Diablo's Me Of Mine

iOS 5 > iPhone 4S

2011-10-18T14:38:00.000+04:00

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that iPhone 4S is out, now we're a step closer to the next generation of iPhones, cause honestly, as an iPhone 4 user, the 4S does not add much to someone like me. I don't even use the camera that much and all apps seem to be working fine and smoothly. I don't know about Siri and how would it impact my life, but you know, jailbreaking is always around the corner and it's a matter of time before Siri goes to iPhone 4 anyway. What made me happy is that iOS 5 was released with all of those nice features, and the price tag is zero! Unlike the 4S, which retails here for 700 OMR for the 32 GB on at Al Emad Electronics in Al Arami, what a dirty little rip off. So yeah, as far as I'm concerned iOS 5 is definitely worth being excited about that the 4S itself.

SotM - Danza Kuduro

2011-10-12T10:04:00.001+04:00

Don Omar - Danza Kuduro ft. Lucenzo

TGI Friday's Opening in Muscat in June

2011-05-04T12:31:00.005+04:00

According to TGI Friday's post at Omanternity, this is their following statement.

Dear All,

Trust all is well,

a lot of you have been hearing rumors which i have to say were not true, but i can finally tell you that yes we are opening TGI Fridays in Oman - opening expected in Mid-June 2011 and the location is confirmed City Seasons Hotel in Al Khweir with plenty of Parking under the hotel only for Fridays Customers. (For people who have concerns about parking)
For most of you who have visited any of our branches in other countries, i can assure you that Fridays Oman will be the first of its kind since we are applying the new design which is spectacular…
I will not tell you that I have heard from trusted sources this information, but I am the source itself.
We will still apply our same policy of first come first serve, but the good news is the place is huge with a lot of seating.
I would love to hear some of your thoughts on what would you like to see in TGI Oman.

Thanks and
Have a good day
Regards

TGI Fridays

I'm looking forward to TGI Friday's opening her in Muscat and finally, it's somewhere close, not all the way in godforsaken Mawaleh like when Chili's first opened, they stayed there in Muscat City Center for around what? 7 years or more? And now, just now they opened a new branch in Qurm City Center. Hope TGI Friday's lives up to it's name here in Oman

The Social Network Movie

2010-11-10T02:00:00.002+04:00

I have to admit, this is one of the best movies I have ever seen, not only does the story line appeal to my interests, Mark's early life and interests fall similar to mine, that is why i can't give this movie nothing lower than a full 10 out of 10. A masterpiece.

Accidental Suicide, Speeding Awareness Production

2010-09-20T12:27:00.010+04:00

My friends Moe & Azzam from Azzam & Moe Productions recently produced a video to raise awareness upon excess speeding while driving. Show your support and like their page on facebook, then pass by to drop some comments over here.

Chili's Opening in Qurm City Center

2010-09-18T08:07:00.003+04:00

Chili's will be located next to the food court instead of Biella. This will be the second branch Chili's opens in Muscat after more than 10 years of it's first branch that opened in Muscat City Center.

It's Sometimes Just SO Good to Cheat

2010-08-28T04:31:00.004+04:00

Yup, i committed the crime you see above. Imagine this, a warm chocolate cake with softly melted chocolate ice cream and another chocolate hazelnut ice cream scoop on the side, all on top of that warm melted fudge cake, the hot mixture of ice cream and chocolate that flames up that irresistible smoke that is sending signals to your mind telling you that this is going to be worth every penny you spent on it.

I feasted on the mentioned above scenario, except instead of chocolate cake, i had a date cake, it was even better (also i wanted to try something new). After being a very strict diet for god knows when, it really makes you feel SO good to just go somewhere fancy and treat yourself to a nice victory cake. I must say even though this little dessert is a caloric atomic boom loaded with carbs, sugar and fat, I felt REALLY good eating it, like i wasn't very worried about it's down sides, i just enjoyed it till the very last drop of it's melted chocolate syrup!

My place of choice was Dubai Mall's Brunetti, my dessert came at an almost whopping 770 calories, 25g of fat and 120g of carbs, and all of this was just a piece of one of my meals, i had a small New York Fries bucket with cheese later on for a scary 440 calories, now THAT made me feel bad because it wasn't that great.

It's pretty nice to have a teat once after reaching a milestone in your fitness game, i'm sure i'll recover these extra calories in three days at the gym, or atleast i hope so, so far i'm feeling pretty good, let's see this cheating dessert actually did set me back or not when i take my measurements next.

