BlogAllAlong

Without a close followup on the news, I’ve been hearing quite a lot about banks going bankrupt in Kuwait, and how only two or three will manage to stand up. Gulf Bank was the first to shout ou loud “We Are Sinking!”, something which forced th Central Bank of Kuwait to freeze Gulf Bank stock from trading, and I guess opening the door for more similar cases, and perhaps increasing demand for the close of whole stock market, which is something completely out of logic if you ask me. This is the market, you know the rules, you know the risks. At least, you should’ve known before you go into it. Don’t try to change the rules during the game.

So anyways, I read yesterday Central Bank is issuing guarantees to cover up bank losses, in an attempt to calm down people who are rushing to take out all their money. Regardless of this guarantees I say, if a bank is not capable enough of staying in business, they should step a side and make room for others. That same bank offered me 50 times my salary loan one year back. Tells the whole story doesn’t it?

A relative of mine went today to Gulf Bank to withdraw some money, and the bank said we don’t have money. You should’ve come earlier! Now that’s more than a good enough reason to pull my money out permanently, and it’s no rumors anymore. The bank is not capabale of giving back people’s money. Either that, or they are trying to trick people into it. At all rates, a bank at these conditions should not be running such type of ads:

Ironically, those type of ads are still running online.

Popularity: 20% [?]

I hesitated a lot before giving those rechargable batteries a shot, as I see it less convenient, and seem still expensive to rely on. I did some math and said, if they work as they’re supposed to, 4 or 6 batteries would do good for wireless keyboard, mouse, and the Wii controller as well, and from another point of view, I will be doing a little good for the Green Environment thing.

Trying it out however turns out to be a huge disappointment. They seem however to run out of pretty fast I have to change it in less than a month! It used to take longer with regular batteries. If the point is I need to always have spares and on recharge, that’s a hell of hassle to look after. I will need dozens of backup batteries, and frequent charger replacements. The concept might be good, but at least for Energizer, it’s still got a lot of work to do, and I don’t recommend you rely on it yet.

Has anyone got a better experience? I would love to know.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I have sworn before times and times not to go to any Arabic or Indian movie. It’s just not my taste. Couple of weeks back however, I got an email from a friend with a link for an upcoming Kuwaiti movie in cinema called “One More Chance”, aka OMC. When I asked, he told me he was the producer of the film. Knowing how smart and multi-talented he is made me pause and have a second thought. First I was shocked as this production business came out of nowhere, and second I was considering for the first time going to a Kuwaiti movie. So I read the synopsis saying “Meshaal, the investigation officer, investigates the murder of his best friend Alaa the programmer. “One More Chance” is a Kuwaiti action comedy movie.” This is when I decided, it’s time to break my vows, and that I did.

OMC is an action-comedy short 1-hour movie  that turned out to be fun, and brings new ideas and ways of thinking to the Kuwaiti movie industry I believe. It brings a promise of possible good things to come. The beginning of the movie, the intro, is one thing that will raise expectations so high it was the best part of the movie. It was done Hollywood FBI or hacking movie styles, something I have never seen done before in Kuwait. The remain of the movie however goes below the intro level, and the way the story was quickly wrapped up and ended will leave you in disappointment after the strong intro scene.

Comic scenes were partly fun, though actors could do better as comedians in action movies. You get the feeling sometimes they are hesitating to tell the joke or something. There is one scene however I bet most people would blast at as we did. Action scenes were sadly the worst. They are Indian styles, and poorly directed Indian styles. Shooting scenes were never also fully completed. Bullet is fired, but you can only try to guess where it went. I will get to why is that in a minute. Camera angles were in many occassions wisely chosen, unlike regular stuff we see in Kuwait which is just Point & Shoot. Also, some environment shots help give the viewer a feeling of the environment, which is another thing overlooked usually. Transition between the scenes is not managed professionally I have to say, as you can tell when a cut and new shot was made pretty easily. Music was in some scenes classic and quite out of focus, irrelated to the scene.

The character of the investigator was completely missing as my friend called it. You can’t tell if he is top-detective, comedian, lame, or anything else. There is just no single character for him.

One thing that was pretty smart is the trick or puzzle if you wanna call it at the beginning of the movie that was resolved at the end. This type of mystery and puzzle solving, though not very complicated, is something we don’t see in Kuwait. Everything is pretty straight forward, you are never surprised or shocked at some point. This movie gave you the Aha! moment at the end.

Another thing I liked about the movie is how they didn’t include any hot girls to attract audience. Instead, they tried to depend on the story and movie content itself. I pretty much hate the over-use of girls as the main purpose of the movie. Love is not everything. You can do a great movie without it. 12 Angry Men should be a perfect example right? Also, no girls most likely means to censored scenes ;)

Actors:

Not being a high budget meant deending on so many new and amature faces, trying movie thing for the first time. Some have shown promises, others need a lot more to work on. For me, Bin Salem was the best actor in the movie. What do you think?

What this movie Isn’t:

I agreed to go to the movie with the promise I will get an hour or two with the producer to hammer him with my review. He genuily accepted it, and that I did. I gave him the long list, chatted about the movie production and his role in it. Once you know the full details, you should know not to raise your expectations so high of the movie. First, the movie was never intended to be a real movie, but rather a short testimonial and rehearsal one instead as a proof of concept, and it was shot with very low budget, and used many voluntairly efforts. Heck the whole movie was shot using one single camera! Thus, some incompleted action scenes were overlooked. You can’t ask for much when you’re not giving anything right? This is why some bullets scenes are missing!

