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For people who don’t own the new iPods yet continue to say that the new iPods don’t scratch easily thats total bullshit. I have had my iPod video for a week now and it spends majority of its time in its foof pod. Yet holding up my iPod now and looking at it from an angle I can easily see around 30 to 40 minor scratches. This is unfucking acceptable. My Sony Ericsson phone which I have owned now for a few months and which I throw into my pocket with my keys on a daily basis has only 1 scratch on the screen. How the hell does my ipod have 40 scratches in 1 week while it remains tucked away in its nice protective case?

TivoGuy got 2 deep scratches on his iPod because he had it in his pocket when he accidently put a paper parking ticket in the same pocket. A paper parking ticket scratched his ipod!

Apple really fucked up this time around. It seems they have been really cutting back on costs, no power adapter, crappy packaging, easily scratching surface and best of all, if you have your phone next to your ipod and it rings you can kiss your ears goodbye.

Update: just added image to the post.

Some interesting tshirts for guys and girls from an interesting brand. [Link]

This post is dedicated to Nat since she gets hiccups often. She tries to get rid of her hiccups by drinking a glass of water while holding her nose closed. Here is the right way to do it:

1. Swallow 1 tsp. white table sugar, dry. A study found that this stopped hiccups immediately in 19 out of 20 people. Repeat up to three more times at 2-minute intervals if necessary.

2. Gulp down a glass of water if the sugar doesn’t work.

3. Eat a piece of dry bread slowly.

4. Breathe in and out of a paper bag. Do not use a plastic bag under any circumstances, and don’t do this longer than 1 minute.

5. Gargle with water (see ‘How to Gargle’).

6. Repeat the above steps until your hiccups stop.

[Source]

Well the Xbox360 is coming out in a few days and its time to move onto the next generation of videogame consoles. I have been reading most of the Xbox reviews online and I have concluded one thing, I need a High Definition Television. The majority of the reviews I have been reading have been saying that unless I have a HDTV I won’t be seeing much of an improvement over the current generation of consoles. So it seems the wise thing to do is to upgrade my TV which I have been wanting to for a while now. I don’t want to get a plasma/LCD TV for numerour reasons including the fact that the only plasma I can afford are the cheap Panasonic Viera series which are currently being advertised on billboards around Kuwait. The problem with the Viera is you get what you pay for and according to online reviews the Viera series have numerous issues with the most important one being they doen’t support the 720p resolution. I also believe that a high definition tube television would give a better picture quality then the plasmas and LCDs, so until OLED TVs get released I will be sticking with the old tube.

This is where the problem starts, I haven’t found many HD tube televisions in Kuwait. I only found two models at Sony, a 29″ and a 34″ and I haven’t found any other anywhere else. The 34″ seems like my best option at the moment but it costs around KD700-KD800 which brings me to the following question, is it worth getting HDTV in Kuwait?

In the States they already have cable and satellite channels broadcasting at High Definition, from what I know we don’t have anything like that in Kuwait. So paying KD800 for a TV so I can play high definition games on it doesn’t make a lot of sense. DVD’s are supposed to look better on HDTV’s but I don’t buy that many DVD’s and I mostly use my TV for watching TV shows.

So any HDTV experts here? Any tips and advice in purchasing a HDTV and using it here in Kuwait?

This is the list for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region according to the Economist. I guess Kuwait is in a pretty good spot.

1. Israel 8.20
2. Lebanon 6.55
3. Morocco 5.20
4. Iraq 5.05
5. Palestine 5.05
6. Kuwait 4.90
7. Tunisia 4.60
8. Jordan 4.45
9. Qatar 4.45
10. Egypt 4.30
11. Sudan 4.30
12. Yemen 4.30
13. Algeria 4.15
14. Oman 4.00
15. Bahrain 3.85
16. Iran 3.85
17. UAE 3.70
18. Saudi Arabia 2.80
19. Syria 2.80
20. Libya 2.05

[Source]

Fucking Åmål
I watched two movies this weekend which were very good and thought I would share them with you. The first movie I watched was Fucking Åmål. Its a Swedish movie with nothing to do about fucking so don’t let the title fool you. They mean fucking as a sign of frustration. Here is the plot summary from IMDB:

Åmål is a small insignificant town where nothing ever happens, where the latest trends are out of date when they get there. Young Elin has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to guys, but the fact is that she has never done *it*. Another girl in her school, Agnes, is in love with her but is too shy to do anything about it. For different reasons, Elin ends up at Agnes’ birthday party as the only guest. They have a girl’s night out together but after that Elin desperately avoids Agnes, refusing to even consider her own homosexuality.

