Just a quick note

I am moving to a self hosted site, so kinda busy designing it to my liking although I am not a good designer or experienced anything like that, but that is a knack to be narcissistic and self reliant ;).

can’t make a longer one since I am sick at the moment and feeling dizzy from staring on the screen and watching tutorials, reading pages and scanning some old doodles.

so cheers

 

No sharing will help those in needs but this does

As many of you may have experienced the stream of viral emails, Facebook post and other stuff that demands you to share, like, click ,comment, perform a split behind you keyboard while scratch your ankles with your elbows which they just claim one thing: ” we will help the hunger problem in some random city, help flood victims, etc. etc.”. none of them are actually helping anyone. If you haven’t   been following the news on privacy violations and other privacy policy, here is the main idea: big sites like Google, Facebook, (Twitter is kinda shady) and many others won’t like to store your private data to present them to other 3rd party programs, companies. and unless they do that, there is no other way for them to know how many likes they got or how many Random Citizen has clicked like button on Facebook. If they know, let’s all file a big ass lawsuit for the company who shared our private stuff to the unnamed 3rd party applications and organization not listed in Terms of Service.

But if you still like to help without spending a dime, here is the way: FreeRice. I remember their start and couldn’t believe it that it is so easy to help. they present you with some word puzzles and then as you answer correctly they donate rice (or it’s equivalents) to people who need it. As any other sane person will do, I first thought of them to be a hoax and not a legit organization. but just started to research them, googled them and the results were they are Legit. WFP has approved them and they are in business from 2007 which seems long enough time to be active if not legit. And another thing is that you don’t spend money (though you can if you want) there is nothing to loose if you spend time on their word game.

Give it a try and feel better about yourself while you are learning something useful.

My daily Gadgets and tools

Everyone is using something to get the job done, I have my choices of utilities for doing so. first and the most important of all is my trusty Samsung Galaxy S2 phone. It’s rooted with stock rom and Nova launcher. I am a bit lazy and forgetful so I need my phone and my pc to take care of most of my tasks, by automating them to do so. On my phone I use Tasker for doing so. it’s one of the best applications that I have ever purchased and love the easiness of making my routines automated by it. Tasker keeps a look on my phone physical states like headphone connected, location-based to do list with the help of Astrid  for shopping, or even application triggered reminders for paying the bills, or even ask my mom how to cook something when I call her, turning off my data when I am in home or at library.

Then comes the Astrid to do list, I was first a big fan of Wunderlist but now I have switched for Astrid in favor of automation. while Wunderlist is one of the best applications for managing your to do list, it’s mostly IOS based and doesn’t have the ability to sync with Google tasks  which is built-in in Google Calendar that I use to manage my time and meetings, deadline of projects and managing my time for my spouse. Also Astrid is persistent in reminding me to do something. If you are using IOS and OSx you can check out the Wunderkit, for project management and collaboration task management.

For my calendar I ditched my phone stock Calendar App the first day and installed Business Calendar  now for managing my schedules and meetings. It’s packing more features and widgets than other Android Calendars and I am a big fan of widgets since I am a lazy person and want to have all the information in one glance not scrolling through my application drawer and find and run the app. Time is money and if my time management application is taking my time, it’s better to be left alone.

My note taking favorite program is Evernote, because of all of the good things you already heard about and cloud syncing with my phone, so I can perform my reading, editing on the go, in the bed late night while trying to fall asleep.

I use Webclipper, Clearly, Food and Hello for other purposes. like clipping articles that I found related to my work, interesting recipes, my food experiences and remembering people ( really bad memory for recalling names or when we first met). In my arsenal of article saving I use Pocket; but there is a routine, every article that I found interesting first goes to Pocket so if I found it interesting or needed it for my research or future reference, it will be moved into Evernote.

