Search: “ace”

This Thursday Cinemagic will be showing an Ingmar Bergman movie called The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet). Ingmar Bergman is one of the greatest directors of all time and The Seventh Seal is one of his most popular movies but its black and white and in Sweedish so it might not appeal to everyone.

Time: Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 7:00 PM

Cinemagic movies are screened in the old Salmiya, on the roof on top of Alghanim Electronics and LG. Attendance is free of charge and snacks and refreshments will be served. [Facebook]

Lake Chaubunagungamaug, also known as Webster Lake, is a lake in the town of Webster, Massachusetts, United States. It is located near the Connecticut border and has a surface area of 5.83 km². The translation for the lake is believed to be, “Fishing Place at the Boundaries — Neutral Meeting Grounds.” This is different from the translation, “You fish on your side, I fish on my side, and nobody fish in the middle”, a hoax believed to have been concocted by the late John Daly.

Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, a 45-letter alternative name for this body of water, is often cited as the longest place name in the United States and one of the longest in the world. Today, “Webster Lake” may be the name most used, but some (including many residents of Webster), take pride in reeling off the longer versions. [Source]

I can’t confirm if this actually did take place in Kuwait or not but supposedly it did. Either way its still sad to watch. [YouTube]

I got an email today at 4PM from a reader about a dog that was stuck on a roof of a building in Khaitan. The dog had been stuck up there for a few days and it looked like it was nearing its end and needed to be rescued right away. Here is a snippet from the email:

I’ve got a stray dog emergency on my hands and thought you might be the right man for the job. Im not super good at explaining directions in Kuwait which is why I have not already placed a call to Animal Friends or PAWS.

There is a dog stuck on the roof of a building. I can see him from my kitchen window.

I really pray that you can help. Several residents have tried climbing up the wall below the roof to reach him. But he backs off. My own 12 year old son tried and he almost fell off the wall.

The dog barks all night. I just checked on him and I can see his chest rising fast. His breathing is labored. I don’t think he has much time left.

Here is how you can find him, but please keep my address details private.

XXXXXADDRESS REMOVEDXXXXX

Now the haris of this building has a reputation (so I have heard) for throwing live kittens from the top of the roof! It’s only a matter of time before the barking at night gets on his nerves and he kills this dog.

So I quickly forwarded the email to Animal Friends and sent one to Nataly as well who ended up calling them up and explaining the situation. Within two hours of getting the email Animal Friends not only managed to rescue the dog that was stuck on top of the roof but also managed to rescue a second dog which they found nearby.

Animal Friends are an incredible organization in Kuwait but really do need as much help as they can get. I know many of you have emailed me asking how you could help out financially so I got their bank account information so you can now easily transfer to them your donations. Any amount will make a difference so please if you care about animals help them out. By the way they don’t just save dogs they save all kinds of animals. They’ve got a 4 month old baboon for example whom they’re building an enclosure for which you can check [Here]

So please help them out, here is their bank information:

Name: Ayeshah Waleed Al-Humaidhi
Address Line 1: P.O.Box 71, Safat 13001
Address Line 2: Kuwait
Account: 16205133
SWIFT: BKMEKWKW
Bank of Kuwait and the Middle East (BKME)

I passed by the Choowy Goowy opening today at the Avenues. They opened up in place of where Starbucks used to be located just outside the food court. They’ve got their cheesecakes, brownies and cookies all available there and all freshly baked in front of you. Now some bad news, I found out tonight that Arby’s will NOT be opening at the Avenues. It seems they pulled out which sucks!

I don’t know where to start this review because I’ve got a ton of good things to say about the Archos 7 but an equal amount of bad things. I guess I will start with the bad things.

The Archos 7 is extremely buggy plus I think I have a problem with mine. There are three brightness settings on my A7, low, medium and high. When I put the brightness on high the back light flickers between low and high constantly. I checked online and some people faced this issue when the screen was set on low brightness but I am the first to report this issue with the brightness set on high. Luckily for me I don’t have any problems when the brightness is set on low or medium, the two settings I will be using most while traveling. I read this issue could get fixed with a firmware update but so far since I got the device over a week ago there’s been two firmware updates and both haven’t solved the flickering issue.

