Category: Personal

I finally managed to pass by Tatami Japanese restaurant for lunch today. Everything I had was really good and the owner of the place (who is also the chef) was there and she was very friendly and helpful when choosing the dishes. My only issue with the place is that the sushi rolls are extremely tiny. Like the tiniest rolls I’ve ever seen. But other than that it’s a great place and worth trying out. Here is the link to their website [Link]

– Have breakfast at Cocoa Room
– Have breakfast at Early Bird
– Take my RC cars out
– Ride my bike
– Go off-roading
– Take my dog out to the desert
– Play Battle Field 3

So far I’ve managed to have breakfast at Cocoa Room and take my RC cars out. Still got a lot more to do.

Last year I upgraded the FJ’s head unit and this time around I decided to upgrade the speakers. I had to order everything online except for the amp which I luckily found locally. Upgrading the car sound system is a complicated process in Kuwait because of the fact we don’t have any good quality components available locally so your only option is to order everything from the US which means you can’t hear the speakers before buying them and you also have to pay expensive shipping charges.

I went looking for the items locally first but I couldn’t find anything I wanted here. The best brands I found here are Alpine, Rockford Fosgate, Pioneer and Kenwood. X-Cite is the Alpine dealer but they’re currently revamping their entire lineup so I couldn’t find anything except for the Amp which was part of their clearance sale. They’re also the dealers for Rockford but their collection was very limited. Pioneer and Kenwood aren’t really know for having the best sounding car speakers either, their head units are decent but their speakers are just average. The brands I was interested in were MB Quart, JL Audio, Polk Audio and Massive Audio, none of which were available in Kuwait.

After doing a lot of research I ended up going with Polk Audio for the subwoofer since I needed to install the sub into the FJ factory sub enclosure and some guys in an FJ forum managed to fit the Polk 8″ sub without too much modification. Since I was going with Polk for the sub I ended up going with the Polk 6.5″ components for the front as well. I also ordered a pair of 3.5″ Rockford Fosgate speakers for the rear pillars, some Dynamat for the doors (sound deadening material), a StreetWires Amp kit and some RCA cables. Shipping cost me nearly as much as I paid for the items which was depressing. The biggest culprits were the sub, the Dynamat and the Amp Kit. I also ordered some speaker adapters from tacotunes.com which would allow me to fit the front speakers into the existing factory FJ mounts.

For installation I headed to Zaharat Al Naseem again. They’re the best local car system installers and I used them last year to install my head unit. It ended up taking around 4 hours for the installation which was longer than expected since I had a few things that needed modifying and customizing. The most difficult part was getting the sub to fit in the factory box (check picture below) but with the help of a Dremel tool we managed to get it to fit nicely.

My sound system sounds pretty cool right now even though it still needs a bit of tuning. The best part is that everything fit into the factory locations so the car looks unmodified until you turn the sound system on. I’m not sure why we don’t have a high end components available locally, I guess the market is too small or just not interested in quality car sound systems.

Update: They’ve moved, here is their new location [Google Maps]

I’ve been taking the Gulf Road to work everyday now for 7 years. The only time it’s ever been packed with bumper to bumper traffic has been during the first two days at the start of “some” Ramadans (not all). But for some strange odd reason, today for the third time in two weeks the Gulf Road has been bumper to bumper traffic. A 20 minute ride to work is now out of the blue taking 45 minutes and I have no idea why. No roads have been closed, there aren’t any new diversions and it’s not accidents. It’s just random traffic that shouldn’t be.

Digumz is a local video game rental website which I posted about back in March. Three weeks ago I decided to sign up and try them out and I’m really loving them so far.

Registration was a pretty simple procedure and I had two options for payment, K-net but I would have to leave a deposit or credit card and no deposit. I opted for the credit card payment and once the account was setup proceeded to order my first game. I went with Gears of War 3 and they managed to deliver it the same evening. They drop off the games and pick them up when you’re done and there are no delivery charges which is fantastic.

