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 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!!!!!

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

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.

Just finished reading The Secret a couple of weeks ago. For the very few of you who have not heard of this book before, it is a book that got published in 2006 after a DVD on the same topic was released. The Secret is a spiritual/self-help book on how to use the law of attraction to achieve everything you want in life. The book got super famous after appearing on Oprah.

Though the book is a massive international hit, many people criticise it, mufti’s in some Arab Muslim countries held that the teachings of the book are haram for some reason, which I thought is very weird, because the majority of the principles of The Secret are compatible with most religions, for example, praying to have what you desire, being grateful everyday for what you have, thinking positively, giving those who need some of what you have, and that each person is responsible for his own fate.

I thought that the Secret is a fun and energizing book to read, it is not meant to be taken as a scientific book of authority, but a little book to make you feel good about the future and that you can do anything you want in life if you put your mind to it.

Controversial blogger and wannabe political activist Ammar Al Maamari wrote a nice post yesterday on the various problems with Applied Science Colleges in Oman.

There are six Applied Science Colleges (ASCs) in Oman in various cities outside the capital, these colleges were previously Educational Colleges that trained school teachers until the country oversaturated with school teachers with no schools to teach in. These colleges now teach design, communications, information technology, and business administration.

Ammar suggests that these colleges face a number of old problems that existed for Educational Colleges and some new ones that appeared with the quick conversion of these colleges. Such problems include:

• The inadequacy of the teaching staff due to their poor rushed selection process that was pressured by the need to convert these colleges ASAP. The majority of teachers teach subjects that they do not specialize in. Some Omani staff also have no training whatsoever and do not serve any purpose.
• There is a shortage in English language teachers and the ones that currently teach have no experience in teaching. Students have difficulty in understanding them, especially if the teachers are Indian. The English teachers were brought through a training agency that apparently got individuals who have no qualifications or any history in teaching English.
• The English taught in the foundation year is general English and not one specific to any of the majors taught in later years. The majority of the subject teaching materials were brought from New Zealand are their level of English is way higher than that of the students.
• Due to the shortage of teaching staff, some colleges are unable to teach the courses which the students entered with the intention to study. To solve this problem colleges require the students to move to another college in another city to study the course they desire. For example, a student in Salalah would be told, after three years in the course, that he has to move to Ibri in order to acquire a degree in communications. Of course, students were not informed about this when they started college and the majority of them are unable to move to another city, so they end up changing their course into something that their current college offers even if they never intended to study that subject.

Ammar offers a number of suggestions for this problem, the first is to merge all these colleges into a single institution that is located in a single place. This way duplicate costs would be saved and only the best of the work force could be selected to run the university. An alternative solution suggested by Ammar is to abolish ALL these colleges and use the RO 15 million used to run them each year to teach the students at existing private universities in the Sultanate instead. Ammar is aware that this is an exterme measure that could affect the job opportunities taken by the locals and would also require the expansion of private universities to be able to accept the thousands of students currently taught in ASCs.

I personally never really had any idea about what happens in these colleges. If you can read Arabic make sure you read the full post by Ammar here.

The theme of blogging in Oman this Ramadan is clearly OmanTV – there is even a blogging campaign initiated by marketing blogger Bader Al Hinai on this subject.

For those unaware of the Arabic TV culture, the month of Ramadan has always been the official TV season of the year, all new series and tv shows are released during this month. Channels compete on exclusives and there are literally hundreds of new shows to watch during Ramadan. Unlike the Arab film industry that is dominated by Egyptian movies, the TV industry is not dominated by any single state, there are loads of high quality popular Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Khaleeji (Gulfy) tv shows. In the Gulf, there are some specific Kuwait and Saudi shows, but there are also general Khaleeji shows to which the general Gulf identity is attached and which actors from various Gulf states star.

