Blue Chi’s

I am not really sure of why I am so hooked on J Pop, I think that it is a natural consequence of watching so much anime and playing many Japanese RPGs. Japanese music sounds very different from American or European music, and obviously it sounds nothing like Arabic either. I still find it strange though how the Japanese culture is influenced by the English language, just half way through a song, or even during their conversations, an English word will pop out of nowhere, and this is not like an English name of the a certain object. I can’t think of any examples, but I really find it weird.

Anyway, I am currently still hooked up on my old BLEACH tracks that I downloaded months back: Houki Hoshi by Younha, D-tecnolife by UVERWorld, and Asterisk by Orange Range. I always wanted to get the ending song for Mai HiME, but I never bothered to search for it. Anyway, the latest news on the scene is that Utada Hikaru has agreed with Square-Enix/Disney to sing the theme song for Kingdom Hearts II, the title of the song is “Passion”. The game is not out yet, but I think that it should be released sometime before the end of this year in Japan. Teh song might be translated in English for the English version of the game, just like the previous one. In addition, it was announced today that the theme song for Final Fantasy XII will be titled “Kiss Me Good-Bye”, it is written by Nobou Uematsu and will be performed by an artist that I never heard of before; Angela Aki. FFXII was supposed to be released in 2004, but it got delayed over and over again, and was recently confirmed to be released in Japan in March next year. I am not sure if the theme song for FFXII will be translated in English though because the theme song for FFX was not translated in English, but theme song for FFX-2 was.

Talking about Utada Hikaru, she has recorded another Japanese track a while ago, and has shot a video for the song “You Make Me Want to be a Man” from her debut English album “Exodus”. Some people say that the video was seen on Channel [V], but there are no screenshots or anything of it yet.

I don’t understand this article, I just don’t. I am not into politics, and the only keyword that showed up on my radar was ‘electronic addresses’. I was like, “Ooh, that’s my famous lost Israeli pilot.” A new penetration for Syrian electronic addresses looking for the fate of Arad. Literally, this means that emails of Syrian people were HACKED. The article starts by saying that just like the email address of the wife of Bashaar Alasad that was hacked before, email addresses of Syrians were hacked as well. Now what in heaven’s name would there be in the email address of the wife of the Syrian president? Would she be emailing her husband on the latest news about the Syrian government, the number of troops, latest weapons and secret organisations? I find this so silly, extremely silly, I didn’t even know that she had an email address, I mean, what would it be, Asma@government.gov.sy? From the beginning of the story till the very end, this is extremely so stupid. But anyway, lets assume that the ’3aqeela’ of the Syrian president had an email that was ‘hacked’. What’s the rest of the story, ‘a similar penetration happened to a great number of reporters, writers and many other important characters in Syria as they received an email address asking them for info about the fate of Ron Arad.’… Just a second, the conclusion of the PENETRATION ATTEMPT was that they received an EMAIL?! I am sure that the word ‘Spam’ and ‘targetted unsolicited email’ does not translate into the word ‘Penetration’. It is extremely frustrating that the news is so extremely inaccurate, I read the thing twice to understand that there was no ‘Penetration’ attempt involved at all, I mean, logically, the foundation that is looking for Arad has paid a Syrian spam advertising agency (or just website) to send email letters to the people on their list, they might have randomly sent the email to random Arabs and Syrians thought that it’s only them, or maybe (the silliest thing I can think of) someone saw the link for Aron’s website and made a forward that reached them thinking that it’s an attack… honestly, is bad coverage really better than no coverage at all?! You don’t even want to know how the rest of the article was.

And I thought that we had so much free time….

