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The first PodBrix apparel item goes on sale tonight (3/21/05). The Brixwear 1000 is a signed limited edition of 300 units. It features an integrated patent-pending magnetic clasp system to secure your iPod shuffle to the front of the shirt.

No modification is needed to your iPod shuffle. Simply place it over the clasp area of the shirt and it locks into place. The shuffle stays firmly attached even with vigorous activity. A quick pull easily removes it from the shirt.

The Brixwear 1000 is available in medium, large or x-large sizes. There are 300 units in total; 60 medium, 120 large and 120 x-large.

Each Brixwear 1000 shirt will sell for $28.99. It does NOT include the iPod shuffle. More details and product photos will be available on the PodBrix.com site at 9:00pm.

Click here for a large picture of BrixWear

Update: As expected it got sold out the same time they went on sale

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.

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.

Today I found the old Pizza Hut logo and I realized how much I missed it. I don’t like the new logo, never did. I don’t like the new shop designs also. I used to really like the Pizza Hut in the old Salmiya where it was right next to Hungry Bunny. The place had carpet floors which I love in restaurants and it was also dimly lit. Now with the current logo and interior design the place looks really cheap.

Spent the whole afternoon driving on and off the road. If you were driving behind me all you would see is a guy driving a Jeep, one second on the road, the other second on the sidewalk. You have to understand, my other car is a 330ci BMW, I can barely make it over a speed bump without hitting it. With the Wrangler though its begging you to climb over stuff. It makes it soo easy. Me and Nat went to a sandy area and I let her drive the Jeep there. She shifted the jeep to 4 wheel drive and took off flying over sand bumps. Now all we need to do is take the top off but its supposed to rain this weekend so it really sucks. Here are picture of the car.

Yesterday night me and nat passed by the Jeep stand at Marina Mall. We saw our salesman and he had some good news for us. Because of the 4×4 thing going on at Marina Mall they are dropping down 200KD off the car. Since me and nat hadn’t picked up our jeep yet they decided to give us the 200KD as cashback. If thats not good service I don’t know what is. We had already paid for the jeep and all and yet they thought it would be fair that we got the extra 200KD back. Amazing service. The guy also told us we could pick up the jeep anytime from 8AM to 11AM the next day. So today we woke up at 7:15AM and got to the dealership and picked up our jeep. First impressions, this is going to be really fun to drive. I am checking the weather forecast for the weekend and it seems its going to rain which means we got to leave the top on for the next few days. Nat is travelling tomorrow also for 2 weeks so its going to be and the car all to ourselves.

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.

Just found this website that talks about how Hartz flea and tick products can kill cats. I sometimes buy Hartz flea colors for our family dog and after reading stuff on this site and seeing some pictures of scarred cats I don’t think I will ever be buying another Hartz product. [Link]