Author: Mark

A reader took the picture of the highway digital sign delivering a warning message and diverting traffic to the appropriate lane. According to him the signs got updated before the police arrived which means the sign was activated with the appropriate message from someone at the control center monitoring the road via highway cameras. If I still want to pick on the signs I would say they should have been twice as wide so that the font size would be much larger making it easier to read from a distance. Nevertheless it’s good to see these signs in action and not just telling time.

Thanks Mohammad

After spending a week building the car and then painting it, I was finally able to take it out for a spin. It’s a race buggy and I should have taken it to the Tamiya track to test out but since I wanted to try and capture some nice shots I decided to take it to an empty desert instead. I feel guilty for doing that to the car but I was careful not to bash it too hard since I have to give the car back once I was done with the review.

I don’t have that much experience with buggies since the only electric buggy I have is the Tamiya Frog and it would be really unfair to compare the two since the Frog is actually a design from 1983 while the 502x is a current generation carbon fiber framed racing buggy. But, I have taken a ton of RC cars and trucks out to bash in the dessert before and from all of them the 502x as expected handled the best. Usually when I take the cars out into the dessert to bash they spend a lot of time flipping onto their backs or over or under steering. With the 502x the car managed to flip only once onto it’s back and that’s an incredible achievement with me since I’m a really careless and abusive driver. It also handled incredibly well turning when I wanted it to turn and gripping the dirt and loose pebbles with great east. It also took all the jumps like a champ and whenever it was in the air time seemed to stop for a second and everything went in slow motion until it hit the ground again. That’s why my brother was able to capture so many air shots, the car just floats in the air.

It was really fun building and driving the car and it’s going to be really tough to give it back. But, last night I found out I won the 501x in the My Toy weekly draw so maybe they’ll let me keep the 502x instead. If you’re interested in Tamiya’s, the dealer is called My Toy and they’re located in Tilal Complex on top of In Living Color. It’s a huge store which I’ve posted about before [Here]. You could also participate in their weekly draw to win a 501x by visiting their Facebook group [Here]

The pictures above were taken by my brother but were post processed by myself. To see my brothers post processed photos click [Here]

A couple of days back the blog was listed with 9 others on CNN’s “Top ten must read blogs in the Middle East“. Automatically when that happened I went into red alert mode, I made sure the blogs cache plugins were up and running and I double checked my servers bandwidth and memory usage to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary so that once this large wave of visitors arrive, the blog wouldn’t crash and I wouldn’t lose or disappoint any potential new visitors. Imagine opening a restaurant and having enough food to serve 10 people but then 100 show up, I didn’t want that to happen to me. I was of course expecting it to be a temporary rush, my 15 seconds of fame before the majority of the new visitors disappear forever. So how much traffic came from that article?

I’m not really sure what to think about this. This was an article on CNN and so my expectations were high of course and I was predicting around 5,000 visitors to come in and easily 10,000+. But somehow I overshot my estimates by a considerable amount as you can see. I have a few theories on why this must be the case:

– Maybe the majority of their readers only read their main news and not other none news related articles
– Maybe their readers aren’t used to clicking links in their articles and so never thought about clicking any of the blog links mentioned
– Maybe no one was interested in finding out more about my blog
– Maybe majority of the people who read the article already knew my blog and didn’t see a reason to click it
– The article went up at the start of the weekend which is when based on my blogs stats the daily readership dwindles down considerably
– Maybe the article wasn’t publicized enough on CNN and so not many people ended up reading it
– Or maybe their readership base are serious businessmen or older people who don’t think blogs are interesting enough or even newsworthy

Those of course are just my theories and I’m sure CNN themselves have a better idea of who reads what on their site and why this article might not have transitioned into a large quantity of clicks. But this got me thinking… How much traffic did the Benihana lawsuit really send my way? I went digging for the numbers and here are the top referrers:

– Slashdot.org 4,957
– BoingBoing.net 757
– electrony.net 469
– fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com 437
– AmericanBlog.com 303
– FastCompany.com 285
– Zagat.com 184
– eConsultancy.com 166
– techania.com 171
– LAWeekly.com 139
– TheNextWeb.com 127

By the looks of it that’s not a lot but at the peak of interest and because of the fact that it was picked up by a ton of bloggers and news sites (here is the full list) it was enough to bring in around 20,000 visitors in a single day which is slightly less than double what I usually get. On January 31st when the story first started picking up my readership for that day increased to 16,748 visitors followed by an increase to 19,610 on February 1st until going back down to 15,672 on February 2nd and then things went back to normal on February 3rd when it went back to 12,030 which is what the blog usually gets per day.

