Search: “maki”

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.

Never knew making my own softdrink could be this dangerous. Out of 13 pages on instructions, maybe 10 are warnings. [Link]

If you are in the process of buying a Mac now put your purchase on hold. Why? Apple has a habit of introducing new products or upgrades during one it large events which are held throughout the year. Steve Jobs usually starts these events with his famous keynotes and then introduces the new products. Next month is the Apple Expo in Paris in which the new iMac G5 was introduced last year. During these expos it is expected that Apple would introduce new hardware and software products, or at least some hardware and software updates. Below is a list of the Apple products divided into two sections, “Likely to be Updated” and “Not LIkely to be Updated”.

Likely to be Updated
Powerbooks (Last updated in January)
iPod Shuffle (Last updated in January)

Not Likely to be Updated
iBooks (Last updated in July)
Mac Mini (Last updated in July)
iPod (Last updated in June)
PowerMacs (Last updated in April)
iMacs (Last updated in May)

To keep up to date with Mac rumors and news I would recommend checking the following sites before making a Mac purchase:

MacRumors Buyers Gude Excellent Source
MacRumors
Think Secret
AppleInsider
Apple Nova Forum

Over a month ago I posted about a woman who is making her own movie about how McDonalds is healthy for you and today on CNN there is an article about how this other woman lost 37 pounds after eating McDonalds for 90 days! I hope people who watched and believed the movie Super Size Me know that it was all bullshit. [Link]

While flipping through my old sites I found a colophone dated sometime in the late 90’s. Only thing I still have from all this is the Iomega Zip Drive:

My PC
Intel Pentium III 500MHZ
192MB SDRAM
TEAC 32X CD-Rom
Quantum Fireball 17.0GB Hard Disk
Quantum Fireball 6.4GB Hard Disk
Western Digital 6.4GB Hard Disk
100MB/PS Network card
Adaptec 1450H SCSI card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster 32AWE
Creative Labs Riva TNT2 ULTRA with 32MB RAM
US Robotics 56K internal modem

Output Devices
Hewlet Packard 5L Laser Jet
Hewlet Packard Deskjet 1100C
Epson 600 Colored Printer
Iomega 100 External Zip Drive
Kodak PCD Writer 225
Chuntex Electronics 17inch Monitor

Input Devices
Hewlet Packard ScanJet 6100C
Wacom ArtPADII

Software used:
Windows 98
Adobe Photoshop 5.5
Adobe Illustrator 8
Macromedia Dreamweaver
Notepad
Internet Explorer 5
Netscape Navigator 4.7

Web Space made availabe by:
The unex-t network.

Favorite music listened too during making of page:
Paul Oakenfold, Cygnus_X, Paul Van Dyk, Massive Attack, Dj Misjah, Dj Tim, Liquid Child, Keoki, Carl Cox and Clint Mansell.

Places I went to chill out during the making of page:
Dunkin Donuts, Armand Van Helden concert, McDonalds, One with the mountain, Tam Tam beach.

Favorite movies ever:
Brazil, Ronin, PI, Blade, The Lost Highway, Fearing and Loathing in Las Vegas, CRASH, 2001: Space Odyssey, Monthy Pyton and the Holy Grail, and The Prophecy I & II.

Now you have the ability to create more then 1 wishlist on Amazon. I for one will find this very useful since now I can create a seperate wishlist for my dvds, music, electronics etc.. AND I can make it private! Amazon just keeps making things better. [Link]

Just took my car to the mechanique because it was making some sounds and vibrations. I don’t like mechanics, they are like doctors. You go to a doctor for a checkup, he tells you that X and Y are wrong with you and that you need to take this and that medicine. You say ok and you leave the office and go get the medicine. You have no clue if the doctor is right or what the hell he was talking about. Same with mechanics. You go there, he tells you that X and Y are fucked up and it will cost you need this and that to fix it. You nod your head pretending you understood what the hell he just spoke about and you agree he fixes them for you.

I just read this article below and I think its ridiculous, how could David Beckham not have the rights to a tattoo located on his own body??

—————–

David Beckham is facing a legal battle over who owns the right to his tattoos, because body artist Louis Malloy fears the British soccer star is making money from his designs.

Malloy designed and inked nine of Beckham’s tattoos, including the famous guardian angel on his upper back, and is determined to sue should the Real Madrid ace use the images in an advertising campaign.

The 42-year-old claims Beckham, who is married to ex-Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, tried to force him to sign a confidentiality agreement, but he refused.

Malloy says, “I was contacted recently and told they wanted to use some of them in a campaign. I said we’d have to draw up a license agreement but then it got too complicated. So I said, ‘I own the copyright, they are my intellectual property, I drew them, I didn’t copy them from other sources.’

“They still think they’re the owners of the images but if they use them without my permission I’d sue. There’s no doubt about it.” [Source]

I was wondering if a new ordinance was introduced or something for making buildings wheel chair compliant? So far 3 buildings next to my office have added wheel chair ramps.. including my office building and Muthana Complex. This all happened this week so its either one big coincidence or a new ordinance was released requiring every office building or mall to have wheel chair access. Speaking of which does Souk Sharq have an elevator? I was wondering a while back how someone on a wheel chair could go to the second floor..