Oman TV and Omani TV shows are a completely different story. Though there is an serious development in the production quality of the Arab television industry, Oman TV remains almost identical to the way it has been since the 80s. There is a general consensus in Oman that Oman TV sucks and that nobody watches it. Oman TV shows are known for horrible acting, stupid scenario, and low production value. Similar to Saudi and unlike other Gulf states, the Omani population has a wide variety of accents and it almost impossible to see a single a Omani TV series in which members of a single family have a single accent. Actors playing roles of elderly individual use Santa clause like white beards for which the stitching attachments are apparent. Scenes of rich characters driving fancy cars would show that the cars have a “rented” car number plate. And lets not even start with the state of the actual horrible acting and the poor scripts.

The disappointment of the Omani audience is more apparent this year on blogs and discussion boards. The public seems to be mostly irritated by two shows which are aired on the local Ramadan “Prime Time” which right after Maghrib and the Ishaa prayers (Most people stay at home during this to break their fast). The first show is Oman’s first 3D animated series, titled “ُEid and Saeed” which was described by an Arabic forum commentator as a show that “explores the struggle of the Omani citizen with household electronics”. The show is basically a silent animated cartoon that is supposed to be “funny” but turned out to be dumb and pointless. While Omanis are used to watch a comic or variety show at this time, the show seems to most to be one aimed as kids, yet as blogger Muscati tweeted earlier this week, even his young kid asked him to change the channel. Commentators on Arabic forum Omania2 find the show offensive as depicts Omani people to be illiterate and stupid. The very few supporters of the show argue that it is not meant to be seriously. The public are not convinced by this and say that such a show should not be aired in prime time on the country’s national television – which is thought by mainly as the channel through which the rest of the Arab world looks at Oman. You can watch an segment of the show on YouTube here.

The other infamous Omani Ramadan show is Darayish. This is the third season of the show which was thought by people on its first as a “revolutionary” series in the Omani media as it seems to be a very brave one for discussion a lot of public issues relating to the government. The show tells a different story each day discussing a social issue in a comic manner. However, many commentators on Arabic forums are starting to call the show a government propaganda platform in which the Omani citizen is shown as the cause of all troubles in society and that the government is doing everything it can to help this citizen. For example, on an episode on health services, the moral of the story was that we have an excellent health care service, but citizens have a misconception that anything done abroad is better and that hospitals abroad will rip them off without providing them with a cure. Bloggers and forum commentators also claim that the show displays Omani people as dishonest, noisy, and annoying people.

It is worth noting that OmanTV is operated by the Ministry of Information and both of these shows are produced by OmanTV.

An old Omani actor called Jumaa Haikal had an interview with Omani newspaper Al Zaman in which he argued that the reason why Oman TV is such a failure is due to the fact that wasta and family connections play a role in selecting the character playing roles. Jumaa Haikal started his own independent production company which intended to use foreign talents to produce Omani TV shows, but according to his interview, his production company and his efforts were crippled by Oman TV and the Ministry of Information. According to conspiracist Ammar Al Maamari the Minister of Information ordered an investigation of what is happening in OmanTV after the publication of that interview.

We discussed the issue on this Twitter and I think that we came to a different conclusion than the majority of the Arabic community. The majority of the Omani population still seem to be waiting for the government to do everything for them. Why do people expect OmanTV to make them the TV shows that they want? At this age and time, anybody with a camere and a computer can make a tv show. You do not need a multi-million budget to make something enjoyable. You can go to YouTube and watch thousands of indie production that are funny, touching, and informative. How come we don’t even have a single Omani YouTube personality? In many aspects, the Omani society is very uncreative and disrespectful of the majority of art forms as they seem to them as either haram, gay, or pro-Jews or Americans (you pick). I personally think that it is an educational problem, schools and universities in Oman do not promote independent thinking or thinking outside the box. Lets not even forget the culture of the “evil eye” and envy, where even if someone made something nice, he would not share it with other people. I’ve heard a story about a famous photographer who locks up his photographers in a cupboard and refuses to post copies of them online.

OmanTV sucks, but I don’t think that Omanis need it in order to start making their own content.

The Arabic Omani blogosphere has gone mad in the last two weeks over a post written by Muawiyah Al Rawahi that suggested that the government should loosen its alcohol regulations to allow local Omanis to also have an alcohol purchase permit, just like expats. For those who don’t know, except for the month of Ramadan, alcohol can be served at licensed restaurants and hotels in Oman legally for all Omani and expat customers. However, licensed liquor stores in Oman can only sell alcohol to “permit” holders. Muawiyah suggested in his blog post that the fact that locals are not allowed to have an alcohol purchase permit pushes them to seek the alcohol black market which is obviously not regulated and can have health and safety issues in addition to the monopolistic activities practiced in such markets.

