Me and Nat have been wanting to get a dog for some time now and we finally decided on what to get, a German Shepherd. We found a British Bulldog for sale (KD350 if anyone is interested) but in the end me and Nat want something much bigger. I have always loved German Shepherds, my cousin had two and I used to love playing with them. German Shepherds are very friendly and very loyal dogs who are mostly trained as police dogs. Today I called up a guy who imports pure bred German Shepherds from Eastern Germany, he has two dogs for sale, Larry and Ben. Ben is 2 years old while Larry is 11 months old. I was interested in Larry but I wasn’t able to see him because he is currently being trained at a school and has 2 more weeks before graduation. I met Ben and he was amazing, the dog is huge and EXTREMELY friendly. He couldn’t stop running around and jumping wanting to play with someone and when you called his name he would run towards you and start licking you. I saw pictures of Larry and he looked even finer and according to the owner even more playful. I also was able to see pictures of Larrys family, his mother and father, his grand parents and his grand grand parents. I saw his whole family tree and they all looked great. I am totally convinced about getting him except for one thing, the owner wants a thousand fucking dinars for him! Nat thinks we should just charge it on our Visa card but a thousand dinars for a dog?! I think thats just crazy, its like hmmm a Quad core 2.5ghz PowerMac or Larry? Now I have to quickly find her another option or else I am going to have to get Larry. I met a kid at Ace Hardware today who had a puppy with him, when I asked him where he got it from he told me Amazon.com! So now I need to check that out…
Category: Personal
I am sitting here listening to the song Crimson by Circulation and I have to say, the PX100 are amazing. When I first got the PX100 I posted about them but now that I have been using them for over a week I am ready to review them. These headphones are really everything I was hoping them to be. They are light, compact, comfortable and sound fucking great.
I usually carry my stuff into work in the morning and then take them with me in the evening. I don’t like leaving my personal stuff behind and thats why I was looking for portable headphones. The PX100 fold up nicely into an amazingly designed case which I can fit in my pocket and then throw into my wrangler knowing that no matter how violent I am with it my headphones are tucked away safely in its hard case. I can imagine this case would also be perfect for throwing into your backpack which would be filled with books and other objects that might usually break your headphones.
During working hours I spend 90% of my time listening to music and if I work an 8 hour shift that means I spend maybe 7 hours listening to music (I know thats not exactly 90%). This is why I really needed my headphones to be comfortable and the PX100 are exactly that. I could have them on for 7 hours straight and not feel the need to take them off. They are super comfortable and light enough for me not to even realize that I have them on.
Now although comfort and portability were a priority in choosing a headphone, sound quality was even more important. Since I also own a pair of Bang & Olufsen A8’s (which suck) and Shure E2’s (great at isolation), I wanted these headphones to be everything the other 2 weren’t.. good in the low frequencies. The bass response in the PX100 is deep and tight and not overdone like my old Technics Dj1200’s were. The highs, the mids the lows, they are all there and perfectly balanced. I enjoy the sound of my Sennheisers now way more then the B&O’s and a bit more then the Shure E2s which is saying alto.
In conclusion I don’t think I ever need to buy another pair of headphones (Actually I do want to try the Grados). The Sennheiser PX100 turned out to be better then I was expecting them to be and I really love them. They cost $45 on Amazon and I think thats a steal, I would pay double the price easily. [Amazon Link]
Something I want to share
I was researching on food when I came across this text which I really liked and would like to share:
Eating is a biological necessity, but answers about what is eatable and not only edible, the way we prepare food, the way we serve and consume meals in social settings are to be searched for in cultural and religious contexts.
We are born into a culture with its set of social relations, traditions and developments, values, food standards etc. During adolescence we get taste memories, which have an influence on our food choices, but we are challenged by different kinds of food, different kinds of lifestyles and culturally different ways of eating. We meet the unfamiliar and strange when we travel, through ethnic food restaurants and when we go shopping. The world is not static; changes seem to happen faster in relation to what we eat today, when, where and with whom we dine daily and on festive occasions. Industrial food production and the global market exist alongside the regional and national kitchens. Urban meal traditions, art of cooking, advertising, technology and taste affects us.
Taken from here.
The Kuwait Advertising Awards are being held tomorrow at 6PM and its supposed to be formal wear. Who the fuck gets dressed formally for an evening out at 6PM? Why didn’t they make the awards show at like 9 or 10PM? Most of the agencies finish work at 5 or 5:30 but no one usually makes it out before 6PM. Even if I make it out at 5:30 by the time I get home its already 6 and then I need to shower, get dressed and leave it would already be 7PM!
Anyway, I hope I am allowed not to go to it. I really don’t like social events.
Update: Its NOT formal. Nat told me formal and she heard it from her agency but its not true.
