Category: Everyday Me

What are your first 10 installed programs on a new Windows computer?

Well, with a format planned for my laptop soon, here are the 10 programs that would make it on to it first.

• Firefox: My browser of choice.
• SharpReader: The feed reader I use.
• eMule: File sharing software.
• Google Desktop: The desktop search tool I use.
• Download Accelerator Plus: To speed up my downloads.
• MSN Messenger: Basically the only IM network I use for the time being.
• Picasa: The coolest photo organizing software.
• Winamp: Still my favourite music player.
• AVG Antivirus: Good antivirus software.
• Photoshop: Always need it for design, photo editing and other stuff.

Of course other stuff like Dreamweaver, MS Office, DivX, Adobe Reader…etc follow after that.

As some of you might already know from my wife’s blog, this past weekend hasn’t been the best for me.

I’m sick…
My whole body is aching, I have a constant headache, you could fry an egg on my head, my throat hurts, my brain feels like it’s bouncing around painfully in my skull, I’m not seeing clearly, my back is killing me and a million other things.

I totally hate being sick!
It just sucks to feel how helpless us humans can be.
Just some damn little virus is enough to throw our lives completely off track and make us virtually useless.

Using Audioscrobbler, a Winamp plugin and RSS Digest I’ve added a new section on my blog’s sidebar that shows the latest songs that I’ve been listening to

What happens is that the winamp plugin contacts the Audioscrobbler site to generate an RSS feed of the stuff I’ve been listening to. RSS Digest then kicks in to read that feed every hour and transforms it into html code that you guys can see here.

Each song links to a page on Audioscrobbler with a list of the top fans of that song.

I think this is really cool 🙂

I don’t know what to say…
This past week was so frustrating for me…

The blog dissapeared all of a sudden, but then it turns out the hosting company is just relocating servers. Phew… But not for too long, as the relocation ends and the blog is still not there, Panic takes over…
I go insane and border on depression…

Every day the news gets worse, first all the files were lost, then all the data was lost too, and so there was nothing left of the blog but some files lying around here and there on my desktop which would at best serve as painful memories…

Anyway, I just logged on the net a while ago and WOW here’s the blog in all it’s glory back up again.

I don’t know who, how or where…
I just know it’s online…
Thank you to whoever saved it…

A big thank you to Houssein who has been hosting this blog and who put a lot of effort into this whole story over the past week…

I’d also like to thank my wife Eman for her support throughout the past days, Natasha for caring and asking about the blog, Haitham for offering to help in anyway that he could and to everyone who thought of Subzero Blue in this past week and missed it.

So, The 2004 Best Arab Blog Awards (BABA 2004) are over and the results are finally out.

Subzero Blue won the award for Best Tunisian Blog 🙂

Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote for this blog. I truly appreciate it.

These are the first BABA Awards and some difficulties and problems have occurred, but still I think it was a good effort by Haitham and Mahmood who deserve a big thank you for it.
Just the fact that this award has grouped a big number of Arab blogs and created some sort of directory for them makes it a success.

Hopefully next year, everything that happened this year will be taken into consideration and we’ll have a greater BABA Awards 🙂

Btw, voting for the Bloggies 2005 is still open until February 3rd, so if you haven’t voted for Subzero Blue yet in the Best African or Middle Eastern Blog category, please do now here 🙂
Thank you 🙂

For some time now I’ve been playing around with different elements in Subzero Blue, and I still plan to go on changing things (to the better, I hope).

Some of you have noticed the changes, some of you haven’t.
So just in case you’re among the people who haven’t, here’s what’s changed.

– I’ve added an About page with some info about me and the site. And for those who are interested, a picture of me.

– I’ve moved some main navigational elements to a new horizontal menu that I’ve created beneath the header.

– I’ve added the 5 most recent comments to the sidebar.

– I’ve added 4 random pictures pulled from my photolog to the sidebar.

– I’ve moved the Linklog to the sidebar and migrated it to a faster script.

– I’ve added a footer for the site and moved the information I feel belongs there to it.

– I’ve been playing around with some design elements here and there.

– I’ve been experimenting with some text ads and where to place them without annoying the readers. So, soon you’ll be seeing less ads in better places.

If you have any feedback or any suggestions, please do not hesitate to share them with me. I’d love to hear your ideas.

If I were a musical instrument, I’d be an acoustic guitar.
If I were a song, I’d be “Somewhere Over The Rainbow / What A Wonderful World” by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.
If I were a word, I’d be “Friend”.
If I were a colour, I’d be blue.
If I were a home, I’d be a country house.
If I were a place, I’d be a tropical island.
If I were a car, I’d be a 4×4.
If I were an animal, I’d be an eagle.
If I were a fruit, I’d be an apple.
If I were a blog, I’d be Subzero Blue.

So, it’s finally Friday and it’s time for me to answer the questions and suggestions that I got over the past week.

So I’ll be answering the questions one by one in the order I got them.

Continue reading Reader’s Requests: The Answers

Update: The Bloggies 2005 site is back online now. You can start voting. Thank you 🙂

Thanks to all your nominations and to the votes of the Bloggies 2005 panel afterwards, Subzero Blue is a finalist for “Best African or Middle Eastern Weblog” for the second year in a row.

Please pass by the Bloggies 2005 site and vote for me and don’t forget to tell all your friends to vote for me too.

Only one vote per email address, so whoever has more than one email can vote more than once 😉

I’m counting on you guys to win the award for Subzero Blue this year.

Thank you all so so much 🙂

Vote for me here: Bloggies 2005.

The most common of childhood questions must definitely be: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”.
We all had certain things we wished to be but ended up not being, and some of us still have some of these dreams.

Well, here are the main things I wanted to be growing up. And as I’m still in the process of getting older, some of these things are recent ones 😉

Pilot: I always loved air travel and still do. And for years and years I dreamt of becoming a pilot.
The Freedom, the flying, the travel, the beauty of it all. It’s a dream I’ll always cherish dearly.

Actor: In my childhood, I loved acting. I was always in all the school plays and stuff. I actually was pretty good. Anyway, I grew out of it by teenagehood. Just kept the needed talent to be a good liar.

Singer: With acting behind my back, my next obsession was with becoming a singer. My room witnessed many a concert by me. I actually think I have a good voice, but then again who doesn’t think that about themselves.

Continue reading Things I Wanted To Be When I Grew Up