Category: Geek

I’m a huge fan of Ai and its potential, so when I heard about Bee and saw the price, I knew I had to try it. Even though reviews weren’t that great, the idea of Bee intrigued me and it was only $49, so not really a huge investment. I figured it was worth getting just to play around with especially since there wasn’t a monthly subscription or anything additional to the $49 I needed to pay for. I’ve had it now for a couple of weeks and my first impression, I really like it, well the idea of it at least.

Bee Ai is basically two things, a mic you wear on your wrist like a Fitbit, or you can clip it onto your shirt. The second part to Bee is the software. The Bee mic constantly records everything around you and the software with Ai keeps track of everything for you. So for example, I went to Xcite last week to check up on some Dyson vacuum cleaners. The next day I asked Bee “How much did the guy say the Dyson vacuum was?”. Bee responded telling me the price of the handheld model I asked about and the larger model. It’s like ChatGPT but for my real life in a way.

But, Bee is also totally unreliable at the same time. It can’t tell the difference between a real conversation I’m having with an Xcite employee, or me watching an episode of White Lotus. It’s really unreliable, but also so accurate and great at the same time which is why I’m loving Bee more than hating it. When it gives me summaries of my day it’s generally accurate and the way it words it makes me feel good about the day, like I did so much and it was epic.

When Bee gives me suggestions to add to my to do list they’re usually very accurate. Actually, more like wow how did it know that kind of accurate. Like Bee knows I have a dog called August, it understood I was trying to teach my dog tricks and my dog was struggling. So Bee added the following to my suggested to do list:

I was talking to a friend about one of my cars and an interior trim piece I needed to get, Bee added it to my suggested to do list.

I had a conversation with another dog owner about the possibility of getting a second dog. I didn’t know the dog owners name at the time but Bee still added the reminder for me to follow up with Waldo’s owner about the potential of getting a puppy. Bee did’t know the name of the person but recognized that the owner has a dog called Waldo and so referred to them that way. Thats common sense smart.

It’s actually a bit unreal how smart (and how stupid) Bee can be. It’s still too early for it to be really useful, but the potential down the line, it’s similar to the Apple Vision Pro, like you need to think much further down the line with improvement in technology and abilities. The idea of having basically an Ai assistant taking notes down for you throughout the day has so much potential, an Ai memory. I already use the blog as my digital memory, especially since back in the day I used to share more personal stuff here, but now something like Bee can become my real world memory. I mean it even recognized that on Sunday the talk of the day was the Ya Hala drama.

If you want to try Bee out, they just started shipping their 3rd batch. Here is the link to their website.

When the M1 iMac came out back in 2021, I bought one with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive. It was fast, especially after moving up from an old Intel-Mac iMac. More than 3 years later the iMac was still great, I never felt it was slow and really didn’t have any issues with it except for two things:

• The color no longer suited my apartment. I went through a major redesign last year and the green iMac wasn’t working in my space.

• The second issue I had was with the hard drive, 1TB wasn’t enough anymore and I kept running out of space. I couldn’t solve it with an external drive since majority of the space was taken up with my Photos library. I thought about moving it to an external drive but I read I would end up with issues which I didn’t want to risk or deal with.

I was also honestly looking for an excuse to pick up the Mac Studio, I loved the way it looked and just wanted to have one. I kept building a Mac Studio hoping I’d eventually pull the trigger but I kept hesitating and eventually knew I was too late to buy one since it was due for an M3 or M4 upgrade. I stayed patient and then the M4 Mac mini was announced.

It looked like the Mac Studio, but was a lot more smaller and much more cheaper. So I pulled the trigger and bought one.

Initially I wanted to get the Mac mini with the M4 Pro chip, but after realizing how much upgrading to 2TB was going to cost me, I decided not to go with the Pro. I never had a speed issue with my M1, and from what I read about the M4 Pro, I wouldn’t really benefit much from it anyway so to save some money I decided to stick to the “regular” M4. I ended up upgrading the RAM from 16GB to 24GB, and the hard drive to 2TB. The hard drive upgrade cost me $800! That’s more than the cost of the Mac mini by quite a bit. It’s crazy, but I guess that’s how Apple manages to set the entry price of the Mac mini so low, they make up for it with the upgrades. $200 to go from 16GB to 24GB RAM, and $800 to go from a 256GB hard drive to a 2TB one. $1,000 worth of upgrades on a $600 computer!