I found this very funny site thats making fun out of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Check it out.. [Link]

Me and Tivo-Guy both hate making decisions on where to have lunch. Our conversations always end up with “you choose” “no you choose”. So, we came up with a solution, create an online software that would decide for us where we would have lunch today.

Tivo-Guy went and created a custom online software in which he added in all our choices for lunch. Now, whenever we want to go have lunch, one of us would click the button on his website and the software decides for us where we will have lunch. The software then sends both of us an SMS with the answer (today its pizza hut).

I would share the website with you guys but then you would probably keep clicking the button and we would keep getting SMS messages non stop through out the day. But I took a picture of “the button” and I attached it to this post 🙂

I just got a phonecall from a creative director I used to work with. He is opening his own advertising agency here in Kuwait and he wants me to join him and help him build a team. In return I would get the same salary I am currently making and he will also make me a partner and give me 10% of the company and its earnings. He already has a major client waiting for us plus he has a deal with an international agecy. If that wasn’t enough, he wants nat and rampurple to join us.

All this and I think I will have to reject the offer. I am a very safe person. By that I mean I don’t take risks. I like routine and I like job security. I am also currently very happy with what I am doing. Ofcourse not everyday is a good day, there are ups and downs, but in general I am having fun where I am now. I am gonna meet with the guy tonight and get more details, I am wondering though if for once in my life I should just take the plunge and go for it..

I feel like getting a 35mm camera. Yeah, people are moving away from film to digital but film does have one major advantage, it allows me to think 10 times before I take the shot, and when I do I would make sure its perfectly framed. Unlike digital cameras, each shot you take costs you money with film so, this will help me make sure the shot I take is the shot I want. With my previous digital camera I would go for a shoot and come back home with 200 pictures with maybe only 10 good ones. When I got my Nikon I told myself that from now on I would think about each shot before I take it and only take it if I know I would want it. In general this new way of shooting has worked, and I have changed my ways, but, I still am careless when it comes to framing. Hopefully getting a 35mm camera will help me get back down to the basics.

I have a few camera’s I am currently looking at:
Leica CM – fixed 40mm lens compact 35mm camera with titanium body and fully manual controls. Price is around $850
Leica Minilux – fixed 40mm lens compact 35mm camera with titanium body but it can’t go manual. Price is around $700
Nikon FM3A – A mechanical SLR (meaning it can work without batteries) with metal body, fully manual controls. Price is around $550 without lens.
Nikon FE2 – A mechanical SLR with metal body, fully manual controls but they stopped making it in the late 80s. Price is around $150 to $200 with lens on ebay.

I am currently leaning towards the FE2 since my parents had the older FE model. Its a very nice compact SLR and its very affordable. The Leica’s though are very tempting but just so damn expensive..

Team America is one strange movie. Firstly the movie is made using puppets and surprisingly it works very well. The movie overall is very funny and full of silly situations. One silly thing for example is all the arab terrorists in the movie know two words, Jihad and Mohammed. So whenever arabs talk in the movie its like “Jihad Mohammed Mohammed Jihad Mohammed” that would be the conversation. Very silly, its making fun out of the fact that when American’s think of arabs they think of these two words first. Its very hard to talk about this movie without ruining it for you so I will just tell you about one scene. The first scene of the movie, Team America go to Paris to capture and kill some terrorists who are planning to blow up a weapon of mass destruction in Paris. While trying to kill the terrorists Team America manages to destroy the Eifle Tower, the Champs Elese and blow up the Louvre museum.. more destruction then the terrorists would have done. The whole movie is funny in this silly way. I would recommend watching it with other people so you could all share the laughs.

The score, 4 out of 5.

PS: The sex scene is the coolest!

I have had atleast 3 people ask me today who is Jason Kottke and what is being Kottked. Firstly Kottked is just a word I made up to imply that my site was linked by Kottke. Who is Jason Kottke? This is what was on Wikipedia (yeah he is listed on Wikipedia!):

Jason Kottke (born September 27, 1973) is a well known blogger and former web designer currently living in New York City. He designed the popular Silkscreen font which has become widely used in web design and has won a Lifetime Achievement Award as a blogger.

Kottke was a pioneering blogger who began his blog in March 1998. As of 2005, his blog is one of the highest-ranked personal sites on the Blogging Ecosystem.

In 2000, Jason Kottke and then-girlfriend Meg Hourihan were profiled in a New Yorker article, You’ve Got Blog, which introduced blogging to a wider audience. The minimalist web design of kottke.org is considered influential, and Kottke was one of the first bloggers to create a sideblog called “Remaindered Links”, which are interesting web links with no commentary. His contributions to blogging were acknowledged when he won a Bloggie Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.

His blogging also got him in trouble with Sony when he broke the news of Ken Jennings’ loss on Jeopardy!.

On February 22, 2005, Kottke announced he had left his web design job in order to work on kottke.org full-time. He pledged that all content on the site would still be free while encouraging readers to become “micropatrons” by making an optional contribution of any amount. This made him the first person to “professionally” pursue his weblog without sponsorship. By close of business on the day of the announcement, there were over 200 people listed as micropatrons on his website. As of April 15th, 2005, the total number of micropatrons stands at 696.

[Wikipedia]