As I mentioned earlier the device is also buggy. I haven’t used the A7 much but so far its crashed with me while watching a movie once. At times it just crashes while getting charged or while its on sleep and I need to reboot it, a quick process but nevertheless it shouldn’t do that. I had it connected to my Mac for over a day now and it was working fine until awhile ago I tried to turn it on and it wouldn’t. For some reason it wasn’t charging over USB which it should have been and the battery got completely drained. URGH! The last negative thing I have to say is that the Archos is pretty heavy. I love using my iPhone after I am done with the A7 since it makes my iphone seem tiny and ultra light. Oh and one more thing, I can’t seem to remove the battery, its like jammed or something!

Yeah there are A LOT of issues but… I still love the Archos 7! I love the screen, the battery life, the ability to just drag and drop my movie folders onto it, the way it plays ALL my files without needing to convert them, the touch screen, the browser, the web TV, web Radio, the stupid flash games, the little stand on the back of the device, the way Archos keeps improving the device with firmware upgrades and finally the fact that I can stream videos off my main server at home over wifi and watch them on my Archos from anywhere at home. When I bought the device I didn’t know I could do that but it turns out I can and easily. I just browse my home network from the Archos, find a video file, double click it and it starts playing instantly.

When I purchased the Archos 7 it was because I thought it was the best portable video player on the market but now I know it is. As of this post I am not aware of any other device on the market that has the same features and abilities as the Archos 7 and thats why I have no regrets. Final score is a 3.5 out of 5. Yeah it has a TON of issues but at the end of the day all it needs to do is play movies for a very long time without running out of battery and that it does perfectly. Of course I am hoping Archos will work out whatever bugs I have with the next firmware update.

160GB Archos 7 is for $272. [Amazon Link]
320GB Archos 7 is for $412. [Amazon Link]

By the way there is also a smaller version called the Archos 5 which sells for $280. Its the same as the Archos 7 in every way except the screen is a 5inch and the battery lasts around 5 hours. [Amazon Link]

The guys from Kuwait Extreme successfully completed in the Marathon Des Sables, a self-reliant 254km footrace through the Sahara desert over the course of one week. This is the first team from the Gulf to participate the 2009 Marathon Des Sables.

The team members are Zed Alrefai, Reyad Malallah, Khalid Alsayer and Ahmad Almajed. Their participation was to raise awareness and, through sponsorship, to fund The Kuwaiti Association for Learning Differences (KALD). The team was sponsored by: ALSAYER GROUP and Eastpak and supported by Extreme Sports, Caribou Coffee, Pro-Vision Sport Management, Artistic View, Dr. Zuhair ALNasar, AMAC, LOfat and Garmin.

The Marathon Des Sables:

This arduous event known as “the toughest footrace on Earth” takes place in the largest desert in the world Sahara desert over seven days covering a distance of 254 km on foot.In addition all athlete must be totally self reliant, carrying their food, water, medical needs and camping equipment for the entire duration of the race in their backpack. The race itself; which is equivalent to a marathon a day, is in fact broken into various stages, the most extreme of which is a distance of 84 km in a 24 hrs period. The real challenge is the weather which all athlete are exposed to sandstorms, high humidity as well the temperature could reaches 50 C during the morning and goes below -0 C at night.

Link to facebook group: [here]

Posted by K.

One of my favorite Le Mans cars, the Aston Martin DBR9 is on display at the Avenues. I am not sure if its the actual race car or a replica but either way its one great looking car.

So as I posted earlier, my Archos 7 arrived today. I watch a lot of movies and tv shows on the plane when I travel and I’ve been using my old iPod to do that. It served me well but the tiny screen and the 4 hour battery life wasn’t cutting it for me. I also didn’t like the fact I had to convert all my videos to a format the iPod would read because it mean I had to plan ahead of time what I was going to take with me so I could spend a couple of days converting them.

