Blue Chi’s

Today was a bizarre day at Capitol Hill, I’ve been assigned for a couple of weeks now to the office of Congressman Mark Souder for the Legislative Fellowship Program I’m participating in. Well today I came to the office and the door was locked, I went to a colleague’s office to send an email to other people in the office to learn about what’s happening. In a few minutes I learned that news broke this same morning that my congressman was having an affair with one of his female staffers in his district office and now he decided to resign!

It was totally random and unexpected. The dude has been in congress for 16 years now and is a very conservative republican who campaigned for family values and such things, now all of a sudden he is exposed to have a sex scandal that leads him to quit. The sad part is that all his office staff lose their jobs if their congressman quits. It was awkward so I decided not to go the office while everyone there was devastated. We only have two more days on Capitol Hill before we travel to Virginia to spend the last week of the program there, I’ll be going to another Congressman’s office in these two days, so I will not have to deal with Souder’s drama. I emailed the two people I worked with in his office and wished them the best of luck, still can’t believe this is happening!!

The alarm on my iPad woke me at 6.30am, I pushed my pillow against my back as I sat lazily in bed, pulled my iPad from the bed side and disabled the alarm. I instantly launched the new multi-column TweetDeck on the iPad to see what the guys are up this morning. I exit the application and see that there are no new message badges on my Mail application, thanks to my awesome Gmail filters all the crap people send me gets sorted into various folders and skips my inbox. I jump out of bed, grab my towel and head to the shower.

***

7.00am: I am having my famous Jordans Country Crisp cereal, I work the cereal with my spoon as I read my RSS feeds on the laid down iPad, suddenly an alert appears on the screen saying that I have a meeting today at 8am. I saved this event on Google Calendar, but it of course syncs with my iPad live. I throw my cereal bowl in the kitchen, slide the iPad in its foofbag and ran to work.

***

09.00am:  my meeting is over, I go back to my office to check on my files, as I walk there I remember that I now can check the list of my in-progress files on the iPad using Google Docs, I do that and see that I have left one of the files with the advisor to sign the letter, I make a detour to check on what happened with that, the advisor had already signed the letter, I take it from his office, give to the DG and change the status of the file directly from my iPad.

***

10.00am: I am in my colleagues office and one of her neighbours asks if I can check the letter for the file we are working on together, I ask her to send it to me by email, on my iPad I open that Word file on Google Docs, make changes directly to the letter right then and there and send it back to her in 5 minutes. She is very impressed by the way I work and thinks that I come from the future.

***

11.00am: I have this new proposal to make the DG for making monthly statistics reports that breaks down the performance of each department on its own, the idea is to have visual graphs such as pie charts and bar charts. I have already collected some data from previous months and created the graphs and report. I go to the DGs office and impress him with my presentation skills on the iPad as slides magically flow with gestures of my fingers. He instantly buys my proposal and asks me to coordinate with the secretaries to collect the data needed for these reports.

***

12.00pm: I am frustrated by some clauses in this huge construction contract I am supposed to review – I remember that I recently bought a digital Kindle copy of a new Construction Law book from Amazon which I can read on my iPad. I pull the iPad and launch the Kindle App, I open the book and search for the chapter on the same clause I am studying right now, I read up a little bit and note some of the possible variations for such a clause. I make some comments based on what I just read and then mark the file as done on my Google Docs log sheet.

***

03:00pm: I’m done with work and supposed to go out for lunch at a new restaurant, I am not sure of the location, but my friend is already there, so he sends me an email with a Google Earth link to the spot. I have my Mifi with me so I open up Google Maps on it and see exactly where the restaurant is. It sucks a little bit that I don’t have the 3G version which has actual GPS capabilities, but I guess you can’t just have everything.

***

04.00pm: It’s is my first time in restaurant so I think let me to do a Omani Cuisine review, my iPad doesn’t have a camera, so I use my iPhone to take shots of all the dishes and then email them to my iPad. While having our dessert I use the WordPress application to make posts on the go, insert the images in my email inbox to the post, review it one more time and click publish! I really like this restaurant and might come back again to try other items on the menu.

