Blue Chi’s

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!

A quick post on recent music I’ve been listening to. I’m listening to more music these days than I used to a couple of years ago, probably because I now primarily purchase all my music from iTunes and rarely ever buy any physical disks. I can only buy music from the UK iTunes store because I have a bank account in the UK, but it is still annoying at times because there are some tracks which are only sold in the US or some other jurisdiction, but not in the UK. For example, only the standard version of OneRepublic’s “Waking Up” is sold on UK iTunes, while the US has also the delux version of the album which has four extra tracks. I always get the delux version if it has more tracks, I do not understand why someone would buy the standard edition which has four missing tracks when the whole purpose of buying an album is get ALL the tracks.

OneRepublic – Waking Up

“Waking Up” is OneRepublic’s sophomore album which got released a couple of weeks ago. I really liked their previous album “Dreaming Out Load” which I still continue to listen to from to time until today. For those who do not know OneRepublic, they are the group behind “Apologize” – one of the most downloaded ever on iTunes. The main man behind the group, Ryan Tedder, has produced many hits such as Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis, Halo by Beyonce, and Battlefield by Jordin Sparks.

I thought that Waking Up continued the same formula of Dreaming Out Loud with more grand instrumentals this time and a more positive message. I cannot say that I like Waking Up more than Dreaming Out Loud, but I love songs such as Made For You, All the Right Moves, Secrets, and Marching On which is without doubt my favorite track on the album. It has been also confirmed that Timbaland is going to have a remix of Marching On on his new album Shockwave Value II! I CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR THAT ONE!

Leona Lewis – Echo

The second album by Leona Lewis was one of my most anticipated albums of the year. It is also the first album I ever preorder in my life… and it did not disappoint. I fell in love with Happy (produced by Ryan Tedder) the instant I listened to it. The album has a good combination of power ballads and pop songs. My favorite tracks on the album are Happy, I Got You, Can’t Breathe, Outta My Head, My Hands, Love Letter, Naked, and Broken. (Isn’t this like the whole album? ) Surprisingly, I’m not really big on Leona’s duet with OneRepublic. Leona Lewis’ song My Hands has also been picked by Square-Enix to be one of the theme songs for the English language release of Final Fantasy XIII – That is cool!

Alexandra Burke – Overcome

Though I was a really big fan on Alexandra on X Factor, I was not very impressed by her first single Bad Boys, it was clear to me that an effort was made to distinguish her from Leona Lewis and make her have a more edgy and urban sound. I did not like her album the first time I listened to it, but it grew really big on me with time and NOW I AM OBSESSED WITH A SONG CALLED “YOU BROKE MY HEART” it is nothing like the music I listen to and it is sung in a really awesome British accent! Other songs I like on this album include the Silence, Dumb, It’s Over, They Don’t Know, and Goodnight Good Morning (which Brandy sang but never released). I must say that I am really pleased with Alexandra’s first album!

I started going to the gym last month for the first time ever in my life, I thought it would be the only way for me to gain weight. I’ve never been to the gym before so I thought I’ll read a book about it and use an iPhone application to make my gym experience more fun!

The book I read is the one you see above, it is Muscle – The World’s Most Complete Guide to Building your Body – by Ian King and Lou Schuler. The book is mainly written for those who want to get seriously into body building and weight lifting, unlike traditional workout books, Muscle takes a scientific approach by explaining how muscles work and goes into great detail into the function and nature of every single muscle you can think of. I thought that the book was helpful because it explains a lot of about how muscles grow, how to have a proper diet, and explains in a great detail many exercises for working the various muscles in the body. However, at many circumstances I thought that the book was an overkill for someone who merely wants to gain weight to look more normal than trying to be a big buff or a professional weight lifter (which the book seems to be directed at). The book also seems to focus on working with free weights more than using any machines (literally, I think only four machines were mentioned in the book).

However, in my regular trips to the gym I do not actually follow the workouts in the book, and instead I follow the routines specified in the iPhone application iFitness. This is an awesome iPhone application that has detailed routines for all training levels. In addition to the explanation on how to do the workouts and show you videos on how to do then, the application also enables you to log your training sessions for each exercise you do and lets you plot graphs to show your performance.

I really love iFitness probably because I am a sucker for statistics! Apparently I can also back up all my data online and send it by email as well. I haven’t tried these two features yet, but they should be interesting.

I’ve been going to the gym for a whole month now and I feel like I can have as a permanent item in my routine, but I’m away from Muscat for nine days for Eid and there isn’t a branch of my gym here in Sohar, I still got my shoes with me, so I might try going to any gym here. What’s even worse is that I’ll be traveling abroad for about two weeks after Eid, so again, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to my gym schedule.

