Categories
Commercials Design

Sony Micro Vault: Frog, Squid, Rat

My favorite advertising campaign this year and best of all, it was produced in our region.

Advertising Agency: Promoseven, Dubai, UAE
Creative Director / Copywriter: Ali Ali
Art Director: George Azmy
Illustrator/3D: Furia

Click here to view them bigger.




Categories
Kuwait Personal

Never Again

Kuwait National Day Celebrations

This is the last time I am going to spend National Day in Kuwait. Its absolutely the worst time of the year to be in Kuwait. Three years ago when little kids were foaming cars it was cute but last year older teenagers and adults started doing it and this year it was even worse.

I stayed indoors most of the vacation but tonight I had to go into Kuwait City to meet up with a friend and it was disgusting. You can’t drive with the windows open cuz you never know which idiot is going to spray you and you can’t get on the Gulf Road because the cops block everything. Its just messed up.

By the way at one traffic light I was stuck in the cop made us all run a red light to clear up the traffic. Problem is the camera at the intersection took pictures of all the cars and buses that ran the red light, what happens in a situation like this? I am hoping the cop telling us to cross the red light shows up in the picture or else I am pretty fucked.




Categories
Work Related

We’re hiring!

JWT
My advertising agency (JWT) is currently looking to hire a Senior Art Director and an Arabic Copywriter. If you’re interested send me an email and I will get back to you. [Email Me]




Categories
Electronics Kuwait Shopping

Eee in Kuwait

Asus Eee

Best Buy Kuwait, the fake Best Buy in Hawalli have the tiny Asus Eee laptops for sale and they are being sold for KD159 which is KD50 more expensive than Amazon. Its really sad how they’ve blatantly copied Best Buy’s logo and name. If it was a crappy shop I could care less but they do actually have a decent collection of stuff so they should also put the effort in coming up with a better name for the place.




Categories
Cars & Bikes Information Kuwait

New Audi Police Cars for Kuwait

Audi Kuwait

A friend of mine emailed me these two photos of what looks to be new Audi police cars for the local enforcement. My speeding fines were probably a down payment.

Audi Kuwait

Update: Here is the picture of the Dodge Charger which was sent in by Khalid. Also I just found out these are test cars and the deal with the government still hasn’t been signed.

Charger Cop




Categories
Apps Electronics Geek

Operating systems for really, really old computers

I have an old PIII 500 with 256MB of RAM and a 20GB hard drive lying around which I wanted to give to someone. I didn’t want to install Windows on it since the person isn’t very good with computers and always ends up getting viruses and trojans installed on his system. The computer was going to be used for Internet browsing, chatting on MSN and Yahoo and copying and view pictures from his digital camera. I decided to install a Linux OS.

gOS

The first Linux OS I installed was the latest version of gOS which was released two days ago. From the screen shots it looked like a really friendly and easy to us version of Linux and thats what I was looking for. After installing it I realized that the operating system was running very sluggishly on this really old computer, it wasn’t going to work.

I then remember I had bookmarked a website from Digg which had a list of Linux distros that were meant to be run on really old computers. I went through the list, did some research and in the end decided to try two different ones, TinyFlux and Wolvix.

Wolvix

I tried TinyFlux first and although it ran really well the user interface wasn’t very friendly. I then decided to try Wolvix and not only did it perform really well but the interface was fairly friendly looking with a Mac like dock at the bottom and large friendly icons everywhere. I decided to stick with Wolvix and after playing with it for an hour I think its pretty impressive for an OS thats under 250MB in size. It has Firefox, a music player, video player, photo viewer, and a whole bunch of other softwares all included and there is a ton more I can download all for free.

This is actually the best part of Linux, its free and the majority of the software for it is free. Another good thing is you can try out the OS without installing it, you just run it straight from the CD and if you like it you can install it if not you just eject the cd, reboot and you are back to your old operating system.

