Search: “sti”

My favorite orange drink since highschool has been Sunkist. I started drinking it back in highschool because it was cheap at only 50fils. Since then, Sunkist has become the only orange juice I drink. For some reason though I always thought Sunkist was a 100% local product. But just now I was reading the label and it said “Under license from Sunkist Growers Inc; USA”. So I googled Sunkist and quickly found www.sunkist.com. Then I found this which I found funny:

Sunkist products have a long history in several Persian Gulf States. Besides being a major juice brand, Sunkist is the market leader in juice drink cups in the Kuwaiti market.

Ofcourse they are gonna be the market leader, their are no other juice drink cups in the market! hehe, anyway, Sunkist still rules!

I think my Sony Ericsson T630 is dying. This past week while talking to people on my phone I was hearing crackling sounds. Yesterday while talking to Nibaq he told me he was also hearing the crackling sounds on his side. So yesterday night I went into the “Service Tests” menu (From main screen press > * < < * < *) and I did the mic test and as I had expected all I was hearing was the crackling sound. Seems the mic on the phone is fucked. Now I don't know what to do. I am soo bored of all the phones in the market. I don't like Nokia, I hate the samsung brand, siemens are interesting but the phones they have which I like don't have bluetooth. Motorolla also have interesting phones but even the ones with bluetooth don't work with my mac and pda the way they should. So that leaves Sony Ericsson. My past 4 or 5 phones were all Sony Ericssons. They work best with my Mac (isync) which is the most important thing I look for in a phone. But there is no SE phone that interests me now. The S700 is cool but big and expensive. The P series I dislike because of their Symbian Os. That leaves me with the K700, which is probably what I will go with. I think I should be able to find it for a decent price now. If it turns out to be more then what I want to pay I will definitely find a second hand like new condition one for a lot cheaper. I am so bored with phones...

They didn’t get the new toys, they still had only Chewbacca and Star Wars Falcon toy so I had a Big Fish meal.

The other day I mentioned a design agency called Landor and today I am gonna mention another great agency called Interbrand. Everyone knows that Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, and Van Gogh painted the Starry Night, but very few people know which agency created the Vodafone logo, yet alone which designer was behind it. Designers are not as appreciated as painters although both are creatives. Creating a brand identity I believe is harder then creating a painting. When artists paint they paint for themselves. Their painting in the end will be purchased by 1 person who might be the only one likes the painting. On the other hand a designer creating a brand identity has a lot more pressure and a much much more difficult aim. When a designer creates a brand its not just for himself, its for everyone. It will be seen by thousands and millions of people and it will become part of peoples daily life. Brands are not locked up away in some museum where viewers trickle in one at a time to see it. Brands are let out into the wild where millions and millions of people will interact with it.

Interbrand have created identities for some of our favorite brands ranging from Imation, Nikon, and Lufthansa to British Airways, 3com and Lexmark. My favorite is Petro-Canada.

For some samples of logo’s they have designed click here
For the agencies website and portfolio click here

I met with Nibaq awhile ago for lunch. He had been walking around Muthana complex trying to kill time until it was time for me to have lunch. While walking around he found a new Apple store that was still being worked on. The place is called Solize and is not connected to any of the other local dealers. We spoke to the guy incharge who was busy displaying mac hardware and he seemed like a nice person ALTHOUGH when Nibaq asked him if he supplied RAM for the powerbooks the guy asked is it Apple? Like duh… Anyway the store had two cool things. First they had second hand macs for sale although not cheap. One was a Graphite G4 500mhz powermac for 300KD. The second was a Dual 800mhz Quicksilver powermac for around 430KD. He also told me he had a Dual 1GHZ mirrored door powermac inside, but I didn’t see it nor did I ask its price. Another good thing he had although once again not cheap was Sonnet Encore CPU upgrades for older powermacs. A G4 1.4ghz upgrade would set you back 190KD at solize compared to the 450$ on amazon. The store will be completed within a week. I personally think this store will NOT succeed due to the terrible location. Its in Muthana Complex, Mezzanine 1, right in the back behind Steps and near the Asus and As Seen on TV dealers. Impossible to find and even if it was located at the main entrance, I doubt the people who frequent Muthana are potential Apple users..