 

We all have our own time budgets and we need to keep the tab on it or we lose precious time which could be used for doing what we love or what we should on like surfing the Facebook, looking at cat and dog pictures and lose our focus on what we really wanted to do by having our every action notification pop ups, dings and chimes. for me the first thing is to know how much time I have putted in my project so here comes the Focus Booster, a Pomodoro Technique based Adobe Air application which helps me to work on 25 minutes periods of pure focus and also Getworkdonemusic.Com which plays high tempo music from Soundcloud.  I have made a pact to myself, that no Facebook until 10 pm and no Mail Application should be opened on my laptop for more than 30 minutes in 3 hour. I hate distraction since I will lose my train of thought since for now I have so many Ideas and concerns. Another thing that I keep in mind is no sitting period for more than 40 minutes. after that I should get up walk around for about 5 minutes. My most used motto is “If it takes 10 minutes to complete it, do it; otherwise plan it“.

My software system bound me to 32 bit version of Windows 7 professional, which is customized in every detail imaginable. from the icons to scheduled tasks. as many other windows users may already know, windows does not support multiple workspace like Linux or OSX  which is where Dexpot comes into play. this programs allows me to have separate workspace on single monitor which helps me a lot. it’s not a memory hog and the transition is seamless. every workspace is dedicated to one thing. no distraction from unwanted shortcuts or programs.

my desktop is customized by the help of Fences  which makes groups for my shortcuts and can hide all of my icons with double-click on the background. we all look for information and files everyday, and I am no exception to this. while windows built-in search is good, I use Everything to find my files faster between my 5 hard drives. and believe me this little app, is what that keeps me sane other wise I would start to chew my keyboard.

for those of my friends and readers who are involved with articles and pdfs, I suggest Mendeley. it’s a tool for managing your pdfs, citations and much more. and since it’s so useful I will dedicate a full post to it in near future (hopefully by Sunday).

Beside My M100 Logitech mouse (which I barely use, since I love keyboard shortcuts) I use a Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet as default input device. I love writing also don’t want to have unnecessary clutter by papers. this pen plus Evernote’s Ink Note are my companions for most of the day.

so while I am enjoying the music from Getworkdonemusic.com, my headset is there to make the experience enjoyable. it’s a Logitech G330  which I use it for communication, music and gaming.

these are just some of many tools that I use to get the job done, I may continue to post new articles about other ones in future.

Art Core Illustrations

As we are all familiar with the new hype about 60’s style art works and how we use technology to make arts like those days with Toy Cameras and Polaroid Cameras  in applications like Instagram, Streamzoo and other vintage effects and utilities. I guess there has been enough discussion made on these new affection by more eligible experts than me. But there is something about Art Core Illustrations that made me do this piece of writing. It’s not matte colors but how they use it to make art.

For me I am a big fan of matte colors but I like how they use this group of colors in their art and still keep it energizing. I am a big fan of monsters too and I like their art so I am using their free wallpapers for my personal use also.

what is really interesting about their illustrations is simple and intuitive design. It’s not like other works with a lot of details and that you need a lot of understanding for the concept to get it. it’s just pure, dreamy and gives you serenity. For me, I am sometimes like this:

o r sometimes in the morning:

well I have found them via the good Lifehacker website on the Wallpaper Wednesday post which made me to look up their page and fell in love with their work on my own. If you want to check them out, you can see the Icons and the Toys (which personally made me drool).

Google+ gave me a new idea

 here is the story first:

well, the weather is in my favor now and I was thinking maybe I should share my moments of photography with my sweatheart when and where I can, I know she has the right to hate me for not being there together but this got me to do so! I want to do this badly and I want to do this soon. The foliage is in the intersection of life and death as the autumn breeze hits my face, that makes a  romantic atmosphere which I am sure I could enjoy thousands of times more when we could feel the cool breeze together!

