With the help of Jacqui, ZDistrict.com has officially been upgraded to WordPress 2.2.1 from WordPress 1.4

The interface has completely changed, and the blog has been smoothed out. I didn’t do this out of fear that I would screw up and everything would disappear but I was completely wrong and it was a rather simple process. It has to be done from Dreamhost (My Host) and then it has to be updated from the WP-Admin side of the blog.

What has changed:

• Much better interface
• More intuitive
• A lot of fixes
• Easier and quicker to post images
• Fixed all my video and audio problems
• Better management of blog overall
• Smarter comment management
• Had a few more standard plug-ins which are useful
• Saves drafts automatically, so you don’t lose posts if the window crashes

Overall I am very happy with the changes and I will be working on the Anime and Riding page to make sure they are overhauled/updated. I’m also very happy that the Gravatar issue has been fixed and now you can see the ZD symbol next to your nickname!

Google has at last introduced Group Chat to Google Talk, it has been a feature we have all been used to in other chat programs but I have stopped using all the other chat programs. One stipulation you can only use Group Chat on the Google Talk Gadget which is integrated into iGoogle, which is the personalized Google.com homepage for each person. Its not integrated into the Gmail Google Talk or the independent Google Talk Application.

To use group chat just click a user you want to talk to and then click the Group Chat option, then you choose someone from your contact list to add to the conversation. What I like overall about Google Talk is the smoothness and simplicity of it. I will be waiting for Google to integrate this feature to all the Google Chat options.

Link: Lifehacker.com

I tend to take a lot of pictures and I’m always tweaking them, and sometimes I like to use filters to mess around with the pictures. This list is huge with lots of different tools to try out, I recommend this list to anyone who likes pictures or working with pictures. Some of the tools people already know, but some are really useful.

Online Resources

• Online photo editors
• Photo sharing sites
• Free photo hosting
• Photography blogs
• Mashups
• Photo printing
• Helps

Link: Mashable

Link: Lifehacker

This is one fantastic website for whoever is living in US and is considering one wireless carrier or another. You have lots of wireless carrier choices in the US such as: Verizon, Sprint, Nextel, Cingular, and T-Mobile. This website provides you with all the cell phone towers registered in your area submitted to the FCC and those submitted voluntarily by users. This will give you a good idea of the coverage in your area provided by your cell phone carrier, and if you have the cell towers of your carrier in the area then you will have good cell reception.

Link: Cell Reception

It seems that Qnet has been down for a bit, it has been down since 8:00pm. The first thing I thought was that they cut the electricity at the Qnet building in Kuwait City or at the Telecommunications Tower since they are starting with the rolling blackouts in certain areas. The only reason I can still surf is because I’m using my kems connection, and its slightly slower the Qnet connection but working great.

It seems there is an all out vote for many of the different kinds of blogs out there. I think that it is pretty cool that tey are doign this, but the votes aren’t even that much to get to the top for some of them such as Hottest Mommy Blogger and Best Blogging Host. I voted for Dreamhost for a few of them as well as WordPress. You can vote multiple times, and its interesting taking a look at some of the websites.

Link: BloggersChoiceAwards

I have been too damn lazy coming around to this and I have this weird feeling that everything could go wrong and the blog would disappear. Its funny since I always come to it and think to myself I will do it later when I am more prepared. What I keep postponing is the damn WordPress upgrade, and every time a new one comes out, I know its simple enough and there are no problems but I just can’t seem to do it. And the other tweaks are simply cleaning a few things up.

• Upgrading WordPress
• The reason for upgrading is so that it fixes all the damn issues I have and so I can post videos and songs. I have a lot I want to post about but I don’t since it never shows up.
• Fixing up the Ride and Anime pages, I need to put up what is relevant there and tweak them a bit.
• There are a few things to tweak on the blog cosmetically but thats about it.

My first step of upgrading has been hell! I can’t seem to backup my content file since my FTP connection keeps timing out, I don’t know why! I think its because my wp-content folder is too damn big! I want to upgrade to resolve all the issues but I’m running into a lot of problems just trying to transfer the files they recommend from the wordpress site, I’m off to a tough start!

I’m might be asking for some help from some people!

Oddly enough this week I was searching for an anime torrent and within the search results were torrentz and torrentspy. I just opened the first few to see what were the seeders and leechers not paying attention to which torrent website I was looking at.

As I was looking through the tabs I noticed TorrentSpy and Torrentz which were blocked by Qnet only a month ago is now open. Both Torrentspy and Torrentz are available to be searched at this point which is surprising, it seems that this was a mistake rather then something on their part, I really doubt that someone removed these websites from a list. This turn of events has made me happy since now we can search for some good torrents if we need to at this point.

I have been using Qnet for years now, and I have 1.5+ MB connection based on a little tweaking. It is really fast and great with no issues what so ever, except the price and when it goes down. I rarely have to call the contact center for any issues.

Recently prices have dropped drastically and at Infoconnect I got a KEMS 1MB connection for 350KD for the year. Which is a steal compared to earlier prices in Kuwait.

The problem was getting everything to work, and I was having issues. The line was dropping, and it couldn’t sustain more then a 64 KBps connection instead of the paid for 1 Mbps connection. I was going back and forth as to where the issue was and they sent an engineer a few times to test. They also blamed MOC for the low quality connection. I was running around with the issue for a few months. Until a couple of weeks back one person from the KEMS techincal team decided to do something differently and it worked. Now the connection has been great, and they started the connection from the point when all the problems were resolved instead of counting those previous months of no service. As long as there are no problems KEMS is great, but if there are problems it takes a while to solve them.

Two Regular Issues that some people face with KEMS:

• Dropped connections
• Can’t sustain higher then a certain rate on a line

Now to combine the two connections with a small server and load balance them. I was happy I got this working, so whenever Qnet goes down I am not without internet, or the other way around. This will have to do until we get fiber to our homes and we can get up to 100 Mbps, I know I’m dreaming for now!

This is a real interesting article talking about when men talk to women and the different effects of contact. This study was based on a man asking a women to dance or for her phone number.

The study started with people involved in the psychology department. And what they were doing was lightly grazing their arm when asking the question.

One man approached 60 women to dance, and out of the 60 that he lightly touched 65% agreed to dance with him, and from 60 that he asked without making physical contact only 43% agreed to dance.

Another test was done with 3 men asking 240 women for their phone numbers, and the 240 that were lightly touched 19% gave their phone numbers to the gentlemen, but from the 240 that there was no contact only 10% gave their phone numbers.

I know these statistics are completely inapplicable in Kuwait but this type of statistic is really interesting how they come about it.

Link: MindHacks