Here are some pictures I took

Remember the BumFights DVD I bought the other day off the street kid? Well turns out it came with a bonus. The DVD is actually 2 DVDs in 1! The DVD had BumFights AND World’s Wildest Street Fights Vol2. I watched a bit of BumFights but then went straight to World’s Wildest Street Fights and it was amazing! WWSF is 45 minutes of non stop videos of people fighting. Could be schools kids beating the fuck out of each other or two girls fighting at a BBQ party. Really amazing stuff, its all home made movies recorded by people at the fights. Very violent and interesting to watch, I loved it. I just wish it was much longer, 45 minutes flew by very quickly.

The other day I watched Terminator 3 and I was a bit surprised in one scene. The scene in question is when Arnold comes to the present time, goes into a bar, steals a strippers clothes and car keys, then goes out to the guys old beat up truck and drives off. Just before he drives off he puts on the strippers watch, an Offshore Audemars Piguet. I found that a bit odd since the watch cost A LOT more then the guys truck. A LOT more then the guy could ever make. It was total bullshit, no stripper working in a bar like that could make enough money to buy a watch like this. So I was kinda put off at the lack of realism in the scene. Anyway, yesterday I found out that this watch store I know in Kuwait has two special edition watches. An Audemars Piguet, Arnold Schwarzenegger edition AND a Montoya edition. So I did a bit of research turns out AP and Arnold have a pretty good relationship and they have worked together on many things from charities to movies.. I found this page that talks about the T3 movie tie in.

Now, lets talk about the coolest watch of the two, the Montoya edition. I didn’t even know such a watch existed. I am a great fan of Montoya since his Indy days and I am a bigger fan of Audemars Piguet watches. So combining the two is too extreme. Here is some info I was able to obtain about the Montoya watch:

Juan Pablo Montoya Royal Oak Offshore Chronograph
This watch was released in tribute to Formula 1 race car driver Juan Pablo Montoya. This watch features a 45mm titanium case with carbon fiber inlaid accents all over the top of the bezel and sized of the bezel and sides of the case. Every shape on this watch and every feature is designed to resemble a Formula 1 race car; The chronograph pushers are styled to look like air-intake cooling flaps, the Bezel screws are shaped like cylinder head screws, the winding crown resembles a wheel axle, the winding Rotor of the movement resembles a clutch disk and the strap resembles the racing suits of F1 racers. And of course, the watch is adorned with inlaid carbon fiber on the top and sides of the bezel. This is a very limited and near impossible to find watch, the Titanium model was released in only 1000 individually numbered pieces with current retail price as of March 15, 2005 of $19,500.

Here are some pictures of the Montoya watch.

So how much are they selling for in Kuwait? The Arnold version is going for KD7,000 while the Montoya version for KD12,000.

Today I bought a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum and something phenomenon happened. Something that has never happened in all the years I have purchased Wrigley’s chewing gum. One of the gum sticks was double wrapped! Here is a picture.

Starting today I will start posting what I had for lunch. It will go under the Lunch category and it will help me (and anyone else) keep track of how much junk food I am eating. Today I had McDonald’s. 1 Fillet-O-Fish combo supersized, and 1 double cheese burger.

