Month: April 2007

OK, the site is up, at long last. I waited a couple of days for my account to OK’d, I had expected it to be up in a day. I went to the internet cafe today to check and viola! My account was up! Of course I couldn’t log in or anything… I later found out that there was a DOS attack, but they managed to get it under control in a few hours. My only obstacle after that was the upload speed at the cafe. It varied dramatically from about 5.5 KB per sec to 2 BYTES per second… I would get status bars telling me I had 4 minutes left, 10 seconds later I had 2900 minutes left… The videos might have to wait until I can figure out a faster way of uploading. In any case, I now have my own place on the web! If any of you need an email address, just let me know, I can set you up with no problem.

Isaac

Still waiting to hear back from dreamhost on the validation of my account. To their credit, they have responded to my questions very quickly and say that I will be up and running “later on this afternoon.” Of course since I’m 8 hours ahead, I’ll have to do it tomorrow. Of course you’ll be reading this the day after I get it all done:-)

One other note, the cobblestones in Sana’a are certainly not chosen for wet traction. It has been drizzling all day and the streets are really slick. The motorcycle taxis are still zooming up and down the streets. I wonder how many accidents are going to happen due to the combo of slick pavement and questionable brakes (most cars and motorcycles here look like they are barely running and need significant repair). I try to stay off the roads on days like today:-)

Isaac

Soon I will have my new domain set up. Along with a new place for my website and a new email system, I’ll have a place for a new blog! Why? Well, there are some real advantages, not least of which is that I will have all of my posts at my fingertips. I don’t know how likely it is that my (former) blogging site will go under, but who knows what can happen. I’ll also now have an RSS feed and be linked in with some services that keep track of blogs. It’s also going to be easier to write and take care of things at home. Yes, I know I can write blogs in a WP, but it never worked real well for me. With this, I’m actually typing in the program itself and just have to update my webpage to post. Last, but not least, I do think this looks better, even with the customization tools available at Livejournal…

All of my old posts will be availible, I’ve relabeled the old link just in case any of you (or me) might want to go back and quote something I wrote to use against me:-) With any luck, I’ll have everything up and running in the next few days. That includes a new email address and website address. My RSS feed should be up too. I’m pretty excited, the new host (dreamhost) is a MUCH better deal than .Mac, it’s about half the price (after a coupon and a 2 year commitment), offers 15 times the storage space and absolutely sick bandwidth. What really got me with .mac was how buggy and slow the email was and the total lack of customer support. I wanted to complain about something so I went to their support page. I tried to log in but got the message that that support account had been suspended due to “security concerns.” That’s it, no info on how to get in touch with someone, no chance to confirm my identity, nothing. So goodbye .Mac, it’s the only Apple product I’ve bought that I was dissapointed in….

I’m hoping that the blog gets to more people now too. There are some background things going on that will make this blog more visable and individual posts come up through the search engines. One of my current housemates read my blog before coming out and I’ve had a couple of people email me about Yemen and studying Arabic. With any luck, this move will improve people’s chances of getting in touch with me to discuss things…

Wish me luck getting everything set up, if you’re reading this it means that I succeeded!

Isaac