Picked this little beauty up yesterday, along with a hard-shell case. This is a Cort gb-94. Can't wait to give this a run through the amp when I get it back to Riyadh.

My bass playing is not exactly startling and I'd been looking for something with four strings, rather than the 5-string Cort I already have. I'm hoping this rather tasty little piece is going to help get me going again - I found the 5-string rather tiring on my fretting hands - this seems a much better proposition. Updates as we go along no doubt.

Today I've decided to write about someone who is probably the best striker Stoke City have had for years, but one that comes at a price, though not a financial one. The price is having someone on the squad who can variously be brilliant and imaginatively creative or as has been for the last two games, destructive and carelessly sloppy.

During the Boxing Day game against Manchester United, on a number of occasions he came close to breaking the deadlock that held over the first 70 minutes, but also lost his left boot on no fewer than 3 times. Can anyone explain to me how a Premiership footballer can't keep his footwear on? I could understand if he had been trod on from behind repeatedly, but that wasn't really the case - the first time it happened, he was one on one with Edwin Van De Sar and lost said boot in full flight. You don't half look stupid when that happens and more to the point a rare opportunity to get in front was missed. To then lose your boot twice more is past the point of comedy and suggests that your approach to the professional game is seriously lacking.

Today's incident at West Ham would be funny if it were not so serious. Having once more conspired to throw away a precious lead to a not particularly threatening West Ham team, our leading scorer decides that he's going to start having fisticuffs with the team captain, Andy Griffin. For his trouble, he then gets a red card and an early bath. There is something decidedly unsettling about Ricardo's temperament, as this is not the first time it has resulted in him being sent off. You understand that your defenders are sometimes going to pick up that extra booking in a last ditch attempt to halt the oppositions' progress, but when your strikers go for a walk because they can't keep their opinionated traps shut, it really is too much to keep quiet about.

I should at this point say, that I wasn't at the game and haven't yet seen it on Match of the Day. I can only go on my reaction to the Radio 5 Live reports I heard as I was travelling north from Peterborough.

I'll reserve final judgement until I've seen the incident myself, but at the moment, I'm thinking that Tony Pulis should be seriously thinking about letting Ricardo go during the January transfer window. Sorry son, but you are beginning to look like a bit of an extravagant liability.

Is now nearly over. It was pleasant enough though. Once I get back to Riyadh, I can look forward to installing CS4 Web Premium and having a bit of a play. The chances are that Photoshop will get most use, though I am looking forward to seeing what can be done with Dreamweaver and maybe getting my head around some Flash bits. I also have every intention of trying to learn how to do something useful with PHP and MySQL.

Aside from CS4, I also now have one of the Bose iPod speaker dock things. Not tried it yet, but I hear they sound quite impressive. It looks as though I'll be able to rig it so it is the speaker out for the Vista box in Riyadh. Whilst the HP 24" screen is impressive, the speakers in it are anything but. Also in this years' stocking was some nice Lindt chocolate with ginger (Yum!), a couple of golfy bits, some Boots skin products for the discerning gentleman (me that is) and just for a bit of fun a book full of Lolcats from ICanHasCheezBurger - I'm a little bit of a softy where cats are concerned.

I'm well and truly stuffed where food is concerned, courtesy of an Anthony Worral-Thompson treated turkey crown with all the trimmings.

I need to go and pack now, as it's off down to Stoke for the big match against Manchester United at the Britannia and use just the 2nd of my season tickets stubs - it was the only way of guaranteeing getting into the ground this season. After that, it will be yet another Christmas lunch at my Mum's before we head off down to my sisters' near Peterborough. More driving...

Time I went and sorted that bag out.

What a dreadful song that is. I don't care if Leonard Cohen sang it, or even if it was in Shrek, it's a bloody awful racket and needs eradicating from the airwaves. What on earth possessed anyone to record it again in such a whiny, tortured, my life is so fucking awful, angst ridden fashion? It's really not necessary and provides no new contribution to the state of British (?), or any other, musical culture. I don't care whether you won X-Factor (actually I care that anyone of the endless stream of wannabes who enter it should win X-Factor), I'd like to see this constipated drivel gone, now and for ever.

Busy eradicating the song going round my head with the Smashing Pumpkins 'Stand Inside Your Love' - always makes me think of AM this song. Some lyrics for you.