If you want to check out the list of Linux distros for old computer click [Here]
For gOS click [Here]
and for Wolvix click [Here]




Categories
Movies Personal Reviews

Movie Review: Dragon Wars D-War

Dragon Wars

It sucked. Dragon Wars is the worst movie I am going to watch this year because I can’t imagine anything turning out worse than this. And yes, the picture above is of a lizard attacking a helicopter…




Categories
Design Food & Drinks Kuwait

Rooster here, rooster there, rooster everywhere

copy of kellogg\'s

The box on the left is the original Kellogg’s Cornflakes with their signature rooster thats been on the front of their boxes since 1957. The box on the right is the Sultan Center generic brand of cornflakes.. with a green rooster. Next up, Sultan Center canned vegetables with a green giant as the mascot.




Categories
Design Fun Interesting

Draw your face

Draw your face

I am assuming the cops use a similar software to this with victims of attacks. The picture on the left is me trying to draw myself and the picture on the right is of Holla (my friend) trying to draw himself. Its pretty easy to use and the results are pretty neat. I am going to get back to working on my face trying to make it resemble me. [Link]

Tips: You can move the location of face features by clicking on them in the picture on the right and moving it about. You can increase and decrease the width and height of the features by using the axis thingy on the left. You can also save your face for other people to see. If you click on load and then search for a face called 248am you should find the one I am working on.




Categories
Food & Drinks Kuwait Personal Reviews

Review: Cheeburger Cheeburger

Chee Burger

I got an email today from a reader informing me of a new burger place that opened up called Cheeburger Cheeburger. Its an American chain that opened up their first international branch here in Kuwait last month and according to their website, their burger was voted the best burger in 28 cities. The problem was where they opened up their location, Souk Salmiya. I hate that place, its probably one of the worst designed malls in Kuwait containing some of the crappiest stores and its always over crowded and parking is always nearly impossible to find. Still, I decided it might be worth the visit and so after work I headed straight to Cheeburger Cheeburger.

The place is located on the top floor in the food court and their location is surprisingly pretty big. The interior is themed like Johnny Rockets which is the 1940’s-50’s style although I doubt they copied Johnny since both restaurants launched around the same time back in 1986. When I got the menu I noticed they had a limited time special offer going on where 1/3 lb burger with fries and coke was priced at KD2.250 while everything else on the menu had 25% off. I decided to go with their combo and I ordered a side order of onion rings with dipping sauce. The way you order the burger at Cheeburger is you choose the thickness of the burger, you then choose the type of cheese you want on it (they have 8 kinds) and then you choose what toppings you want and if you want any certain sauce. I didn’t get too creative with mine since it was my first time, I just went with swiss cheese, ketchup, tomato and lettuce.

A few minutes after placing my order my coke arrived and it was in a jar! I thought that was pretty creative since I don’t recall ever getting my softdrink in anything but a cup. While waiting for my appetizers I noticed a bunch of Trivial Pursuit cards on the table near the salt and pepper shakers. At first I assumed that some kid had left them behind but then I noticed every table had a bunch of cards. Turns out they have them there for the customers to entertain themselves with while they wait for their food to arrive.

The first thing the waitress brought me were my onion rings and fries followed shortly after with my burger. The onion rings were skinny but delicious, the dipping sauce had a lot to do with it. Anyone who’s had the awesome blossom at Chili’s will recognize the sauce immediately, I love it. The fries were good but nothing to set it apart from the competition. My burger, well I can’t imagine it being voted the best burger in 28 cities. It wasn’t bad, on the contrary it was good, it just wasn’t special. Thats probably my fault though since I went pretty safe with the toppings. The bread was good, the meat was good, it was everything else in the burger that didn’t stand out. Maybe next time I could try their one pound burger, according to their website if you can finish it they would put your picture up on the wall and I can’t imagine it being that difficult to finish.

