Amazing Pictures of Kuwait in the early 1960s

Verity Cridland has posted some wonderful pictures on flickr. According to Verity:

These photographs were taken by my Mother as colour slides.
In 1961 cameras were hardly airtight and these pictures had a lot of dust on them. This was on the actual film rather than just dust from old age! They also had a scratch on each slide caused by sand and grit inside the camera.

You can see the slide show here.

New Market Terms

CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer

CFO-- Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET--A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET--A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING--The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO--The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER--What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR--Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST--Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT--When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER--A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION--The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO--What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS--What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR--Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT--An archaic word, no longer used.

Forget Earth Hour - This is Way better

Two Sided Speed Camera in Kuwait

Happy driving, and drive slow people.

Calorie Counter Steps

No this is not a diet post, but I did come across some steps that help you count calories:



Very cool, don't you think?

The Kuwait Contract - Het Koeweit Contract

While strolling down a flea market in Amsterdam, I came across this used book placed among a pile of others.



The book had the insignia for Kuwait and was titled "Het Koeweit Contract", published in 1987. I don't speak Dutch but I guessed that it could be a translated official contract. It turns out I was mistaken. I looked up the name of the book and it is a thriller about Kuwait with different dutch contributors. I would be interested in finding a translation for this book. Here is the translated link that I found on geocities.

Anyone familiar with this book ?

Ripping DVDs and Loading them on to your Nokia Mobile with Handbrake

I just got a new Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic mobile with 8GB memory. That memory needed to be filled. The Nokia 5800 is touchscreen meaning that if you where to play a movie it would fill the whole screen. I asked on twitter what would be the best tool to rip DVDs from and I got an an answer from the ever helpful blasha and 3baid. They both recommended handbrake, which as described on the site as an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows. meaning you can use it to RIP DVDs and convert them to files you can store on your iPod, iPhone or Nokia mobile or any other gadget or computer that can play those files.

Of course, only rip your legal family DVDs, and none of the copyrighted stuff.

I tried to rip a few DVDs and load them on my Nokia mobile but it would not play it, I looked around the web on the best settings for Nokia and I did not find anything useful, I did a few ripping experiments and succeeded.

So here are the best setting for your Nokia Mobile.




I would also recommend playing around with the picture settings to have the output less than or equal to the resolution of your mobile, to save on space of the final output file. After the movie is ripped, you can transfer it normally to your Nokia mobile via USB or bluetooth.

EXCLUSIVE - Space Shuttle Launch Pictures

My friend who lives right next door to Cape Canaveral in Florida sent me these pictures of the space shuttle launch that happened yesterday. He took these pictures from his back yard last night.





Here are some news items about that same launch:

NASA readies for Sunday space shuttle launch.

Discovery Blasts off.

Hamad Darwish - The Kuwaiti Vista Artist is giving away his wallpapers that did not make it to Vista

A little more than a year ago, I wrote about Hamad Darwish. Hamad is an amateur photographer that got contacted by Microsoft to use some of his photographs on Vista. Yuo can find my older post here.

Now Hamad has a site and is giving away the his photos that did not make it into Vista. You can get these beautiful pictures here.

The 10 Most Disgusting Delicacies

I have eaten a in a lot of bad restaurants, but I have never come across the food items listed here. Actually I did try the Sheep's head, or bacha which was pretty filling and tasty as long as you did not look at what you where eating.

Don't follow this link if you have weak stomach. Enjoy and bon apetit. [Link]