Taken From Al-Khaleeji Newspaper

See people! That’s how it is done. The Youth Centre in Doha is organising a ‘Forum Gathering’ for all the different Qatari forum administrators and owners to meet to share experiences and opinions. It’s cool that the tiny article focused on the fact that BOTH sexes have took initiative and started their own forums. It is amazing for these people to have their efforts recognised for all the social benefits of online forums on the web. While this seems to reflect the ‘united’ nature of online forums of the same country, here in Oman it seems to be the exact opposite, not only that our authorities and media is ignorant about the online Omani community, but this ignorance seems to reach all the way to the Omani webmasters, I mean, not only that people do not realise that this is the ‘INTERNET’ – a connected network, they don’t have the smallest idea about how the internet functions, not in practical terms of connectivity, nor in the commercial aspect of the web. In EnglishSabla (An Omani Forum), long time ago I had to edit my signature because it contained a link to my online portfolio, I was told that I cannot ‘advertise’ in their forum because my website is ‘commercial’. While in reality this was only because I was another Omani person, they believed that I had no right to ‘take advantage’ of their forum without paying them a money reward. Of course this goes back to the ignorance of the meaning of the word ‘internet’ and this is amplified even more when one of the five Sins is involved such as linking to another Omani forum. However, I was notified that I had to ‘pay’ to be able to put a link to my portfolio in my signature. Honestly, I don’t think that we can even call this commercial ignorance, it is probably more of a delusion about ‘internet money’. I really wonder how much money does Sabla raise monthly from links put by members to their other COMMERCIAL websites and forums, I am curious to know how they calculate the royalties as well, do they use the number of the posts made by the member as a multiplier for a signature charge, or do they the number of thread views instead? While Qatari forums seem to unite under a single ceiling, we had online forums where the NAME (not even the link!!) of another OMANI forum GETS CENSORED! Yes, Omani people don’t like to READ the names of other OMANI forums on their boards, how about that?! I would like to shout out the word ADSENSE for our Sabla friends, obviously nothing gets more profit that the money you gain from your signature advertising (As if you ever got any, duh), but that’ll pay your bills for sure. Meh.

I have not visited Sabla for sometime, so they might do have have AdSense already, who knows.

This is funny because we were talking yesterday at OBCA’s (That’s NOT Omani Banking Commerce Association) about Omani companies that promote their services using non-Omani models. There was an ad in today’s paper saying that this is our chance to be famous, they are looking for male and female Omani MODELS for some advertisers for some bigshot companies (or that is what it seemed like), well, good luck to all of you models, but please make sure you don’t end up like OIB’s unibrow lady or Oman’s scariest finger.

I would like to report the occurrence of an unusual event at Sohar’s Labour Office today. A group of Omani individuals have broken all forms of traditions and tore away culture shamelessly, they have committed the greatest sin of all, they have queued. It was revolutionary, groundbreaking, breath-taking, this group of anonymous unconnected Omani youth and elderly ‘invented’ a systematic way of collecting their labour cards using a new alien concept that could be illustrated using the phrase ‘wait for your turn’. To accomplish this goal they took advantage of the two rows of seats perpendicular to the collection window and made a seating path in a ‘U’ shape with an entrance tip and a leaving tip. This way individuals had to move along the path one seat at a time so that each does not only gets to access the window at his turn, but he does not even have to wait for it standing. The system works seamlessly perfect regardless of the various attempts to intervene by the individuals that were not introduced to the outrageous regime, those attempts were stopped by the yelling and shouting of the ‘users already seated’ that used phrases like “DOAR DOAR YAL 7AG”.

One old man REFUSED to move one seat at a time claiming that he KNOWS when his turn comes and insisted on staying at the system entry seat till his turn comes, the revolutionists tried persuading the 50-something lazy old man by explaining how the system works but the stubborn Omani refused to move. Unbelievably the men did not stop, new comers were asked to enter the queue in available seats further in the chain ignoring the position of old man to guarantee the functionality of the system. After the completion of the queue by 10 individuals and the fact that the position of the old man reached now the end of the first row the old man finally decided to become a believer of the new religion and moved. An exclusive photo of the event in progress could be seen here at Law & Music:

Although light has finally reached the window of Labour Card collection, other windows such as the cashier and the application submission points were both engulfed in the darkness:

Ad-Blindness is a phenomena developed by regular internet browsers as a result of increased advertising all over the web. We no longer ‘see’ internet ads, we do not choose to ignore them, we have truly become involuntarily blind to the content of these ad texts, banners, and pop-ups. We are almost completely immune to the textual content of Google Adsense, can you remember the last time you read the content in a google ad box? Advertising on the internet is no longer an easy job, advertisers have to really be creative, they have to use images, sounds, and think of every single possible way to grab the attention of an internet browser to persuade him to CLICK on their flashy banner.

