Caching...

Is it just me, or are the blogger feeds slow in updating new posts? Also, comments and new posts take atleast an hour to show up on the blog, despite frequent refreshing.

Change of Address...

Hi all,

Just wanted you all to know that I've changed my blog address from http://drnsain.blogspot.com to http://drnsains.blogspot.com.

You can check it out by clicking here or above.

PS: Wonder if this could also be updated in the blogroll?

Farewell to Sleepless in Muscat

Some very sad news: one of Oman's best known bloggers, Sleepless in Muscat, has died at the age of 29. You can read more at Oman Community blog.

He was a long-standing and respected member of UAE Community blog, and one of the earliest pioneers of blogging in Oman.

His very last entry, which you can read here, is a beautiful and sad poem. In tribute to him, here is the last verse:

I grow old as nature would pass me by
Is this the way that I shall always live my life?
The red rose in my hand
Petals flow in the air
Has passion died?
Is there no more flair?

We hope that he rests in peace and wish every sympathy to his family.

Blogger problem, or is it just me?

I write a new item, publish it to my blog but after several hours it's still not there.

Click on 'Search Blog' and it's there. Go to 'Edit Posts' and it shows up there too.

The only place it doesn't appear is on my blog.

Any ideas?


LATER EDIT: Exactly the same is happening with this posting.

I am a spammer...

according to Blogger, which has flagged Bss & Brn in Al Ain as a spam blog. Has anyone else ever had this happen to them?

So now I have to wait two days for some human at blogger to look at my blog and decide that it is OK. This page claims to explain what exactly triggers their spam filter:

"[S]pam blogs... can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site."

OK, I don't think that we have that large a number of links (certainly a lot fewer than this one does), much less ones pointing to a single site, so I guess that our writing has now officially been judged as "irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical" by a computer program.

The Top 5 UAE Bloggers - Emirates Evening Post

1 - Secret Dubai
2 - Dubai Daily Photo
3 - Dubai Consumer Mirror
4 - Grapeshisha
5 - UAE Community

Some notable omissions there perhaps... quite shocked frankly at being included...!

What's your top 5 UAE blogs?

The Big Switch

We're switching over. It seems to have already happened, though I haven't had the confirmation email yet. I just put our first tags in ;)

We might look at a volunteer plan to devise some useful tags - such as "media" "blogging" "banking" "construction" and have a team of people go through the archives to tag everything. With nearly 2,000 posts I'm not sure it's a job for just one person.

Do people here generally think tags would be useful?