Category: Information

I got a nice surprise today morning, a little cupcake from Little Treats. Turns out they are opening a store at the beginning of the month so they sent me and my partner at work an invite for the opening day. Their store is going to be located on the mezzanine floor in the Wataniya Complex in Salmiya. I think thats the small shopping center across the street from NBK. If you don’t know what Little Treats is you can check out my previous post on them. [Link]

It takes 8.5 minutes for the light from the sun to reach the earth. I just found that out, I was expecting it to take much longer. [Source]

Oh and I am currently watching a movie called Sunshine.

A friend just sent me a link to this site which is basically a Kuwait route planner. I typed in Ikea as my start point and Ace Hardware as my destination and to my surprise it gave me directions. [Link]

Thanks Holla!

This post is a bit technical but its meant to be a small guide for bloggers who want to post using their phones.

The past two days I have been experimenting with different softwares and ways of moblogging. The easiest way I found to moblog was with a software for my Nokia called Shozu. It’s very easy to use, I just take a picture and a small window pops up asking me if I want to send it to my blog. I could then click yes and it sends it or I click on more options and add more details like a subject title and body copy. But I had two problems with Shozu. The first one is the fact that it resized my images down to a thumbnail size and you could only see the larger picture by clicking on the link. I didn’t like that and there was no option to change it. The second problem I had was that since the software is free, Shozu places their logo at the end of your posts. I also didn’t like that, they should at least have an option where if you pay for the software they remove the logo but they don’t so I looked for an alternative.

After a bit of experimentation and googling I found a better solution (for me at least). It’s not as practical as Shozu but I am in total control of everything. I decided to go with the Blog by Email route and here is what I did:

1) Created two new email accounts
2) Got a plugin for wordpress called Postie
3) Got a software for my Nokia called Resco Viewer

I setup one email account on my Nokia to send emails from. The second email account would be the one I would send my posts to. I then installed the Postie plugin in WordPress which is a must have plugin if you are planning to blog by email. Firstly, Postie allows u to attach pictures and videos to your emails and then posts them for you. it also gives you a lot of other options for example Postie has an option where it could palce the image above or below the body copy, I chose above so it would match my regular posts. Postie could also resize your images and compress them before it posts them which is really important if you can’t resize images on your phone. Finally I purchased the software Resco Viewer for my Nokia. With my phones camera I have two size options when it comes to taking pictures, 1600×1200 and 640×480. The max size for images on my blog is 400 pixels wide. If I wanted to I could take pictures at 640×480 and have Postie resize them for me but by resizing the pictures myself on the phone and compressing the images slightly, the file sizes would be a lot small meaning it would be cheaper for me since I pay per kilobyte.

So the process now goes something like this:
1) I take a picture on my phone at 1600×1200 pixels
2) I resize the image to 400×300 and compress it
3) I send an email to my blog and attach the resized image
4) Postie checks my email constantly, when it finds an email it posts it on the blog under the category Moblogging

Now the biggest problem is my phone doesn’t have a spell checker to expect a ton of misspellings. So thats basically how I will be moblogging while in Paris. I will continue to post regular posts but the photo ones are meant to be something new and something I haven’t done on this blog yet. It should prove to be entertaining.

This is really fucked up! Two bloggers, Bashar Al-Sayegh and Jassim Al-Qames were attacked and taken into custody by the secret police. The reason? Some anonymous reader posted an inappropriate comment about the Amir. Now the thing is Bashar deleted the comment once he read it but he was still held accountable. That’s really freaky, if two Kuwaitis got arrested and beaten up by the police for a comment by an anonymous user what chance do I or many of us expat bloggers have?

Q8SWS has more information and details on this incident. [Link]

I should have posted this awhile back but I totally forgot. This is a documentary by Michael Moore from 1994 when he came to Kuwait. [YouTube]

Thanks RJV!

Did anyone check out the back page of Al-Watan newspaper today? There is an advert for these two Kuwaiti magicians who recently made a helicopter disappear in Las Vegas. The magic duo go by the name Majstick and I checked out their website and they don’t have the video of their helicopter disappearing trick but they do have videos of other tricks like a bouncing tissue and a floating ball. I took the courtesy of uploading their videos to YouTube to make it more available to everyone, you can check out their magic tricks by following the links below.

