Faisal's Tobril

It’s been a year and two months since I’ve published a post here. A lot has changed: I’ve gotten engagaged, I now work half the year in Baghdad and I’m moving to Amman. I’ve also discovered that, as many bloggers and writers over the years have discovered, that I’m currently going through a dry spell. [...]

Is it my fault that the only reason I sit at ahwas downtown is because they’re readily accessible to me and my friends and not because of any cultural reason or excuse? Is it my fault that I don’t want to attend all these “really cool” foreign movies that are shown around different Cairene venues [...]

So the people over at WordPress have two new releases: WordPress MU is an official branch of WordPress that is designed for managing and hosting thousands of blogs instead of just one. And bbPress is forum software with the WordPress touch, and developed by the same folks. It has some pretty cool features, such as [...]

I was tagged by Isabelle of istas to list my 15 favourite things, or so I understood. I don’t usually do tags… but what the hell. And thus… here they are: Kissing. My girl-friend (She might be reading this!) A good Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novel (AKA The Dune Series). History books… and books about the Military. (So [...]

I had hoped that all my previous posts were enough for those that do not know me to realize that I am quite secular in my social and political views. Having said that, let me make it clear that having a secular view point does not mean you don’t care about religion or, at least, [...]

Hussam El-Hamalawy, a friend and a “The Arabist” Contributor, has this link to a video on “street activism“. I hadn’t seen it before and found it quite interesting. What interested me most was the bit near the end. The group of young people that the Journalist/Reporter talked to were, as far as I could tell, [...]

Two new addresses to type into your address bar: The Egyptian, a new Weblog which was supposed to start a couple of months ago is now entering the scene. It is an attempt at collaborative, group, or mutli-contributor blogging (or whatever you wish to call it). Egypt Blog Review; Political Blog Aggregator with interviews and [...]

… keeps crossing my mind every now and then; setting up one of those Multi-Contributer Blogs which cater to a variety of topics and interests. In fact, I tried it once and attempted to contact people (who initially showed great enthusiasm) and ask them to contribute. After the initial enthusiasm, things died out. Which was [...]

A couple of days, or was it weeks ago, I came across someone else’s blog and they were discussing what their stat counter or blog counter informed them about the search keywords that obtained their blog in the results. Sadly, I don’t remember the exact terms, but I do remember laughing myself to tears as [...]

Disclaimer: Proposed, sometimes detailed, solutions to Egypt’s problems coming your way. “Were I President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, things would be very different.” It makes me smile; the number of times I have heard the previous statement… both from myself and others. And so, in the spirit of wasting my time and working [...]