***

05.00pm: I am not going the gym today, I check on Haitham to see if he is willing to chill out in Caribou as usual, he is down for it as usual. He brings along his iPad and we order our drinks, he uses the Photos application to shows me the latest renders of concepts he designed. We chat while we casually tweet and browse the internet. Someone on Twitter suggests a new multiplayer game on the iPad, we both download it and play using ad-hoc mode together. Haitham sucks at videos and I kick his ass so easily.

***

08.00pm: I grab something to eat from McDees on my way back home, I’m pretty sick of it at this stage, but I can’t be bothered to get anything else. I am too lazy to switch on my computer, so I dock my iPad and watch the latest episode of Diggnation as I have my dinner. I wonder why millions of people around the world, including myself, waste our time watching a couple of geeks get drunk and talk about random stuff, thing is it’s really fun to watch!

****

10.00pm: I have no other plans for the day and for some reason I’m pretty exhausted. I decide to read a couple of chapters of the latest Kindle Haruki Murakami book I downloaded from the Amazon on my iPad. I never imagined that I would one day enjoy reading translated literature, but I guess Murakami is really special. I lay on bed and read until I fall asleep.

I always had a problem with my phone and web-based address books. I have multiple entries of the same people, each with a million different numbers. Very recently I decided to sort this once and for all and have all my address books synced using Gmail’s support for Microsoft Exchange. Using Exchange making any change in either of my address books causes the other one to reflect that change INSTANTLY without doing anything but update the actual entry. As my iPhone is always connected to the internet this really works as advertised and it is just unbelievably efficient!

It took me a while to clean up my Gmail address book and have ALL my contacts on it first, I deleted many contacts of people I have not been in touch with for years and those who I am now exclusively in touch with via Facebook. Once I got my Gmail address book completed, I completed wiped out my phone’s address book and used the Exchange settings to have Gmail sync with it, in a matter of seconds the names started popping up in my address book and the process was done! Whenever I add a new contact to my Gmail address book that person appears instantly on my iPhone, making any change to any entry also appears instantly as well!

OK, what’s even cooler is that after I got both of my address books unified an sorted, I used the iPhone Facebook app to sync the photos of all of my friends with my iPhone address book, so now when any of my friends call me their Facebook profile picture shows up on the screen! AND this picture is later synced with Gmail so I can also see it inside my Gmail address book!

Besides the address book feature, I also use Exchange to push emails instantly to my iPhone so that it email and SMS become virtually the same, and best of all is that my calendar is now synced with Google Calendar live so that any event I add to my iPhone calendar appears in Google Calendar instantly without me doing anything but add the event to the calendar! It is seriously insane I love it!

The recent release of the Google Nexus One, the new Android phone, got me a little bit worried about my attachment to the iPhone. I am very interested in the Nexus One, it is a really great phone, but no matter how good any other phone seems now, it is very difficult for me to consider leaving the iPhone platform because I have integrated a number of iPhone specific applications into my lifestyle and I do know if anybody ever will make equivalent applications for any other device (iFitness, iXpense, Nike+, etc).

No matter how pretentious it might sound, but the iPhone has really changed my life, the way I use a mobile phone, and the way I interact with the web on the go, and this layer that the applications bring to the mix make it extremely hard to move to another platform, no matter how appealing that device seems. The only option I can consider now for getting another mobile phone would be to have it as a secondary phone – which I really never had even though I badly think I should get another number for work… but seriously, would someone who has an iPhone buy an Android phone as a secondary mobile phone? I can’t possibly pay for two mobile data plans, that’s just not right.

iPhones and other smart phones users, do you feel attached to your platform or can you easily switch regardless of the applications?

I’ve only subscribed to a mobile data plan less than two months ago, but I already feel that the way I use the Internet on the go has changed forever, tharmt is of course also directly related as well to my iPhone as well, but many other smart phones like android devices. Could’ve done the same.

