Category: Internet

My Qualitynet DSL account expires next month and so I was just checking their website to see if they have any new offers because last year when I signed up they had a double your bandwidth offer. So I am checking to see how much 512KB will cost me this time around and to my surprise its KD100 cheaper. Last year if you signed up for 1 year of 256KB they would double the bandwidth to 512KB. I paid KD380 then. This time around I don’t see a double your bandwidth offer but a 512KB connection now costs KD280. The sad thing is 1MB is still KD560 a year which is double the price, maybe my sister who lives next door and steals uses my internet will pitch in for a 1MB (hint hint Rampurple). [Link]

Chewbacca from StarWars has a weblog! [Link]

I just used Alexaholic to graph and compare traffic with my site and other Kuwait bloggers and I found the results interesting. It seems most of the time our traffic dips and peaks together. The Kuwaiti blogging community in a way is connected together which makes sense if you think about it. We all for example got more traffic when the Amir passed away since everyone abroad wanted to find out what was happening in Kuwait. We probably also got a dip in traffic during the vacation when many Kuwaiti students studying in the US came back to Kuwait and stopped checking the blogs. You can check out the chart and see what I am talking about by clicking the link below. You could also plug in your own blogs and check and compare. [Link]

I currently have a reseller account at Fasthosts where I pay around $90 a month to host as many sites as I want with them. That was a good deal 6 years ago when I first signed up but now its really expensive compared to whats available in the market. So I did a lot of research trying to find a replacement and I ended up finding one with a really deal, DreamHost.

For anyone here who is thinking about starting a blog or is looking for a webhost for their domains then you should consider DreamHost. They currently have a really good offer going on where for only $9.95 a month you get 20GB of webspace with 1TB of bandwidth every month and the ability to host an unlimited number of domains with them. Setting up WordPress (the software that runs this blog) is very easy with DreamHost, its just a click of a button, plus if you sign up with them now they give you a free domain name so you can have your blog up and running for only $9.95!.

I used a $50 discount coupon when I signed up but I found a $60 one. The coupon code is: 60DOLLARS. Use it when you sign up to get an instant $60 discount.

It’s really hard to find a better deal so check them out and don’t forget to use the coupon code to get your $60 discount. [Link]

What is VideoSift? VideoSift brings you the best of GoogleVideo and YouTube. You vote on the videos that you like, and the good videos are sifted to the top of the page. Its like Digg for videos, makes life a lot easier. [Link]

Internet addict that is. I realized in the past few days that I can’t be stuck in Kuwait without Internet. When I go on vacation its not that big a problem since I psychologically prepare myself that I will be without Internet for a certain amount of days. Being suddenly stuck without Internet at home though has turned me into a wreck. I feel stupid without being up to date on the latest news, gadgets and gossip. I feel disoriented and grumpy without Internet. I am also losing my temper quicker and getting stressed out a lot easier. I hope I get Internet back at home soon or I think I am really going to lose it.

I am at work and I am online using Qualitynet dialup again. It turns out that although Fasttelco brought back online most of its services yesterday night, their Kuwait City users will remain without Internet for another day or two. All phone numbers starting with 24 still do not have Internet access.

Dear Mark,
We would like to extend our sincere apologies for the difficulties you may have encountered with our Internet and Data services on 28th Jan 2006.

The problem was due to a major failure at Ministry of Communication Building that impacted our services.

We would like to assure you that series of measures have been taken to avoid such incident in the future, while a total restoration was carried to have our service back to normal..

If you are still encountering any problems please do not hesitate to contact us.

We regret any inconvenience caused to you in this regard and take this opportunity to thank you for your understanding and patience.

Best Regards
Customer Service
Qualitynet
For Support Call 804444

What a day, my Internet stopped working last night and I figured it was something with my account. Today morning I came to work all ready to check my email and turned out we didn’t have Internet here. At first the word was our internal server was down but then the word reached to us that everyone in Kuwait was having Internet issues. As many bloggers have posted it turned out that there was a fire in the building hosting the servers of the 3 main ISP’s in Kuwait and this disrupted the service. Things are better now though and both Qualitynet and Zajil/KEMS have their services back up. The bad news is that our agencies ISP, Fasttelco, got hit the worst and according to TivoGuy they had most of their stuff burn down. Fasttelco has assured us though Internet would be back up in 3 days time but I think it might take longer.

So until we get Internet back up I will most probably be connecting online from work using a qualitynet dialup account like I am doing now. Its a bit retro but better then nothing.

One interesting thing I realized was without Internet I did stuff I used to do before when I never had Internet. For example I read 3 newspapers today morning and then spoke to Nibaq on the phone for at least 20 minutes… the longest I had spoken to him on the phone since back when we were in high school trying to setup a Duke Nukem multiplayer session!

I was googling something from my parents PC next door and I realized that Google on their computer looked different then mine. Seems like google has redesigned the search results page but I can’t view it on my mac at home. I just used VNC to connect to their computer and get a screen shot. I checked Digg someone also posted about this but they are calling his screenshot a fake. Check out my screenshot [Picture]

It seems whatever the problem was with blogspot and fasttelco is solved now. Fasttelco users can access blogspot without getting a timeout error.

A hillarious web 2.0 spoof. [Link]

Yesterday while at work I couldn’t access any blogspot website. We have a fasttelco connection here but I thought it was probably just a fluke from our internal network. When I got home I realized K theKuwaiti also had trouble accessing blogspot. I don’t think blogspot is being blocked by fasttelco because if it was they would put up a URL Blocked page. Whatever the case is, I am currently accessing all the blogspot blogs using HideMyAss. Not practical but it gets the job done.

Update: It’s not blocked anymore

It Rocks! If anyone needs an invite leave a comment below. I got 20 invites to give out. [Link]

Just found a bug in the Internet connection here, kinda like the one Zajil had in Kuwait. Basically I log in using my internet card, I sign onto MSN and then logout from the internet. The MSN connection stays open. Pretty cool.