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An update for the 2:48AM iPhone App is now available in the app store. In this version I added the Bazaar Magazine category to the app so now you can read the magazine on your iPhone. Bazaar have also added a full RSS feed to their site so you can now add them to your feeds. I think I like the direction this app is going where I’m trying to get a variety of local entertainment in one app. If you have a suggestion that would fit leave a comment below. Next update will be for the Kuwait Blogs app. [Link]

Damn, I’ve always been pronouncing chipotle wrong… [Link]

Burger picture above which has nothing to do with the link or post was taken by pouryourheartintoit. Looks delicious. [Picture]

Now that the initial hype of the iPad has died down a bit I’ve been trying to figure out where and how I would use the iPad and I haven’t really come up with an answer. The iPad works with WiFi meaning for me I can only use it at home or at work. I don’t go and hangout at coffee shops so it wouldn’t matter if I can get WiFi elsewhere.

At the office I barely have time to scratch my head and I’m sitting in front of a pretty 15″ MacBook Pro so the iPad wouldn’t serve a purpose there. I also don’t want to carry the iPad along with my Blackberry and iPhone to work everyday.

At home I’ve got access to three computers, my MacBook, my G5 PowerMac and my MSI Wind (also running OS X). Where would I fit the iPad? The minute I get home from work I get on my MacBook and start work on my blog until I’m tired and go to sleep.

The only place I thought the iPad fit nicely was in bed. Its lighter than a laptop, easier to hold and felt cozier in bed. But again what would I use it for? By the time I get to bed I would have already spent around 15 hours of my day online on a computer so what reason would I have to get on my iPad at the end of that?

What about traveling? I continue to blog when I travel and so I would need a laptop with me. An iPad wouldn’t work for me, I need an Ethernet port for hotels that don’t have wifi, I need a USB port to connect my camera to and I need Photoshop to be able to resize, retouch and compress images so I could post them. I can’t trust the iPad for all of that, its like trying to go off-roading in a Corolla. For in-flight entertainment I’ve got my amazing Archos 7 which has a 160GB hard drive and can play practically any video format you throw at it. It also has an amazing battery life that lasts over 10 hours AND I can get an extra battery for extra long trips. So really the iPad doesn’t fit in my travel plans as well. Even if I wanted to travel light I could always take my tiny MSI Wind.

So will I get an iPad? Yeah of course, even though I don’t have a use for one its still an incredible need to have device and I need to have everything thats this cool. I’m sure as the iPad matures and more people develop applications for it I’ll find a use for it in my life.

Just got hold of an iPad from X-Cite to review and check out. It just arrived from the States and it’s one of the first iPads in Kuwait. So far my first impression is that the iPad looks even cooler than the pictures, it’s really an incredible device I love it, the screen is amazing, better than the screen of my MacBook which I’m currently typing on. X-Cite just got a small batch of iPads today and they’re on display at their Avenues X-Cite branch so you can go and try them out.

I’m going to play around with my review unit for a bit more and post some more details later today. I’m curious to see if I’ll be able to buy books from the iTunes store.

X-Cite are getting the 16GB iPad with WiFi and the price is KD299. If you want to pre-order an iPad you need to leave a KD50 deposit and you can only book one unit since quantities are limited. It’s first come first served. You can only pre-order the iPad from the Avenues X-Cite branch starting at 7PM today. The earlier you book, the higher the chance you get your iPad in one of their next shipments. As an added bonus, if you mention my blog when booking you will get a free flash drive. If you want to play with an iPad pass by the Avenues X-Cite branch after 7PM today since that’s when they will go on display.

Turns out you can watch the Allah Made Me Funny show for free tonight and skip on paying to watch it at GUST. The Ministry of Awqaf & Islamic Affairs with The Grand Mosque Western Perception Of Islam Center are sponsoring the show tonight. The show will take place around 7:30PM (after the Isha prayers) and the location is the Grand Tent close to the Grand Mosque. There are an estimated seats 1000 and enough parking for 550 people. The event is for free and there’s no reservation!

