Category: Geek

If you’re into comic books and graphic novels you really don’t have that many options in Kuwait. Azgardian is a small store dedicated to just comics and according to them, they’re the first comic book store in Kuwait. The store is located in Rihab Complex but they also have a delivery service if you don’t want to drive into Hawalli. For more information and to check out some of their collection, visit their instagram account [Here]

I wasn’t planning on posting about the DJI Spark until I got to use it on my upcoming trip, but because of the amount of interest I got on it from my instagram story and twitter over the weekend, I decided I’d at least post my first impression. First full disclosure, DJI released the Spark last month and when I saw Xcite had a preorder page for it, I got in touch with them and asked them if they could send me one over to review. They couldn’t get me a Spark from their first shipment since it quickly sold out, but Thursday they got in touch with me to let me know they secured me a drone from their second shipment and I passed by and picked it up.

The DJI Spark is tiny, like super tiny. Its around the same size as my iPhone 6 and it weighs just 300 grams. But don’t let the size fool you, this isn’t an indoor drone and it’s packed with advanced features of its older brothers. I’m not going to go into too many details since there are a ton of YouTube videos that do that, but I will highlight some things in this post which I think are cool.

There are three ways to control the Spark, either with your phone, with the optional remote, or using hand gestures. The last one is a bit of a gimmick but it works and it can be useful.

Hand Gestures
The Spark has a sensor at the front that will recognize your face and then detect your hand gestures which you can use to control the drone. You wave goodbye at the drone and it will fly up and hover away from you. You want it to snap a photo of you? Just give it the correct gesture and it will take your photo. This is pretty cool because it keeps things simple for those who don’t want more out of the drone other than snapping selfies. You can watch the video above of how this works.

Using Your Phone
The Spark doesn’t come with a remote control, instead you can download an app onto your phone and use it to control the drone using wifi. This means you don’t have to carry a remote around which keeps the Spark portable. The only downside is that the Spark’s flight height is limited to 50 meters and the flight range to just 100m when using the phone due to the wifi’s limited range. The top speed is also limited to 20km/h.

Remote Control
The first thing I did after picking up the Spark was buy the optional remote control. Personally I can’t use virtual control sticks in apps, maybe I’m old fashioned but I like physical buttons and joysticks. The second reason I wanted to get the remote control was because it increases the flight height from 50m to 500m and the flight range from 100m up to 2KM. That’s a HUGE increase. With the remote control you can also put the drone into sport mode which increases the top speed to 50kmh. Really impressive specs for something so freakin tiny. I still can’t believe how high it can fly.

I spent the weekend playing around with the Spark and as a complete drone newbie, I did find the experience overwhelming at first but that’s probably because I didn’t read any instructions and just winged it. Friday morning I woke up early and headed to my favorite open area in the desert to take some photos. There was an overcast so my photos were coming out very flat and dull, but I did manage to take one photo which I added to my instagram story. Saturday morning I decided to take the drone near Scientific Center and fly it there, that was a pretty scary experience because when I told the drone to come home and land, I freaked out because I got worried it would decide to land in the sea. It did’t thankfully and instead came back down to it’s original launching point. That same afternoon I wanted to see if I could fly the drone from my hand and then have it land back in my hand when I was done, all without having to leave my car. It worked! Because the drone is so tiny you could use your palm as a launch and landing pad.

If you’re a beginner like me, the drone has a bunch of automated and smart flying modes that will make your videos look professionally shot including:

Active Track: You highlight the subject you want the Spark to follow and it will follow it
Tripod: Keeps the drone stable and slow allowing you to film cinematic shots
Rocket: Starts filming you from eye level and then flies straight up while still focusing on you
Dronie: Starts filming you from eye level and then angles out and away from you while still keeping you in focus
Circle: The Spark films you while rotating around you
Helix: Rocket + Circle combined

Battery life is my only issue with the Spark so far. The total flight time is just 16 minutes which isn’t a lot especially if you factor in the time it will take you to get to the height you want, position your drone and also the amount of time the drone needs to fly back down to you. You’re definitely gonna need more batteries and I already ordered 2 from Amazon and they’ll be waiting for me in L.A. when I get there end of the week.

Overall I love this little thing. It kinda feels like having an invisible photographer friend with you everywhere you go. When I went out to the desert to take some photos, I tried the active tracking feature and had the Spark follow my car around shooting video of it while I was driving. In the winter when I go snowboarding I could have the Spark follow me shooting video of me face planting all the way down the slope. It’s tiny and light enough to take everywhere with you which is why I’m looking forward to using it on my trip.

