Category: Blog Info

I’m in Lebanon on a short vacation which is why posting has been slow this week. I should have posted this at the start of my trip but I originally thought I was going to continue to post normally which I’m clearly not doing.

News tips are appreciated a lot more than usual when I’m on holiday so if you have anything interesting for me to share on this blog, send it in!

Just to keep you guys in the loop, I’m currently working on a major facelift for the blog. Visually it shouldn’t differ too drastically from the current look, the biggest change is that the new design will be 2 columns instead of 3. This will allow me to post larger photos in my posts and visually make the blog look a lot cleaner and simpler. The biggest changes though will be behind the scene. The current theme code is extremely outdated and so I’m pretty limited with what I can do to the blog. For example, I want to add like buttons or upvote buttons to the comments like how it is on Reddit, but I can’t do that right now with the current theme.

For mobile users, you’ll be pleased to hear that with the new update there will be a mobile friendly version of the website. That should make browsing and commenting from your phone a lot easier.

If there is anything specific you think I should add or do with this upcoming facelift let me know. I can’t promise I’ll actually implement them but I would be curious to hear your thoughts.

I’m heading to LA and San Fransisco for a few days so expect me to either not post at all in the upcoming days, or if I do post it will be at odd hours. Everything should get back to normal once I’m back next week.

If you’re a GUST student I’ll be at your campus today (Wednesday, March 14) for a Q&A session. The session will be led by Motez Bishara, a visiting instructor at GUST who also happens to be a good friend of mine. I met Motez through the blog 5 years ago when I posted about his book “Beating the NBA: Tales From a Frugal Fan” so this should be pretty fun.

The Q&A is taking place in theater W1-010 at 12:30PM.

I posted my first blog post ever exactly 15 years ago to this day. It wasn’t on 248AM, I launched that two years later, it was on another blog called qHate. Back then I was still living with my parents, I was piss-ass broke and didn’t really know anyone in Kuwait. Crazy how that was just 15 years ago since a lot has happened over that time. It’s kinda scary when I think about where I’ll be 15 years from now, probably in L.A. working in the electronics section of a Walmart would be my best bet.

My computer setup back in 2003

There are dates that represent important moments in my life, I was born in 1978, 1988 was my first trip to L.A., the Gulf War in 1990, graduating from high school in 96 and so on.

2003 is when I started blogging.

I’ve been getting emails from readers letting me know that my iPhone app no longer works on their phones after updating to iOS 11. The thing is, I’m surprised people actually still have the app on their phone. Apple removed my iPhone app from the store around 5 years ago (maybe longer?) and I haven’t it had on my phone ever since. Yet somehow it managed to survive on other peoples phones and now I’m getting complaints that it isn’t working.

So in case you still have the app and you aren’t aware:

1) The app doesn’t exist anymore, if you have it you’re lucky, I don’t even have it
2) If you upgrade to iOS 11 the app will no longer work

There are no plans for another 248AM app in the foreseeable future, but what I’d like to do is eventually have a mobile friendly version of the website. But I don’t have a timeframe for when that will happen.

If you’re ever interested in more content than whats on here, you can follow me around the web using the links below:

Twitter: @mark248am
Instagram: @mark248am
Facebook: /248am
Soundcloud: @mark248am
Spotify: interdigitate
Yelp: mark248am

If you do follow me on Spotify make sure you follow my “ice cream run 🍦” playlist which is updated constantly with tracks I’m currently liking. [Link]

A few weeks ago I asked a friend of mine if she’d be interested in posting food related posts on the blog. She’s one of the co-founders of PantryBee and since she used to be one of the writers on the old local blog The Dusty Co, I figured she’d be perfect for these posts. Her first one is up and you can check it out below.

I’m currently in the south of France for my best friends wedding. I wasn’t planning on not posting while here but we’re currently staying out in the middle of nowhere and the internet connection here is the slowest thing ever. It took two tries and 5 minutes just to upload the single picture for this post for example. The closest place to where we are is a small town called Murs with another slightly larger one further away called Gordes. The biggest city is Avignon and thats a full hour drive away.

In hindsight, I should have prepared posts ahead of time for the blog, but I didn’t so sorry about that.

I’m in California for the next two weeks on vacation so my posting timings will be a bit different from usual. The last time I went on holiday was last September and it was just a week in Bulgaria so I’m really looking forward to this break.

News tips are appreciated a lot more than usual when I’m on holiday so if you have anything interesting for me to share on this blog, send it in!

Nearly forgot about this but 12 years ago today, I started 248AM and published my first post. Here’s a line I wrote two years ago but one that still holds true today:

I don’t know how long I will be doing this for, I just know that I really love doing it and I’ll keep doing it as long as you keep coming back here to read what I have to say*. Thank you everyone for being the best readers a blogger could hope for.

*unless I get deported before then

I’ve been wanting to shutdown the Community (Forum) section of the blog for some time now. With the introduction of my Classifieds section it pulled a lot of traffic away from the forum and then with the introduction of Kuwestions, it basically pulled whatever traffic that was left.

The only reason I actually kept the forum up this long was for sentimental reasons. I know a couple who met in the forum and ended up getting married (How cool is that?), so kinda figured they’d want to keep all their first messages to each other. I already got in touch with them and told them to go in and save all their old conversations and once they’re done doing that I’ll probably close it down.

So if anybody else has any important messages in their account they’d like to save, do it pretty soon. [Link]

Dr. H is a Kuwaiti family medicine resident working in a polyclinic in Kuwait. I’ve invited her to write on the blog about her experiences and I think these will end up being pretty interesting posts. She just published her first one below so check it out.

Just a random tidbit, 14 years ago today I posted my first post ever on a blog called Qhate. Before 248AM I had a blog called Miskan, before that I had another one called Moblogging from Kuwait (it was like instagram, but before instagram) and before that I had another blog called Qhate. Qhate was a war blog where me and a few friends were posting about life in Kuwait during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

My first post on February 6th, 2003.

Unlike my old posts here on 248AM, I don’t cringe when I read my old posts on Qhate. It kinda feels like I started off writing pretty well and then took a big dip in quality by the time I started 248AM, only to recover again years later. In around 10 days time its also going to be 248AM’s 12 year anniversary. Crazy.

All my posts from all my previous blogs are still online except for “Moblogging from Kuwait” since it was hosted on textamerica.com which shut down a decade ago. You can still find some stuff from it using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine but not much. I used to take all the photos and post to my blog using the Sony CLIÉ UX40. That was back when smart phones didn’t exist and Sony PDA’s were so ahead of their time.

If you haven’t checked out the “Kuwestions” section on the blog then today might be a good day to do so. Lots of interesting questions there with many helpful answers so you might find out something new or you could even help out by answering a question yourself. Check it out [Here]