2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

I checked in and now am having dinner at Pizza Express.
(Posted from my Nokia e61i)

I am heading out to the airport now. Any post after this is either going to be from my hotel room in Paris or via my phone. I am taking the Gulf Air flight, Kuwait > Bahrain > Paris. My flight leaves at around 10PM and I should get to Paris by 7AM. Over and out!

His Majesty King Raam by Lemon Jelly.

A friend just sent me a link to this site which is basically a Kuwait route planner. I typed in Ikea as my start point and Ace Hardware as my destination and to my surprise it gave me directions. [Link]

Thanks Holla!

Thanks Fadi!

This post is a bit technical but its meant to be a small guide for bloggers who want to post using their phones.

The past two days I have been experimenting with different softwares and ways of moblogging. The easiest way I found to moblog was with a software for my Nokia called Shozu. It’s very easy to use, I just take a picture and a small window pops up asking me if I want to send it to my blog. I could then click yes and it sends it or I click on more options and add more details like a subject title and body copy. But I had two problems with Shozu. The first one is the fact that it resized my images down to a thumbnail size and you could only see the larger picture by clicking on the link. I didn’t like that and there was no option to change it. The second problem I had was that since the software is free, Shozu places their logo at the end of your posts. I also didn’t like that, they should at least have an option where if you pay for the software they remove the logo but they don’t so I looked for an alternative.

After a bit of experimentation and googling I found a better solution (for me at least). It’s not as practical as Shozu but I am in total control of everything. I decided to go with the Blog by Email route and here is what I did:

1) Created two new email accounts
2) Got a plugin for wordpress called Postie
3) Got a software for my Nokia called Resco Viewer

I setup one email account on my Nokia to send emails from. The second email account would be the one I would send my posts to. I then installed the Postie plugin in WordPress which is a must have plugin if you are planning to blog by email. Firstly, Postie allows u to attach pictures and videos to your emails and then posts them for you. it also gives you a lot of other options for example Postie has an option where it could palce the image above or below the body copy, I chose above so it would match my regular posts. Postie could also resize your images and compress them before it posts them which is really important if you can’t resize images on your phone. Finally I purchased the software Resco Viewer for my Nokia. With my phones camera I have two size options when it comes to taking pictures, 1600×1200 and 640×480. The max size for images on my blog is 400 pixels wide. If I wanted to I could take pictures at 640×480 and have Postie resize them for me but by resizing the pictures myself on the phone and compressing the images slightly, the file sizes would be a lot small meaning it would be cheaper for me since I pay per kilobyte.

So the process now goes something like this:
1) I take a picture on my phone at 1600×1200 pixels
2) I resize the image to 400×300 and compress it
3) I send an email to my blog and attach the resized image
4) Postie checks my email constantly, when it finds an email it posts it on the blog under the category Moblogging

Now the biggest problem is my phone doesn’t have a spell checker to expect a ton of misspellings. So thats basically how I will be moblogging while in Paris. I will continue to post regular posts but the photo ones are meant to be something new and something I haven’t done on this blog yet. It should prove to be entertaining.

I am at Sultan Center and trying out moblogging in preperation for my Paris trip tomorrow. No spellchecker here which sucks. (Posted from my Nokia e61i)

While watching my partner at work try to balance himself while standing on a soccer ball, it reminded me of this toy I had back in the 80’s. It was a disc with a rubber ball stuck in the middle and the aim was to stand on it and jump around.

I spent a good chunk of time trying to find a picture of it but I couldn’t. I remember it being called Disk-O-Jump or something of that sort but I couldn’t find any pictures or traces of it. Then I remembered the Pogo Stick and figured I try searching for Pogo Ball and to my surprise I found it. I really don’t remember it being called a Pogo Ball though… [Link]

This is a video I was sent in taken by a surveillance camera showing the earthquake that occured in Kuwait a few nights ago. If you pay attention very carefully you could feel the camera shaking, not very exciting but at least there is a time stamp. [YouTube]

Thanks TwaiF!

This is really fucked up! Two bloggers, Bashar Al-Sayegh and Jassim Al-Qames were attacked and taken into custody by the secret police. The reason? Some anonymous reader posted an inappropriate comment about the Amir. Now the thing is Bashar deleted the comment once he read it but he was still held accountable. That’s really freaky, if two Kuwaitis got arrested and beaten up by the police for a comment by an anonymous user what chance do I or many of us expat bloggers have?

Q8SWS has more information and details on this incident. [Link]

I sent the post below from the Kuwait Bookshop via 3G. The size of the image is small but when you click it you get a bigger one although at a very low resolution. I could probably figure out how to make it a higher resolution but then each post will cost me 500fils or something crazy like that considering I will be photo blogging while roaming..

I am at the Kuwait Bookshop in Muthana and just picked up the last copy of the Paris City Guide by Wallpaper*

I have tickets to the NIN concert that is taking place on the 22nd in Ireland but I will be missing it and instead going to Paris for work. I am disappointed I will be missing out on NIN but it’s not like I am getting sent to Dubai or Beirut. I’ve actually never been to Paris before so I am really looking forward to it. I will be leaving on the 21st and coming back on the 26th. While there I will try photo blogging since with my new phone (the E61i) I can actually do that. By photo blogging I mean taking a picture from my phone and then instantly sending it to my blog. I already have a software that will do that for me and I will try it out before I leave to France to make sure its working right.

update: Here is a link to my old photo blog, before I started 248AM and Miskan. [Link]

The sequel looks like its going to rock. [YouTube]

So an earthquake hit Kuwait and I missed it since I was sleeping. Sucks! [Link]