If you’re interested in the DJI Spark, Xcite are selling them for KD169. Here is the [Link]

If you’re interested in coding electronics and are looking for Arduino or Respberry Pi kits, RTC Electronics in Hawalli have kits as well as a pretty decent selection of components to go along with them. I’ve posted about RTC on this blog before, they’re a large electronics supply store and they really have everything you could think of from transistors to equipments for events.

Their prices aren’t that cheap though, the Raspberry Pi3 kit costs KD32 (includes a case, hdmi cable, power adapter and SD card) while the Genuino starter kit costs around KD35. But like I mentioned, they also carry components like RGB color sensors, servo controllers, temperature and humidity sensors just to name a few and those wouldn’t be worth buying online, not unless you were shipping them with other stuff since they don’t cost much anyway.

If you’re interested in passing by RTC, here is their location on [Google Maps]

Update: Just found out you can also find Raspberry and Arduino kits locally [Here]

Like with the pager in my previous post, while going through old boxes at my parents place I also found a bunch of old Video8 camcorder tapes. Luckily I also found my old camcorder and although the battery no longer works, the camcorder still functions properly when plugged into power. So last night I decided to digitize some old tapes.

If you want to digitize your old videos that are on VHS tapes or camcorder tapes, its actually not that complicated to do so. I’m using the Elgato Video Capture which I bought around 7 years back and it works on both Mac’s and PC’s. The way it works is also pretty simple:

1) Plug the Elgato device into your computers USB port
2) Connect your old VCR or camcorder to the Elgato just like you would to your TV
3) Run the Elgato software on your computer and press record
4) Press play on your VCR or camcorder
5) Thats it. Once your’d done click stop and the software saves the file

So if you’ve got old tapes lying around it’s really not that hard to digitize them and if its important stuff, I’d try and get it done as soon as possible. Here is the Amazon link to the Elgato video capture device I use [Link]

Cosplay (コスプレ kosupure), a contraction of the words costume play, is a performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture and a broader use of the term “cosplay” applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage.

The video above by UrbanQ8 is of all the cosplay from last months ComFest event that took place here in Kuwait. From all the previous videos and photos of similar events I’ve seen, it looks like the local cosplay scene is growing pretty rapidly and I’d say we’ve got a pretty legit scene at the moment. It’s also not male dominant as you’d imagine it being, it’s probably close to a 50/50 split. [YouTube]

It’s been almost two months since the release of the Nintendo Switch and in this latest podcast we discuss our overall impressions of the console, why we’re loving it, what issues we’ve had with it and how its changed our gaming habits.

Play in Browser | iTunes | Android | Download | RSS

Post by Patrick

A few days ago a friend asked me how I backup my computer files and I realized its a subject other people might be interested in. Everyone should have some sort of backup and if you aren’t backing up your files then you should get on it asap. My setup is a bit complicated just because I’m extra safe and super paranoid about hard drives failing and files getting deleted. So, I currently have all my data backed up to the following:

In my house:
2 x 1TB External Hard Drives
10TB Synology 5-Bay Server (pictured above)

Cloud Storage:
Apple iCloud
Amazon Glacier
Microsoft OneDrive

For those of you who don’t know what Cloud storage is, it’s basically storage over the internet.

Home Backup
First just to give you an idea of what I’m doing at home in terms of backing up. I have two Macs, my main workstation which is an iMac, and my MacBook Pro laptop which I use mostly for browsing the web and working on client designs every now and then. I don’t backup my laptop since I don’t save any files on it but my iMac on the other hand gets backed up daily onto two external hard drives. Why two? Because in case one drive fails, I have a backup drive. What doesn’t get backed up onto this hard drive are my clients design files. I do freelance branding work and all my clients files are stored on my 5-bay server. The reason for this is so I could access them from both my computers at home and also access the files from anywhere over internet (my server is connected online). The server has 5 drives but 1 drive is a safety net, so in case one drive fails on the server, the 5th one saves the day and I don’t lose any of my clients work. So when it comes to backing up locally at home I’m pretty much doing ok, but I also feel a lot more comfortable knowing all my important files are also saved to the Cloud.

Apple iCloud
The only important files my iMac has is my iPhoto library that contains nearly half a million photos. Basically nearly all the photos I’ve ever taken since my first digital camera. Because I’m pretty paranoid about losing the photos, other than the two hard drives the photos get backed up onto daily, I also back my photos onto Apple’s iCloud. That way in case my house burns down, I still have access to my photos. The reason I am using iCloud and not another service is because its one of the few ways to retain the file structure of the image library. It’s also the easiest way of backing up my photos to the Cloud.