Their website is really easy to use and practical. Ordering a game is pretty simple and quick. You flip through their site, find a game you want and then click on the “Rent Now” button and it will be added to the queue list. If you don’t have anything on that list the game will be dispatched to you immediately. You could then continue to add games to your queue list and arrange them according to your priorities.

When you want to swap a game you go to your “Games I have” list and click on the “request game exchange” button and the next game on your list gets dispatched. In case your first choice isn’t available they will dispatch your second, if the second isn’t available the third and on and on.

Now there really aren’t any negatives, at least not for me since when I signed up their prices started at KD7 a month. For that price I can rent as many games as I want per month but only 1 game at a time. A couple of weeks back though they increased their prices and now the most affordable package starts at KD15. Lucky for me and everyone who signed up before the price increase, our memberships will continue to be renewed at KD7 a month which is great. At KD15 a month I don’t think I would have signed up since I am probably going to be renting only 1 game a month. For KD15 a month I might as well buy a game a month instead of renting. If you are planning to rent at least two games then KD15 a month would make more financial sense. They also have other packages in which you could rent more than a game a month but of course those packages also cost more.

Here is the link to the Digumz website [Link]
They also have another website where they sell games, here is the link to that website [Link]

At KD7 a month I’m really loving Digumz.

This is going to be my last post on the iPhone 4S since there is only one thing left to discuss and that is battery life. When I first got the phone I noticed the battery life was similar to the iPhone 4 but this weekend the battery life got so bad I actually went and purchased a car charger.

But I also found out why the phone started draining a lot more battery than my iPhone 4 ever did and that’s because I was using the Reminder App a lot because of Siri. When I tell Siri to remind me to pick up tea once I get to the supermarket, the phone starts checking my location at intervals to see if I’m at the supermarket or not so it could remind me to pick up tea once I am.

Once I turned location based reminders off I noticed the battery life went back to normal. It’s not hardware related since the Reminder App is also available on the iPhone 4 but Siri makes it more fun and easy to use. So to summarize things, the battery life is the same if you use the iPhone 4S like the iPhone 4, but once you start taking advantages of some of the iOS 5 features, battery life on both the iPhone 4 and 4S starts dropping considerably.

On a side note, check out this tip on how to make the Reminder App even more useful [Link]

My iPhone 4S arrived from the UK yesterday and so I managed to spend more time with the device and now have a few things I want to highlight, mostly the negatives.

Reception
According to Apple they’ve improved the reception on the iPhone 4S. I never had any issues with the reception on the original iPhone 4 but I do have an issue with the new “improved” reception on the 4S. Although the phone signal now spends most of its time with full signal bars which is great for people who use the phone to call people, another problem has come up instead. The phone now spends a lot more time on Edge instead of 3G internet. I hadn’t seen the little “E” icon on my iPhone for ages but now it’s popping up all the time. I first noticed it in my underground parking, I used to get a weak phone signal before (say 2 bars) but would have 3G. Now I have full signal bars but Edge instead of 3G. I figured it’s not an issue since I don’t spend too much time in the basement checking email or tweets. Once I got out of the parking it swapped back to 3G, but then once I hit the traffic light near Corniche Club on the Gulf Road it was back on Edge. It swapped back to 3G again before going to Edge once I got near TGIF. I even got the Edge signal at the Kuwait Stock Market traffic light. And I’m not talking about Edge appearing briefly and disappearing again, I’m talking about Edge being there the whole time while I’m waiting at the traffic light.

Edge SUCKS. I might as well not have internet since Edge is that horribly slow. I don’t know what Apple did to the reception but I hope this is just a bug that will be fixed in the next software update because I would rather have 2 signal bars and 3G instead of full signal bars and Edge.

Siri
She’s great but I have an issue and it’s not that she doesn’t understand me sometimes (check above). In my previous post I mentioned how I wanted to use Siri to remind me of stuff when I get home or get to work. For example “Remind me to walk my dog when I get home”. Siri is supposed to know when I get home and remind me to walk my dog. Problem is because we are in Kuwait we can’t teach Siri where home or office is. Siri uses Google Maps address to learn our home and office locations and right now Google Maps addresses only work in the US. What I don’t understand is why Siri won’t learn the locations using GPS positioning. If you use the Reminder App without Siri you can teach it locations using your GPS position. I already has a saved location in the Reminder App called “Work” and I can tell the App to remind me to do something once I get to the location “work”. Why can’t Siri use the already saved location information or why it can’t learn locations using GPS instead of street addresses doesn’t make any sense.