But, overall it was still a lot cheaper than the Mac Studio I had been building on the Apple website for months now which is why I still pulled the trigger.

I ended up buying the Apple Display from Xcite since they were selling it for KD499, similar price to apple.com not including tax or shipping. Once you include tax and shipping the price shoots up much higher than Xcite. You can find the display cheaper on Amazon but even then, once you add tax and shipping the price ends up being similar to Xcite.

Now that I have everything installed and running I really love my new setup. The Mac mini is really small and doesn’t take up much space on my desk. The Apple display is big and beautiful as well, it’s not much bigger than the iMac screen (24″ vs 27″), but it does give me much more room to have two windows open side by side comfortably. It also expands my USB-C ports by an additional 4 ports, and has a Mic built in which is great since the Mac mini doesn’t have a mic.

Having 2TB is probably the biggest relief since I don’t have anxiety about running out of space and this should last a pretty long time with me since I don’t really store any large video files or anything of the sort on my iMac, just my photos which are around 600GB, and work and blog related files which are less than 300GB.

The only negative I have with the Mac mini is that the headphone jack is on the front which means if I want to physically connect them to my speakers I need to have a wire running out the front. I have KEF LSX speakers next to my display and with my previous iMac I ran them over Bluetooth. But it isn’t very reliable as in every few days the speakers lose sync with the video on my Mac and I need to disconnect and reconnect to get them to sync again. With the Mac mini I was hoping to connect them with an optical out or audio out but from the back. I have a USB-C to headphone jack adapter but decided to get a USB-C to optical out and ordered one from Amazon. But I now have another issue, the adapter I got doesn’t support volume control from the Mac so that’s around 15KD wasted and I either need to find another optical out that supports volume control, or just give in and use my USB-C to headphone jack and connect the speakers that way.

But other than that I don’t have any complaints, and no regrets with my purchase either!

So it’s just been over 6 months since I got the Apple Vision Pro, which is why I wanted to share a usage update.

My AVP usage has dropped considerably since I first got it, which is to be expected since the first couple of months its lots of experimenting, trying to see what I want to do with the AVP. Now I’m more aware of what to use the AVP for, and it’s mostly media consumption.

The #1 use of the AVP for me is watching Formula 1 races. There are two great apps on the AVP to watch the races and both offer similar features. Imagine sitting in a movie theater and watching F1, but it’s me on my couch watching it. And it’s not just about having a large screen, I also have multiple screens all around, one showing the timing screen, one showing an overhead map of the race, and then multiple windows of the different driver views. It’s ridiculous, I love it. Another advantage is I could sit in the living room and watch the races while my wife sits next to me watching TV. Both of us physically using the same real world space, but I’m in a different digital space doing my own thing.

My second favorite thing on the AVP are the immersive videos. These are videos that make you feel like you’re watching a film from inside the film. It’s nothing like you’ve ever experienced, it’s nothing like IMAX or 3D glasses or whatever, it’s an experience you can only have through the AVP at the moment. Immersive videos are 3D 180-degree 8K recordings with Spatial Audio. At first, Apple released a bunch of these, mostly short documentary like films, but a few weeks ago they released a short film called “Submerged” that takes place on a submarine during the World War and is directed by an Academy Award winning director. It was insane, I’ve never experienced a movie like that before in my life. I was left stunned and once I was done I made my wife watch it and I could see from her facial expressions that she was also taken aback by it. You’re IN the movie, it doesn’t feel like a camera is capturing the action, but it’s your own eyes. It’s very hard to explain because it can’t be compared to anything.