Amazon Glacier
Now another thing you should know about me, I hate deleting files, I have nearly every file I’ve created or downloaded since the late 90s. I guess I’m a digital hoarder of a sort. I don’t have any use for these files anymore other than for nostalgic reasons and so these files are located on my home server which I can access anytime I’m looking for anything specific. Just to be safe I’ve also backed up these files onto the Cloud. They aren’t files that get updated and they aren’t files that I need access to frequently so I’m using Amazon’s Glacier service to back them up into the Cloud. Amazon offer a number of Cloud options, Glacier is their cheapest one but comes with limitations like it takes 3-5 hours to retrieve a file from the Cloud. But since I only need to retrieve data in case of a server failure at home, that isn’t a big deal. How cheap is Amazon Glacier? $0.007 $0.004 per gigabyte per month, so around 100fils a month for 70GB.

Microsoft OneDrive
Finally, I use Google Drive to backup all my clients branding work. I have my home server setup to backup all my clients files onto the Cloud every 30 minutes. This has a number of benefits. For one it’s a safety measure, in case something happens to my server at home, my clients files are safe in the Cloud. The second benefit is in case of a power outage. Last year I faced a number of long power outages in my neighborhood and during one incident I was working on a clients project. I ended up having to push back a deadline (I never pushback deadlines) because my iMac switched off and so did my server so I didn’t have access to the files. If I had my files on OneDrive as well, I could have just gotten on my laptop, connected online and gotten access to my clients files and continued working on them. The reason I’m using OneDrive and not Google Drive for this is because I get 1TB of storage with my Microsoft Office monthly membership. I could use Google Drive, I have no personal preference they’re both great.

So what should you use?
I don’t think there is one solution that fits everyone, it really depends on what you want to do and what you want to backup. Mac users will probably find iCloud the most convenient but because it doesn’t give me much control I actually find iCloud super complicated to use. I barely understand how the whole iCloud photo sharing/backup system work and I’m constantly worried I’ll click on a wrong button and end up wiping out all my photos. So iCloud freaks me out that way.

Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive would probably be the easiest for majority of users. Everyone has a Gmail account so you already have Google Drive and if you’re legally using Microsoft Office, then you also already have OneDrive. You can use both these services like external hard drives where you just drag and drop folders and files onto them or use software to automatically backup your files daily or as often as you like onto them. At the very very very least, if you’re not backing your stuff onto the Cloud you should be backing up your files onto an external hard drive. It’s super easy to do, on Mac’s you just plug in a new empty hard drive and it will ask you if you want to use it as a backup drive, that’s how easy it is so there is no reason why you shouldn’t be backing up your files.

Let me know if you have any questions.

After a long hiatus Double Jump is finally back. When we launched the podcast we were following an uninspired format that was problematic for a couple of reasons. Recording once every week was an issue and so the topics we’d discuss were outdated by the time we sat down to talk about them. We took a break to figure out what direction we wanted to take the podcast in. What we decided on is to focus more on conversational topics that we think are worth discussing and that are less time sensitive.

In this weeks episode we talk about video game piracy and how it influenced our taste in video games growing up. What genre’s or what games we played that we normally would not have tried if we had to pay full price. Back in the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s, piracy in the Middle East was the norm and it was everywhere. As kids we didn’t know any better and our parents didn’t really care, it was something we were all used too. You’d go to Rihab and the majority of the stores sold pirated games until it evolved into what it is today.

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Posted by Patrick

Yesterday I noticed Fantasy World was selling the Oculus Rift virtual reality system. I’m not sure they’re being sold anywhere else but the price at Fantasy World is a ridiculous KD399. I say ridiculous because you could order it from Amazon UK and have it shipped to you directly to Kuwait for just KD194 including customs which is half the price. Here is the Amazon [Link]

BitOasis, the UAE based Bitcoin exchange backed by the DCG (Digital Currency Group) out of New York have now added support for KNET and exchanging bitcoin into Kuwaiti Dinars.

Bitcoin has many benefits and is considered by many the future of currency. Some of the advantages of Bitcoin include anonymity during purchase, meaning there is no digital trace linking a person to a transaction, similar to when paying for an item in cash. Another advantage is that nobody owns Bitcoin, not an individual, not a company, not a government, bank or any other financial institute. This means no one can freeze your account, take any money from it or stop you from performing transactions.

If you’re interested, check out the BitOasis website [Here]

Thanks Abdullateef

No Man’s Sky is a exploration and survival game that takes place in a procedurally generated universe that features 18 quintillion planets. You have your own space ship that allows you to fly from planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy, discovering new planets, animals and plants, while trading with various different races.

