1,001 Arabian Blogs

This is my 1,001st blog post, I thought I’d do a quick retrospective. I’m not sure why I started blogging, I remember back in 1998 a friend told me that they had set up a blog for themselves and I thought to myself “what the hell was the point in that”, they were posting a diary online, probably on live journal or something like that.

A few years later I bought ohmz.co.uk among others (I’ve also been the proud owner of watermelons.co.uk…), but I never used that because I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do, so that domain expired. At some point I bought ohmz.net, and I installed php-blog, a really simple bit of software that allowed me to post crap to my webspace. Back then I was working as a stage technician and I had dreams of being a music blogger. I blogged about my experience backstage with whatever bands I was working with, usually at King Tuts Wah Wah Hut, it was really poorly written and really boring I think 3 people read it in total. I stopped blogging there after a while and forgot about it, until I got an email from my web host saying that my blog had been closed down because it had been identified as a spam center. Apparently there was a flaw in the blogging software I used that allowed people, or bots, to email people from my blog and they were spamming the bejesus out of the internet.

I un-installed the blog software I was using and installed Drupal, played around with it for a while, didn’t like it and settled on WordPress.

My blog lay dormant for some time, I’d post the odd bit of crap every now and then, but I wasn’t really that interested. I had a minor spike when I posted a picture of my birthday cake a few years ago:

But then my blog went dormant again for almost a year…

Recently I started using my blog as place to post random cool stuff I found on the internet, art, gadgets whatever, I wasn’t expecting anyone to read it, it was just so I could remember that the stuff existed. One particular post involved an image of someone with make-up that made them look like a drawing by Roy Lichtenstien:

It didn’t get much attention at the time but a year later I saw a huge spike in my visits:


I had a whopping 40 views in one day to that post, so I wrote a follow up post with some more examples, those two posts remain some of my most popular posts… I was getting up to 100 views a day due to having posted some pop art make-up, and I was happy…

Then something strange happened… I’m not entirely sure what the catalyst was but in the past two months my views have sky rocketed:

I went from a little over 300 views in Oct 2010 to over 33,000 in February of 2012, and there is still time left today for me to get more. I appreciate that the spike in October was due to people looking for ideas for Halloween costumes, I’d expected a spike there, but then the hits continued to ramp up, I got a big boost by posting some geeky Valentines day cards but people are actually looking at the home page rather than just hitting individual blog posts. I think I may be experiencing my 5 minutes of fame…

I actually find it reall amusing that having published my 1,000th blog post yesterday and my views yesterday were 1,337, a number which I think is dear to geeks around the world:

So what have I been blogging about aside from posting random links to stuff I’ve found online? My amatuer photography, my rubbish writing and various story ideas including my NaNoWriMo efforts (Check “writing” link at the top of this page if you want to have a look), Some tribal art I put together a while ago:

A tribal dragonfly

I’ve taken a stab at writing my own web comic creatively titled Blip and Blop:

I’ve also written various film reviews and rants. I think in the future I’m going to try and post more original content to balance out the stuff I’ve posted that just links to other peoples work. I’m not going to stop posting links to other stuff I’ve found, just supplement it with origianal content that you can only find here, that is until someone else reblogs it elsewhere (I’m under no illusion that will ever happen…).

Anyway I just wanted to say thanks for reading my blog, I hope you continue to enjoy it.

Omar

P.S. In case you were wondering about the title, I am aware that none of my blog posts have been in Arabic but I am an Arab (or at least half Arab) and I felt the title worked so I went with it.

P.P.S. If there is anything that I’ve blogged about in the past that you have found particularly interesting or you just want to comment on the style of the blog/give constructive advice or abuse feel free to mention it in the comments. I may get a lot of views but not many people comment on my blog, and it’s cold and lonely in cyberspace…

 

Android Phone Review Template…

I loved this template for an Android phone review that Stephen M. Hackett of 512 Pixels put together, unfortunately it is so true.

I am a big fan of Android but apart from there being more space on the device I don’t see any reason to upgrade my Android phone, the features are creeping in but too slowly for my liking.

  • The screen is better, brighter and bigger than on previous devices.
  • It’s thin, but not iPhone-thin.
  • The OEM’s Android skin isn’t awesome, but in some places, it could be.
  • The new launcher comes with lots of widgets that do things.
  • 4G is cool, unless you like battery life. But damn, those 28 seconds of browsing are fast!
  • The camera software still sucks.
  • Also, FRONT-FACING CAMERA! Note: This can be swapped for “3-D!!!!” if the review requires it.
  • While Android is open, there’s lots of crapware on this phone.Hello, VZContact Manager FREE!
  • This may be the best Android phone yet, but if not, just wait a week or two.
  • The current version of Android lacks some polish, but the next version of Android will be the one to have, we promise. It’s going to rival iOS. Granted, this phone probably won’t ever get to run it.

I’m looking to upgrade soon and to be honest I’m kind of stumped as all the high end Android phones on the Market seem to be exactly the same phone with a slightly different shell…

So much so that I’m debating going on an 18 month fruity holiday to see what it’s like on the other side of the fence and to allow the platform to differentiate it’s self a little…

I think that choice hinges on what Apple announce on the 4th and on what the new Nexus Prime handset has to offer, although I doubt there will much difference between the Nexus Prime and the current Galaxy S II, I do like the idea of having a phone whose name is part Blade Runner and part Transformers.