This has been a very interesting year with a lot of changes, ups and downs like anyone else. You always have good and bad experiences and the best thing is to enjoy your good times and learn from the bad.

For the past month I have been slightly disconnected from my online activity due to real life taking over completely. Too much family and work activities that kept me busy to the point that any other free time I had I would just try and get some sleep. Only recently I have managed to catch up with some of the TV shows I have had piled up.

With all these good, great, and bad experiences that you go through in life your perspective changes on things and you tend to hopefully develop from that. Looking forward to this coming year and hopefully getting my blog revamped at last, its been too long, about 4 years going on 5 since the last revamp.

Enjoy your 2014 people.

December is now upon us and the last couple of weeks has been filled with weddings and milchas one after another, this is the wedding season after eid, back to back milchas. Almost one every night for the past three weeks. Work is has gotten crazy as well other then work at my desk there is insanity for flying for short meetings and back again. The end of the year you want to get in as much new business as possible for work and then you have your year end which is a ton of paper work and very time consuming.

Then there is my personal time where my TV Shows have been on the back burner even though I really want to watch them. And there are a lot of shows that are passing me by. My online time has gone down the way side as well there are so many posts that I need to catch up on but I seriously don’t have the time for it even though it is all in my head.

I would like to take two weeks off, one week to catch up on errands and another week to do nothing but catch up on TV and enjoy some outdoor activities. Time off to do nothing would be fantastic, but that rarely happen.

The above picture is of a fantastic Man Cave – Garage & Living Room Combined!

There are a lot of bloggers still out there, and I think at this stage most everyone is using WordPress with one host or another. Over the years I have always been recommending the use of Dreamhost since their service is above and beyond better then any I have used.

Now they have come up with Dreampress, its the perfect WordPress package, hosting and wordpress with support features. Like in my case I have issues with my Database so when people comment it always hangs, it needs to be cleaned up and optimized, I don’t know what the hell to do with it to fix it, professional support for WordPress is hard to come by and I have tried most of these online websites and almost all of them have failed to get back to me.

Now I’m hoping Dreamhost can shift my website from the Virtual Private Server (VPS) to the Dreampress services. First thing I’m going to ask them is solve my DB issue and update my themes. Thats one of the reasons why I haven’t changed my theme in so long, the damn thing got really slow and heavy, so it needs to be overhauled. After the back end clean up then the facelift will come at a later stage, crossing my fingers for Dreampress but check it out at the link below.

Link: Dreamhost – DreamPress

The signs are always there with Google, whenever the links to a product slowly start dropping from the main page you know that they aren’t a fan of it or giving it that much importance. Google Wave went because it didn’t work as a product, Google Buzz ruffled too many feathers even though I liked it, and then Google Reader was suddenly coming to an end. July 1st is the cut off date for Google Reader, I know these days a lot of people aren’t reading blogs as much but we still visit a lot of websites and my online dependency was on Google Reader to keep things organized. The announcement honestly shocked me so looking for an alternative was a scary idea, I got so comfortable with Google Reader I didn’t know if I would find an alternative. After doing a little research I went with Feedly and I’m very happy I did.

I tried Feedly a few years back and Google Reader at the time was more comprehensive and useful as an RSS Reader, but within those years they stopped the development of Google Reader, and Feedly is miles ahead. The integration is seamless, a very smooth and clean interface and I honestly like looking at it. It works on both Android & iOS, and its web based which is very simple, and moving onto there is extremely simple, just sign in.

What I Love About:

• Its Fast, really loads fast
• Multiple Layout Options, so you can see it anyway you want
• You can mark things read in different ways which works great
• Integrated with Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and most major social networking sites
• Works on desktop, iOS, & Android

Link: Feedly

I know that Google tends to shut down services that aren’t used by people much, but Google Reader! Seriously, I live off of that, and so many apps depend on that, we have until July 1st to use Google Take Out and import our RSS Feeds to other RSS Readers. But at least there are options, cloud based would help if you tend to use your RSS Reader from multiple locations like myself, and Desktop based if only from one or two machines, but then comes the problem of syncing for Desktop Feeders, they are still all linked to Google Reader, so how will they sync between each other. I know the desktop based solutions below sync with Google Reader, I’m not sure how they will sync across from each other.

Your options:

• CLOUD BASED
• Feedly
• NetVibes
• NewsBlur

• DESKTOP BASED
• Android – GReader – The Best For Android
• Mac – Reeder – Very Clean
• Winwdows 8 & Windows 8 Phone – NextGen Reader – The Best for that Platform

No matter what other options there are I can’t believe they are doing this, it’s such a good and simple product, to me I depend on it to get through all my feeds and keep tabs on all the websites I follow and there are a lot and to sync between all my feeds is going to be very annoying.

I remember when they cancelled Google Buzz, fine I can understand that, and that collaboration tool that people didn’t know how to use. But Google Reader! Come on Google, just give us this one and let us keep it. Any thoughts people on this? How dependent are you on Google Reader, I know a lot of people don’t read blogs or certain websites as much as they used to but I didn’t think they stopped using Google Reader! Opinions people!