So does anybody else go the gym around here? Have you read a helpful book on the topic or used a good iPhone application to help you with it?

Eid is tomorrow here in Oman, We got a nine day holiday this time and spending the whole break in Sohar at my parents house.

For everyone on Twitter please use the hash tag #omaneid when making any updates or uploading any eid pictures!

Eid Mubarak to all of you!

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.

My previous post on my addiction to Twitter attracted a lot of replies, many were written by people who are not Twitter. I have reached this stage where quitting Twitter is NOT an option. I feel that I am part of a community of people I care about and whom I have no other direct regular method of communication with. I am, like the majority of people in my Twitter circle, having a lot of fun on Twitter, I’m meeting new people, learning about new things to do in town and discussing topics through methods that cannot be replicated on any other medium. I just CANNOT QUIT.

What I would like to do is be able to carry on with my life and still have fun on Twitter like everybody else. I have developed a simple strategy to be able to do this. First of all, I decided to CLOSE DOWN TweetDeck when I’m doing something else. It is really not rocket science, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to do anything else when there are 5 new tweet update notifications every 30 seconds. For example, this time I don’t have TweetDeck opened as I’m writing this blog post! See!!!

Second thing, I am going to have a Twitter break each 45 minutes or between switching tasks. This way I will have something to look forward to and will have a systematic method for checking Twitter. In order to time myself I’m using my good old Klok application which I’ve been using for a couple of years now. I cannot live without and I don’t know how I never used it since I got back in town earlier this month. I have Klok installed on my work machine and my computers at home.

I am also starting to get back into a systematic to do list workflow for everything. I have installed a number of iPhone apps and will see which one to go with. Will try using GTD, but not sure if it’ll work.

Finally, I’ve stuck up a new banner in my room to indicate my next goal! I want to receive a 1,000,000 page views a month at the Republic of Code. I’ve been stuck at around 500,000 pageviews a month for a year now and never exceeded. Some of you remember my old banner, which worked. All I need is to have a goal to work towards!

I have already implemented many of these methods today and I managed to respond to all new forum threads, read two chapters in a programming book, AND GO OUT OF THE HOUSE AND BUY A PAIR OF SHOES. I have also chatted with Twitter and had fun with the guys over there. So I think it should work out if I properly focus!

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!!!!!

A number of Omani bloggers have started a competition recently for creating an awareness poster for the Swine Flu. Not sure why the rules are so long and complex when there are no prizes for this other than bragging rights… but you should still check it out if you are a design person in Oman. You can learn more about this competition here.

UPDATE: Competition winner will now get a nice Wacom Bamboo. Check out the details here.

Sangeetha at the Digital Oman blog has taken the initiative to organize a gathering to Omani people on Twitter, which I will be attending. If you are on Twitter and going to be in Town on the 8th of October then feel free to come join us!

We are going to meet up in Barista Coffeeshop in Masa Mall at 7pm on the 8th of October.  For more info follow Sangeetha on Twitter and check her blog.

UPDATE: THIS EVENT IS MEANT TO BE FOR PEOPLE WHO USE TWITTER. PLEASE REGISTER AN ACCOUNT ON TWITTER BEFORE JOINING AND THEN POST AT SANGEETHA’S BLOG TO CONFIRM YOUR ATTENDANCE.

A UAE newspaper called the National ran a story written by Saleh al Shaibany about media censorship in Oman (link), which to my surprise quotes me a couple of times in a manner that suggests that I was interviewed for this article. I did not know about my mention in this article, I clicked the link on Twitter and was surprised to see my name there.

I was not interviewed for this article and my quotes were taken out of context from a number of posts I have written in the past. Saleh al Shaibany never got in touch with me prior to the publication of this article. I do not agree with or support the opinions mentioned in this article.

In the post from which my second quote was taken I argued that that the government in Oman, unlike neighboring countries, does not in fact censor the internet on political grounds, as it relies instead of legal methods, such as the criminal law or breach of confidence, to prosecute the authors. Controversial websites that criticize government officials and those that leak confidential documents are still open the public. My post made it clear that the problem of censorship in Oman is due to random acts of Omantel and the inefficiency of the company. My other blog was blocked by mistake and not because of its content.

I am very upset about this whole experience. Any reasonable reader would think that I was interviewed for this article and that I am in support of the message behind it. I am very disappointed to see my quotes used out of context without any reference to where they were taken from.

I emailed the editor of The National and the head of the Foreign Desk at the paper. I’m still waiting for the response.