This post will probably be understood just by Lebanese but my sister just told me about this place in Kuwait that sells ka3k and also makes ka3k sandwiches. I got 3 packs of Picon the last time I was in Lebanon so it would be cool if they can grill me a Picon sandwich in kaa3k. They also have a website and they deliver! [Link]
Ka3k Ka3k!
And then there were two
Since I paid my traffic violation at the beginning of the month I have stopped speeding. I now cruise the Gulf Road going around 80-100km/h max but I guess its easier since I am driving the Wrangler instead of the Beemer. The Gulf Road car-cam must be catching a lot of people because the MOI has now expanded their coverage to include a second car-cam on my morning route. The original car-cam that caught me speeding 21 times was located just before McDonalds on the way to Kuwait City, the new car-cam is located just before Fuddruckers. If only it was possible to invest in these cameras…
Picture by T
MacBook Air
Tomorrow is MacWorld Expo 2008 and rumors are flying on what new products Apple might release. One product thats currently circulating the rumor sites is the MacBook Air, supposedly an ultra portable MacBook that will replace the discontinued 12inch PowerBook and iBook laptops. I hope they don’t release anything new, my credit cards are maxed out as it is! [Link]
Beats by Dre Headphones
These are headphones I am looking forward to trying out. I am not a big fan of Monster Cable who are behind Beats but they are talking about new technologies in this headphone that haven’t been used before and I find that very intriguing. They are going to cost $400 which is the average price for pretty decent headphones but this also means they will have a lot of competing to do. Can’t wait to read the first review. [Link]
Update: Amazon is currently offering a $50 discount on the Beats by Dre. Click here to check it out. [Amazon Link]
Swarovski-studded toaster
I am holding out for the Swarovski-studded microwave. [Link]
2oktob 3arabi
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 have an old PIII 500 with 256MB of RAM and a 20GB hard drive lying around which I wanted to give to someone. I didn’t want to install Windows on it since the person isn’t very good with computers and always ends up getting viruses and trojans installed on his system. The computer was going to be used for Internet browsing, chatting on MSN and Yahoo and copying and view pictures from his digital camera. I decided to install a Linux OS.
The first Linux OS I installed was the latest version of gOS which was released two days ago. From the screen shots it looked like a really friendly and easy to us version of Linux and thats what I was looking for. After installing it I realized that the operating system was running very sluggishly on this really old computer, it wasn’t going to work.
I then remember I had bookmarked a website from Digg which had a list of Linux distros that were meant to be run on really old computers. I went through the list, did some research and in the end decided to try two different ones, TinyFlux and Wolvix.
I tried TinyFlux first and although it ran really well the user interface wasn’t very friendly. I then decided to try Wolvix and not only did it perform really well but the interface was fairly friendly looking with a Mac like dock at the bottom and large friendly icons everywhere. I decided to stick with Wolvix and after playing with it for an hour I think its pretty impressive for an OS thats under 250MB in size. It has Firefox, a music player, video player, photo viewer, and a whole bunch of other softwares all included and there is a ton more I can download all for free.
This is actually the best part of Linux, its free and the majority of the software for it is free. Another good thing is you can try out the OS without installing it, you just run it straight from the CD and if you like it you can install it if not you just eject the cd, reboot and you are back to your old operating system.
If you want to check out the list of Linux distros for old computer click [Here]
For gOS click [Here]
and for Wolvix click [Here]
Last month Al Nasr, a Basketball team in Kuwait signed up American center John Francis Smith to play for their team. Well John is in Kuwait now and he’s made a video of the apartment the team has given him. It looks really nasty and very old, I don’t think I could even spend a night there yet alone live there. Its a really shitty place and he’s really really pissed. [YouTube]
On Saturday from 11am to 4pm there will be a car boot sale at the AUK parking lot. A car boot sale is basically when people come together and sell stuff they don’t need anymore. It should prove to be interesting. [Link]
George Bush is coming to Kuwait today (Friday) as part of his trip to the Gulf. I heard a lot of the roads will be closed, I hope that isn’t true since I don’t want to get stuck in Salmiya all day. [Link]
The Junkyard
I woke up today morning at 8:30 with a phone call from Stallion. He was on his way to come pick me up so we could go to the junkyard. I needed a seat riser for my Wrangler but not any seat riser, it had to be off a pre-2000 model because the one I had was one of the new ones which allows my driver seat to tilt forward. The pre-2000 models didn’t have that option and so had more empty space under the seat which would allow me to install my car’s amplifier in that space.
I was expecting the junkyard to be just one large unorganized place but it turned out to be this huge area made up of little small junkyards that were split up by car make or type. We drove around looking for junkyards that had Wrangler parts but there weren’t many. We found around 6 to 8 places that had Jeep vehicles but only 3 had Wranglers. After driving around from place to place we found what I was looking for BUT the guy would refuse to sell the seat risers without the actual seat.
Stallion using his great haggling skills tried to convince the guy to sell us the seat riser by itself but instead of convincing the guy to sell us the riser he nearly initiated a riot and the guy ended up refusing to sell us anything. I was sure we were going to get attacked by the Afghani workers there, I don’t know what happened because it all happened fast but it was a really short conversation that ended with Stallion and the Afghani worker shouting at each other and us walking out quickly.
We finally gave up on finding the seat riser without the seat so we took off back home. On our way we passed by Dunkin Donuts in Al-Rai since I had been craving Dunkin Donuts for a week now. It had be a long time since I had Dunkin and I had forgotten how good their donuts were. I took a lot of pictures of the junk yards which you can find by clicking continue below. It was a pretty productive morning.
I am not a big fan of classic cars or old cars in general but there are five I would love to have in my garage one day.
1- Lancia Delta Integrale
2- BMW M3 E30
3- VW Golf GTI MKII
4- Ford Escort Cosworth
5- Datsun Skyline GTR (1971)
When is Britney going to Die?
This is a cool software that works on some Nokia phones. Say you get a phone call while in a meeting, all you need to do is flip your phone over and it will give the caller a busy tone and put your phone on silent. You could also just put your phone on silent by flipping your phone over anytime and taking silence off by flipping it back. Currently only works on the N95, N95 8GB, N93i and N82. [Link]
The IKEA Naming System
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