I’m so happy… I hope the children are as well!

and Mrs. Malik for the safe delivery of their son: Sinan Malik Abdullah, may he lead a long and peaceful life and be a joy to both of his parents.

Alhamdulliah 3al Alsalamah and congratulations once again from everyone at the Den.

It was a wonderful weekend, I think it was a Sunday with music and variou activities at Dundas and Yonge, opposite the Eaton Center.

Hanan and Amna had henna tattoos done, while the boys enjoyed themselves listening to the live band and running around the place.

What started off in fantastic weather, ended up in a freakish torrential downpour at the end of the day, which made us grab the first taxi that came our way to get to the car part to drive back and pick the rest up!

Good day nevertheless…

This visit happened early on in our stay in Toronto. It was on July 5th. The girls dissapeared by themselves while Frances, Arif and myself went through the exhibit. Arif enjoyed the Henry Moore sculptures.

There was a fantastic exhibition by Turner, Monet and Whistler, sadly they did not allow me to shoot video or pictures in that exhibit. They also barred me from shooting video anywhere inside the exhibit, hence you will see just the snapshot stills I have taken through the Henry Moore exhibit, and other places inside and outside the AGO.

88MB • 10m15s • RealMedia

Nothing to do, so Arif and I went to the (then) Royal Meridien (now the Ritz Carlton) Beach Resort. Have a look at what he was up to!

This was done at the Holiday Inn car park in Feb 1999 and it was brilliant! Everybody seem to have enjoyed themselves and this race has now become a staple event in Bahrain’s motorsports.

You’d would think that in an Arab Muslim country that we not only subjugate women, tread all over them, and keep them hidden away in a harem, right?

Not a bloody chance. Have a look at what these Equestrian ladies are doing and competing at the highest levels in the Bahrain Equestrian Scene.

So what would a child dream of? Money? Power? Politics? Not a chance… they’re more concerned with the “real” pleasures of life: FAST CARS!

What a day! This was the pre-cursor to the F1 proper, and have the first ever F1 car driving at hellish speeds on a public road was brilliant. Here is the movie I have created, with the help of Arif who actually shot quite a lot of video that afternoon.

Yep, I’m on my travels again. This time to Athens, Greece for a few days on business. So until I return, the person who is to blame for all the world’s ills, is:

Chan’ad

He is of course to blame for Abdulhadi Al-Khawajah being beaten, the Malkiya Wall requiring Royal Court intervention to get demolished, and the continuing existance of the Ministry of disInformation.

Have at ‘im guys!

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I don’t know what fucked up brain thought of this piece of shit called iPhoto? And why the hell does Apple take it upon itself to try to complete with the likes of Adobe at every turn is beyond me. They’ve done it before by dumping Adobe’s Postscript font technology for TrueType only for the pros to continue to use Postscript, and dunces like us just shifting to Truetype without any thought.. that’s a different subject however…

So far, after several months of switching to Macs (at home) the ONLY application I dearly miss is Adobe Photoshop Elements. I even bought it specifically for the Mac thinking that it’s going to be the same as the PC. Not a bloomin’ chance. It does have the photo editor, but it doesn’t have the album functionality. Hence my dependence on the stupid, brain dead, slow as a snail fucked up program called iPhoto. I Photo WHAT for duck’s sake if it crawls – no, it SLITHERS in a geriatric way with just 20,000 photographs?

And when it comes to backing up the piece of shit library AFTER IT BLOODY WELL HIJACKS YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS AND PUTS THEM INTO IT’S OWN APPLE-GOD-LIKE-FOLDERS which are completely useless, it just doesn’t do it!

I bought an external Sony DVD drive with EVERYTHING, plus, minus, whatever, and when I came to back up the piece of shit, it won’t do it beyond a single DVD! huh? That means that I have to become the computer and calculate how many pictures or libraries I can store on a single DVD because the piece of crap can’t span disks!

Even when I have given in to this fact, the bloody thing takes about 30 minutes to “calculate” or whatever the fuck it’s bloody well doing to get any response ONLY to crash the bloody program!