Fucking Åmål is one of the best movies I watched this year. There is no nudity, there is no violence, there is no sex and there are not hot Swedish blonds, but nevertheless it was a great movie to watch and it never felt slow or dull. The story was very well written and watching Agnes go from sad and lonely confused girl to a confident and happy lesbian was somehow exciting to watch. I guess the fact that she was Swedish AND lesbian could have made things more interesting but I think it had to do more with the fact that the movie is Swedish and so it was interesting to watch the lifestyle of their high school students. If this was an American movie I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much. Anyway watch it if you can, I am giving it a 4.5 out of 5.

Ichi the Killer

The second movie I watched was Koroshiya 1, (Ichi the Killer). I had had this movie on my wish list for over 2 years now and I was finally able to watch it. The reviews I had read about the movie said this was one of the most violent movies ever made and I have to agree with them. I don’t think I am going to go to Japan anytime soon after watching this movie since I no longer think of them as quiet polite people but more like psychotic violent killers (I am joking here don’t send me hate mail). Here is the plot summary from IMDB:

Yakuza boss Anjo disappears with three million yens. His loyal gang members, lead by the masochist Kakihara, start a search, but their aggressive and gory methods worry the other yakuza gangs. Kakiharas most scary counterpart is the mysterious Ichi, a psychopathic killer with a dark childhood secret, who is controlled by a retired cop.

If the site of blood makes you queasy, if torture scenes make you feel sick and if watching internal organs get splattered all over the wall makes you puke then I would not recommend you watch this movie. You will see allot of everything I just mentioned and more. The director Takashi Miike is one sick mother fucker and I think thats why his movies are so incredible and like nothing else out there. Quentin Tarantino’s movies look like a school girl dressed in pink carrying a Hello Kitty backpack when compared to Takashi’s movies. The torture scenes are extremely gruesome and even if you cover up your eyes theres no escape since the sound is just as horrifying. Ichi the Killer with all the violence and blood had a good plot and the star, Ichi is just really fucked in the head. The whole movie was fucked in the head and thats why I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen for a single moment. It took me a while to get a hold of this movie but I am really glad I was able to since it was really worth watching. I am soo watching more of Takashi’s movies now..

Last month I purchased an old 300mhz Apple clamshell iBook. It had 32MB of RAM and was running OS 9.2 slowly. So I ordered a Kingston 256MB RAM stick for my iBook and it arrived earlier in the week. The first thing I did once I installed it was to replace OS 9.2 with Linux. The reason simply was I needed to be able to browse on the iBook and Firefox wasn’t available for OS 9.2 and I had heard OS X would run very slow on my Mac. So Linux was my only option and after over 1 hour of installing the OS I tried it out and was very disappointed. Although it was very responsive and it did have Firefox, I wasn’t very comfortable using it and I decided to give OS X a shot. If OS X turned out to be very slow then I would come back to Linux as my last option.

I formated the drives and proceeded to install Panther (OS 10.3) onto my ibook. Installation was brisk and in less then 30 minutes it was done installing and rebooting. When the OS launched again I played around with it a bit and I was shocked. Panther was pretty responsive and very very usable. It was not slow, there was no lag and I wasn’t even bothered by the 800×600 screen resolution. I was simply amazed at how well everything was running. I quickly copied Firefox and Adium from my main mac at home and proceeded to set things up importing my bookmarks and setting up my system preferences, everything ran extremely smooth and I even managed to install OS 9.2 in case I ever needed it.

