2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003PSP Magazines is a site that enables you to download magazine snippets and load them on your PSP. You can currently download snippets from the following magazines:
BLENDER Magazine
Car & Driver
FHM Magazine
Gamespot.com
MAXIM Magazine
Mountain Bike Magazine
Road & Track
Rolling Stone Magazine
Snowboard Magazine
STUFF Magazine
Sports Illustrated
SYNC Magazine
WIRED Magazine
All this is for free, here is the link.
I need to try this, get an empty coke can, smear some chocolate on the bottom and start polishing using the chocolate wrapper. 30 minutes later you will have a mirror like surface. Then hold a twig infront of the mirror under the sun and a few seconds laters you will start a fire. More details and pictures after the jump. [Link]
via BoingBoing
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?
I didn’t know if this review should focus on their Shawerma or everything as a whole. So after a lot of consideration I decided I would focus more on the shawerma and just mention the other items. Sajj House has been around for a couple of years now. I first found out about it when I was in highschool I think, or first year of university. I started eating there though 3 years ago. In this time I was able to try many of their items, their shawerma, their Taouk sandwich, kofta, and a variety of sajj sandwiches. Everything I have ever had at Sajj House tasted incredibly good. Everything, from their Taouk to their Chocolate with Banana Sajj sandwich. Their prices are extremely reasonable and their service is very friendly.
Now that I have done introducing the place we can finally focus on their shawerma. I am not very picky with shawermas. I would and do eat shawermas from any place. It could be a small shawerma place in a backstreet of Hawalli, or it could be a shawerma place in Salmiya high street, if I feel like having shawerma I will head to the closest source. I have only had 2 bad experiences with shawermas through out my life, so in general I find most shawermas satisfying. But, I have never ever given a shawerma place a score of 5. So this brings us to a very important question. What shawerma would deserve a 5? Its very difficult since a 5 would mean this is the ultimate souper douper shawerma. You might have figured out where I am going with this review, if not I will tell you. On my way to Sajj House yesterday I was thinking about how I rate their shawerma. Is it a 4.5? or is it a 5? Could there ever be a place that would score a 5? Does a 5 mean a perfect shawerma? Then I realized something, Nataly had never had a shawerma at Sajj House, plus she is very picky when it comes to garlic. So I decided at the moment, if Nataly liked the shawerma that would mean it gets a 5. If she didn’t it would get a 4.5.
We went to Sajj house, we both ordered shawermas and then we drove off to our secluded spot (dead end next to the french school). We sat down, opened up the windows and started eating. She loved it. She didn’t mind the strong garlic which tastes really good, she loved the sajj bread they use to wrap the shawerma in and she loved the fact that the chicken wasn’t greasy at all. Thats when I knew, we hit the jackpot with Sajj House. They truly have the ultimate shawerma and its only for 350fils. What gives their shawerma a 5? Well as I mentioned above, they wrap the shawerma in sajj bread, which makes it very light, the garlic they use is perfectly blended and the chicken is not greasy at all. The chicken is actually grilled on coal flame not gas. To add to all this, Sajj House provides other items you can take with the shawerma. Say you want to have 1 shawerma and 1 zaatar sajj, when you order you know both of your items will taste incredible. This strong support from the other items on the menu helps push the score up. Their service is also very nice. Everyone from the Lebanese cashier to the Lebanese shawerma guy, they are very nice and clean. You also have 3 options of getting your shawerma, you can order delivery by phone, you can park your car outside and they will come to you, or you can go down and order it yourself. Their location also helps, they are located in Salmiya adjacent to the Restaurant Street but away from all the traffic (if you are heading towards platinum gym and restaurant street, if the cinema is to your right then you will come up to a small roundabout, if you go straight its platinum gym, if you take a left and continue going straight past the stadium on your left, you will find sajj house on your right). In conclusion, if I gave their shawerma a 5 you should know its really has to be something out of this world to get a 5, and the fact that Nat, an amateur picky shawerma eater loved it, then it just adds more credibility to my score.
update: Since I posted this review over a year ago I have to say the shawermas at Sajj House have become terrible. They have changed the recipe or something but I have now stopped eating there and my new favorite place is Badar Al Badoor. If I was to review Sajj House today I would give them a 2.5 or 3.
Team America is one strange movie. Firstly the movie is made using puppets and surprisingly it works very well. The movie overall is very funny and full of silly situations. One silly thing for example is all the arab terrorists in the movie know two words, Jihad and Mohammed. So whenever arabs talk in the movie its like “Jihad Mohammed Mohammed Jihad Mohammed” that would be the conversation. Very silly, its making fun out of the fact that when American’s think of arabs they think of these two words first. Its very hard to talk about this movie without ruining it for you so I will just tell you about one scene. The first scene of the movie, Team America go to Paris to capture and kill some terrorists who are planning to blow up a weapon of mass destruction in Paris. While trying to kill the terrorists Team America manages to destroy the Eifle Tower, the Champs Elese and blow up the Louvre museum.. more destruction then the terrorists would have done. The whole movie is funny in this silly way. I would recommend watching it with other people so you could all share the laughs.
The score, 4 out of 5.
PS: The sex scene is the coolest!
In reply to the previous post titled “Crackdown in Wonderland“, a regular reader Fadibou commented saying the following:
Hi Mark and all of you. I work in a software company here in Kuwait and its frustrating to see people supporting Piracy. Piracy is a nice word for stealing. Copying software and selling it without permission and without giving money back to its creator is pure theft. As for the crack down, it will increase and hopefully soon there will be no place to buy pirated(stolen) games and software. As for your remarks that a lot of games are not worth buying, well try getting evaluation copies or demos. They should cover your investment before you buy. As for Rihab, Can you please tell me which shop did help you get Doom 3?
