Categories
Blog Info

My 1000th Post

Cool, just realized that this is my 1000th post.

Blog Stats
There are currently 1000 posts and 2,908 comments, contained within 49 categories.

I posted my first post on February 19th which means that I have been blogging for 206 days. 1000 posts in 206 days means I post on average around 5 posts a day.




Categories
Apple Geek

Inside my Mac

OK, this post is connected to yesterdays Hot Hot Hot post. Here are pictures of the inside of my Mac so you guys can understand my problem. As you can see the interior of a Mac is laid out different from PC’s and so cooling devices that work with PC’s wont work on Macs. Currently air is being brought in using the fan over the hard drive and coming out from the top from the power supply.

Here are the pictures:
Inside my Mac 1
Inside my Mac 2
Inside my Mac 3
Inside my Mac 4

Suggestions to my cooling issues are welcomed. I have 4 hard drives inside by the way, 2 side by side and 2 on top of each other on the far right.




Categories
Apple Kuwait

Hot Hot Hot

ultra fan

Two days ago I posted about my PowerMac finally being upgraded, well I have run into a minor problem that requires more upgrading. Basically you can currently bake a cake inside my Mac because of the heat. I had one hard drive reporting a tempreture of 65 degrees celcius which is around 20 degrees hotter then usual. I don’t even know how hot my CPU is running but I am also guessing pretty fucking hot since you would burn your finger if you touched the CPU’s heatsink.

I am now trying to find ways to cool the interior of my case. Since its a Mac its not easy since the interior of the case isn’t standard by any means. I have found PCI slot fans but I can’t find one that will blow air in, most blow air out of the case which at the moment is not a priority. It is always better to over pressure the interior of the case then to underpressure. I also need to find a way to cool the hard drives, a way that doesn’t require screws since there is no place to screw anything in. Until this heat issue is solved my Mac won’t be on 24 hours a day, I will have to turn it on when I need to use it and off when I am done.




Categories
Food & Drinks Kuwait

Subways Taste

subway

Had lunch at Subway Salmiya yesterday. It was very disappointing. I ordered the Subway Melt and the Italian BMT and both of them the ingredients they used looked a lot different then the usual. The two sandwiches also didn’t taste like usual. Hopefully this isn’t the begining of the end for Subway in Kuwait. I have seen this happen before in Lebanon, everything was going perfect then suddenly the owner in Lebanon decided to use local ingredients, suddenly everything started to taste drastically different and then later he was shutdown by Subway International.

On the bright side they are accepting Sub Club cards once again, this time they are using different colored and sized stickers.




Categories
Interesting Kuwait Photography

Old Marriott Hotel

Marriott Hotel Kuwait

Found this picture I took back in 91 of the old Marriott hotel which was burnt by the Iraqis. I have more pictures of other buildings that were destroyed but I cant seem to find them anywhere. Anyway click here if you want to view the above picture in hi-res.

A few months ago I was able to gather a whole bunch of pictures from after the invasion which I found online and uploaded to a flickr account. If you want to see those click here.




Categories
Blog Info

Feeds Beta

Here is a link to something I am working on, its kinda like safat except it grabs feeds from some of my favorite sites. https://feeds.mark248am1.wpenginepowered.com/

Its still in beta testing.




Categories
Automotive

Quote of the Day

Got this from K:

“You own a Ferrari when you want to be someone, you own a Lamborghini when you are someone” -Frank Sinatra




Categories
Links Personal

Websites I Check Religiously

Here is the list in no particular order.

Gizmodo
Engadget
CNN
BBC
2:48AM
Google News
Boing Boing
Waxy
Macrumors
The Superficial
Amazon
Kottke
Slashdot
Gmail
Lebanese Forces
LF Forum
Naharnet
AppleNova
The Register
Cnet
Autoblog
Safat
Joystiq
IGN
Del.icio.us
I Don’t Like You
Google




Categories
Fun

The Russian Maze

russian maze

This looks easy but I can’t figure it out how to get out of it! [Link]

Update: K managed to finish it. Here is the walkthrough.

up
down
down
up
up
down
right
down
left
left
left
up
right
down
left
down
right
right
right
right




Categories
Design Kuwait

Aaaaarghhhhhhh!

crappy sign

Has anyone noticed these signs on the sea side? They are huge, bulky, ugly and unpractical. They are hard to read, its only in Arabic, and the most important information which is the logos of the restaurants are too tiny to be noticed. I am also sure its impossible to read the sign at night. Who is responsible for approving this crap? I am guessing its the same people who authorized the construction of a tall building to block the Scientific Center.