The game starts off by placing you on a random planet with a broken spaceship. Your first task is to look for resources to help you repair your ship and take off from the planet. This first area serves as a light tutorial that should help you get a grip on the games loop. After you successfully take off from the first planet, the universe opens up to you and you can either choose to follow on the games set path to the center of the universe or you can choose travel to any galaxy and any planet you like as long as you have the fuel.

The problem with having procedurally generated content though is that a players experience is based off luck and chance. I’ve seen people complain that planets look the same, feel the same and there is truth in that, but my personal experience has differed. I’ve been lucky enough to discover a wide variety of planets, ranging from planets that have nearly zero life on them with intense weather to planets teeming with life. So even though I’ve seen planets that look similar, I’ve also been lucky enough to see enough variety that I’m still interested in exploring and taking screenshots of planets I like.

IKEA Kuwait now have their wireless charging range available including their wireless charging pads and furniture with built-in wireless charging spots. I read about these products last year but didn’t think they were launching them so soon. You can now for example buy a bedside lamp that includes a wireless charging spot so in the evening all you need to do is put your phone on the lamp base and it will start charging. It’s simpler than having to plug your phone into a charger and it also means less wire clutter.

Some phones already have wireless charging built in but if your phone doesn’t (like iPhones) then you’re going to have to purchase one of their covers to use with their furniture. If this interests you, here is a link to the IKEA Kuwait product page which has more information on it. [Link]

The official second episode of Double Jump has been delayed indefinitely because one of my co-hosts just got married. So until things settle back down with him, here’s a solo episode I recorded a while back. In the podcast I discuss a few 3DS games I’ve been playing, the closure of Lionhead Studios and the Nintendo Direct. Recording solo was a challenge since I’m used to having discussions with co-hosts, but it was an interesting experience nevertheless. Talking to myself for half an hour felt like I was back in school presenting a project to a class.

We’ll be recording “.5” episodes whenever there’s a lull in recording either due to busy schedules or if we have a few ideas that don’t fit into the main show. Recording this episode made me realize that I’d have to use a different format than the one we use for our full episodes so instead of discussing what I’m playing and the news, solo episodes will focus on one specific topic. So until we get back on track with our main show, I’ll be recording more solo episodes and should have another one recorded this week.

Until then, enjoy!

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Post by Patrick

I’ve been interested in Podcasts for the longest time but I was always hesitant to get into it because I’m more of a writer than a speaker. But then I ended up meeting some of the guys from the LuckyGG Arabic gaming podcast who encouraged me to take a chance and start my own Podcast especially since there aren’t many English podcasts about video games in this region.

I co-created the podcast with Yaqoub Al- Hussaini who is one of the hosts of LuckyGG and we’re also joined by Abdullah Boushehri also from LuckyGG. The goal of Double Jump is to discuss games we’ve been playing, news that we find interesting and regional news that we feel like our listeners would be interested in. The goal is to record an episode a week and publish it every Wednesday. These episodes will be two hours long.

I’m also planning on recording Double Jump episodes where I’m on my own and some episodes with a different co-host each week but this is still a work in progress, hopefully I’ll be able to start publishing those episodes sometimes mid-March.

We recorded and published our first episode last week and I’ve linked to it at the end of this post. We’re learning as we go and I think Yaqoub and Abdullah both did a great job especially since English isn’t their first language. I also appreciate the fact that they’re willing to go out of their comfort zone for me. I’m learning a lot after listening to just this one episode and feedback is always welcomed so feel free to leave a comment with suggestions or thoughts.

In this first episode we discuss a variety of games, mainly The Division Beta and Street Fighter V. We also discuss some major news that came out these past few weeks like the pricing of the HTC Vive. Our first episode is available everywhere!

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Posted by Patrick

Last week Huawei sent me to CES 2016 in Las Vegas to cover the experience for my blog. The Consumer Electronics Show is one of the largest electronics shows that takes place during the year and the largest event that takes place in Las Vegas period. If you checked any electronics or gadgets blog last week like Gizmodo or The Verge then you were probably overwhelmed by all the CES related posts that they published. Well I’m not going to do the same here, instead I’m going to highlight just some of my favorite things I saw at CES this year.

The whole experience was insane since the Las Vegas Convention Center is HUMONGOUS. I thought the watch expo Basel World was huge when I visited it in 2013 but CES is so much larger. It’s hard to explain how big it is, I mean just the lobby of one of the halls was larger than any of the halls at the Kuwait International Fair Ground. CES was so huge that it took me more than 2 hours of fast walking to cover all the halls and then after I left I found out I had even missed one hall completely. There was so much stimulation everywhere I looked that I felt like I was having out of body experience at one point.

Anyway, below are some of the things that stuck out for me, if you follow me on twitter (@mark248am) then you’ve probably already seen most of the below but with less details.