Finally another issue with Siri and I don’t know if this problem is only happening with me or not but Siri refuses to make phone calls. If I tell her for example to call my wife or call my brother, she will start the calling process and show me she’s dialing the number but then she replies back apologizing that she can’t call them. I’ve tried it with a bunch of different people in my contact list, I’ve removed the +965 from numbers, I tried everything and Siri will keep telling me she can’t call them. Again a strange issue which hopefully will be fixed in the future.

Speed
The phone is fast, for day to day operations it’s not noticeably faster than the regular iPhone 4 but just run any game and you’ll instantly see a huge difference. Most games were loading and opening instantly and even games like Rage were loading in just a couple of seconds. If you’re a gamer you’re gonna love the 4S.

The only thing really left to test is the battery life and I can’t do that right now since I’m too busy playing with Siri and the new features. Maybe once my phone use goes back to normal in a weeks time I’ll be able to compare it to my previous iPhone.

If anyone has any questions or anything they want me to try just ask in the comments below.

Update: My guy at Alghanim just called to tell me they’re selling the iPhone 4S 16GB for KD289 and they already started delivering the phones to people from yesterday. I purchased the phone from the Apple Store in the UK and with shipping it ended up costing me around KD230. But I guess if you want the phone right now and don’t want to wait 2-3 weeks for it then this is probably your best option.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Alghanim Electronics sent over an iPhone 4S for me to try out. I’ve been using it for a few hours and thought I would share my first impression on two of the most important new features.

The Camera
Thew camera on the iPhone 4S is a much better camera when compared to the regular iPhone 4. I saw some sample shots on the Apple website and they looked great but those shots were obviously taken in perfect lighting with an amazing photographer. I was curious to how the camera would fair in boring regular situation with random light and a not so great subject. Since the weather today is a mixture of humid, hot and dust, I decided to go to the roof and take a landscape shot.

On the left is the iPhone 4S shot and on the right the iPhone 4. Although it doesn’t look like that dramatic a difference when you zoom in at 100% it’s a complete different story as you can see below.

As you can see the iPhone 4S photo had a lot more details and a lot less artifacts. Another advantage of the iPhone 4S camera is that the lens is brighter which means better shots in low light situations. Below is a photo I took indoors.

Again zoomed out like this the details don’t show as much but once you zoom in at 100% (check below) you’ll see that the iPhone 4S shots are a lot less noisier and a lot more sharper.

One of the main reasons I purchased the iPhone 4S is because of the camera. I take a lot of shots for the blog and although I should, I don’t usually carry my good cameras with me all the time. Most of my shots are taken with an iPhone so the ability to take better shots is a great advantage for me. If like me, image quality is something you care about then the difference between the iPhone 4 and 4S is actually pretty major. You can download the full resolution images I shot and used above from these links:

Landscape with iPhone 4S
Landscape with iPhone 4
Low light with iPhone 4S
Low light with iPhone 4

Siri
Another reason I got the iPhone 4S is because of Siri. I’m a huge Stark Trek TNG fan and Siri reminded me a lot of the computer on the starship Enterprise. Even though Siri is limited when compared to the computer on Enterprise (it can’t prepare meals for example), it’s still very impressive and I love it. Siri is going to get even better in the future and I honestly can’t wait.

There are a few things that won’t work in Kuwait though. If you ask Siri for the best burger joints in Kuwait it will tell you it won’t know. Some of the Siri features are US only for now but it does do a whole bunch of other things. You could ask it to convert currency for you, find out the population of countries as well as other trivia. More importantly for me it can take notes and set reminders which is a big deal for me. I’m a very forgetful person and also very lazy so even when I usually remember something I never write it down or set a reminder. Now with Siri, once I remember something I can just tell it to write it down or remind me when I get home or work to do something. She’s really going to be my personal secretary/assistant.