While on the subject of immersive videos, Apple has released I think three immersive sports videos, one from the NFL, one from MLS and one from the NBA All Star game. Those are crazy as well, imagine watching a sports game while standing on the sidelines of a soccer field or sitting court side at a basketball game. I’d watch so much more sports if this became the norm. It’s an insane experience, standing there on the court and having an NBA player just walk by you, you really don’t realize how tall or big sports players are until you’re right there next to them. It’s also not just one view, in the 5min or so long videos Apple lets you experience the games from multiple angles and at different times. So when the NFL game ended you’re there on the pitch surrounded by people celebrating, at the NBA game if someone is taking a free throw your view point is from behind the basketball. It’s also all in 3D so when a ball comes flying past you, you duck.

So yeah, that’s my primary use for it. Every now and then someone releases a new game or app that tries something different and I try it out for the experience. The Reddit AVP community is great. Apple hasn’t sold a lot of AVP’s so the community is pretty small. There are a lot of developers active on the AVP subreddit and take feedback seriously and usually make the changes pretty quickly. Many of them are always looking for people to test out their apps and games as well, so it feels like a close-knit community from the old Internet back in the 90s.

Yesterday, Apple released a software update that allows you to have an ultra wide monitor when mirroring your Mac. Lots of people were looking forward to that update since it would help them with their workflow. Some people love the AVP for traveling, especially when staying at hotels. Everyone is kinda finding their own thing of what they want from the AVP which is pretty cool to see.

I definitely don’t think anyone should buy an AVP right now that’s for sure, it’s not ready for the mass, it’s still just for people who are willing to basically be beta testers and have lots of money to buy one. They did announce they’re launching the Apple Vision Pro in the UAE, so the next time you’re there, if you can get a demo I’d highly recommend it, just to get an idea of what the future could be like.

Yesterday COMFEST announced that Dacre Montgomery, the actor that plays Billy on the popular Netflix series Stranger Things is coming to Kuwait in September. Dacre is coming to take part in a meet and greet at the POPUP BY COMFEST event thats going to be taking place from September 26th to the 28th at the fair grounds. To stay posted on the event or to find out who else they might be bringing you can follow the COMFEST on Instagram @comfestcon

This is a bit of an odd one, but I haven’t used Google as my primary search engine in three months. Instead, I’ve been using a search engine called Kagi and I love it.

I first heard about Kagi through the blog Daring Fireball or maybe his podcast “The Talk Show“. I tried it out for a few days and liked it, so I subscribed and I’ve been using it since.

I like Google a lot obviously and I’ve been using it ever since they launched. My favorite search engine before Google was HotBot which was launched in 1996 by Wired Magazine, but I haven’t used anything other than Google since. I tried Bing, I tried DuckDuckGo but neither of them did anything for me.

This past year I’ve been experimenting with trying new things that could possibly improve my online experience. Earlier in the year I dropped my favorite browser Google Chrome for Apple’s Safari. It’s been nearly a year and it’s still something I’m getting used to. Google Chrome had become too bloated and on Macs, it drains the battery a lot quicker than Safari. So I dropped it. It was difficult at first mostly because of some extensions that are only available for Chrome, but it’s been a mostly positive experience and I’m glad I’m now using Safari. It’s so much faster and feels lighter.

With Google, my issue was that it became harder to find what I wanted quickly without having to first sift through a bunch of shitty websites that are filled with Ai generated content, or I have to dig past sponsored posts to get to what I want. So I decided to try Kagi and it works really really well.

I started with the free trial which is limited to 100 searches but I went through it really quickly. I then had the choice to pay 5$ a month for 300 searches, or 10$ for unlimited searches. I went with the unlimited searches which was the right choice because looking at my search usage, I’ve exceeded 300 searches every month.

Usage
Oct 2023: 739 searches
Nov 2023: 1319 searches
Dec 2023: 643 searches

Setting up Kagi as my primary search engine on Safari on the Mac and on my phone was a bit of a hassle since Safari doesn’t have Kagi as a search engine for me to pick from, but Kagi have an easy step by step guide which did the trick.

The experience has been really good, I mean it has to be if I’m paying 10$ a month for it instead of using the free Google. All the results I get are relevant all the time. I no longer, or at least very rarely get sent to one of those Ai generated sites and the whole search experience is ad free.

