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Sunday, 5 July 2026

#LearnedToday 21 to 30


#LearnedToday 21 by shakeeb.in

All those who are impressive orators imo, have this one thing in common: they have normal SPEAKING tone while they speak in public. Not that painfully formal and obviously fake one. 

Be it Muzaffar Master or Imteyaz bhai in Kamptee markaz, or internationally recognised like Nouman Ali Khan, Qasim Ali Shah, Mufti Tariq Masood and Dr. Israr Ahmad. 

Remember: it doesn't necessarily mean they use very simple words either. Dr. Israr for example. 

Tags:  Public Speaking

#LearnedToday 22 by shakeeb.in

Bookmarks in browsers are not just bookmarks.🎉😄

Ever copied from Wikipedia? Those references are annoying, aren't they? 

I used to  remove them using regular expressions, which I'm not an expert at, but manage to do stuff I want with Google's help. 

The other day, I randomly checked it on SuperUser and found that you can use a browser's bookmark to run JavaScript code. 

Tada. I have a bookmark now, and when I click it, it removes all references from Wikipedia text. Will write a short blog post and teach you guys how to use it. 

Tags:  Technical

#LearnedToday 23 by shakeeb.in

Tags:  GK

Soaps are considered as self-cleaning. So if you were not sharing it with anyone because of your hygiene, well, don't be a douche bag and let them use it. 

You don't even have to wash it before use. Gross? I know, but that's how it is.

Even if some bacteria stays on the soap, it is still soap. And you're are going to use water eventually, so don't worry.

#LearnedToday 24 by shakeeb.in

Tags:  Philosophy, Life

Fish-love vs True-love

To sum up, he says that it's not actually love when we love something/someone because it pleases us. Love teaches you to be selfless. 

“Now that part of me has become in you, there's part of me in you that I love.” - Abraham Twerski

Ref: True love explained  by Abraham Twerski [YouTube]

#LearnedToday 25 by shakeeb.in

(AsIs)

Tags: Life, Philosophy

Is having a complex vocabulary a sign of superior intelligence?

There is a correlation, but having a complex vocabulary won't make you more intelligent. Intelligent people are viewed as intelligent because they can communicate their ideas effectively, which requires a complex vocabulary. Intelligent thought in itself has no value, unless it can be communicated in an idea or manifested into action.

Having a complex vocabulary also shows that you're probably well-read and you have a wide range of knowledge, which are signs of an intelligent person.

So, intelligent people aren't intelligent because they have large vocabularies, they have large vocabularies because they are intelligent.

Ref: r/insightfulquestions, Michael Eric Dyson and Jordan Peterson Debate on YT

#LearnedToday 26 by shakeeb.in

Tag: Psychology

Expertise Bias

All sorts of specialized knowledge can make experts see everybody around them as morons. 

You might think what you're explaining is obvious, or the work you told them to do is easy; but it is 'obvious' and 'easy' for YOU, not for them. Be patient.

If you're the expert on something, try to recognize that other people aren't experts and cut them some slack. And if you know an expert who gets frustrated when they have to field the same basic requests or questions again and again, cut them some slack, too.

Ref: Psychology Today

#LearnedToday 27 by shakeeb.in

Tag: Biology

What is exactly is the "lump" in throat before you start to cry?

Your throat, which starts as a single tube eventually splits into two tubes: one going to your lungs and the other going to your GI tract. 

"The expansion of the glottis in and of itself does not create a lumpy feeling, until we try to swallow. Since swallowing involves closing the glottis, this works against the muscles that open the glottis in response to crying. We experience the resulting muscle tension as a lump in the throat." 

Basically the glottis is the vocal chords and their opening.

Ref: eli5 Reddit

#LearnedToday 28 by shakeeb.in

Tag: Philosophy

Islam promotes the idea that the materialistic world is just not worth the attention we give to it. So the pain we get isn't that big of a deal tbh. 

“Stoicism” has the same ideology - the fortune of pain and pleasure. And most of the world out there is basically leveraging on it to fight anxiety, stress, low self-esteem and the likes. 

How much do you care about the world and people around you? All the time. And how often do you try to make yourself happy? Answer yourself.

I disagree with a few points in Stoicism, however. But that's just because we associate religion with what happens, which Stoicism doesn't require. 

Ref: Wiki, YT

#LearnedToday 29 by shakeeb.in

Tag: Language, Linguistics

Had always wondered why isn't there a proper representation of letters in latin alphabets. The charts before dictionaries used to confuse me. 

For example, why do they assume that "a p sound already has an h attached to it" etc.

Phew. Apparently there IS a standard. Maybe will help me someday in some project. 

Quote from wiki:

"The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language." Unquote.

P.s: Came across this going through some farsi stuff.