In comparison, on March 29th the rumor of Jackie Chan being dead started spreading again and a search for Jackie Chan is dead on that day resulted in my blog being one of the first results on Google so I got a sudden influx of over 10,000 visitors coming in to check out my old post on that rumor. That sudden surge actually brought down the blog a few times during that day which resulted in me permanently removing some memory intensive plugin as well as having the Super Cache plugin permanently on so that in the future no matter what happens the site can handle it.

Anyway I’ve never shared detailed numbers like this on the blog before so hopefully you found the above interesting, it’s just a small behind the scenes glimpse.

248PM was an idea I had where anyone could come in and post whatever they wanted but it just didn’t take off the way I wanted it to. So for now 248PM will redirect everyone to this blog until I can think of another idea for it.

Update: Actually I think I will just turn it into a blog where I post stuff that I don’t think is good enough for this blog. That way I can keep the A-Side / B-Side thing going on just without the community aspect.

Update2: Ok 248PM is back now except it’s no longer a community blog, it’s just a normal blog that’s only mine with random posts that are not related to Kuwait. Check it out [Here]

I loved this commercial and they found some amazing lookalikes. It’s actually a spoof of JK’s wedding dance video which was a huge online hit around two years ago. Even The Office spoofed it in one of their episodes but T-Mobile still managed to make their version interesting enough to set it apart from the other two. [YouTube]

I finished building the Tamiya 502x earlier today and managed to finished cutting up the body, masking it and then painting it in fluorescent pink. The color came out cooler than I was expecting, I painted the rear wing black and the wheels as well which helped give the car an aggressive look. Going to take it out tomorrow and have my brother snap some pictures while I send it flying off some jumps. Should be fun.

Note: The Tamiya dealer is called My Toy and they’re located in Tilal Complex on top of In Living Color. Here is a link to their website [Link]

Shot this last night, they were just kicking the ball back and forth to each other. Scooters are not allowed but football is? [YouTube]

CNN have put together a list of the 10 must-read blogs from the Middle East and my blog made it to the list! This is what they had to say about me:

Want a break from politics? Try 248am for a slice of Kuwaiti life

Mark Makhoul, 32, a creative director at an advertising agency, began his current blog, 248am, in 2005. Mark’s wife Nataly Tawil, a designer, makes occasional contributions to the blog. The pair are both Lebanese and live in Kuwait.

While it may not offer the political insight of some of the other blogs on the list, it does present a slice of life in Kuwait, covering art, technology and more, with lots of reader contributions.

And it’s not entirely without controversy … Makhoul is apparently being sued by a Japanese restaurant chain over a negative review.

Check out the full list and article by clicking [Here]

I always try to make up some reason to get a new pair of headphones like for example I have ones I use on flights that are under 3 hours and ones I use for flights that are longer than 3 hours. I have headphones I use when I listen to electronic music while another pair I use only to listen to songs ripped at a 320kbps or higher. If I didn’t make up all these reasons and excuses I would probably end up with just one pair of headphone and I would hate that.

But, if for some odd reason there was a law that said every man can only one pair of headphone, then the pair I would want to own are the Sennheisers PX100-II. I purchased the original PX100’s back in 2005 and I posted a review of them here on the blog giving them a 4.5 out of 5. Those headphones became my office headphones since they were easy to take off and put on, they didn’t isolate me completely from my surroundings and they were cheap enough to leave lying around on my desk and not worry about them disappearing, breaking or having tea spilled on them. Around 2 months back the foam ear covers on my PX100 got ripped and I started noticing a rattling sound in the right ear so I decided it was time to get the newer PX100-II as a replacement.

As much as I loved my original PX100 it took me around 10 seconds to literally trash them and call them junk right after unboxing the PX100-II. The new versions are so unbelievably well made! They feel incredibly sturdy and they’re so beautifully designed. I can’t stop being amazed at how perfect these headphones look and feel. Sounds wise it’s hard to judge since although they do sound like an improvement over my older headphones (specially the bass which sounds a lot tighter) but my old headphones were falling apart so it wouldn’t be a fair comparison. Other than the new looks and build quality another nice feature is that there is only one wire coming out of the headphones instead of two (one form every ear). This makes things a lot tidier and easier to fold and pack away.

