Category: Kuwait

Yesterday I installed Tiger on my PowerMac G4. It wasn’t very easy. The problem I have is that my PowerMac can’t read DVD’s and Tiger came on a DVD. To solve the problem I figure I could put the DVD in Nat’s PowerBook, then connect her mac to mine by booting hers up in target disk mode. When I did that though I only was able to see her hard drive and not her DVD drive. Then I decided to try something else. I opened up Disk Utility on Nats PowerBook and in the options chose to create an image of the DVD and saved it on her Hard Drive. A few minutes later I had a 2.3GB image file of the DVD. I then connected a mini ipod to the powerbook, and in disk utilities chose to format the ipod. I then told it to restore an image onto the ipod and chose the Tiger image which I had just made a few minutes earlier. This move basically turned the ipod into a Tiger boot disk. I then plugged the ipod into my Powermac and a finder window opened with the Tiger setup file. I double clicked on it and it told me I needed to reboot my mac. Once it restarted it loaded up the Tiger installation and i proceeded to install tiger on my mac.

The Problem
After finishing installing Tiger I booted up and everything was working fine. When I tried to connect to the internet though it gave me a modem error, something about it not being turned on. I look at the modem and it was blinking red instead of the usual green. Turns out the DSL modem drivers are not compatible with Tiger. To solve this issue I went to Hawalli and purchased a DSL Modem with a built in wireless router for KD30. I then came home and set it up to connect to the internet and share it across the network. It worked. Now since the new DSL modem does not require a computer to be connected to the internet, I can now reboot my mac and shut it down whenever I want without it effecting anyone on my network. Previously I had my powermac connect to the internet and share the connection over the network. That wasn’t practical because if I rebooted or shutdown my mac for some reason, the internet would disconnect.

Tiger Experience
I have been using it for a short while now and things seem a tiny bit faster. When I first booted up Tiger it was a bit slow doing stuff because Spotlight was trying to index my whole drive. Once it was done indexing things came back to normal. The new mail program looks a lot more cleaner and cooler. Dashboard is interesting, my favorite widget is the flight tracker. It actually shows me the departure and arrival time of any flight plus where the plane currently is on the map. I might post a more fuller review later on but so far I like Tiger.

My Mac Specs
Graphite PowerMac G4 733MHz
1MB L3 Cache
896 MB SDRAM

Update: someone made it aware to me that I could have booted the powerbook using the Tiger CD and put my powermac in Target Disk mode. Then on the powerbook when it asked me where I wanted to install it I could have chosen the drive from my mac. Might have worked and been quicker.

Yesterday I got a phone call from Qualitynet. They wanted to make sure if everything is ok and if I had any problems at all. I told them no nothing, everything is running fine, the guy once again told me that if I ever had any problem I could contact support on 804444. I thanked him and hung up. This is the second follow up call I have received, the first was last month right after I got the connection. Very nice people.

Ok, in February if any of you remember, I placed an order on the Sultan Center website for A&W Root Beer. They were only getting the diet version here in Kuwait for some reason and it tasted like crap. So I asked them if they could bring me the regular version. Today I get a phone call, they got me regular A&W Root Beer! Carton contains 24 cans and it will cost me around KD4 per carton. Not cheap but better then nothing. I love root beer, when I was in Canada I never drank Pepsi or Coke, I always had a fridge full of just A&W Root Beer.

Ok, I had a $127 gift voucher to spend on Amazon yesterday and its all gone now except for $15. Anyone got anything interesting I could buy for $15?

Warning: For mac geeks only. A guy who got Tiger has posted 50 observations about whats new. Tivo-Guy got and installed Tiger yesterday and hopefully I will get it off him today. Can’t wait. [Link]

A friend of a friend just purchased a yellow Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII. It cost him KD10,500 from the local dealer. I personally don’t like it. It looks too normal. My favorite Lancer is the Evolution VI since that car looked aggressive. Also I wouldn’t have gotten it in yellow. I think yellow only looks nice on a car if its a Lambo or Ferrari.

Was at Virgin 2 days ago, they had some new mac products. They had the Mac Mini which they were selling for around KD220 and the Apple iSight. They also had the Griffin Technology iCurve and the Griffin PodPod. Whats funny is the PodPod costs $9 on amazon but KD9 in Virgin.

Over lunch me and Tivo-Guy were talking about Amazon and how the perfect business would be to have an online store where you never have to update and it would bring you some money in. So when lunch was over I came back to the office and did a bit of searching and I found a free software that sets up an Amazon store on your server that works with your own associate account. I showed it to Tivo-Guy and with his help we got my store running on https://248am.com/store

Check it out, everything on amazon is in my store. You can search, browse, and read reviews. Just like you were on amazon. Now the plan is to fix up the site, get it looking good, and then I will get a good catchy domain name and setup my own store. I love this!!!!!!!!!