The Arabic community was outraged by Muawiyah’s public discussion of a social and religious taboo: drinking alcohol. Though previously celebrated in forums and other blogs for his commentary and criticism of public figures and government practices, Muawiyah has been criticised and personally insulted on a number of online discussion boards for his “unislamic and immoral opinions”.  ِA single thread dedicated to criticise and attack Muawiyah on Omania2.net had more than 12 pages of comments AFTER deleting all the ones which were regarded by the staff members as ones that violate the rules of the forum. A Omani member of over a 1000 posts who claims to be currently in Australia asked the administration to ban Muawiyah completely from the forum because of his suggestions to disobey religion.

The outrage in the Arabic community is bizarre to some extent, mainly because the sale of alcohol is legal in Oman. Yet it remains socially unacceptable for most people, and it is of course prohibited by religion. The majority of commentators in Arabic forums cannot seem digest the idea that alcohol has always been legal in Oman. This reminds me of how I always tried to explain to my classmates earlier this year about different social norms in Oman, and how things could be legal, yet socially and religiously unacceptable (e.g. drinking alcohol), or legal and religiously permitted, yet socially no longer acceptable (e.g. having four wives).

It is interesting to see how ‘freedom of expression’ became a really popular proposition in the online Omani community with all the expose´campaigns and criticism of the government earlier this year, yet the community is not willing to allow a blogger to have an “opinion” on a legal topic that is not socially acceptable. However, just the same way the authority can no longer control what people want to say, the people themselves will not be able to control what anybody wants to say either.

The feature that changed the way I use the computer the most is Spaces. This feature lets you have a number of virtual desktops to which you can launch specific applications that do not appear on the other ones. I work with two screens all the time, so this makes a huge difference for me as I usually have different applications launch in specific screens, and this lets me switch both windows instantly instead of attempting to minimize and maximize a number of applications on Windows OS.

My second most used feature is Active Screen Corners. This feature lets you assign an action to be executed when you move the mouse cursor to a screen corner. I use this in conjunction with Spaces and Expose. This makes it possible for me to switch spaces and applications using a quick mouse gesture instead of using the keyboard or clicking on the spaces icon. I have another corner assigned for Expose and another one to show the desktop.

I also like customizing the dock. I only have the applications which I regularly actually use their permanently. These are Firefox, TweetDeck, and iTunes. I have the essential CS4 Applications in a grid folder, my work applications in another grid folder, and then I just have all the installed applications in their original folder.

Another feature I like the screen capture tool which I have configured to work with an extra button on my mouse. Using it I simply click my scroll wheel to the left and then select the outline of the area I wish to capture. Really helpful when writing web tutorials!

Anyway, in addition to all these things I like I also have a number of issues with the Mac OS X. The first problem I have is when Expose does not work. For those who do not know what this feature is, it is a quick method to switch between programs in a single space which spreads out all the applications in a zoom-out grid like form. However, some applications have a lot of floating panels, example all Adobe CS4 applications. Using expose here makes each panel appear as a separate window screen making it impossible to know what is happening on the screen. The screen below is supposed to have 2 applications and 1 window opened.

The Mac OS X separates the upper file menu from the actual application window. For most users who use a single screen, they will not think that this is significantly different from Windows, however, because I use two screens, this difference becomes a huge issue, because the file menu only appears on the primary screen, any applications opened on the secondary screen will have their file menu on the other screen which is plain weird and confusing.

I am also irritated by the crazy number of shortcuts built-in the system. Almost all the F buttons already do a system-wide function that override any function to these buttons in other applications. I had to disable them one by one in order to be able to do any work. Some other crazy ones like renaming any file you select by pressing Enter cannot be removed or edited. I also still cannot get over the fact that you cannot maximize folders and apple applications such as iTunes. Not sure if I ever will.