My immunity against adverts proved ineffective today, as a casual internet browsers who commits all sorts of intellectual property crimes, I was searching for my not-so-legal content (it was not music BTW, just ROMs), as I was casually browsing over the pages and switching from one tab to another, huge yellow Arabic letters grabbed my attention as they flashed against the black background of the banner.

I stopped, I know quite a bit about online advertising, there are barely any advertisements targeted towards the Arab world, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be from those cheap CPM advert providers, and there is no way they would be in ARABIC. It must’ve been a problem with the encoding of the page, the banner flashed again, and this time it said: “We’ll Give You 10 Million Dollars”.

This must be a stupid advert for some gambling site, and that was a script error, it carried on “If you give us any information leading to”

.. I was shocked, this must be some advert against some person in Qaida, they have taken some online actions to gather all the info they can get about Usama Bin Ladin, but then it said..

WHO?! I couldn’t even pronounce the name, that is not an Arabic name, it’s probably Urdu or something. I had to surrender to the random ad, you actually got me, now say, who is Ron Arad?

Ron Arad is a missing Israeli pilot lost during the 80s raid on Lebanon. His family has not lost hope and is still searching for him, the funny thing though is that they have made an ARABIC website about it, they are claiming that they are going to give a 10 million dollar prize to the person that can lead them to him. These are Israelis that attacked Lebanon, he has effectively contributed to the death of other Arabs and Muslims, and now they have their website in Arabic and are using quotes by Mohammed PBUH to persuade Muslims to contribute in the search. The website does not say a single thing about him being Jewish or that he IS Israeli, they just said place of birth is Israel and that he has a daughter and a wife. The number to call if is a UK number and they also claim complete secrecy on the matter. They know Arabs would not like to be caught helping Israelis, that’s so considerate… Ron’s website is in available in four languages, Arabic, Farsi, Russian, and English, and in addition to all the money reward, all the info, stories, and photos of Ron, you may want to visit his official website to listen to a song dedicated to Ron Arad at his official website. (Did they REALLY think that this is going to move Arabs emotionally to actually go and help them? Duh)

I might have sounded really racist in this post, but honestly, they know that the only way to ask the people that you have attacked, killed their families, destroyed their houses, and also stole their lands is by buying them off with loads of money. You’re now trying to tell these people that he was on lost on a MISSION at your country, could you please help us find him? You bite your tongue as you remember that this favour here should be “He was here on a mission to kill you, but you got lucky, so now, could you help us find him? and before I forget, I would like to remind you of what your prophet said about helping the poor, the ill and the isolated.” (That is if there was such a saying by the prophet to start with) Maybe you should remind them of what your government said and did, or maybe you should remind them about what your very own husband was there to do.. or lets say what he had already done.

I do not understand why OmanTV is such a horrible channel, in the old days when I used to watch TV I used to always think that the worst Arabic TV channel was Sudan, followed by Yemen, and then Oman. It is not surprising that poor countries like Sudan and Yemen do not have the funds, but OmanTV?! This reminds of the famous post by the SillyBharainiGirl about Oman. There seem to be hundreds of Arabic channels nowadays, I never watch TV as I find my PC a more enjoyable method of wasting time, and the only reason I own a TV is to plug it to my PS2.

