FreeBSD use a protocol called CVS to update its source code, it is also use it to upgrade FreeBSD ports.
But before you start update you must specify the mirror you want sychronize your code with, of course you should use the server near you to speed up the process.
I always had trouble finding the best mirror, I used pickup server in France, then I switched to servers in the US, but I never satisfied with the speed.
Until I discovered fastest_cvsup which is a tool that test all mirror of given country(eis) and give the fastest one of them, neat!
It turned out that the fastest mirror are indeede in france, here is the result:

# fastest_cvsup -q -c sa,fr,us,ca
-=(ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo)=(cvsup2.ca.freebsd.org)=-
cvsup4.fr.freebsd.org

The command check server in Saudi Arabia (nothing in Saudi Arabia but to make sure), France, US, and Canada.
You milage may vary, in fact teh result could change from day to day, so it might be a good idea to use a script like the one given with the tool:

#!/bin/sh
if SERVER=`fastest_cvsup -q -c fr,us,ca`; then
cvsup -g -L 2 -h $SERVER /usr/local/etc/cvsup/ports-supfile
fi


We found a small configuration error that broke the transparent proxy from working on some DSL connections, it should work now with every one, Enjoy!

Finally after 8 months of waiting, and many calls and visits to Abdul Latif Jameel my new Avalon arrived.

Today a friend of mine opened my old web site http://myweb.saudi.net.sa/rayed/ and I noticed that my flickr badge is working again! I thought he used an external proxy, but he wasn’t 🙂
Flickr is open again but is it for good or it is just a mistake from ISU.
I enabled my Flickr badge again, I miss Flickr!
UPDATE: ISU blocked flickr again 🙁
UPDATE: It is open now, I am confused!
UPDATE: It seems that Flickr is open in Riyadh proxies, and not on Jeddah proxies, I hope it is closed by mistake.

Here are two photos I took today when visiting Konstanz, I forgot my Canon camera so I took these photos with my Nokia phone, surprisingly they look good. Click to enlarge.

So no real updates for a while, it is freezing in here, a lot of pictures in the near future.

but after two months 🙁
STC is under going a massive deployment in DSL lines in 2006, they announced that they will increase the number of DSL lines kingdom wide from 50,000 line to 500,000 line by the end of 2006!
So I decided to call the STC service number 907, and order DSL, they gave me an appointment today to tell me if the line is ready or not, no called me, so I called and they told the “Moather” exchange -which my area belongs to- will get DSL access in 26/1/1427 Hejjri which corresponds to 25/2/2006 according to IslamicFinder
I’ll be waiting.

We had today a major DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service), we get thousands of concurrent connection from all over the globe. It took us a while to figure out the problem, the attack still active but hopefully we managed to take the site online again for Saudi Arabia users.

WordPress the blogging software that runs my site released version 2.
A lot of new features, the admin interface is complete changed with many new enhancements, they also added WYSIWYG editor, and easier file upload.