Thanks DarkWolf80s via Q8geeks

Update: The show turned out to be a press conference were the fans were able to meet the guys. No stand up comedy sadly.

Local blogger and teacher Miss Farah posted something which I wanted to share with my readers. One of her kids in class had brought only chips and chocolate for lunch (pic above), so Miss Farah sent a letter to the parents explaining to them how unhealthy that was for their daughter. Next day she checked the kids lunchbox and this time the little girl had cucumbers, carrots, croissant, corn and juice (pic below).

I thought it was great of Miss Farah for caring enough to contact the parents and I thought it was also great from the parents to actually listen to her. Hopefully the lunchbox continues to stay healthy and other parents reading this can do the same with their kids. You can check Miss Farah’s blog [Here]

The other day I posted about Kuwait’s first drift track, well it turns out the picture above is from the original drift track in Kuwait back in the 1970s. Ok, that’s not true, I actually retouched the picture to give it a vintage feel because I found pictures on the blog Every Little Thing that were taken today at the track and literally ALL the cars in the pictures were from the 70s. Seriously its like every Datsun from that era was at the track today, it was like a vintage car meet. Check out the pictures [Here]

On the bright side its great seeing those guys drifting on the track instead of blocking the highway and making donuts in the middle of traffic…

Update: Thanks to a reader, here is a [Video]

Desert Girl scanned and emailed me a PDF of a National Geographic issue dating back to 1969 that had a pretty long and comprehensive article on Kuwait. I hate reading articles like this because it just makes Kuwait in the present look slow and untrendy compared to Kuwait in the past (I know I know I should GTFO). The architecture, the lifestyle and the exotic essence seemed to have vanished. I found the picture above of this really beautiful looking villa which I think belonged to Ibrahim Al-Shatti in the article and I was wondering how the villa looks like today. It would be very cool if it was still in excellent condition just like in the picture. If anyone knows where this villa is located or can take a picture of it and email me I can then post it here.

Here is the article [6MB PDF]

It took a lot of my time but I finally finished my very own iPhone app. I actually launched it last week on my twitter page but I didn’t officially announce it since I wanted to get some feedback and fix any bugs that I might have missed first. Good thing I did since I spotted a silly bug the first day it got released and quickly released a version 1.1 update a couple of days later. Now the version has gone up to 1.2 and I’ve been able to introduce a few nifty features which I felt helped round off the app and make it launch worthy.

Originally when I went about creating the app I didn’t know what the use would be. Already the blog was very viewable on the iPhone because of a plug-in I had installed that formatted the site to work perfectly on the iPhone so if my app did the same thing it would be useless. I kept thinking about what else I could do and bit by bit I started adding stuff to it that made it more useful. Here are the things you can currently do with my iPhone app:

– Check my latest posts
– Check the latest comments on my blog
– Check the latest posts in the forum
– Check my twitter
– Check my YouTube channel
– Check latest posts on Safat
– Check latest Kuwait news from Arab Times
– Check the weather via the Kuwait Meteorological Center (contains more details than the default iPhone weather app)
and my favorite…
– Get the latest traffic updates via #q8traffic on Twitter

These are just the features I have currently but hopefully will be adding more stuff down the line. If you want to download the iPhone app search for 248AM in the app store or click the following [Link]

In the post below I was just testing to see if I could broadcast live footage and it worked! For the people who were able to catch my live act I was just broadcasting video of my dog sleeping on the floor so you didn’t miss out on much. I got this idea for live broadcasting from P0ach and wanted to see if there was an easy way to do it and it turned out there was. I signed up for a free account on ustream.tv and downloaded the iPhone app for Ustream called Ustream Live Broadcaster and thats it. All you need is your iPhone’s 3G connection or WiFi and you can broadcast live video from anywhere to the blog. So next time I witness a fire or fight I can just broadcast the video live for everyone to watch. Pretty cool!