Measurements for the 27th of August, 2010

Height, 67.7"
Waist, 28.5"
Neck, 14"
Body Fat Percentage, 8.7%

DailyBurn.com Keep Track of what you Eat

2010-08-19T21:24:00.006+04:00

nu·tri·tion: The process of providing or obtaining the food necessary for health and growth. DailyBurn.com is my favorite website to help me keep track of the calories i consumed, if my intake of protein is up to par and wither my carbs intake have increased above 60g per day. The great thing about Daily Burn is when you review your daily nutrition intake, you will be able to evaluate where you went wrong or right with your food, in a case it was those Three Mejdool Dates you had before your iftar that stacked you up with 60g of carbs and 200 cals or the Two Grilled Chicken Breasts that you ate for dinner that rewarded you with 50g of pure protein. This can help you justify which foods you should limit, and which you can have more often if they appeal to your taste.

When you create an account at Daily Burn, you can start logging in your progress right away. Every morning you can log your weight to track it's progress over the long run, you also log your Nutrition by searching for the food you ate in Daily Burn's database of foods, they have almost everything, and in case you got your hands on something that is not available (that is quite unlikely unless your trying to log a home cooked meal, which you can also do by creating your own recipes) you can create a new food item to be stored in their database where you store its Nutrition Facts into their ready made sheet and then it'll be ready for logging by you or any future user that stumbles upon the same product.

You also can log in the exercises you do at the gym along with your sets, reps and weight count. Video demos are available for all exercises, it's a great source for looking up exercises and trying to observe the right way they are executed in case you have a feeling your not doing a certain exercise right or when you perform without feeling a stretch or strain on the muscle.

Working with Daily Burn for around two month, i grew a great sense of judgement upon the foods that are good for me, bad for me, the amount of portions that i need and exactly the nutrition values available for each kind of meal that i cook myself after breaking it down to its basic ingredients and evaluating each one of them.

Daily Burn is free to sign up for and has an iPhone App for updating your weight, nutrition and workout on the go, i'm using this app and it's so far so good, mostly been using it to look up info on food when trying to decide what in the world can a healthy dinner consist of tonight.

Low Carb Tortillas for a Healthy Pizza

2010-08-18T06:37:00.007+04:00

My idea of a good diet to lose weight is a very basic high protein, low carb diet, of course that includes staying away from any disasters known as fast foods, processed carbs (such as sugar, pasta, soda, pizza, etc.) and greasy fats (like butter, lard, etc.).

When you cut off carbs, bread becomes something of the past, and the more you go along without carbs the more you will understand that the feeling of being stuffed till your throat with food that your shirt is about to pop right through the other guy's eye and the reason you feel pretty sleepy, tired and lazy after a big meal is mainly because your overdosing on carbs, big example is rice, ever been shitfaced so far to the ground after ripping apart that entire dish of mandi and all of it's rice? Now you know why.

These tortillas you see in the picture above are a great alternative if your cravings are asking for some bread or a muscle healthy pizza! Tumaro's Low in Carbs Tortillas come in a great 11g of carbs (7g fiber, 4g net carbs) and 60 calories per slice, instead of those 40g of carbs and that whopping 240 cals that you would find in Subway's 6" Wheat Bread!

With these tortillas you can go for a great healthy & light pizza, just add 2 tbsp of pizza sauce, some grilled chicken, Kraft's Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese, a handful of olives, tomatoes, jalapeños, onions and a chunky salsa for optional extra flavor (It's insanely in calories ~ 5 cals per tbsp). Mexican food also comes really nice with these, i made healthy light tacos and burritos for iftar yesterday for everyone, they all loved it!

Tumaro's Low in Carbs Tortillas can be found in Lulu Hypermarket in Ghubra for about 2.300 RO, next to the cakes and sweets section. Make sure you pick the Graden Vegetables green bag, it has less calories than the other bags.
Kraft's Shredded Low Moisture Part-Skim Mozzarella Cheese can be found in Sultan Center in Qurm, for about 2.200 RO.

Dieting My Way to Fitness Perfection

2010-08-18T06:07:00.006+04:00

Guess I'm going to be updating my blog from now mainly about health and dieting since I've been a regular on this topic for a long while now and it became part of my everyday life.

I've been mainly trying to diet and workout so that i can get into great shape and better health, (since i have some sort of breathing problem every time i consume a large meal) and have set my goal towards getting a ripped body and six pack abs, which i assume is a sign of fitness perfection since it's not easy to obtain and would need a seriously low body fat percentage, probably below 5%.