The only time I ever use Google is when I want to search for images. Images.google.com is still better than Kagi’s image search so I always check Kagi first, not find what I want and then head to images.google.

So yeah it’s weird but I don’t Google anymore and surprisingly it’s working out really well. The next step is to try to use Apple Maps over Google Maps just to see if there are any benefits, but I think that is going to be a struggle since Google Maps is pretty great at what it does.

If you want to check out Kagi, here is the link.

When I was a kid growing up in the 80s I got into the hobby of stamp collecting before eventually losing interest and moving on to videos games, music and the internet. Jasem on the other hand started collecting stamps when he was 10 and hasn’t stopped since.

I’ve know Jasem for nearly 20 years and although I knew he was into stamps, I didn’t realize how deep he was into this hobby until just a couple of weeks ago. Turns out he’s the largest stamp collector in Kuwait and one of the largest in the Middle East having over 400,000 stamps, and thats not counting duplicates!

When I first walked into his archive, a room with back to back shelves filled with stamp folders, my jaw dropped. The shelves were organized by country and in alphabetical order but there were also more focused folders revolving around themes like JFK, Oil & Gas, Chess, Flowers and more.

I had him pull out his Kuwait folders so I could go through some of Kuwait’s first stamps. One thing I discovered was that before Kuwait had their own stamps they used to overprint British and Indian stamps. Basically they were standard British and Indian stamps that they would overprint the word KUWAIT on them. Kuwait launched their own stamps in 1959 but used rupees until the Kuwaiti dinar was established as a currency in 1961. Jasem has all four kinds of those stamps, Indian and British overprints as well as the first Kuwait stamps in rupees and the first Kuwait stamps in dinars after. They’re incredibly interesting to see since they’re part of Kuwait’s history.

Thats one thing I love about stamps, a properly organized stamp collection is like a picture history book since every important part of a countries history would have been released as a stamp.

I asked Jasem what he was planning to do with his continuously growing collection but as of now he doesn’t have any plans. At the moment he’s just collecting while also trading and selling stamps he doesn’t need. Eventually I imagine he’s going to display them somehow for the public. When I was in Bahrain last year I passed by the Bahrain Post Museum and they had a small curated collection of rare stamps which were really interesting to go through. Hopefully he ends up setting something up like that, at least for the Kuwait stamps since I’m sure a lot of people who love to see them.

If you want to find out more about Jasem you can check out his website jasemali.com

Good Game, the popular tabletop gaming store which opened back in 2013 in Sanabil Tower has now moved back to Sanabil Tower (Google Maps) after previously moving to Salmiya. They didn’t move back into their old store in Sanabil but instead got another larger corner store. I wasn’t really a fan of the Salmiya location since it wasn’t very cozy but the new store sorts that out.

If you’re a fan of tabletop gaming or if you feel like getting into Dungeons & Dragons after watching Stranger Things, check them out @goodgamekw

The largest comic convention in Kuwait, COMFEST starts today but sadly yesterday it was announced that cosplayers would no longer be allowed at the event.

Cosplaying is when people dress up as characters from a film, book, or video game and is a huge part of comic conventions (pictured above). But, due to pressure from an official, they were told not to allow cosplaying since it went against sharia law, public morals, and local customs.

So now we can add cosplay to the growing list of things banned in Kuwait.

Good Game is having their first Pokémon Center Day this coming Tuesday. They’re hoping to provide Pokémon fans with a place to discuss all things Pokémon and even trade Pokémon cards. If you’re interested here are the details:

When: March 15, 2022
Where: Good Game Google Maps
Time: 6PM
Entry: Free

A couple of weeks ago when I posted about my Datsun, a reader suggested I install a hidden GPS tracker on it. I thought about it and it kinda made sense so I decided to see how much one would cost. After doing a lot of research, I ended up getting a GPS tracker called Tracki.

There were a number of reasons I chose Tracki including:
– it came with a sim card
– it would work worldwide
– the monthly subscription was around $14
– it has a 4 out 5 rating on Amazon with 24,000+ reviews
– the tracker cost only $10!

