Sometimes I’m paranoid as hell about my website and that something is slowing it down, but in reality I’m not really sure and its always a matter of trial and error. Recently I stumbled upon this testing tool from Pingdom, you enter your website and they give you the time to load, whats slowing it down, whats taking more resources to load, and lots of other details. You can see what is loading first and a variety of items which is very cool and keep on testing it every once in a while, I didn’t even realize my website is 1.8 MB worth of data to load back in the day that which is even more then a floppy disk. I liked how they organized the data and they let you organize the data, very useful free tool, and I keep getting 88/100 for my average score, not bad. Check out the tool linked below.

Link: Pingdom

My friend is an idiot but I love the guy, he does love to do things like this, lets refer to him as Preetooo. In our dewaneya we do events like Milsim and other things together, and during one of those events I spent around 400 KWD for the group which they pay “The Collector” and then he pays me, which in this case is PreeToo. I asked Preetoo about the cash he said he will give it to me on the weekend which was last week, but he forgot so I called and harassed him for forgetting. Then he said is gonna give me the cash in a few days and he is gonna hit me with, the bastard didn’t lie. He hit me with a brick, more like a few bricks in an envelope. As you can see from the pictures, turns out Preetoo was wanted to be cheeky about it so he gave me the 400 KD in quarter and half KD notes. Feels like 10000 KD cash too bad its like that, and now I have to go to the bank and have them count it to check that it isn’t counterfeit money and I think they will think something is wrong for me to have that much change on me.

Just before GulfRun I had a quick business trip that came up and had to take off to Amsterdam for 42 hours, two longs meetings and heading back to Kuwait. Luckily we had some time to spend sight seeing and walking around, and the first thing you notice is that everyone is on scooters and bicycles in Amsterdam, they even have their own roads.

I was surprised how much they speed but being neighbors with Germany I should have kept it in mind, they were flying down the highways and our taxi was flying which I honestly enjoyed, they knew how to drive. One thing to keep in mind, always use official taxis and not the mini-cabs which are random cars just to be safe. We checked into our hotel which was very nice and luxurious, the rooms were a bit small but the atmosphere was amazing. We went walking right away since our meeting was the next morning in The Hague which is about 25 to 45 minutes away depending on traffic.

We started walking from 3 pm until 12 am, you literally can’t help but enjoy walking in such a cozy city. We kept walking from alley to alley and walking around these canals. To my surprise a lot of shops close early in Amsterdam, most of them close by 7 pm which is rather early so after that we would go somewhere to eat and there were a lot of very nice places to check out.

The flower section was amazing, it was honestly beautiful seeing so many kinds of flowers and I know that a lot of flower shops in Kuwait import their flowers from Holland which have huge flower farms and it is a beautiful view. Then there is the cheese and they do love their cheese, lots of cheese shops all around. The one thing that surprised me is all these french fries shops and mayo, thats all they sell and their are people waiting in long lines for them.

What I found surprising are the Dutch themselves, I just had a mental image that they would be the same as the Germans, but I was very wrong. The first time me and my colleague held out a map someone came over and ask if we were lost or looking for something. They really wanted to help us when we were just looking at the map to get our bearing and to figure out where we are going next. The whole city is beautiful and I honestly really liked it and thought about coming back again to really check it out. There were so many bicycles and scoots around it was ridiculous, they rang their bicycles bells and honk their scooters, and they expect you to jump out of the way, it was hilarious.

I knew that illegal substances were legal in Amsterdam but it was very different knowing it and seeing it, specifically smelling it. You can smell the Marijuana a mile away, you get a whiff of it every once in a while and sometimes in front of cages that you don’t expect, you would think they would be dingy places but they turned out to be very nice cafes with people smiling and blood shot eyes which looked hilarious. Then there were the stores they were right on the main street, I thought it was a jewelry shop only into turned out to be designer store which sold drugs, it was hilarious they had so many different names and presented in nice lighting.

It reached a point where I had to double check if I was buying a normal muffin or if it was laced with something, maybe just a little bit too paranoid but I didn’t want to eat something I shouldn’t. Then of course there is the red light district that you could see a mile away. They are open about their rules and regulations about where these places are, and you can see people walking around. As expected the Dutch don’t care too much for these entertainment drugs as much as people would think, its mostly tourists who are smoked up and chilling in the cafes.

It is a very interesting city and there is a lot to it that I didn’t have a chance to see, and I really loved their highways, people were speeding normally and the police weren’t harrassing them. Turns out in Holland the policy is very anti police, so they aren’t as abusive as police officers in the US who have a lot of power so people seem to be more relaxed around them and speed a little. And I want to rent a scooter next time around and zip around town.

(Check Out The Pictures Below! There are ALOT)

I can’t help but want to slide around in empty parking lot after seeing this video, maybe a short quick drift or slide. Two Toyota GT86 coupes were parked in this empty parking lot, all that’s missing is the not-so judicious application of one’s right foot. Two pro drift drivers recently got the chance to fling the GT86 around in a quick battle, and the result is a video that shows just how controllable the GT86 is right out of the box.