The tricks:
MajBall
MajTissue
MajStick

You can check out their website for more information on them. [Link]

Thanks Holla!

I mix these two up all the time. [Link]
For a full list of common errors in English check this [Link]

What losers! [Link]

A site with guides on how to get rid of common annoyances like how to get rid of bad smells or how to get rid of headaches. Lots of information on a wide range of issues. [Link]

Remember I posted about the vintage Matchbox car that was selling for $300 on eBay? Well I checked the status of the auction today and it turns out the car ended up selling for $1,385! [Link]

This is a documentary that was uploaded to YouTube by NiceQ8i on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The documentary has tons and tons of footage taken after the war showing all the devastation that took place. Even if you don’t have time to view it all at least try to skim through it.

Documentary part 1
Documentary part 2
Documentary part 3
Documentary part 4
Documentary part 5

Image taken from GulfWar

Last month I posted about how Bazaar used an illustration for the cover of their dining guide without crediting the illustrator, without paying for the image and without permission from the artist. They replied thanking me for finding the artist and that they contacted him and were going to reimburse him.

Well they did contact him but the amount they offered to pay the artist was just $200. Considering that rights managed images start at a $1000 and upwards then you could imagine how low $200 is. Anyway the original artist had this to say about the whole incident:

I have been invited to comment the case with Bazaar copying an image that once was created by me. The image was used without my permission. I was therefore never compensated financially and for good reasons I assume that I was never mentioned in the credit line. I was made aware of the unauthorized usage before Bazaar contacted me.

When they contacted me they offered to compensate me financially. I am sure they found that the compensation was fair but I have a different opinion. In fact we are in a position where we don’t seem to be able to reach an agreement. I have therefore decided that it is not worth to take this any further due to the cost and time that I would have to spend on this.

I have also decided that I will not accept money that Bazaar offers me since that would be accepting the terms of how they have used my image. So case is closed.

I think it is vital to defend the copyright law for many different reasons. In most countries it is seen as self-evident that you shouldn’t use an image without paying for the copyright, but from what I can tell by following the debate on this website I understand that Q8 might not be one of those countries. The sad thing is that in countries where the copyright law is not taken seriously the originator has little or no chance at all to protect his work.

I am a freelance illustrator and my only source of income is the images I create. I have a family to support and bills to pay. If I manufactured, let’s say bikes and someone took one of my bikes form the warehouse and used it without telling me, how would you characterize that? Should the unauthorized use of images be treated differently?

I have been featured on design blogs all over the world. I take it that most of the people who are publishing my work there are very young. But they all have something in common – they contact me before or shortly after publishing my images and very often they write “Copyright Bo Lundberg” . What is it that they understand and that some publishers don’t?

Another aspect is that when I create an image it is commissioned by a client. They are paying for the usage of the images. To illustrate what can happen when people copy my images I would like to give an example. Once I had a call from a publisher in the US that I had done more than 80 illustrations for. They were extremely upset with me since they had found all my illustrations in another book printed in Asia and now they were contemplating on suing me. What had happened was that someone just ripped my images from the original book and created a whole new book, obviously without informing me. I managed to reason with the original client but as you might understand it was quite a situation to have been copied and then facing a possible trial.

I wish all the designers in Q8 good luck in your efforts. And to those who commission work I would just like to ask you to think twice before using an image without authorization. In the long run – who wants to work as an illustrator or photographer if you are not compensated and protected by copyright law?

Bo Lundberg

The reason I think we have a big problem here is because Bazaar is one of the biggest and most respected magazines in Kuwait. If they aren’t going to abide by copyright laws and set an example to the smaller publishers who will? They might as well do what Campus Cruise did and just take pictures off flickr and put them on the cover.

Since its my day off today I decided to go and change the tires on my Wrangler. After a bit of searching I landed at Dunlop and ended up getting my tires from there. I wasn’t planning to get Dunlops but they had a really great offer where if you buy 3 tires they give you the 4th for free. The offer is going on until mid September if anyone is interested and they are located opposite Ace Hardware.

Are you at risk of burning out because of your job? This is a quick test (just 15 questions to answer) to find out. With all the crazy load I currently have, I was surprised to score just a 49 which means I’m safe. [Link]