I am a 24/7er are you?

I have just received the final version of the call to action for the 24/7 Campaign, which is a campaign to demand better working conditions for migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. I leave you the pleasure of reading the details in the call to action itself.

You can already see that I added the 24/7 badge to my blog, so I am a 24/7er, Yalla join us! ;)

Twenty-four-7.org

It's time for some life updates

That's what we bloggers do best, or at least we Lebanese bloggers do best... Say "sorry guys, I was too busy to blog." Most of the time, we also like to add a long list of everything that have kept us busy lately, but usually we are too busy to tell our followers that we are busy.

So I started writing at 9:57PM, February 13, 2010. I am sitting at starbucks cafe (yeah yeah, I know a true leftist elistists, Queer Lebanese should be too proud to sit at starbucks and sip her coffee... Bite me. It is valentine's eve, in other words, it's my birthday. Today I turned 25 years old. I celebrated my birthday by cleaning all day, trust me, cleaning, masturbating, cooking, drinking, and smoking are the greatest pleasures in life.

Google, Gmail, security and China

So other than the tragic earthquake last night in Haiti, I started work today with the war that Google launched against China. In fact, I first read about it in the Guardian's "Google sends a shockwave through the Chinese internet" by Charles Arthur. I was not satisfied with Arthur's analysis, so I went to one of the links provided to Google's official blog, in which they provided their position in a blogpost titled "A new approach to China." And I thought that would be it for the rest of the day, since we would have to wait for a while to see what would happen. But then, oddly enough I stumble upon another blogpost by Google, this time the Gmail blog, "Default https access to Gmail" where the giant declares that gmail correspondence will be encrypted by default from now on. Though personally I am not sure if this is whole thing is an actual war or just a Media stunt used by Google.

Thoughts on the latest template change

Well, as you may have noticed, I changed the Theme of my Blog. Of course this is not the first time I change a theme. I have been blogging on blogger for four years now. I started off with the good old fashion simple black minima template, almost a year later I started planning for the first major template change.

This image was created via wordle.net

I didn't have any experience whatsoever in programming (I was a Biology student for god's sake!), so I did the only thing I was good at, run after my adorable brother for help, and he did everything humanly possible to help me. But it's not easy to work with the fake ADD, autist wannabe, that I am. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted, but I couldn't communicate it.

Another problem was that I got infested with the Meem virus.

But then somehow in my personal history I became this blogging expert in my own community. And I was setting up blogs and giving trainings on the subject. Kind of ironic, isn't it? I started off by managing the old Meem blog which was on wordpress. Then this year I moved it to Blogger (MeemBlog) then I started the Feminist Colective Blog. And shortly after I started working at the Social Media Exchange. Wow how did the biologist turn into a Blogist?

I don't know, I don't care. I love it. I love working at SMEX and I loved the blogs I managed. One the most challenging tasks when it comes to webdesign for dummies that I excel in was to the MeemBlog. I used a ready made theme and adapted it. The challenge is to get a neat, nice template that would remain very customizable. It was more challenging that I thought it would be (eh, I know, that's what all unprofessionals say).

On the other hand, changing the template for this blog was ultra-easy, thanks to the previous ordeal. One thing you should always remember, if you want to design websites then you should get into the designers' skin. If you didn't study wedesign at university, that is not an excuse to wait until you need a theme to look for one. Get a social bookmarking account (be it Delicious, Diigo or whatever other tool you prefer) and stay tuned to the latest resources. Yes you will spend hours looking for details that you are not going to use very often. But then when you do need that dream theme, you will just have to look through your bookmarked links.

Now that this step is over (I've been fantisizing about changing the theme for months now) I have so many other things I need to cater for.

Yalla, wish me luck