Yesterday night on the Conan O’Brien show, Sylvester Stallone was one of the guests. I really like him (Stallone) a lot, he is one of my favorite actors. Not because of his acting abilities but because of his personality as an actor and the fact that he made the movies Rambo and Cobra, both favorites of mine. So yesterdays show was extremely funny, Conan was able to get the best out of Stallone, he joked about Rocky and stuff, plus asked if Rambo would make a come back and surprisingly Stallone suggested he might. Conan made a good point by suggesting Rambo now has a new enemy to fight, Al Qaeda. Stallone joked saying that Rambo is old now and probably won’t travel that far from home, he said Rambo would probably just drive down to Mexico and fight someone there. Stallone is a really funny guy, watching him yesterday made me feel like watching Cobra again. Anyway here is a recent picture of him with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Similar to the flickr site from the other day, this site spells words using thumbnails from Amazon.com. It works differently from the flickr one so its interesting to try. Here is the link.

I went for a long walk in Salmiya tonight and found a kid selling some DVDs. I don’t usually buy of these street kids since the quality of the DVD recording is usually terrible. I still decided to check out the dvds though and to my surprise I found Bumfights volume 1. What is Bumfights? Well these guys went around paying homeless people to fight each other and do stupid pranks like set their hair on fire or pull their teeth out using pliers all on film. When the dvd first got released it caused some controversy and thats when I found out about it. Its not a major movie release or anything so I was surprised to find it here on the streets. Its amazing how you can find the strangest stuff in Kuwait sometimes.

Anyone noticed that Nat hasn’t been posting here? I should just kick her out of this blog.

I am pro Sony PSP. I definetly think its a way cooler machine then the GameBoy DS which is big and clunky. The Sony PSP games are way cooler and the connectivity features of the PSP are also a lot cooler. In a recent comparison in WIRED magazine between the PSP and DS, the PSP ofcourse came out on top. But today I read an argument about the PSP that I found interesting. The PSP is better then the DS, we know that, but how much better it could have been is the issue here.

Here is the rant I read taken from Joystiq:

The PSP’s battery is a topic of huge debate. Depending on use, a single charge can last anywhere between 6 hours all the way down to 1.5, depending on which features the handheld utilizes. Why is this?

I seriously ask, should you as a consumer and gamer, have to juggle volume and brightness to eke out a bit more play time? Should game developers be asked to manage the battery consumption or should that be an issue for the developer of the system? Basically, shouldn’t the system, when used at maximum capacity, have a reasonable battery life?

If Sony hadn’t tried to force an optical drive in the PSP, there would be much more room in the system for a larger capacity battery. Load times would be nonexistent. The system would be less fragile and prone to breaking due to mechanical failure. The system wouldn’t have the shuriken UMD ‘feature’. Overall, it would be a much better system. Sony’s reliance on the optical disc has resulted in a worse product than could have otherwise been built.

Why? Why did Sony insist on putting an optical drive in the PSP when it had to compromise on so many other issues? Simple, Sony wants to sell you movies and music on the UMD. They want you to buy a UMD movie for $20. That UMD movie has 1/3 the resolution of a similar priced DVD. That UMD movie can’t be played back on a TV. That UMD movie does not have additional DVD features, menus, subtitles or other cool things you may find on a DVD. Sony makes nearly 100% profit on movies and music.

Sony sacrificed the PSP in order to make money off of movies.

Now, before you start calling names, I’m not laying hate on the PSP. Nice screen. Sleek, shiny case. Good graphics. Nice.

I look at the decisions made by Sony and I see decisions that are absolute trash for gamers but great for lining Sony’s pockets with money. I feel frustrated knowing the PSP could have been so much more if they would simply step up to the plate and decide to knock a home run out of the park instead of walking to first base on the back of movies and music. The missed potential for a system with an 8 hour battery, fully loaded with wi-fi on, makes me weep.

4 hours isn’t enough. 2 hours is a downright embarrassment. As gamers, we should demand more.

Today is the first day of the 4×4 event at Marina Mall. I passed by yesterday night and they were still setting things up. Basically various car manufactures are going to be displaying their 4X4’s plus on the beach there is a 4X4 offroad course with little hills and stuff. I heard you will be able to test drive any car for free on this course including an H2. We will have to wait and see if this turns out to be true or not. The event is from March 8th till the 18th if I remember correctly.