Search: “ace”

I just found about freelensing and can’t wait to try it tomorrow during the day. This is the definition of freelensing according to Luke Roberts:

Photos taken with the lens detached from the camera but held in place and moved around to focus. This also lets extra light in sometimes causing light leaks and giving a vintage look and feel.

Also:
* Gives extra bokeh by shrinking the area in focus (aperture is 0)
* Allows for super macro shots
* Delicious light leaks
* Tilt-shift effects

For some cool freelensing samples (better than mine above) click [Here], [Here] and [Here]

Update: Here are some more free lensing shots I took which turned out much nicer. In all the shots except for the last, I had the lens flipped backwards.

I was emailed the following:

Throughout the coming months there is going to be an eventful calendar of activities at different Starbucks locations. Ranging from insightful and inspiring photography exhibitions, to fun live music performances and gigs and many other more art forms to be included and surprises to be later announced.

Each weekend the photography exhibitions will take place in 3 Starbucks stores across Kuwait so choose the closest to you and come encourage young creative youth in Kuwait and spend a great weekend at Starbucks..

The schedule of events and locations are to be found for reference below:

6 -7 March
Starbucks Al Bidaa:
Ammar Al Othman & Samar Al Bader

Starbucks Behbehani Villa – behind Church – Kuwait City:
Saleh El Gaith & BaderAl Ajeel

Starbucks Mishref Coop:
Abdula Al Foudary & Nawaf Al Saleh

13-14 March
Starbucks Avenues (by Fountain):
Maha Al Asaker & Jarrah Al Boloshi

Starbucks Kuwait Free Zone:
Saleh El Gaith & Bader Al Ajeel

Starbucks Palms Spa & Resort:
Samar Al Bader & Sherifa Ben Ali

20-21 March
Starbucks Al Bidaa:
Maha Al Asaker & Jarrah Al Boloshi

Starbucks Salem Al Mubarak – Opposite Al Fanar:
Bader Al Ajeel & Ammar Al Othman

Starbucks Hilton Al Mangaf:
Abdulla Al Foudary & Nawaf Al Saleh

27-28 March
Starbucks Behbehani Villa – behind Church – Kuwait City:
Sherifa Ben Ali & Maha Al Asaker

Starbucks Palms & Spa Resort:
Jarrah El Boloshi & Saleh Al Gaith

Starbucks Marina Mall:
Ammar Al Othman & Abdulla Al Foudary

For more information visit their Facebook group [Here]

Thanks Maha!

Someone emailed me about an exhibition thats taking place in Kuwait for a “digital artist” called Anwar Ghader. So I googled him to check out his work when I found a cool post on Projekt Cyan showing how in under 10 minutes you can replicate one of his work. I really dislike how some people take a picture, apply a few Photoshop filters and then call it art. That’s not art, what I posted the other day is art. So if you want to find out how to create your own digital art like Anwar click [Here]

Update: Just so there is no miscommunication. The reason I don’t call Anwar’s work art is not because it was easy to create or because it is ugly or anything of that sort. Its because of the way the work was created. If I take an image and using the software Rasterbator I create something nice, does that make me an artist? If I use Obama Icon Me to create a cool looking poster, does that make me an artist? So why is it art when Anwar (or any other person) uses live trace to create the work?

K5 has an interesting post about this cool little store he found called Nawader Al Kuwait. The place has a huge collection of vintage Arabic vinyl records and also vintage radios and record players. The place also has other random items, personally I am interested in the painting of the musicians above so I might pass by tonight to check the place out. You can see more pictures and information about the place on K5’s blog [Here]

I got home after work to find a bunch of retards fighting under my building. I parked my car in the basement and walked up to the ground floor to find around 20 teenagers (16-18 year olds) shouting, screaming and shoving each other around. I watched them for like 5 minutes and then decided to go upstairs and watch them from my balcony. A lot of fights erupt next to my building because there is a billiard place in the building next door that attracts a lot of the wrong crowd. There is also a prostitution ring that operates in that same building but they only open for business like once a week and its a pretty tightly run ship with high end customers so they never cause any problems (I should post about them one day). The billiard place on the other hand just attracts all these trashy kids that want to fight for the dumbest reasons.