Ref: Wikipedia

#LearnedToday 30 by shakeeb.in

Tag: Language, Linguistics

The letter "w" is pronounced "double u" because back in the days, they literally used to write two u's in its place. 

Later, they replaced uu by w. Invention of typewriter promoted it even more.

Ref: Reddit 

Shakeeb Ahmad Maharashtra, India

Shakeeb Ahmad is a blogger, poet, enthusiast programmer, student of comparative religion and psychology, public speaker, singer and Vedic Maths expert. He loves playing with the numbers and invented a shortcut method to square the numbers at the age of 16. In sports, football is root to his happiness. He lives it.

Saturday, 6 June 2026

Rekhta Reader & Downloader (Web App) – Thousands of Books on Mobile and Desktop


I come bearing good news today. By now you have already guessed it from the title, and I strongly suspect some of you have been waiting impatiently for the day a proper Rekhta tool with an actual user interface would finally arrive.

This post is also available in Urdu here.

What can I say? The things we like for ourselves, we like for our friends as well. And I like sharing.

So, without further ceremony, here it is:

Rekhta Reader & Downloader

A complete tool that allows you to read and download books from Rekhta.org on both desktop and mobile devices.

Let us take a quick tour of the tool.

As soon as you open the application, you will be greeted with an interface similar to this:

Requirements

Before using this tool, you must install a CORS bypass extension in your browser.

Download the extension here. I have included the complete usage instructions again near the end of this article, so if anything feels unclear, you will find a detailed guide there as well.

You can also see the complete workflow in the diagram below. ( Full-size image )

Extension page for reference:


When the extension is active, its logo appears in color. If it turns black, the extension is disabled.


Back to the tool itself.

Paste the URL of a book into the first field and click GO. The book pages will immediately open inside the reader for browsing and reading.

Search Books Directly — No Need to Visit Rekhta Separately

You can search Rekhta's book collection directly from within the application.

As you can see, the search results appear right inside the tool. Simply click the book you want to open and close the dialog window afterwards.

Click on any page image and start reading. This lets you browse a book before committing to downloading the whole thing — which may save some of us from downloading a dozen books simply because they looked interesting.

Clicking the PDF button downloads the entire book.

I will repeat the usage instructions again near the end of this article, though the screenshots above should already make things fairly self-explanatory.

Before that, however, it might be worth explaining how this tool came into existence in the first place.

The Story Behind This Tool (and a Few Dry Technical Details)

A while back, inspired by the work that Falsafi Bhai and Muhammad Umar Bhai had done on Urdu Mehfil, I put together a Node.js (JavaScript) version of the tool. It worked, and I used it regularly, but it came with three rather annoying problems:
  1. It still had to be run from the command line. There was a graphical interface at one point, but it never really worked properly.
  2. It only worked on a computer. So whenever a book was needed, the routine was always the same: open the laptop first, then download the book.
  3. There was no reading facility. One had to download books blindly. And before downloading a dozen books out of sheer curiosity, it is usually nice to know whether a book is actually worth reading in the first place.

The original plan was to package the entire JavaScript library as an NPM package. Partly because it would be useful, and partly because it seemed like a good opportunity to gain some experience in that area as well.

Then, as often happens with side projects, life intervened and the idea quietly slipped out of mind.

I remember mentioning it to Umar Bhai during a private conversation on Mahfil. A few months later the idea resurfaced, so naturally I opened Mahfil again and started digging through the old discussion threads to refresh my memory and reconstruct the project's history.

Eventually I landed on Muhammad Umar Bhai's GitHub profile and discovered that he had already published a JavaScript version of the tool.

Suffice it to say, I sat there feeling slightly defeated.

(For the record, the Windows version of this tool still exists and continues to work perfectly well. The only catch is that it has no graphical user interface. Think of it as a traditional command-line application that you run through Command Prompt. Not particularly difficult, but an interface certainly makes life easier.)

Then fate decided to intervene.

Looking back at that old codebase sparked a new idea: why not port the entire thing to the frontend and make it work directly as a web application? If successful, everything could happen inside the browser without requiring users to install or run anything complicated.

There was, however, one obstacle.

Browser security policies generally do not allow one website to freely interact with another website's resources. In technical terms, the browser gets quite protective and starts throwing what developers lovingly call CORS errors.

To work around that limitation, I considered two possible solutions and built support for both into the web application.

  1. Proxy Backend

    The first approach was to use a proxy backend. In simple terms, a backend service fetches the data on your behalf and returns the response to the application. Since the browser sees the request as originating from your own backend, it usually has no reason to object. In theory, this should solve the problem quite neatly. For the sake of accuracy, I should mention that I never fully tested this route in production. My expectation is that it should work, but because the real challenge involves loading images rather than ordinary API responses, there is always the possibility of running into the same CORS restrictions further down the chain. Which brings us to the second and far simpler workaround...
  2. CORS Bypass Extension

    This is by far the easiest solution. Browser extensions exist specifically for bypassing CORS restrictions, and several of them are freely available. Install one, enable it when needed, and the application can access the resources it requires. The extension linked in this article is the one I have been using myself.

As inelegant as browser workarounds sometimes feel, they have one undeniable advantage: they save everyone from setting up servers, configuring proxies, maintaining infrastructure, and generally turning a simple reading tool into a full-time engineering project.

In the end, the goal was not to build a monument to software architecture. The goal was much simpler:

Open a book. Read a book. Download a book if you want.

Preferably from a phone while lying comfortably on a sofa.

How to Use the Tool

To use the tool, simply follow the steps below in order.
  1. Install a CORS bypass extension. Download it here .

    If you intend to use the tool on Android, make sure you are using a browser that supports extensions. One such browser is Kiwi Browser. Kiwi Browser for Android You can download the APK from the Assets section of the release page, or obtain it from any other trusted source you prefer.
  2. Open the Rekhta Reader web application. Rekhta Reader (https://tools.shakeeb.in/rekhta-reader/)
  3. Enable the extension and start using the web application.

If you run into any issues, feel free to leave a comment below. Suggestions and feedback are equally welcome.

These days I find myself reading most books directly inside the tool, and rarely need to download them anymore. On mobile, however, I still download books occasionally simply because the reading experience is sometimes more comfortable that way.

What Comes Next?

This is not my first Rekhta-related project.

Some time ago I released another tool for Rekhta content in the form of a script and an Android application.

Related blog post:

dRekhta – Rekhta Content Scraper for Android (Release)

That project was designed for text content rather than books.

Now that the books side of the equation has been sorted out as well, the plan is to merge the text-focused tool into this same online platform.

The idea is simple: instead of maintaining separate tools for separate tasks, everything should live under one roof.

Once that happens, you will be able to browse and download Rekhta's poetry, short stories, prose content, and books from a single portal.

One search box, one interface, and hopefully a lot less jumping between websites.

Whether I can stop myself from adding even more features after that remains an entirely different question.


Shakeeb Ahmad
May 23, 12:35 AM


slug: rekhta-reader-downloader-web-app-read-download-urdu-books-mobile-desktop
og title: Rekhta Reader & Downloader (Web App) – Read and Download Thousands of Urdu Books on Mobile and Desktop
og description: Rekhta Reader & Downloader is a simple web application that lets you read Urdu books online and download them for offline use. Works on both mobile phones and desktop computers, with built-in book search and a clean reading experience.
keywords: rekhta reader, rekhta downloader, rekhta book downloader, rekhta books, urdu books online, read urdu books, download urdu books, urdu ebook reader, rekhta web app, rekhta reader online, urdu literature, urdu ebooks, mobile urdu books, desktop urdu books, rekhta reader downloader
Shakeeb Ahmad Maharashtra, India

Shakeeb Ahmad is a blogger, poet, enthusiast programmer, student of comparative religion and psychology, public speaker, singer and Vedic Maths expert. He loves playing with the numbers and invented a shortcut method to square the numbers at the age of 16. In sports, football is root to his happiness. He lives it.

Friday, 20 February 2026

Quran: Hifz Helper (App Release)


Assalamualaikum!

The Quran Hifz Helper app, which has been in development for over 6 years, is now complete. Alhamdulillah, we are releasing it this Ramadan. May Allah make it beneficial for everyone! Insha’Allah.

- Shakeeb Ahmad

Quran Hifz Helper Promo
Quran Hifz Helper Icon

Quran Hifz Helper

The ultimate Quran app — read, memorize, explore translations, and view scanned mushafs. A full digital experience, just like a real mushaf.

Official User Guide

Key Features

Full Quran

Page-by-page reading, browse by Juz/Surah, smooth navigation.

Scanned Mushaf

High-quality scans of authentic Quranic mushafs for digital viewing.

Audio Recitation

Beautiful recitation by famous Qaris with background playback.

Hifz Tracker

Track progress, streaks, and spaced repetition review.

Translation & Tafsir

Multiple English/Urdu translations, word-by-word meanings, and tafsir support.

Dark Mode

Eye-friendly light and dark themes.

Install on Any Device

Android

Install directly from Play Store or add PWA to home screen.

iPhone / iPad

Add to home screen via Safari for a full app-like experience.

Desktop

Install via Chrome or Edge for offline use.

Spread the Benefit

If you find this app useful, share it with others. Contributing to Quran service is ongoing charity.
Shakeeb Ahmad Maharashtra, India

Shakeeb Ahmad is a blogger, poet, enthusiast programmer, student of comparative religion and psychology, public speaker, singer and Vedic Maths expert. He loves playing with the numbers and invented a shortcut method to square the numbers at the age of 16. In sports, football is root to his happiness. He lives it.