The truth about “somebody that I used to know”

 

I was reading my news feed for Watch This article on The Verge which made me ask myself this question: ” what is it with some songs like this that make people cover them, hum them, whistle them and on on?”. Is it because we all feel a little bit out of place latley, troubled in love, socialy challenged and etc. Or there is something more going on, like this type of music target some of our more basic instincts, feeling of betrayal, the fear of being left out, maybe it’s a new trend among our 21st global tribe behavior that had led us to this kind of large scale activity. I just hope that feeling more like a human being become a social trend in the near future .

in the end I will leave my favorite version of this song performed by Noah and Christina Grimmie :

Prejudice

yesterday I was at the pride parade in stockholm, which was kind of nice being there. Those people, they didn’t have any intention to justify you by your hair color, skin tone or anything else.

the most amazing part was how they broke free of all swedish social trending, letting themselve to be free. what if all swedish people opened up, not being camera shy, not being socially awkward, cold with their witty politeness! Hope to see the people open up for godsake and start to embrace each other the way the homosexuals do, free of prejudice.

It’s all about fighting for something, for some right, if you have reached it the hard way you will value it for others too.

Dear Old Competition

As far as I can remember there was always a competition going on in my life, but now it’s gone! Back in the elementary school I hate the rival to surpass but that was more the child play than any positive behavior of mine.

Later on in my life, it became more and more crucial to challenge my classmates, friends and even enemies. Since then my character has become fused with these thoughts the less the challenge the more boring life became to the point that you just pass days and you stop caring about other challenges that life may propose. At some point you will compromise between what you want and what you need to do as the basic instincts of primates in order to survive the life. But does it really quench the thirst of a person hungry for some challenges?

I think maybe throughout my life I just cared about passionate rivalry this as a matter of fact is so sweet and so sad in the same time.

You see; the sweetness of this is the joy, passion and the sweet taste of victory or the bright side of defeat, so as I said before, there is always a harsh bitterness included when you live your life in this way. You need to open yourself to the problem of not having a worthy opponent in a long run or even you don’t even care about the fact that you are bored to the point that it tears you apart.

But in the struggle between these two states, there is a cunning way to turn this into a win-win situation. You can always turn a no challenge state in a challenging one.

One does not simply sit and surrenders to the situations.

the dream of mine

who cares about the status and social class in this age? I mean come on, we aren’t in the medieval ages anymore.. and Dorothy you aren’t in Kansas anymore.
so listen to me, I say that there is no aristocrat class anymore and thus results in more logical era than those times. I mean think about it we are compromising every day for what? for our freedom versus our social acceptance. ain’t that the bitter truth? think about we are different classes in the same time. for me I am an engineer, while I am a headbanger, a photographer and a blogger, add the categories of my nationality and my beliefs and some other factors and you will start to see tiny birds maneuvering in a psychedelic patterns around your head.
ok what I mean is that I think we as human race need to give ourselves a rest and start to simplify our values in a whole new way. I don’t want to go too deep in the problem here those who will get it will get it.

To pray or not to:

What give rise to praying? Isn’t it the inner need for serenity, when you found yourself powerless? What is praying to man rather than declaring he know he is weak; otherwise you won’t see him praying on his knees.

Till the moment he considers himself powerful, he constantly needs to feel some greater force than himself at work. If he stops feeling this, he may lose his composure. When you feel there is nothing more to do you just give up. You go numb, so here is the trick; In all of the teachings, proverbs and religious beliefs you see that they ask you to act while you are praying to a higher power, because in my opinion the praying is just overcoming the negativity of your disability to overcome the fear of, flaw.

When you finish praying your mind will start to work again, because you believed in some higher power, some mythical being, your mind start to think like one; showing you some new way. You become flexible to more absurd ideas, which seemed unreasonable at the first time they came to your mind. But when you pray, you are going for divine intervention, but my friends, I am afraid to say, that it’s you that act not GOD or some angle and Saint.

Well now on praying or not, let’s say don’t be a douche on both ends. Praying can be positive if you look at it with foresaid reasoning but if you look at it alone; without acting your role in your life, it’s advisable to give it up. It got nothing to do with being atheist or agnostic or infidel to any kind of belief. It’s all about pointless action, if you just pray for a better pay check or a miracle cure for your so called untreatable sickness, unless you don’t act, SURPRISE they will never happen to you.

In the end I can say that praying like any other human invention is a sword with two cutting edges, one can make you king and the other can turn you into a poor twisted mambo jumbo believer. All I can say, is that you need to act based on some more absurd idea to turn a frown upside down.