After a week of using my iBook it has finally become my main Internet browsing portal. I am getting online from my living room while watching TV and I am really enjoying it. Sure I could be surfing from the living room with Nat’s powerbook but its not mine and even when I setup my own account on her powerbook it still always felt as if I was using HER powerbook. My previous Internet portal in the living room was my Audrey and I think I will have to find another place for it (maybe the bathroom) since because of my iBook I am no longer using it. This iBook is mine and I feel right at home with it… until the next generation of iBooks get released. So far its great and I even am posting from it right now. So in conclusion a Mac capable of running OSX smoothly cost me KD25 ($85) for the iBook and KD12 ($40) for the RAM. Unbelievable fucking cheap!

In case you haven’t heard, Jazeera Airways has an amazing offer, for the next 3 days you can purchase tickets to any of their 5 destinations for a price of KD5 (one way). I calculated a 2-way ticket to Lebanon including all the taxes and the total amount came to KD32 ($109) which is like wayyyy cheaper then anything else. It’s even cheaper then taking the bus or your own car. I tried to find the offer on their website but its not there, you can only see the price when you are trying to book. My friend recently travelled with them and he was very satisfied. [Link]

I found this via del.icio.us, its a thread at MacRumors.com discussing the iPod when it was first announced back in 2001. Its cracking me up reading the comments, my favorite one so far is “I still can’t believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently!
Why oh why would they do this?! It’s so wrong! It’s so stupid!” [Link]

My iPod Video doesn’t like phones post has been making its rounds around the web. Here is where its been mentioned so far:

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
Mac4Ever
Macfeber
Engadget
Slashphone
Macenstein
Macorama
iPod Fun
MacWorld (SE)
Sektori
Onliner

Cool, my post about how cell phones mess up the new ipods made it to engadget. My bandwidth though has hit 1.7GB already and thats from a 200KB file. Sucks. [Link]

Yesterday night I watched Coming to America. I watched it for the first time back in 1989 and really liked it so I figured I would watch it again since I had completely forgotten it.

Anyway the movie wasn’t bad the second time around but the coolest thing about the movie were the very famous actors who played very small roles in the movie because they were nobodys back then. For example it was the first movie Cuba Gooding Jr. acted in. Cuba played the role of a “Boy Getting Haircut”. He was an extra with no talking part or anything! It was really funny watching him in such a crappy role! Second cool actor was Samuel L. Jackson. Coming to America wasn’t his first movie but it was one of his early ones. In the movie Jackson plays the role of a “Hold-Up Man”. Again he didn’t have a name but at least he did have a talking part. Eriq La Salle who plays Dr. Peter Benton on the TV show ER had a major role in the movie playing the part of Daryl, the boyfriend of the chick Eddie Murphy gets a crush on. The final person who isn’t as famous but looked very familiar turned out to be Victoria Dillard (her pic). I checked her out on IMDB and turns out she used to be in the TV show Spin City. In the movie she played the role of a “bather”. She basically was topless in the bath tub bathing Eddie Murphy. Its really weird watching very famous actors act in movies were they were still very unfamous. I guess everyone does start as a nobody.

I just found a 12 page thread in a forum about new upcoming skyscrapers in Kuwait. A guy by the nickname of skoulikimou has 3D rendered images plus phone cam shots of the newest and under construction towers all over Kuwait City. Some interesting stuff, check all the pages. [Link]

Yesterday I posted some highlights, here are more:

– Ferrari F1 car on display
– Ford GT on display
– New Jaguar XK on display
– Audi RS4 on display
– Carrera GT on display
– Mazda RX8 on display
– Audi Q7 SUV on display (hidden in private room)
– Eleanor on display (Gone in 60 Seconds)
– Porsche Cayman on display
– New Subaru Impreza STI (Not for sale)
– Mitsubishi Evolution IX
– Renautl Megane Turbo
– Hummer H3
– BMW M5

If you have an iPod Video and you don’t want to spend time converting your movies to work on the ipod then just download them in the iPod format via torrents. You could try search sites such as torrentspy and thepiratebay for ipod videos but an easier way would be to go to Podtropolis, a 100% pure iPod Video tracker. Its a bit quiet there now since its still new but it should start getting more popular soon. [Link]

Update: Here is more ipodvideotorrents.com and videoipodder.com