After I post a comment on my blog I get taken to an empty white page. Is this happening to anyone else?
For people who don’t own the new iPods yet continue to say that the new iPods don’t scratch easily thats total bullshit. I have had my iPod video for a week now and it spends majority of its time in its foof pod. Yet holding up my iPod now and looking at it from an angle I can easily see around 30 to 40 minor scratches. This is unfucking acceptable. My Sony Ericsson phone which I have owned now for a few months and which I throw into my pocket with my keys on a daily basis has only 1 scratch on the screen. How the hell does my ipod have 40 scratches in 1 week while it remains tucked away in its nice protective case?
TivoGuy got 2 deep scratches on his iPod because he had it in his pocket when he accidently put a paper parking ticket in the same pocket. A paper parking ticket scratched his ipod!
Apple really fucked up this time around. It seems they have been really cutting back on costs, no power adapter, crappy packaging, easily scratching surface and best of all, if you have your phone next to your ipod and it rings you can kiss your ears goodbye.
Update: just added image to the post.
Black & White Film
Just a quick update on my Holga. I just gave in my first role of black & white film to Boushari. Its going to cost me around KD5.500 to develop 12 pictures. Turns out they charge 4 times the regular amount to develop black & white pictures because they have to develop them manually. So in conclusion these 12 random pictures I took better be fucking good and even if they are this is the last time I will shoot with black & white since the whole Holga experience is supposed to be dirt cheap. I never liked black & white photography during university so I don’t know why I bothered to try it again now. Anyway while there I picked up some colored film, cost me only 550fils, really cheap.
Fucking Åmål
I watched two movies this weekend which were very good and thought I would share them with you. The first movie I watched was Fucking Åmål. Its a Swedish movie with nothing to do about fucking so don’t let the title fool you. They mean fucking as a sign of frustration. Here is the plot summary from IMDB:
Åmål is a small insignificant town where nothing ever happens, where the latest trends are out of date when they get there. Young Elin has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to guys, but the fact is that she has never done *it*. Another girl in her school, Agnes, is in love with her but is too shy to do anything about it. For different reasons, Elin ends up at Agnes’ birthday party as the only guest. They have a girl’s night out together but after that Elin desperately avoids Agnes, refusing to even consider her own homosexuality.
Fucking Åmål is one of the best movies I watched this year. There is no nudity, there is no violence, there is no sex and there are not hot Swedish blonds, but nevertheless it was a great movie to watch and it never felt slow or dull. The story was very well written and watching Agnes go from sad and lonely confused girl to a confident and happy lesbian was somehow exciting to watch. I guess the fact that she was Swedish AND lesbian could have made things more interesting but I think it had to do more with the fact that the movie is Swedish and so it was interesting to watch the lifestyle of their high school students. If this was an American movie I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much. Anyway watch it if you can, I am giving it a 4.5 out of 5.
The second movie I watched was Koroshiya 1, (Ichi the Killer). I had had this movie on my wish list for over 2 years now and I was finally able to watch it. The reviews I had read about the movie said this was one of the most violent movies ever made and I have to agree with them. I don’t think I am going to go to Japan anytime soon after watching this movie since I no longer think of them as quiet polite people but more like psychotic violent killers (I am joking here don’t send me hate mail). Here is the plot summary from IMDB:
Yakuza boss Anjo disappears with three million yens. His loyal gang members, lead by the masochist Kakihara, start a search, but their aggressive and gory methods worry the other yakuza gangs. Kakiharas most scary counterpart is the mysterious Ichi, a psychopathic killer with a dark childhood secret, who is controlled by a retired cop.
If the site of blood makes you queasy, if torture scenes make you feel sick and if watching internal organs get splattered all over the wall makes you puke then I would not recommend you watch this movie. You will see allot of everything I just mentioned and more. The director Takashi Miike is one sick mother fucker and I think thats why his movies are so incredible and like nothing else out there. Quentin Tarantino’s movies look like a school girl dressed in pink carrying a Hello Kitty backpack when compared to Takashi’s movies. The torture scenes are extremely gruesome and even if you cover up your eyes theres no escape since the sound is just as horrifying. Ichi the Killer with all the violence and blood had a good plot and the star, Ichi is just really fucked in the head. The whole movie was fucked in the head and thats why I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen for a single moment. It took me a while to get a hold of this movie but I am really glad I was able to since it was really worth watching. I am soo watching more of Takashi’s movies now..