There is a underpass in Paris that’s only 2.4m in height and a lot of truck drivers ignore the warnings and try to drive through only to have their trucks ram into the ceiling. Someone with a lot of free time set up a blog for this underpass where they postpictures of trucks after trying to go through. [Link]

A reader sent me the footage above which he captured on his way to work. A shop on Canada Dry street that stocked tires went up in flames. Hopefully no one was injured. [YouTube]

Thanks Atif!

Update: Here is some more info and pictures [Link]

Update2: In addition to the pictures, Q8Geeks.org just uploaded a better video of the fire which you can check out below.

[YouTube]

Oula just sent us this email in response to the previous post:

Dear All;
This incident was just brought to our attention by this blog. We are very grateful for this effort from your side to point out any deficiency on our side as we always aim to be the best employer we could be. we are currently investigating the issue and whoever denied him treatment in the first place will not be ignored and will be accountable for this violation. We at Oula Fuel are very clear with our contractors that we require the most fair treatment for the employees and that is why we pay even more than the market price to the contractor just to make sure that these employees are treated as best as possible. As long as we require the employees to be on their best while serving our customers, then it’s only fair to treat them well in the first place.

We here at Oula Fuel extend our best regards and wishes to everyone who provided us with a chance to correct a violation and whoever would point out misunderstandings that might go un-noticed without the collective effort from all concerned citizens who aim to make Kuwait the best country ever.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us on 1800111 or [email protected].

Regards,

Mohammad Al-Khareji
Sales Supervisor
Marketing & Sales & PR Dept.
Oula Fuel

Tel: (965) 2 2321 709
Fax: (965) 2 2321 333
Hotline: 1 800 111
m.alkhareji @oula1.com
www.oula1.com

Stay up to date with 2:48AM, the most popular blog in Kuwait. The app allows you to check the latest posts, comments and posts in the forum. You can also check out the latest posts from the Kuwaiti blogosphere via Safat and read the latest news from Arab Times.

I’ve been visiting Bayan Dental for over 5 years now. I first found out about them from Zaydoun and ever since me and Nat have been getting all our dental work done there at their Salmiya branch. They were actually featured in my Miskan project back in 2005 as Day 303 which is where the picture above is from. Once every few months I pass by my dentist (Dr Samer Khaddour) for scaling because I know that the longer the gap between my visits the more I am going to suffer during my session so I try to keep the gaps small. My dentist and Nat always seem to team up on me since they find my fear amusing but I’m slowly slowly getting over it.

Anyway I recently got approached by Bayan Dental and got offered veneers for free if in return I could post and explain what veneers were on my blog and also about my experience getting them installed. I didn’t have a clue what veneers were but after a quick google followed by a detailed explanation from Bayan I found these two words the best way to explain them… Hollywood smile. Veneers give you the perfect smile and you get them installed in one hour without any pain or anesthesia and they last forever.

I asked them if my dentist could install them for me and since he specializes in restorative and aesthetic dentistry they told me it shouldn’t be a problem. Since then I’ve already had a couple of visits with my dentist getting a mould of my teeth done so I could see how my teeth currently look and how they will look once I am done. They will be sending me a bunch of pictures of difference cases before and after veneers so I could share them here with some proper information about veneers and how they work. For now I thought I would post this to keep everyone in the loop on whats going on. If you have any questions about veneers (and I guess anything dental related) you can post them below since someone from Bayan will be reading the comments and answering any questions you might have.

Since we’re on the subject of dentistry for those of you who have a fear from dentists you could post what concerns you have below and I could try to answer them from my experience like for example how much pain or discomfort a procedure might have or how long certain things take etc.. I haven’t done all the procedures but I think I’ve done most of the general ones. One thing I’ve learned from my experience is that if you have a dental issue now and you don’t take care of it, it will only get worse tomorrow and the fix becomes more complicated.

Update: If you’ve never been to Bayan Dental before, just mention my blog when you go in and you will get a 17% discount on non cosmetic procedures.