You and me
Meant to be
Immutable
Impossible
It's destiny
Pure lunacy
Incalculable
Insufferable
But for the last time
You're everything that I want and ask for
You're all that I'd dreamed
Who wouldn't be the one you love
Who wouldn't stand inside your love
Protected and the lover of
A pure soul and beautiful you
Don't understand
Don't feel me now
I will breathe
For the both of us
Travel the world
Traverse the skies
Your home is here
Within my heart
And for the first time
I feel as though I am reborn
In my mind
Recast as child and mystic sage
Who wouldn't be the one you love
Who wouldn't stand inside your love
And for the first time
I'm telling you how much I need and bleed for
Your every move and waking sound
In my time
I'll wrap my wire around your heart and your mind
You're mine forever now
Who wouldn't be the one you love and live for
Who wouldn't stand inside your love and die for
Who wouldn't be the one you love

...no actually it's an ice-cream van in the street outside! Business is business I guess, even on December 24th...

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

It's a bit like that here at the moment. All I have to listen to is the gentle whirr of the PC next to me. The shopping is done, as is a proportion of the wrapping. Outside, it's a sort of twilight world, not quite light and not yet dark. The lights on the old ICI plant are beginning to twinkle in the distance and I can still see the never ending vapour trail the place is throwing out. At least the place doesn't smell like it did in times past, or at least so I'm told.

I get the impression my body would like to shut down for a while. This often happens when there's been a bit of a build up to something, travelling, driving, shopping, wrapping etc. It feels like I'm on hold waiting for something now - in this case waiting for AM to get back from her Mum's so we can wrap the presents for my family. I'm hoping it doesn't take long, as my back really doesn't enjoy the experience of being bent over for any great length of time - hitting a golf ball doesn't seem to have quite the same effect, but then that's a rather more active form of bending over, unlike present wrapping which is rather static.

I hear the front door, must be time to go do the needful (to quote one of my Saudi colleagues)

It's the early hours of Sunday morning on 21st December. What's more, this time I have a pen! "This time" what? you might inevitably ask. I'm in an airport of course, and if I'm in an airport then I must be at a loose end and so the mind tends to occupy itself.

Actually, that's not so true this time, as I've just spent the last couple of hours in what passes for Riyadh's business/first class lounge, physically attached to the iPod, but mentally more attuned to John Irving's 'The Fourth Hand'. His books are bizarre make no mistake, but you'd only have had to have read one to know that. I've read a fair sample of them now and they never fail to entertain - other passengers must wonder what's got into me, as I'm sure I wear a permanent smirk on my face.

Not at the moment though, as I've moved out of the rather cloying lounge and into the hive of activity also known as Costa Coffee and as always, the joint is just bouncing like a regular rubber ball. There is the merest hint that passengers are shifting irresistably towards the gate, but Costa Coffee and I are not to be parted just yet.

It's a well known fact that the majority of the world's airports are not designed to accommodate the average human form - I cite in evidence the chairs. Is it possible they could have been created with the purpose of supporting a vaguely humanoid shape for in excess of two hours? The ones here are surely only an intermediate manufacturing step on the way to a particularly exotic (and no doubt expensive) brand of cheese grater. Very good for aeration though so I'm told.

I see the lines a forming, so Costa and I must part company. Another short but torrid relationship must end with a journey...

It seems I was right about the undersea cables in the Mediterranean. The news wires this morning are awash with stories of breaks in cables affecting coutries across the Middle East and India amongst others. One such sample story can be found here at Bloggernews.net. I didn't pick this one particularly for its rumour and conjecture content, but more because it has a great jpg showing where the worlds' undersea cables run - I've always loved maps - I should have been a cartographer. Given the extent of the problems at the moment, it may be considered something of a surprise that I can post this at all, but I guess it does go to show the extent of the redundancy built into the [internet] system, and potentially how difficult it would be to shut it down as some would have us believe a variety of Government agencies would like to do.

It's Friday night and that means tomorrow is another work day - unlike many other work days, this is not so bad, as it's the last one I have to do before I fly back to the UK. This evening though, is proving to be a slightly frustrating one, as the local internet feed appears to have gone completely down the toilet.

Every site I'm hitting takes what seems to be an eternity to reach, in some instances, 2 or 3 minutes per page to load completely. Now as I've got a few things to do this evening that rely on me having a usable connection that's not good. Chief amongst them is writing up a set of handover notes, which rely on me establishing a VPN link back to the office. Did I hear someone say "not gonna happen?". Yes, thought so...

Other than that, there are a few things I wanted to try with the blog with the primary aim of helping out someone across at b2evo who's having a few 'issues'.

Current issues are very reminiscent of the problems encountered (twice) this year where some muppet managed to drag their anchors through the undersea cables in the Mediterranean. This not only affected the internet feeds, but also the telephone lines into the country. By strange coincidence, call it quirk of fate, AM has had an appalling time trying to ring me this evening - no joy at all calling my mobile, and repeated attempts before finally succeeding with the land line. I do actually dream of the day when I can, on a daily basis, just click on any given link and know that the page will materialise before me almost before I've finished clicking the mouse.

