Blue Chi’s

I am going to make a confession, I am addicted to Twitter. I just can’t stop checking it every single minute of the day. I check it before I get out of my bed in the morning, I check it right after I get out of the shower, I check it while I’m having my breakfast, I check it before I leave my room, I check before I start the car, I check it when I’m stopped at a red traffic light, I check it when I get off the car, I check it all throughout the day and I check it one last time when I’m in bed and I decide to go to sleep. I JUST CAN’T STOP CHECKING TWITTER.

I really really like Twitter, I have so much fun chatting with my “online” friends on Twitter, I tell them everything I do, and there is always someone to comment back on my updates. When I am in a shop and not sure what to buy I make a tweet and someone will make a suggestion, when I’m in a restaurant and I don’t know what to have someone will make a recommendation, when my car is stuck because of my careless driving I make a tweet and someone will come to get me towed. I’ve met the majority of the people I chat with all day long and they are all fun and hilarious people, and now I really care about them.

When I’m not actually on Twitter I am most likely talking about it with someone offline, 75% of everything I say to my flatmate starts with “Today on Twitter I read”. I spoke with two people today on the phone and told them about what I did on Twitter and I texted one of my colleagues about what I did on Twitter today. There are days when I say more things on Twitter than actual spoken words offline. It is totally insane.

I just said that I really like Twitter and I enjoy it very much, but I think that’s taken over my life. I really cannot do anything else besides it. I used to accomplish so much in my free time, I’ll write a couple of blog posts, write a tutorial, read a chapter in a law or a programming book, and reply to all new threads at the Republic of Code, but since I got my workstation sorted late last week, I really can’t say that I’ve accomplished ANYTHING. I spend a decent time on my computer still, but I’m JUST CHECKING TWITTER ALL DAY AND NIGHT!!

I don’t have an email notification application because I believe it will interrupt whatever I do and therefore slow me down, but now I can’t force myself to close TweetDeck and it keeps on pinging every single minute with several new tweets from different people. It’s almost like I’m clinically addicted to this thing, I even have it open RIGHT NOW AS I TYPE THIS ON MY SECONDARY SCREEN JUST WAITING FOR A NEW UPDATE TO COME.

SOMEONE SAVE ME!!!!!

I booked my flight to travel back to Oman this upcoming Thursday. I have completed a very rough first draft for my dissertation and I decided I’ll review it and polish it up back home. I have to go back to office by the 1st of October and will be spending the whole of Ramadhan and Eid at home in Sohar. Packing was not as bad as I thought it would be, I’m carrying a whole separate suitcase just for books!

Reflecting back on my experience this year, it was surely different from the LLB, classes were so much more fun because I decided to share my opinion on every single thing we discussed the  IT law and IP law classes. I traveled to more places around the UK this year than the total of my previous four years! I also made friends with people from so many different places and did not just stick around with the Gulfies.

In preparation for my departure I printed a super awesome photo album which I’ll be taking with me home. Click on the image below to see the full version.

I’m also start playing with video. Check out the first video I made, it’s taken in the park next door:

I’ve written about my HP laptop problem last month. Today I got my laptop back and the problem is now resolved.

I have an HP Pavilion dv2000, the screen started acting funny, noise appears, and then the system would randomly just crash. I contacted HP and even though my warranty has expired, they decided to fix it for free because my model is known to be defective and qualifies for extended warranty. HP arranged for a carrier to come pick the laptop, and in about three weeks I got my laptop back. They replaced the motherboard with a new one and now it works like a charm. I had a dual boot setup which they did not touch, my hard disk has all my stuff on it and no data was lost at all.

I had problem with the initial collection because the carrier to which HP hired to come collect is an idiot. (Not directly HP’s fault). Anyway, everything else went fine and HP were swift to act once I contacted them.

If you have a problem with your HP Pavilion make sure you contact HP before you do anything with it.

I am not sure what I’ll do with my HP laptop now that I have my Mac as well. I might try a dual laptop lifestyle because I really like Windows 7 and I hate the fact that Chrome for the Mac is not ready yet.

Just thought I’ll make an update about my jogging progress. I’ve been jogging once every two days since the start of June and today the collective distance of what I ran reached a 101 KM!!

The widget and the nike+ website somehow is keeping me motivated to go out and jog more. I hope I can maintain this when I go back home. You can check my progress on the widget located on the side bar of my blog.

Those who know me personally know that I do not practice any sort of sports activity at all. I’m as skinny as a stick and it is so unhealthy I think I’m going to die real soon.

Anyway, I recently started jogging. It might sound like something insignificant, but this is the most active thing I’ve done in years. I also recently started using the Nike+ iPod gadget to track my performance! It is the coolest thing EVER. For people who don’t know what this is, it is a small piece you put in your shoe and which an iPod nano or an iPod Touch can sync with to track the performance of your exercise. 

