Category: Blog Info

Exactly ten years ago today I launched 248AM as a side project for my other blog at the time, miskan.com. I didn’t have a plan and I definitely wasn’t expecting it to turn into what it is today, I just had a lot to say and so I created this space as an outlet.

A lot has happened to me since the blog started, I’m ten years older for one thing and I’m a lot more mature as a result. My style of writing has changed, the things I post about, the topics and definitely my language has all changed. The only thing that hasn’t changed is my aim which is to entertain you.

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.

So my blog is coming up on its 10 year anniversary next month (February 19th) and I’ve been thinking of different ways of celebrating it. Here are some of my ideas so far:

– Hold a small private party and invite friends and blog contacts
– Hold a public meet up similar to the one I did back in 2006
– Get wasted and then drunk-post like I used to back in the old days
– Shutdown the blog permanently and move to Cape Town

Does anyone have better ideas? Here is the link to my first post on 248AM [Link]

The British Ambassador Matthew Lodge will be holding an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session today as part of his weekly “Mondays with Matthew” posts. The AMA session will be open from 4:30PM to 6:00PM at which time the British Ambassador will be online to answer any questions you might have. So if there is anything you’ve always been curious about and wanted to know the answer to, this will be your chance to ask him. So don’t forget its from 4:30PM to 6:00PM.

Just an FYI, for the next four days I’ll be attending a Nuqat workshop from 9AM to 1PM. That’s usually the time I post on the blog so for the next four days I’ll most likely be posting in the afternoons instead or I’ll have to start preparing my posts the evenings before which I tried doing last night but failed miserably…

Back in March I launched a new fashion section on the blog, an ambitious plan to try and get some of the local fashion brands to collaborate on the section but things didn’t work out the way I had envisioned them. Some brands were more active than others, the quality of posts varied and truthfully most of the content just felt like adverts. So, a couple of months back I decided to revamp the section and it’s now my fashion section.

I’m not a “fashionista” and don’t want to be one either but I do think I have great taste in sneakers and good taste in clothes. So mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com/fashion is now all about what I’ve bought and what I’ve got my eye on. I’ll also be providing links and prices to everything except for the sneakers. Most of the sneakers I post about are limited releases and I already have an extremely difficult time getting them before they sell out so I won’t be sharing any of my sneaker sources. In any case check out the revamped section and let me know what you think. [Link]

Around two weeks back a friend of mine at the British Embassy called me up and asked me if I’d be interested in having the new British Ambassador Matthew Lodge guest post on my blog. At first I was a bit hesitant but the more I thought about it the more interested I was in the idea. Part of the reason I like inviting people to write on the blog is so that I have interesting content to read and I was curious to know what kind of posts the British Ambassador would write about. The way I looked at it, if there was a reality show based around a British Ambassador living in Kuwait I’d want to watch it which is why I called my friend back and said lets do this.

So last Monday I was invited to have breakfast with the British Ambassador at his residence inside the British Embassy grounds. We sat and spoke casually for nearly two hours discussing various topics but mostly about Kuwait (he just moved here around two months ago). Just before I left we decided to start off with two posts for now and see how they go. Starting today and if everything goes according to plan, the British Ambassador will be guest posting every Monday under posts called “Mondays with Matthew”. His first post is already up and you can check it out below.

Did anyone go to the Laugh for Life comedy event last night? According to a friend of mine, one of the comedians cracked some jokes related to my blog and they were good so if anyone has it on video please share!

I’ve finalized the categories on the blog and the last and final addition is the Entertainment section. It was previously called the gaming section and was being run by my brother but I’ve now got two friends who will also be helping out in that section with movies and music.

Tarek J, the guy behind the weekly Cinemagics rooftop movies will be handling the movies part of the section. Tarek is a walking film encyclopedia and has pretty good taste in movies so I’ll be personally keeping an eye out for his recommendations.

Amin Fari is the second friend who will be helping out. Amin is a talented local musician and he will be handling the music stuff in that section. He’s already a got a few posts up and you can check them out [Here]

Next step is to update the iPhone app.

Is anyone facing any technical issues while loading the website? By technical issues I mean timeouts or even the page not loading right? Let me know.

Updated: Technical issues have now been fixed and posting will resume as normal. If you do continue to get “timeouts” please let me know.

As part of the blogs expansion I’ve added a bunch of new sections to the blog and because I know it can be annoying to keep clicking every section to see if there is anything new, I decided to solve that issue by updating the middle column. After playing around with it for awhile now I’m finally comfortable with the way it looks and the function it provides.

If you take a look to the right side of this post you’ll find “More from 248AM”. These are posts that aren’t on the main blog page but instead posts that have been published in one of the other sections. So if you’re looking for more content to read, keep your eye out for articles that pop up over there.

My thanks to the businesses below for advertising on the blog this month, make sure you check them out.

DKNY – The Beat of New York [Link]

SEVENFRIDAY – Show me, don’t tell me [Link]

Elevation Burger – Elevating Kuwait’s food, one organically delicious burger at a time [Link]

Beidoun – Luxury shopping at your doorstep [Link]

IO Centers – Fully furnished and serviced offices [Link]

American Tourister – Hurry up! SALE on American Tourister travel bags [Link]

KNES – Kuwait National English School the best value in excellent education [Link]

The Rental Company – Event furnishings and party supplies [Link]

AbiDoc – Need a Doctor? Search, Learn, and Book Appointments with AbiDoc [Link]

Dent Xpress – Kuwait’s premier paintless dent repair facility since 2005. [Link]

For those of you with Gulfnet who were having difficulties accessing my site, everything seems to be back to normal again. I tried to contact them to figure out what was going on but their email form on the website kept giving an error so I contacted them on twitter and facebook but they ignored me and when I finally called them up to complain, the customer support rep told me he couldn’t file a complaint for me because I wasn’t a customer. So thanks to everyone who contacted them about this, my guess is my blog was blocked accidentally or they had some technical issue.

Every now and then I invite professionals to contribute to this blog to help me cover subjects I personally cannot do myself. One subject I used to enjoy reading were the health and fitness posts which were written by Fahad AlYehya (thedietninja). Since Fahad moved on from the blog a long time ago, I’ve invited a new contributor to take over that subject, Amy Freeman.

I was introduced to Amy by a friend of mine a couple of weeks back and after first meeting her I realized she could provide a lot of interesting content for the blog which I’d personally love to read. Amy just published her first post below and I’m now looking forward to reading more of her stuff on a weekly basis. I hope everyone else will too.

Weekly roundup of some interesting items for sale in the classifieds section:

Sony DSC-QX10
Pedro’s Massive Sale
M-Audio Keystation ES61
Polaroid Land 220 Camera
Apple iPad Air 16GB (sealed)
Canon 7D with Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens
Denon AVR4810CI 9.3-Channel Multi-Zone Home Theater

For more items on sale check out Classifieds

For those of you who were having trouble publishing your ads in the Classifieds section the past two days, the issue has now been resolved. Sorry for the inconvenience.