Categories
Kuwait Mags & Books

A Visit to the Bookshop

some books

Yesterday night I passed by The Kuwait Bookshop in Muthana Complex. What I like about the Kuwait Bookshop is the amount of old books they have. Since its the largest bookshop in Kuwait and has been open since before the Gulf War they have a lot of books that have been in the shop since it first opened. For example I found a 1985 edition of the Guinness Book of Records on one of the shelves. I even ended up buying a book from 1985 myself. Ozy was with us at the bookshop and he found a book called “The New Observer’s Book of Automobiles”. The funny thing is the car on the cover was a 1985 BMW M635CSi… very new! Its actually a pretty cool book for anyone who is interested in information on the cars from the 80’s like the Lancia Delta HF Turbo or the VW Golf MKII. I also picked up a copy of Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince and Aesop’s Fables. I already read The Prince in university but I feel like reading it again and I have also read Aesop’s Fables but the version I got seemed to contain more stories then the version I read so gonna reread this again.

I usually don’t have time to read books but recently I have been reading all my magazines in the beginning of the month and then I spend the rest of the month just flipping through them trying to find articles I haven’t read. Now I will try to read books instead when I am done with the magazines. I also prefer short stories since my memory is terrible for novels but I don’t mind thin books like The Prince. One of my favorite books of the moment is Supercade which Nibaq got for my birthday. It contains a lot of pictures and magazine style of writing. Basically every game or every video game console thats mentioned is treated like an article by itself. I don’t have to read the whole book from the beginning I can just flip through and read what I want when I want. Nibaq also got me another book called “The Ultimate History of Videogames” but that book is literally like a history book. I am going to try reading different bits of it randomly but I think I have to actually read this one from the beginning till the end.

Anyway here is a larger picture of yesterdays books.




Categories
Kuwait Links Sports

Zed Al-Refai

I just found out Zed Al-Refai, the Kuwaiti who climbed Mt. Everest has a website. Check it out. [Link]




Categories
Kuwait News Strange Videos

Girl in Police Dress

dancing cop kuwait

From the Arab Times: A security source disclosed an Arab girl who is seen in a clip wearing police uniform is outside the country. A security source said contacts have been established with concerned authorities in her home country to arrest her, reports Al-Rai Al-Aam daily. Earlier it was reported the picture was circulated among phones users with the Bluetooth technology and the policeman who allegedly allowed the girl to wear his uniform is in police custody, said a source who refused to give his name. Police have also arrested the policeman’s friend for taking part in the crime. The same source said the girl was in an apartment hired by a policeman contrary to earlier reports which said the suspect was a police officer. The source added the rank on the uniform was a forgery.

Anyone have this video clip?

Update: Thanks to DNA-Q8, here is the clip. [Video 200kb]




Categories
Apple News

Silhouette Can’t Afford iPod

ipod chick

And I thought models in Kuwait were underpaid. Dancer Mandy Coulton became famous as one of the dancers from the colorful iPod ads but Mandy herself can’t afford her own iPod. She was paid $1,500 for her three-hours work on the campaign and finds $400 for an iPod too much to pay. “I can’t justify spending that much money when I have day-to-day stuff to pay for like the car and rent.” She works as a nanny part-time while she waits for her dancing career to take-off. [Link]




Categories
News Politics

War in Iraq: Disastrous Decision

I am FOR the war in Iraq ofcourse since I live in Kuwait and Iraq with Saddam was posing a threat to me. But today I read something very interesting by Michael Scheuer which made a lot of sense. He was giving an interview on the TV show Hardball when the reporter asked him if the war on Iraq was a good decision, his reply made a lot of sense and it makes me wonder if the US administration knew this would happen. If they were then what is so important about Iraq that made them take such a risk. This is the full transcript.

O‘DONNELL: And, finally, the president has made the case that winning the war in Iraq is central to winning the war on terror and making sure that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda cannot take—harm the United States. Is that true, if we win there, will that help?

SCHEUER: No, ma‘am. The war in Iraq has broken the back of our counterterrorism effort. I‘m not an expert on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, but the invasion of Iraq has made sure this war will last decades ahead and it has transferred bin Laden and al Qaeda from being man and an organization into being a philosophy and a movement. We‘ve really made sure that the war against us is going to be a long and very bloody one. Iraq was an absolutely disastrous decision.