There are two things you need to work on to reach such a goal. First is your dieting, that is simply what you eat, which is SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT (it's almost 80% of your journey) and exercising right (the remaining 20%). I'm no expert in both of those, but I've been doing a lot of research here and there, gathered lots of experience and on my way to be a success story. I started with the weight of 84 Kgs and around 21.4% body fat and now i'm 63 Kgs with 4.2% body fat, this transition took place during a year, but in the past 2 months (my summer vacation) I've been putting extra extra effort in reaching my goal, so far i have a visible four pack and inshalla by the end i Ramadan i will hopefully get close to a six pack (we have a beat going on this one! :P).

If I go back to my family and look at my relatives, there is one striking resemblance between all of them, lets face it, there is no nice way of putting this, they are all fat, and i'm not talking obese, they quite heavily overweight. It could be their genes to blame, but who knows, no one can prove that for a fact and if you always blame how your body looks like on your genes, you suck, period. It's basically their eating habits, they indulge on massive amounts of greasy fattening deep fried sugary butter-full food, and that's just horrible! I'm here trying to break the habit and be the first (in my house) to achieve a great figure of health and inspire the rest of this household to get off their lazy asses and get healthy & fit!

There is so much to talk about when speaking of a topic such as fitness, for now i'll just continue updating with my day's happenings here and there and some recommendations on food, exercising, local gyms and anything else worth posting about.

If your interested in reading more about Health & Fitness, drop by Steve Kamb's NerdFitness.com and check out his blog, he's an average person like you and me on his way to help others to a better healthy life, his Newbie's Guide to Fitness ebook inspired me like crazy and is HIGHLY recommended to read!

OmanTv Game Show Project

2010-08-16T05:35:00.003+04:00

I've been assigned to create a Quiz Game Show's Question Bank. What that basically means is that i'm supposed to create the interface of a game show where cards will pop out, each card had a color under it, so the participant selects a card and tries out his chances, he can get a gold card and instantly win, a green card for a question, a red card for an instant loss or finally an empty white card that signifies no progression at all. The challenge was to a dynamic flash game that can easily change the colored cards' formation around the map and also some sort of way to deal with the questions so that they're updated everyday with 30 new questions per episode.

The problem with this project is that i had to fully and completely finish it off in like a day and a half, i got a call about it from the responsible people and they said that you need to do whatever it takes to finish it on the first day of Ramadan! Which was impossible because this conversation happened almost a day before Ramadan, but in any case it was all a happy ending after SO much stress and work (OMG, i still have haunting memories of how stressfully the pressure from that situation was)

I would like to throw a HUGE ASS SHOUT OUT to Riyadh Al Balushi cause his flash tutorials at republicofcode.com were such a MAJOR help for me through out the show. Since i never studied flash's ActionScripting and just tried to pick it up as i go, i never knew the core basis of simple techniques such as defining a function! I mean seriously? I felt so stupid when i read the functions tutorial and went like Ohhh, so that's what it's all about O_O And i bet ActionScripting 3.0 is a whole different world that makes everyone's life easier, not sure if i'm ever going to move to that world.

Anyway, so thanks a bunch Blue Chi! Your tutorials are purely awesome! Owe you alot for 'em, makes me also wish i learned more back in Oman3D's days lol.

So for ya'll who are interested in watching my flash game in action, check it out on OmanTV 2 at 10 pm EVERYDAY, it's going to last till the end of Ramadan. Enjoy :)

PS, there are kick ass sound effects in the game, don't miss out :P

iPhone 4 Rates

2010-06-12T00:20:00.006+04:00

I'm definitely getting this phone as soon as its official store release on June, 24th. Will probably pre-order it on the 15th and have it shipped here through Aramex, only takes around 8 rials shipping charges, its not bad at all considering the fact that stores in Oman will most probably sell these units at insane prices such as 500 rials. Following are Unlocked iPhones' rates

iPhone 3GS, 8 GB is going for $499 that's 192 RO
iPhone 4, 16 GB is going for $599 that's 230 RO
iPhone 4, 32 GB is going for $699 that's 270 RO

Update, i'm one pretty darn happy iPhone 4 owner now, totally recommended in every sense in the world :D!

Phet Cyclone Expected to Pass Muscat

2010-06-03T23:20:00.003+04:00

Hope its nothing bad, keep up with the latest updates on English Sabla, Twitter and Omanternity.

Burger King Qurm Open for Public TODAY!

2010-05-12T09:04:00.004+04:00

Yes, believe it this time, it was announced minutes ago, Today, 12th of May, 2010, Burger King Qurm opens for the first time in 10 years! (Almost two of those 10 years was how long we were kept waiting since it was first sighted).