Isn't it odd though that the spam has no problems reaching me though?

If I was being wholly honest, I would say that the internet is just one of a number of things that haven't behaved themselves today. If you add in an ATM that completed a 1,000 SAR transaction, but didn't give me the cash, a less than impressive round of golf and the DVD player that seems to have given up on playing audio without sounding like Norman Collier, you'll perhaps get the idea.

On the up side, at least the dishes are done. Suppose I ought to go up the ante and throw a last pile of clothes into the washing machine - domestic bliss...

I am mildly embarrassed to report that once more, I have won TPF Fight Club Round #5. I am not accustomed to winning anything, much less something that needs what might be loosely described as "my own skills". Now obviously, the first rule of 'Fight Club is that you don't talk about it, but as they never said "don't write about it", I think I may be covered. Participation only requires a digital camera some form of editing software and an internet host to load the images up to, or at least that's the theory. The sequence actually runs like this:

1. T -10: Get the camera out of the bag, put the flash gun on it's little stand, mount the IR trigger for the flash onto the camera.
2. T -5: Launch Photoshop Elements 5.0 on the PC, start the Flickr Uploader and launch it into the correct account (I have 2), and plug in the USB cable
3. T -4: Sense of tingling anticipation
4. T -3: Nerves beginning to jangle
5. T -2: Visit loo
6. T -1: Start to repeatedly refresh the Fight Club thread for the day waiting the topics to materialise
7. Start time: Read topics and begin to crap myself, thinks "What lunatic from the black latrine came up with these?"
8. 1st 30 minutes: Run round house like an idiot with various bits of photographic equipment trying to come up with some sort of shot that might just capture a flavour of the topics listed. This variously includes turfing out the content of cupboards (cold remedies were a good one this week), lying on the floor in search of the elusive 'artistic angle', finding new uses for AM's handbag and creating impromptu still life sets on the dining table.
9. Next 25 minutes: Download photos from camera (very frustrating waiting whilst this happens), start picking through images in PSE only to find that the perfect composition that you only made one attempt at is slightly out of focus, edit like fury (levels, shadows & highlights, saturation, save as jpg, resize to 800px, unsharp mask, add border, save as smaller jpg, repeat 4 more time).
10. Last 5 minutes: Next comes the uploading, again takes a frustrating amount of time to get the images into 'the other' flickr account. Dive into each image and pick up a link for the full size image and start creating a post in the correct thread at TPF. Click submit...
11. 60 minutes: Realise what everyone else has posted and panic that this was the best you could do.
12. Next 48 hours: Sit and wait whilst everyone apparently votes for everyone else
13. 48+ hours: Takes winners spot on the podium

When I put it like that, it sounds simple doesn't it. The amount of head scratching as I'm going is nothing normal though. There are always at least 2 topics that just evade me, as I have never considered myself to have much of an imagination. I rely on AM for most of the ideas, I just need to work out how to shoot them, but as she's in the UK at the moment, that approach wasn't an option

I'll give it a go next Sunday, but that will be post two flights and a 3,500 mile journey back to the UK - I never feel good after that, though at least I'm slumming it in business class this time.

As a bit of an addendum, here's a couple of the better candidates from Round #5.

For the Ladies:

Disconnected:

I've not blogged today and it's too late to start now, I've added a couple of links to the site though. Been trying to get my head round some Ubuntu server admin - no wonder I'm fried. Here's a photo from earlier today though, from my "Petrol Pump Attendants" series.

This is weird and I can't believe it will last, but all of a sudden my internet connection is running at warp speed. This has to be the fastest I've ever seen a connection run in in Saudi Arabia - maybe I'm the only one in the whole country on line at the moment. Maybe Zajil are not so bad after all. I should go and play the Trivia now and see if helps me at all.

Actually, that approach worked really well and the end result was worth the wait. Much better than the microwave, which whilst quick, tends to deliver rather watery results. Same goes much the same for the chilli, the flavour and texture is improved by warming in a pan and not done in the nuke.

Forget the 1 hour bit. Just re-set the timer for another 15 minutes - damned foreign potatoes! At least the chilli looks good to go...

Link: http://food.ivillage.com/mainingredient/fruitvegetables/0,,gz7h,00.html

...is apparently done at 400F for an hour, turning half way through. As the oven has just beeped to say it's now up to temp, I shall pop a raw one in there and go for a quick cycle round the compound. It's cold out there - Brrrrr....