Other things I also looked at were battery life and what kind of connection it had, in this case, Tracki charged over normal micro-USB and battery life depended on how often I wanted it to ping back the location. For example, if I wanted to update the location every 2 hours, then the battery life would last 12-15 days. If I wanted the location to be updated every 6 hours then the battery life would last 22-26 days. On the other hand, if I wanted live tracking where the tracker would update the location every few minutes, then battery life would only last 3-5 days.

The battery life clearly isn’t that great but there is a simple workaround. You could either hardwire the tracker into your car either by getting an adapter to plug it into your OBD port (most new cars have it), or you could run a USB cable to the tracker from your cars USB port of fusebox, that way whenever the car is on it’s charging your tracker. In my case, I decided I would just strap a power bank to it. I have a few laying around the house that I don’t use and one is more than enough to keep the tracker running for a couple of months. Even if I have to swap the battery out every month that wouldn’t be too much of an issue.

So does it work? Yeah, it does. At any time I can just launch the Tracki app and check and see where my car is or where it was. So not only can I know where my car is at any given moment, but I can also view the history of where it’s been. That’s useful if say your car was stolen and then taken and parked somewhere underground. You could at least track the car before it went underground. And then if say for some reason the tracker can’t get you an accurate GPS point, it can continue to give you a rough idea of where it is using wifi or cell towers to triangulate its location.

Attaching the tracker to your car is very easy, you can either use the magnet on the back of the unit to attach it to a metal surface, or use the double-sided tape that came with it to stick it somewhere. If you’re connecting it to the collar of your pet, you could use the rubber case which has a lanyard or keychain hole in it.

There are a couple of negatives with Track the first being the Tracki app. It just feels over-complicated and buggy. For example, sometimes I try to save settings and get an error when in reality it actually saved the settings. Also, battery life is probably the biggest issue. Not sure if it’s because I was playing with the settings too much or what exactly, but I have the tracker set up to update the location every 4 hours which means the battery life should last 18-22 days, but it ended up lasting me just a week. It’s not that big of a deal since I’ll be strapping a battery pack to it, but if you’re using the tracker say to track your pet, you can’t really attach a battery pack to it. One more thing that is annoying is that 1 subscription covers 1 device. So if you get a tracker for all your cars you don’t get to share an account or even a discounted rate.

If you’re interested in getting Tracki, the price on Amazon fluctuates between $9.88 and $14.88. Amazon can also ship the device to you directly and that cost me an additional $21.59. You could ship it to your Aramex Shop&Ship account and pay less but I didn’t want to wait that long. Here is the link to Tracki on Amazon.com

There is a Turkish restaurant in Avenues called Seyami Usta that now accepts cryptocurrency as a means of payment. They’re the first local business I’m aware of that accepts cryptocurrency and it’s odd that it’s a restaurant and a Turkish one at that. Payment is done through Binance Pay and is only available at their Avenues location.

If you’ve been there and paid with crypto, let us know how your experience went.

Thanks abalawadhi

A reader shared some photos of an old Sinclair game he still had which he purchased from a computer store in Kuwait back in the early 80s. The store was called AL RUSHAID and the tape had the following info on it:

AL RUSHAID Trading & Contracting Co. (RTC)
P.O. Box 25443, Safat-Kuwait
Tel: 412404, Telex: 23721 KT

He also had this info to share (I’ve edited it slightly):

While I do remember the computer store at the Salhia complex and it was my favourite shop for a while (and my description on your website remains the way I remember it), I am not sure the branded cassette I’ve shared is from the store at Salhiha. There was another nearby computer store that I used to visit as well which also used to sell ZX Spectrums and games. I couldn’t tell you the street name, but I think it was on the main shopping street, somewhere between The Grand Stores, Salhia Complex, and Al Muthanna Complex. Definitely, it was not near Al-Sharq Tower because that was far away from the shopping area.

Another thing you probably know is when Al-the Khalejia department stores first opened, they used to have a small section that sold computers like the ZX Spectrum, they had some original games on sale. I think the computer section didn’t last long and it disappeared sometime later.

