If you’re a gamer, you’ll probably be aware of the fact that the XBOX line is severely screwed from birth. The main problem is overheating, which renders the machine useless after a month or so (Ahhh Microsoft).

After taking his machine to Aladdin (the famous guys for fixing games), he discovered that there isn’t an actual solution for this overheating problem. So he went and bought those little laptop heating trays, removed the fans, stripped the XBOX bare, glued them inside, and then decided that it’s a better idea to play with the XBOX without its body.

And it’s actually working.

Just in case anyone wants to figure out what to do with their XBOX if it stops working from heating up. The screen goes fuzzy and then it shuts down.

And my eloquence drops down to 0 when I’m sleepy. Nigh!

This advertising campaign for the Sydney International Food Festival is pretty cool. It basically makes each country’s flag out of the food that the country is famous for.

Can you guess all the flags? :)

via adland

This list is in no order of preference.

1. Discovering a new Greasemonkey script that makes my life oh, so much better. Seriously. The power of changing everything at your fingertips. My favorite one these days is the Flickr spaceball remover.
2. Finding a tab I closed by using undo close tab. Applying ctrl+z to things that logically can’t have ctrl+z. Makes me hopeful that some day I’ll be able to ctrl+z things life itself.
3. Moose. His eccentricity. His surprises. His hugs. His utter fascination with sports.
4. Just the thought of Ctrl+Z. I often change my mind, and when you’re work is 100% centered around softwares, I can’t imagine my life without ctrl+z and the joy it brings. That is one thing I will never, ever take for granted.
5. Messing with paths in Adobe Illustrator. The deliciousness of the pen tool is not something I can possibly describe in words. You need to feel it to appreciate it.
6. Using 3gab. My favorite birthday gift Ever. One of the reasons I look forward to going home.
7. Spending as much time with my family as possible. They make my world turn.
8. Finding a frickin’ awesome Wikipedia article, that sends me out to a million other tabs of Wikipedia articles. That is my favorite way of wasting time. Beats reading Encarta, which I used to do when I was a kid. Once a nerd, always a nerd. I wear the nerd badge with pride.
9. Reading good Fantasy. A good book with elves, orcs, magic, and all other kinds of whimsical tales. My favorite reads: His Dark Materials, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, World of Warcraft (big thanks to Mohannad), among others of course. Man, good books are awesome. They are the secret to true happiness.
10. Instant access to knowledge. AKA Google.

Of course, there are many other things that make me happy, but these are the ones that have recently made me most happy.

What are your top ten things that make you happy?

It is a generally-agreed upon thing by children in this part of the world: it’s best to keep the tummy-ache a secret, cause otherwise, you will be subjected to your mother’s disgusting and inherited herblore.

That means mazaher (concentrated orange blossom water), which is even more of an acquired taste than marmite. Its smell is so strong that you might as well be chewing on flowers. Worse, it also means merameyeh (sage), infused with tea, and I still believe that it’s main idea is to stop kids from complaining.

It has taken me over 20 years to acquire a taste for orange blossom water (and my taste for merameyeh is still not acquired). I discovered that I actually like it quite recently, when things that you could possibly drink at the office like coffee, tea, milk and juice were finished. The only untouched bottle in the empty pantry was a bottle of orange blossom water.

I poured a little over hot water, and I found myself drinking nothing else for the next few days. That’s what we called “White Coffee”, or “Ahweh Beidah”.

And then I started wondering if MaZaher is really as useful as they make it sound. Afterall, it’s just water and flower essence. Its status as the ultimate curer of everything just doesn’t make sense.

My usual way of finding out: Google. The internet loves alternative therapy products almost as much as my grandmother, where the most random things seem to be so good. Honestly, I’m quite skeptical about such things, but I was willing to brave my skepticism if both the internet and ancient herblore in this region agreed.

My discovery: nope, our ancient herblore and the internet do not agree this time. While our herblore claims that orange blossom water is the cure to stomach aches, bloating, heartburns, indigestion, as well as every other kind of upset tummy problems, the internet seems to believe that it is only good for your skin.

I personally think my favorite use of orange blossom water is when it’s added to 2ater, which is the syrup that is added to 99% of Arab sweets. Especially when MaZaher tastes very strong with 7alawet il Joben. Yummm.

Yeah. Case in hand: Stop pestering your kids.

The Telegraph have an article on how some very popular websites looked when they first launched. It is quite amusing to look at them, because sometimes, you actually used in it’s first version, and it’s just like damn, has it been that long? Othertimes, it looked so ugly that you can’t believe the standards were that bad.

I’m sticking my favorite examples here, but check out the whole list on The Telegraph.

Google.com – launched in 1996. Hard to believe how ugly the logo was. I still find it hideous. Also, Google’s homepage is much simpler now.

Facebook.com – launched in 2004. Hard to believe that FB was this ugly in only 2004. It looks like it was created in ’97.

Yahoo.com – launched in 1994. I think Yahoo looked similar for quite some time. Quite impressive I think for 1994.

YouTube, 2005, hard to believe that it was this ugly, huh?

Amazon.com – launched in 1995. Amazing piece of webdesign for 1995. Amazon has kept true to the spirit of its first design for almost 15 years. It’s also extremely functional and yet quite well designed.

Nytimes.com – launched in 1995. I love how this looks like a newspaper, complete with the ads on top and the lines below the logo. So cool.

Bonus, And Far Away’s first ever design, in 2004.

I love efficiency, and so I love the new Zain pre-paid scratch cards for cellphone credit. They’re 1/5th the length of the previous cards, and they’re made of paper rather than plastic.