While watching the fight from my balcony I heard what sounded like one guy yelling at who I thought was one of the Bangladeshi janitors in my building so I went back downstairs to make sure no one did anything to the workers. Turns out the workers were inside the building away from harms way but the fight outside had turned really violent with guys holding cutters and some guys bleeding. I live in a shopping mall in the old Salmiya street and these guys were basically fighting in the backside, then moving inside the mall and then back out to the front of the building onto the main Salmiya street. It was ridiculous! So I asked the landlord if he had called the cops and he told me yeah when the fight had first started but no one had come yet.

20 minutes later and the cops still hadn’t showed up. Actually the fight dispersed and everyone ended up going their separate ways and the cops never showed up. I went back up to my apartment while the janitors started to clean up the blood stains. Unbelievable.

When I first started this blog over 4 years ago I was getting only a handful of visitors a day. Since then the site hasn’t stopped growing and I’m now averaging over 10,000 visitors a day. From day 1 the blog was being hosted by a good friend but now it’s time for me to move the blog to its own dedicated server.

I just signed up with Rackspace, a leading web hosting provider hosting sites like Threadless, 37signals, Liquid Web Laughing Squid, ESPN, Disney Online, Motorola, Canon USA and more. They gave me a really good deal and promised to have my server up and running by Tuesday. This means I would probably start moving my blog to the new server sometime late next week.

If you’re interested my new server will have the following specs:

Dell 2850
Dual socket = 2 Xeon 3.2 GHz performance CPU’s
Two 146GB 10,000 rpm Hard drives (Raid 1)
4GB RAM
1 x Cisco 506 Firewall
24x7x365 Unlimited live person support
Guaranteed 1 hour hardware replacement
100% network uptime (Backbone = 65GB throughput)
1000 GB High Performance, Tier 1 Redundant Bandwidth
Constant network monitoring for latencies and intrusion

During the move there should be some downtime but I will post about it ahead of time.

[YouTube]

This fire happened on Wednesday and resulted in two dead woman and 64 injured. What I found shocking is this:

Relatives of the women initially blocked firefighters from entering the wedding hall, an action that some suggest may have contributed to the disaster. According to an eyewitness, when firemen first arrived at the scene, they were prevented from entering the hall by some men (apparently relatives of some of the women inside) on the grounds that it was an all-women place. “You can’t get in,” they shouted.

According to eyewitnesses, the hall was filled with smoke at first, which frightened the guests. They panicked and a stampede broke out when flames began to engulf the area.

Witnesses added that what aggravated the situation was the fact that many women who were trying to flee the scene, stopped to put on their veils and head covers. They also said that the hall accommodated 220 women and children. [Kuwait Times]

Thanks Kuwait Black Market!

A new pizza place recently opened up in the Avenues food court called Pizzeria Rustica. Its located opposite Applebee’s. The rice placed called “Rice” also looks to be opening up any day now. The lights were on and the staff looked like they were getting training.

There is a digital art showcase that’s being held at The Exhibition for the next two days. Here is the information I received by email:

Ugly, But Beautiful
Date: February 26-28
Time: 4PM-12AM
Location: The Exhibition

Beauty is something rational, everyone has their own taste of it. Ugliness, on the other hand, is one’s own opinion.

When you look at an image that is full of beauty and structure, you find it beautiful because you are living a structured life. You rarely see things placed randomly, as a result you say an image is ugly without knowing that ugliness has its own beauty.

That is why we can say something is ugly, but beautiful at the same time.

‘Ugly, But Beautiful’ is Remon Yousef’s means of making you see how ugliness can have its own beauty.

Remon Yousef, a Lebanese graphic designer currently working in Kuwait, will be showcasing his artwork to the public for three days only.

All artworks are for sale.

I got the following in my email:

Campus Activities Board, a university funded organization at the American University of Kuwait is creating a charity carnival to help children in need. Whether they have down syndrome or autism, are orphans or in foster care, or are disabled– this day is for them.

All the money from the tickets and all donations will be spent in buying toys and gifts for the children that were not able to attend. The week after the event will be to take volunteers and go to five of the centers here in Kuwait.

The Charity Carnival will include:
Carnival Games
Raffle
Art Corner
Prizes
Face painting
Pony Ride
Bouncy Castle
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory room with movie
Free Candy
Toys
and much more

People are invited to bring friends and family to enjoy this day!

