Now we have some explanation for the internet failures we have faced over the past couple of months from one area to another. Hopefully no more cables will be cut any time soon.

Turns out the United Arab Emirates took two ships into custody on February 19th after those infamous cable cuttings. Wayward anchors are suspected to be at fault, and the Korean company responsible for one of the vessels just agreed to fork over 60 grand in damages in exchange for the release of its ship. The other ship, which is owned by an Iraqi company, is still under Dubai custody, and the two sailors on board were arrested and are awaiting prosecution next week. As for us, we’re standing by our space aliens in league with garden gnomes theory. It all just adds up.

Link: Engadget

I have needed a major upgrade for a while now, for some reason the old blog was falling apart at the seems. It was just a matter of time until something went really wrong. Previously the search box disappeared, couldn’t post certain things, the back end was a mess but I was managing.

Thanks to Jacqui and Ananyah my blog looks refreshed, I love how organized it is and I really like the Theme. The header includes my Truck and my Bike, and there are a few other headers in the work. I removed the Flash header due to problems I was having with it when loading in certain programs and that it wasn’t completely upgradeable for WordPress 2.5. I prefer the static look, but the header will be tweaked a bit, there are still some content that I fixing but most of everything they took care without any help from me. I just remained a by stander, I thought they were going to update it a different day, they both stayed up late into the night making sure it was ready to go live. I was surprised in the morning, and very happy with the result. Now I just have to upgrade a few things in the content pages which I have left on the back burner for a while now. I’m happy a lot of people like the new look, some have a different opinion, but overall its more organized then before.

Based on Time Magazine’s list, here is the full list of the top 25 and the 5 over rated blogs. They are money making blogs, and some of them are the usual ones and some are very interesting blogs which seem to have a huge following. Going to the Time magazine link would give you more information on each ranking, but here you just have the rank.

The Top 25 Blogs
1. The Huffington Post
2. Lifehacker
3. Metafilter
4. TreeHugger
5. PostSecret
6. Blog di Beppe Grillo
7. Engadget
8. Freakonomics
9. Gigazine
10. Ace of Spades HQ
11. Radosh.net
12. Gawker
13. Andrew Sullivan
14. Velveteen Rabbi
15. Boing Boing
16. TechCrunch
17. Web 2.Oh…really?
18. The Sartorialist
19. Daily Kos
20. The Consumerist
21. Indexed
22. Threat Level
23. The Dullest Blog in the World
24. Bad Jocks
25. The Reverse Cowgirl

The 5 Most Overrated Blogs
1. Slashdot
2. Jim Cramer Blog on Realmoney.com
3. Ars Technica
4. Nicholas Kristof On the Ground
5. I can has cheezburger

Link: Valleywag

Someone could say that this guy doesn’t like Google, a man reporting from the inside and he is angry at this company. I think he single handedly wants to take down this company by exposing all the dirt that is happening inside.

Link: FuckedGoogle

I decided to try out Firefox 3 Beta and from Beta 2 I have been enjoying all the new features and light browser. It just kept getting better and better, didn’t hang with me yet. I just recently downloaded Firefox 3 Beta 5 and it is really annoying, for some reason Youtube keeps hanging and there just seems to be something wrong, can’t seem to put my finger on it. Overall I think it is a great improvement and still with development it will beat Explorer as usual, in comparison Explorer 7 is heavy and crashes every time I load more the 7 tabs, but with Firefox its still better in Beta form then Explorer 7. Right now I’m having a few issues with Beta 5 but hopefully it will keep improving.

The only reason I’m picking on NBK is because its supposed to represent the biggest and the best that is available in Kuwait when it comes to banking, so I hold them to a higher standard. Or I am very frustrated with this stubborn system that is difficult to use.

Their IT are made of people that can’t think of a simple solution and don’t seem to know how to get the job done right. Security isn’t the issue here, it can be maintained without making the life of the user miserable. They see the system as working and they don’t want to touch it so it won’t break if they make any improvements. It has been the same front end for the past few years, maybe small changes but nothing substantial.

