.

I'm really excited about this years academy awards, there are so many big and well known names that are nominated and most if not all have delivered some really excellent performances. I am especially excited for 'Kate Winslet' as it seems to be her year after winning 2 Golden Globes. This is her 6th Oscar nomination so I'm hoping she's going to finally win. I watched 'Revolutionary Road' which she was just excellent in, and I hope I'm going to watch 'The reader' sometime within the next day or so (yes you figured it, I'm downloading a DVD screener rip of the movie because I don't want to watch the censored version nor do I want to wait for months for the original DVD copy to come out).

I am also hoping that Brad Pitt wins, this is his 2nd nomination only (his first being way back in 95 for '12 Monkeys') so it would be great if he gets it this time, though I highly doubt that's going to happen. But the Nomination most people are talking about is 'Heath Ledgers' Supporting actor role in 'The Dark Knight' which is without a doubt well deserved and the favorite to win this year, but Part of me is hoping that 'Robert Downy JNr' gets it for his excellent portrayal of a wannabe black guy in 'Tropic Thunder'.

To read about the rest of the nominations you can check out the list Here.

One last note, I'm going to watch 'The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button' tonight, I couldn't wait for it to arrive in theaters here especially after being nominated for 13 oscars. I want to see what all the fuss is about.

So apparently the Muscat festival has begun, I wasn't here for the past 4 festivals (or was it 5?) but I've been to the Qurum park location this year only to find myself bored with the lack of interesting activities in it. I don't want to sound like many other ungrateful Omanis who always complain about everything without making a change, but it really was a snooze fest! The same old 'Traditional Omani Village' that we've been seeing every year, same tacky little shops and the advertisement artwork and over all festival brand is beyond horrible which just sends out a very poor image of the Omani standard especially since it's being advertised for on an international level and not just locally.

I appreciate the efforts that the Omani government makes to handle such events, but it's time to up their game, it's time they do something that is worth being proud of, it's time they shocked us with some mind blowing events and rides that compensates for the lack of activities and events throughout the rest of the year, and I hope they find a better creative agency to handle the festivals artwork in the future and let people who actually understand what needs to be done take charge.

You can check out their incredibly tacky website HERE.

After using a mac at work for almost a year now, I decided to ditch my old PC for the new 13" Macbook, and I have to say that everything about it makes my digital experience so much sweeter. I don't have to deal with any anti virus crap, I don't have to wait a zillion years for it to start up or shut down and it's just so beautiful to look at. I'm not going to go into the specification details cause you can just go to the apple site for that.

All I can say is that I have no idea how I survived before it, and have no idea why other people just don't switch to the mac. People complain that the operating system is so different than that of windows, but it's actually a much better and much smoother operating system without 99% of the bugs you get with your copy of windows.

Okay, so I just spend nearly one whole hour stuck in the car due to the traffic that is caused by the parading omanis whom are celebrating Oman's victory in the match today against Iraq. Alright, so I understand their happiness, I understand that there are very little events in the country that people just want a reason to blow off some steam, but COME ON! This is just absolutely ridiculous, guys and girls dancing like idiots in the middle of the streets waving flags in their cars that are covered in the most tacky stickers I've ever seen, forcing the rest of us who just want to get back home or get by our lives to get stuck in that horrific crowd.

The shatti areas were a complete mess today, It normally takes me around 5 minutes to get home (I was having dinner there with friends) but getting out of that disaster of a crowd was just nerve wrecking. It even extended to the high road, and the khuwair traffic light intersection looked like it was hit by an atomic bomb, luckily I didn't have to get into that and just took a U turn on my way to M.Q, and yeah the only reason I had to take the high road was because the police blocked the bridge that takes you to M.Q from shatti.

I personally don't condone such behavior that just puts a halt to everyone's life whether they want to be a part of it or not and I think that the R.O.P are doing a horrible job in controlling it.

Apparently it's difficult for many arthouses (if you can call them that) to follow brand guidelines. RealityCG, the company I work for, have been assigned to come up with a supergraphic for the 19th Gulf Cup and we came up with a pretty decent little design to compliment an otherwise very mediocre logo (god knows how they accepted it in the first place). Unfortunately the people who've been handling it just don't understand the concept of following the guidelines we clearly laid out for them so that they don't end up butchering the supergraphic or the logo, but of course, being in Oman, it's almost a certainty that it does get messed up. it is frustrating to see the supergraphic being completely butchered, chopped, squeezed, you just name it in many applications other than the ones we clearly defined for them. It just surprises me that work like that gets approved, and sent out to the real world. Just comes to show you how much people here care about quality, actually strike that, just shows you much they KNOW about quality.

Anyways, to make things clearer, here's what the supergraphic is supposed to look like:

and here's one of the applications on an omanoil pylon:



The supergraphic over there is obviously skewed (squeezed) and it wasn't even cropped the way it was intended to be cropped.

Thankfully, they changed those though after we made it clear to them that the application was completely wrong, although there are still some weird interpertations of the supergraphic all over town (the little light boxes near the lulu roundabout, and a billboard on Bareeq Al Shatti).

Oh well.