2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

A handful of Firefox friends from Oregon State University went and painted a huge Firefox mural in the middle of the campus quad. The thing is huge and looks really cool. Too bad its not permanent. [Link]

I was watching Everybody Loves Raymond on my Tivo when a black screen with copy on it came on for a micro second and disappeared. So I paused the tivo and went back frame by frame to the black screen. I then took a picture of it and though I would share it with you. I love finding stuff like this.

Wow, the Playstation 3 is going to look cool. But whats up with their joypad?? [Link]

Just got a flyer from GameWorks with the following message:

Play all you can play in 1 hour for KD3.500 every night from 9PM to 11PM. Valid till May 31st.

KD3.5 doesnt sound bad. Probably will try it tomorrow night before starwars.

As I promised, here is an example of a picture of the day before post processing. Here is the post on miskan.com with the picture post processed. I still need to post a guide on good post processing but I have been really busy.

I was passing the Sheraton round-about today when I noticed there was something going on infront of the old Kuwait door. There were some people dancing and stuff plus they were being filmed. So I took a picture, click here to view it.

The Scientific Center is one of the coolest looking places in Kuwait, so I would like to know who is the smart guy who gave I don’t know who, permission to build a building right infront of it?

click here for a better view

Today was unbelievable, I had more work then I could handle and thats never happened to me before! I had to be at a full day photoshoot which started at 10AM, at the same time I had to be at the office at 11AM to meet a calligrapher. At 1PM I had to be at another location with another account handler to plan another shoot for tomorrow then I also had to be at the office to work on a logo that is due today and also an ad for one of our clients which is also due today. Luckily other team members offered to help me out and I was able to accomplish most of my jobs. Crazy stuff, I didn’t have lunch yet even. Now I got to finish up a quick job here and head out to another photoshoot at 6. No time for anything today.

Nibaq told me he was going to watch Star Wars III at the movies on Tuesday, so I decided to check out the KNCC website for showtimes. Turns out there is a showing on Tuesday at 12:00AM at Marina Mall so I just bought 2 tickets and reserved our seats online. It was the first time I tried using their website and it was also the first time I bought tickets online. Its a very easy feature to use and I am surprised we have this technology in Kuwait.

1) First you need to sign up on their website, a very easy and quick process.
2) Then you look for the movie you want to watch.
3) Once you find a movie you want you then have to find a showtime that would suit you.
4) The next step is to reserve your seats. This is the best option, they show you a map of the theater and then you can choose where you want to sit. Very cool.
5) You pay for your ticket online using Knet, Credit Card, M-Net or a Smart Card.
6) You receive an email and SMS message confirming your order.

Very easy and very simple. I now might watch more movies because of this.

I just got invited to a flickr group called Horses, Ponies & Foals… why??! Whats worse is I accepted the invite and joined the group!

I take a few shots during the day and at night I post them on Miskan.com. What you don’t see though is how the pictures looked before right out of the camera. I shoot everything in RAW format which basically means the pictures are stored on my memory card unaltered. The pictures aren’t compressed in any way, no white balance is applied, no sharpening, no nothing. Its pure. When I open up the pictures in Photoshop, I have to set up the Raw options before the picture opens up. Its basically a window where I can control various aspects of the picture from brightness and contrast, to exposure and the white balance. It time consuming since I have to open each image and post process it till it looks good. Each one of my raw files are also over 5MB (on older cameras they are twice the size). The advantage is I get to control the settings, not the camera. Most of my pictures are usually shot under exposed because you can always brighten a picture but you can’t darken an over exposed shot. Shooting in RAW also means I am now more picky with my shots, I don’t want to get home and have 50 pictures I need to open and adjust one by one. I just don’t have the time for it nor the computer processing speed to do it quickly. Below is a shot I just took now in the office to give you an example of the importance of post processing.

In this first picture you can clearly see the white’s are grayish, the floor is dull and the whole picture lacks decent contrast.

This picture is the first one but it’s been post processed. I increased the brightness, contrast, a bit of saturation, set the white balance to neon and then proceeded to manually set the white balance till it contained a decent amount of magenta.

So in conclusion, don’t expect to get good pictures if you don’t post process. Remember when in university you took photography? Remember how in the dark you spent time experimenting trying to get the right contrast and shadows etc.. this is the same thing. If you don’t do it right don’t expect excellent results.

update: I think from now on whenever there is a cool shot I upload onto Miskan.com I will post the original unprocessed one here just to show the importance of post processing.

How do you spell this? What does this mean? What is this? Who is this? What does it to?

Just one answer.. https://fuckinggoogleit.com/
I am gonna tattoo this website on my forehead.

The reason I did’nt post all yesterday (except for 1 post) was because I had a scratched cornea. Now I am back at work and everything is cool. Did you know the cornea is the fastest healing tissue in the human body?

Today I was listening to my iPod via iTrip when I noticed my signal was getting disturbed. I had my iTrip setup to broadcast on 102.5mhz and I am sure it was free the other day. So I turned off my iPod and as I had figured, there was a station that was interfering with my music. So I started to search for an empty station and there wasn’t any! I don’t know why but I think it has to do with todays weather but every frequency had some kind of interference from a nearby station. Really sucks, its like the iTrips worst nightmare.

Best Airports
1- Hong Kong International Hong Kong, China
2- Singapore Changi Singapore
3- Incheon International Seoul, South Korea
4- Munich Munich, Germany
5- Kansai Osaka, Japan
6- Dubai Dubai, UAE
7- Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
8- Schipol Amsterdam, Netherlands
9- Copenhagen Airport Copenhagen, Denmark
10- Sydney Sydney, Australia

Best Business Class Lounges
1- Cathay Pacific Hong Kong, China
2- Virgin Atlantic London Heathrow
3- Gulf Air Bahrain
4- Asiana Airlines Incheon Seoul, South Korea
5- Swiss Air Zurich, Switzerland
6- Singapore Airlines Singapore
7- SAS Scandinavian Copenhagen, Denmark
8- Malaysia Airlines Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
9- China Airlines Taipei, Taiwan
10- Qantas Airways Sydney, Australia

Best First Class Lounges
1- Cathay Pacific Hong Kong, China
2- Thai Airways Bangkok, Thailand
3- South African Airways Johannesburg, South Africa
4- Asiana Airlines Inchon, South Korea
5- Malaysia Airlines Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
6- Lufthansa Frankfurt, Germany
7- Singapore Airlines Singapore
8- Qatar Airways Doha, Qatar
9- Gulf Air Bahrain
10- Swiss Air Zurich, Switzerland

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