Search: “about the blog”

I was placing some orders on Amazon today when I decided to get an Amazon Prime account. What is that? Basically for $79 a year I get unlimited 2 day shipping on anything I purchase on their site. I calculated how much I spent on shipping last year and it was in the hundreds so $79 is a good deal. Now whats cooler is that Amazon Prime allows you to invite 4 other household members to use this account. Doesn’t sound interesting.. until you realize ALL of us Aramex users are counted as living in the same household since we all have the same address. So I sent an invite out to Tivo Guy and Nibaq since they’re my best friends. If this works then we are going to have so much fun buying stuff of Amazon. Also if you need anything delivered overnight, as an Amazon Prime member you only have to pay $3.99 to have any of your items shipped overnight. Amazon just keeps getting better.

I have a G4 733mhz PowerMac at home and its really starting to show its age. I have been wanting to get a G4 1.4GHz upgrade chip for a while now so today I was checking amazon and to my surprise they now have a 1.7Ghz upgrade chip! But the problem is I don’t know if I should pay $500 and upgrade my mac or pay more and just get a new one.

I don’t like the current PowerMac G5’s. I have a Dual 2GHz G5 here at work and I just think it lacks personality. Nat and my Brother both have 12inch PowerBooks and I don’t like those also. They seem very fragile and look very normal. My favorite Macs at the moment are the iMacs and the iBooks. I used to have an iBook before but it died. I think they are a really good steal. For $999 you get a gorgeous 12inch iBook with a CD-Writer, Wifi, Bluetooth, and a 1.2Ghz chip. I also like the 20inch iMac’s because they are so fucking huge yet so small at the same time.

So I guess if I had a lot of money I would turn my current mac into a server and I would get a 20inch iMac and a 12inch iBook.

If anyone is interested in checking out the 1.7Ghz upgrade for the mac here is the amazon link.

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.

[Wikipedia]

Someone managed to create software for the PSP that allows him to have full control (Play, Stop, Pause, Menu) of his DVD player, TIVO, and High Def TV, all wirelessly from his PSP. [Link]

Like Nibaq just posted, Adobe just acquired Macromedia. What does this mean to us? Well first lets see what major software both companies have.

Adobe
Acrobat, Photoshop, Elements, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, Premier, After Effects

Macromedia
Flash, Dreamweaver, FreeHand, Director, Fireworks

The biggest and most controversial problem is Illustrator and Freehand. Both softwares are currently being used although in the past few years FreeHand has lost a considerable share of the market, they still have a cult following. But, between Illustrator and Freehand, there is no question, Freehand will die. Its been dying slowly anyway but I am sure the fans will cry murder. Fireworks which conflicts with Photoshop and Elements will also die out, Photoshop has a much larger market share and a much stronger brand. GoLive and Dreamweaver, GoLive is out for sure. Adobe has been trying to play catchup with Dreamweaver for a very long time and this way they can just trash GoLive and pickup the much more popular Dreamweaver. Director will be a very nice addition to the Adobe Suite and I hope they manage to integrate it nicely with the other Adobe software, which I am sure they will. Finally owning both Flash and Acrobat I think is a very strong package, PDF is used a lot in the print world while Flash is used alot in the digital one. Owning both means that they will have a very strong position in both medias. All they need now is to buyout Quark and we will have another Microsoft-like company to deal with.

This has to be the longest lasting April Fools prank of the year. On April 1st Maynard Keenan the lead frontman for one my favorite bands Tool sent an email saying he found Jesus. This was an obvious attempt to mock Brian Welch from Korn who a few months earlier decided to leave Korn because “he had found god“. Surprisingly though many people didn’t get joke and till today people still don’t it was just a joke. Even Nibaq was telling me the other day that if I knew Maynard had found Jesus. Here is a link with details on this April Fools prank, something like a detailed history of it.

By the way, now that I think about it, Keenan sounds like a Lebanese family name pronounced Kin-3an. Interesting…

Nibaq just got me the coolest thing. Its a toy based on the only website 20Q. Basically it can guess what you are thinking about. Its easy to play, just think of something, and 20Q will try to guess it in less then 20 questions. It really works try it.