Last month I purchased an old 300mhz Apple clamshell iBook. It had 32MB of RAM and was running OS 9.2 slowly. So I ordered a Kingston 256MB RAM stick for my iBook and it arrived earlier in the week. The first thing I did once I installed it was to replace OS 9.2 with Linux. The reason simply was I needed to be able to browse on the iBook and Firefox wasn’t available for OS 9.2 and I had heard OS X would run very slow on my Mac. So Linux was my only option and after over 1 hour of installing the OS I tried it out and was very disappointed. Although it was very responsive and it did have Firefox, I wasn’t very comfortable using it and I decided to give OS X a shot. If OS X turned out to be very slow then I would come back to Linux as my last option.
I formated the drives and proceeded to install Panther (OS 10.3) onto my ibook. Installation was brisk and in less then 30 minutes it was done installing and rebooting. When the OS launched again I played around with it a bit and I was shocked. Panther was pretty responsive and very very usable. It was not slow, there was no lag and I wasn’t even bothered by the 800×600 screen resolution. I was simply amazed at how well everything was running. I quickly copied Firefox and Adium from my main mac at home and proceeded to set things up importing my bookmarks and setting up my system preferences, everything ran extremely smooth and I even managed to install OS 9.2 in case I ever needed it.
After a week of using my iBook it has finally become my main Internet browsing portal. I am getting online from my living room while watching TV and I am really enjoying it. Sure I could be surfing from the living room with Nat’s powerbook but its not mine and even when I setup my own account on her powerbook it still always felt as if I was using HER powerbook. My previous Internet portal in the living room was my Audrey and I think I will have to find another place for it (maybe the bathroom) since because of my iBook I am no longer using it. This iBook is mine and I feel right at home with it… until the next generation of iBooks get released. So far its great and I even am posting from it right now. So in conclusion a Mac capable of running OSX smoothly cost me KD25 ($85) for the iBook and KD12 ($40) for the RAM. Unbelievable fucking cheap!
My Holga
I finally got my Holga camera yesterday and it feels as cheap as I was expecting it to be. For a $20 medium format camera I wasn’t expecting it to be anything more. My Holga is a 120N which is the latest version of the Holga and has a number of features and improvements over the older 120S . Bulb mode and two aperture settings, sunny and cloudy (f11 and f8) are the most important new features for me. The packaging it arrived in was equally as cheap which was very fitting. The whole camera feels like a Burger King kids meal giveaway. Once I got the camera I went and purchased black & white medium format film. It cost me 750fils (like $2.5) and I can take 12 shots with it if I shoot my pictures in 6x6cm format or 16 shots if I shoot at 6×4.5cm. I chose black & white randomly just to see how the outcome would be. I started taking pictures today and once I have them developed I will post the pictures here. For now you can check out pictures of the camera below.
Holga Front Shot
Holga Back Shot
Holga Box
Holga with iPod Video
When I pre-ordered my iPod Video I also looked around for a case for my iPod. From the start I decided I wasn’t going to get a case where I would have to keep my iPod in it the whole time. I wanted to enjoy the sleek iPod in my hands and not via some case. I also didn’t want to get an iSkin since although it would allow me to keep the iPod scratch free it completely destroys the iPods sleek look and feel. I also had one for my original iPod and I hated it. In the end I decided I would get an iPod sleeve. The sleeve would protect my iPod while I carried it in my bag or pocket but when I wanted to use it I could take out the iPod from it. I searched around for various sleeves and in the end if settled for the foofpod.
The foofshop has a whole lot of different materials for the sleeves but in the end I decided to go with the Red Fire Engine (vibrant corduroy). Since my iPod was going to be black I figured red would look good with it and I was right, it does. I got the foof before my iPod so when my iPod arrived I quickly shoved it into the foof and it was a perfect fit. My iPod felt really safe and at home in the foof. The foof also quickly grabbed the attention of my employees at work since it really doesn’t look like your average everyday case. Overall I am very satisfied and it only cost me around $15 for something that was handmade all the way in Australia, pretty cool.
Click here for more pictures of my iPod with my foof
Click here for the foofshop
Choosing the right headphone is very difficult. I have never used the iPod ear buds because they suck really bad, instead I have used my iPods with the following: Technics DJ1200, Bang & Olufsen A8’s and the Shure E2’s. The Technics made my ears sweat and they hurt after long use. The B&O A8’s sounded terrible with a complete lack of low frequency response (ie no bass). The Shure E2’s are the best earphones I have owned so far. They are canal phones which basically means you stick them deep inside your ear. They provided excellent sound quality and provide amazing isolation from the outside world. If you have them on with music playing at a decent volume you won’t be able to hear anything around you. I once made Nat scream at the top of her lungs right in my face with my E2’s on and I didn’t hear her at all. The downside though is they take like a minute to put on and in a working environment with lots of interruptions, they weren’t practical at all.