One thing that drives me nuts is the security question, if you have the wrong password and they ask you the security question. The security question just “disappears”, really it does, nothing is there, but you can still answer. I knew that because I tried it but most people would be confused. Then there would the images on the front of the website that they need to get rid off, clean things up a bit.

The password recovery is just a disaster of a process, you do it the first time then it resets and you have to do it again and enter your Civil ID number and Account number. Who has that information on hand all the time? Not everyone does. Then there is the matter of a username, if all major international banks have usernames as login why can’t NBK? Again I have a problem with their website, they have put zero thought to the customer usage and how simple it is. You are talking about one of the biggest banks in the Middle East, they could at least improve on this. The best website I have ever used is from Bank of America.

It seems that Qnet was really having a problem in last couple of weeks that I saw with my connection. So the speed wasn’t consistent throughout the day, and it was mentioned by one of the comments that they are having an internal and external network problems which are being sorted out. That has been sorted out based on the speed connection chart above.

My downstream connection is about 420 to 480 KB/s throughout the day which is fantastic. This high bandwidth connection is very much worth it, I hope they are able to sustain this level of connectivity and keep growing. I am completely utilizing this download with all the movies and anime that I am stockpiling, anything I can think of I am downloading.

I have tried every ISP there is in Kuwait from the low to high speed connections. I have ran into problems with different ISPs and different problems, some reacted quickly, some were horrible, some were a disaster. After going through a few of them over the past two years I have done an evaluation on my experience with them and price.

Ranking:

1. Qualitynet
   • Decent Pricing (Cheapest price for higher speeds)
   • Reaction – Not too bad there is a lot of room for improvement.
   • Services – They are trying to improve their network so hopefully we get to see the results sooner
2. Kems
   • Very Good pricing (Cheap at 2MB and below, if you go higher they are expensive)
   • Reaction – Very good support staff, they really follow up with the customer
   • Services – They have good quality of service and they keep improving
3. UCC (United)
   • Pricing (They aren’t cheap, but they try to make deals)
   • Reaction – They don’t have a clue what they are doing
   • Service – They cap your downloads and sometimes don’t give you the speed you paid for
4. Fasttelco
   • Pricing (Most expensive by far, almost double some)
   • Reaction – Horrible reaction, its a disaster internally they don’t know whats going on in their own network
   • Service – Its a jumble, they don’t know whats going on and they also try to regulate P2P which is annoying

This is my opinion and I’m heavy internet user, some might have a different opinion but this has all been through experience with them. Between UCC and Fasttelco is choosing the lesser of two evils, I would avoid both if at all possible.

Internet Connectivity has been an issue over the past couple of months but it seems things have been ironed out. What I find funny is that ISPs keep blaming the problems outside the country for slow speeds they are having.

I have had the 4 MB connection from Qualitynet for the past month now. I paid 850 KD during the special pricing at the Expo. I was wondering how they would sustain the speed and if my line would be able to sustain that speed. My line has been able to sustain the speed consistantly and it has been an improvment but there also have been a few hiccups.

With a 4 MB connection that means you can download at around 380 to 420 Kbps depending on what you are connected to. I have been downloading from a server with a very fast connection, during the day my connection would hit 400 Kbps and average around that. Then at night it would drop to 100 to 140 Kbps, at best it would reach 200 kbps. It was strangely unstable but that was due to Qnet’s side. I asked them to refresh my IP, and everytime they did it solved the problem until it repeated the next night. Overall I think that the difference in speed is very noticable, and this 4 MB connection is worth for those who download a lot and use it for other reasons such as streaming out, vpn, and remotely connecting to your computer.

I have been on a huge downloading spree as of lately, I have managed to get a lot of Movies and TV series. Then I realized that there are some Anime’s that I don’t have complete and I don’t have access to them all the time.

So this is just part of the list of Anime’s that I am currently downloading to complete the ones I have as well as the more episodes:

• Mazinger Z – Full
• Kyo Kara Maoh – Full
• D.Gray-Man
• Gundam 00
• Oh Edo Rocket – Full
• Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto – Full
• One Piece 1 – 300

Between all these Animes it easily adds up to 200 GB to be downloaded over the next few days. Now I just have to figure out where to store them and how to organize them.  (Click On the Picture for More Details)