The place in general wasn’t disappointing, they had a lot of little things that made it special and thats what I liked about the place. For example nyone who’s eaten at Johnny Rockets knows how crap their paper napkins are, they are too tiny and too thin. Well at Cheeburger Cheeburger their paper napkins are kitchen paper rolls which is fantastic. I know napkins aren’t usually important in a restaurant review but I just wanted to use it as an example of the little things I am talking about. My biggest disappointment in the place is the location and location is everything. I hate Souk Salmiya and I know I am not the only one. If Cheeburger Cheeburger was open at say Marina Mall or in Jahra then I would go back again over and over but sadly I doubt I would go back to Souk Salmiya unless I really had to. If it was located anywhere else it would most probably get a 4 out of 5 but because its in Souk Salmiya I am giving it a 3. My bill came out to be KD3.150 which I think is a steal. You can check out their menu by clicking [Here]




Categories
Interesting

10 Commandments of the Mafia

Taken from BoingBoing: The BBC reports that when Italian police searched a Mafia boss’ hideout, they found a list of ten rules for proper mafioso etiquette.

1. No-one can present himself directly to another of our friends. There must be a third person to do it.

2. Never look at the wives of friends.

3. Never be seen with cops.

4. Don’t go to pubs and clubs.

5. Always being available for Cosa Nostra is a duty – even if your wife’s about to give birth.

6. Appointments must absolutely be respected.

7. Wives must be treated with respect.

8. When asked for any information, the answer must be the truth.

9. Money cannot be appropriated if it belongs to others or to other families.

10. People who can’t be part of Cosa Nostra: anyone who has a close relative in the police, anyone with a two-timing relative in the family, anyone who behaves badly and doesn’t hold to moral values.

[BBC Link]




Categories
Video Games

COD4

cod4

I passed by and picked up my copy of Call of Duty 4 today from Rihab in Hawalli. I’ve been playing it for around an hour now and so far I think its the best military first person shooter ever. There are sooooo many enemies all trying to kill you at the same time its just non stop chaos all the time.
COD4 > Halo 3.




Categories
Funny Strange

Strange Email #7

As I’ve mentioned before I get a lot of strange emails, at least one a day and sometimes when they are really strange I decide to share them with you. This is one I just received now, I have no clue what it says! By the way, I received it exactly the way its written below.. with the spaces and all…

yesterday i boughtfrozen two mince,but the price is very different.but truthfully one pices0.545fils,im buy1.020fils and 1.040fils.im stay in fintas,shops until very distant.what is the difference minutes you?

Update: For those of you just seeing shapes instead of copy, here is what it says:

Yesterday I bought frozen two mince. but the price is very different. but truthfully one pieces0. 545fils. im buy1. 020fils and 1. 040fils. im stay in fintas. shops until very distant. what is the difference minutes?




Categories
Apple Geek

I couldn’t unlock iPhone with firmware 1.1.1

iphones

A friend of mine passed me his two iPhones today to unlock. He purchased them around the same time I purchased my last iPhone except his arrived with the 1.1.1 firmware while mine luckily arrived with the 1.0.2 one. Yesterday an updated version of AnySIM got released which I posted about and which supposedly unlocked the 1.1.1 iPhones but I tried it and it didn’t work.

The steps to unlocking a 1.1.1 iPhone are fairly easy, its just one tiny extra step compared to unlocking the 1.0.2 phones.

1) I downloaded the latest version of INdependence
2) I ran it and clicked on the option to Enter DFU mode (this is the option that you didn’t have to do with 1.0.2)
3) I quit INdependence, ran iTunes and restored the phone to version 1.0.2
4) I quit iTunes and ran INdependence again
5) I clicked on Activate
6) I then clicked on Jailbreak
7) I then clicked on install SSH
8) I FTP’ed to the phone and copied AnySIM
9) I ran AnySIM

Thats all the steps required to activate and unlock the iPhone. I also installed AppTapp but that can be done later. Now my issue is everything went smoothly except for the AnySIM unlock. It ran and gave me an error at the end which is normal, but when I rebooted it still wouldn’t work with the local GSM network. I tried unlocking both iPhones and had the same issue. Everything else on the iPhone works except for the phone. I don’t know if this is happening with other people or if I missed a step somewhere but whatever the reason might be it’s too late at night to figure it out.




Categories
Moblogging

Blood Bag

I just found a limited edition copy of one of my favorite movies, Ichi the Killer. It comes in a blood bag! (Posted from my Nokia e61i)