I’m one of those people who are always skeptical about what companies say, so when WIMD was offering high speed wireless connectivity to homes I wasn’t sure what to expect from them. I spoke to an engineer and sales person, they basically said they would bring the equipment, connect it and try it out before they would bill me. The engineers came about 4 days later, they started installation, they had a few initial issues but after a few hours everything was ironed out. They use a consumer grade Cisco router that you can buy from any electronics shop like XCite in Kuwait but the Wireless Broadband is through Proxim.

They are using Wireless Broadband technology which has been tried and tested for a while now. It is excellent but there a few minor drawbacks, one of the major ones is that it isn’t consistent. So even if you have a 10 MB connection it can be 10 MB then drop to 4MB then back up to 8 MB then back to 10MB again, its just the reality of the Wireless Broadband Solution, but overall any speed even if it isn’t consistent is better then 1 MB. In my case it hit 20 MB so I went for the 20 MB package without a thought, I live off the internet and now I shall be very happy.

Requirements:

• Line Of Sight (Your house has to be visible to One of Their Towers)
• Close to a Tower (They have lots of Towers)
• You can mount a small tower to the exterior of the house

They are using Qualitynet as their backend provider, I think or hope they would expand on that. Now that people are starting to find out about them and they have coverage around Kuwait I hope they can still manage to provide the speeds they have promised even when their subscriber base increase dramatically.

Link: WIMD

Pricing:

• 6 MB – 325
• 7 MB – 355
• 8 MB – 390
• 9 MB – 473
• 10 MB – 523
• 11 MB – 590
• 12 MB – 660
• 13 MB – 730
• 14 MB – 800
• 15 MB – 870
• 16 MB – 940
• 17 MB – 1010
• 18 MB – 1080
• 19 MB – 1150
• 20 MB – 1220

Singapore is known for a lot of things, one of them is their strict rules, organization, innovative business, cleanliness, and delicious food. What I wasn’t expecting was someone to jump off the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, I don’t know how much paperwork they went through to get this done and it is extremely intimidating to jump off a building. One time in my life I would like to try Base Jumping one time in my life but for now this video is fun to watch.

The young Norse god Thor embarks on a quest with his brother Loki to find and recover a legendary sword.

Direct To DVD movies from DC Comics & Marvel are pretty good, and some are amazing and this one from Marvel is pretty good, not the best they have done but still a different portrayal of the young God of Thunder. Thor is portrayed as a young God in Asgard who is sick of being cooped up in Asgard and and so sets off on an adventure to recover a powerful sword. The story is pretty good, you have to be familiar with Thor and Asgard characters to a degree and I really liked the animation it was bit more on the fun side but I liked how the story progressed. An entertaining animation if you are into Marvel & DC.

Link: IMDB
Rating

There wasn’t even half the enthusiasm that there usually is for voting this year, everyone is just fed up with the whole mess. I didn’t know what to expect but I was hoping for a good change, I think we just want progress at this point. I was very happy that a lot of people went out to vote but the results were devastating. Every person I voted for didn’t make it to parliament but that isn’t the disappointing part, whats disappointing is that a majority of the people who got into parliament will rip this country apart and there will be nothing progressive taking place in Kuwait in the next 4 years. It is said that a majority of the Parliament are from the religious faction and have plans in mind to change some laws, all I know is that what ever they have planned won’t be good. There is always hope and I hope things will get better and people will realize that they can’t keep voting for the same hooligans who make things a mess in Kuwait, we need progress. I’m even surprised that no woman made it to Parliament, Aseel Al Awadhi was good and of course there are the bad but I was hoping for more women but it doesn’t look like it will happen in this Parliament.

This whole past week I have been at GulfRun enjoying every moment on the track and in Bahrain. And before that I was traveling and a lot of other things that piled up. I came back a few days ago but its like I’m playing catch up with everything thats going on. First I’m catching up with my offline life then I will catch up with my online life.

It was such an active week last week that I was barely online and I didn’t have much time to check out my work emails. Even three days off work and I got 221 Emails piled up which I had to reply to not including the normal emails. When we drove back from Bahrain it was a lot of cars who attended GulfRun which was a lot of fun seeing people you know on a four hour road trip, but we were subjected to an extensive search of our car and items as they suspected us of carrying alcohol into Saudi, just took some time and the guy was a bit cold but it didn’t take long before we were at McDs grabbing some sandwiches for our drive. The best part is to be eating those fries on that long drive, it does hit the spot in the afternoon. Now go to settle down and catch up with everything, I want a vacation that I don’t have anything to do but the things I want to do while staying in Kuwait. I would get a lot done!

The IMF is shut down when it’s implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin, causing Ethan Hunt and his new team to go rogue to clear their organization’s name.

When they kept saying IMF I kept thinking International Monetary Fund but I kept reminding myself that this is some secret US Government Agency. We are back with Ethan Hunt, “Your mission, should you decide to accept it … This Message Will Self Destruct”. This time around the team are on their own, they are being framed for the destruction of the Kremlin and things are getting interesting. The action is nonstop stop from the get go and they go from one continent to the other trying to figure out what their enemy will do next. The action is great but the story was somewhat disconnected, it seems they wanted the action to top over thing else which it did and a lot of times things didn’t make any sense. Ethan Hunt could fight off a team of trained assassins but gets his butt handed to him by one evil genius with zero fighting capability. Still it was a lot of fun to watch and if you are looking for some action then this movie is it for you, and don’t expect too much from it.

Link: IMDB
Rating: