Category: Blog Info

10 years ago this month (December 2012) I got the Instagram account @248am. I really wasn’t planning on using it and whenever anyone told me I should move to Instagram I was always quick to kill the idea. I couldn’t see my content working on Instagram and so I wasn’t interested in moving. One of the best things about my blog is that it serves as a major resource for google searches. Anytime anyone searches for anything related to Kuwait, they’re most likely going to end up on my blog. With 13,500+ posts and counting, I’ve covered basically every single topic relating to Kuwait. This vast archive of content accessible by anyone with just an easy google search is something that Instagram just can’t compete with.
 
Then, 6 weeks ago I randomly came across a plugin for the blog that would automatically post my content to Instagram. It wouldn’t require any work from my side so I decided to give it a shot. It didn’t take long for me to realize my content wasn’t really working there. I’d refer to a link on my blog post but since I can’t have links on Instagram it wouldn’t show there. Or I’d refer to a bunch of photos in a post but the plugin I was using would just post one photo. It looked like I didn’t care and I hated that, so I started adjusting and editing my posts a bit to get them more Instagram-friendly.

A month in things just clicked, and I quickly got a grasp of what was working and what wasn’t, I reworked my logo, created a new template for posts, and deleted everything I had posted before that. I also made a new internal set of rules, a list of what I would or wouldn’t post on Instagram, and what kind of topics I would or wouldn’t cover. Things quickly took off and the response has been incredible.

The amount of people I’ve reached, the number of engagements, shares, it’s all been really overwhelming.

The biggest difference I realized between my blog and Instagram is all the feedback that Instagram gives you. With the blog, even though I get thousands of people to come through it every day, the only way I can tell is if I check my stats which I rarely do. But on Instagram, there are so many ways for people to interact with you, people can share posts, they can heart posts, follow you, leave a comment, send you DM’s, tag you, tag a friend, repost you, etc. It’s also super easy for brands to interact with you by reposting your content or just sending you a thank you or a heart. The whole experience so far has been a nonstop bombardment of interactivity that has really gotten me excited about blogging again.

I’ve been blogging daily on this exact same platform for close to 20 years now. That’s obviously incredibly tedious and repetitive work so Instagram is now a new and very exciting challenge for me. I’m taking everything I’m good at and everything I’ve learned and applying it to that platform. My blog isn’t going to go anywhere, it will continue to be my main platform with the more varied posts, but Instagram is now going to play a much larger role and I’m really excited to see where this is all going to go.

@248am

Just a quick note, the blog is currently migrating to a new web host so some of the most recent comments might not make the move. So in case, your comment disappears it’s because of the move and not censorship. Once the move is done I’ll post a second update.

Update: The move has been completed.

Update2: I must have done something wrong cuz I ended up accidentally deleting over a year’s worth of posts and comments on Facebook. Ouch.

Just a quick update, I removed yesterday’s post on my own accord. I wasn’t forced to remove it. I stated what I had to state and my readers read it so it’s done with. But when a post like that blows up and goes viral outside my regular reader base, it can easily get misinterpreted by people who don’t know me or the blog, and that brings a different set of issues that I don’t want to deal with. For everyone that reached out with support yesterday, thank you, it meant a lot.

Now back to our usual programming.

February marks two blogging anniversaries for me. February 6th, 2003 is the date I published my first blog post on my first blog Qhate.com, and February 19th, 2005 is the day I published my first blog post on this blog.

Last year should have been the most challenging year of the blog since being stuck at home and not going out as much should have hampered my ability to post about stuff. But, looking at the data, last year I published 415 posts compared to 442 the previous year so it wasn’t that bad and that’s probably due to the fact there were a lot of Covid related posts. I got nearly 4,000,000 page views last year with the busiest month being May. May is when we had the full 24-hour lockdown with the 2 hours to go out and mingle, that’s also when private supermarkets became available on moci.shop.

I still wake up every morning at 7AM to publish my posts before heading to work. It’s a good routine that has been working really for me. I also just realized I’ve been blogging for nearly half my life, such a bizarre feeling.

Anyway, thank you to all my readers, hopefully, this year is going to be a lot better for everyone.

The Classifieds section is getting a theme update so if it looks a bit weird while trying to use it now you know why.

I finally got the classifieds section working properly earlier this week and then yesterday just as I was about to post that everything was back to normal I realized that for some reason my theme had broken again. Not sure how that happened without me having touched anything, but I’ve now got to redo everything. I’m hoping things will be back to normal by tomorrow though.

Just a quick note for those of you trying to post an item for sale in the Classifieds section, it won’t work at the moment. The section is currently getting a software upgrade as well as a minor facelift which is why you’ve been getting errors for the past two days. The developer promised to get it done today but might need another day or two to make changes. Sorry about that!

Update: Classifieds is back up. Ran into some issues with the upgrade but finally got it done. Doesn’t look different right now but behind the scenes I’m now running the latest version of the software and most importantly, the errors with uploading images is now gone. I’m now gonna be working on the facelift.

I’ve been blogging for what now 15+ years? and I can count the number of posts I’ve removed. Even the Benihana posts which I went to court over and lost are all still up on the blog. I’m very against removing posts which is why I’m upset I had to remove one now.

Earlier today I posted about a new online business that launched and then someone from that business started leaving fake reviews in the comments. They were so obvious, not only because of the tone of voice or the fact they shared similar IPs, but also because some of the comments were responding to comments that were still under moderation waiting for me to approve them. Meaning only I and the original commenter could see those comments and nobody else.

As much as I hate removing posts from my blog, any business that has to resort to this kind of bullshit and waste my time is not going to get any sort of promotion on the blog.

After this past weekends press conference with the announcement of the 5-stage plan to recovery, there were many things left unclear, and some things that were just plain confusing. A lot of you had questions which is understandable.

Language Barrier
This is something I’ve already mentioned before. The majority of the messages shared right now are only shared in Arabic. The biggest issue with this is other than the fact a large part of society isn’t getting the messages, it results in a lot of fake news being shared with no way to verify if it’s true or not. It’s not that difficult to get stuff translated and information shouldn’t just be translated to English either since a lot of the low-income workers read neither English nor Arabic.

Too Many Channels
Another issue I think is how the information is being shared across multiple channels. There isn’t one official source where you can check to get all the Covid-19 related announcements, laws, and whatever. Right now there are around 6 different official Instagram accounts but they also share different information across their different channels. So you might find something on the Twitter account that’s not on their Instagram account, or you might find something on their Facebook page which is neither on the Twitter or Instagram pages. So not only do you need to follow all the Instagram accounts but also all their other social media channels as well just to make sure you’re getting everything. And that’s if you speak Arabic, if you don’t then you have to rely on random Instagram accounts or google translate newspapers.

My Blog
Which brings me to my main subject, the blog. Anybody who knows me personally knows that I love knowledge. I want to and need to know everything and I’m always curious which is why I’ve had no trouble finding content to post daily for the past 15+ years. I also love sharing and during this crisis, I realized there was a demand for information in English so I naturally started helping people by posting all the information in English so everyone knows whats going on. It’s a role I took on because nobody else was doing it right. But then the questions started rolling in. People had questions and they were coming to me because nobody else was answering it for them. The official accounts seem to ignore questions and so people had nowhere to go except blogs like mine or places like Reddit to try and get answers.

But this past weekend people had A LOT of questions after the press conference especially those who were either in locked-down areas or areas that were going to be locked down. I didn’t have any answers and the questions kept coming in and in. Add to that the angry and frustrated comments people were leaving and the Kuwait vs Expats arguments that were taking place and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I ended up closing down a number of posts for comments but then people started emailing me questions or direct messaging me on Instagram and Twitter. With everything that’s going on right now, I don’t need this anxiety.

It’s not my job to translate news to English or answer questions about area lockdowns or know if you’ll still be able to take your wife to the hospital. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any of these answers. I wish I did but to answer your questions I have to sift through various information all in a language I can barely read to try and make sense of things that don’t make sense.

So I’m no longer gonna do this. I’m going back to posting about things I find interesting no matter how superficial it might feel reading about a burger review with everything going on in the world. But that’s what my blog has always been about, just random shit I think is interesting to share. Happy Stuff.

This post is also closed for comments.

The picture above is my original computer setup when I started blogging back in 2003. I’m trying to remember why I had both a Mac and a PC setup but I can’t seem to figure it out.

I’ve got a pretty organized digital photo archive that dates back to the 90s when I first started scanning pictures, and so it’s fairly easy for me to pull up an old photo from a specific time period. I love digging up old photos since it’s always fascinating to see what kind of tech I had back then since I was fairly geeky. The photo above was my portable set up back then, my 12inch Apple iBook, a Sony Ericsson T68i phone and a Palm Tungsten T personal digital assistant (PDA).

I also found the photo above from the same time period but featured my Sony CLIÉ PDA, my original Apple iPod with a Firewire port, my iOGEAR Bluetooth to USB adapter and my T68i phone again. The Bluetooth adapter allowed me to connect my laptop to my phone to get online, something unheard of back then but ordinary today. The photo below is when I first sucessfuly got online from my laptop using my phone’s internet. I remember I took this shot parked near the Kuwait Towers, the date of the photo is February 18th, 2003 which is 12 days after my first blog post ever.

Good times!

Just a quick note, there seems to be an issue with my blog at the moment where some readers on Android devices are reporting pop-ups. Not sure how and why its happening but I’m working on fixing it. In the meantime, if you get a pop-up asking you to download flash or whatever, do not download it please. Sorry about this!

Update: The issue should be resolved now (thanks Burhan!)

Yesterday I launched the new and improved look for the blog which I worked on with the team at Wavai. I tried to keep everything mostly in the same place, I just cleaned up and simplified the layout a bit. The biggest change is that the blog is now finally mobile-phone friendly. If you access the blog from your phone (which 65% of you do), then you’re going to see a much simpler and clearer 1-column layout.

There are a lot of issues that still need to be worked out with the new design, and I’m still working on a lot of random little things behind the scenes so please be patient. It’s probably going to take a couple of more weeks for me to finish everything. Once I’m done with the main page I’ll work on applying the new look to all the other sections on the blog like the Events page and Classifieds. For now, let me know what you think.

Today is my blogs 14th anniversary (maybe 15?) and around a week back it was my 16th anniversary (or was it 17th?) since I first started blogging. 2018 might have been the most stress-free year for me blogging-wise. I decided to kinda take a very chill approach to the blog, and not pressure myself as much where I have to post 2 or 3 times every day. If I have something to post I’ll post, if not I won’t. I know it sucks for you but I really am getting too old for this 😅.

I’ve mentioned this before but it is a lot of pressure having to constantly try and find stuff to write about every day, it’s also really difficult to do when I have a job, a social life and a lot of days where I just want to sit on my couch, watch a TV show and not leave the house.

Last month I started a new job and it’s taking up so much of my time so I don’t know how 2019 is going to turn out. I’m trying to wake up at 7AM every day to get the posting out of the way, and so far it seems like its working. Surprisingly (to me), this is probably the first time in a while where I’m not considering stopping the blog. I realized that the blog helps me stay current and active, so even with my busy work schedule, I’ll keep finding time for it especially now that I’m putting less pressure on myself.

Anyway, that’s all.

As many of you know I’ve been working on a blog redesign for sometime now. I don’t mind change, but I also like routine and when I’m used to a website being a certain way I don’t like it when they suddenly change things. With the redesign I tried to keep most of the things in the same place and just simplify the design a bit. I also had two issues I wanted to improve with the redesign:

1- I wanted the images and videos to be displayed larger on the blog
2- I wanted a mobile friendly version of the blog

I got the first issue sorted, with the redesign both the images and videos would now be embedded in a larger size. I did that by basically killing the middle column of the blog and integrating it into the sidebar.

What I haven’t been able to sort out is the mobile friendly version of the blog. My current theme can be adapted to become mobile friendly with a click of a button, and so can the new theme. But my issue isn’t with that, the problem I have is the fact there doesn’t seem to be a way to have the advertisement banners show while in the mobile friendly version of the blog. The banners are my only source of revenue for the blog and so have to be on the blog at all times. Right now if I turn on the mobile version of the blog, the banners get shoved down to the bottom of the page and that’s not good.

If anyone has any idea how to sort this out let me know, or if anyone has an idea on a different income model for the blog that doesn’t rely on banners also let me know. I’m open to suggestions.

If you want to give me your opinion on the new redesign, check out a live preview of the new design [Here]

Yesterday I posted about Eddie Griffin being barred from entry into Kuwait and this morning I found out it wasn’t true, it was fake news. I never fall for fake news, I’m usually the one telling friends if the news is fake or not but this time I messed up.

How did it happen?

Originally when I was writing up my post about Eddie Griffin, the working title was “Calls for Eddie Griffin to be Barred from Entering Kuwait”. My source originally for this “news” was @tafteeesh. So as I was writing up my post I decided to look for news on twitter. Eventually I found the hashtag #لا_لدخول_الملحد_جريفين_الكويت with a ton of people posting about this including MP’s, users with over a million followers, and various news sources. So I concluded this was a fact and not just a rumor or a call for a ban. I then edited my title and removed “Calls for” because it was no longer a call for action but an action that had already been taken and I published my post.

Throughout the day yesterday, I was reading the comments when one reader posted stating that the organizer Algas Events were doing damage control saying it was just a rumor and that the event would still take place. So I quickly checked their instagram account so I could post an update but didn’t find anything concrete to dispute the original story. The organizers were replying to their followers with vague comments like “we got this” and then when a follower called them out on their vagueness they responded with the following:

That to me didn’t read as a denial to the rumor. In fact, it read to me like a decision was made to ban Eddie Griffin, but that they were in talks with the authorities to reverse the ban and they would keep us updated. Then, this morning I got a phone call.

A friend who is working with the organizers called to let me know that no decision was made to ban Eddie Griffin yet, and that all the sources for this news including reputable sources were not basing it off any official announcement by the MOI.

So, I basically posted fake news… I think. The only reason I’m not really sure is because they haven’t issued an official statement yet denying the ban. So there might be a bit of truth to all of this, we will have to wait and see. For now the event is still on and they’re still selling tickets.

I’m sorry I posted news that wasn’t verified yet (basically fake news) and I’ve updated my previous post to reflect this. I always try to post facts unless they’re clearly stated as rumors but this time I messed up.

Check out the events page for more info on this show [Here]