Doom 3? I don’t know what you are talking about.. (starts whistling casually)..
I have had atleast 3 people ask me today who is Jason Kottke and what is being Kottked. Firstly Kottked is just a word I made up to imply that my site was linked by Kottke. Who is Jason Kottke? This is what was on Wikipedia (yeah he is listed on Wikipedia!):
Jason Kottke (born September 27, 1973) is a well known blogger and former web designer currently living in New York City. He designed the popular Silkscreen font which has become widely used in web design and has won a Lifetime Achievement Award as a blogger.
Kottke was a pioneering blogger who began his blog in March 1998. As of 2005, his blog is one of the highest-ranked personal sites on the Blogging Ecosystem.
In 2000, Jason Kottke and then-girlfriend Meg Hourihan were profiled in a New Yorker article, You’ve Got Blog, which introduced blogging to a wider audience. The minimalist web design of kottke.org is considered influential, and Kottke was one of the first bloggers to create a sideblog called “Remaindered Links”, which are interesting web links with no commentary. His contributions to blogging were acknowledged when he won a Bloggie Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.
His blogging also got him in trouble with Sony when he broke the news of Ken Jennings’ loss on Jeopardy!.
On February 22, 2005, Kottke announced he had left his web design job in order to work on kottke.org full-time. He pledged that all content on the site would still be free while encouraging readers to become “micropatrons” by making an optional contribution of any amount. This made him the first person to “professionally” pursue his weblog without sponsorship. By close of business on the day of the announcement, there were over 200 people listed as micropatrons on his website. As of April 15th, 2005, the total number of micropatrons stands at 696.
“Mark notes that this is the second time Adobe has purchased Freehand.”
Fucking cool! [Link]
Just found a link on waxy to a website with jokes that have real endings. Very silly stuff, here are some examples:
How do you drown a blonde?
Hold her head underwater until she can no longer breathe and stops struggling.
Why did the blonde get fired from the M&M factory?
Repeated absences and stealing.
What’s the difference between the Pope and Michael Jackson?
The Pope is dead.
Why do Mexicans not like going out in the rain?
It’s wet.
What’s worse then finding a worm in your apple?
The Holocaust.
Why was six afraid of seven?
It wasn’t. Numbers are not sentient and thus incapable of feeling fear.
More jokes here.
Yesterday Adobe announced a merger with Macromedia. The largest issue I saw with the merger was that Freehand would be killed off. That didn’t matter to me since I prefer Adobe Illustrator but I know there are many designers who prefer Freehand. So I decided to do some research and this is what I found out.
It turns out that this is not the first time Adobe buys a company that owns competing products. Back in 1994, Adobe purchased the company Aldus which back then was releasing Freehand which it marketed under license from Altsys Corporation. Adobe also picked up Aldus’s PhotoStyler which was a competing product for Photoshop and Hitchcock which competed against Adobe Premier.
After the merger, Adobe killed both PhotoStyler and Hitchcock in-favor of its own stronger products Photoshop and Premier. Freehand was the biggest issue back then though. The merger between Aldus and Adobe came close to collapsing many times because Altsys Corporation who had licensed out FreeHand to Aldus claimed that it would be unfairly hampered by Adobe’s competing product Illustrator. To resolve this issue once the merger took place FreeHand was sold off to Macromedia. Now after yesterdays Adobe and Macromedia merger, Freehand is back with Adobe.
The biggest gain of the Adobe and Aldus merger was the software Pagemaker. Pagemaker was released in 1985 and is generally credited with creating the desktop publishing field.
The issue with Adobe’s GoLive webdesign software conflicting with the newly acquired Macromedia Dreamweaver software was also dealt with before. In 1999, Adobe acquired GoLives CyberStudio software and renamed it to Adobe GoLive. With that acquisition, Adobe killed its own webdesign software PageMill due to the superiority GoLive had.
In conclusion, although the merger between Adobe and Macromedia is a big thing, its also not the first time something like this has happened. Out of the previous mergers Adobe was able to improve its suite and benefit us all. But, monopolies never are a good thing either and if Adobe decides to slack off then we will all be in trouble. Many people are now expecting Adobe to purchase its major desktop publishing competitor Quark. But I believe that might not happen since all Adobe would gain is to kill off a competitor its already slowly but surely beating. So we will now have to wait and see what Adobe will do next.
Resources:
Aldus and Altys settle dispute over FreeHand
The Aldus Adobe Merger
Adobe kills Aldus PhotoStyler, Hitchcock
Aldus on Wiki
Adobe acquires Aldus
About Adobe, Premiere, and All That
Ok, this might be nearly as big as yesterdays Adobe and Macromedia merger, GameStop Corp. and Electronics Boutique Holdings Corp. have announced a merger agreement. The new company will be known as GameStop Corp. and pretty much holds a monopoly on video game retail. Over 3,200 stores. About $3.8 billion in annual revenue. [Link]
Hi miskan!
You may have heard on the grapevine that we planned to reward our dear Flickr members who bought a Pro Account in the early days. Well, it’s true! And since you’re one of those lovely people, here’s a little something to say YOU ROCK!
1. Double what you paid for! Your original 1 year pro account has been doubled to 2 years, and your new expiry date is Jan 31, 2007.
2. More capacity! Now you can upload 2 GB per month.
3. 2 free Pro Accounts to give away to your friends! This won’t be activated for a day or two, but when it is, you’ll see a note on your home page telling you what to do.
Thank you so much for putting your money where your mouth is and supporting us, even while we’re in beta. Your generosity and cold, hard cash helped us get where we are today.
Kind regards,
The Flickreenies.