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A week ago Z District reviewed the Seagate Portable HD and although I am a Seagate fan I thought the hard drive looked ugly and fragile. This is why I decided to put up a review of the drive that competes directly with the Seagate one, the Western Digital Passport.

I ordered the 120GB Western Digital Passport drive so I could use it to back my MP3s and personal work. I already have an external drive but I needed something much smaller and portable. Since I was going to use it for my most important data, the drive had to be reliable and durable. Thats why I went with the Passport drive, I have never had any problems with Western Digital hard drives and from the pictures the Passport drive looked like it could take a beating. Now that I have it sitting in front of me I can tell you that it can.

The Passport drive case is made from 2 materials, half of it is alluminum and the other half is rubber. The drive feels like its indestructable but still looks really slick and extremely cool. The other positive thing is you only need 1 USB slot to both power and run the drive unlike the Seagate which requires 2 USB slots.

I really am in love with the drive and can’t find a single flaw except for the fact that 120GB is the largest size available. I give it a 4.5 out of 5.

Buy the 40GB WD Passport drive from Amazon
Buy the 80GB WD Passport drive from Amazon
Buy the 120GB WD Passport drive from Amazon

The 248AM Meetup is going to be held tonight (Monday, August 7th) at 9PM at the Starbucks in front of Al-Fanar Complex in Salmiya. We will gather upstairs and me and Nat will probably be the first people there.

If you don’t know anyone thats fine, no one knows anyone anyway and the purpose of this meetup is to meet new people and just hang out. So don’t be shy or anything like that, its just a gathering not a blind date.

Date: Monday, August 7th 2006
Location: Starbucks opposite Al-Fanar in Salmiya.
Time: 9PM

Here is a crappy map if you need one. [Map]

note: you can bring a friend with you if you want.
note2: if you have a Nintendo DS, bring it along with you.

I love the way how Apple always manages to find a cool way of attacking Microsoft. Tonight is the Worldwide Developers Conference where Apple will be introducing some new products and someone managed to take a picture of a banner for the new Mac OS which has the headline “Introducing Vista 2.0”. If you didn’t get what it means its basically taking a shot at the upcoming Microsoft Vista (the new Windows) which is already more then 2 years late. Basically the poster is saying that OSX (Macs operating system) is already way more advanced then Vista. [Link]

update: another banner reads “Redmond has its own cat. A copycat.”

These are the current DSL prices in Kuwait for a 512KB connection.

Qualitynet: KD24.5 a month (You need an NBK account for this price)
UnitedNet: KD25 a month (Yearly contract paid montly)
Fasttelco: KD70 a month (KD50 if paid 1 year in advance)

Just a note, Fasttelco had the lousiest sales guy when I called, really crap. UnitedNet don’t seem to have a website which I think is very ify Turns out they do have a website but google doesn’t know about it. With Qualitynet if you don’t have an NBK account then you need to pay the full year subscription in advance or you will have to pay the monthly fee of KD38.

Z District has a cool post on the Shooting Range located on the 6th ring road. If you haven’t been to the shooting range before then check out the article, he has pictures and info inlcuding the prices. [Link]

Chicken of the VNC is the best VNC client I have ever used on the Mac. Its super fast, has a cool name and its free. [Link]

Just spoke to Nats boss at work, he wants to buy some arcade machines for their office and Nat told him I had contacts. I repeat that, he wants to buy some arcade machines for the office! Her new company is starting to sound like one of those Silicon Valley start ups…

First time I saw this on a car I was like damn that guy must have been doing some major offroading. Second time I saw it on a car I was like wait, it can’t be mud, must be paint primer. After seeing it a bunch of times on various cars I realized this was actually a paint job. It seems some people find this cool.. I don’t understand why.

Here is another picture.

I was at ACE Hardware yesterday and I found a water scooter for sale. There was this old TV show called SeaQuest and they had these water scooters in the show and I used to think they were cool and always wanted one. They aren’t expensive either, ACE is selling them for KD45 and they run for 1.5 hours on rechargable batteries. If I actually went to the beach at all I would have purchased it myself but since I don’t I won’t.

A guy got busted for growing a forrest of marijuana in his underground bunker and here are pictures. [Link]

[source kottke]

So the other day I get a call from a driver with some goodies for me. Someone had contacted me the day before asking me if I would like to try some brownies, muffins and cookies and I had happily accepted and now the driver was here with my stuff. I couldn’t wait, brownies, muffins and cookies, three of my favorite munchies for me to try out.

When I first opened the bag though I was disappointed, the muffins were Blue Berry muffins and I only eat chocolate muffins and the cookies were like chocolate with walnuts or something and I only eat chocolate chip. So 2 out of the 3 items I couldn’t eat which sucked. BUT, the brownies were regular chocolate brownies and I had no problem with those.

I had a blue plate in front of me with a dozen warm brownies on them and they looked really delicious. So I had one, then another followed by another. They were pretty good, they were soft and rich without being to sweet or heavy. Nat also tried them and really liked them to. I didn’t know how much they cost or what the place that made them was called since I didn’t get a menu neither did I get any kind of material with information on the place. So I sent an email to the guy who had contacted me and I asked him for some info and this is what I found out.

The service turned out is called The Daily Fresh. They launched less then 2 months ago and are still in the testing stage where they are still finalizing their menu with the different flavors and prices. Next month (September) they will have everything finalized including the menus and prices but for now you can order a dozen brownies for only KD3. Thats only 250fils per brownies which is a really good deal for what you are getting.

Currently the only other place I know of that delivers brownies is LoFat. Problem is LoFat’s brownies cost 500 fils each and are about half the size of the brownies from The Daily Fresh. They also taste just as good so there is no advantage except the low fat part but info on that is a bit abstract at the moment.

If you are interested in ordering some brownies all you need to do is call The Daily Fresh on 7702422.

This is incredibly funny, its a video of Darth Vader working as a day shift manager at a supermarket. Watch [Part 1] and [Part 2]

Note: Sorry everyone in UAE, I know Etisalat blocked youtube recently

[source boingboing]

Pictures of food dishes at El Bulli, a highly regarded restaurant in Spain. [Link]

[source kottke]

Haha this is cool, if you don’t want people at work to know you are browsing the web then use this link. Its makes all sites look like you have a document open in Microsoft Office. [Link]

[source digg]

I have an Exabyte VXA-1 tape drive which I want to give away for free. It takes 33GB tapes and they are very very reliable. You could shove the tapes into a freezer or dump them into boiling coffee and you would still be able to retreive the information from them. The version of the tape drive I have is external and connects using Firewire. The price of this tape drive brand new is $1,099.

I am giving the drive away for free because I am having problems with it. I don’t know if its a software problem or hardware problem. I passed it to TivoGuy and he was able to get it working but when I tried using it on my Mac it would sometimes backup the data and sometimes it would give me an error. It could be from the backup tapes, it could be a software problem or it could be a hardware problem. I am not sure and I don’t care. If you want the tape drive just leave a comment below. You will get it without any tapes and without the firewire cable. If more then one person wants the drive then I will give it to the geekiest one.

For more info on the drive click [Here]