I keep coming here wondering if anything will have changed, but it won't unless I do something will it. Ho hum...

Link: http://pownce.com/christopherallanperry/

Today is the last day across at Pownce. Some strange but probably predictable responses on the site today, with some using it as their last opportunity to vent some frustrations over its demise. There's little chance anyway that they'll get booted for it, not with only 15 hours (allegedly) to go.

It'll be a shame to see it depart to be honest, very simple in concept, but quite a cool place to hang out. It never got the big numbers of members that Twitter achieved - and let's be honest it was trying to tap into the same internet demographic - it was probably the better for that, as it never hit the mainstream.

Well, goodbye Pownce, it was good whilst it lasted

Now, let's see what you've got 6A

Cracking set of challenges this evening, which caused much head scratching. Today's titles were:

1. Mind Control
2. Disconnected
3. Cold
4. This one's for the ladies
5. Holds together

You can see them over at the link on the previous post - you could even sign up to TPF and vote for me if you wanted.

Link: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=148683

Just 25 minutes to go. Better get the camera ready and fire up PSE5 ready for action. Lets see what we can come up with this week - not so easy though as AM isn't around to throw in extra ideas for me.

Current:
140,93,55
#8C5D42

Possible:
190,144,117
#BE9075

Tea break over. Hadj is done for another year and my local colleagues are now back at the coal face. Just for a change, I now feel like I can do something productive again, though exactly what is yet to become clear. Only a week to go till I bale out for a short while. Oh goody, 12 days non-stop driving to look forward to! The joys of a festive season eh?

Link: http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?t=17415

I think that slowly but surely, the blog is now coming together. Still a couple of small niggly things to suss out, like the fact that it won't let me create new categories from within the b2evo back office yet, but every indication says that this is a MySQL issue rather than the blog software itself. I hoping that the post at b2evo on the link [above/below: delete as applicable] will get me a usable answer on this one.

If you've been following any of this, you may notice that I've been messing with the r/h column stuff - it should look a little cleaner now. I've dropped a couple of things out of there and re-ordered stuff a bit. The search box still looks a bit clunky and out of keeping, but I may have to learn to live with that. I've done the same over in the T189 blog and also with the Linkblog, which generally you should never see, to keep a common 'look and feel' to it all.

At some point, I'd like to expand the width of the body of the blog out to at least 1,000 px to let it breathe a little more. A slightly larger font is also a possibility, as is a fluid layout to make it a little more flexible. The other thing that needs sorting is the CSS behaviour of this skin in Firefox3, my browser of choice. I've seen something on it across at b2evo and it doesn't look beyond the wit of man to sort out. But not tonight, time to hit the hay I think, they're all back in work tomorrow!

For anyone hitting this site for the first time, they are probably wondering why a European expat would end up with a domain name of izdihar.com. I've had the domain for quite some time now, probably since around 2000/01. The reason I got it was because I was living on a compound of the same name in Riyadh at the time and one day did a casual search for the name and was amazed to find it still available. Without much ado, I registered it, only to find that within a matter of weeks, I had a Canadian claiming that Izdihar was "his wife's rare Iraqi name". Despite a few nervous moments, when it came to actually paying the ICANN domain name resolution people the necessary to 'investigate' his claim, it all went very quiet and has been ever since. I now reckon I'm good for this name for as long as I can remember to keep up the payments myself. The compound itself is being transformed into a Holiday Inn and it's been some considerable time since I lived there.

As to what Izdihar actually means, it is a feminine name of Arabic origin and can be translated as "blossoming", "flourishing" or "blooming". It is generally taken to engender a sense of progress or moving forward. Quite a nice idea for an internet site and who knows, maybe one day a valuable domain name in its own right. Maybe I'll work out what that is, or maybe I won't. Until then, here I am in whatever form I choose to present myself. Welcome.

One final note for now, the image in the next post is now my most commented image at flickr - it was worth the trip out to the desert after all then.

Edit: Updated to reflect Ahmed's comment below.

OK, got that done. The image was taken from this one I took this afternoon

Works out rather well I think.

That was a rather long evening of trying to get everything to behave itself in that skin. All the images now fit the width of 'leftside', which turns out to be 575px and I've also corrected an error in the way each individual post is set out - they are now full one after another. There has to be a better way than using a never ending series of [br /] tags.

Must be time for bed

Well I can honestly say that worked considerably better than I could realistically have hoped for. The blog s/w has now been updated. It doesn't necessarily have my skin of choice, and some stuff needs resizing to get it to display images at a size I feel comfortable with but it's not looking too bad. More later

Just realised how old this version of the b2evolution application I'm running [1.10.2]. Given that they are now up to 2.4.5, maybe it's time I did something with it - ho hum, time for some skin action...

