TIME magazine’s newest issue cover.

Their annual Person Of The Year is always highly anticipated and always causes controversy. Past winners have included the likes of Ghandi, JFK, Hitler, Arafat, Clinton, among many others (the full list is in the link) ..
This year, TIME has picked us as the person of the year. By us I mean myself by writing on this blog, and by you checking this blog, and by everyone else who has participated in changing the face of technology by ….

“bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution.”

I think this is a perfect choice for this year. Blogs, YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Facebook, and so on, are just a few examples of the weapons used in this revolution by each of us. And they really have revolutionized the way we live.
This has been proven beyond doubt here in Kuwait especially during this past year. From the passing of the late Emir Shaikh Jaber to the issue of succession of power to the hugely popular issue of the voting districts, all these important events have been monitored very closely and followed and even sometimes initiated by us the Web 2.0 generation!

The effect of internet was so powerful that websites run by young Kuwaitis were able to change the future by getting the people involved and the members of parliament behind them in the Nabeeha 5 campaign. Also, during the days after the late Emir’s passing, the only source of updated, accurate, and unedited information (January) was the internet from Sa7at AlSafat’s website, which was also as influential in the nabeeha 5 campaign, along with many many websites which I cannot name otherwise I will spend another hour writing them all, but you know who you are!

The effect of the internet on how we live and think is something that always interested me, and this year has been exceptional in the effect it has had. You only need to take a quick look at the blogs or YouTube to see how much of an effect these individual contributions have had on our lives.

So, congratulations everyone on your win, and congratulations to TIME for picking a brave choice!

As I mentioned more than once before, I am addicted to YouTube, and this has not changed yet! You get alot of weird videos on YouTube and many of the really funny or good ones are actually posts of things made by other people, such as clips from shows or so on. Very rarely do you watch something and become amazed with the creativity and talent of the person who created the video.

Lasse Gjertsen is the name of the guy behind two of my favorite clips on YouTube. The first one I saw a while back and was really impressed with the idea and most of all with the quality he was able to do the video at.

The latest video he created is just incredible! He posted it on November 7th, and has already been watched more than 1,000,000 times in less than 2 weeks!! I highly recommend you watch it … my favorite so far! He takes the style of the first video to the next level and breaks new boundaries which noone even got close to reaching on YouTube (in terms of non professionals).

If YouTube is blocked at work, try this link instead.

Thank god for YouTube and technology! Otherwise, this guy would be an unknown talented artist!

Speaking of brb and tyt, I think everyone remembers the good old days of mIRC (is it still being used in Kuwait?).

Here is my question -

What was your nick on mIRC?

We’ll probably be surprised, and some of us probably have seen or spoken to each other in our previous internet life!

My nick was - `3afreet (believe it or not I cant remember if it was 3afreet or 3efreet! Im sure someone will remind me)
lol, Im smiling just looking at the name!

Many of you who visit my blog have read about the show U-turn and know that I enjoyed it. The show definitely didnt get the attention of recognition it deserved during Ramadan three years ago on KTV.
The show was directed by Nawaf AlShammari and included many people including Nazar AlQandi and his group.
I will start uploading some clips every now and then, and I just uploaded my favorite clip from the show -

Salah El-Dine

The work done on this clip is more detailed and better than almost everything else Ive seen on KTV in the past 5 years! Plus its incredibly hilarious!

I already said before that I am addicted to YouTube, which is still true, but have always wanted to post some sort of video of my own. The four videos I had posted before have been funny things that I have recieved on my phone, nothing original.

So, since I was sick and spent 2 full days in bed, I had to do something, so decided to create some sort of video to post.

I spent exactly 40 mins on this, so don’t expect ANY kind of quality, its just a test to see how things work.

I used two extremely simple programs - Windows Movie Maker & Paint , yes….absolutely nothing fancy, its extremely childish.

Tell me what you think - Firqat bin figure stick video

In the past two days, I read a couple of articles that are related in some way and made me think about us humans.

First, an article about a new study that says men over 40 are much more likely to have autistic children, in fact, the chances are six times those of fathers below 30!

The second article is about the British Fertility Society recommending that women put their fresh young eggs on ice at 30 to improve their chances of conceiving at 40-plus, another reason why conceiving earlier is better.

So both are saying that people should have children earlier….and that at 40 your body is telling you that its a bit too late.

My question is….how long will that last?? I mean evolution is part of nature, and the definition of evolution according to the Encyclopedia Britannica is -

“..theory in biology postulating that the various types of plants, animals, and other living things on Earth have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations.”

Modifications in successive generations is what I’m interested in. Humans now are very different than humans 400, or even 100 years ago! Unlike our predecessors, we do not live according to what nature has provided us, for example, in the past, the day started with the break of dawn and ended at sunset. Now we have electricity and therefore have enough light to stay up during the night, to the point that many of us have became nocturnal beings, living in the night! This has to be a radical change in our biological systems, but will this change us eventually?? Will our grand-grand-grand-children evolve to have better night vision for example??

Another example of how we abandoned nature is the relation between women’s menstural period and the moon. I read this somewhere before but don’t remember where, that women’s periods are affected by the cycle of the moon, and that back in the day, it was a practical thing because when the moon was at its fullest, the men used to go hunting or whatever and leave their women behind, and it was during that specific time that women went through their period. Its pretty interesting, but irrelevent now! That has to be some sort of evolution process.

Now we come to the two articles above. Nowadays, it is common for people to marry in their late twenties and mid-thirties, and consequently, have children at around that age. Compare this to how things were back in the day, not so far back, even to the time of our grandparents, when they used to get married early in their teens, and have children at around 16 or 17 if not younger. Biologically, this is probably how it should happen, since both bodies are able, but socially, it is unacceptable in our age! We are having children at an older age than before because of work and career and so on (I am talking worldwide, not just us), so will our bodies adapt to this as time moves on??

Very philosophical topic today, but I think its interesting

Also, how would you like to evolve?

I was using the internet at around 6 PM, and at around 6:30 PM it went down….its nearly 12AM now and still no internet!! I use Qualitynet, so not sure if its the same with FastTelco and others or not!

Anybody know what’s the cause of this?? Is it related to the whole delay thing last month when some wire connecting us to UAE was broken or something??

This post is brought to you by GPRS using my phone, and its not as bad as I thought it would be! Its my first time using this whole technology, but its cool!

How come GPRS works fine but not my Qnet connection? Is it a different technology? Enlighten us oh great techies!

Going along with my previous post, I decided to send some of the funny clips I got on my phone to my YouTube thing! I actually totally forgot that I have an account, which I created last year to upload the wataniya ad rip off video for that post.

Anyway, check out my YouTube page finally!

Also, the only reason I used the words bluetooth and بلوتوث is because im sure alot of ppl will stumble here from searching for بلوتوث on google or something

This is my new obsession….

Link!

I can literally spend hours on this damn thing!! I love the simple creativity by normal people, nothing fancy, no special effects, only an idea and a some basic work and you’re on for millions of people to watch, rate, and comment on your work!

It made me wish I knew how to do some basic editting and wish I had the creativity these people have!

I’d love to see some more stuff done by Kuwaitis, I know alot of people who got the skill for this stuff…. especially someone like Nazar AlQandy (last part of that post) and his crew, who have always been very creative and somewhat couragous, would love to see short clips of their work here like the stuff they used to have on the show U-turn, or anything really!

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My favourites from browsing yesterday -

Very creative dance group