Category: Interesting

I just found out about this incident (yes 20 years late) but I still found it very disturbing. In 1988 an American warship stationed in the Gulf shot down an Iranian airliner carrying 290 civilians killing everyone on board. The Americans thought it was an attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter. Whats even more fucked up is the Americans never admitted wrongdoing, accepted responsibility, nor apologized for the incident! I am not a big fan of Iran but this is sickening. [Link]

A friend sent me a link to Yamli, a website which does a bunch of things my two favorite being:

1) You search the Arabic web but using English letters. Meaning you type the Arabic as it sounds using English characters like 3arabi and it will convert it for you to عربي

2) You can type a document in Arabic but again using English letters and it will do the conversion for you as you type.

You can try it out, its easy. [Link]

Thanks Katia!

I’ve always wondered what was the logic behind the name of some items at IKEA. They always have Scandinavian names but what do they mean? According to Wikipedia it turns out there is a format IKEA follows. Firstly most of the names are usually either Swedish, Danish, Finnish or Norwegian in origin. Secondly most of the names are based on a special naming system which IKEA has put in place and is as follows:

Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames

Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names

Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names

Bookcase ranges: Occupations

Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays

Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names

Chairs, desks: men’s names

Materials, curtains: women’s names

Garden furniture: Swedish islands

Carpets: Danish place names

Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms

Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones; words related to sleep, comfort, and cuddling

Children’s items: mammals, birds, adjectives

Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms

Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions

Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish placenames

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oobject has a top 20 list of skyscrapers in the Gulf, nearly all of them are in Dubai but Kuwait’s upcoming Mubarek Tower made the list. My favorite is the Ras Al Khaimah Convention Center (Dubai UAE) pictured above which is designed by OMA and led by Rem Koolhaas. Its made to look like the Death Star from Star Wars. [Link]

New York Times must have been on something when they came out with this list of “53 Places to go in 2008” because they’ve placed Kuwait in position number 32! We beat places like Las Vegas, New York and London, thats just insane! [Link]

Thanks S!

Aramex called me up today asking if we could sit down together and discuss the problems I have with their service. I am thinking, why get the opinion of one guy when you can get the opinion of a whole bunch of people?

So if you use Aramex and have problems with them please post it below as a comment so they can read it. It seems they have a genuine interest to improve their service.

I was researching zombies on wikipedia when I found information on something called zombie walk. Its an event where a large group of people dress up as zombies and then walk around city streets. A quick search on YouTube resulted in a ton of videos, the one above was taken in Toronto but if you follow the link you can find the rest on YouTube. [Link]

I just heard about Mishaal who is a local weather forecaster. Supposedly he is extremely accurate and is the next Oujeri and he is only 17. He has a website with his own forecast, will start checking it to see how accurate this guy is. [Link]

Picture from Q8ia Forever

And because the former dictator had reason to be paranoid, the boat has bulletproof glass, closed-circuit television, storage space for a large cache of weapons, including heavy machine guns and surface-to-air missiles, and a secret passage that runs the length of the boat for easy access to a fast patrol boat and a mini-submarine pod for emergency exits.

Maybe we could all pitch in and buy the yacht and then take it out to Kubbar where we spend the whole day partying on it. At the end of the night we burn the yacht to symbolize our hatred to Saddam but we keep the mini-submarine since thats just too cool. [Link]

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I am assuming the cops use a similar software to this with victims of attacks. The picture on the left is me trying to draw myself and the picture on the right is of Holla (my friend) trying to draw himself. Its pretty easy to use and the results are pretty neat. I am going to get back to working on my face trying to make it resemble me. [Link]

Tips: You can move the location of face features by clicking on them in the picture on the right and moving it about. You can increase and decrease the width and height of the features by using the axis thingy on the left. You can also save your face for other people to see. If you click on load and then search for a face called 248am you should find the one I am working on.

This is a cool site with plates from around the world. It has a collection of Kuwaiti plates including the ones that were redone by Saddam during the Gulf War. [Link]

I used to like the old Kuwait Airport since I grew up with it but like everything else in Kuwait its being modernized and not in a good way. The new airport is generic looking and doesn’t have the character of the original airport which was designed by one of the most significant architects of the 20th century, Kenzo Tange.

I was at the airport on Friday and noticed they’ve taken out the old retro looking arrival sign and replaced it with this colorful ugly LED panel. I used to really like the retro one and I wonder where it is at the moment, did they just trash it in the junk yard? Anyway if you want to check out old pictures of the Airport when it first opened like the first one in this post click [Here]

If you want to see pictures of other great architecture projects from the 70’s and 80’s check [Here]

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An interesting collection of photos but I wish there was some information attached to every image. [Link]

The world’s highest fountain is located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and it blasts water 312 meters up in the air which is higher than the Eiffel Tower. There is a video of it in action and more pictures [Here]