There are loads of gadgets that probably do a similar thing, but the really cool thing about this is that you can then sync your running data to the NikePlus website to see graphs indicating how well you do and compare it with other people around the world. You can also set goals which you try to achieve or follow training exercises suggested by the website.

What is even cooler is the new Flash widgets released by Nike which you can display on your blog. It might sound like a silly idea, BUT I LOVE IT. You can create an avatar, customize it, and then display it on your blog or Facebook wall. It displays your most recent data, the total number of kilometers you ran and the total number of workouts you had. There are some accessories which you can dress up your avatar with and you can get more of these the more you exercise.

I placed my widget on the sidebar of the blog. Check it out!

I want to go run out now just to update my widget! LOL, I guess it’s working!

I ordered my Macbook on Friday as you guys know cause my HP laptop started tripping.

Hours ago at WWDC, Apple announced new 13″ Macbook Pros to replace the aluminum 13″ Macbooks with better specs and at a lower price!!!

The ironic thing is that a friend of mine was thinking of buying an iPod touch and I told him to wait for WWDC because Apple might introduce a new iPhone (and consequently maybe a new iPod touch, but the former happened and not the latter), but for some reason I didn’t think about WWDC when I purchased my own laptop.

While WWDC was running, the Apple Store was down for the update, so I couldn’t check the status of my order and I knew if it went out I won’t be able to return it or replace it because it was a custom configuration. It was nerve wrecking. 

I instantly checked the store right after WWDC finished and found that I still had the option to cancel my order, so I instantly did! AND IT GOT CANCELED.

I guess just I got lucky.

It will take about a week for them to refund me my money back, but I already ordered my new Macbook Pro this time. My original order was now at a lower price and had more features, so I thought I’ll upgrade the harddisk with a bit more space as well.

It will still take about ten days for it to be delivered to me. I think I will be able to survive.

I updated my HP’s BIOS firmware today, and my laptop somehow seems a bit better, but the problem is still there. The feedback I received from HP suggests that it is a problem that will require servicing the laptop. I will deal with that once I get my new one.

(Pic Credits: Niklas)

Something weird has happened to my HP laptop, out of the blue the screen flickered, got some pixel noise and then it froze. I tried restarting, into Windows Vista, the pixel noise is everywhere and it freezes before even showing the login screen. I booted into Windows 7 and the same exact thing happened. Somehow though Safe Mode works, and occassionaly the noise would be gone from the boot menu and I can login to Windows before the screen randomly freaks out and it freezes. It feels like a hardware error because of the randomness of it and the fact that it affects both of my operating systems.

I’m happy this thing didn’t happen last week during my exam period, I don’t know what would’ve done. Luckily I’m taking this week off and just not doing anything, but I need to start working on my dissertation soon.

Heard from Diablo that the same thing happened to his HP machine and his only solution was to replace the motherboard of his computer. I emailed HP and their instructions indicate that I need to ‘service’ my system because the problem seem to effect everything even the BIOS menu.

I am going to email HP again to see how the “service” process takes place and how much it will cost me to replace a part such as the motherboard. I can’t believe this happened just two months after the warranty expired. Well, at least it didn’t happen exactly the day after it expired.

I think fixing this is going to take a while, and I’m not sure I can trust it with my work now that I have to start writing my dissertation. I thought I’ll just buy a new computer. I thought I’ll go for a Macbook this time, I have some Windows applications which I paid for, but I can install Windows 7 on the Mac as well, so I guess I can still have Windows as my primary OS and try the Mac OS X from there.

I just ordered the aluminum Macbook online, got a student discount for it as well, but they expect to have it delivered in ten days or so. I might send my HP laptop for service once I get that one so that I don’t remain stuck without a computer during the transition.

I finished my exams last Friday, I just had two exams, my other two modules are assessed on essays only. The only remaining part of my degree is the dissertation, my topic is going to be on the impact of DRM on natural uses of copyright.

I do not have any major plans for summer, but I’m not going back home either. I will try to finish my disseration ASAP to go back home for good around the end of July/start of August. My leave from MOLA ends on the first of October, so hopefully I can spend August and September at home with my family if everything goes according to plan.

I am not doing any work at all this week though, just trying to enjoy the weather, go to the park, lay on the grass and read some fiction without worrying about anything happening the world.

I haven’t made a diary-like blog post for a very very very long time, probably because, like all other Omani English language bloggers, I’m posting all my daily updates on Twitter. I do have my twitter feed displayed on the right side of the my blog index page. Maybe I should make that larger and more emphasized the next time I update the theme of this blog.

Got tagged by Diablo to list down five things people probably do not know about me:

1. People think that I’m a spoilt only child of my parents, but I actually have three brothers, four sisters, one half sister, two nephews and a niece.
2. Many of my family relatives do not know I exist.
3. I don’t have a single illegal application installed on my computer or phone.
4. I don’t know a single Arab person in Southampton.
5. I read the local headlines of Omani newspapers on daily basis online.