Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Bloody McRoyal
Ok, I am not a fast-food person but my uncle just arrived at our house with his meal and seriously, it was one bloody McRoyal! Of course he didn’t finish it, and I was so upset I took it back to them and made sure the manager saw it. They immediately started offering a new meal or a refund but that wasn’t the point. I explained to them the importance of checking their food quality before giving it out to their customers. It was disgusting.
(10) Comments | Filed under: Blogging | Kuwait |
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Happy Eid everyone!
When we were kids, my parents made sure to make every Eid a big deal for us. We woke up in the morning to find the house decorated with sparkly and shiny stars and balloons. Then there was a huge breakfast which baba had prepared around the carefully wrapped gifts in center of the table. It was amazing, we were always impatient during breakfast because the gifts were right infront of us and we wanted to finish quickly! It really grew on us to spread the joy of Eid. So this year, like the past five, we are actually involved in the late night decorating and gift wrapping for my younger brothers to wake up to. This evening though is sort of different for me, I am very much reminded of the less fortunate and I wish I could spread the joy to them as well. I am reminded of our visit to Ethiopia last summer and how happy the kids were over simple gifts. By simple I mean cookies, crayons and drawing books. They were happy people even with the little they had. We have a lot to be thankful for.
Hope you all have a festive and happy Eid. Celebrate it!
(3) Comments | Filed under: Blogging |
What’s your creative profile?
If you have a minute, head on over to the Art Institute’s visual quiz website and find out what kind of creativity you’ve got. It’s pretty cool and really fun since it’s completely visual. All you have to do is select the image that feels right for each statement.
Take the quiz at: http://ai.imagini.net/ and share you profile results here!
I am a Creative Pathfinder.
(10) Comments | Filed under: Design |
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Helvetica Movie
Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.
It’s now released on a DVD that includes the full 80-minute feature film and over 90 minutes of additional interviews with people like Massimo Vignelli, Matthew Carter, Erik Spiekermann and Hermann Zapf. I recently watched the documentary and its amazing. I do recommend everyone to watch it, not just designers!
Visit the film’s website at: http://www.helveticafilm.com/
(3) Comments | Filed under: Design |
Saturday, December 08, 2007
How to speed up Windows startupٍ
When you buy a new Windows computer, it starts-up beautifully and pretty quick. Try installing Office, Skype, Live Messenger, iTunes, AVG antivirus, zipGenius and restarting the computer becomes a PAIN. Right after logging in, a 5-minute waiting period becomes a daily routine as the necessary files and programs start loading. Some of them respect your wishes and don’t start up automatically after logging into the system, others - no matter what you do - start up and call its five other plugins to start up as well (such as update managers and all).
There comes a day when you start your computer and wish none of these programs start launching. Here is how you can do that:
- Click
Start>Run - Type
msconfig - Click on “Startup” tab
- Very carefully deselect all the programs you DO NOT want to start at login. Such as Messenger applications, Acrobat updater, and anything else you have installed and you know you don’t need them at start-up and you will be able to run them whenever you want. BUT BE WARNED: do NOT deselect SYSTEM programs. There are programs on the list that are required by the system, so you want to make sure they start up as soon as you login. You really have to know what you are doing here.
- Click OK.
You can restart anytime, it’s not necessary you do it now.
After restarting you will get a message that you are in running SELECTIVE STARTUP, and that’s OK! It’s true, since you “selected” how you want your system to startup. Once you deselect anything from under the “Startup” tab, you are switched to SELECTIVE STARTUP in the General tab, just keep everything under selective startup checked as it is.
If you ever change your mind, you can always go back to msconfig and click NORMAL STARTUP from the General tab instead of SELECTIVE STARTUP. The NORMAL STARTUP will use the default settings when restarting your computer - which is starting up all programs on the list every time you log-in into your system.
You will be amazed to how fast you will be able to log-in after doing this.
Note: This is for advanced users and you are doing this at your own risk, I will not be held responsible if your system doesn’t load for any reason. Enjoy!
There are many ways to speed up Windows OS, feel free to share your ideas and concerns here…
(3) Comments | Filed under: Tech | OS | Windows |
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?
Microsoft recently commissioned a children’s book titled “Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?” to help parents explain to their children everything about their new stay-at-home Windows Home Server, a.k.a HP EX475 MediaSmart Home Server. You have to admit it’s a really great marketing campaign! People usually describe servers as a stack of some ugly hardware in a storage room of every company and NOT something lying around at home. So, Microsoft brought up this new technique of bring it home in a very “home-friendly” manner. They even put together a series of short videos of a “techie” going into a house and interviewing everyone in the household about the “new member” of the family - the server. There are two videos out, and they are very funny! You can watch them here.
The whole idea is: it’s not less of a server now that it’s a stay-at-home server, by getting Windows’ stay-at-home server you will improve your home network security and capabilities. Some of the highlight features are that you can connect your Xbox to it and access videos and audio files stored in the server and play them on your TV (just like the Apple TV). With a few clicks, you can also set it to automatically backup files on the computers connected to it on the local network (wired or wirelessly). This release allows you to connect up to 10 users and 1 guest account.
Microsoft really knows how to reach out to non-tech savvy people, bringing them the latest technology in a simple way. I know I am going to get something with that last statement, but hey, Microsoft is in every house and that should say something. Here’s a preview of the book:
The book will be published and sold on Amazon in the near future.
Currently, the server is available in 500GB HD but I was expecting a lot more than that! It costs around $700. A 1TB is not yet in-stock but should be very soon - now that will probably be enough for some families. Of course expanding the capacity of the HD is possible and it can be reach up to 9TB - which is a relief. The storage appears as one large volume, so whenever you add a drive it will expand the same drive, no partitioning allowed. One downside, you can NOT load a program on the HP MediaSmart Server and share it among multiple PCs, which is a bummer. Maybe there will be a work-around hack for this…
You can check out the flash interactive video available here to see how the server can be used in your entire house, room by room.
(2) Comments | Filed under: Tech | Microsoft |
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Islamic Urban Art in the UK
Graphic artist Muhammad Ali, born and raised in Birmingham, UK, has some amazing work done under the name AerosolArabic. He has done a few T-shirts and hoodies that are sold for a very reasonable price on islamicdesignhouse.com. If Muhammad is not on tour, he usually gives some workshops for kids at schools to encourage them to make professional meaningful graffiti art with style.
I think it’s amazing to see some Islamic art on walls around the world that are done professionally. It would be great to see the walls in Kuwait turn out something like this, rather than the scribbles kids are writing. The picture below is in the UK, you can see a lot more at the gallery in his website.
(8) Comments | Filed under: Design |