2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

I sent the following email to Fasttelco in regards to yesterdays post on Fasttelco blocking flickr.

———————–

To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Date: May 1, 2005 8:39 AM
Subject: Is Flickr Blocked?

Hi, when I try to access www.flickr.com i get the following message:

Forbidden
You were denied access because:
Access denied by access control list.

But when I access flickr.com it works. Many of my friends have also
been facing the same issue. Is Fasttelco trying to block flickr?

Thanks

mark

I decided to share with everyone the statistics of 2:48AM from the day 1 which was February 19th till the end of April. The list is displayed as Date followed by amount of unique visitors.

Feb 2005 557
Mar 2005 1961
Apr 2005 3144

To see how many visiters have been coming in day by day detail click on more below.

Does anyone know where I can download the Sesame Street song but the stoned version. I had it somewhere I just can’t find it…

Update: here it is!

By clicking on the below link you can vote for NBK in the following categories of the Banker Middle East 2005 Awards: Best Bank, Best Customer Service / Call Center and Lifetime Achievement.

https://www.bankerme.com/bme/2005/award/

The selection of banks in each category has been suggested and put forward by a panel of experts from across the region as a whole.

The only category that is different is the Lifetime Achievement Award, in which you can vote for anyone you like from the banking industry. NBK’s CEO Mr. Ibrahim Dabdoub is definitely on the top of the list.

Thank you for your support to NBK.

I was listening to VOA (96.9) over the weekend and this show started I forgot what it was called but basically it was a show where you would call in and give your feedback about VOA. I thought that was perfect, I could finally call in and complain about their stupid special english show, and how the way they say the news at night very slowly is such a stupid idea. So I pick up my phone and wait for them to give out their number when this guy from India calls in. The guy was blind, and he spent the next 10 minutes talking about how the special english show was the best and how it helped him learn English. He kept asking the announcer if his English was any good and the announcer would reply yeah its great, then the blind guy would say well this is all because of your show. Then he kept on going about how he loves the way they present the news with a vocabulary of only 1500 words and how it helps him and his friends improve their english. Anyway after all that bullshit I put my phone down, there was no way I was gonna call in after a blind man and complain about a show which helped him learn english. Just my luck, now I got to wait till next month when they air the show again to call in.

This was todays B-Side for Miskan. I liked this shot because it looked very psychedelic. No photoshop filter of any sort was applied. No mirrors were involved in this picture.

Today from work on our Fasttelco DSL connection I couldn’t access flickr using the URL www.flickr.com. When accessing flickr.com it would work but when I typed www.flickr.com I would getting the following error:

Forbidden
You were denied access because:
Access denied by access control list.

At first I thought it might have been just me and something to do with the server at work, BUT in the post below about flickr being banned in UAE, Bloboz commented that he was getting the forbidden access denied message. Is anyone else facing that issue? Is Fasttelco blocking flickr?

I was chatting with Nibaq today and he mentioned that he might have read somewhere that Flickr was either banned in UAE or the ISP there is doing something to slow down the uploading of photos. So I decided to ask some UAE people on Flickr and this is what they had to say:

manaal says:
no idea….working fine with me.

w6an 3mry says:
it’s not banned but i think they are doing something to block some of the bad photos

Avish says:
:s inshAllah they don’t ban it totally coz i don’t know what i’ll do 🙁

7abo0ob el Emarat says:
la hopefully they wont cuz we all cant live without it 🙂

ZexySamurai says:
I can live without it! ‘_’ Hehehe, but I love it loads so I hope that’s not true…
P.S. the uploading speed is fine with me..

Eneas says:
what’s UAE?

Green Peace says:
it is working fine with me

My brother sent me a link to a girls photoset on Flickr with pictures of her browsing flickr using her PSP. Here is the link.

Ok, I just installed Tiger on my Mac at work and I am fucked. One of the most important softwares I have called Extensis Suitcase is not yet compatible with Tiger. This means that I am stuck with default fonts in softwares like Illustrator and Photoshop. Now I need to figure out how to go back to Panther… THIS SUCKS!

Update: Ok this is what I did to kinda solve my problem for now. I copied the fonts I need the most to Library>Application Support>Adobe>Fonts. Now my fonts work with my Adobe Products. I will keep checking the Extensis Suitcase Tiger Compatibility Chart everyday till they fix it.