So since I ordered my new iPod Video, I wanted to order new headphones. I did allot of research and I finally brought down my options to two headphones, The Grado SR60’s and the Sennheiser PX100. Both are open air speakers which means my neighbors would hear what I was listening to but that wasn’t a concern. What I was looking for was good sound, portability, comfort and practicality. The Grado SR60’s are one of the best quality headphones you could buy and for their price ($69) they are a steal. Many audiophiles compare their quality to much more expensive headphones costing hundreds of dollars more. The Grado’s are handmade in Brooklyn and they have a retro look which you will either love or hate. I was about to get them when I realized they didn’t fit the specs I wanted. They were not comfortable, they were not portable and because they came with a really long cable they weren’t very practical. So my only option was the PX100.
I just got my PX100 over an hour ago and here is my first impression. The headphone case is amazing, the PX100 fold down to a very compact size and which you can then shove into this cool plastic case it came with. Sound wise they sound really good at the moment with very decent bass and very clear highs and mids. According to forums the sound will also get better once I break the headphones in over the weekend with a continuous 48 hours of non stop music playing through them (to help speed up the break-in period). The cable length is perfect and so far the headphones are very comfortable, so comfortable that I can’t actually feel them on my head! The downside of the PX100 so far is that it looks pretty cheap, but that’s expected since it cost me only $49. So far I really like them, once I get my iPod on Saturday and I finish breaking in the headphones I will post another better review so check back.
Update: I have had my PX100 on for 3 hours now and I had totally forgot they were on until I just tried to scratch my head. My neighbor can hear the music I am listening to but I made a deal with her, she now can play music through her computer speakers if she wants to while I am listening to my headphones, that way I don’t bother her.
There is a bakala I visit frequently since its located under my office. His pricing is weird though and I don’t know what to do about it. I usually take a large bottle of water and a bar of Twix. The problem is he sometimes charges me 300fils for the 2 items which is the regular price, but sometimes he also charges me 250fils which is a discounted price. Today though when I got the stuff he wanted to charge me 350fils until I asked him if they had increased the prices and then he was like oh yeah sorry here is your 50fils back. Its really weird, its never consistent.
Holga Medium Format Camera
I have been wanting to shoot with medium format film for like forever but I was never able to because the camera I wanted was too expensive. I wanted the Hasselblad 503CW which costs around KD1000 in Kuwait (like $3000) which is too much to pay for something I might end up not using that much. Even a second hand older Hasselblad 501 cost hundreds of dollars on eBay. So I put my dream of shooting 6×6 pictures aside until I found out about the Holga. The Holga I believe is the cheapest medium format camera you can buy, It is very cheaply built and takes 6×4.5cm or 6x6cm shots. The lens is made from cheap plastic the same way the whole camera body is also made of cheap plastic. There are also not allot of options on the camera either, it has a fixed shutter speed and a fixed aperture, the only thing you can control is the focus and even that has only 4 options. So how much does this camera cost? Believe it or not only $19 without flash and $29 with flash. Thats like super cheap. Now the coolest part of the Holga camera is the pictures. Because of the way the camera is cheaply built the effects you get on the pictures are amazing, they look like pictures that were shot by your parents back when Madonna was still a virgin and Michael Jackson still black. I already ordered mine from Amazon without flash of course since I don’t think I have ever used flash. Once I get it I will take a couple of pictures and post them on this site. Until then here are two galleries of pictures taken by the Holga camera.
I watched the horror movie Shutter the other day. It was my first Thai movie I had ever watched and it left me impressed. I don’t know why I keep watching these horror flicks, they freak the hell out of me, seriously.
Shutter is about this guy and girl who run over a girl one night while they were driving back home and then they leave her to die in the middle of the road. The guy and girl are both photographers and so the girl starts haunting them in their pictures. They start finding weird shadows and ghost like forms in all the pictures they take which start to freak them out. If that wasn’t enough they start seeing the dead girl in real life. It was a really freaky movie with allot of creative moments which I had never seen before in any other horror movie.
This movie also convinced me to make my own horror movie except mine will be realistic. In my movie when you see a dead girl come out of your sink in your photography dark room, you run away and you never step foot into that dark room again! Seriously I can barely watch scenes like this while the people in the movie seem to find it freaky for 5 minutes and then act like it never happened. There was one really cool scene in the movie where the guy would be sleeping and then wakes up to find someone at the end of the bed is slowly pulling away the cover, he looks down and sees the dead girl! I told Nat that was pretty cool and I might try it on her one day, she told me if I did it would also be the last day I see her! No sense of humor at all..
I don’t know how easy it is to find this movie in Kuwait and its also not available on Amazon but you could download it the way I did via torrentspy. Its a great horror flick with a really cool ending, something thats just really fucking freaky and just goes to show how creative this horror really is.