The fact that the movie got good impressions and motivation persuaded them to push it to the big screen. It was too late to go back and finish the incompleted scenes however. It was basically tough luck, so don’t go to the movie expecting a full real movie, but rather a short one that might be fun, and shows you a potential attempt, and a promise of possible good things to come.

As a matter of fact the producer was saying “Bashar, I am glad you are reviewing it as a movie. This was made for us as a practice only, and if there is going to be next movie it will definitely be much better prepared for”. 

Another thing is, I highly doubt this movie will suit females. It seems like a pure male targeted one. Action, and IT.

Geeky Takes [WARNING: SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!]:

Being an IT person the producer said you have to see it. I did, but that comes at a cost. I will expect high IT stuff from it, just like AntiTrust. So here goes the list of Geeky Takes

• Intro movie was, again, great and gave feeling of IT upcoming events.
• Spyware Definition: First of all, Spyware is not so much a techy catchy thing to show off with. If you wanna show off with techy stuff, pick a more deep topic. Second and most importantly, the definition was wrong or at least incomplete. Spyware is a software that normally installs without the user awareness, that’s right. But most importantly, a spyware is a software that collects information about your computer usage and transmits it to other parties without your approval, which was missing from the definition.
• What is the program about? They say it’s program for secure communication between police and investigators, however that does not make it a Spyware right? Apparently, no one really knows what the program really does.
• The programmer, Alaa, used Mac to program a client based app, which was later ran on Windows laptops. While you could argue Mac was running dual boot systems, that thing was apparently not accounted for.
• The programmer Alaa was too much decent looking, his desk was completely clean from any papers. No empty pepsi cans, no cold pizzas lying around. It just didn’t give the feeling of hard-core geek.
• No single command line shown! Boo-Hoo!
• The program did not give the feeling of being a security communication program, and it seemed to look different from begin than from the end of the movie.
• Programmers don’t use mouse! At least not so often.
• The identity program was kinda neat one, how it scans through identities to find the right person.
• When the gang steals the program, they do the old Delete Files trick rather than steal the laptop with it’s source code, or at least shoot the MacBook to death. Apparently, no one was welling to sacrifice his MacBook for the sake of the movie. I wouldn’t :)

Movie Site: http://www.abdalmovies.com

Popularity: 19% [?]

I’m not sure if this is new to me or new to Google them selves, but those new Google AdSense Image ads really look more attractive than before.

Anybody know about this?

UPDATE: It turns out this is a new type of ad being tested by Google, where you select a template of animated or photo gallery ad, select title, logo, and collection of photos to get going. I got the option once, got an error when I wanted to finalize the ad, and now, the option is gone :(. I want it back! 

Popularity: 23% [?]

Accoona.com, the site that started back in 2005 have finally given their last breath, admitting the touch competition and how hard it is to maintain such an expensive service up and running. Not that I was a heavy user of it, but I did like their Business Search service. 

Fare well.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Tomorrow is the final date for migration to the eight digits numbering plan, and as per the schedule set by the Minisrty of Communications (MOC) them selves, MOC gets to do the migration at last. Nevertheless, MOC have stated several times since summer there are totally ready for this migration, and it’s just a matter of public awareness that is delaying the launch.

Now, you may call this an incident, but the details strongly suggests against it. Today, my home phone kept ringing almost every minute, when almost no one knows this number, as it’s only there for internet access to be honest. Everytime I pick the phone I get strange outcome. Once, it connected me to the Clock number 113. How come? I thought first it’s a prank. Then a second call, when I pick up, it rings as if I was calling. Third and fourth time. It kept going on. Last time there was an old lady at the other side of the phone, and clearly she didn’t know what’s going on. When she heard me on the phone, it appeared she had dialed the wrong number.

Prank? Unlikely with this variety of people I talked to. Coincidental problem? Very improbable at this rate. But at all rates, I will not just fire a conclusion.

Soon after, I get this message shouting loud and clear, 777 Emergency Hotline will not be available through MOC, and you must use your mobile operator to call them:

Now isn’t that an emergency hotline, and like the most important number of them all? Wasn’t MOC ready for this since summer as they claimed? And how could you rely on a mobile operator in case of emergencies? I know it usually does the purpose, but what if it doesn’t?

So anyways, later today I try to call from my land line my parent’s house. First I got IVR very unprofessional noisy Kuwaiti message that I think was about the move to new plan. It soon broke up. (Again, MOC was ready for this). Everytime I call I get an error, regardless if I try 7 or 8 digits.

Fare enough, I said. Being a technical I know those things happen during migration. But why didn’t they do it at late night I wonder? Those delivery restaurants must be really pissed off. So anyways, I wasn’t expecting any better. I called using my mobile phone, only to hear Arabic message saying: “Sorry, due to excess load on the network, we cannot take your call. Please try again later”

Hey… wasn’t I supposed to use my mobile phone for emergencies? I thought I am exaggerating with my example, but it didn’t last long to prove, Murphy’s law never fails you. 

Great job MOC. Well done. You had written the rules all by your self, forced mobile operators to raise the funding for this migration, and then you totally screw up.

UPDATE (6:30 AM): I still can’t call 6 digits number from land lines, and guess what. Same time NBK Online Credit Card system is not working. But that’s no coincidence, NBK has a monthly regular downtime for their credit cards :(.

Popularity: 18% [?]

If you are a Google Chrome fan owning a Mac, you probably want to go here and sign-up for the Google Chrome for Mac news update, and get instant notification once the Mac browser version is out (in Beta ofcourse :)

In their words “Google Chrome for Mac is in development and a team of engineers is working hard to bring it to you as soon as possible.” I am really glad to hear about this, but I hope it’s not the reason PC Chrome is not getting good enough attention.

Popularity: 25% [?]