We only have one TV channel in Oman, and I guess we should be happy for this as we need not have another source of embarrassment. Honestly, I was watching some live show today while I was having lunch and it was so horrible, I don’t understand if it is their lack of charisma or their lack of sense of elegance. While the girl was alright in my opinion, I could not take the guy. Starting from his aggressive and sleazy tones all the way to the guy’s weird looking dishdasha (robe-like-dress) that was made of a glossy greenish blue fabric and was stitched using white threads around the neck.

One of the most things that irritate me is the way people change the way they pronounce the letter Geem, the majority of people in Oman pronounce the letter with a ‘Ga’ sound rather than a wet J sound. For a strange reason, Ga pronouncers seem to always try to convert it to ‘Ja’ when they’re on TV, this includes TV presenters, interviewed people, everyone. This is probably factored to a strange school of thought that I assume makes people think that “Ga” sounds make seem to belong to a less-educated or probably less-sophisticated class. I find this stupid, and not it proves itself worse when people confuse both letters in a single sentence, eg. Wag’id Ja’ed. (Very good), HOW RIDICULOUS IS THIS? People should show more pride in their very own accents, of course we all have to make ourselves clearer when we speak to other people in the public, but I just don’t understand why this means that we shouldn’t be proud of our very own accents.

I was tagged by Devilish.

How many books do you own?
I am not going to mention my Law books cause this is going to bore everyone to death, I own ZERO books in the traditional sense, I am not a bookworm and I literally own zero novels and books of a similar literal form, I didn’t read a single novel since I left school and until the beginning of this summer. The only “books” that I own are a few programming and design books.

What’s the last book you bought?
Essential ActionScript 2.0 by Colin Moock

Last book you read?
Daughters of Arabia – By Jean Sasson – (A friend left it in our apartment and decided never to pick it up, so I ended up reading it instead about a month ago.)

Currently reading?
Essential ActionScript 2.0 – By Colin Moock (I read a big part of in January, but I had to stop because of school and now I’m trying to start all over)

Whom would you like to book tag?
I cannot think of anyone, Petite for Life visits this place, so I think that I shall tag her if she has not been already tagged.

Podcasts are radio like audio shows downloadable over the internet to be listened either on your computer or your digital audio player. Although podcasting started long time ago before the iPod was made, it became popular due to increasing popularity of the iPod and the recent release of iTunes 4.9 that took the whole podcasting concept mainstream. Though podcasting is a big part of the iPod culture, it is not limited to iPods as most podcasts are published in MP3 format that is playable on almost anything.

I personaly started listening to podcasts early in June and I instantly fell in love with it. The amazing part of podcasting, as everyone says, is that it gives us the chance to listen to what we want, the way that we want, at the time that we want. Syndicated Poscasts could easily make you always updated with the recent shows on your iPod without waiting, you can then simply listen to them on your way to work, during your morning exercise, or even while having your breakfast.

There is already a wide collection of podcasts on all various topics, starting from personal podcasts by random people to ones regarding IT, music, and even porn. It is sad that there aren’t many Arabic podcasts (I don’t know if there are any actually).

More recently, one of the founders of Blogger started ODEO, a new podcasting directory ,that is still BETA actually and promises to let its users to be able to CREATE their podcasts – using ODEO’s client I guess.

What I hate about some podcasts is that their makers do not compress their files well, it is sad that we, users of slow connections, have to spend an hour downloading a 11MB 8 minute mp3 file. Most podcasts have nothing but the recording of a conversation of a presentation by a person, we do not need stereophonic sound, we do not a 128Kbps rate, not only that making optimising the file size would would decrease our download time, but it would actually save the publishers of these files some serious bandwidth. I am not subscribed to any Podcast feeds currently (I couldn’t even download iTunes 4.9 to start with!). However, I am a regular listener to engadget podcasts.

I received an email today from Salim Al-Huthaili, a Sultan School graduate of the year 1996. He has started an MSN group for Sultan’s School graduates and asked to spread the word and join the group. I personally registered and looking forward to see any updates on the webpage. Sultan’s School graduates and interested individuals, please visit this page: http://groups.msn.com/OurSultansSchoolDays

(I am being very generous today.)