Tickets will be sold at the American University of Kuwait from in the liberal arts lobby from:

Saturday, February 21, 2009
From 11:00 to 6:00

Ticket Prices:
3 KD for adults
1 KD for children

Tickets will also be sold at the door!
If you want to volunteer for this event contact: [email protected]

They also have a facebook account which you can check [Here]

A friend recommended I try The Butcher Shop burger for my Burger Challenge so I passed by a few nights ago to give it a shot. I’ve been to the Dubai branch before but haven’t been to the Kuwait branch one since they launched so I was looking forward to it especially since my friend told me their burger was “amazing”.

I passed by The Butcher Shop the night there was the big dust storm so they only had two tables occupied. All of Avenues was empty which I actually found pretty cool. I quickly flipped through their menu looking for the burger section and then told the waitress I would have the cheese burger medium well and a coke to go with it. It was around 8pm and I hadn’t eaten a single thing all day since I was busy with work so I was really looking forward to the burger.

The burger arrived shortly thereafter and to my disappointment it didn’t look very appetizing. The presentation was pretty dull and I actually had a hard time taking a good shot to use with this post. Looks aren’t everything of course and I was hoping the taste would make up for the presentation. It didn’t surprisingly. The bottom of the bun was very soggy while the top bun was dry. The patty although thick and tender didn’t have any flavor. It was a really boring burger even though it was the only thing I had eaten that day.

The cost of the burger is KD2.950 which is fairly decent for a place like The Butcher Shop but I wouldn’t have it again. I was thinking of giving it a 3 out of 5 but the fact that I was extremely hungry without food all day and still managed to find the burger unsatisfying and flavorless dropped it down another half point to 2.5 out of 5. If you’re at the Avenues and are looking for a good burger have Johnny Rockets or Ruby Tuesday instead.

The Butcher Shop is located at The Avenues
The cost of the Cheese Burger is KD2.950

Here are the burger places I’ve reviewed so far:
Applebee’s
Bredz
Burger Boutique
Fuddruckers
Hashi
Gaucho Gril
Gourmet Burger Kitchen
Johnny Rockets
Munch
Papa John’s Burgers
Prime & Toast
Ruby Tuesday
Slider Station
Sheraton Hotel
The Burger Hub
The Little Oven
Wimpy

Today I went off-roading with some friends. First in our real cars and then in our radio controlled ones. We had three Tamiya FJ Cruisers, my Tamiya Lunchbox and my Tamiya Frog. It was extremely fun, I bashed the hell out of my Lunchbox and it now needs a major paint job but I don’t care. I took a ton of pictures and so did my brother but I couldn’t put all of them here. There are a few more pictures below though if you hit continue.

Update: My brother just uploaded some photos to his flickr account [Here]

A reader of the blog sent me pictures of Dean & Deluca so if you haven’t been there yet click on continue below to check the place out. By the way, if you’re a salami fan I think they’ve got the best salami in Kuwait… but thats probably because they don’t have ANY competition!

I had been hearing a lot of negative stuff about Dean & Deluca like how everything they have is available at Sultan Center, or how their prices are too expensive and how they really don’t have many products so when I passed by this weekend I wasn’t expecting much.

The place ROCKS. I don’t know what people are complaining about. First of all I don’t think I saw anything there that was available at Sultan Center. Price wise, yes they have caviar that costs over KD2,000 and Black Truffles that cost over KD600 but those items aren’t meant for us, they’re for the people who can afford them. I checked out their meat section and found their prices actually cheap, at least I think KD3.600/kg for Wagyu beef is cheap. They have around 6 or 7 types of mushrooms and a whole range of fruits and vegetables that I haven’t seen before. They even have a great seafood section. I also found out they made gourmet sandwiches, kinda like the ones at Napket and also have ready made soup (Lobster Bisque for KD2).

I am really glad a place like Dean & Deluca opened up in Kuwait and I hope it does well so that it remains open. Places like this bring back the joy in cooking. If you haven’t passed by please do, they’re located in the Avenues, phase II.

(I couldn’t take any pictures because the two times I passed by it was PACKED so if you have any pictures email them to me)

Flooded McDonald’s is a film work by Superflex in which a convincing life-size replica of the interior of a McDonald’s burger bar, without any customers or staff present, gradually floods with water. Furniture is lifted up by the water, trays of food and drinks start to float around, electrics short circuit and eventually the space becomes completely submerged.

Yeah I know it sounds like a strange idea for a movie but thats what makes it interesting. Here is the link to the official site of the movie. [Link]