Later around 1985 I used to get games for my computer by visiting the Hilton Hotel, there was an international magazine shop inside the hotel that used to sell computer magazines from the UK, there were several ones for the ZX Spectrum (and the Commodore 64). Many of these magazines came with a free demo cassette with free games and previews of upcoming games.

best regards
Sufian

PS. My parents were expats in Kuwait, and I lived there until I was 18, then left abroad to the US to study, and then moved to Belgium as my mom is from Belgium. I still have lots of my school books from Kuwait in Arabic, and other things that I grabbed with me when I left Kuwait in 1988.

Since the game was branded RTC I thought it might be the same RTC as the electronics shop in Hawally since according to their about us page they’ve been around since 1983. But after talking to RTC Electronics I was told pre-1990 they were called Babel so they’re not the same place. If anyone remembers where Al Rushaid was or have any info on it, let me know!

Update: Found a news clipping and an ad in an old Kuwait Times newspaper

Recently I started having lower back pain and after visiting the doctor I decided based on his recommendation to work on improving my posture, mostly when sitting in front of the computer. Like most people, I tend to hunch over the computer and I wanted to stop doing that so the first thing I did was get a posture corrector strap. A posture corrector strap kinda looks like a gun holster you see detectives wear on TV shows under their suits, just minus the gun. Although it did its job in keeping me from slouching, it wasn’t comfortable to wear for long periods, and depending on what you’re wearing, it could be visible.

I then found out about the Upright GO 2 through a friend of mine, a tiny device you stick to your back and monitors your posture. Whenever you start slouching it buzzes. My friend recommended it so I ended up ordering one for myself.

The Upright GO is super easy to set up. All you need to do is attach it to your back and then connect to it via Bluetooth and an app on your phone. You then sit or stand upright and hit the calibrate button in the app and that’s it, you’re set. It takes around a second or two but once the device calibrates it starts recognizing your movement when you slouch or hunch over. Anytime you exceed a certain angle threshold for more than a few seconds, the device buzzes gently to make you aware that hey, you’re hunching over.

The device is really tiny which is why I used my AirPods for scale in these photos. It’s also very lightweight and so whenever I stick it on my back I can’t tell it’s even there. The reusable adhesive on the back of the device uses a medical-grade sticky silicon, and in my case, it lasts for 7 days. After the 7th day, it no longer is as sticky and I swap the adhesive with a new one. The device came with 10 adhesives so it should be good enough for nearly 3 months of use since I don’t wear it on weekends.

Does it work? Yes, it does!

After using it now for two weeks I noticed my posture has improved. Not only that but because I hate the buzzing so much, even when I’m not wearing the Upright GO I still have the fear it will buzz. There is a bit of PTSD involved because even when I’m not wearing the unit, out of habit I expect my back to buzz anytime I hunch over. So I’ve mentally started recognizing when I start to hunch over and right away straighten up.

The Upright with the help of the app tracks your posture throughout the day and in my case, I recognized I am worse when I’m at the office. When I’m home on my computer I have a very ergonomic TOM chair that offers great back support and keeps me sitting up straight. When I’m at the office I sit on a regular chair with no back support so I tend to slouch and hunch over my laptop. But looking at my data over the past couple of weeks I can see that I have improved overall.

There are two versions of the Upright GO, the original version which is larger, has a shorter battery life and cheaper, and the Upright GO 2 which has a longer battery life, is much smaller but also slightly more expensive. I bought the Upright GO 2 for $99 from Amazon but I noticed it’s now selling for $79 and I’ve even seen it as low as $69. An extra pack of adhesives costs $9. If you don’t want to stick it on your back there is a necklace you can buy that attaches to the Upright GO but I haven’t tried it. The Upright comes with a small case that holds an extra adhesive and it’s where you are meant to put the unit when you’re not wearing it. Battery life on the Upright GO 2 is 35 hours so I only charge it once every few days.

The Upright is not something I’d wear for more than a couple of months at a time, it’s a behavioral training device and as I get the hang of not hunching over I’ll stop wearing it. When I see myself starting to hunch over again I’ll star wearing it again. If you want to get one, here is the link to Amazon.

