2008-07-28

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

If you see the garbage being piled up in the street, and no one to take your trolley from the supermarket to the car, no one to serve you tea or coffee at work, no one to sweep the streets, no one to water the road greenery, well it is because the Bengali slaves workers are revolting and do not want to sleep 10 in a room and get 18 KD monthly salary.

On a more capitalistic note, here is a cool ad from Toyota:

2008-07-26

I can ride my bike with no handlebars

Here is a song that starts sounding very trivial but quickly develops into a very deep serious song, it is called Handlebars by the Flobots.



This new version of the video reminds of the the epic Pink Floyd animation in the The Wall movie.

2008-07-22

Best Coffee Machine in the World

I was at a meeting held in a hotel and as part of the catering they had a Nespresso machine.

I had machine coffee before it was usually bitter and tasted like puddle water but I did not mind, as long as it had a strong caffeine kick. Nespresso is different. Nespresso comes with these small tin pouches that are colored according to the strength of the coffee you want. You insert the pouch in the slot just aboove the spout and press the button. After you press the button, the rest is magic. Neon lights flash, the machine hums, the pouch is punctured and blasted with a powerful stream of steam, and into your cup pours coffee. Even before you drink your coffee, the smell of freshly made coffee is all over the room, so strong you could taste it. Tasting the coffee, all your senses tingle. The feeling is so good, it probably is banned in a few backward countries.

Words cannot describe it, but here is a picture of this particular Nespresso machine.

Nespresso

2008-07-20

The Caffeine Click Test

I woke up extremely early today and rushed to make myself a coffee so I could open my eyes. As the caffeine burnt into my bloodstream, I came across this coffee test.
The results are only for my first cup. I am sure after a few more cups I will reach Delusions of Godhood. Try it and see where you are.

The Caffeine Click Test - How Caffeinated Are You?
OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

2008-07-12

What is that Tune?

Ever had a tune running around in your head and you where dying to know what it was?

If only you could hum it to google and it would come up with an answer. Well we are not there yet, but getting there. This flash piano allows you to play the tune and searches for the notes you just composed. Try it here.

iPod Touch Upgrade - Success and Amazement

Check for Update for iPod Touch

I signed up to the iTunes store after it accepted my Kuwait credit card. Only apps are available for Kuwait currently. I managed to download 2 applications; Twitterific that allows you to tweet from your iPhone or iPod Touch, and Apple Remote which I felt was cool but did not really know how good it was.

I synced my iPod touch and then fingered around my iPod and could not find those apps installed there. I read up and found out that I needed to upgrade my iPod touch to version 2.0 of the firmware. I hit the "check for update" a million times and every time it told me the iTunes store was not available. It appears that after Apple introduced the iPhone 3G yesterday, iTunes could not handle all this traffic hitting its web servers, so I just gave up.

This morning I woke up and before anything, I turned on my comp and hit the upgrade button again. Success! This time I downloaded the new 2.0 firmware via iTunes and installed it. The whole process took just a little short of 1 hour on a 1 Mbps connection.

Twitterific was installed, and Apple Remote. I tweeted in twitter, and started Apple remote.

The Apple Remote app is mindblowingly amazing. What it does is it lists out all your iTunes library on your iPod Touch (and iPhone) and you select the song that you want. That song is played on your PC's speakers and you get to hear it. What is amazing is that as long as both your PC and iPod are both connected you can control the music played anywhere you are.

I got a nice set of speakers for my PC, but with this new capability I am going to buy a monster pair of speakers with trunk sized subwoofers so I can listen to my music anywhere in the house.

2008-07-11

iTunes Update

After my last post and after downloading iTunes 7.7, I browsed around the iTunes store and I could not find any music or movies to download, just Applications.

iTunes Accepts Kuwaiti Visa Cards

I just read Loco's post about iTunes Speaking Arabic so I started my iTunes and entered my info including my Kuwait Gulf Bank Visa card. It refused it, saying my secuirty code was wrong, I tried again and got refused again. I reviewed my info and it turns out I entered a few numbers wrong. After fixing it, I tried again and I got an iTunes acount now.

Now I am going to max out my account with all the iTunes goodies.

PS

I tried downloading a game for my iPod Touch and it said I need iTunes 7.7, it sent me to the Apple site but the download thingie would not appear, probably because all these iPhone 3G need it and there are too many people downloading. No Worries, I googled "iTunes 7.7" and found a link on download.com here.

2008-07-05

How to Add More Speed Dials in Opera (For Opera 9.5 or greater)

One of the coolest things about Opera is the speed dial where you are presented with a quick shortcut to your favorite destiantions every time you open a new tab or window in Opera. The Speed Dial displays a 3 x 3 mini image of your favorite web sites to allow you to quickly jump to those sites.

Opera Speed Dial 3x3

I always wanted to include more sites so I found this little tweak that allows you to increase the number of speed dials. like this:

Opera Speed Dial 4x4

You can do this as follows:
  1. Find out where your Opera Directory is located on your computer by going to Help -> About Opera

  2. find the Opera directory and open it.

  3. Find the speeddial.ini file

  4. copy the speedial.ini file to a backup file like speeddial.ini.backup (always back up any settings files just in case something might go wrong)

  5. Close your opera browser (very important)

  6. Open the speeddial.ini file in and text editor and add the following lines to your speeddial.ini

    [Size]
    Rows=4
    Columns=4

    save the file of course.

  7. Start Opera again and you have more speed dials to add more of your favorite links there.

This hint was taken from Operawatch.com and from Remco's web page

If you want more speed and beauty from your browser, you can get Opera here:
Safe online banking and shopping - New fraud protection from Opera

2008-07-03

The ABC of Technology

New Age Technology it's as easy as ABC

Here is a nice picture of the ABC of Technology today, stolen borrowed from haha.nu

Now what would the Kuwaiti one be ?

I reserve D for Don Veto - Reviews and Words of Wisdom

You can choose any other free letters. Maybe I will make a nice graphics once we complete the whole alphabet.

2008-07-01

While Shopping at Amazon.com ...

I was browsing around amazon.com and I always try to fill my orders with stuff that I need desperately, and stuff that would be nice to have, just to save on the shipping. I was looking around Amazon to see what I else I could put in my order cart. To get some ideas I looked at my wishlist that I update from time to time. No inspiration there. There is a special place where you can "Find someone's Wish list", just for fun I put in Kuwait and I got some funny results.

The "kuwait awqaf public foundation" wanted a whole bunch of books about Awqaf, they where mostly unavailble except for some french waqf books.

Somebody called Kuwait wanted an Etienne Aigner A Logo Tote with some Havaianas Women's High Light Flip Flops, I hope its a girl.

Captain Amer T. Almajed (Kuwait airways) wished for the book "Building Safe Systems in Aviation". Hmm, makes me a little nervous about flying on Kuwait Airways.

Jordan Kuwait Bank wished for a long list of books. Books like "What the Hell Do Women Really Want: A Guide for Men in the 90s", "Flirting with Forty", "The Playbook : The Definitive Guide To Dating For Young Professional Men". Ladies, if you are looking for a job don't work for the Kuwait Jordan bank, unless you want to be hit upon.

The Kuwait Science club wished for a "Canon EOS 20Da Digital SLR Astronomical Camera". That sounds reasonable, someone might donate one to them.

Its interesting what people wish for, and more interesting to find out.