.

یہ اس وقت دنیا کا سب سے بڑا درخت ہے۔ یہ سب سے زیادہ بھاری اور حجم میں سب سے بڑا ہے۔ یہ درخت تقریباً 2200 سال پرانا ہے۔ جی ہاں، آپ نے صحیح پڑھا۔ ان بڑے درختوں کے بیچ ہونے کا تجربہ سمجھ سے باہر ہے۔ یقین کریں، آپ ان خزانوں کی بڑے پن کا احساس صرف اس کے پاس کھڑے ہو کر اور اوپر دیکھ کر ہی کر سکتے ہیں۔ اس کے وجود کا خیال ہی حیرت انگیز ہے، جب دنیا کی تاریخ بن رہی تھی یہ تب بھی وہاں موجود تھا۔
تصور کریں کہ دنیا 2200 سال پہلے دنیا کیسی تھی۔ اللہ جانتا ہے کہ سینکڑوں سال بعد کیا ہوگا۔
یہ درخت شاید اس وقت موجود تھا جب نبی عیسیٰ علیہ السلام پیدا ہوئے اور زندہ رہے، پورے دور میں عیسائیت کے عروج کے یہ موجود تھا، پھر جب اسلام وجود میں آیا جیسا کہ ہم آج اسے جانتے ہیں،پھر جب فرشتے اس دنیا پر نازل ہوتے تھے اور نبی صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم اور ان کے صحابہ کرام اس دنیا میں چلتے تھے،
یہ وہاں تھا جب جنگیں لڑی گئیں، جب معجزے ہوئے، جب حکمرانوں نے حکومت کی، جب سلطنتیں زوال پذیر ہوئیں… واہ.. اس نے جو چیز جو تاریخ دیکھی ہے اسکا جواب نہیں۔

01/30/2024

This is a shot from very early morning as we were queuing up for for boarding after gathering our gears.

I loved the colors at sky and show they were positioned. Very beautiful

01/28/2024

Came across this in my neighborhood. This car is really cool, out of ordinary and catches your attention. I wasn’t the only one who took the moment and appreciated the beauty. This guy in video ordered a few months late and will be getting his car in 3 years or so.

01/04/2024

That is how you retain customers. When we reached there to lodge on our Sequoia visit, room wasn’t ready and we had to wait for an hour.
Later the mattress wasn’t comfortable.

We were just tired and didn’t want to go through the process of changing room so we just stayed. Later when we got back, got a survey from lodge, I shared my experience. I wasn’t expecting anything, neither I even complained. Got this email yesterday that they have waived off 20% for inconvenience. This is just one recent example of customer services. There are countless other which I personally have experienced.

12/28/2023

Any suggestions or complaints for me as we are done with 2023?