Back in 2019, I posted a review of the KEF LSX Wireless Speakers which I fell in love with. Since that review, I had been using them with my record player and a few weeks ago I bought an SVS SB-2000 Pro subwoofer to pair with them. For some reason, my record player and the sub didn’t get along really well, when I’d stream music onto the speakers from my phone they sounded incredible with the sub, but when I played any record, I’d get a really low deep humming bass note that was just awful.

I couldn’t return the subwoofer (and didn’t want to honestly) so I decided to get a second pair of LSX speakers to connect to my main computer and the sub. I had been using my old Onkyo home theater amp connected to a pair of Bose Acoustimass 5 Series III speakers with my Mac and although they sounded a bit boomy sometimes, they weren’t bad at all, I was just looking for an excuse to get new KEF LSX speakers after seeing them on sale. When I posted about the KEF LSX back in 2019 they were selling for 340KD but, Xcite have been heavily discounting their speakers (I got my KEF R7’s for 50% off) and the LSX were now on sale for KD250, so I picked up a pair of white ones.

These are probably the best speakers you can get for your computer. You can read my original review where I discuss why they are so good, but the experience of using them with my Mac is so unreal. Although the speakers are located on the corners of my desk, the sound feels like it comes straight out of my iMac in front of me. On more than one occasion I’d bring my ear up to my Mac to make sure the sound wasn’t really coming from there. I think it has to do with KEF’s phase correction or DSP but you really need to hear it to believe it, I love it. Also just to add, the LSX alone already sounded great but paired up with the SVS sub and I started to semi regret not getting this combo for my gym instead of the R7 and saving a ton of money (but not really cuz I also love my R7’s a lot).

If you were interested in the LSX speakers previously but thought they were too expensive, check them out now. They don’t have many in stock right now and I think I got the last boxed white pair but worst case you could pick up a display model. Also, the Xcite website says they’re all out of stock but they aren’t really, my white ones were out of stock online but they still had stock in-store in addition to the display models. Just make sure you go to the large Xcite on the 4th Ring Road in Al-Rai or the Avenues location next to IKEA since these are the only two locations that carry them.

Update: 6 months later I have to say, my LSX 50 paired up with the SVS SB-2000 is such a great combo and can easily hold its own versus my much more expensive KEF R7 speakers. When it comes to bass, there is no competition, the LSX SVS combo beats the R7 easily so if you’re into electronic music, this is the setup to have.

I posted a few days ago that I recently got a new Espresso Machine, but unlike my previous one, my new machine doesn’t have the option to turn on automatically every morning. It doesn’t sound like a big thing but espresso machines need around 30 minutes to heat up properly which is an eternity when all I want is my morning coffee. So I decided to my first smart plug to automate the morning process for me.

I haven’t really had a need for any home automation product but since I got my first smart plug, I’ve now bought a second one and just about to order my third. These things are pretty practical and super easy to set up. I ended up getting the Eufy Smart Plug since I found it readily available locally and it was the same brand as my RoboVac which meant I didn’t have to install a new app on my phone.

The way the smart plug works is you plug it into a power socket and then plug a device into it like my coffee machine. You then connect the smart plug to your wifi network and access its settings using an app. With the app, I set up a schedule for my coffee machine to turn on every morning at 6:30AM so that the machine is ready for me to use when I wake up at 7. I also use the app to manually turn on the machine in the afternoon before I leave the office. That way by the time I get home my machine is ready to use.

The smart plug has a number of other features including the ability to monitor the uptime of your devices, how much electricity they consumed, and the smart plug can also integrate with both Google Home and Amazon Alexa. I have my second smart plug connected to a floor lamp in my bedroom so I can now turn it off before I go to sleep with a voice command.

The only issue I have with the smart plug really is the price. It costs KD11.5 which isn’t cheap especially if you want to have a few of them around the house. It’s also fairly bulky so if you have a plug say behind the couch or a dresser, you’re gonna have a very tight squeeze if it manages to fit at all. If you’re interested in picking one up, I got mine from Blink.