Siri didn’t have that many problems understanding me. I do tend to mumble and I did have a few instances when Siri wouldn’t know what I was talking about but I also found Siri pretty forgiving. For example I might start saying “tell me” and then mid sentence change to “I mean what is the capital city of Kuwait” and Siri would still understand and tell me “Kuwait City”. Yes it does feel weird (ie stupid) talking to a phone but I’m sure I can get over that.

I ordered my iPhone 4S last week from the Apple UK store but for those of you who haven’t ordered yet and just want to walk into a store and pick one up Alghanim Electronics will have them in stock starting tomorrow. I asked about the price but as of this post they still hadn’t finalized it yet.

Update: The prices for the iPhones has been released by Alghanim and they are the following (don’t shoot the messenger):

iPhone 4S 16GB for KD350
iPhone 4S 32GB for KD390
iPhone 4S 64GB for KD420

For those of you who aren’t aware, you can order the new iPhone 4S from the UK Apple Store online. I didn’t post about this earlier since I wanted to make sure it would actually work but I just checked the status of my order and it’s getting ready to ship so it’s working. That’s how I ordered my iPhone last year as well, the cost is decent around KD227 for the 16GB and you just have it ship to your Aramex Shop and Ship UK address. The phone is also factory unlocked so you can use it as soon as it gets here. [UK Apple Store]

Note: If you want a UK forwarding mailbox you can get one by signing up with Aramex [Here]

Four of my Aramex packages cleared customs today and are out for delivery which is strange since I thought customs were on an “indefinite strike“. The packages actually cleared faster than usual since they were only stuck in customs for two days and that included yesterdays strike. Weird.

[YouTube]

I posted this video earlier in the week on 248PM but it feels appropriate to post it here today. I’ve been a Mac guy since before the iPod but it’s hard to deny how much the iPod has helped Apple. So I flipped through my photo archive and found some pictures of my original iPod. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPod, but he did make it happen and Apple is what it is today because of him.

Below are some shots of my original iPod. The picture taken in front of the Kuwait Towers is actually Nibaq, we took the picture for iPod Lounge back in 2002.

I have a post from back in 2005 where I mention that shipping 4lbs with Aramex’s Shop & Ship would cost KD7. Today the same weight according to their online rates calculator would cost KD11 not including the KD2 customs tax. The total with the customs tax is KD13 which is nearly double what we used to pay back in 2005.

I miss the old Aramex. Back when I joined in 2001 it would literally take 2 days from the time the package shipped from the States for it to be in your hands here in Kuwait and they were much much cheaper.

I’m thinking of getting a small camera and placing it in my car to record everything that happens on the road while I’m driving. There’s a lot of messed up crap that happens on the Gulf Road and I figured I might as well record everything and then later upload them to YouTube.

So far I’ve leaning towards the Veho Muvi MicroDV camera pictured above. It’s tiny, battery lasts around 3 hours, it clips to the rear view mirror and it costs around $50 on Amazon. Seems pretty easy to turn on when I get in the car and to turn off when I get out. My trips around are around 20 minutes long which would mean I would have to charge it every 3 days which isn’t too big a deal.

Has anyone used the Veho cam before? Anyone got any better suggestions?

According to the Arab Times, 7,543 citations were issued by the surprise General Traffic Department campaign this past week. I was super close to getting a violation myself the other day because of my car tint but I guess my tint wasn’t as bad as others since I was allowed to pass through the checkpoint.

I really think car tints should be legalized or at least light tints where you could still see who’s inside the car. Something dramatic must have happened recently for cops to crackdown down this hard on car tints and I’m curious to know what.

Anyway, these campaigns do benefit everyone and they do make the roads safer but because the campaigns last a week or two it’s a temporary fix and not long term. I’ve recently noticed a lot more people are running red lights and to me those drivers are a lot more dangerous than car tints. But, on the bright side I heard they’re going to be installing a lot more red light cameras so that’s a good thing.