I spoke with several people about how the transition to a mobile data plan is similar to the transition to a mobile phone for the first time, to some people the mobility by itself does not justify the cost of the plan, but used to say why get a mobile phone when I can just go home and make a phone call, most people are not running vital businesses that require urgent instant feedback, but the same thing could be said about mobile Internet, imagine being able to do everything you do on your PC on your mobile phone, from YouTube and Facebook, to editing an excel sheet on Google Docs, and all of that in a big enough screen and running through a high speed connection. Of course the phone plays s big part of it, but it is the connectivity that makes all the difference. It is truely life changing.

So if you did get my opinion yet on whether or not you should get a data plan, even in Oman, the answer is yes of course – provided you have a good enough phone to make use of it. And just to prove my point, I made this blog post from my phone that is connected through a 3G network!

Went today on a super random activity: We’ve gone to Ruwi to shoot a short film!

A group of people on Twitter and myself decided to make a small movie about the search of a houseboy named Babu (it is supposed to be based on a true story!).

Our director, storyboard writer, camera man, and video editor is Maithams (you can check out his YouTube channel here and watch his latest short film here). The star of the film is Raideraid, and supporting actors are myself and Alucard187. Muscati and Conceptoo have also contributed in brainstorming and planning the project. We still need to shoot a couple of other scenes in the upcoming weeks before the project is completed.

Shooting in Ruwi was a very *unique* experience. That place on a Friday is like a whole different planet as it gets fully occupied by Asian labour hanging out on the streets on their day off.

Here are some photos of the sets we shot in.

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!!!!!

So I’ve been on Mac OS X for a couple of months now and I think I’ve adapted my workflow to the way it works. Mac OS X has some awesome features that are not available natively on Windows.

The feature that changed the way I use the computer the most is Spaces. This feature lets you have a number of virtual desktops to which you can launch specific applications that do not appear on the other ones. I work with two screens all the time, so this makes a huge difference for me as I usually have different applications launch in specific screens, and this lets me switch both windows instantly instead of attempting to minimize and maximize a number of applications on Windows OS.

My second most used feature is Active Screen Corners. This feature lets you assign an action to be executed when you move the mouse cursor to a screen corner. I use this in conjunction with Spaces and Expose. This makes it possible for me to switch spaces and applications using a quick mouse gesture instead of using the keyboard or clicking on the spaces icon. I have another corner assigned for Expose and another one to show the desktop.

I also like customizing the dock. I only have the applications which I regularly actually use their permanently. These are Firefox, TweetDeck, and iTunes. I have the essential CS4 Applications in a grid folder, my work applications in another grid folder, and then I just have all the installed applications in their original folder.

Another feature I like the screen capture tool which I have configured to work with an extra button on my mouse. Using it I simply click my scroll wheel to the left and then select the outline of the area I wish to capture. Really helpful when writing web tutorials!

Anyway, in addition to all these things I like I also have a number of issues with the Mac OS X. The first problem I have is when Expose does not work. For those who do not know what this feature is, it is a quick method to switch between programs in a single space which spreads out all the applications in a zoom-out grid like form. However, some applications have a lot of floating panels, example all Adobe CS4 applications. Using expose here makes each panel appear as a separate window screen making it impossible to know what is happening on the screen. The screen below is supposed to have 2 applications and 1 window opened.

The Mac OS X separates the upper file menu from the actual application window. For most users who use a single screen, they will not think that this is significantly different from Windows, however, because I use two screens, this difference becomes a huge issue, because the file menu only appears on the primary screen, any applications opened on the secondary screen will have their file menu on the other screen which is plain weird and confusing.

I am also irritated by the crazy number of shortcuts built-in the system. Almost all the F buttons already do a system-wide function that override any function to these buttons in other applications. I had to disable them one by one in order to be able to do any work. Some other crazy ones like renaming any file you select by pressing Enter cannot be removed or edited. I also still cannot get over the fact that you cannot maximize folders and apple applications such as iTunes. Not sure if I ever will.

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:

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.