Too quiet in fact. At least the love of my life made it home safely this morning. Sounds like BMI wasn't as busy as might have been feared before she left. I gather the UK is rather colder than here though - not sure I fancy that much.

Talked to my sister on the phone last night, seems they've got a new cat called 'Casper' - a British Lilac? Think that's what she said it was, company for Floyd, who's been a little at a loose end since Clyde passed away a couple of years back. Nice cats but rather large and with an appetite to match.

Wonder if it's worth trying to get up to the red sands after work with the camera? Nice spot, but the light dies away so fast these days that it's a struggle to get far enough out to do anything before it's dark. Thinking about it, there should be plenty of time this weekend or the next to get something sorted before I fly out myself for Christmas. I need to do some shots of that tower behind the King's farm again - the last one worked rather well once I'd used Photoshop to disguise all the quad bike tracks.

Just got a phone call a couple of minutes ago from my wife to tell me her OU exam results were out. As always, she's passed with flying colours. Having checked my result, I on the other hand have managed to blow it on the exam - only got 35%. Fuck!

Eid day and it's quiet round here. The department ticks along on the strength of seven expats and Eddie - difficult to believe we have a headcount of 34, trying to go to 41. Still, the rest of the business is the same - never mind Mr Shareholder, your investment is safe with us...

Picked up an HP w2448hc monitor last night - it's VAST! More screen real estate than you can shake a stick at. The only real downside is that, as always, the built in speakers are absolute pants - I feel another upgrade coming on in the audio department. Mind you I watched part of the Dave Gilmour in Gdansk DVD on the new monitor and it looks quite spectacular. Who needs a telly?

Fight Club happened again last night. Four participants indulged themselves. Don't think I'll win this week, Chiller's looking much too good this time. The themes this week were a bit more challenging than the previous ones:

• Greet the morning
• I spy
• Communication
• Too many _______
• This photo sucks

You can see the results in the Trash Can - or at least you could if I could remember the URL for it. I thought I was slow last night, but it turns out that despite only being 4 minutes of the hour to go when I posted, I was still the first one in.

OK, I did things - 100 of them - best score to date at the golf course. No dramas, nice and steady, but too many shots frittered away in an offhand way. Got slightly burnt whilst I was at it - forgot my hat, dozy sod that I am...

It's cold this morning, only about 9C which round here is as good as being below freezing. Being so dry, there is nothing in the atmosphere that holds any heat, so it's a wrap up warm day. Must go now, things to do.

No, not what you're thinking. The more I look at this blog, the more I'm convinced it needs a new skin and probably something that isn't so busy at that. I guess that with the default stuff they throw a whole bunch of stuff in there to give you an idea of what can be done with b2e. IMNSHO, it ends up looking a bit cluttered and if I was wholly truthful I don't know what some of it is for... I mean, all that RSS stuff, does it really matter to anyone?

Possibly the introduction of CS4 Web Premium over Christmas will help me get onto this sooner than I'd thought would happen.

It's quiet in the office now. Hadj has kicked in, the boss is away, so what's a guy to do? I've compiled an Amazon 'Wish List' for my Mum, browsed around for a while looking at studio flash kits, ordered a Sto-Fen for the 430ex, picked up a tall latte from Seattle's Best. So what to do with the rest of the day?

Seems something has happened at Pownce. It'll be shut down on 15th December, after which we wait to see what comes next from Six Apart who've bought them out. Some of the Pownce staff have moved across to SA and others are now acting as consultants, including Kevin Rose, he of Digg fame and fortune.

In other news, I'm now officially a Moderator across at The Photo Forum. I'd been acting as a 'Spam Cop' for a while and at last count count claim somewhere in the region of 500 spammers banned and any number of posts consigned to the 'Trash Can'. The new role is interesting, I now have to get rather more visibly involved in the day to day running of the site. Rather more discussions on stuff behind the scenes than one might imagine, but no where near as salacious as some seem to conjure up. It's amazing at times how a simple change can be blown up into all sorts of wild fantasies.

Should you find the time and the inclination, it's worth getting across to TPF for the 'Fight Club' on a Sunday 14:00 EST (22:00 KSA time). It's a very simple, but fun idea - take 5 photographs on 5 different themes assigned by the host, process and publish them all within 1 hour. Following this, votes are cast by your peers. I blush to mention that it has run for 3 weeks so far and I've won all 3 (must get the smileys working in here, esp the one to represent mild embarrassment).

Well time to the off, more later maybe. Oh, and we're away at Newcastle today. We should be good for a point I'd like to think.