Burger King Qurm's menu is up on Facebook. Notice how the Triple Whopper is not there while its available in UAE's menu? lol

Seriously sucks that they don't have Hershey's Chocolate Pie, i really wanted to try that.

12th of May, Burger King Oman Opens

2010-05-07T20:20:00.003+04:00

For all who have been keeping up with my blog about when will Burger King Open in Oman, it's been officially going crazy on their facebook page, but the date is marked and Wednesday, 12th of May is the day to be when Burger King Qurm Branch opens again in Oman.

Honda Civic Type R Released in Oman

2010-03-25T13:51:00.003+04:00

Honda released the Civic Type R for the first time in the Middle East here in Oman. The price in the showroom is 13200 RO. There are only demo cars in the showroom at the moment, shipment of Red, Silver and Black will be arriving in April all with a few modifications. Also don't freak out from the rims, their color can be changed.

Specs.
Engine, 2.0 i-VTEC
Horsepower, 201@7800 RPM
Maximum Speed, 235 KPH
0-100, 6.6 seconds
Comes in Manual Transmission Only.

Guess Burger King Oman's Opening Day

2010-03-21T23:56:00.002+04:00

It's officially offical, BK Oman will open sometime between the 20th of March and the 20th of April. Their official facebook group put up a calender where people tag themselves onto the day they think it will open at. Try your luck and give it a guess.

Thanks for the tip, Guest on my shoutbox!

Rain this Sunda

2010-02-05T11:35:00.003+04:00

Read on Weather.com that so far there is a 60% chance of rain this Sunday. If it ever really happens, enjoy!

Burger King Oman Puts Up "Coming Soon" Posters

2010-01-22T21:07:00.005+04:00

Passed by Burger King qurm today and saw them put up the new wall posters on the windows. This is the first official coming soon announcement that comes from Burger King themselves unlike what we public rumor out and certainly unlike what their fan page on facebook always says. Obviously, how soon?

Update, rumor has it that its going to open on the 20th of February, hmm..

Chocolates For All Your Flavours

2009-12-25T14:38:00.003+04:00

Sultan Center had this for ages now, a dedicated quarters for imported goods from the US and Europe, they have everything that waters your mouth of goods that have zero hopes of ever being imported to the Middle East, specially products that you can munch on! Sultan Center also has a service that allows customers to pick specific goods to be shipped to Sultan Center, so you can basically feast your eyes on goods from the web and drop by Sultan Center to see if they can get them shipped, that'll bring back all good times you spent with snacks while being abroad (they come at a pricey expense too for being shipped half way across the globe). Got my hands on a couple of weird flavored chocolate bars, Dark Kitkat, Peanut Butter Twix, etc.

Believe It! Burger King Muscat Oman Opens This Month

2009-10-01T22:15:00.002+04:00

This just GOT to be the most anticipated joint opening for me in town. Believe it or not (you probably already know), but this time it really is going to happen, Burger King will open once again in Muscat since 2001 this month and most probably next week. The sign is already up and if you ask the workers inside, they're responding with confirmation that the joint will open next week. This picture above is of the Qurm branch, really dunno what's going on with the Mawaleh branch.

Happy days ppl :D!
They wont be too happy when we eat this junk way too often and get either super fat or super sick hahahaha

Brand New Camaro Spotted in Oman

2009-09-17T12:39:00.002+04:00

One of the first 2009/2010 Camaros in Oman i guess, looks really hot!

Burger King Really Is Opening in Oman

2009-09-17T12:20:00.005+04:00

I passed by the Oman Oil Petrol station in Qurm that has the rumored Burger King in it. The door to that cornered place that is supposed to be Burger King had its door open and people were working on the electricity wiring inside, surprisingly everything is ready in there, from the stall to the seating to even the equipment inside, as everyone had the word going on it, the delay is caused by something foreign outside the facts of the place not being ready, but they were putting on the finishing touches on the place so i guess something's gonna happen soon.

Mad Parking Skills

2009-08-11T12:50:00.002+04:00

These are just two out of like 6 times that i park this close to the car infront of me. Seriously, i'm gonna ram this car one day lol

Ran Flat

2009-08-11T12:39:00.002+04:00

It first went like KA5BOOOFJEOOW, then everything was shaking and it felt like an earthquake and then when i stopped to look at what has happened, i saw that my tire turned into ma3karoona (spaghetti.. sort of)

Black rims would kinda would look good on the car lol