I feel like getting a 35mm camera. Yeah, people are moving away from film to digital but film does have one major advantage, it allows me to think 10 times before I take the shot, and when I do I would make sure its perfectly framed. Unlike digital cameras, each shot you take costs you money with film so, this will help me make sure the shot I take is the shot I want. With my previous digital camera I would go for a shoot and come back home with 200 pictures with maybe only 10 good ones. When I got my Nikon I told myself that from now on I would think about each shot before I take it and only take it if I know I would want it. In general this new way of shooting has worked, and I have changed my ways, but, I still am careless when it comes to framing. Hopefully getting a 35mm camera will help me get back down to the basics.

I have a few camera’s I am currently looking at:
Leica CM – fixed 40mm lens compact 35mm camera with titanium body and fully manual controls. Price is around $850
Leica Minilux – fixed 40mm lens compact 35mm camera with titanium body but it can’t go manual. Price is around $700
Nikon FM3A – A mechanical SLR (meaning it can work without batteries) with metal body, fully manual controls. Price is around $550 without lens.
Nikon FE2 – A mechanical SLR with metal body, fully manual controls but they stopped making it in the late 80s. Price is around $150 to $200 with lens on ebay.

I am currently leaning towards the FE2 since my parents had the older FE model. Its a very nice compact SLR and its very affordable. The Leica’s though are very tempting but just so damn expensive..

I was having a discusion with K about the stuff we carry around with us all the time. He was telling me how if the PSP came with a 60GB drive we could drop the iPod. I went ahead and mentioned if the PSP also had PDA abilities I could drop my PDA. Basically it turns out we both carry a lot of gadgets with us. He carries the following with him: laptop / pda / phone / psp / ipod.

I carry the following with me always: camera / phone / psp / ipod / moleskine / 3 types of pens / swissarmy knife / keys / wallet / hand sanitizer / fresh mouth spray

What do you carry with you?

I am in such a bad mood now. I had an argument with 2 other creatives at the office. I was trying to explain to them that arabic typography is difficult and they wouldn’t get it. I have 3 logos I need to create arabic type for, they want it today. I explained to them that this isn’t an easy thing. It needs time. One of the creative insisted its an easy thing and doesn’t need time at all. I went ahead and explained to them that 2 of the 3 english logo-types I need to convert are located in a box. This causes problems with the arabic since the arabic typeface will have the letter “Ya” which will have dots that will fall below the baseline. This means the hight of the arabic type will be higher then the english. I can’t change the size of the box so that will be a problem. The guy wouldn’t listen and told me he would do it. I of-course refused since I am the best guy for this job and I would be afraid anyone else who attempts it will end up killing the logos. I really hate it when people don’t get it.

This weekend passed by so fucking quickly! I hate sundays also. I am at work now and I am still half asleep although I went to be at 11PM last night. Sucks.

All I want is a 20cm Tefal frying pan from the Privilege line and I can’t find it. I know I saw it at Sultan Center before but when I went and checked today it wasn’t there. I went to 2 Sultan’s, the Salmiya and Souk Sharq plus City Center Salmiya and this other store that had a large collection of Tefal pans and none have the pan I want. Nat kept bugging me to buy any pan that its all the same, but I told her no. They are NOT all the same. Here are the specs of the Privilege line:

– A cool yet stylish dark exterior, made from PTFE, is tough, durable and easy to clean
– 5.5mm thick induction base for perfect heat distribution
– Stylish glass lids with stainless steel rims and adjustable steam vents
– Pouring lip on all pieces for safety and ease of use

In summary, it looks good, its affordable and I can’t find it.. here is the link with more info.

Today was the coolest, I did something I never did before, I spray painted in broad daylight. I woke up early today like 10ish. Nat went out shopping so I was home alone. So to pass the time I decided to cut out a new stencil so I could spray paint it. I decided to do one related to Samir Geagea since its currently Samir Geagea week in Lebanon. When I was done with my stencil around an hour and a half later I decided to just go out and try it. I didnt have anything else to do so I was like fuck it lets just go. I went to the regular construction site I usually spray paint at and tagged the walls. When I was done I drove around trying to find another construction site when I spotted something. You know the huge sewage system they are installing all over Salmiya? Well they have these huge concrete stuff laid out all over the place so I started tagging them. I must have tagged atleast 20 different ones all over Salmiya. It was really cool plus they are gonna burry the things later so no harm done. I did learn one thing today, don’t spray paint against the wind..

Was dropping off nat to work when we spotted this picture under the traffic light. At first I thought it was a picture of a teenager who had gotten killed in a traffic accident and this was some sort of memorial for him. Turns out its an ad for this musician called Marzougaleid or something. Who comes up with these stupid ideas?