I give a tweet!

I caught the twitter bug this week and decided to give twitter a chance. I did not even understand the whole idea behind it until I watched this great video that explains it all.

Basically its great for learning more about what your friends or in twitter-lingo people your following aka stalking are doing between e-mails, phone calls, chatting, blogging, going out when you actually have a chance to talk to them.

The main reason I started using it is at work we started using Yammer which is very much like twitter except it is limited to your company.

So follow me

Computer breakdowns, Google Reader, TimeSpace and goodbye 2008

Once again I find myself neglecting this blog, lets see if 2009 is a better year.
So my PC laptop crashed at home last week, and after many many attemps I managed to boot it into safe mode just long enough to drag all my stuff out onto another drive. I loaded all my photos, university stuff, master's project and papers, etc. on to my G4 powerbook last night and everything seemed like it was working fine. I "needed" to run my mac updates since I have not done so in a while, but really I should not have as something went coocoo after that update - maybe just a coincidence but I'm pretty sure the hard drive is pooched. So back to my PC laptop which I spent 2 hours this evening restoring and now it is in pretty good shape, much much faster than before which is one good thing that came out of this. But now I have this pretty g4 laptop that is pretty much useless until I figure out if I need a new hard drive or not, and whether I can grab the stuff inside or not. I do have a backup of it, but my only concern is I am not sure how recent my backup of the code I wrote for my masters is. Sure that was a while back (Jan 2008) but still I would like to keep the code I delivered...

Anyway enough boringness, for the first time I set up iGoogle and personalize my page. Very neat, added a lot of fancy little portlets, got my news, jokes, weather and shit all on one page. But then I decided to setup Google Reader and hook it to the blogs I like to keep up to date on. Now that Google Reader is a master piece - so simple yet I think it is probably one of the most useful product to come out of Google Labs. I love it! Thanks to Google Reader, I came across TimeSpace - a Google map based news aggregator with a time slider

Very cool. As you can see I have been occupied with the news from Gaza, what a sad way to end 2008. God help them and bless them. Anyway won't start my rant on that topic just yet...

Is this the coolest way to browse Flickr or what?

I Came across this Flex app (flash) a few weeks ago that searches tagged flickr images that match your choice of keywords. The app is called Tag Galaxy, try it out.

So once again I am MIA on this blog for several months now. Nevertheless I have been very busy the past few months working on some very interesting projects.

Google Earth Day 2008
What have you done for Earth Day this year? I was on a team that developed a website for others to make publish what they will do for Earth Day.

Martha Stewart Store Locator
A map based store locator for MarthaStewart.com allows users to search for stores that hold Martha Stewart products. Filter stores by city, zipcode, radius, product and retailer. Very neat!

Audiograff.com
A really cool Google Maps mashup that plots the location of music events - currently in the UK mainly, but will grow to world wide events at some point. The other neat component is that the database is loaded with new events from Ticketmaster every day! Got a band? what are you waiting for?

On another note, I bought a Nikon D40 recently and started reading about photography. I am really impressed with the picture quality of the D40, I barely have to do anything and the pictures come out ' redonculously' awesome! I will put up some of the best shots soon - maybe I can tag them and get them to show up on tag galaxy! All in all, I am very happy with that purchase.

This was a pretty generous update on Random Sh!t tonight for the very few readers left out there. I'll try to be more active in the future.

Come again

Deja vu!

I was checking out findbyclick.com (a community to share map locations and points of interest using the Google Maps application), and I decided to check out the location for Pentura Solutions where I started working this week. To my surprise I found a black car parked right behind the office in an almost empty section of the lot and I thought "Deja vu!" This was the exact same view I saw today when I left the office at 6pm today, but from the top. Check it out, you never know what you might find other than the gazillion Tim Horton's and Starbucks locations already posted!

Shakira ver 2.0 : )

Over a year ago I drew Shakira using lines only, so today I thought I could do a better job at this and made another Photoshop drawing of Shakira. [Note: this drawing is property of Nael El Shawwa]
Like the drawing of Ali you can follow the same pointers given there to produce a similar effect. Ali's hair is not as fancy as Shakira's so this part is the trickiest to do. My advice is to divide the hair into several layers: (1) a solid color for the hair, pick a colour that is common in the hair. (2) draw some thick highlights on another layer on top of the first. (3) draw thinner highlights on top of the thick ones. (4) Using the blurring tool, blur the highlights on both layers to create a more hairlike effect. Repeat this step until you are satisfied with the "hairy" layers.
The second trickiest part were the "boobs". My only advice is trial and error until you produce the boobilicious effect!

Photoshop Vector Cartoons

I first started drawing these cartoons around two years ago [see the Photoshop labels for other posts like this]. Today I started a new type of Photoshop art called vector drawings. Its not really difficult to do, just needs an eye for colors. For example, I did this cartoon of my cousin Ali - he does not wear a rose on his ear, but I thought it would be hilarious if he did.
So here is a simple tutorial how to do this:

1. Pick a photo you wish to vectorize
2. Plan which parts will go on what layer. A good vector cartoon needs to be organized
3. Use the brush, or the pen tool (I like the pen tool) trace out all the skin layer and give it one solid color for the skin. This will look like a blob at first.
4. Do the same for the hair on another layer, on top of the skin layer
5. And again the same for any other props like the glasses or the rose or the cup - each on a separate layer so you can control what goes on top of what in the image
6. When dividing the layers, you can also use multiple layers for the same item. For example, in the drawing above, the frame of the glasses, and the lens are on separate layers. This allows me to add transparency to the lens so we can see the layer underneath it
7. Add some shadows and lighting on different layers to make it more realistic. Keep them separate.
8. One thing I did not do in the image above, is add facial lines. These are important to capture the person's expression
9. Practice
10. Be creative!

Hope that was useful!
Cheers

Rethinking time

Adam Schwabe blogs:

The Polar Clock has circular bars that move to complete the day of week, date, hour, minute and second in what first appears to be a confusing arrangement, but is surprisingly logical.

This is a pretty neat perception of time, and it makes a lot of sense, probably even more sense than the confidential method. Other than having a really cool looking "clock", the interface is also more intuitive. Rather than just being able to tell what the time is, I believe with this you can easily tell how much time is left until a certain time. The other good point although not really applicable today, is the fact that if the conventional time system of 24hrs a day does ever change, it would be easier to change using this method by just changing how much the circular bars increment. Since time is read relative to the complete size of the circular bar, it would be easier for people to "get used" to the new method.

This was quite an interesting read, perhaps I should try to rethink the ordinary.