Ok, fine, calm down Mahmood. There must be a way. I look. I search. I google. And finally I find a library manager called “iPhoto Library Manager” yes, I know, Apple people are QUITE creative aren’t they? Only to find that as my library is about 20,000 pictures, it just gets iPhoto to crash more frequently!

I’m fed up of this shit. I’m a hair-breadth away of planting the fucking miniMac into the garden under a huge pot and get my Dell back up and running.

Okay okay, I’ll try something else. But my blood pressure is going to go through the roof in a few minutes…

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH

I was intrigued to read about a conservation effort in Bahrain mounted by one man to rescue the dwindling population of indigenous Bahraini frogs and terrapins in Khaleej Times on June 21st. The intrigue was due to two factors: (1) it was reported in an Emirati paper rather than a Bahraini one, and (2) we actually had someone who cares about the environment here?

The article thankfully gave us the venue and the person so it took only a couple of phone calls to arrange to meet with the person responsible for this effort.

Armed with my video and stills cameras, I went to see Essa Jassim at Al-Areen early on the morning of the 22nd to talk to him about his frogs and terrapins, and do a short interview for the vlog, if I could find one of his frogs I would shoot that too.

Essa was extremely accommodating, he talked to me at length about this, and other conservation efforts that he is involved in, about his experiences with the frogs, why he chose to champion their cause and how he went about rescuing them. But like any good man, he made little of this, as if to say that anyone could have done the same. Sure anyone could have done the same, but no one other than Essa bothered.

I hope you enjoy visiting Essa’s frogs as much as I did. It was 2 or 3 hours that were well spent at Al-Areen. If you’re in the area, I would highly encourage you to visit, it is a lovely place.

On the technical side, this is the most challenging video I have done to date. I actually spent some time researching the subject, doing some planning, purposely going to another location to interview a person I’ve never met before and it all shows. The technical aspects of the movie suck! There is a lot of learning to be done, and this was a very good start.

This is my checklist for what I need to get and do as soon as practicable:

1. Get a proper video camera, the Sony HDR-FX1 is my first choice there.

2. Get a proper microphone with a windscreen. You will hear how atrocious the sound quality is on the movie, I apologize as this is the best I could do with what I have at the moment. Suggestions for a good quality, yet cheapish mic are welcome.

3. I need to get a couple of lapel mics with windscreens. Subjects tend to get very conscious of the camera and refuse to look into it. When they do that, their sound is directed elsewhere hence the sound quality suffers. A lapel mic might help in this situation.

4. I’ve used a very dinky pocket tripod for this interview shoot which was good enough, I have a couple of other tripods for my stills cameras but I doubt that they will be any good for video as their heads are not fluid enough. I need to get one of those.

5. You will notice how self conscious I was in the interview, even though I recorded myself AFTER I finished interviewing Essa and then edited myself in at the appropriate places. I should have kept silent for 10 seconds longer between questions so I could get better edits.

6. I should have looked into the camera rather than looking down on my notes and then into the camera. Quaint yet, but professional no.

7. Because the source material was less than good, I spent a lot longer on the edit than I should have. I should plan the shoot a bit better.

8. Compression game me big problems, this time not with the pictures at all, but with the sound. Once compressed using various settings and those I have used before, the speakers sounded like they’re speaking into tin-cups! That should be fixed with good quality off-camera mics. I hope.

9. Lights! I need lights, reflectors or at least position the camera properly to take advantage of natural light. I had to do shenanigans get this corrected in post with a lot of colour correction which is not very successful due to the backlight in the interview segment.

Technical and subjects suggestions welcome.

We had lunch today at Cafe Italia at the Seef Mall. I believe that it’s the best pizza on the island, I always over stuff myself there, and in keeping with the Friday traditions, I have!

But, in between ordering and waiting for the meal to arrive, I thought I’d take Tariq Khonji’s advice and scan the blueteeth around me to see at least what dimwitted names I could get. And those I got aplenty.

Have a look at these moronic gems:

Some people need to be taken out and shot to be put out of their misery. I’ll pay for the bullets!