I wanted a player which had a long battery life, a large screen and a player that could play Divx and Xvid formatted movies. Thats why I ended up going with the Archos 7. The battery lasts over 8 hours, the screen is a huge 7inch and I could just drag and drop movies onto its 160GB hard drive without converting them.

My first impressions so far are good. The screen is great and much more responsive then I was expecting. It doesn’t get smudged easily because its a matte screen but the back of the device which is shiny is full of smudges. I moved a few tv shows and movies over to the Archos and it played them all except for one which had AC3 sound encoded. To play that I needed to purchase a plug-in which I did. The US site has 3 plug-ins listed for the Archos 7 at $20 each while the global version of the site had the 3 plug-ins bundled together for $40. I decided to get all 3 plug-ins for $40 and I can now play HD movies and movies encoded with AC3 without a problem. I don’t like the idea of paying for plug-ins but I am glad I have the choice to do so instead of no choice at all. I tried watching tv with the built in web tv and although it works I couldn’t find a decent channel to watch except for Sky News. The web browser on the Archos works really well and I was able to load up my blog without any issues. It even displayed the flash ad banners which I have on my site, something which Safari on the iPhone can’t do.

Now the negative stuff. The device is heavier than I expected which isn’t really a problem for me since I will only be using it on the plane. I also had trouble playing one movie, every time I tried it would just crash the Archos. I am thinking its because of the way the movie was encoded but need to experiment more with this. It was a 1.8GB file. Quantum of Solace which I have encoded with AC3 sound and coming in at around 1.4GB played flawlessly.

So far I am really liking the device. I know some of you might have specific things you want to know about the Archos just ask me below and I will try to reply. The Archos 5 and 7 are basically the same device except for the larger screen and longer battery life on the 7.

160GB Archos 7 is for $272. [Amazon Link]
320GB Archos 7 is for $412. [Amazon Link]

Magic Planet opened up at Avenues and it looks really great. What I think makes the place special is the minimalist design of some of the toys which all seem to take form of white bugs. I took the picture above but a friend of mine (Thanks Ibrahim!) emailed me a ton of pictures which you can check out by clicking on continue below.

I first spotted this on Some Contrast and then this weekend I ended up driving by it on the way to Marzouqs place so I decided to stop and take a picture of it with my Yashica. If you want to see the previous artwork that was on display there click [Here]

I knew there were dog fights in Kuwait but I didn’t think they were being held in public, during the day and at a popular place like the Friday Market. Where were the cops?? This is sick! [Link]

The blog is currently being prepared to be moved over to the new server on Rackspace. The forum is going to be shut down until the move is completed and there will be no posts on this blog until Saturday.

If you leave a comment from now till Saturday on this blog there is a chance it won’t be there once the blog is up on the new server. Sorry for any inconvenience, it should be a quick and painless move.

Update: Ok the forum is now on Rackspace. Its no longer mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com/forum you now can access it by going to forum.mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com

Update2: The blog is now on Rackspace. Took only around an hour thanks to Rami.

Update3: My email is still down at the moment.

Update4: Email is working and by the looks of it everything else on the blog. The move is complete, I just have a few things related to the theme and the forum I need to adjust. Rackspace my server provider emailed me and then called me because they read on my twitter I was having minor issues. They read my twitter and then called me! Thats fanatical support!

A forum user (q8enviro) posted about new double sided speed cameras and yesterday I noticed three on highway 40. I couldn’t take any picture because it was dark but I just noticed Some Contrast posted pictures of the new double sided camera which you can see [Here]

I think they’ve also added new cameras on highway 40 since I passed by maybe 6 on the same stretch.

A reader commented under one of my posts that one of my favorite shawerma places in Kuwait, Badar Al Badoor changed their name to Bazar Al Bazoor. According to the reader, when it came to renewing their license their sponsor wanted them to pay KD10,000 just for the name “Badar Al Badoor”. They told him no way and decided to change the name. Everything is still the same except the place is now called Bazar Al Bazoor. It sounds really funny now but in Arabic if you remove the dots over the letter “za” you get Badar Al Badoor again.