Someone is selling a 1999 model VW Golf on ebay that belonged to the new pope Ratzinger. I had a 1996 Golf in the same color. Cool. [Link]

Here is a list of the top 25 games of 2005 according to Joystiq.
Hmmmm no DS games?

* 96: Resident Evil 4 (GC)
* 95: God of War (PS2)
* 94: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (XBX)
* 92: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (PC)
* 91: World Soccer Winning Eleven 8 International (PS2)
* 91: Psychonauts (PC)
* 91: Jade Empire (XBX)
* 90: World Soccer Winning Eleven 8 International (XBX)
* 90: Silent Hunter III (PC)
* 89: Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (GameBoy Advance)
* 89: World Soccer Winning Eleven 8 International (PC)
* 89: NBA Street V3 (PS2)
* 89: Tekken 5 (PS2)
* 89: Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (XBX)
* 89: Gran Turismo 4 (PS2)
* 89: Doom 3 (XBX)
* 89: NBA Street V3 (XBX)
* 89: WipEout Pure (PSP)

The Ghost That Feeds – Ray Parker Jr’s “Ghostbusters” vs. Nine Inch Nails “The Hand That Feeds” [Via]

I preordered 2 copies of the NIN new album With Teeth, limited edition dual disc version before they went out of stock on Amazon.

Yesterday I installed Tiger on my PowerMac G4. It wasn’t very easy. The problem I have is that my PowerMac can’t read DVD’s and Tiger came on a DVD. To solve the problem I figure I could put the DVD in Nat’s PowerBook, then connect her mac to mine by booting hers up in target disk mode. When I did that though I only was able to see her hard drive and not her DVD drive. Then I decided to try something else. I opened up Disk Utility on Nats PowerBook and in the options chose to create an image of the DVD and saved it on her Hard Drive. A few minutes later I had a 2.3GB image file of the DVD. I then connected a mini ipod to the powerbook, and in disk utilities chose to format the ipod. I then told it to restore an image onto the ipod and chose the Tiger image which I had just made a few minutes earlier. This move basically turned the ipod into a Tiger boot disk. I then plugged the ipod into my Powermac and a finder window opened with the Tiger setup file. I double clicked on it and it told me I needed to reboot my mac. Once it restarted it loaded up the Tiger installation and i proceeded to install tiger on my mac.

The Problem
After finishing installing Tiger I booted up and everything was working fine. When I tried to connect to the internet though it gave me a modem error, something about it not being turned on. I look at the modem and it was blinking red instead of the usual green. Turns out the DSL modem drivers are not compatible with Tiger. To solve this issue I went to Hawalli and purchased a DSL Modem with a built in wireless router for KD30. I then came home and set it up to connect to the internet and share it across the network. It worked. Now since the new DSL modem does not require a computer to be connected to the internet, I can now reboot my mac and shut it down whenever I want without it effecting anyone on my network. Previously I had my powermac connect to the internet and share the connection over the network. That wasn’t practical because if I rebooted or shutdown my mac for some reason, the internet would disconnect.

Tiger Experience
I have been using it for a short while now and things seem a tiny bit faster. When I first booted up Tiger it was a bit slow doing stuff because Spotlight was trying to index my whole drive. Once it was done indexing things came back to normal. The new mail program looks a lot more cleaner and cooler. Dashboard is interesting, my favorite widget is the flight tracker. It actually shows me the departure and arrival time of any flight plus where the plane currently is on the map. I might post a more fuller review later on but so far I like Tiger.

My Mac Specs
Graphite PowerMac G4 733MHz
1MB L3 Cache
896 MB SDRAM

Update: someone made it aware to me that I could have booted the powerbook using the Tiger CD and put my powermac in Target Disk mode. Then on the powerbook when it asked me where I wanted to install it I could have chosen the drive from my mac. Might have worked and been quicker.

Yesterday I got a phone call from Qualitynet. They wanted to make sure if everything is ok and if I had any problems at all. I told them no nothing, everything is running fine, the guy once again told me that if I ever had any problem I could contact support on 804444. I thanked him and hung up. This is the second follow up call I have received, the first was last month right after I got the connection. Very nice people.