The final score? This is getting a 5 out of 5 easily. There really isn’t anything to complain about they’re perfect. Although the older PX100 headphones cost me $45 and these new ones cost around $70, I had previously stated in the old review that I would willing to pay double the amount for the PX100. Well the double of $45 is $90 and the newer and better PX100-II cost $70 so it’s still a good deal.

I ordered my headphones from Amazon but that’s because I couldn’t find them in Kuwait. That is until I passed by Virgin at Marina Mall last week and spotted them selling for around KD20. I’ve also purchased another pair of Sennheisers for running (the 680i) and will post about those once I spend some good time with them.

Here is a link to the full sized photo [Link]

via Jalopnik

It should be opening in around 2 months time.

Thanks Ramez

Cy from the blog Cyrographics uploaded pictures of Al Hamra Cinema before it got demolished. He used to work for a company that surveyed the site and he found these photos while searching through some old files. This is what he had to say about the photos:

Disclaimer Notice: I am not the owner of these photos, they are just uploaded for the sole purpose of sharing a rare glimpse of Kuwait history for the younger generations of citizens and expats alike. All credits are due to LAS Architectural and Consultancy Office

I was browsing through my files from my previous office when I chanced upon these photos of the Al Hamra Cinema as it was before. Our office (LAS) used to do a lot of Master Planning studies and proposals for the development of Kuwait City and this area, Al Maqwa Al Shargi, where the cinema used to stand, was part of one of our studies. I don’t know much about the history of this cinema, or even Kuwait in general, but I know this cinema was and will always be a part of each and every Kuwaiti families lives.

We took these photos during our survey of the area in 2003.
The other photos in the set were taken in the latter part of 2004, I guess for sentimental reasons, when the building was demolished to give way to the construction of the Al Hamra Tower.

These files had been stored in our hard disks since then, almost forgotten and in danger of being corrupted, deleted and worst, being lost forever.

You can check his blog post [Here]
You can check out all the pictures [Here]

Also, here is my post on Al Hamra Tower that was built in place of Al Hamra Cinema [Link]

As I mentioned last week I picked up a Tamiya 502x race buggy to review for the blog. It’s been nearly a week now and I’ve been working on the car every night for a few hours trying to get it built. Currently I would say I am more than 90% done with the build. I have mostly electric stuff I need to work out and then cutting up and painting the body.

The build was fairly easy although there were some difficult moments. The car frame and a large chunk of the parts are in carbon fiber with a lot of metal parts as well which is expected since this buggy is race ready. But, for the price and purpose of this car I would have expected even more metal parts at least for example when it came to the steering parts which are currently mostly plastic. Tonight I’m gonna try and get the electrics done so I could then prep the body for painting and if everything goes smoothly I might have the car up and running by Saturday.

By the way for those of you who’ve never built a radio controlled car before you need to try it since it’s really a lot of fun. I always compare it to Lego and IKEA, if you like building and putting stuff together then you’ll really enjoy building these cars specially since you get to drive them afterwards. They’re a lot more challenging than building a Lego police station or an IKEA cabinet as well as more rewarding.

[YouTube]

965malls uploaded the video above which he shot of some teenagers fighting underneath his building. What makes his video special is the fact a car ends up running those kids over. According to him no one got hurt as a result.

The teenagers fighting bit I can easily relate to since my neighborhood in Salmiya has turned into the ghetto (plus a garbage dump) due to the fact I have a billiard place in the building next door. Fights amongst teenagers and young adults are practically a daily occurrence and women getting harassed by them has also become the norm.

Come to think of it I don’t know why I don’t use my blog to help improve my area by highlighting problems like I previously did [Here]. I’ve recently been considering moving out of my neighborhood because of all the garbage and fights but why should I move? I’ve been on this street for 30 years now and I shouldn’t have to move because the garbage collecting company isn’t collecting the garbage or the fact that there are no longer any street cleaners as well picking up garbage or that the cops don’t care about any of the violations that are happening on the street. I’ve mentioned this before but there is actually a brothel in the building next door and I have to say I’m glad they’re there since they’ve actually cleaned up a bit of the area around their building. Things are so bad I was actually considering hiring my own street cleaner just to take care of the area around my building!