2:48AM - Entertaining Kuwait since 2003

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

[via]

Finally, no more flash in flickr. The reason it took me so long to get with flickr was because I hate flash. And now, flickr has stopped using, thank god, feels good and fast now. Adding pictures to groups is so much more practical and easier now.

My previous Oakley’s broke a few weeks ago, the model was Minute Black with Black Iridium lenses and the rate of transmission of the lens was only 10%. Since there is a volleyball tournament tomorrow I decided I needed to get new shades. I found some really cool ones in the market, my favorite was the Oakley XX model, but the problem was I only found it in Metallic Black with Black Iridium Polarized lenses. Polarized lenses are really expensive and add up to the price of the shades. The XX model I saw cost KD60 which was over my KD50 budget I had set. My previous Minute’s only cost me KD33 and I was hoping to find something just a bit more expensive. So I kept looking for a non polarized version which would bring the price down under KD50 but I couldn’t find any. So I ditched the XX model and spotted the Straight Jacket version which was Black and used a Gold Iridium lens. I think the golden lens gives me the adventurer type of guy look which goes pretty well with Nats Jeep. The price was KD40 which was under my KD50 budget and so I got them. When I put them on outside in the car I noticed a problem though. Everything around me was yellow. When I tried it in the store I hadn’t noticed it but outside it became pretty obvious. I hate the yellowish tint and it fucks with my eyes color balance. The rate of transmission is decent though at 12%, not better then my older lenses but still good enough. Hopefully this yellow tint crap issue is only temporary and I won’t notice it once I get used to it. Oh one thing I noticed, Perla Nera is too expensive. The same shades I got for KD40 they were selling it for KD46! Rippoffs..

In the past 2 days I have been getting comments in an old post about Prince Naseem’s Mercedes SLR Crash. The comments are from people talking about Prince Naseem and his cousin and some stories and stuff. But the conversations sound strange, and why are they posting in my blog you know? I think I read about something like this before though. They spam conversations on a subject to get a higher rank in google or something.. I don’t know just see this for yourself. [Link]

Yesterday SheWrites posted her movie of the week which is a favorite of mine, Dazed and Confused. So today I am gonna post my favorite drug related movies, here is the list:

Dazed & Confused
How High
Half Baked
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Carlitos Way
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

update: I forgot about Trainspotting!

Just got invited to a party tonight. Starts at 9PM, will probably leave by 10. Should probably take my PSP so kill time…

Back in March I was trying to get Nat wasta because she needed a paper from the government saying she could get license. There is a law that says if you have been in Kuwait less then 2 years then you need special permission to get a license. A friend at work told me he knew someone who could get me the papers. So I gave him all of Nat’s papers and he took them and gave them to the guy. A week later the guy comes back and tells me the wasta wants a ticket to Egypt. I was like what? No way, I knew some other people who had offered to help for free, one of them was Nibaq. So I told the guy from work forget about it, get me the papers and I will find someone else to help. Next day he comes to the office he is like the wasta went ahead and did your papers, all he wants in return is a cheap phone. I was like OK thats not a problem, atleast the papers are signed.

I went and bought the wasta a Nokia 2600 for KD30 and sent it to him. The gift got rejected and I posted about it back then here. Turns out the wasta wanted a Nokia phone that costed around KD145. I told the guy at work that no way I was gonna pay KD145, I told him if the guy was also gonna get Nat her license then maybe I would. He was like the guy said he would help her out with the eye test. I told him she doesn’t need help in the eye test. The guy at work told me I was right forget about it.

Since that time till now every week a couple of times the guy at work keeps telling me the wasta is asking about his phone. Now past two days the guy at work is telling me the wasta is really pissed and he has been threatening him and crap. I told him what do you want me to do? He was like get him the phone. I was like no way why should I. He was like because he did the papers. I was like come on I told you not to do them anymore.

Anyway to summarize things, the wasta is threatening the guy from work, telling him he will do bad things to him and now the guy from work is scared and has been begging me all day to help me out. This situation is really pissing me off.

How I see it, its the fault of the guy from work. a) He should have gotten me the papers when I told him I didn’t want to get the guy the ticket. b) he shouldn’t have told me a cheap phone is what the guy wants. c) when the guy kept asking him when I was going to get him the phone he should have told him the story about how I was told a cheap phone would do and if its an expensive phone I didn’t want any help.

Am I right here?

Just got my two tickets to the Volleyball Tournament this weekend held by The Communication Zone. Its going to be at Kempinski Hotel this Friday. Supposingly over a thousand tickets were sold so its going to be really crowded..

Here is a larger picture of the tickets

Over a year ago I purchased a trackball mouse to use at home. Because my desk at home was small, whenever I was using the computer my wrist would start to really hurt because my hand was always half dangling off the desk and I was always positioned in a very anti-ergonomic position.

I did some research and in the end I decided to go with the Kensington Orbit Optical. The reason I went with Kensington was because of the way the trackball is shaped and because it uses optics. The shape of the trackball allows me to rest my wrist onto it and allows me to control the ball with my fingers. The use of optics allows the trackball to be extremely accurate and very easy to roll. The Kensington trackball also came with PC and Mac drivers.

The first question people ask is, so is it really better then a regular mouse? The simple answer is no. The trackball works differently from a regular mouse. When you spend years working with a mouse and then move to a trackball, the change takes getting used to. I use the trackball at home but not at work. The reason is I can control the mouse better then the trackball, and this is after using the trackball nightly for over a year. The mouse is just more natural to me and the speed and accuracy I work with the mouse I can not get with the trackball. But, I didn’t get the trackball because its a better tool then the mouse. I got the trackball because my wrists were hurting me, and because of the trackball I don’t have that problem anymore.

The trackball is very comfortable to use. Very comfortable. You don’t have to move your hand or wrist when using it, just your fingers. I work on the computer all day at work and by the time I get home my wrists are hurting. Using the trackball at home allows me to recover while still using the computer. It really makes a big difference, since I have gotten the trackball at home I have never had any wrist issues.

How is the actual Kensington trackball? Its great, if you want a trackball this is the one to get. Amazon have it for only $25. Thats really cheap. Unlike normal trackballs this has an optical sensor which means its ultra accurate and is dust and dirt proof. The trackball is very smooth, the form is ultra comfortable. The size is nearly twice the size of a normal mouse. The dark grey area you see in the pictures is actually a rubbery material. The trackball comes with a USB to PS2 adapter for those of you who dont have a free USB port.

I just ordered and received my second Orbit trackball a few days ago. The reason is my first one got worn out. The rubber feet under the trackball got unstuck, the rubber wrist rest started peeling, and the whole thing started looking.. aged. So I went and ordered another one and it feels really good.

I will give this trackball a 4 out of 5. When comparing the trackball to a mouse if just comes down to how comfortable the person is with each. This review is of the Kensington Orbit Trackball, and as a trackball this is just really hard to beat. I have used the Logitech optical marble mouse but the shape and feel of it is just terrible compared to this. And for only $25 is really a steal.