This post is dedicated to Simply Stinni. BMW Films came out I think 2 to 3 years ago. They were short movies directed by famous people and starred famous people. For example the movie “Star” was directed by Guy Ritchie and starred Madonna. The budget was provided by BMW and each film had a different story then the other and different actors, except for one, Clive Owen. He played the same person in all the movies, a driver. Here is a summary of the movies from BMWfilms.com

Brace yourself for intricate plot twists, riveting car chases, and a dose of wit. All eight short films of The Hire, created by Hollywood’s finest talent, are available now for downloading and streaming.

These brilliantly produced films star Clive Owen as the driver. Hired for his superb driving skills and unshakable poise, the driver encounters unexpected obstacles that put his abilities to the test. Watch as each film reveals new depths of character, intrigue, and cinematography.

There are 8 movies in today. All free to download. Make sure you watch the Season 1 films.

[Link]

There is free wifi at Häagen Dazs at Souk Sharq according to a recent post by nibaq. Further investigation has revealed that this is just temporary. By next week the connection there will NOT be free. So take advantage and to those of you attending todays blog meetup, have fun.

There’s an auction on Ebay for the thrill seekers out there. Tornado Attack, LLC and ‘Team Tornado’ is auctioning off the “co-pilot” seat in Tornado Attack One to secure your spot in an expedition which will conduct a tornado chase and put you in the eye of the storm. The TA-1 vehicle started life as a Baja trophy truck and has gone through a $250,000 upgrade that allow it withstand an F-4 tornado (158-260 mph). [Link]

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Turns out there is a group of StarWars fans who are standing in line outside a movie theater in the States.. but the movie won’t be playing at that theater. The movie will be playing at a nearby theater and they were asked to move and stand in line outside that theater but the fans refused. They believe the movie should be played at the theater they are standing outside of and they are determined to stand in line for another month and a half till the movie comes out.. although it wont be playing at that movie theater. [Link]

UPDATE: Read the comments under the article on that site. Really funny..

BusyNow got his PSP yesterday. As an EX-DS owner, BusyNow believes his PSP is much more superior. Click here to see his pictures.

Nibaq yesterday left his Nintendo DS over at my place.. deliberately. He is trying to get me to like the DS and convince me that its a much better system then the PSP (yeah right). I tried playing wario ware on it yesterday, I found the fact that you could blow on the DS for some of the mini games interesting and original but other then that I wasn’t impressed. I find the second screen useless as it serves really no purpose and the touch screen is so uncreative since I have had it for ages on my PDA and the only good thing its for is clicking links on and not controlling a car. If anything the two screens actually make me a bit dizzy. So since my first experience with the DS, I haven’t gone back to playing with it again, neither has nataly who is busy playing Metroid Zero Mission on the Gameboy SP. Will I crave the DS today? We will see but I doubt. So far, it really sucks.

From Engadget: Damn, it’s only been a week since the Sony dropped the PlayStation Portable on us and people already pieced together a ton of different hacks and how-tos for the new game console. We’ve thrown together this list of all the hacks and how-tos we could find, we’ve probably missed a couple, so let us know and we’ll add ‘em to the list:

How to use non-Duo Memory Sticks on your PSP
How to browse the web with your PSP
How to get TiVoToGo shows onto your PSP
How to get e-books on your PSP
How to read web comics on your PSP
How to get manga on your PSP
Creating Sony Thumbnail files
PSP dead pixel checker
How to use your Mac to play PSP games over the web
How to take apart your PSP
Reading RSS feeds on your PSP
How to get videos and DVDs onto your PSP

Although many people tend to disagree, I really love the way the BMW 7 series looks like. Its big, and its different. Maybe at first it was a bit hard to absorb it but now that its been on the streets for some time its easier to understand. Since many people though complained about the look, BMW went and gave it a minor facelift. I think it looks worst worse now, check out what they did to the cars rear, it looks terrible.. [Link]