Over 11000 visits to my blog since I started it - THANKS!!

I noticed tonight that my 'visitor counter' went over 11000 hits since I started it around January 2008 so I just want to thank everyone who stops by and do a brief retrospective.

I hope you find the site useful (well I know from the emails that I receive that people do). Do feel free to email me if there's anything particular you would like to see on the blog - I may or may not follow up suggestions depending how I feel.

This site is intended to be mainly practical though I reserve the right to go utterly off-topic if I feel like it :D I won't be discussing politics or religion anytime soon though I may make posts referring to these issues from a practical perspective occasionally.

I'm actually amazed to find that I come up on the first page of Google quite often without putting any effort at all in to SEO strategies!

I think my "proudest" moment was when I pulled together information for how people could help in the aftermath of last year's landslide. I had not originally intended to blog on the matter, feeling uneasy about riding on disaster's coat-tails, but my blog started getting hit after hit - I think over a hundred in the first few hours after news started coming out, several hundred in a couple of days - from Google on my visit to St Simon Tanner in Mokattam article which is in the vicinity of where the landslide occurred, and I could see from the search terms that people were looking for information on this disaster.

I searched the net and there was no information available on how the public could help. I contacted a friend of mine who provided me with contact details she had received privately via email, thus enabling me to act as a central point of information for people wishing to provide assistance.

I was also chuffed when a couple of friends told me that they had Googled the El Korba festival this year and were amazed to discover the OBC had pride of place at the top of the first page of Google! Oldbag - in the Loop :D

I have also been contacted by some of the big 'time' sites to confirm information about dates and times of things in Egypt!

An issue which I also like to bring to attention is POSITIVE aspects of women's lives in Egypt. There is plenty out there focusing on the negative, so I have set up a little online project - a database which ANYONE can contribute to - feel free!!! of EGYPTIAN WOMEN in any kind of positions of influence or 'role modelling'.

If you have names and details, follow this link, check whether the person is already listed (be creative with the spelling - it is all transliterated into English so sometimes there are variations) and if not, please add them on! You can't edit mistakes, so if you DO make a big mistake, add the corrected details as a fresh entry, and email me so I can delete the incorrect entry.

So far, I have only added 39 women - but they range from athletes to professors, artists to politicians. I do have more in the cupboard culled from the newspapers, but it is a slow process.

I hope to start getting out and about again late October so look forward to making more fresh posts then.

That's all for now folks.....

NOTHING TO DO WITH EGYPT - problems with Mozilla Firefox

This post is nothing whatsoever to do with Egypt!

Anyone else who has trouble with Mozilla Firefox browser after installing MS Office 2007 (From a CD, not the 60-day trial that is on many computers these days).

The trouble I was getting was that links were not clicking correctly particularly from Google. They were not opening and the URLs did not seem to be resolving correctly. On closing FF, the program did not stop running (even with checking the download window was also closed) and had to be manually stopped in the task manager.

This was not affecting FF on my other netbook with Office but I was using the 60day trial and just put the reg key in that instead of installing from disk so it didn't install it.

It also didn't affect Internet Explorer or Opera 10 browsers. Windows XP Home OS.

It's taken me a while to track down but.. MS Office 2007 installs a plug-in to the Mozilla Firefox browser called "Office plugin for Netscape Navigator".

First use task manager to make sure all your FFs are closed.
(ctrl+alt+del go to processes tab and manually closing the firefox.exe program - arrange alphabetically to make sure ALL are closed).

Then open FF.

Find your add-ons (menu bar - Tools AddOns PlugIns)
Disable 2007 Microsoft Office System (Office plugin for Netscape Navigator)
Close down FF (including the task manager check again).
(or completely close down your computer and reboot if you prefer).
Resign on to FF.
When you resign back on to Firefox, it should be fixed.

And pretty please with sugar on top people, do not write and tell me all about Open Office, I know all about Open Office and while it is pretty good for people not wanting to invest in MS Office, if you are doing work for organisations using MS Office, it is NOT the same.

Medical Tests in Cairo (Al Borg / El Borg Labs)

I needed a blood test so this morning around midday I visited El Borg Lab in 6th October City. I paid for the test in advance (less than 200LE for the one I wanted - the price I was charged was the same as an Egyptian friend who had the same test done recently) and waited around 10 minutes to be seen.

The phlebotomist (person who draws the blood) was exactly as professional as I am used to in the UK - using sterile needles fresh from sterile pack, etc..
You can choose to view results online or you can phone or call in. Well I called in tonight (19911) - just 11 hours later - and my result is ready!

So, I am recommending El Borg Labs to people needing medical tests. They have branches all over Cairo and other parts of Egypt Al Borg (El Borg) Lab branches and you can contact them on a single number 19911 which I believe is freephone (I used my mobile and it didn't deduct any minutes from my package).