I have been very lazy over the past year and not really maintaining the back end of the website, it’s one of those tasks that just sat on the To Do list looking at me every day, and I just got used to it being there. On Thursday morning my blog crashed the shared server it was on because of some of the processes running in the background going crazy, so it was acting wonky and needed some tooling. I switched to Virtual Private Hosting over the weekend through Dreamhost and got it back up, but its still hoping along and not 100% healthy. I need to get rid of some of the heavy parts that is bogging the blog down and speed it up a bit, so bear with me while I try a few things and hope to god that I don’t screw anything up, thanks people for your patience.

Everyone thinks of the things that they did the year before whenever they come to the new one. In my case I’m thankful for all the good things that happened in 2012 and learned from the bad. I managed to accomplish a lot of my goals and enjoy a lot of adventures, but there are a few things that I missed which is sticking to the gym and losing weight, that always seems to evade me, my craving for food is just too much.

2012 is the year of the Android, so many devices and so many advances and I’m happy I got my hands on them. Of course everyone went nuts over any new Mac Product like clock work, but there were a few improvements which I will admit to like the iPod Touch and a few other devices. I managed to ride in a few different locations this time around and I hope to ride in more locations soon, that is the plan for 2013 with regards to riding. I always have a lot of plans in my head I just have to action them, but happily I have made a lot of progress with a lot of projects, it was a very busy year but luckily nothing fell through the cracks. I need to be a bit more active, but that viral & bacterial infection that I caught at the beginning of December really knocked me out.

New Years was simple for me, just two other guys and I manned the BBQ & a few shows, keeping it simple was the goal this time around. What were your plans?

Ok someone called me and told me to check this blog and I thought it was hilarious. A man or woman is criticizing blogs, and in this case I think its a man, and I was one of the targets and honestly I found the post to be hilarious. It’s been a while since we have had a blog that roughs up the water and takes shot at people, some are ligitimate and some are not. In my case I’m getting called out for my reviews: “zdistrict’s Reviews Mean Nothing”

Honestly I just love movies so much and I’m easily entertained, I take movies for what they are entertainment, some suck and some are fun, and the ones that really suck I don’t even bother writing a review about them. But he does have a valid point, some times I need to write about these crappy movies too but then again I just don’t bother with them. Still a funny post by KuwaitBlogsSuck!

You can check out this blog here: KuwaitBlogsSuck

Hahaha Mark got called out too, but his were on his pictures. Seriously this blog might be offensive to some people but some parts are pretty funny even if the facts aren’t completely true. This is going to be interesting, you have to love a bit of contreversy.

Thanks to @ZainKuwait for setting up a very fun event, I haven’t been to much of any events because of timing and work, but because a lot of people I knew were going and people called up (Dude from 7ajiDude) I decided that I would pass by for a bit before having to take off. They really tied everyone together on this one, and they held it at a very nice venue, @ Al Hamra on the 55th floor, The Sky Lobby, so you get to meet friends and new people with a beautiful view. Every body from every type of social media was there from Bloggers, Tweeters, YouTubers, and Instagrammers, pretty much anyone and everyone that had to do with Social Media.

The amount of people I saw and wanted to catch up with was insane, I met up with the Android crew and we held up the back corner by Pick Yo while the events started. Literally I think everyone was there, I kept flying between people saying hello and catching up. There was a lot of Apple and Android banter going on but it was relatively friendly, lol. They were giving away prizes to people who were answering questions right and one of them ones who did was Jacqui, she original gadget queen.

The best part for me was catching up with a lot of people I have seen in a while all in one time, but it was a bit too short a time to catch up with everyone. The event setting was great, and I loved the seating, they really did a great job of setting the whole thing up. The catering was nothing short of fantastic, all by local businesses and very well done, there were literally many to list a few: Gelato Italiano, Rice Pudding Factory, Neqsa, Kiwi Bakery, Pick-Yo Frozen Yoghurt, The Pantry, Gathering, Al Foz Kitchen, Chocolateness, and Vinox Chocolatier. Those are just the few that I could remember and I was only there for an hour.

(Pictures Were Supplied By The Great Qortuba)

Since jumping on to Twitter I started using the URL Shortening Services of BITLY just because it gives you some stats and easily integrates into twitter. That was pretty simple and straight forward, as of a few weeks ago they went ahead and refreshed their whole site with the same functionality but displayed in a better way. Now you can really track what is going on with your links and when they are getting clicking with the information being provided to you graphically as well as numerically.

The picture above displays the number of times your links were linked and the stats for the past 7 days. And you can keep going back for all the links you have used before, that is pretty useful to know what is going on with the links. Then below is something totally different then what I’m used to, the total number of clicks on links for the past month, which ones were direct links, and which ones were referrals. Then you have clicker based on location which is pretty cool. Overall I always liked Bitly because it was useful and now I love it even more for presenting this treasure of information in such a simple way.

Link: Bitly